Waiting...still waiting...

    Today, I sat at my business Phil's Ice House 78750 from 7 a.m to 3:30 p.m. waiting for my building inspector to give me a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy and open my business to the public. During the day, we had a Moms group come early bringing 20 or so kids in tow to catch lunch and ice cream afterwards at Amy's Ice Creams, also our business.When the first mom poked her head in, I had to inform her we were waiting for the "blessing" from the City of Austin to open and sell hamburgers. Did I say hamburgers, and ice cream? Yes, this is not a nuclear power plant or a puppy mill, it's ice cream and hamburgers, America's favorite. It was difficult to turn away all those paying customers. Meanwhile my staff, ready for the "blessing" has cleaned everything in the place 27 times, they keep polishing...
     Around 3, the staff has resigned itself that we are not opening today. My inspector, who is a good guy and reasonable usually, did not return any of my pages. I truly hope he is okay, but wonder why a phone call couldn't have saved a whole lot of people some grief.
     Backtracking, why a "Temporary" Certificate of Occupancy? Well, here's how it works, when you build on raw land, you have to get a "Site plan". Which in the City of Austin costs about 100K for a small parcel, so a bunch of engineers; civil, landscape, structural, mechanical electrical and plumbing, an arborist, a geologist can tell you how and what to build on your land. Free Country hah! This all takes about a year and then you can submit plans which they may or may not approve. Finally after all the "blessings" of the City you can start building......No wait! You might be on the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone, Call the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality, we are going to need to approve your plans...Oh, your going to need to keep a book that tells you what to do in case there is an environmental problem... A Water Pollution Abatement Plan and a Storm Water Pollution Plan ... More tomorrow... I haven't even broke ground.