311 Finally Begins To Pay For Itself

Putting the eye on the street to good use:

When a city paving contractor caused minor damage this spring to the sidewalk in front of his Great Kills home, [a Staten Island man] and his wife [ . . .], dialed 311 to start the repair process.

What they got was a visit from an inspector — and then a summons and an order to fix it.

To their disbelief, a similar story played out among their East Brandis Avenue neighbors, all of whom say the situation stinks like hot asphalt. “They rammed it with the machine and all of this buckled up,” [the wife] said, pointing to a slightly raised concrete slab in front of her driveway. “The point is that what they’re saying we have to now fix is exactly what they did.”