elpasospeak

This was posted anonymously.  I thought that it deserved a separate category so I have moved it here.

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I had the opportunity to deal with El Paso’s City Development department this week. The experience was not totally pleasant, and a friend suggested I visit elpasospeak.com and tell you about it. So….

My water heater died a couple of weeks ago. Just one of those things that a homeowner has to deal with. I called a plumber in to replace it; on finishing the job, he informed me that we now needed to schedule a visit by a city inspector to approve the installation. Okay, I thought, there has to be accountability somewhere, and a city inspector sounds like the kind of person I’d want to make sure the plumber did the right thing.

He offered to schedule the inspector’s visit for me. But, he said, the down side is that they (the city) would not give us a time, and that if I was not home when the inspector came, the city would bill me $65.00 and I’d have to reschedule.

Huh. Ok, I’m sure the inspectors are very busy people. And I understand that service related technicians can only offer a window of time; because of the nature of what they do, it’s hard to be specific.

So, the plumber arranges it and tells me that I can call the city on that day and maybe get a narrower time frame as to when the inspector would be out. The day arrives, and at 8:00 a.m., I begin calling the city development department. No answer. I call again at 10 minute intervals, until, finally, at 9:10, someone answers the phone. (Ok, maybe the city doesn’t honor normal business hours.) I’m given the inspector’s name and phone number, and I call him directly. He tells me he’ll be at my house sometime after 10:30 a.m., but before lunchtime (which, I surmised, would be noon). At this point, I’m thinking that maybe I’ll only miss a half day of work. Hah!

Noon came and passed, and of course, no inspector. I finally reached him at 4:30 to determine why he had not yet come to my home. Turns out he had other homes in my neighborhood, and he thought he had hit them all, but apparently had overlooked mine. To his credit, he apologized and said he’d be right out to do the inspection. Ten minutes later, I showed him the new water heater; he looked, noted the insulation around the pipes, noted that it was a gas water heater, noted that they had also installed a drip pan. He then pulled out a card, wrote his name, my address, handed it to me and said ‘This is for your records. Sorry again for the delay’.

He was done in about two minutes.

Huh? That’s it? I don’t need to sign anything?

Nope, he said. You’re good to go!

Amazing. So, this little episode raised some concerns in my mind:

I wonder if the inspector considered the value of my time? Because it wasn’t just my time. It was my boss’s time. And my customer’s time. Considering he was 4 1/2 hours late, I’m thinking I should invoice the city for a sum of money equal to the amount of money my company lost….

And where is the accountability? Where are the checks and balances? How does the supervisor in the city development department even know that the inspector was at my house? Or any other house? What documentation does the city keep to ensure that inspections don’t get skipped?

And, by the way, what kind of an inspection was that? I could have taken a photograph and sent it in as proof that it was installed up to code.

I believe that in any organization, leadership sets the tone. They are the role models, and they set the example for the rest of the organization to follow. I’m wondering now, just what kind of leaders my inspector has? And if it really does come from the top, boy, are we in trouble.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2013 at 8:44 AM and is filed under City government, Personal Experiences With Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.