More careless spending by the City of Detroit

"Police Department paying millions for phone lines in buildings it does not occupy

According to sources there will be a story airing soon about more waste in the police department that cost untold millions. It seems since 2005 the Detroit Police Department has been paying for phone lines that were left open in buildings that the department moved out of. Among the buildings listed are:

• 13th Precinct now currently Wayne County Sheriffs Admin. Bldg.
  

• 5th Precinct that was demolished and replaced with INS.
  

• 4th Precinct on Fort/Green.
  

• 8th Precinct on Grand River
  

• Gang Squad on McGraw.
  

• Academy on Greenfield at WCCC
  

• Gaming on E. Jefferson
  

• 2110 Park the old police academy behind the Fox
  

Other buildings where phone lines may have been left open for years include the Fisher Building, Cobo Hall and the Joe Louis Arena where DPD formerly had offices. Allegedly there were millions of dollars paid to AT&T for telephone and data lines that remained active and were not disconnected upon DPD vacating the property. According to sources the person who may fall on the sword for this is Deputy Chief Rahimzadeh who is in charge of Technical Services. He was reportedly investigated by Internal Affairs and even though they found no criminal wrong doing there is a matter of negligence on his part. In 2007 Chief Godbee became the Assistant Chief of the Administrative Portfolio, he was Rahimzadeh’s boss. He left and returned as Assistant Chief in 2009 before becoming Chief of Police. Unfortunately this mismanagement has cost the department millions of dollars over many years, dollars that could’ve been more useful in manpower and resources. According to sources in that 8 year period there was $2 million of lost revenue. Even if it’s just a million the symbolism of any money lost will not be lost on the citizens who are without police protection or officers being asked to give up their pay.Not to long ago Chief Godbee had to answer questions on why the city was paying for lease vehicles that the lease has been up for years, not to mention paying more than what the vehicles were worth. "

The *really* sad part of these types of stories is that they keep popping up, when a simple audit of the department *should* have cleaned up this waste. One incident should have been enough to trigger a quick audit. Two should have set off a thorough, line-by-line audit of everything the department spends money on.

If they are being audited regularly [[I doubt it) then whomever is doing the auditing needs to be fired.

But some want the EFM to stay out, cuz Detroit can handle their own problems. Right...

Just give them more money, thats the obvious solution. They dont have time for any kind of audit.

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Originally Posted by JBMcB

The *really* sad part of these types of stories is that they keep popping up, when a simple audit of the department *should* have cleaned up this waste. One incident should have been enough to trigger a quick audit. Two should have set off a thorough, line-by-line audit of everything the department spends money on.

If they are being audited regularly [[I doubt it) then whomever is doing the auditing needs to be fired.

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Actually, a regular audit might well not find unused telecom lines--it would show bills for telecom services and payments for telecom services. There aren't any physical objects to check against. I don't know if you've ever looked at the telecom bills for a large organization with many locations, but in my experience matching the bills up to actual services can literally take years. In particular, depending upon the company and the bill type they often don't tell you where the circuits being billed are located. They are also often wrong.

There are companies that specialize in doing telecom audits, often for a percentage of the savings they will generate by finding unused lines that are still being paid for or lines that are billed incorrectly or lines that are not contracted at the best rates.

Considering all the facilities they are closing, the city certainly should be doing regular telecom audits and if they haven't [[and this looks like they haven't) I would say that is mismanagement, not that it would be a surprise.

Wouldn't you assume that at the time they were vacating a building there would be someone in charge of turning off all utilities? It's just hard to imagine how they could move out of that many buildings without anybody having the phones shut off.

How many schools were simply abandoned?

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Originally Posted by winstonst

How many schools were simply abandoned?

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Oh, man! Do we really want to know?

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Originally Posted by Hamtragedy

Oh, man! Do we really want to know?

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Point is, with so many schools simply abandoned fully stocked and left unsecured, why is anyone surprised at this? They should check the phones at
the old schools also.

If the lack of common sense to cut off the service resulted in the unused phone bill being $2M, I shudder to think what they've paid to DTE and Consumers.