Audit Report on the Department of Buildings’ Controls Over Illegal Curb Cuts and Driveways

Executive Summary

The Department of Buildings (DOB) regulates the use of more than 1,000,000 buildings and 40,000 active construction sites to ensure that such use is safe and lawful. In doing so, DOB enforces the New York City (City) Construction Codes, Zoning Resolution, and the New York State Multiple Dwelling Law.

DOB’s specific areas of enforcement include the laws and rules related to the installation and maintenance of curb cuts made to enable vehicles to drive smoothly into driveways, garages, parking lots, loading docks, and commercial drive-throughs. DOB enforces compliance with these legal requirements and promotes public safety through its review and approval of building plans, issuance of permits and licenses, and its conduct of inspections and issuance of violations.

To legally create a new curb cut in the City of New York, a homeowner must obtain a DOB Curb Cut Permit and an approved Department of Transportation (DOT) Roadway/Sidewalk Permit to allow a temporary sidewalk closure.  Existing curb cuts must also adhere to the Zoning Resolution codified by the Department of City Planning that specifies the allowable dimensions and distances from any obstacles, adjacent curb cuts, and street corners.

The City routinely receives complaints that private homeowners have illegally installed curb cuts and paved driveways on their properties. Most such complaints received by DOB are made by the public through NYC’s 311 service and are automatically classified as Priority D, the lowest priority of complaints.^[1]

DOB’s procedures require curb cut complaints forwarded to DOB by the 311 system to be reviewed by DOB Triage Command Officers (triage officers) who then assess their validity. If a triage officer determines a complaint to be invalid, the triage officer closes the complaint. If a complaint is determined to be valid, the triage officer forwards the complaint to DOB’s Construction unit, which then assigns it to field inspection personnel for inspection.

When a DOB inspector observes an illegal condition within DOB’s jurisdiction, the inspector issues a violation to the property owner. Illegal curb cuts may result in the issuance of multiple violations that must be corrected and for which penalties may be assessed.

For our audit scope period, we obtained from DOB a complaint listing with 7,256 entries, of which 5,783 were individual complaints associated with 3,874 properties of potentially illegal curb cuts, driveways, and carports according to DOB’s internal reporting. For the 5,783 individual complaints received during our audit scope, DOB performed 3,238 inspections for 3,020 properties.  Of these 3,238 inspections, DOB issued 1,435 Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings’ Environmental Control Board (OATH) violations related to 1,203 properties.

Audit Findings and Conclusion

With respect to curb cuts and driveways, DOB did not adequately oversee its processes for responding to complaints and for issuing permits for their installation. In particular, we found deficiencies in all aspects of DOB’s complaint intake, inspection, and disposition processes. DOB did not ensure that the conditions referenced in the complaints it received were inspected timely or that complaints received from the City’s 311 system were handled appropriately, including with regard to the closure of original, unaddressed complaints, and did not ensure that inspections were properly conducted in every instance where they were warranted. Additionally, DOB did not ensure that properties designated as requiring further research and inspection were actually re-inspected.

Further, DOB lacked training for its field inspectors regarding curb cuts and driveways and did not provide sufficient supervisory oversight of their inspections. DOB did not ensure that field inspectors adhered to established criteria during field inspections, and did not provide its field inspectors with training specific to inspections of curb cuts and driveways.

Additionally, DOB lacked controls over the issuance of violations for illegal curb cuts and driveways. In particular, DOB did not ensure that: a violation was issued in every instance where an inspection revealed an illegal condition; that photographs depicting violating conditions were taken and uploaded into DOB NOW; or that field inspectors’ written remarks input into DOB NOW were appropriate and complete. In addition, we found that not all violations were filed with OATH and, therefore, properly adjudicated.

DOB field inspectors also did not appropriately refer all complaints that fall under other agencies’ jurisdictions to those agencies. Further, field inspectors did not address violating conditions observed in areas adjacent to inspected properties if those conditions were not expressly the subject of the original complaint.

In addition, in conducting the audit, we also found that DOB reports generated from its databases in response to auditor inquiries of curb cut complaints, dispositions, and supervisory reviews contained inadequate and/or inconsistent information and were therefore unreliable.

Finally, DOB inappropriately issued permits in situations where the curb cut applications did not meet all the required conditions set forth in the City’s Zoning Resolution. By issuing these permits, DOB facilitated the installation of illegal curb cuts and driveways.

DOB’s failures related to inspecting and permitting curb cuts increased risks to public health and safety and inconvenience for neighborhood residents and visitors. In addition, based on a sample of 1,024 complaints made during the audit scope period, we found that the City potentially failed to assess and collect as much as $430,014 in penalties due to DOB’s failure to adequately respond to 502 (49 percent) of those complaints. In addition, based on a review of the total population of complaints received by DOB in the audit scope period, we found that the City may have foregone as much as an additional $32,604 due to additional errors by DOB in its handling of re-inspections and filing of violations with OATH.

Audit Recommendations

To address the issues raised by this audit, we make 27 recommendations including:

In connection with deficiencies in processing complaints of illegal curb cuts and driveways, DOB should enhance its procedures to ensure that:

• Triage officers correctly identify curb cut and driveway complaints that merit a field inspection and forward them to the Construction unit;
• Allegedly  illegal curb cuts and driveways referenced in complaints are inspected timely, according to DOB’s standards; and
• All assessed OATH violations are filed prior to the pre-set hearing date as required.

In connection with DOB’s inadequate oversight and training of field inspectors, DOB should:

• Ensure that DOB supervisory field inspectors (supervisors) review the results of all field inspections prior to finalizing their results;
• Ensure that field inspectors complete and submit a checklist as part of their inspections;
• Ensure that field inspectors use appropriate measurement tools during inspections to ensure that homeowners are adhering to the proper dimensions of a curb cut and driveway; and
• Establish specific training for curb cut and driveway inspections to ensure that field inspectors have the requisite knowledge to assess the legality of curb cuts and driveways.

In connection with DOB field inspectors’ inadequate inspections of curb cuts and driveways, DOB should:

• Ensure that inspectors’ comments related to inspections of curb cuts and driveways are relevant, complete, and appropriate with respect to the complaint;
• Ensure that field inspectors correctly identify violating conditions and issue violations as appropriate; and
• Ensure that potentially violating conditions under DOT’s jurisdiction are referred and forwarded to DOT so that it may appropriately follow up.

In addition, DOB should:

• Verify that information submitted on site surveys is accurate and reflects the existing condition of a property prior to approving a curb cut application;
• Verify that the information submitted in support of curb cut and driveway permits contains all required documentation;
• Confirm that applications submitted include all necessary detailed information, including: the purpose of the curb cut (access to a garage or parking lot); measurements of the curb cut; the number of garages and parking pads to be accessed via the curb cut(s); the location of the garage or the parking lot (on which side of the property); and the actual location of the curb cut to be installed (at the back or front of the property);
• Maintain a complete and accurate list of all user access rights for all employees who handle curb cut approvals, inspections, and dispositions; and
• Automate the detection of invalid BINs and addresses and their dispositions as such.

Agency Response

In its response, DOB agreed with 19 of the audit’s 27 recommendations, partially agreed with 3 recommendations, and disagreed with the remaining 5 recommendations. For 10 of the 19 recommendations with which it agreed, DOB further stated that those recommendations are either already current practice within DOB or are “already being addressed through updated technology systems put in place since the period your audit reviewed.” For the 5 recommendations the agency disagreed with, it stated, among other things, that the implementation of those recommendations is not currently practicable given the agency’s available resources; or that the agency is not responsible for compliance with the recommendation. DOB also stated that “[e]ach of the locations identified in the report have also been re-inspected, and enforcement actions taken where appropriate. We agree, however, that our processes can always be improved and we will continue working to strengthen them.”

[1] Depending on the type and severity of a complaint, DOB assigns it one of four priority codes: A, B, C, or D. Priority A complaints are hazardous and present an imminent risk to public safety (e.g., shaking building), and must be inspected within 24 hours. Priority B complaints are serious (e.g., illegal conversion, inadequate sidewalk shed or scaffolding), but do not present an imminent risk to public safety in DOB’s judgment and must be inspected within 40 days. Priority C complaints allege violations that DOB considers non-hazardous (e.g., defective plumbing), while priority D complaints involve quality-of-life problems (e.g., illegal curb cuts).