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The Department of Buildings tried to provide answers to somewhat irate community members at a special meeting Monday night. It wasn’t always successful.

The Queens Civic Congress meeting “DOB: Where are we?” was hosted at the Kew Gardens Community Center, and featured a panel with Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Bronx Councilman Jimmy Vacca, and Queens Civic Congress Vice Presidents Richard Hellenbrecht and Paul Kerzner.

DOB Commissioner Pat Lancaster tried her best to placate often angry community members, sometimes allowing her own passionate opinions to show through. Lancaster implored the QCC to understand her position, that she had inherited a step-child agency that was so totally impotent at the beginning of her administration that the computers couldn’t stay on for eight hours at a stretch.

“What I found [when starting at the DOB] is worse than anyone could imagine,” Lancaster said. She continued to say that over the course of her administration, the DOB has taken on numerous monumental tasks, including spending 300,000 hours completely overhauling the building code. A task that, according to Lancaster, was finished at noon on Monday.

“We are aiming to offer customer service to the city of New York,” she said. “We know we’re not finished yet, we know we have work to do. We’re going in the right direction.”

Lancaster said that when she started, the DOB didn’t even have building codes and permit information online. Starkly different from the current climate, in which the DOB Web site receives almost 400,000 hits a day.

Many community members disagreed with Lancaster’s assertion that the DOB was working to “keep the spotlight on integrity.”

“Your job is to protect us,” said Bellerose resident Michael Agugliaro. “There needs to be infrastructure. You’re talking about building for 2030, but you’re building on a foundation that is faulty.” Agugliaro was concerned about bringing new residents into areas of Queens that were already saturated with large multi-family homes built contrary to zoning.

“Right now, we’re in a critical situation that people don’t even know about,” Agugliaro said. “There’s no more landfills, we’re shipping our garbage to places like Virginia. What if they decide they don’t want our garbage anymore? This whole 2030 thing, this is pipe dreams.”

In response to allegations that the DOB lacked the teeth to really enforce its violations orders, Lancaster was adamant that the DOB operates exactly as it should.

“We can’t do anything that is anything like search and seizure,” she said, “and frankly, I don’t think you want us to.” QCC members expressed concerns about the Department’s “closing” policy that labels a complaint closed if an inspector can’t get access to a building after two attempts. This controversial policy has seen many different parties weigh in, and Lancaster seemed reticent to say anything about it.

Other residents in areas as disparate as the Rockaways and Flushing were concerned that the DOB had cut itself off from the community, alienating itself at a time when the community needed it most.

“I don’t get responses like I want [when reaching out to the DOB],” said QCC member Lew Simon. “We need some response…I’m hoping the door will reopen for me.”

For the rest of the meeting, Bronx Councilman Jimmy Vacca chronicled his own experiences with DOB violations and violators. He was quick to praise Lancaster, but agreed that work still needs to be done.

“We cannot fall asleep again,” he said. “The most important thing to you, more important than your neighborhood, is your block. Unless we look at our city block by block, we’re doing ourselves an injustice.”