Chicago will soon wake up to a massive amount of new taxes. I hope you are ready. Many folks enjoy wasted money in Chicago due to waste, payoffs, and corruption. Insider will find a way to game the system. Alderman Burke was the king of skimming. Burke used his position to shake down the Committee of Finance vendors. Massive campaign contributions lined Alderman Burke’s pockets from law firms like Hennessey and Roach. Alderman Burke and his henchman (women) ordered workers compensation claims to Hennessey and Roach when Burke needed extra money to make favors and appear to others as the Godfather. The Chicago Ethics Board allowed this for far too long. Vendors understand pay to play. Just pad the bill and the bill is paid.
We have a series we are making outlining the scams. Due to Rahm Emanuel and his denial of FOIA, things have slowed down. I am giving Mayor Lightfoot a little more time to open city records.
Just recently, John Pope, after making a mockery of the problems at the Jardine Plant, has been given more responsibilities. You think with the DOWM in the newspapers all the time would hire a professional to run the plant, but stupid always trump at the DOWM. It would be funny, but wasted time is par for the course. I have sent a list of proposed improvements after my meeting with the 5th floor. The DOWM has layers of management to fix the screwups of the management. It is all smoke and mirrors.
John Pope has designed a new emergency notification system for the DOWM. Employees are subject already to harassment and retaliation and a myriad of ways to get fired when they refuse to buy tickets to political events. Many Chicago employees are stressed out from lack of professional management and weak union response. Times must change. There is no training on City workers that need mental health services and a complete failure to recognize symptoms.
John Pope just started “Swift Reach 911”. I hope Mayor Lightfoot investigates this scam. Basically, John Pope is admitting the Chicago water filtration plants are a dangerous place to work. I agree. When you hire people with no qualifications from the top-down, additional safety is needed. Chicago should have a Professional Engineer running the department. Lori Lightfoot promised to clean house, but we have the same rats stealing taxpayer money.
Swift Reach 911 is a texting and email system to make folks aware of emergency problems. Visitors and employees can sign into the system and if an employee goes cray cray, everyone will be notified. Say, for example, a commissioner is in the Jardine Plant making love to one of his underlings wanting a promotion, and he (she) changes her mind, everyone will know to evacuate the plant. All he (or she) needs to do is “just say no”. If you asked me, this new system is in response to the do-nothing Safety guy, Ralph Chiczewski, and his other retired cop friend paid to drive around and bother watchman.
Also, the system is a blatant attempt to hide the discontent and calling of police when employees get their personal items stolen. The Jardine and Eugene Sawyer Plant have drawn attention since police have been called and emergency services have been called and subject to public scrutiny. The new policy has so many disclaimers that make the policy useless. The million-dollar question is, who determines what an emergency is and what the response it. Smells like a coverup again. Maybe they can use this system when a Commissioner is drunk and gets into a hit and run car accident with a city vehicle and leaves the scene. Now Ralph can keep his City vehicle parked at home when someone is drunk and gets into an accident. More on this later.