You vile pit, you wretched filth-hole — look at what you’ve done to us. We stood motionless, entirely at your mercy, and even you yourself did not know the power you wielded. Your minions are a proud bunch, battling decisively, speaking determinedly, appearing as confident as a bird dog in a large field.
And yet… and yet, there are those among your ranks who have not succumbed to the mindless humming and unscalable walls of impenetrable normalcies. There exist within your own gates those who can hear, and decipher, the cries of outsiders begging to be heard and allowed passage through your dark channels.
I am speaking now of one of your leaders, Donny, who bravely led us through your bleak corridors and sought an audience with Pat and Rhonda, in whose hands he would lay our fate. And thus, in a moment, all was healed: the journey was cut short, the seemingly hopeless and endless fight — won.
And so I say to you, City of Orlando, farewell. You have been turned against by your own, who have come to understand our plight, and your mighty ugliness and bureaucratic nightmares have been overturned. We have succeeded, and, come Friday, we will no longer be at your mercy. We intend full well to reveal your weakness to the masses so that they, too, might one day succeed as we have.
Sincerely,
Melanie
—
It’s true, everyone! After a long, hard morning at City Hall, I finally found a person there who a) understood our situation and b) could do something about it. He managed to erase everything that didn’t make sense.
The trip down there this morning was made because I got a phone call from a girl there saying that our building permit was ready to pick up. (We’ve been submitting document after document after document trying to get this building permit put through so that we could get our occupational license.) When I arrived, she disappeared for about a half hour, and returned with a very stern-looking older gentleman. He had emerged from his office to tell me that, no, I was not allowed to pull my own building permit. That only a licensed contractor could pull a building permit. Even though everything had been approved. And they had never mentioned anything like this before.
As it was my 5th trip down to the city, and I have had more than enough time sitting on my frustration with the whole situation, I totally blew up on the guy — big time. The conversation, however, made a miraculous transition: we started arguing about why it was unfair that I not be able to pick up my own building permit (we didn’t HAVE a contractor because we didn’t DO any building!) and the conversation then shifted to WHY we needed a building permit in the first place. He wanted to know.
So, naturally, I told him that I had NO IDEA why we were being forced to get a building permit. He agreed that it didn’t make sense. Christina (the girl processing my application) sat there, pretty much silent, but then added her two cents saying that her boss said we’d have to submit our plans to such-and-such reviews. I argued again that she only said that because SHE and her associate said they didn’t know any other way to process the information that needed to enter the system besides — well, ta-da, applying for a building permit.
Twenty minutes go by, and he has heard enough. He shakes my hand and says “All you need is a commercial plumbing permit. I’ll run this by Rhonda. I’ll take care of it.”. Just like that. I look at Christina, and say, well, now what? She told me that she’d let me know what came of this as soon as she knew. And I left.
15 minutes later, she called to say that she had withdrawn our building permit application, and changed it to a plumbing permit — that our plumber should come down and pull the permit whenever he can.
I’m honestly not sure whether to celebrate or to be mad-as-hell… So much time has been wasted on a process that was eventually just waived by someone, FINALLY, who listened to me. Someone who could hear our story and make a JUDGEMENT about what should be done and how our licenses might be able to be processed slightly outside of the system’s norm. It is honestly infuriating that this could have all been avoided.
I’d be angry with myself for not seeing a way out of this, except the more I revisit the process, the more I see that it’s the system’s problem, not anything we could have actually changed: the zoning and plumbing still had to be reviewed, and besides falling under a building permit, there doesn’t appear to be any other way to process those reviews. That is a MAJOR flaw in how they evaluate businesses. Contractors aren’t involved in EVERY situation… Not every business has fire or mechanical issues that need to be looked at. But there is no system in place that allows for any minimal cases. In Orlando, anyway.
In San Jose, for example, if your business is smaller than 10,000 square feet, your building plan review can be approved within ONE hour. They distinguish between small projects and skyscrapers. So do most major cities in the US, including Chicago and New York. They have systems in place to deal with small projects and special cases. Easy approval. They actually have in mind to HELP entrepreneurs, to give small businesses a fighting chance of survival, without having to pay rent and sit unable to operate for months on end waiting for paperwork to be processed. It is pretty audacious for Orlando to claim to be pro-small businesses, and in the same instance, do nothing to help ease the permitting process. It is shameful, and something should be done.
So, there’s my rant. Our plumber’s liaison will head down to the city in the morning to pick up our plumbing permit and schedule our inspection, which should take place the next day. At some point in this process over the next 2-5 days we should be able to pick up our occupational license. And then, friends, we feast!!!
On a side note, we have this tiny green lucky cat… Gramma picked him up somewhere, and we had him in the shop when we had our State inspection. He’s been sitting in the shop all alone till yesterday, when we decided to bring him home with us to try to bring some more help to our situation with the city. I decided on my way out the door, to grab the little guy, and — to really get my money’s worth — held him the whole time I was down there this morning…. Hey, you never know.
