Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Distractions causing dereliction of duty

From the Daily News:

Mayor Bloomberg loves to think big...

All this attention to big projects comes at a price, though.

Some of the price comes out of your pocket - water and sewer rates have skyrocketed under Bloomberg, and the city's construction debt is higher than ever before.

Some of the price comes in the changed character of a city marked by giant footprints - neighborhood haunts like Freddy's Bar and some apartment buildings replaced by a new Brooklyn arena.

And some of the price comes in opportunities lost, inattention to detail, small problems that could have been fixed before they became big ones.

While billionaires fought over what to build at Ground Zero, two firefighters lost their lives in the former Deutsche Bank building in a scandalous breakdown of administration.

Bloomberg brags about installing GPS monitors and credit card readers in taxis, but nobody bothered to program them so they couldn't rip off $8.3 million in excess fares.

The man who made his billions on technology admitted Friday that he should have paid more attention to the CityTime technology program, which will eventually computerize city workers' time sheets but is hundreds of millions of dollars over budget.

History doesn't worry much about a few hundred million extra here and there. It's the taxpayers' job to look at the price tag.

2 comments:

Missing Foundation said...

History will record how the savviest most sophisticated city in the world, the center of the media, has its head stuck up its ass worring about this week's fashion statement or the latest art exhibit featuring body fluids.

So if they don't care about us, why should we care about them?

Increase their taxes and close those lopholes. What are they going to do? Move to a 3rd world dung heap or some wobbly tax haven?

Anonymous said...

Impeach Bloomturd!!!