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Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Well 10 pipes are better than none.
The water service for a home or other building connects to a water main which usually runs under the street in front of the buildings. Some of these mains are well over 100 years in the ground. The connection between the city’s main and the private building usually has a flexible lead pipe between the main and the valve that the city can use to shut off water if the need arises. For the first 120 years of city water service, lead was the only material that had the necessary flexibility for this task. Polymer with the flexibility and durability… Read more »
Thanks for this explanation. Based on this info I would say they need a totally different way of doing these replacements. And that is to not replace them at all, leave the old lead in the ground. Do it instead one city bungalow block at a time by mass installing a new feed parallel to the old feed: Using trenchers, a crew would make a trench from the main to every house on the block going right through sidewalks, lawns, etc. Another crew simultaneously trims out the trenches at each end. Scraping to the main and scraping to the house… Read more »
Dr Nemo– from what you describe, having the city water dept replacing service lines on a tm basis vrs competively bid at fixed unit cost would be a colossal waste of taxpayer $. I kid you not, it took over a month for water dept to repair my neighbor’s water service in the parkway
Dr Nemo- correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe by city crazy contracts you also have to have a separate truck driver sitting around staring at his I-phone and a non-working supervisor sitting around staring at his I-phone as well? In the case of my neighbors leaking service, on top of all that the city has a separate crew to post signs, remove any trees that might be in the way(which a week of waiting took about two hours with a multitude of personnel and one guy actually cutting the tree on the cherry picker to remove tree). Then… Read more »
Important to keep in mind that conservation of the taxpayers’ moneys and effective service to the citizens are secondary considerations in city departments and schools. The primary focus is maintaining and strengthening the political system. The city schools and departments provide a paycheck which is in substantial part a reward for the employee’s political work and support. If you keep that in mind, the many departments and their many employees as well as the often low quality and volume of the work provided to the public becomes understandable. It’s meant to work this way. The people have been voting for… Read more »
At City Hall, at Cook County, “quite impressive” work-performance is achieved by just arriving at work on-time each weekday, occupying your desk-seat for full shift without obviously sleeping on-the-job, and not causing major screw-ups. Ineffectiveness is okay. Sloth is okay. Stupidity is okay.
Shakman showed that the most important qualification for a job with the City of Chicago, even the lowest level jobs, was political connections.
It’s like that everywhere. Don’t screw up too much and you’re set for life.
Showing up is just the minimum sarting point for city workers, collecting tons of ot pay is a given. If lead pipes are replaced by direct hire city water dept crews as opposed to being competitively bid all the crazy city contracted work rules & ot provisions apply and presto-change-o you have the cost to replace a lead water service costing an absurd $26,000 while other cities are replacing service lines for $4,000 ea. And to make things worse, the cities giving inspector Ferguson the boot with no promise of replacement. So, in otherwords zero oversight of how all the… Read more »
Yes, very impressive, 400,000 jobs @ about 120 completions per year, you’ll have it all done in only 3,334 years! Chicago, “the city that works”, go team. Oh wait, I thought it was 10 per month, now I see its 10 per 13 months. I knew that was too fast and impressive. I revise my calculations, it will take a much more reasonable 40,000 years to finish. Sorry for my optimism.
I don’t want to sound racist but I don’t think a “Cheng” should be overseeing a water pipe replacement program. Maybe something that requires organizational skills or something like that. This should be run by a Ramirez or a Gonzalez. Should be able to knock out a house or two a day 3k – 4k per house tops.
Ms. Cheng should consult a dictionary for the definition of the word “impressive”.
Astoundingly it took the city water dept over a month to repair (not replace) my neighbors leaking water service. This included crews showing up at 8:00 @ night –with one guy doing the digging, one supervisor staring at his phone, one guy in the truck staring at his phone and astoundingly an entire additional pickup w a guy staring at his phone. Unbalivable incompetence by city employees making an astronomically better living than me. All are neighbors call water dept & aldermans office a zillion times..god help us if city starts replacing lead service lines with direct city water dept… Read more »