311: The city at your out of service

"Nothing succeeds (or succumbs) like success."

Consider the '311' system, which is hyper-touted by the city as a splendid innovation and triumph of futuristic efficiency. Its "success" shrinks away under scrutiny. 

The city is better at quoting proverbs than at fulfilling promises.  

Streamlining the confusing, maze-like spread of agencies, properly directing inquiries about services that are in their purview, minimizing redundancies and delays, cutting through red tape and promoting accountability and public confidence has not been achieved by integrating and centralizing complaints and informational requests into a single call center.

Whenever the City tries to simplify the delivery of services, things get complicated.

The 311 system intercepts complaints as though they were footballs but then doesn't run with them. It functions as a firewall that blocks the aggrieved public's direct access to agencies that are often dysfunctional or, in the case of the NYPD, sometimes immobilized by the supremacy of political-driven restraints over legitimate causes of action.

It's never the fault of the workers who answer the phones. They're given scripts and preset formats.

Most complaints relate to noise, trash collection, potholes, street lighting, blocked driveways and rodent infestations. A trivial snippet from my own experience looms larger as symbolism.  

Early every autumn, the bathrooms in a popular public park behind an elementary school near me are padlocked. Signs on the doors state they are being "winterized" and will re-open in spring.

As always, they remain locked at least until June, and not one minute's work had been done on them (and none was needed) during its closure, which was not due to plumbing, structural or staffing problems.

The cause is laziness and a consummate absence of accountability.

If you tally the number of french fries served in all the meals of the combined diners in the metropolitan area since Carmen Electra was a thing, you'd get an idea about how often I called 311 about the toilet shutdown. At least once for every bubble of urine that I discreetly left in the dirt on a quiet lane, when no one was looking, and there was nowhere else to pee.

Every year it's the same deal. False assurances. No action. Meaningless complaint numbers. 

A friend of mine from Brooklyn called 311, because he often cannot access his car, due either to unattended triple-parked vehicles, or autos and trucks belonging to worshippers who leave their cars at all angles in prohibited areas and are never ticketed, perhaps under orders from City Hall.

Potholes are a boon to the City's treasury, so maybe it is somewhat conflicted about repairing them until a new mini sinkhole is born perhaps two weeks later. Taxes on repair costs from broken axles and busted tires can be used by the city retain consultants or help make up the shortfall from unpaid bus and train fares.

Since its inception, 311 has received tens of millions of calls.

Give credit where credit is due. At least a dozen were resolved promptly. Some roadkill was whisked away and graffiti sandblasted.

Private fireworks displays are illegal in New York.  If you've forgotten what belly laughs sound like, try complaining to 311 or your police precinct.

Loud and poorly supervised displays that illuminate the skies, set off car alarms, and spook stray animals, are tolerated, not just on July 4 or Chinese New Year. 

Calls 311 are answered, but cries for help are not.

Try reporting the falling of a tree that just nearly missed you. They'll either put you on hold or tell you to call them back when a branch weighing over 100 pounds lands on your head. 

Many of the more serious calls require an NYPD response. Commissioner Jessica Tisch pledged to "focus on responses to 311, community engagement, the identification of chronic conditions, and strategies to resolve them."

Her QSTAT novelty, modeled on former Mayor Giuliani's CompStat system, will focus on quality-of-life issues, rather than crime.

Over twenty years ago, the 311 help line was pledged to be "a 24/7/365 clearinghouse on all things City government." There was talk of interactive maps and a new dashboard to break down data neighborhood by type of request and its disposition.

The NYC 311 Monitoring Tool is not a consummate fraud, but it is certainly overhyped. 

As the summer progresses, the customer service reps who answer the 311 calls will be getting the usual season-related complaints, like drag racing and alcohol-fueled altercations at barbeques. Because of the lull in major Jewish holidays, there may be a pause in the coordinated mini pogroms in front of synagogues, by folks who tweak and mock the First Amendment.

The Labor Day parade, which honors workers, is not many blistering weeks away. Some of its thunder has been stolen by May 1, which has more explicitly political overtones that many workers reject, although it is celebrated in their name anyway. 

It's more global, more socialist and less relevant to us.

Blind unity and unconditional solidarity with all workers and picket lines, even under dissimilar circumstances, is the watchword and war cry of radical gentry from Park Slope to the Hamptons.  After securing their high net-worth portfolios and insulating them from every form of financial and social unrest, they batten the hatches and brace for impact as they fight for a just society.

If belief that "my country, right or wrong" passes muster as an upright assertion of patriotism, then so should "my aggrieved comrades, no matter where they labor, what they do, or compensation they get, are fully justified in their collective bargaining demands, right or wrong."

We should be jubilant, not envious, when our fellow unionized workers score big.  It is their just desserts.

Prior to the three-day LIRR work stoppage in May, around 10 percent of the strikers were already making over $100,000 in overtime alone. A few were raking in almost a quarter million dollars annually in guaranteed OT. 

Overtime costs have been around 22 percent of the LIRR's payroll, if right-wing Manhattan Institute can be believed.

The LIRR employees have had a good deal, much better than most of their comrades in the labor movement, such as it is, but they deserved it, no matter how above the average.  Management will always trot out the alibi of having to be the righteous stewards of responsible fiscal austerity, even among the most profit-awash private companies, whose senior executives often pocket compensation packages, including bonuses and stock options, that amount to thousands of percent above what they begrudge their employees.

"Mickey Mantle, one of baseball's greatest, made $100,000 at the end of his career in the 1960s, and mediocre players today who might never have made it into the major leagues prior to the expansion of teams, are being paid 20 times that salary," observed a friend of mine who lost interest in baseball, because "it became a business, not just America's pastime anymore."

Have the team owners gone into hock to pay for the tab?  

Remember their M.O and where their heart is: on May 20, an arbitrary 10 percent of their 80,000 employees received emails at 4 a.m., informing them that they had been fired. No prior warning. 

All employees were told to stay a home that day to find out whether they were among those axed for no reason related to their performance.

No grace period.  No grace. Period.

In labor negotiations, victory is vindication. Defeat contrives to avenge. 

It awaits the next negotiation or election. Workers should fight like hell for all they can squeeze. Any litmus test for what is unreasonable is itself unreasonable.

If they can get it by any lawful means, then they deserve it.  That's the measure of merit. 

More power to them.  Never commiserate with the bosses. 

And bravo to the rank-in-file of the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council. Their members are housekeepers whose average annual pay will increase to over $100,000, with an average hourly wage of over $61 by 2034 and hotel owners will continue to pay the full cost of members' health care benefits.

And some breaking news!

Due to a DNA test of 16th century remains in Seville Cathedral in Spain, Mayor Mamdani may be able to "have his cake and eat it too," by continuing to opt out from participating in the Columbus Day parade, but without affronting Italians and Catholics. 

After 21 years of forensic medical experts' investigation, it has been concluded that Columbus was likely a Spanish Jew, one of many who were forced by the Catholic monarchs Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand to convert or be tortured, killed or expelled. He chose the mildest course.

Fancy that! 

Now Zohran can boycott Columbus on the grounds that he may have been a Zionist.