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bkornblith t1_ja9dudl wrote

"As THE CITY has reported, the cost of installing what are known as “comfort stations” in city parks ballooned before the pandemic — from an average cost of $1.3 million in 2011 to $3.6 million as of 2018. "

What the actual fuck... The biggest issue in NYC is everything costs millions of dollars for literally no reason.

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akmalhot t1_ja9sowv wrote

Everyone has their hand out. Top to bottom .

Buddy suodating his house in Nassau, came to a standstill. Had to hire a an accelerator or whatever to get the permit people to come approve things.

Total scam

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bkornblith t1_ja9udla wrote

I have a friend who bought in Forest Hills and its been a year and a half and still hasn't got his plans approved by the city for renovations... truly a wild amount of corruption everywhere.

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akmalhot t1_ja9vy8u wrote

Oh, get one of these accelerators it'll be approved in a month or so

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bkornblith t1_ja9wtn1 wrote

He has one…

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akmalhot t1_ja9xbls wrote

Half of me grows to hate ny more and more..

The other half can't go back to suburban life.

It's like a terrible drug in ways...

Id definitely tell others who's careers are not accekerates or better by living in the tristate to never move here.

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isowater t1_jaaugwl wrote

You can just say fuck it and do the renovations anyway. The Philly approach

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djdjddhdhdh t1_jab8grv wrote

Ye then you’ll you’ll be the guy in states island who keeps getting sent to jail for not having 300k to tear down illegal renovations lol

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ehsurfskate t1_jab18fh wrote

I’m a professional engineer and depending on the work he is doing it could be self cert by a registered architect or professional engineer. Only downside is cost to retain us to do that, but it usually gets through permit in days.

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ehsurfskate t1_jab2n5w wrote

So not all work can be self certified so it may fall under that. Alternatively, the special inspector may be giving him a hard time. Usually for the jobs we do we also inspect -as licensed engineers or architects it’s easy to get the special inspection credentials.

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bkornblith t1_jab1m37 wrote

That super weird as he has an architect who made the plans. Basically, he’ll get an inspector from the city, they’ll come by and say these two things need fixing, he’ll fix them, they’ll send a new guy, different shit, repeat forever.

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Freddy-Sez t1_jaaqlg0 wrote

I always wonder how permit expeditors get into that line of work

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Adriano-Capitano t1_jabrmyl wrote

I’m in that industry.

Walked out of a job, went to a bar, talked about walking out of my job to random people at the bar, one of whom offered me a temp job. One of my co workers at the temp job had an old friends who was looking for an employee, and like that I was hired.

Small family run business that’s been doing it for decades, not many people do it so you tend to run into the same people doing related work, engineers, installers etc all the time. A lot of internal drama, often if you get on the wrong side of a city employee they will make it difficult for you to get things permitted. Or often previous owners had unfinished permits, violations which make things more complicated.

Overall it’s an easy job that pays OK and my office in particular is closed whenever the Department of Buildings is closed, we work pretty much all remote, and by 3PM it gets quiet and I can more or less sign off.

I have also learned why projects like these can take so long to get approved and why they seem like a scam. If you’re doing an inspection, often the client, business owner, property owners, engineers, property electrician, general contractors, people who provide lifting trucks, city inspectors all have a stake and need to be present to ensure things go smoothly on all ends. One person missing the inspection might fuck the entire inspection up if they forgot to point something out and now you have to reschedule ALL those people and it costs thousands more suddenly. And the city inspector is pissed they have to come back again so they will find a way to give you a hard time or ignore you.

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