The city’s mammoth upgrade of its antiquated 911 emergency call-taking system was plagued by delays, cost overruns and “persistent mismanagement” under the Michael Bloomberg administration, investigators charged Thursday.
In a 109-page report, the Department of Investigation said failures over nearly a decade, including poor performance and price markups by a number of contractors, drove up the price of the overhaul by hundreds of millions of dollars.
The project, which was launched in 2004 to improve the city’s 911 call infrastructure and create essential backup protections, isn’t expected to be completed until 2017, at a total cost of more than $2 billion.
“[The project] not only is late and over its original budget, but also has tested public confidence in the city’s ability to deliver on necessary improvements to the 911 system that are critical to public safety,” the report says.
It's amazing what billions in your bank account can do for your reputation.
I guarantee you, were de Blasio to have similar scandals like CityTime or the 911 mess, the elites of this city, including the media, would not be so gentle.
I say it's time to garnish Bloomberg's bank account for the mess he made in NYC. NYC citizens should demand restitution.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I never thought of him being a financial genius, but an underhanded, conniving, cunning financial misfit. I despise the bastard with all my being.
RBE, you're right, of course, but let's not forget the entirety of the technology mess that occurred under Mayor Mike, who established his personal empire by building what is the world's biggest financial technology and information management system.
ReplyDeleteWe have ARIS, at almost $100 million, abandoned last year after IBM spent years developing a student-based information aggregation system that was used in its final year by 3% of parents and 16% of teachers.
We have SESIS (Special Education Student Information System), at another $100 million, which took two years after its "go-live" to be turned into a relatively useful electronic repository for student IEPs. Unfortunately for the DOE, the UFT was successful in arbitrating tens of million in back pay for special education teachers who, during the two year period when SESIS was essentially useless, were forced to spend hours during prep and professional activity time and at nights and on weekends, entering several squadrillion pages worth of data and information into screens that generally refused to accept the information that was entered into them.
We have the failure of Citi Bike, or at least the fact that it had to be bailed out before it could be extended beyond mid-Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn, which was essentially a technology meltdown because the original contractors couldn't get the system to work in any useful way and or price the product to make a profit.
So, with City Time and Enhanced 911, a scoundrel's mess of wasted IT spending brought to you directly by Mr. Technology, himself, Mayor Mike.
As for the Mayor Mike's Fiscal Geniosity, Exhibit No. 1: how smart do you have to be to "balance" the City's budgets when you refuse to negotiate contracts with 151 separate bargaining units, drain the labor reserve the City usually keeps stashed away to fund those contracts and bequeath a basic requirement of urban financial management to your successor?
I'd look like a "fiscal genius", too, if I walked out the door and just showed you the cash in my bank accounts--without ever making any provisions for the debts I'd accumulated before turning my "surplus" over to you as I was being "huzzahed" for my geniosity on my way out of town.
Click on the tags for the post, you'll see how many times I've been over this ground. There was the NYCHA computer system re-do, the FDNY GPS mess, the NYCDOE scandals (Project Cougar & Judith Hederman) - a fairly impressive list when added to the 911 and CityTime messes as well as the systems you bring up too!
DeleteGreat comments and I would like see many more posts here because this guy bloomberg is the biggest fake human (not sure if he is human) on the planet. I would listen to mayor mike on WOR radio on Fridays and I would think to myself...does this guy really have all this money? Is one great idea worth 35 billion in todays world?? Any how, because of this jerk I have 22 year old teachers telling me what to do as I parole the schools of NYC as an ATR thanks to this misfit midget. Where in any industry does an experienced professional like myself - 15 years teaching plus 2 masters degrees have to listen to a 22 year old know nothing just because of bloombergs zany system that he implemented as mayor of NYC. How fregan sad that we have thousands of excessed teachers roaming from school to school and 22 year olds running the classrooms!!!! Only in the demented mind of this sicko ass wipe who is the same guy who hired Joel (coke bottle glasses) Klein, the infamous Kathy Black - you know - can we talk contraception please - and well - dennis walcott - i leave walcott alone cause he was just a puppet and not really alive during mikeys mayoral ship
ReplyDeleteYes Bloomberg did a lot of damage to our profession and he truly is a real ass hole. The money he squandered during his time as mayor is unconscionable and he goes around touting what a great job he was doing. He left the office not giving any of the hard working NYC employees a raise while he left with 35 billion - when he started as mayor he was worth 5 billion - go figure. This creep still has the balls to live in NYC - remember he is a bostonian born and raised but always "dreamed" of being a new yorker but never to be...he is a cold creepy midget who now spews his distaste for human beings in his company and no sooner he returned to his old company employees including high level managers left the company in droves.....how did we all live with this lizard midget for all those years....finally, it now appears that midget mike is working in gov cuomos office cause it sounds like the gov has been kidnapped by mikey devilish himself....
DeleteMike bloomberg comes from the Saddam Husein school of life. Saddam Husein had several palaces including gold every where including gold door knobs. Sadams palaces were huge and worth tens of millions of dollars....yet the people of Iraq lived like crocodiles. The people of Iraq lived in mud and suffered from oppression while Sadams lived in his palace...This is where Mikey Bloomberg was educated people..t
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