Speaking in Code

Yesterday I entered the vortex known as small town municipal government.
As I mentioned in my previous post, we are in the midst of septic malaise. Here are some phrases that have been muttered recently, in regards to our septic system:
"I'm sorry Ray did a half-ass job on your tank"
"You need to have your tank pumped immediately."
"That's not supposed to be there"
"The plumber shouldn't have told you to do that. That's a fire hazard."

You can see how it's going so far. I won't bore you with the smelly details, but I will say that I provided the new plumber with a two-page timeline of our septic troubles of the past few days.

One of my tasks is to obtain the septic design for our house. The Septic Pumping guy said that I could obtain the paperwork from our town hall. It would have had to be approved before installation, and they have to keep a copy.

So I went to our local town hall yesterday. Here's how it went down:
I go to the counter, and tell them I need a copy of the septic design for our house. "Oh, you'll have to talk to Dottie," the woman at the counter says, and points down a hallway. I could only assume that's where Dottie's office was. So I go over to Dottie's office and explain my situation. She has one of those throat microphone things (I don't know what they're called, but when I googled "throat microphone" I got some weird hits) that she has to hold to her throat every time she talked. It wasn't too hard to understand, but I really had to pay attention. Anyway, she went off into an adjoining room and started digging through paperwork. "I don't have anything," she said in the mechanical voice. "Let's go to the code office."

Let me say that it would be hard to imagine more code violations than I saw in the Code Enforcement office. Apparently the enforcement happens outside the walls. There was one spot where there clearly used to be a wall, and whoever took the wall down neglected to fill in the floor where the wall used to be. The electrical wire for the light switch was just stapled to the wall. It wasn't in the wall, or even in any sort of conduit. Exposed wiring abounded.

Anyway, Dottie had managed to find our lot map number, which unfortunately was of no use to the woman working in the code office. Of course when I say "office," I use that term loosely. It was more like a hallway and a former closet that had two desks in it. She couldn't find anything in the computer, and the filing "system" consisted of a giant pile of paperwork on the floor. Some of the paperwork was from 1983. Some was from 2005. This was not looking good. The woman told Dottie to look with "the yellow papers," because some of the septic plans were filed with them. Sounds like a really top-notch system they've got going on. What I gleaned from the chaos was that the previous code enforcement officer (who is shared between about 5 towns, since we're in a small town) wasn't exactly dilligent about filing. Or anything. And of course our plans would have been filed during his tenure. Anyway, Dottie and I went back to here office, where she proceeded to look again, and of course nothing turned up. We went BACK to the code office, where I got the number of the state wastewater management office. If you recall my last interaction with a state office, you'll know I was not optimistic.

Somewhere in all of this, Dottie was able to find some paperwork that was submitted for our plumbing application. This wasn't what I needed, but she thought that the septic design might have been done around the same time, and maybe that would help the state office find it. She was nice enough to make me a copy. While she was doing that, a woman who was apparently in charge of answering phones got a call. She had on what I'd call Giant Old Lady Glasses, and one of the lenses was covered with a patch. I am not trying to make fun of anyone's physical disability, temporary or otherwise, but dear lord this woman seemed to make up for her visual impairment by yelling. So she yells over to Dottie (who is about 5 feet away at the copier, and clearly trying to help me) "you have a phone call! Do you want to take it right know!!!!" (I know this is a question, but she really was yelling, and I thought that the exclamation points would be more appropriate to convey the voice modulation problems). So Dottie has to yell back (as best she can with her throat microphone) that she was helping me, and to just transfer the call to her office. Dottie gave me the paperwork (it was a copy of a carbon copy, so let's just say there wasn't much legible information) and sent me on my way. I know that she was doing all she could to help, but I was so very frustrated by the fact that something fairly simple (getting a copy of paperwork) would take an hour, and I still wouldn't have what I needed.

I got to work and called the state office. No one answered, and I left a message. Ditto for later in the afternoon. I called back this morning, and no answer. What is going on at the Wastewater Office? Does anybody actually work there? Do they not care about the fact that we're on a strict "if it's yellow, let it mellow" flush policy right now?