When we spoke to Richard Tobe, Commissioner of the Department of Economic Development, Permit and Inspection Services about Buffalo’s “Brain Drain” he asked to speak to us about another matter.
This past May, we were contacted by Rocco Termini who had a run-in with the city’s inspections department over construction on his Webb Building project. An inspector issued a verbal stop work order on the project, citing the lack of a permit for the work being performed. Termini, feeling he had the proper permit, called the mayor’s office in an attempt to keep work going. Several weeks after the incident, a fatal accident occurred on the same site, though it was unrelated.
The inspector in question spoke to The Buffalo News, and as a result Termini expressed that he felt his treatment in the local media was less than fair and that he wanted his say. We were happy to oblige, and the videotaped interview can be seen in Parts 1 and 2.
Though Tobe said in the interview, “With regard to the Webb Building, where that unfortunate death occurred…” afterward he acknowledged the death was entirely separate from the issue at hand, which was a question of whether or not proper permits for work had been obtained by Termini when the inspectors arrived. Tobe said two of three necessary permits had been obtained by Termini. Tobe further related that a permit that allowed work to resume was issued one day before the accident, and that at the time of the fall, there was a valid building permit for the work that was underway.
The guilty plea and conviction on past Termini projects mentioned by Tobe in the interview had to do with site inspections on other Termini properties and involved certain structural elements that Termini said had to do with violations such as a boarded window, a door missing from a furnace room, a hand-rail that was the wrong size, and some missing fire dampers that he had discussed with the fire marshall. “I feel that I’m being held to a higher standard than most,” Termini said.
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