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 theDOB’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- Does Your Building Qualify? The Jared Program eee ce Cee Rela ey emer Een “Directors & Officers Liability Py Se ey Soe etre’ See Dad Pe ee Ry Correa Edward J. Mackoul, CIC Sa Tour ty (212) 391-8280 | (516) 431-9100 Pm cc 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 selfthis, [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 ALL AREA REALTY SERVICES, INC. If Not, What Are You Waiting For? 718-721-0700 ff 212-721-0707 (¥ 516-417-8400 JUINE 2008 WABITAT 39