My wife is a college professor. Constantly I find myself in the company of scholars and intellectuals and I know I am not one of them. I am a mason, and not the kind that knows the secret handshake either. Rather, the kind who sets stone, lays brick, and places stucco. As a building inspector, I bring my lifetime’s worth of expertise to the duty of enforcing codes in an effort to keep people safe. As I sit with the citizens of New York in a social setting, I am keenly aware of their perception of city workers in general, and of building inspectors in particular. As I embark on a new season of training rookie inspectors, my goal is to ensure that how we are perceived by the public ranks alongside the stellar reputations of Fire Fighters, Police Officers, and Teachers in the pantheon of well regarded, if not heroic, civil servants. Bad apples are the exception, not the rule, in all walks of life. They garner the most attention because punishment must be public, while praise, it seems, is relegated to a quick sound bite on a slow news day. These are just the facts of life in Gotham and it’s taken me a long time to develop the thick skin required to press on.
I want to take this opportunity to honor all the diligent grunts in the trenches making a difference day to day by paying serious attention to the details of how our city works. The blood and guts of a modern metropolis; its plumbing and electricity, boilers and elevators receive notice only when they fail to work properly and are otherwise taken for granted. The people who work on these systems, designing them, building them, and maintaining them, know better.
The public of this great city, from the mayor to the commissioner of buildings, to your family, co-workers and neighbors, to the homeless people on the streets, are demanding of excellence and insatiable in appetite for a greater New York City. They are tough customers. We owe them and each other our best.
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