Outsourced Cities, Brought to You by CH2M Hill [View all]

[Hestia]

Published on Wednesday, October 16, 2013 by PR Watch
Outsourced Cities, Brought to You by CH2M Hill
by Brendan Fischer and Seep Paliwal
When the town of Sandy Springs, Georgia, spun-off from Fulton County and established a brand new government, it didn't sign a Declaration of Independence; it signed a contract.


Sandy Springs, GA
The 100,000-person town entered into a five-year contract with the for-profit management company CH2M Hill to operate almost all of the town's services: running trash collection, and street cleaning, and wastewater management, and even security and administration for the courthouse. A for-profit company, rather than public officials and public employees, would be in charge of providing all "public" services except for fire and police departments. CH2M HILL employees, wearing Sandy Spring uniforms and driving trucks with Sandy Spring logos, even enforced municipal ordinances like grass-cutting and parking regulations.

Sandy Springs, an affluent suburb of Atlanta -- home to Herman Cain, professional sports players, and the woman who voiced Iphone's Siri -- had been fighting for years to spin-off from Fulton County, with many residents resentful that they were subsidizing services for poorer parts of the county. In 2005, after Republicans gained new majorities in both chambers of the Georgia legislature, Sandy Spring got its wish. The new town -- conceived by retired engineer Oliver Porter, a devotee of Austrian free-market economist Frederich Hayek -- had just a few months to set up a fully-functioning city government, and CH2M Hill stepped in, offering itself up as a one-stop-outsourcing-shop.

In the next two years, the newly-created communities of Johns Creek, Milton, and Chattahoochee Hills -- which, like Sandy Springs, were wealthy suburbs cutting themselves loose from less-affluent counties -- followed suit, signing contracts with CH2M Hill to establish fully outsourced cities.

more at link: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/16-0
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Straight out of "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein. She stated in the book that this would become the new norm - 2 America's, one for the rich and the rest, well let's just say, let them eat cake.