Co-opCondoBoard
FYI
BUILDING CODE VIOLATIONS
Local Law 48: The Creeping Horror
By FRANK LOVECE
(with apologies and thanks to Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft)
OU MAY CALL ME MAD — OTHER MEN HAVE. Yet a story is no less
true for having driven
You will understand whe
known
the e1
I first heard of Local Law 48 —
which amends Section 26-118 of the
New York City administrative code
to increase the fines for violations of
stop-work orders at construction sites
when a gentleman 1 shall call T.
relayed to me his tale of horror, His
36 HABITAT UNE
08
hearer into the mouth of madness.
Treport to you of a creeping un-
ore dark and fearsome than Cthulhu or Shuma-Gorath
known as Local Law 48 of 2006.
small, self-managed Manhattan co-op
‘was having plastering and waterproof-
ing done on one of its fagades. Their
contractor had inadvertently neglected
to obtain a Saturday work permit. A
small thing, “twould seem, no more
loathsome than a pedestrian crossing
“gainst a stoplight — a technical viola-
tion of no noise or bother. Yet when, at
10 A.M. on Saturday, May 20, 2006,
Department of Buildings
spector Patel Satish, Badge Ni
noted the site’s lack of an “af
permit, the contractor and the co-op
accepted his stop-work order, dutiful
ly stopped work, and moved to “cure
this violation.
Scoff if you will; I have seen the
results of their remedy firsthand, with
my own tortured eyes. There, on theDOB’s online “Building Information
System” (BIS), two years later almost
to the day, it is plain for all to view
in red, the hideous phrase, “A
Stop-Work Order Exists on This Prop-
erty
Curiosity compel
trembling fingers, | clicked on those
words; the mouse ‘neath my hand fairly
me, and with
seemed to seream, but I deterred not
And, what I found, happily, filled me
not with dread but with surprise and
a sense of cosmic justice, For there
on the Environmental Control Board
‘Overview for Complaint” pag
the solitary word “Resolved.”
I clicked further for details. “Het
ing Status: Cured” “Amount Im.
posed: $0.00." “Amount Paid: $0.00."
‘Complfetion] Status: C — Cure Ac
cepted
And more! My friend T. had shown
ime a hard-copy letter! Nicole Hudson,
of the DOB's Administrative Enforce
ment Unit, wrote on July 3, 2006,
‘Your Certificate of Correction for the
above Notice of Violation (NOV) has
been received and approved by this de-
partment. ... Since your Certificate of
Correction has been approved, you do
ee
PNET SS
THE LAW ITSELF (PDF)
bit: //wwu.nycgov/himl/db /downloods/at 4802006. pdt
FACT SHEET “Inceas in
ies for Working without «Perit
bit://bome2.nyc gor /l/dab/ownloads/t/cv_penales_wwop_foctsheet pdt
CERTIFICATION OF CORRECTION FORM (AEU-2)
bit: //wanyc gov i/db hors /orms_violationsshiml#aeu2
not need to appe:
any fines.
at the hearing or pay
Virtue rewarded? Mistake forgiven?
My friend, one would imagine so. Yet,
as if my mind were harkened back to
that fateful day itself
fore the creeping unknown would be
signed into law on December 5, 2006
= I swear that I heard the sound of hol-
low laughter emanate from something
within the womb of the city council
itself.
Time passed for T. and his co-op. On
a recent day, the treasurer, a Mr. K.,
made use of the newly upgraded BIS to
censure all was well with the property
six months be-
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38 HABITAT
entrusted, in part, to his care. Seeing
the red banner still in place, K. grew
troubled. A responsible man, he tele:
phoned the Department of Buildings 10
discern the meaning of what appeared
to be a strange contradiction on the site
He was told that, following tradition,
the certificate of correction letter his
co-op had received must now be hand:
delivered to the DOB’s Environmental
Control Board.
And there his troubles began.
T. himself went as instructed to the
DOB's third floor, where he was sent
to the fifth floor, where he was sent 10
the fourth floor. There, he told me, the
clerk, whom we shall call Mr. C., disre
garded the certificate of correction let
ter, disregarded the department's own
BIS, demanded payment of a $5,000
fine as the minimum imposed by Local
Law 48 of 2006, and became verbally
abusive.
‘What does “ILM.
asked when the clerk wrote those ini
tials before a name on a document.
"What does it matter to you?” the
clerk snarled
“Does it stand for Internal Man:
er?” T. asked,
‘Oh, you're a smart guy, aren't you?”
the clerk replied.
Itis ironic that a Lovecraftian horror
tale should suddenly turn Kafkaesque,
yet that is what happened. Although
zero fine had been imposed, and the in-
cident had occurred six months before
Local Law 48 even existed, the clerk
vowed to keep the building stamped
with a scarlet leter since the co-op had
not paid a $5,000 fine that had not been
imposed nor had even been on the law
books at the time. Yes, and more irony
Local Law 48 involves the violation of
A stop-work order ~ yet there was no
violation! Work had stopped when the
stop-work order was given!
The co-op remains at the Gates of
Hell, with the DOB becomii
same GOH. Trying to make sense of
hat selfthis, [poke with a numberof attorneys
and with an architec. I tried for over
three days to speak with DOB Press
Secretary Kate Lindquist, importun-
ing her through both telephone and e-
rail and receiving neither respect nor
response from a troubled department
where, as one respected, longtime at-
torney told me not-for-attribution: “A
lot of envelopes [of money} change
hands.”
None of these professionals knew,
offhand, about this law in any detail;
not all had even heard of it. When told
more, they agreed in principle
“They should [raise the fines)”
Edward Braverman, senior partner
at Braverman & Associates, told me
“Stop-work is stop-work. The reason
developer doesn't stop work is that he
doesn't want the expense involved and
wants to beat the system.”
“There are times where owners
weigh the cost of the fine if they get
caught versus the cost of complying.”
said Stephen Varone, a principal of
Rand Engineering & Architecture,
one of New York City's busiest ar.
chitectural and engineering firms. “I
think the DOB is trying to take away
or reduce the number of times owners
‘would do that calculation. I's not nec=
essaily that owners are nefarious,” he
pointed out, mentioning “scope creep’
and other incremental ways that con-
struction details on paper can evolve in
the field,
Is it equitable that the same $5,000
‘minimum applies to giant develop-
crs doing massive construction and
small building doing small repairs?
“That's subjective,” attorney C. Jaye
Berger told me. “A'small building may
cause just as much irritation as a big
building. On a block with a couple of
thousand people being awakened on
a Saturday morning, they may feel
$10,000 is more appropriate
“Even a small building with a serious
violation can cause public harm to an
adjoining building.” agreed another at-
torney ~a former city planning director
for whom the creeping unknown causes
such trepidation that he would speak
only with a guarantee of anonymity.
“An enormous building will have more
impact because it touches more proper-
ties, but a small building can also have
potential for large problems. It’s hard to
be generic with fines.”
Yet what if it is not, in fact, the
creeping unknown that is so danger-
ous? What if it is the minions of Lo-
cal Law 48 of 2006 those clerks and
bureaucrats who are not lawyers and
misinterpret the law, who let stubborn
pride and obstinacy keep them from
reason and understanding, and who
refuse to accept even the word of their
own online and paper documentation?
“Let's say the BIS says a violation
has been removed, and you still get a
default notice,” said Varone. “You go
toa hearing and say, “The BIS showed
it was clear’ Judges listen to reason.”
‘And when two years have passed
without notice from the city, and a vio-
lation stamped as cured is suddenly,
inexplicably, horribly not so?
“Sometimes,” Varone advised me,
‘Keep asking until you
get the answer you want.” As soon as
you get a dead end, you should speak
io another clerk. Instead of speaking 10
a supervisor, you find someone else in
wgement and ask them to clear it
up.” In the clerks’ defense, he said, “it's
like parsing the constitution at a cer-
tain point, and the clerk doesn't neces
sarily know.”
Nor, it grieves me to say, will he
‘admit that he does not know. Regard-
less, all we have left is the wisdom of
experience ~ and the sanity of mad-
ness. “Be aware,” said Varone, “that
the fines have increased, and [that fact
is] not on the industry radar for some
reason.” Indeed, if reason ~ at the DOB
exists, 4
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JUINE 2008 WABITAT 39