My Dollars Hardly At Work

Funding from federal Homeland Security grants helped build Chicago's new City Incident Center to coordinate traffic, towing, fire fighting and snow removal.

This is the logical next step in our ongoing effort to integrate the communications and dispatch operations of all the relevant city departments, so they can respond rapidly and effectively to any emergency -- whether it's a blizzard, a major fire or a terrorist attack, said Mayor Richard M. Daley opening of the state-of-the-art facility Monday.

Chicago already has one of the world's most advanced 911 emergency response centers next door to the 3,000-square-foot Incident Center.

The $4 million center has 24 computer workstations, 42 television screens, and advanced Web-enabled communications including an 18-foot tall, high-definition video wall. A dozen of the television monitors can descend to eye level and display live television images from citywide cameras.

Did they build a operations center or a movie set?  This type of spending is wasteful and completely unnecessary.  

It will not reduce terrorism.
It will not improve response to terrorism.
It will not improve snow removal.
It will not do anything except provide Daly with an impressive toy to impress all of the other mayors in the country who will begin to clamor for similar payoffs.

Instead of buying 18-foot High Definition video walls with my money they should be spending just enough to get the job done and let me keep enough so that I can buy 3-foot HD TV.  I’m pretty sure I’ll put it to better use than they would.