To Fill A Pothole Deferred

Mister Softee operators breathed a sigh of relief when plans for the Jingle Enforcement Mechanism were abandoned in favor of something more useful:

The city’s newest team of inspectors won’t write tickets or issue fines. They won’t harass landlords over leaky pipes or ensure that builders follow safety codes. The target of this team will be the city itself.

Yesterday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled the Street Conditions Observation Unit, Scout for short, at a news conference in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

The sole mission of the 15-member team is to patrol the streets in small three-wheeled vehicles looking for maddening little problems like potholes, clogged catch basins, damaged bus shelters and unsightly graffiti. The inspectors will also be on the lookout for more substantial problems, like homeless people in need of aid, the mayor said.

The program is the latest evolution of 311, the city’s popular customer service line, which gives residents access to all city services and allows them to record complaints by dialing one phone number.

Each inspector will be armed with a BlackBerry with global-positioning software to allow him to record observations and locations automatically in the 311 system, which will then notify the appropriate city agency.

“We’ve taken the first step, where it’s easy for you to report problems,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “But you shouldn’t have to do that. We love to have you do it, but it’s government’s responsibility to find the problems and fix them, not to sit there and say, ‘Duh, we didn’t know.’

“That’s not what good government is all about.”