The delay of the Preliminary Project Review

So my preliminary project review was submitted to the City of Toronto on November 14, 2012. The city staff told us that the result should take 10-15 business days. And here we are, more than 15 business days later. The city building application status web site still indicated that the status of the application is “Not Started”.

I don’t mean to sound harsh, but if one of my client gave me $175 and I have told them it will take 10-15 business days to get some job done, I would want to actually finish that before the 9th business day. If it took more than 10 business days to complete it, I would actually call my client to explain why. And if it takes more than 15 business days, I would have to explain to my client exactly what went wrong, and much more. Yet here we are, because this is public sector works, at city hall, more than 15 business days later, there simply is no communication, not even an excuse like “we have too much to work on and that’s why your application is delayed.” Yes because the city as well as the staffs works for the city knows that they can delay and delay, and delay some more, for as long as you are not taking them to court, there’s nothing you can do about it. You are completely at their mercy of when they want to work on your request and how long it will take to complete your request.

The last time I had to deal with the city, it took them over 1 month to tell me my front yard parking application is rejected because the proposed parking pad is too close to a fire hydrant. To me, I think this should have taken a knowledgeable person 10 seconds to see and a few minutes to send out a rejection letter. And so to me, it shouldn’t have taken one week, certainly not two weeks, and most certainly shouldn’t have taken one month (or in this case a bit more) to get the result back. But it did. All the while, in my own business I am trying to be more efficient every day, to get the work done in less time than it use to, all at the same time trying not to charge for more money.

This difference is night and day between my private business and my city’s public sector works. So next time if you don’t get a sense that I support the local CUPE job action, well you know why. Show me public sector union workers improving efficiency as we do here in our small businesses, then I’d give you my support. Otherwise, all I see is a large group of people trying to bunch together and force others to give them a fatter pay cheque all without working a tiny bit harder or better for it.

At the mean time, I continue to stare at this: