Calling 311 an exercise in futility

From Cleanup Jamaica Queens:

New York loves the motto, that came about after 911, "If you see something suspicious, say something, tell a police officer, blah blah blah............."\

But don't always expect something to be done.

Case in point. Saturday, October 18th, a small apartment building is going up at the corner of 170th and 90th Ave (89-28 170th St) and they have been in the process of putting in water/gas lines. Now this past summer, 170th Street was paved and an individual in Queens Borough DOT told me that once streets are paved they should not be torn up for x amount of time except for an emergency. Well the developer of this building in the past few weeks have torn up the road several times and this past Saturday was at it again from 7:30am to around 5pm (constant jack hammering, tamping down of asphalt, etc) and the whole time, the street was closed off. The permit is for work only on Monday through Friday. When I approached the man in charge and asked if he had a variance permit on Saturday, his answer was "Ah, yeah, I think it was done the other day, but I don't have it with me. But we are working on an emergency." Actually there was no emergency, they were just finishing up their job, which was probably behind schedule. Of course when you call 311 about this, they tell me DOB will eventually come out in x amount of days. Of course said work is already done, so they will see nothing and the developer gets off the hook.

Since the part of 170th Street was closed, the illegal trucks that use 170th then had to detour on another residential street, 90th Avenue, so then you had several of these trucks, many carrying chemicals barreling through several very narrow residential streets. A complete day of illegal activity and quality of life issues.Makes you wonder sometimes about reporting anything anymore, especially in Queens and especially in Jamaica.