The City has not implemented most of the recommendations we made in our 2023 report, which found that a City contactor that provides emergency board-up services for victims of break-ins or vandalism overcharged business and property owners.
Our 2023 report found that the contractor, Stanley C. Kennedy Enterprises, Inc. (doing business as 1-800 BOARDUP) directly billed and overcharged community members for City-initiated emergency board-up requests, in violation of its City contract, and the City did not provide sufficient oversight of the contract.
Community Safety Division Director Mike Myers and other City officials expressed agreement with the recommendations when our report was published last July. However, in the 10 months since, they have not undertaken recommended actions such as notifying the contractor that it was in breach of contract or hiring a firm to audit contractor records. The City has taken some steps to strengthen oversight, such as instituting a process to check that invoices to the City are in line with prices in the contract, but these steps are insufficient to ensure that problems we identified do not persist. As a result of the lack of action, neither the City nor contractor have accounted for past harm done to community members who were wrongfully charged.
City Ombudsman Jennifer Croft sent a letter to Director Myers on May 20, 2024, expressing concern that most of the recommendations have not been implemented and providing an update on the status of all recommendations from the report.
Read the full letter sent to Director Mike Myers
The letter summarizes the implementation status of eight recommendations made by the Ombudsman:
While a response to the Ombudsman’s letter was not required, Director Myers provided a reply, which is published here at his request:
View the original report
View the original 2023 report and recommendations