Thursday, February 15, 2007

Convicts Inspecting City School Buildings

Avella Calls For Suspension of Building Inspection Company Contract - Queens Times, 2/14/07

Council Member Tony Avella recently called upon the Mayor to immediately halt the City’s contract with a building inspection company called Materials Testing Lab (MTL).

Avella’s request comes after viewing a recent investigative report by Fox 5 News into the operations of MTL.

“According to the Fox 5 News investigative report,” Avella said, “MTL employs several inspectors that have extensive criminal backgrounds and no previous building/construction experience. Despite a lack of any knowledge of construction techniques, such as welding, electrical wiring, etc., these inspectors have the authority to approve work on construction sites involving City buildings, including new school construction.”

Avella added, “As a result of their inexperience, the Fox 5 news report indicated that these inspectors are simply approving every construction site under their jurisdiction. Given this Fox 5 report, I strongly urged the Mayor to immediately halt any contract(s) the City may have with MTL and to conduct a full review of sites these inspectors previously approved. One can only imagine the amount of faulty construction that has been overlooked because of this company.”

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Isn't it ironic that our governmental "crooks" employ "convicts" to do inspections? I'd be tempted to laugh if this wasn't so serious!

Years ago, when the MainSt. #7 Flushing station was in the middle of a redux......an examination of the Vendex files kept by NYC indicated that the contractor employed to do the job had a "questionable" history.


Despite the raising of the alarm regarding this by C.M. Harrison at the time,
it didn't stop the city from using that firm!

In fact (indicted) Brian Mc Laughlin, Stavisky & Co. held a demonstration on the corner of Roosevelt & Main , supporting the project as it was!

Anonymous said...

Who has top control of the NYC Public School system?

Now that he has the responsibility, what does he do? Rake in some taxi money at the expense of the safety of schoolkids in the city.

Oh, yeah! I forgot; the schoolkids are in public schools. Not the expensive, exclusive private schools this mayor really favors.

Why should he care that the "inspectors" are unqualified? To this mayor, anyone in a public school is unqualified to get his interest.