Baltimore City Streets Crumble While Two Million Spent on Website Update That Isn’t There
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In a time when the Baltimore City Public Schools are failing and the juvenile crime rate in the city is skyrocketing, the city government spent $2 million dollars on something VERY important.
A redesigned website.
Yes, that’s right. Baltimore City spent $2 million dollars on a redesigned website. The old website is still there, still functional, but the Mayor and City Council wanted a better one.
Baltimore Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming issued a report on July 2nd that detailed the amount spent by the city for the website for a redesigned website. The contract for the building of the website was awarded to FEARLESS SOLUTIONS a company owned by Delali Dzirasa. The contract was worth three times the original estimate for the website revision (approximately $800,000) and the amount granted was seven times higher than the closest bidder.
The awarding of the contract was considered suspect as it was not done via the normal bid process. Rather, the Baltimore City Office of Information and Technology (BCIT) limited the number of potential vendors for the contract and favored “Vendor 1” (Fearless Solutions) even though there was a much cheaper alternative. The contract was for a “redesign” of the city’s website and was supposed to be completed by August 2023. It has yet to be finished.
Only two vendors responded to the emails advertising the contract – one asking for $1,332,958 and the other for $306,250. After the bids were submitted, Vendor One (Fearless Solutions) was asked to reduce the time needed to complete the project and therefore decrease the amount of the bid which was eventually awarded to them. This seemed to be an attempt to get the cost more in line with city expectations. Fearless Solutions, after an interview and presentation process by both bidders to a hand picked panel of city officials, got the contract.
Mayor Brandon Scott stated, “In keeping with the city’s focus on equity and opportunity for local business owners, we are delighted that the winning bid will go to a local minority-owned company.” He didn’t mention that the owner or the winning company was owned by a donor to his campaign who had actually arranged events for his re-election campaign. That man was Delali Dzirasa.
Scott also didn’t mention that Dzirasa’s wife, Letitia, served as the head of the Baltimore City Health Department and then Deputy Mayor under Scott. The Dzirasas participated in many of the Mayor’s business initiatives and boards. They frequently met with the mayor on a social as well as professional basis.
Meanwhile, the website was not being re-done. BCIT employees were concerned about Fearless Solutions and its inability to complete the project regardless of the massive contract amount. Five months after securing the deal, FEARLESS requested an additional $887,000 to complete the project. Seven months later, the city approved another request for a quarter-million dollars, bringing the total cost to over $2.2 million. Still, no working revised website.
In interviews with Inspector Cumming’s investigators, city IT employees stated that Fearless “had inadequate preparation,” “lack of cohesive organization,” “unnecessary coding.” No wonder the website progress was halted. Not only that, but Fearless Company staff pushed back completion multiple times, incurring more cost for the city as the company’s staff kept working and billing work hours. The original launch date was pushed back from August 2023, to June 2024, and then to June 30, 2025.
As of July 1, the new site is still not live.
“There is no website at this time. In fact, the company we hired stopped working for the city a year ago yesterday,” said Inspector General Isabel Cumming.
The inspector General’s investigation centers around a suspect, biased bid process, favors done for Scott’s campaign donors and appointees, and grossly mis-spent city funds on a website that is still not re-designed after two years.
This kind of waste and fraud is nothing new in Baltimore City. Millions are allocated to phony non-profits designed to mediate disputes in order to prevent crime. In another recent story, a non-profit given funds by the city sent those funds back to Brandon Scott’s office. Patrick Hauf from Spotlight on Maryland reported this story in May:
The Baltimore Children and Youth Fund (BCYF) is guaranteed taxpayer dollars each year through the Baltimore City charter. The group operates as a non-profit and uses its taxpayer money to boost youth programming, mostly through grants to organizations in the Baltimore area. However, BCYF announced last week a plan to give Mayor Scott’s office $1.5 million.
“BCYF is supporting strategic summer partnerships coordinated through the Mayor’s Office, including $500,000 designated to deepen alignment between BCYF grantees and city agencies,” the organization’s press release stated.
It’s not supposed to work that way.
David Williams, the president of the Taxpayer Protection Alliance, said moving money between government entities and non-profits enables potential mismanagement.
“This doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he told Spotlight on Maryland. “A nonprofit should not be used as a funnel to give money back to the city.”
“The concern is that when you have money that is funneled through any sort of entity, you increase the chances of waste, fraud and abuse,” he continued.
More on this story can be found here: Baltimore taxpayer funded nonprofit sends funds to Mayor Scott’s office
It’s nothing new in Baltimore City. Corruption, incompetence and financial indifference are the norm.
And the city still crumbles under huge budget deficiencies. Those with connections in the city get paid. Those who don’t stay poor and trapped in a city that does nothing to educate or protect them.
The post Two Million Dollar URL To Nowhere appeared first on The Easton Gazette.
