I wonder what the good County Executive does for a living. Given his response I suspect he lives in a world of his own creation. A world where minor issues of available resources, sufficient labor, and coordination of effort. You know, the elements of a technological society. Just guessin' he's a community organizer, insurance agent, or attorney.
I had a direct exposure to the way such people (allegedly) think almost exactly 30 years ago. I was on the staff of a large-ish municipal public housing authority. We had (at the time -- now demolished, thanks be to the deity of your choice) a large complex consisting of six high-rise apartment buildings, all fed off a central boiler house. The boiler house contained three identical boilers, and was set up such that two were sufficient to run the complex if one was down for service. Of course, that was based on maintaining the apartments at a reasonable temperature, and closing the windows when it's 15 degrees outdoors. Public housing tenants seem (or "seemed," at the time) to believe that 80 degrees is a normal temperature for wintertime, and that the system should maintain that with all the windows open. Reality check -- the system can't do that.
So the tenants got Legal Aid to sue the housing authority. It happened that the previous winter, in an effort to meet the unreasonable demand imposed by the way the tenants abused the system, one of the boilers had overheated and buckled the plates surrounding the firebox. As the staff architect, I rejected the notion of replacing that one boiler with a new boiler from a different manufacturer and totally different design -- the maintenance people were not up to dealing with multiple equipment types in the same facility. So we put out a contract to repair the boiler.
The parts were not "stock" parts -- you don't go to Home Depot and buy firebox plates for a commercial size, fire tube boiler. So we found a company in Buffalo, NY, who could make the parts. The lead time
just for the parts was 90 days -- then they had to be shipped to us (did I mention that boiler plates are big, and heavy?) and welded into the boiler. This does not happen overnight.
So we go to court. As the agency's Contracting Officer, I was called to testify to the fact that the repair to the number three boiler was under contract, that we expected to receive the parts in approximately 60 days, and that it would take about a month to complete the work once the parts arrived. The contract for the repairs was entered in evidence, as was the order from the boiler repair company to the supplier of the new plates, all documenting the lead times to which I had testified.
The judge ordered us to have the boiler on-line within three weeks.
Yes, we ignored him.
