By Steve Rhodes
“A traffic camera company that lost its Baltimore contract earlier this year after acknowledging that its faulty equipment resulted in thousands of erroneous speeding tickets was named Tuesday as the preferred bidder to take over Chicago’s scandal-ridden red light camera program,” the Tribune reports.
A disqualification is in the eye of the beholder; this is Chicago.
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“Xerox State & Local Solutions Inc., based in Maryland, was picked unanimously by a seven-member selection committee in Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration, which will now enter contract negotiations with the company, the mayor’s office said in an e-mail to the Tribune.”
The e-mail was unavailable to answer questions, however.
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“The majority of our camera programs are extremely well run and our customers are very satisfied,” Xerox Corp. spokesman Carl Langsenkamp said. “That’s really all I have to say about Baltimore.”
Oh, Carl. We’ll say it for you, then:
- City Issued 16,000 Speed Camera Tickets In Six Weeks
- Some City Speed Cameras Have 5% Error Rate, Xerox Says
- City To Void More Than 6,000 Camera Tickets
- City In $2 Million Dispute With Xerox Over Camera Tickets
And yet, Chicago says it checked Xerox’s references.
“The evaluation committee checked references as part of its thorough review process and contacted Baltimore officials about Xerox, which successfully conducts business with many municipalities,” Emanuel spokesman Bill McCaffrey said in an e-mail. “Neither Baltimore nor any other municipality has debarred or declared Xerox ineligible to contract for city business.”
Baltimore is just refusing to pay Xerox $2 million because it fucked up so bad.
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McCaffrey’s e-mail account was unable to respond to questions.
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No wonder tests showed so many speeders – they’re duplicates! Ah, ha, ha, ha.
Community Consequences
“As principals make tough decisions in the wake of massive budget cuts, one major casualty could be the out-of-school time programs offered by community schools,” Rachel Reed reports for Catalyst.
“Chicago’s 150 community schools provide after-school and specialty programs in partnership with outside organizations. The goal is to provide expanded learning opportunities for children – most in lower-income neighborhoods – as well as programs to address students’ health and social-emotional needs. Families are part of the mix, too; some community schools offer GED classes or other programs for parents.”
So the kind of programs that are crucial to underserved neighborhoods.
“Though partner organizations get the majority of their funding from sources other than CPS (the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, administered by the Illinois State Board of Education, provides the bulk of funding for community schools in the state), layoffs of teachers and other workers due to CPS budget cuts jeopardizes programs.
One problem is likely to be a lack of support staff to help run the after-school programs that are a hallmark of community schools. If janitorial services are cut, for instance, schools simply won’t be as flexible in their options, says Patrick Brosnan, executive director at Brighton Park Neighborhood Council. BPNC partners with seven community schools and offers academic and social enrichment programs, mental health resources and adult education workshops.
At Kelly High School, Brosnan points out, most teachers who got pink slips were newer teachers, who were willing to work long hours after school and had been hired by BPNC to help run its community school offerings.
“Those teachers were selected because they wanted to do it and they have a following,” Brosnan says. “Students gravitated towards them, so they could bring students to the program. So now we have to start from scratch.”
Then again, Rahm is about nothing if not scratch.
Mourning George’s Music Room
Legendary Lawndale shop trashed.
Where’s Cutler?
See if he made the list of our very own Dan O’Shea’s Top 20 Fantasy QBs & RBs.
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The Beachwood Tip Line: Unsanitized for your protection.
Posted on August 14, 2013