Y2K bug takes a bite out of building permits

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Originally Published Friday, February 2, 2001 Y2K bug takes a bite out of building permits By Fran Bott Record Staff Writer TRACY -- A computer glitch has added yet another bump in the road to deciding how many homes will be built in Tracy. The Y2K computer bug city officials thought would never materialize dated 37 building permits "1900" instead of "2000," essentially hiding them from the permit database for the entire year, said J.B. Teig, the city's chief building official. As a result, the city inadvertently issued 37 permits too many last year. "It was not a server or a software problem," Teig said, "but individual PCs that had their clocks set wrong." The city has had a building-permit cap of 1,500. But voters in November passed Measure A, which cut in half the maximum number of permits issued by the city beginning this year. City leaders and planning staff are still reviewing just how many pending projects will be allowed to continue over the next several years. Many of them are expected to get approval to build at the old 1,500-permit cap at a City Council meeting Feb. 20. Teig said the 37 permits dated "1900" will be included in the permit tally for this year. "The developer community will get the same number of permits over the two-year period of time," he said. The mistakes were discovered in a year-end audit. Teig said city staff will

now "check and countercheck" monthly permit totals by comparing the number of permits to the amount of permit fees collected for improvements to projects such as streets, storm drains and parks. Deputy City Manager Julie Yuan-Miu said no other city department has had evidence of similar Y2K gremlins. "This is the first time we've heard of anything like that," Yuan-Miu said. "We're going to work with (the building department) to make sure we avoid any similar problems this year." She said the city is recruiting to fill an information-systems manager post that has been vacant for about two months. * To reach reporter Fran Bott, phone 833-1122 or e-mail fbott@recordnet.com http://www.recordnet.com/daily/news/articles/12news020201.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), February 02, 2001

Answers

The above is from Tracy, California

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), February 02, 2001.

Something isn't right with this story.

"It was not a server or a software problem,"
Teig said, "but individual PCs that had their
clocks set wrong."

If it was a Y2K glitch with their computers,
the date would have read 1980. Anybody else
have any insight on this one?

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), February 02, 2001.


Haven't you heard? It is against federal law to attribute any computer failure to Y2K. Any explanation, no matter how blatantly stupid, is preferable. This is because, as everyone knows, Y2K was a hoax.

Notice to the humor-challenged: this is a "JOKE".

-- Joseph R. Whaley (whaley@attorney-us.com), February 09, 2001.


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