911 System Wastes Your Money While Jeopardizing Your Safety: Comptroller
911 System Wastes Your Money While Jeopardizing Your Safety: Comptroller
http://www.wpix.com/news/wpix-911-system-called-money-pit-nyc-comptroller,0,7324450.story?hpt=us_bn7
NEW YORK (PIX11)—
The call system that sends cops to scenes of crimes and firefighters and EMTs to emergencies is overbudget, and underperforming. That was the message City Comptroller John Liu conveyed in the report on a 15-month long audit that his office released on Wednesday.
(snip)
As an example, the comptroller released a billing sheet for a contractor who billed $192 per hour for two hours of work that included "open[ing] the door for 5 folks," and "call[ing] to kill a waterbug in the ladies room."
"HP was being reimbursed for a lot of their costs," Deputy Comptroller Tina Kim said, regarding unnecessary payments to the contractor, "like their office costs, even their coffee."
The news conference was attended by leaders of a number of public employee unions, some of whose members would benefit if the city did not contract out 911 work. It provoked talk of politics being behind the comptroller's 911 audit, but union leaders attempted to play that down.
In fact, said Al Hagan of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, hiring of his union's members has not been affected by the 911 system's changes. Instead, he said, he had attended the news conference to highlight just how inefficient the 911 system is. He said that his union had gotten thousands of complaints from its members saying that information it had given to dispatchers and first responders was confusing and misleading.
"If it's a problem for an experienced fire officer," Hagan told PIX11 News, "It's deadly for the people of this city."
(more at link)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
911 is contracted out???? And it costs more?
