When I opened my investment firm in 2001, I signed a lease on my office, transferred the utilities in my name, installed the phones, moved in some furniture and hung the sign. Of course that was Great Bend, Kansas and nearly 8 years ago. In Corpus Christi things don’t work quite as easy in the year 2008.
I started the day off by shopping for an electric service provider. The first provider had a good price, $.o96/kwh; however, the $400 deposit was a deal breaker. So I moved on down to the next provider also at $.096/kwh with no deposit. Now we’re talking…sort of. Since Texas is a choose your provider state, the electric companies are required to provide a 3 business day right of rescission, which means no electricity until Monday. Ok, I can live with that. Sunday morning 10AM the first weekend of November won’t be oppressively hot and our storefront has large windows…no problem. Then came these words, you will need an inspection from the city before we can connect the meter…say what?
Needless to say the city of Corpus Christi has a nice little thing going with the power provider. If commercial service has been off for more than 24 hours, it requires an electrical inspection for $76.88. Well okay, that is the price of doing business in the big city…so I bebop on down to the city development office and tell them my need. I fill out the form wait for 20 minutes and then meet with the friendly fellow behind the desk. He asks me where we are moving the church from and I tell him, we are not this is our first location. He then informs me that we don’t need the first piece of paper I had filled out, but instead we needed a certificate of occupancy, which by the way would cover the electrical inspection. So $211.15 later I leave the development office with 5 appointments scheduled between 8AM and 5PM tomorrow. We have to be mechanically, electrically, plumbing, vector, fire, health, etc… inspected….remember all I wanted to do was sign up for electric service and turn the lights on. Then next Tuesday I’ll wrap up with the fire inspection…barring any unforeseen inspection issues.
The landlord had the building re-keyed today as well. When I went by to get the new key, no one was in the office and there was no expected time of return. My calls to the contact numbers were unsuccessful. So hopefully I will be able to get in tomorrow for the inspections.
On a brighter note, I met with my favorite group of pastors today and they laid hands on me and prayed over me as we get ready to launch. This was a real boost for my spirit as I was feeling pretty drained after everything else today.