Tag: City

City has made little progress expanding internet access

Laurent

In a hearing before City Council in June of last year, Baltimore’s then-chief broadband official outlined a vision to bring next-generation internet connection to one of the poorest parts of town, the public housing project Gilmor Homes, within a matter of weeks. He pitched the idea as step one in an aggressive campaign to establish 100 communal Wi-Fi hotspots across West Baltimore, all within a year.

“I used to say, ‘If the mayor said he wanted public Wi-Fi at Gilmor by next Friday, we could do it,’” said Jason Hardebeck, whom Mayor Brandon Scott hired in March of 2021 to be his director of broadband and digital equity, explaining in an interview last month that excess fiber-optic wiring at the housing complex would allow the city to string up outdoor internet service there almost immediately, at little cost.

But within two months of outlining his proposal for Gilmor Homes to the City Council, Hardebeck was fired from his post without reason given, he says. His plan to connect Gilmor Homes for public internet remains unfulfilled.

Two years since Scott established an office to close the digital divide, Baltimore leaders have yet to issue a plan showing how the city would meet that goal, which the mayor has pledged to accomplish by 2030 with millions of dollars in federal support. Proposals to establish hundreds of hotspot sites around town and to wire eight public housing complexes for top-of-the-line Wi-Fi remain in draft stages.

As of early March, a $35 million pledge Scott made as a “down payment” on his 2030 target had yet to connect a single resident to the internet.

At a moment of historic opportunity to correct entrenched disconnection in Baltimore, the dismissal of Hardebeck, an engineer and tech crusader whose resume includes suing Facebook over patent infringement, curbed the progress of Scott’s broadband office and its millions of dollars in federal funding. As the Scott administration continues to workshop its broadband plan behind closed doors, proponents have been left to wonder how the city intends to reach tens of thousands of households that still have no connection

… Read More... Read More

City of Austin doesn’t track technology it purchases, audit finds

Laurent

AUSTIN (KXAN) — The Metropolis of Austin doesn’t know how substantially it spends on know-how every single calendar year and doesn’t retain a citywide stock of the know-how it owns. These are just a couple of the results in a new town auditor’s report.

The audit, introduced to several city council users this 7 days, notes there are several problems with the city’s course of action to buy technological know-how.  

Planning for purchases is mainly left to personal departments and not carried out continuously or coordinated, according to the audit. The city’s process to obtain technology typically involves many events, like city council, the Communications & Technologies Management Section, the Company Obtaining Office environment and other metropolis departments.

Auditors seemed at the city’s know-how buying procedure amongst 2019 and 2021. They paint a photograph of a dysfunctional system which lacks interaction or knowledge of what the town already owns.

“Imagine you are dwelling in a residence with four other roommates who do not talk much. Every of you goes to the grocery shop and buys foodstuff, but none of you has a checklist or understands what is in the pantry in advance of you go,” auditors wrote metaphorically. “When every person gets household, how substantially foodstuff did you buy that was now in the residence? How a lot of of you bought the similar issue? This is like how the City buys engineering besides the City’s approach is on a much larger sized scale.”

The audit thorough examples of city departments purchasing technological innovation that does not fulfill or align with the city’s needs.

In one occasion, a section spent $36,000 on tablets for staff members to use in the subject. After getting the tablets, the office uncovered they would not function with the department’s software, and the division shelved them, in accordance to the audit.

The audit references another example the place a section desired to obtain a way to monitor its inventory and the city’s Communications

… Read More... Read More

Web co. Wix expands in Miami Beach amid city diversification

Laurent

People cross the street at Lincoln Road and Drexel Avenue in Miami Beach, Florida, on Monday, June 7, 2021.

Men and women cross the road at Lincoln Street and Drexel Avenue in Miami Beach, Florida, on Monday, June 7, 2021.


Daniel A. Varela

[email protected]

Israeli website growth large Wix is asserting plans to develop on Miami Seashore by close to 50% more than the future three decades, amid a bigger push by Beach front officers to diversify the city’s economic climate.

Wix, which has identified as the Seashore residence considering that 2015, moved into its existing places of work at 1691 Michigan Ave. in the vicinity of Lincoln Road in 2018. The company now programs to goal as lots of as 150 new hires on top rated of its current 300-sturdy workforce there and stands to acquire city incentives if it meets those hiring plans. Wix also bought and absorbed staff and executives from South Florida startup SpeedETab previously this 12 months.

“We’ve witnessed a tremendous sum of expansion in the past two a long time,” explained Joe Pollaro, U.S. common manager at Wix. “The want to be on the internet has improved, and we required to increase our worker count globally, but specially in the U.S.”

Wix’s Seashore workplace is house to its main customer assistance device in the U.S. the business now has 210 million end users all around the globe.

“We’ve located we have been in a position to generate a talent pool of young, rapid learners (in the Seaside business) who can swiftly alter in a rapid-paced environment and also located men and women with strong consumer services guidance encounter,” Pollaro stated. “The varied language skill set has also been really useful for us.”

Wix’s announcement comes amid a drive to raise the volume of high-compensated, superior-experienced work in Miami Beach. The city has heralded the arrival of 3 new economic corporations in 2021, joining the city’s anchor personal fairness agency, Starwood Cash.

Encouraging direct that financial transformation is Rickelle Williams, the city’s director of financial improvement.

“We believe the Miami Beach front setting lends itself to the tech community, and we want to make positive we are here with open up arms,” she stated.

… Read More... Read More

Here’s how much money Iowa City Council candidates raised, spent

Laurent

Iowa City Mayor Bruce Teague outraised the other three candidates for City Council, garnering support from his constituents, family members, fellow elected officials and labor organizations ahead of Tuesday’s election.

The Iowa City Council money race is coming into focus as Election Day draws near. All four candidates submitted campaign finance disclosures to the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board’s web reporting system showing how much they raised and spent.

Teague brought in $7,842 from 100 total donors. Megan Alter, another candidate for one of the two at-large seats on the City Council, raised $6,915 from 102 donors. The third at-large candidate, Jason Glass, raised $3,865 from 50 donors. Shawn Harmsen, who is running unopposed for the District B seat, raised $6,259 from 106 donations.

“I think that people really wanted to ensure that the campaign that I was running for this community had some resources,” Teague said.

Like the other candidates, much of Teague’s money went toward expenses like mailers, campaign signs, office supplies and advertising.

Read more coverage on the Iowa City Council election:

Teague and Glass spend their own money on campaign

While Teague outraised the other candidates, Glass ended up spending more than all of his opponents combined.

In total, Glass spent $650 of the money he fundraised for his campaign, but also chose to finance campaign costs early on with $22,334 of his own cash. By comparison, Teague, Alter and Harmsen only spent $17,217 combined.

Jason Glass poses for a photo, Monday, May 3, 2021, in Iowa City, Iowa.

Glass said campaign startup costs like website creation and design, logo design and advertising, were costs he chose to take on himself. He said he didn’t focus on fundraising during his campaign, but rather reached out in-person and online to potential voters.

“I wanted to make sure I had quality materials and quality web presence and spent what I needed to in order to reasonably do that,” he said. “I am very pleased with the quality of my website, my materials, my Facebook and my logo and yard signs.”

Glass’s disclosure said he spent $6,397 on web fees and $4,627 on printing costs for mailers, among other campaign costs.

Glass

… Read More... Read More