question 3a

White House Memo: Some Risks as Obama Confronts Congress

October 19, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

On the road in the important electoral states of Virginia and North Carolina the past two days, Mr. Obama has joked that his administration is breaking up its $447 billion jobs bill into separate chunks so it would be easier for befuddled Republicans in the Senate to understand.

But the increasingly caustic tone of the president’s attacks on Congress raises a question: How long can Mr. Obama continue to hammer Republicans without exhausting the patience of voters who elected him to be an alternative to Washington partisanship — and without risking the perception that he is part of the problem?

As his bus rolled from the Blue Ridge Mountains toward the Virginia Piedmont, the president delivered an unwavering message: the nation is facing a jobs crisis of historic proportions, and Republicans are blocking his attempts to deal with it.

“Maybe they just couldn’t understand the whole bill at once,” Mr. Obama said to a chortling crowd at the airport in Asheville, N.C. “We’re going to break it up into bite-size pieces.”

Republicans seem likely to reject several parts of Mr. Obama’s package, including new money for retaining teachers and repairing schools. And the president’s acerbic tone suggests that he knows as much.

Running against a hostile Congress is an appealing strategy for a president who, however much he has slipped in the polls, is still far more popular with voters than are his foes on Capitol Hill. Polls also show that most voters support large parts of the jobs bill, a point Mr. Obama drove home at every stop.

But the approach is not without risks for the president.

“What he’s obviously trying to do is model himself on Harry Truman and the ‘do-nothing Congress,’ ” said David Winston, a Republican strategist. “The problem with that is that the unemployment rate in November of 1948 was 3.8 percent.”

While Mr. Obama’s partisan jabs appeal to his Democratic base, they may turn off independent voters, who flocked to him in 2008 in part because of his carefully cultivated image as a leader who rises above the partisan fray. With the jobless rate closer to 10 percent than 4 percent, they may start to tune out the president.

The risks and advantages of the strategy were on display Tuesday at Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, N.C., where Mr. Obama spoke about the first piece of the jobs bill to face a vote: $35 billion in federal aid to states and cities for teachers, firefighters and police officers.

Mark Jewell, a 47-year-old teacher trainer, said that North Carolina’s schools desperately needed that money, and that he backed the president’s strategy of forcing Republicans to declare their position on every component of the jobs bill.

“We’re going back 50 years because of a Congress that wants to vote against anything Obama does,” Mr. Jewell said. “The Republicans are using it as a campaign tactic.”

But Thomas O’Connell, a 20-year-old student at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, said that blaming Congress was not enough. “If he’s going to say the system is broken, he’s got to put forward something of substance himself,” he said.

Mr. O’Connell, who described himself as an Obama supporter but a disenchanted one, said he wished the president would propose public financing of political campaigns, rather than raising $1 billion for his own campaign.

There was a lot of sympathy for the president’s predicament among those who lined up to hear him at the community college. But there was also a sense that people’s patience was limited.

“We want to stand behind him and support him, but at some point we also want to see forward motion,” said Natalie Hopkins, an administrator in the Guilford County school district.

White House officials argue that Mr. Obama has laid out a detailed list of remedies in the American Jobs Act, including school aid and help for veterans in finding jobs, which the president will highlight with the first lady on Wednesday in Virginia.

In the end, they argued, Republicans will support some of the measures. But with at least five votes on parts of the bill likely to come up in the Senate, the exercise could keep the spotlight on those lawmakers until Thanksgiving. “This is the first act of a long drama,” a senior White House official said last week.

Mr. Obama seemed to recognize the yearning for an end to the rancor. He spoke of his efforts to find common cause with Republicans, telling the crowd in heavily Democratic Asheville, “Some of you have been mad at me for trying too hard to cooperate with them, haven’t you?” And he praised a free trade agreement with South Korea that passed the Senate with Republican support.

He also acknowledged that the Republicans had come up with an alternative to his jobs plan, though he quickly dismissed it. Speaking at a high school here, Mr. Obama claimed that the package would gut environmental regulations, roll back Wall Street reforms, leave 30 million Americans without health insurance and perhaps even cost jobs.

“I don’t know how you present a plan for jobs that results in less jobs,” Mr. Obama said to titters. “I mean, they didn’t call it the American No-Jobs Act.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=de4ec1511720db67bbc5757934a95211

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: foes, proportions, question 3a

This Luxurious House Is Not a Home

October 18, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Now, the chatter involves a different question: Why hasn’t he moved in?

The owner, Mukesh Ambani, and his spokesman have declined to discuss the matter, leaving plenty of room for theories. One popular explanation is that despite the time and money lavished upon it, the building does not conform to the ancient Indian architectural doctrine known as vastu shastra. (More on that below.)

Certainly the home — which is called Antilia and according to Indian news reports has three helipads, six floors of parking and a series of floating gardens — looks lived in.

At night, the cantilevered tower is lit up bottom to top, inside and out. Members of the city’s moneyed class report having attended movie screenings in the theater and eaten dinners in the grand ballroom, served by a staff trained by the luxury Oberoi hotel chain.

Yet, friends of the family say that after the last canapés have been served and the guests have bidden goodbye, the Ambanis often decamp to Sea Wind. That is the more modest, 14-story apartment tower at the south end of the city that Mr. Ambani, his wife, Nita, and three children share — on different floors — with his mother and his estranged younger brother, Anil, and Anil’s family.

When does Mukesh Ambani plan to move into Antilia?

“I have asked him the question twice,” said a friend who has attended several parties there. He asked not to be identified for fear of ruining his relationship with Mr. Ambani, whose net worth Forbes has estimated at $27 billion.

“He said, ‘Yes, we’ll go next month. Let it be done.’ They don’t talk about it.”

Another close family friend confirmed that the Ambani family did not live at Antilia but said members did sleep there “sometimes.” This friend, who also asked not to be identified to avoid offending Mr. Ambani, had no explanation.

Tushar Pania, a spokesman for Mr. Ambani’s company, Reliance Industries, dismissed questions about whether the family was living at Antilia as idle gossip. “It’s a private home. There is no reason to discuss it in public,” he said.

He said the family had moved in, but when asked whether the family still lived at Sea Wind, he revised: “They live in both places.”

But why would someone build what is widely considered the world’s most expensive private residence and then use it as a pied-à-terre?

Some friends, business associates and Ambani watchers offer the vastu shastra explanation, which gained wider currency earlier this year when DNA, an English-language newspaper in Mumbai, published an article about it citing “sources in the know.”

Vastu, a philosophy that is particularly significant in Hindu temple architecture, emphasizes the importance of directional alignments that create spiritual harmony. Many Hindus believe that living in a building not built according to vastu principles brings bad luck.

Basannt R. Rasiwasia, a vastu expert whose clients include prominent businessmen and their families — although not Mr. Ambani — said Antilia appeared to run afoul of one of the key principles of vastu: The building’s eastern side does not have enough windows or other openings to let residents receive ample morning light.

“From the outside, what I see is that the eastern side is blocked, while the western side is more open,” Mr. Rasiwasia. “This always leads to misunderstanding between team members or sometime may create issues. This also indicates more hard work to achieve moderate success. There is more negative energy coming from the western side.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=7d3a29544423989c326b7ed5833ff32f

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: hotel chain, question 3a, story apartment

Economix Blog: Judith Scott-Clayton: From Kindergarten to College Completion

October 7, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Judith Scott-Clayton is an assistant professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.

A report released last week has drawn new attention to low degree-completion rates among college entrants, particularly among those who never attend full time. The organization that published the report, Complete College America, seeks to rally policy makers around the goal of substantially increasing completion rates by 2020.

Today’s Economist

Perspectives from expert contributors.

But here’s a question: if we want to increase college completions over the longer term, is it more cost-effective to direct resources to college students or to preschoolers and kindergarteners?

The influential economist and Nobel laureate James Heckman, among others, has asserted that early educational investments have the highest return, because of the cumulative nature of skill development (“skill begets skill”). By the time a high school student is on the verge of college (or an older worker is considering returning to school), this argument goes, it may be too expensive to try to fix skill deficiencies that trace back decades.

Yet the federal government continues to invest far more in higher education than in early childhood programs (see chart). For example, the Pell Grant program received more than $28 billion in 2009, compared with less than $10 billion for Head Start.

College Board, Department of Health and Human Services, Joint Committee on Taxation.

A new study presented last week at a Federal Reserve Bank conference on education and employment adds to the growing body of evidence that early educational experiences can affect outcomes in college and beyond. (Note: Susan Dynarski, one of the study’s co-authors, was my doctoral adviser.) The study found that kindergarteners randomly assigned to smaller classes through the Project Star experiment were 2.7 percentage points more likely to enroll in college and 1.6 percentage points more likely to complete a degree by age 30.

While the magnitude of these effects may sound modest, they are statistically and substantively significant compared with the control group’s attendance rate (38 percent) and degree completion rate (15 percent). And the effects were much larger among minorities and at-risk students.

Previous experimental and quasi-experimental studies have found large effects of both the Abecedarian and Perry Preschool programs and the Head Start program on college enrollments. A consistent and fascinating pattern in all of these studies is that early effects on test scores tend to fade over time, only to re-emerge as effects on college-going and other adult outcomes.

When it comes to cost-effectiveness, however, the new study challenges the theory that early investments are always better. The 33 percent reduction in class size evaluated by the Project Star experiment was not cheap, and the authors estimate that it cost more than $400,000 per additional student induced to attend college as a result of program participation (calculated by dividing the $12,000 per-student cost of the program by the estimated college impact of 0.027).

Using impact estimates from other studies, the researchers calculate that programs aimed at individuals on the brink of college have the biggest bang for the buck — if the goal is college attainment.

For example, a recent experiment that randomly selected people to receive assistance with completing and submitting a federal financial aid application found that this assistance, which cost only $88 per participant, increased college enrollments by seven percentage points.

An enormous caveat to this analysis is that good early childhood programs have been shown to improve a host of outcomes even for those who never attend college, including childhood health and mortality. Moreover, scholarship programs and financial aid application assistance may work only to the extent that there is a pool of people who can benefit from college but aren’t already enrolled — so their current cost-benefit ratios may not be infinitely scalable.

Finally, some interventions at the college level may increase attainment simply by handing out more degrees rather than by fundamentally increasing skills (an extreme example of this is a new effort to locate and award degrees to former students who earned enough credits but never asked for their diplomas).

Based on both theory and evidence, it is hard to argue that we’re not underinvesting in early childhood education. Even policy makers who care only about college completion rates should be looking for promising interventions in the earliest years of life.

But that’s no reason to write off later interventions. There appear to be opportunities for cost-effective investment all along the educational continuum.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=04722eda2f8195470050ea2eda520492

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: educational investments, question 3a, scott clayton

The Haggler: Hidden Fees in Travel Deals, Revisited

September 25, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

We begin with an update from our last adventure, which focused on resort fees, those annoying, undodgeable charges that are frequently tacked on to hotel bills, typically for stuff you didn’t ask for and don’t want.

In the previous column, Priceline explained why it was unable to include those fees in the rates it publishes on the site. (In brief: It encourages hotels to include the fees, but can’t force them to do so.)

But we didn’t hear from a resort-fee-charging hotel. So let’s meet Alan Feldman, a senior vice president at MGM Resorts. One of the chain’s hotels in Las Vegas, the MGM Grand, charges a $20 resort fee, for which visitors, according to the hotel’s Web site, receive Wi-Fi, a copy of USA Today, free local and toll-free calls, “limited” business center services and access to the cardio room. (Free toll-free calls? MGM Resorts, you are too kind.)

Why, Mr. Feldman, is the $20 per day fee for this bounty of goodies not included in the prices that turn up on Priceline?

“That’s a really interesting question,” he said. “It’s their Web site. I don’t know how we control what is displayed.”

Mr. Feldman then acknowledged that he was taking a less than fully educated guess. So he said he’d look into the matter. A few days later, he called and said that actually it is a choice made by the hotel. “We do wish, though, that Priceline made the alert about resort fees a little more prominent,” he added.

To the original question: Why not just include those fees in the price of the room, so that a) you don’t have to worry about how prominent Priceline’s fee alert is, and b) you don’t have guests fuming about a $20-a-day fee they didn’t see coming?

“We have heard negative feedback from guests,” Mr. Feldman said. “But we’ve also heard positive feedback, from guests who are happy that they are no longer paying à la carte for different services. They don’t feel nickeled and dimed.”

Right, because they feel twenty-dollared. But let’s say this rare breed of financial masochist exists — someone who actually prefers paying a lump sum for services he or she may not have used. Couldn’t MGM Resorts please those people and those who are angered by the resort fee by simply including it in the price published on Priceline?

It could, agreed Mr. Feldman. Ultimately, his next answer boiled down to the notion that resort fees are an established part of the industry and have been around for years. Which is true. It’s also true that the fees are getting fatter. Bjorn Hanson of New York University’s Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management released a study a few weeks ago forecasting that American hotels will collect a record $1.8 billion in fees in 2011 — up from $1 billion a decade ago.

We’ve seen a similar trend in other industries, of course. Most notably event ticketing and airlines. Which brings us to a letter.

Q. Your recent column on resort fees brings to mind an experience I recently had with British Airways. They are running a promotion wherein you get two free tickets if you sign up for their British Airways-branded Visa card and spend $3,500 with it in three months. So I paid the $95 it cost to sign up for the card, charged $3,500 and, last month, booked two British Airways tickets to London. Not a bad deal, I thought. Until I learned that these tickets cost $527 in taxes and fees. Each. When I contacted customer service, they informed me that the promotion had stated that taxes and fees would be additional. I knew that, but $527? Come on. If the fees had been $100, I would have been annoyed. Two hundred and I would have been very annoyed. But would you agree, Mr. Haggler, that it is nervy of this company to advertise as “free” a pair of tickets that cost more than $1,000?

Linda Stutz

Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

A. Nervy is one word for it. The Haggler could think of others. Ms. Stutz sent along a breakdown of the fees, and they include a custom user fee ($5.50), United States Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service fee ($5), immigration inspection fee ($7), a passenger service charge ($49.18) and $362 for “fuel and security.”

Obviously, many of these fees go directly to the government. But not that charge for $362. At minimum, it seems as though British Airways ought to give credit card enrollees a better heads-up, doesn’t it? Perhaps something like, “People, you are not even going to believe how much in fees and taxes we add to those ‘free’ tickets you want.” Or maybe try an analogy. Like, “You know how at some steakhouses, the waiter will say ‘Our medium rare is basically what everyone else calls medium’? Well, we’ve got a similar thing going at British Airways. Here, our ‘free’ is what everyone else calls $1,000.”

Too blunt? Maybe. A spokeswoman for British Airways, Michele Kropf, wrote this in an e-mail to the Haggler: “Like other airlines, British Airways does levy a fuel surcharge on all our tickets, including redemptions, as due to the high price of oil we have to pass some of those costs on to the customer. We do not cover the full cost of our fuel bill through the surcharge.”

Hmm. British Airways does not cover the full cost of the fuel bill through the surcharge. Care to guess, dear reader, how the carrier covers the rest of the cost? A bake sale? A raffle? A Willie Nelson fund-raising concert called Fuel Aid? The Haggler is going to take a wild guess: the price of the ticket.

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=f0257cca7bfd9da161b1393f93c4a2d7

Filed Under: Your Money Tagged With: goodies, question 3a

Your Money: When One Child’s Illness Is Worth Less Than Another’s

July 22, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

In the last couple of years, Sallie Mae has been trying to deepen its financial ties with customers, adding an online bank and a credit card.

And earlier this month, it added a curious product known as tuition refund insurance, which can make you whole if an ill child must withdraw from college sometime during the term.

The insurance, which Sallie offers in partnership with Next Generation Insurance Group, a company it recently bought a stake in, doesn’t treat all sickness equally, though. If a student withdraws because of a physical illness or injury, a family gets 100 percent of its money back. People who leave because of mental health problems, however, get only 75 percent back.

This would probably be illegal if tuition refund policies were deemed health insurance, instead of insurance that just happens to be based solely on your health. Federal law now mandates equal coverage for mental and physical illness in many instances when employers offer any health insurance for mental illness.

Even if disparate tuition insurance coverage is legal, however, it’s still offensive to people who spent their careers fighting for so-called mental health parity. “There should be a buyer beware sign blinking on and off,” said Ken Libertoff, who ran the Vermont Association for Mental Health for 30 years. “Parents need to know that there is a fatal flaw in these plans’ constructions.”

Indeed, that construction suggests a question: Is it even worth taking an insurance offer seriously when it forces you to accept less coverage for the debilitating illness that is most likely to befall you?

Tuition refund insurance in the United States dates back to 1930, when a company called A. W. G. Dewar offered a plan that provided tutors to families whose children were home sick for an extended period. Eventually, the insurance became a policy that paid out cash to make up for whatever a private primary or secondary school would not refund.

Dewar’s offering took root at private schools, and today it serves about 1,200 private elementary and secondary schools along with 180 colleges, where the tuition stakes can be even higher.

According to Dewar, just over half of secondary schools (though only one college) that offer the insurance make it mandatory for some or all families — say, for new students, who may have adjustment problems — or for anyone who doesn’t pay tuition in full up front. At colleges, fewer than 10 percent of parents choose to buy the tuition refund plans.

That low take rate at colleges probably reflects the “it can’t happen to me” syndrome, but perhaps some parents who have dug into the details discovered that these policies often covered mental illness differently from physical injury. Not only is the payout less, but the insurance often requires a multiday hospital stay as a sort of proof that the depression or anxiety is real.

A couple of years ago, a University of Vermont student named Sherry Williamson discovered that the Dewar policy available to her fellow students worked like that. As a registered nurse suffering from depression, she found the differing treatment difficult to stomach. “I couldn’t believe that UVM, which tries to promote diversity and be all-encompassing, would take on a policy that was clearly discriminatory,” she said.

She found her way to Mr. Libertoff, who got her complaint in front of the appropriate state agencies. Like the federal government, Vermont had its own mental health parity law, but the state ultimately used a separate nondiscrimination statute to force Dewar and the university to equalize its coverage.

In the wake of that decision, another insurance company called Markel that offers tuition refund policies decided to offer equal coverage on all policies nationwide that it sold through schools, rather than risk the wrath of state insurance commissioners.

Sallie Mae, however, chose to adopt the disparate treatment approach even though it’s using Markel as its underwriter. According to John Fees, president of the Sallie partner Next Generation, it had no choice if it wanted to offer affordable premiums to everyone in the United States and do away with any mental illness hospitalization requirement.

How much more would it have cost to offer equal coverage? “I’m not at liberty to say that at this point,” he said. “It’s a confidential business relationship with Markel.”

Mr. Fees seemed a bit miffed by my suggestion that his policy might be discriminatory on its face. “I live with a clinical psychologist, and I had this conversation with her,” he said. “The aim is never to discriminate against anyone.” When I asked Dana Tufts, Dewar’s president, about the potential for discrimination, his public relations representative, Carmen Duarte, interrupted and refused to let him answer.

Discriminatory or not, it’s possible that Sallie’s policy is actually too generous. The price starts at $599 for the maximum $50,000 in school year coverage for tuition, room, board and other related expenses, with some identity theft and medical evacuation insurance thrown in gratis. The price goes down from there if families want less coverage. Also, undergraduates who borrowed money from Sallie Mae starting July 1 get $5,000 in tuition refund coverage free.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=cf1645ab13efa6a49923b5691502fe0f

Filed Under: Your Money Tagged With: insurance coverage, question 3a, tutors

You’re the Boss: How We Got the Restaurant Open for July 4

July 5, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Chris KoszykChef Joe, tending the garden and hoping for a permit.

Start-Up Chronicle

Getting a restaurant off the ground.

Tokyo turnips. French radishes. The light and the land of Bridgehampton can grow anything. Lemon balm. Thai basil. When Paul Hamilton is the gardener, throw in sugar snaps and heirloom eggplants. When his makeshift staff includes four chefs with green thumbs and a closed-down kitchen, you can depend on lovely sorrel and Vietnamese coriander.

The garden blossoms. The owner wilts. Last week, I found myself singing the permit perdition blues to Paul Hamilton as he planted red chili peppers. After his ear was unduly bent, he asked one quiet question:

“Do you know Laurie Wiltshire?”
“No. Should I?”
“She might be able to help. She’s a good friend.”
“I’ll talk to anybody any time.”
“I’ll call Laurie. Fifty people are out of work because you can’t get a permit. That’s crazy.”
“I have to be open by July 4th, Paul.”

Paul called Laurie. Laurie called me. Ten minutes later, I was on the phone with Mr. Big in the building department of Southampton. He cracked a few jokes I didn’t get and said I would have permission to plug the hole in the wall within 24 hours.

Sure enough, the next day, I had the permit that was supposed to take four weeks. A verbal permit, nothing in writing, but printed posters take time and have to go through channels beyond Mr. Big’s reach. Gratitude nearly choked me, as did befuddlement. In equal parts, I was elated and vexed by a system that can move so swiftly when it wants to and so slowly the rest of the time. Just because I know Paul who knows Laurie who knows Mr. Big, my luck made a sudden U-turn. Guilt is riding shotgun, of course, as too many fellow citizens are still standing in line at town hall with furrowed brows and unanswered prayers.

Laurie Wiltshire is tall and blonde and had a modeling career in Hollywood before she discovered a talent for getting all the unions on the same movie set at the same time — gaffers, gofers, carpenters, drivers, designers, talent, the whole end credit scroll. When she got married and moved to the Hamptons, Laurie worked for a local land expediter. She has now had her own shop, Land Planning Services, for 13 years, and knows everyone with any authority or expertise in the permit game. Unlike Lucy van Pelt, Laurie Wiltshire is worth every nickel. Under her spell, my fortunes have turned on a dime.

Thus is the yin and yang of a small-town sangha. Thus is the politics of the boonies, even the toniest of boonies. You can cut the municipal molasses with a hot Korin knife if you know the right people. Or pay the right people. I know what you are thinking: why didn’t I have an expediter all along? Good question. I thought our case was so open-and-shut, so obvious in its urgency that the town elders would sidestep the hurdles and an expediter would be overkill. Like sending Hillary Clinton to a school board to negotiate for whole wheat bread. What I never realized was how welcomed expediters are because they are efficient, ask the right questions, provide smart answers and never show up without the proper documentation. It seems rather simple in hindsight: expediters expedite.

(Lest we assume all conflicts are resolved in a day, it should be noted that Laurie Wiltshire has cases that have lasted five, eight and 10 years. Even an all-star expediter has trouble moving certain mountains, or dunes, in the Hamptons.)

On Monday, June 20, 2011, a new skin of stainless steel went on the old kitchen wall and cement wall board was installed behind it, double thick, and wood studs were wrapped in metal. For good measure, we replaced the X-rated insulation with fireproof Roxul. There will be no fire or brimstone in this cavity.

But before we can close the wall and get back to the business of food, it has to be approved by three departments, building, health and fire. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of red tape, I will fear no inspection. The firewall is beyond reproach. I call health. No problem. I call the fire marshal. No problem. I call building. They say the inspector will be there on Wednesday.
“By the way,” I ask, “who is the building inspector on duty?”
“Hold on, please,” says the voice. “Bridgehampton? That would be … ”

I drop the cellphone. Thud. Dud. My body goes numb. I hear a faint voice from the ground, “Hello? Hello?” I cannot move. I know this inspector. He was visited upon me once before. I barely recovered.

Everyone who knows this inspector fears him. My general contractor refuses to be on site when he arrives. They have had “serious issues.” The mere mention of his name elicits the same kind of response as did Keyser Söze in “The Usual Suspects.” Jaws drop. Eyes pop. Good people and bad run screaming for cover; he eats children for breakfast and spits out their bones at lunch. (Note to legal department: That last sentence is hyperbole.)

To say Inspector Söze will fail you for the slightest hint of an infraction is understatement. If Inspector Söze learns I do not have a written permit, I realize, he will laugh and leave without a word. I drive to town hall. I climb the steps and reach for the front door. An alarm goes off. Can they read my thoughts? Am I persona non grata? I look for cameras. Dozens of people stride toward me briskly.
“What is happening?” I ask.
“Fire,” says a woman.
“A fire?” I echo. “Another fire?”
“A fire drill,” says a passing man. “It only lasts 10 or 15 minutes.”

I mill about on the front lawn with the civil servants. This is a break for them, an eternity for me. If I sneak into this empty building, I could be first in line when the fire drill is over. Better yet, I could rifle through desk drawers until I find my permit. I am casing the rear entrance to town hall when the exercise thankfully ends.

The dark-haired woman behind the counter says Inspector Söze will resolve the issue when he arrives on site come Wednesday. I am sorry, I say, but that won’t fly. No more Mr. Milquetoast. I will not leave this office until I have a permit in hand. No sane person would let Inspector Söze make a decision tomorrow that could be made by someone else today. The specter of the inspector has emboldened me; like any hero, I am propelled by a fear that looks like courage.

“I was approved,” I say.
“But we do not have any copies in this office,” says the dark-haired lady.
“Where can I get one?” I ask.
“You will receive it in the mail,” she says.
“When?”
“Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the next day.”
“That’s not good enough. I need the permit now.”
“We sent it to your general contractor.”
“I need it now. One approved plan, please.”
“I don’t know what to say. We don’t have it here.”
“Let me speak to Mr. Big.”

Mr. Big hands over the plans that did not exist. Stamped on the approved permit are these words: “No oversight, error or omission on the part of the Building Inspector or his Representative shall legalize the erecting, construction, alteration, removal, use or occupancy of a building or structure that does not conform to the provision of the N.Y. State Fire Prevention and Building Code and Code of the Town of Southampton Zoning Regulations.”

At 9:15 a.m. on Wednesday, June 22, 2011, Inspector Söze drives onto the property. He exits his white S.U.V. with the Southampton seal on the door and before any greetings, he says, “That wall is illegal.” He is pointing not to the fire-damaged wall in question but an entirely different wall along the entrance to the restaurant. “And the shingles next to the front door are new and this whole section of the restaurant is illegal and was erected after your permits and expands your footprint.”
“I beg to differ,” I say. “We have not changed a thing.”
“Yes you did. The wood is a different color.”
“It’s a different wood.”
“And the shingles next to the front door are new and this whole section of the restaurant is illegal and was erected after your permits and expands your footprint.”
“The shingles have been protected by an overhang. There is nothing new on this property except the inside of that other wall.”
“Do you have your site plan?”
“No, sir. I have the plans for the wall that was burned.”
“Do you have your survey?”
“No, sir. I have the electrical approval and the permit to rebuild the wall that had the fire.”

He looks at the firewall.
“Why steel studs?”
“The fire marshal suggested them,” I say.
“The fire marshal doesn’t know anything about construction,” says Inspector Söze. “Do you want the building to catch fire or fall down?”
“Neither,” I say.
“I can’t see the header above that exposed beam.”
“It’s exactly the way it always was.”
“Expose it. And where is the insulation?”
“Right here, sir.” The insulation is in a box, on the ground, ready to be put into the wall.
“Why isn’t in the wall?” he asks.
“Then you couldn’t see the work, the steel studs, the sheets of Durock.”
“Without the insulation, I cannot approve this project.”
“It’ll take 10 minutes to put the insulation into the wall.”
“Call the town for an inspection when you are really ready, when the insulation is up and you reveal what’s on top of that header and you have a site plan and a survey for that illegal wall.”

I hold my tongue. With my teeth. He drives away. I am left alone in the vacant parking lot. Very alone. And nauseated. Inspector Söze was dead wrong about the wall. About both walls. The old one is old, and the new one is sound. The purpose of his visit, it seems to me, was neither to inspect nor assist. The sordid dramas that play out inside his head, I suspect, have nothing to do with me or this restaurant or the public’s safety.

Standing there, I call the town to arrange another inspection for the following day. Everything Inspector Söze needs can be produced within an hour. The woman on the phone says there is a problem — an open demolition permit. It is back. The fallible computer has struck again. This is the same open permit that was flagged by Town Hall’s front-room computer and then overruled by a back-room computer the week before. I head back to town hall to straighten out this mess in person. “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” is on the radio. Clarence Clemons is dead.

The next morning at 11:15, Thursday, June 23, 2011, the inspector drives onto the property, takes a long walk around the perimeter of the building and then stares at the open wall. And approves it. Just like that. Doesn’t want to read the site plan or survey or the Holy Bible I brought along. He signs a piece of paper and climbs into his white S.U.V. with the Southampton seal and drives away.

I walk through the garden and smell the anise hyssop. The red beets share a bed with the golden beets. We will be back in business for the Fourth of July weekend, the holiday that celebrates our independence from an oppressive government. I will invite Laurie Wiltshire for a good stiff drink, maybe a gin and tonic. I owe her.

Bruce Buschel owns Southfork Kitchen, a restaurant in Bridgehampton, N.Y.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=7e727613e60cd673893b105dab3cbe9c

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: eggplants, green thumbs, question 3a

You’re the Boss: My Three Problems This Week

May 6, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Hi everyone. Here are the problems I’ve been pondering this week:

1) Last year I moved one of my best craftsmen from the shop floor into the office to do sales. We’ve been working together closely, and he’s been very successful. So far this year, he’s made 47 percent of our sales, and I’ve made the other 53 percent, and sales this year have been coming at a pace 35 percent higher than last year. (We’re on track to do $2.1 million this year, as opposed to $1.57 million in 2010.)

Our sales process involves communications by phone and e-mail, and the production of proposals using four different software programs. Nathan has mastered the process, but we both feel that he could be better at speaking on the phone. Phone calls are an important part of the process, but they can be difficult. One has to listen carefully to the client and come up with intelligent solutions to their problems instantly — and then explain them clearly and succinctly. I’m really, really good at this, probably because I’ve been doing it for 25 years. Nathan, without benefit of so much practice, tends to backtrack and repeat himself.

So here’s the question: Does anyone know of a method or program for developing better telephone skills? I did a lot of searching on the Internet and turned up loads of help with public speaking, but that’s different. I’ve been thinking that recording him a few times, so that he can hear what he sounds like would be a good place to start. But then what?

2) It’s been three years since we did formal employee reviews, but I’d like to get that process restarted. In the past, we had a lengthy list of questions we asked our workers, mainly concentrating on what they thought could be done to improve our production processes. We reviewed once a year, in the spring.

The Partner and I routinely gave out raises to everyone, usually around 5 percent a year. In retrospect, that didn’t work all that well. It’s pretty stupid to ask workers for feedback on their jobs only once a year, and automatic raises led to skyrocketing labor costs without proportional increase in productivity. We now have production discussions every week at our weekly meeting, and I am determined to keep my labor costs in line with the local market.

I’m thinking that the review process will mostly be a way to discuss my perception of how individual workers are performing, so that they are clear as to what I expect to see from them in the future and so they can tell me what ambitions they have. I can’t promise everyone a series of advancements in the future — we’re simply too small give everyone a career path. (That’s a topic I covered previously.) But I’d like to do what I can. Does anyone have any thoughts on reviews in very small companies or any comments on my current thinking?

3) Speaking of reviews, who reviews the boss? What’s the best way to get my workers to give honest feedback on my performance?

I look forward to your thoughts.

Paul Downs founded Paul Downs Cabinetmakers in 1986. It is based outside of Philadelphia.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=bd1ee07638a9d1c6031b9661f399eff9

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: e mail, question 3a, software programs