Overdue food inspections: the red mark that belongs on the wall
Food premises in many cities are listed by last visit and by a colour that someone later assigned in a spreadsheet. Colours travel badly. A red cell in a file that only the supervisor opens does not help the inspector who is standing in a market at 07:00.
A wall chart that simply lists premises by days past the legal interval is uglier and more useful. The inspector can point at a name. The supervisor can see whether the same three streets eat the whole week. The public notice, if the department chooses to publish it, can use the same order.
We copy dates from the inspector’s stamp book, not from a summary that has already rounded them. Premises that changed owner keep the old date until a visit is recorded, with a footnote. Premises that closed are struck through, not deleted, so a resident who still sees a shuttered café on the list can see why.
This is not a scoring system and not a ranking of neighbourhoods. It is a date list. That limitation is the point: a hearing can argue about staffing; it should not have to argue about whether the date on the wall matches the book.