Sorry if this was covered, but I don't think it was
https://popular.info/p/this-multi-billion-dollar-corporation
https://popular.info/p/this-multi-billion-dollar-corporation
Jackson and Siemens water meters
- Thread starter BoomBoom.sixpack
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I stopped reading when they started blaming republicans.
Siemens obviously did something ****** but Jackson has been mismanaged. When the city population shrinks so does water usage. Start working on the issues little by little. You don’t have to replace the entire system at once.
But. And here is the key part, WHY DIDNT THEY USE THE SIEMENS SETTLEMENT AS A HUGE JUMPING OFF POINT?
Siemens obviously did something ****** but Jackson has been mismanaged. When the city population shrinks so does water usage. Start working on the issues little by little. You don’t have to replace the entire system at once.
But. And here is the key part, WHY DIDNT THEY USE THE SIEMENS SETTLEMENT AS A HUGE JUMPING OFF POINT?
If you would have read the article instead of getting your feelings hurt, you would know the answer to what happened to the settlement money.
Actually it’s not, at least not fully. This whole thing (situation and to some extent the article) is a complex maze of gross mismanagement and half truths. For example, when the city of Jackson asked for the 47 million, they got a 44 million dollar federal grant, and the state chipped in the other 3 to give the COJ their 47 million. Meanwhile the city of Jackson contributed zero. They conveniently left out the part where Jackson got the grant and didn’t put a dime of their own money in. Also, the EPA had practically been doing jumping jacks while trying to tell the past two administrations what was coming with that system and not a whole lot was done to try and fix it. At the end of the day each and every municipality or district is responsible for its systems. And the mayor and council failed miserably at solving these problems. As for Siemens, they should have their *** kicked. COJ didn’t have any performance benchmarks in the contracts to spell out what would happen if their system didn’t work. And it bit them in the ***. Again, not the states responsibility, but this is where they should have turned to the feds for help. The federal government would have loved to make an example of a foreign company screwing an American municipality. Again crickets. And why hire a Birmingham law firm to go after Siemens when there are plenty of qualified attorneys in the greater Jackson area who would have loved a crack at this case. Just a cluster17 all the way around.
Yeah I went back and finished it. Still doesn’t explain why Jackson can’t fix a problem as simple as sending a damn bill to someone after reading a meter.
Meters don’t work at all? I’m calling BS.
Replace the faulty meters over time.
Cities all over the country do it manually.
I mean you can look at the revenue coming in from x% of the people. Focus on the y% where no revenue comes in.
Then focus on getting the Siemens system working little by little.
I mean they ran a deficit for 5 years bc the idiots used expected numbers versus actual. I can see that problem for 6 months. Even a year. 2? 3? 4? Years? Is the head of the water department really that dumb? That’s a rhetorical question by the way.
Meters don’t work at all? I’m calling BS.
Replace the faulty meters over time.
Cities all over the country do it manually.
I mean you can look at the revenue coming in from x% of the people. Focus on the y% where no revenue comes in.
Then focus on getting the Siemens system working little by little.
I mean they ran a deficit for 5 years bc the idiots used expected numbers versus actual. I can see that problem for 6 months. Even a year. 2? 3? 4? Years? Is the head of the water department really that dumb? That’s a rhetorical question by the way.
The city settled for getting their money back instead of seeking money for damages. That was dumb
As part of its proposal, Siemens had promised that 58% of the work would be done by minority-owned subcontractors. But the city alleged that, instead of finding qualified minority-owned businesses to do the work, Siemens contracted with "sham subcontractors" who merely acted as pass-through
They didn’t hire “sham subcontractors”, they hired the “sham subcontractors” the city instructed them to hire.
They didn’t hire “sham subcontractors”, they hired the “sham subcontractors” the city instructed them to hire.
Jackson doesn’t have enough qualified people. And they certainly lack qualified leaders and department heads. One issue with the Siemens contract was the high turnover rate among Jackson employees made training on the new system almost impossible.
Jackson forced many of the minority contractors on Siemens. They wanted to be sure many of their local black buddies got a piece of the pie. Jackson has zero interest in “hiring the best and most qualified”. And that’s not changing anytime soon.
Siemens was stupid. Never walk into a big contract in a predominately black city with liberal leaders who make everything about race. It never ends well.
AMI and AMR meter systems are quirky. You have to understand them. Nobody at Jackson understood them or hung around long enough to learn. Too much turnover and too many unmotivated employees.
Siemens promised huge cost savings and accurate meter readings that would make the system pay for itself. Explain to me why getting an accurate meter reading matters when you have no intention of making the customer pay for the water used.
The system shouldn’t have cost that much anyway. $95 million for 60,000 customers is almost $1600 per customer. I assure you other utilities with a similar system didn’t pay that much. But Jackson was willing to pay more to ensure that friendly consultants got a piece of the pie.
When Phil Hull contracted to audit the system, he found entire streets that had straight-piped around the meter. And often a city employee helped them.
Word to the city. Elect and hire qualified people. Elect and hire qualified people. Elect and hire qualified people.
Jackson forced many of the minority contractors on Siemens. They wanted to be sure many of their local black buddies got a piece of the pie. Jackson has zero interest in “hiring the best and most qualified”. And that’s not changing anytime soon.
Siemens was stupid. Never walk into a big contract in a predominately black city with liberal leaders who make everything about race. It never ends well.
AMI and AMR meter systems are quirky. You have to understand them. Nobody at Jackson understood them or hung around long enough to learn. Too much turnover and too many unmotivated employees.
Siemens promised huge cost savings and accurate meter readings that would make the system pay for itself. Explain to me why getting an accurate meter reading matters when you have no intention of making the customer pay for the water used.
The system shouldn’t have cost that much anyway. $95 million for 60,000 customers is almost $1600 per customer. I assure you other utilities with a similar system didn’t pay that much. But Jackson was willing to pay more to ensure that friendly consultants got a piece of the pie.
When Phil Hull contracted to audit the system, he found entire streets that had straight-piped around the meter. And often a city employee helped them.
Word to the city. Elect and hire qualified people. Elect and hire qualified people. Elect and hire qualified people.
Wow. To anyone that has worked professionally in capital projects in the private sector, this makes Jackson look even worse. Here’s one: why the hell are they letting the vendor tell them the payoff for the investment? That’s for the customer to understand. There are 100 more WTFs in that article.
Sky is blue, water is wet, vendors lie. It is incumbent upon the customer to protect themselves, even more so when the customer is the public.
Sky is blue, water is wet, vendors lie. It is incumbent upon the customer to protect themselves, even more so when the customer is the public.
Leadership is and has been a joke for a long time. Unfortunately, I can’t think of the last time a qualified candidate ran. I said in a post a few days ago that I think Kenneth stokes may be the most competent leader in Jackson right now, such a sad statement to even think could possibly be true.
The crazy thing about Jackson's billing is that the trash is included in your bill. With so many people not receiving and/or paying their bill, I have no clue how the city paid Waste Management unless they stole from Peter to pay Paul.
I tried to post on the site which is linked in the first comment in this thread but you have to be a subscriber. If anyone is a subscriber, please post that folks from out of state do not know the true facts on the water situation.
They just read an article and start making BS comments!
They just read an article and start making BS comments!
Ding ding ding ding.
Definitely got shammed.
This is why the article is bullsh!t. Name the sham contractors and sham subcontractors and who approved them. I'm willing to bet many were minority owned and approved by the city.
Definitely got shammed.
This is why the article is bullsh!t. Name the sham contractors and sham subcontractors and who approved them. I'm willing to bet many were minority owned and approved by the city.
One of the contractors was named in the article. Anytime a contract requires certain contractors due to minority status, it’s gonna be a **** show.
This is key. There are some preferred City contractors that get rich off these contracts and may or may not know that water drains downhill. It is a shame that we've gone from greasing the palms of competent laborers to greasing the palms of incompetent ones.
Just read these two articles on Jackson waste collection from this year.
I find it almost unconscionable that any journalist can write a piece about Jackson government without mentioning that the mayor is clearly completely incompetent to run even a lemonade stand...
https://www.wlbt.com/2022/02/22/was...inst-city-jackson-over-waste-hauling-debacle/
https://www.wapt.com/article/richar...r16m-lawsuit-against-city-of-jackson/40624824
Jackson is far from the only city/municipality to have a painful experience with AMI and AMR deals. There are a few things that have made Jackson's more painful. First, they paid a big mark up up front to make sure the right sham subcontractors were used. Then they took a huge paycut on the backend by doing a corrupt contingency deal with their lawyers. Contingency deals are for individuals that can't pay. I don't think mere incompetence can result in promising a contingency fee on a nominally $400M lawsuit. Then they let the problem drag out rather than dealing with it quickly. In other places, when people start getting screwy bills, the problem tends to get fixed reasonably quickly because they expect to actually pay their bills. And when bills aren't being sent out, the city politicians and employees are actually motivated to go deal with it because they understand they can't just give away millions of dollars of water for free.
I can almost guarantee you there were lots of problems with the city's case. Partly because things are rarely completely one sided, but also because with a project that complex, the project was undoubtedly dependent on the city cooperating and assisting for it to be successful. What are the chances Siemens wouldn't be able to point to dozens if not more examples of city incompetence or just non-responsiveness? Even if the city's incompetence or non-responsiveness was not actually what caused the problems, that's still going to be a risk at trial.
Done right, minority participation goals can be good for everyone involved, and serve an important purpose in giving minorities access to contracts they may not otherwise be able to get. Done wrong, and it's just a massive waste, fraud and corruption scheme. In my experience, we've used a minority sub on a government contract before. It worked reasonably well at first, but over time we were pressured to increase the minority participation. We were able to choose our own minority contractor and were not steered to any specific contractor.
I listened to the local Representative, I think Banks??, as he said no way would he allow privatization of the water supplier. And he sounded damn illiterate. Then Hohrn got on there saying the same. That area almost doesn't deserve help for continually electing these idiots.
They'll continue doing this crap and wait on the bailout each time, all the while blaming everyone else.
They'll continue doing this crap and wait on the bailout each time, all the while blaming everyone else.
I'm not sure why that's an important purpose. I think there is some benefit to doing small business set asides in that it in theory helps promote and develop competition on non-set aside projects and also promotes upward mobility. But in general, why spend more taxpayer money to give extra money to minority contractors? It's not like you're taxing the people that discriminated against minorities in the past to pay for it. You're just screwing unrelated people (including other minorities that down own or work for the company getting the contract).
I didn't make assertions, I made an assertion, singular.
The mayor of Jackson is completely incompetent.
I have no interest in debating something so obvious to anyone paying attention. There is plenty of evidence for all but the most closed minds.
I notice in your last 30 posts you have not discussed MSU sports a single time.
Why are you here?
If a municipality or state is giving out hundreds/thousands of contracts, and not even a small percent are going to minorities, then isn't it a given that either there's some discrimination going on, or there's a lack of representation in business by a class of people that obviously needs some assistance to achieve it due to past discrimination?
I thought your assertion that the press didn't point out that Lumumba is incompetent was right on the money. You didn't actually assert that Lumumba was incompetent because for any reasonable person that's already a given. And as for your question "why are you here" I have the same question about several of our left leaning trolls.
I guess the press part was more a feeble attempt at humor than an assertion, but it is truly amazing how much "journalists" will flat out ignore to push an agenda. I'm not really talking about those articles being egregious reporting wise. They tell the story.
It makes me crazy that his incompetence is not blasted on 11 until he simply has to resign.
What a disaster for the citizens of Jackson.
Depends on what you mean by done right. If all that is required to meet your goals is showing that you did things like solicit bids from minority contractors and advertise in locations likely to be seen by minority contractors, then you are correct, it doesn't cost anything and it's a not a bad thing (not sure how much good that does though? are minority contractors really not monitoring normal bid announcements?). But usually if there is any response, there is pressure to pick a minority sub, even if they are more expensive. It's possible, but not likely, that the extra cost is coming out of the prime's pocket.
Or maybe there aren’t any worthy contractors in the area who are minorities?
I’m all for helping people who are trying but there are a lot of minorities ruining **** for other minorities.
I’m all for helping people who are trying but there are a lot of minorities ruining **** for other minorities.
When it comes to efforts to help up a long oppressed class, I'll take paying slightly extra for people to do real, needed work over paying people not to work. Especially as free market theory says that that extra cost should shortly be eliminated by such firms entering the market.
I will say though that incentives for Jackson-based companies makes even more sense, from Jackson's perspective.
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