Columnist Jeff German: Sign flap at county building

Friday, Sept. 16, 2005 | 11:12 a.m.

Ron Lynn, the county's top building executive, swears he didn't mean to scare any of his employees.

But that's exactly what he did last month when he had signs posted around his county government building warning that the facility was "protected by audio and visual recording equipment."

The small red signs, glued to the glass doors of the 4-year-old building at Russell Road and Cameron Street, also warned that "all activities and conversations may be recorded."

There was just one problem, however.

The building has video surveillance cameras for security purposes. But, according to Lynn (and surely to the relief of the American Civil Liberties Union), it is not equipped to record personal conversations.

This is a facility that's well traveled by the public. Not only is it the home of the county's busy building inspectors, but it also is the place where all construction permits and design plans are filed and processed.

Lynn told me Thursday that it was a mistake to put the audio language on the signs when no audio recording supposedly was taking place.

"In hindsight, it may have been better to custom make (the signs) for the capability of this building," Lynn said.

The incident has brought more criticism Lynn's way at a time when he is fighting with his building inspectors over a plan pushed by homebuilders to hire less-qualified private contractors to speed up the inspection process.

The inspectors fear the new program will lead to the construction of unsafe homes, and they have accused Lynn of kowtowing to the influential homebuilders, who are only worried about their bottom lines.

"They're trying to intimidate us," said Zack Gharibian, a senior building inspector and shop steward for the local Service Employees International Union. "They're trying to break our unity."

Lynn acknowledged that posting the signs in the middle of the controversy was bad timing.

But he insisted it was merely an "unfortunate coincidence" and had nothing to do with the spat over the private inspector program.

Some employees, however, were so irate that they recently removed a couple of the signs on their own.

Several of the signs, including one at a public entrance, were still posted when I visited the building Thursday morning.

But by the end of the day, I'm told, all of the signs were taken down with Lynn's authorization.

Lynn had trouble explaining how the audio language wound up on the signs.

His boss, County Development Services Director Phil Rosenquist, said one of Lynn's managers had come up with the wording as part of an effort to give notice to the public that video cameras were in the building.

"In my estimation, the wording was unfortunate, and we'll fix it," Rosenquist said.

If only Rosenquist and Lynn could eliminate the paranoia gripping the Building Division.