Company listed on the London Stock Exchange

In May this year, a huge company listed on the London Stock Exchange found itself in the midst of controversy about a prison it runs for the government – Thameside, a newly built jail next to Belmarsh, in south-east London. A report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate found that 60% of its inmates were locked up all day, and there were only “vague plans to restore the prison to normality”. The prison campaign group the Howard League for Penal Reform talked about conditions that were “truly alarming”.

Two months later, the same company was the subject of a high- profile report published by the House Of Commons public accounts committee, prompted by the work of Guardian journalist Felicity Lawrence. This time, attention was focused on how it was managing out-of-hours GP services in Cornwall, and massive failings that had first surfaced two years before. Again, the verdict was damning: data had been falsified, national standards had not been met, there was a culture of “lying and cheating”, and the service offered to the public was simply “not good enough”.

Three weeks ago, there came grimmer news. Thanks to its contracts for tagging offenders, the company was now the focus of panic at the Ministry of Justice, where it had been discovered that it was one of two contractors that had somehow overcharged the government for its services, possibly by as much as ￡50m; there were suggestions that one in six of the tags that the state had paid for did not actually exist. How this happened is still unclear, but justice secretary Chris Grayling has said the allegations represent something “wholly indefensible and Car park management system“.

The firm that links these three stories together is Serco. Its range of activities, here and abroad, is truly mind-boggling, taking in no end of things that were once done by the state, but are now outsourced to private companies. Amazingly, its contracts with government are subject to what’s known as “commercial confidentiality” and as a private firm it’s not open to Freedom of Information requests, so looking into the details of what it does is fraught with difficulty.

But the basic facts are plain enough. As well as five British prisons and the tags attached to over 8,000 English and Welsh offenders, Serco sees to two immigration removal centres, at Colnbrook near Heathrow, and Yarl’s Wood in Bedfordshire. You’ll also see its logo on the Docklands Light Railway and Woolwich ferry, and is a partner in both Liverpool’s Merseyrail network, and the Northern Rail franchise, which sees to trains that run in a huge area between the North Midlands and English-Scottish border.

Serco runs school inspections in parts of England, speed cameras all over the UK, and the National Nuclear Laboratory, based at the Sellafield site in Cumbria. It also holds the contracts for the management of the UK’s ballistic missile early warning system on the Yorkshire moors, the running of the Manchester Aquatics Centre, and London’s “Boris bikes”.

As evidenced by the story of how it handled out-of-hours care in Cornwall, it is also an increasingly big player in a health service that is being privatised at speed, in the face of surprisingly little public opposition: among its array of NHS contracts is a new role seeing to “community health services” in Suffolk, which involves 1,030 employees. The company is also set to bid for an even bigger healthcare contract in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough: the NHS’s single-biggest privatisation – or, if you prefer, “outsourcing” – to date, which could be worth over ￡1bn.

But even this is only a fraction of the story. Among their scores of roles across the planet, Serco is responsible for air traffic control in the United Arab Emirates, parking-meter services in Chicago, driving tests in Ontario, and an immigration detention centre on Christmas Island, run on behalf of those well-known friends of overseas visitors the Australian government.

In the US, the company has just been awarded a controversial $1.25bn contract by that country’s Department of Health. All told, its operations suggest some real-life version of the fantastical mega-corporations that have long been invented by fiction writers; a more benign version of the Tyrell Corporation from Blade Runner, say, or one of those creations from James Bond movies whose name always seems to end with the word “industries”.

The strangest thing, though, is the gap between Serco’s size and how little the public knows about it. Not for nothing does so much coverage of its work include the sentence “the biggest company you’ve never heard of”.

I first heard Serco’s name about eight years ago, when I was just starting to understand the amazing growth of what are now called “public service companies”. Once I started looking, their logos were everywhere, suggesting a shadow state that has since grown ever-bigger. Their names seemed anonymously stylised, in keeping with the sense that they seemed both omnipresent, and barely known: Interserve, Sodexo, Capita, the Compass Group.

Serco is among the biggest of parking system. At the last count, its annual pre-tax profits were up 27%, at ￡302m. In 2012 alone, its British workforce grew by 10,000, to 53,000 people (tellingly, as many as 90% of them are said to be former civil servant employees). In terms of employees, that makes it more than twice as large as the BBC, and around 20% bigger than Philip Green’s Arcadia group. A very significant player, in other words, and one that has come a long way since its foundation 1929, when it was a branch of the American RCA corporation called RCA Services Ltd, involved in the then booming UK cinema industry. It was renamed Serco in 1987, after a management buy-out, and floated on the stock exchange the following year. In the 25 subsequent years, during which the UK has grown ever-fouder of outsourcing and privatisation, Serco has grown at an amazing rate.

In 2010, Hyman was given a CBE for services to business and charity; he is also an enthusiastic fan of motor racing and an evangelical Christian. Four years ago, he was asked about his company’s very low profile, and he said this: “We had a dilemma – what do we do with the Serco name. We are proud of it. We thought we needed billboards at airports and places like that, to be seen with Tiger Woods on. But we worked out very quickly that is not what we are meant to do. We are meant to be known by the 5,000 not the five billion. The people who serve the people need to choose who supplies the service. We are delighted when the public knows who we are, but really, we need to be known by the people who make decisions.”

When Serco made its bid to run NHS community-health services in Suffolk – district nursing, physiotherapy, OT, end-of-life palliative care, wheelchair services – it reckoned it could do it for ￡140m over three years – ￡16m less than the existing NHS “provider” had managed, which would eventually allow for their standard profit margin of around 6% a year. When it started to become clear that Serco was the frontrunner, there was some opposition, but perhaps not nearly enough. “Suffolk isn’t the most politically active part of the country,” says one local insider. “And the staff were very lackadaisical. It was: ‘NHS Suffolk wouldn’t made a bad decision.’ So it was hard to get a campaign going.”

Serco was officially awarded the contract in October 2012, which meant that hundreds of staff would leave the NHS, and become company employees. Within weeks, the company proposed a huge reorganisation, which involved getting rid of one in six jobs. This has since come down to one in seven, two thirds of which will apparently go via natural wastage. In terms of their pay and conditions, the hundreds of people who have been transferred from the NHS to Serco are protected by provisions laid down by the last government, but it is already becoming clear that many new staff are on inferior contracts: as one local source puts it, “they’ve got less annual leave, less sick pay … it’s significantly worse.”

Meanwhile, other people are reportedly quitting their jobs, and the service given to patients is said to be getting worse. “In my team alone, we’re 50% down on staffing hours compared with last year,” says one former NHS worker, who provides home-care to patients who are largely elderly. Thanks to poor morale, she says that the team in which she works has lost around a third of its staff, and she is also having to see to administrative tasks that were previously carried out by someone else: in addition, she claims, support for a new IT regime is “farcical”.

The company that is running Britain

In May this year, a huge company listed on the London Stock Exchange found itself in the midst of controversy about a prison it runs for the government – Thameside, a newly built jail next to Belmarsh, in south-east London. A report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate found that 60% of its inmates were locked up all day, and there were only “vague plans to restore the prison to normality”. The prison campaign group the Howard League for Penal Reform talked about conditions that were “truly alarming”.

Two months later, the same company was the subject of a high- profile report published by the House Of Commons public accounts committee, prompted by the work of Guardian journalist Felicity Lawrence. This time, attention was focused on how it was managing out-of-hours GP services in Cornwall, and massive failings that had first surfaced two years before. Again, the verdict was damning: data had been falsified, national standards had not been met, there was a culture of “lying and cheating”, and the service offered to the public was simply “not good enough”.

Three weeks ago, there came grimmer news. Thanks to its contracts for tagging offenders, the company was now the focus of panic at the Ministry of Justice, where it had been discovered that it was one of two contractors that had somehow overcharged the government for its services, possibly by as much as ￡50m; there were suggestions that one in six of the tags that the state had paid for did not actually exist. How this happened is still unclear, but justice secretary Chris Grayling has said the allegations represent something “wholly indefensible and Car park management system“.

The firm that links these three stories together is Serco. Its range of activities, here and abroad, is truly mind-boggling, taking in no end of things that were once done by the state, but are now outsourced to private companies. Amazingly, its contracts with government are subject to what’s known as “commercial confidentiality” and as a private firm it’s not open to Freedom of Information requests, so looking into the details of what it does is fraught with difficulty.

But the basic facts are plain enough. As well as five British prisons and the tags attached to over 8,000 English and Welsh offenders, Serco sees to two immigration removal centres, at Colnbrook near Heathrow, and Yarl’s Wood in Bedfordshire. You’ll also see its logo on the Docklands Light Railway and Woolwich ferry, and is a partner in both Liverpool’s Merseyrail network, and the Northern Rail franchise, which sees to trains that run in a huge area between the North Midlands and English-Scottish border.

Serco runs school inspections in parts of England, speed cameras all over the UK, and the National Nuclear Laboratory, based at the Sellafield site in Cumbria. It also holds the contracts for the management of the UK’s ballistic missile early warning system on the Yorkshire moors, the running of the Manchester Aquatics Centre, and London’s “Boris bikes”.

As evidenced by the story of how it handled out-of-hours care in Cornwall, it is also an increasingly big player in a health service that is being privatised at speed, in the face of surprisingly little public opposition: among its array of NHS contracts is a new role seeing to “community health services” in Suffolk, which involves 1,030 employees. The company is also set to bid for an even bigger healthcare contract in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough: the NHS’s single-biggest privatisation – or, if you prefer, “outsourcing” – to date, which could be worth over ￡1bn.

But even this is only a fraction of the story. Among their scores of roles across the planet, Serco is responsible for air traffic control in the United Arab Emirates, parking-meter services in Chicago, driving tests in Ontario, and an immigration detention centre on Christmas Island, run on behalf of those well-known friends of overseas visitors the Australian government.

In the US, the company has just been awarded a controversial $1.25bn contract by that country’s Department of Health. All told, its operations suggest some real-life version of the fantastical mega-corporations that have long been invented by fiction writers; a more benign version of the Tyrell Corporation from Blade Runner, say, or one of those creations from James Bond movies whose name always seems to end with the word “industries”.

The strangest thing, though, is the gap between Serco’s size and how little the public knows about it. Not for nothing does so much coverage of its work include the sentence “the biggest company you’ve never heard of”.

I first heard Serco’s name about eight years ago, when I was just starting to understand the amazing growth of what are now called “public service companies”. Once I started looking, their logos were everywhere, suggesting a shadow state that has since grown ever-bigger. Their names seemed anonymously stylised, in keeping with the sense that they seemed both omnipresent, and barely known: Interserve, Sodexo, Capita, the Compass Group.

Serco is among the biggest of parking system. At the last count, its annual pre-tax profits were up 27%, at ￡302m. In 2012 alone, its British workforce grew by 10,000, to 53,000 people (tellingly, as many as 90% of them are said to be former civil servant employees). In terms of employees, that makes it more than twice as large as the BBC, and around 20% bigger than Philip Green’s Arcadia group. A very significant player, in other words, and one that has come a long way since its foundation 1929, when it was a branch of the American RCA corporation called RCA Services Ltd, involved in the then booming UK cinema industry. It was renamed Serco in 1987, after a management buy-out, and floated on the stock exchange the following year. In the 25 subsequent years, during which the UK has grown ever-fouder of outsourcing and privatisation, Serco has grown at an amazing rate.

In 2010, Hyman was given a CBE for services to business and charity; he is also an enthusiastic fan of motor racing and an evangelical Christian. Four years ago, he was asked about his company’s very low profile, and he said this: “We had a dilemma – what do we do with the Serco name. We are proud of it. We thought we needed billboards at airports and places like that, to be seen with Tiger Woods on. But we worked out very quickly that is not what we are meant to do. We are meant to be known by the 5,000 not the five billion. The people who serve the people need to choose who supplies the service. We are delighted when the public knows who we are, but really, we need to be known by the people who make decisions.”

When Serco made its bid to run NHS community-health services in Suffolk – district nursing, physiotherapy, OT, end-of-life palliative care, wheelchair services – it reckoned it could do it for ￡140m over three years – ￡16m less than the existing NHS “provider” had managed, which would eventually allow for their standard profit margin of around 6% a year. When it started to become clear that Serco was the frontrunner, there was some opposition, but perhaps not nearly enough. “Suffolk isn’t the most politically active part of the country,” says one local insider. “And the staff were very lackadaisical. It was: ‘NHS Suffolk wouldn’t made a bad decision.’ So it was hard to get a campaign going.”

Serco was officially awarded the contract in October 2012, which meant that hundreds of staff would leave the NHS, and become company employees. Within weeks, the company proposed a huge reorganisation, which involved getting rid of one in six jobs. This has since come down to one in seven, two thirds of which will apparently go via natural wastage. In terms of their pay and conditions, the hundreds of people who have been transferred from the NHS to Serco are protected by provisions laid down by the last government, but it is already becoming clear that many new staff are on inferior contracts: as one local source puts it, “they’ve got less annual leave, less sick pay … it’s significantly worse.”

Meanwhile, other people are reportedly quitting their jobs, and the service given to patients is said to be getting worse. “In my team alone, we’re 50% down on staffing hours compared with last year,” says one former NHS worker, who provides home-care to patients who are largely elderly. Thanks to poor morale, she says that the team in which she works has lost around a third of its staff, and she is also having to see to administrative tasks that were previously carried out by someone else: in addition, she claims, support for a new IT regime is “farcical”.

Columbia dog park could open in fall

Columbia could have its first dog park as early as September if the Columbia Association Board of Directors approves $55,000 additional funds for the project, CA’s Director of Community Building and Sustainability Jane Dembner said.Dembner and Dennis Ellis, CA’s Director of Capital Improvements, said the additional funds, which would bring the total cost to $135,000, are needed to complete the project.

“Recent cost estimates and bids indicate the $80,000 originally budgeted for the dog park construction will not be sufficient to complete the project,” Ellis wrote in a memo to the CA Board. “The budget figure was approved early on in the process before a site was actually selected and without the benefit of detailed cost estimates.”

Since the original funds were approved, CA has chosen a 3-acre site in Harper’s Choice in between Rivendell Lane and CA’s SportsPark. After receiving approval from the Harper’s Choice Village Board, CA submitted plans to Howard County’s Department of Planning Zoning, which approved them earlier this month, Ellis said.

The approved plans have resulted in more finite cost figures, which Dembner said exceeded the ultrasonic sensor.”We’d like to complete the dog park now. We are ready to go, but we need some extra funds because there was never an understanding of how much the full project would cost,” she said.

Plans for the park call for two fenced-in areas — a two-acre space for large dogs and a seven-tenths-acre space for small dogs. It also will have two water stations, which will be used by owners to wash their dogs before leaving the park. Drivers can access the park through a side road off of Rivendell Lane. The side road, which will be repaved, will also have 19 parking spaces.

The park, which will be open from dawn to dusk, also will have a pay box staffed by a full-time employee, according to Sean Harbaugh, assistant director of CA’s Open Space Management.A fee structure for park-goers has not been finalized, but Harbaugh said it will be similar to the system used by the county at Worthington Dog Park in Ellicott City.

“There will be an annual registration fee to use the dog park, or people can choose to pay a nominal daily fee instead,” Harbaugh said. “CA is working on what those rates will be.”

While the board could have approved the fund transfer at its July 25 meeting, it pushed off the decision until August after requesting that Ellis deliver cost estimates for permeable concrete, which is better for stormwater run off and the environment.In addition to repaving the side road, the parking spaces and access road, the plan also calls for concrete walkways to and around the park.

“I’m an advocate of the permeable pavements because I’ve seen them successfully done by the County as well as other agencies,” said Board member Alex Hekimian, who suggested the change.”At some point we have to start thinking about doing something similar at CA. This location might be a good place to start because it doesn’t require a whole lot of expense.”

Ellis estimates that shifting to permeable concrete could double the cost from $20,000 to $40,000. There also are concerns the permeable concrete could cost more to maintain.Plans for a second Columbia dog park, built by the county and located at Blandair Park in Oakland Mills, are still being drawn up, according to Raul Delerme, bureau chief of capital projects for the county’s Department of Parks and Recreation.

Pay for parking at the parks, visitors must shove exact change and cash into metal posts known as “iron rangers.” Accounting and budgeting software lacks consistency throughout the state from park to park. Park rangers are still required to have law enforcement experience, even though much of their work involves providing education, visitor assistance and community programs. And state parks has yet to create a working relationship with the state travel and tourism commission to market the parks.

A bit of modernization and thoughtful reworking could help the cash-strapped park system regain its footing as it searches for ways to become economically sustainable, according to a couple of study commissions seeking to revamp the department.

Major General Anthony Jackson, the new state parks chief who stepped in after former director Ruth Coleman resigned in the midst of a budget scandal, has been more blunt about the department’s outdated practices. While speaking at a Regional Parks Association forum on June 15 in Oakland, Jackson said that state parks hasn’t made a cultural or business change since the 1950s and continues to lack a marketing or business department.

Jackson said he will create a new business and marketing department in the next couple months and will begin promoting the parks more aggressively with state park passes for sale at Parking assist system, as well as television advertising campaigns.

“We haven’t done a good job of marketing what we have, and need a broader tourism strategy,” said Stuart Drown, executive director of the Little Hoover Commission, a bipartisan state agency that also offered recommendations to improve California State Parks.

And it’s no wonder the parks department ran into budgeting problems when it lacks a consistent department-wide way to track its revenue. Drown called the accounting system “antiquated.”

He added that state parks also needs to modernize its view of the nonprofit and citizen partners it collaborates with by taking their concerns and ideas more seriously as their involvement in management grows.

Elizabeth Goldstein, president of the California State Parks Foundation, said she hopes the Parks Forward Commission uses the Little Hoover Commission’s findings and Jackson’s action plan as a starting off point to make solid improvements.

Visalians say quality of life is improving

Despite the effects of the recent recession and the resultant cuts in Visalia city staff and services, residents are more satisfied with the quality of life here than they were two years ago.

They also are slightly more satisfied with services provided by police, but they’re less satisfied with Visalia firefighters. And the majority of residents either don’t want the city to replace their split trash cans with separate cans for regular trash and recyclables or they just don’t care. All of this is according to the latest public opinion survey conducted by the Visalia Citizens Advisory Committee. The group, comprised of Visalia residents, presented its survey last week to the City Council. It was conducted in April, with surveyors contacting city residents in the parking lots of four supermarkets. A total of 359 people answered the questions, compared to 342 who responded to the last Advisory Committee survey conducted in 2011.

Among the primary findings this year is that 69 percent of the respondents rated the overall quality of life in Visalia as above average — high or very high — compared to 53 percent in 2011.In addition, 29 percent of those people ranked the the city’s quality of life as average, 2 percent rated it “low” and nobody gave it a very-low rating.Still, 69 percent of residents giving the city above-average ratings for quality of life falls short of the 76 percent who did so the first year the survey was conducted in 2007.

But in another survey question that allowed people to pick from an extensive list of the most important things the city should be working on to make Visalia better, controlling gangs and crime rates, along with improving overall safety, were the top two picks this year.Residents also were asked to prioritize what they considered the most essential city services other than police and parking sensor, and road maintenance and traffic/traffic signals remained the top two, as they have in the four previous Visalia public-opinion surveys conducted since 2007.

This year’s survey included a new question about garbage, specifically whether residents prefer the current split cans for their homes — in which they put their recyclables on one side and their non-recyclable trash on the other side — or if they would prefer that the city switch to separate cans.In this year’s city survey, 47 percent of the respondents said the city should go with separate cans, while 39 percent indicated that they preferred staying with the split cans, and 15 percent said they had no opinion on the matter.

City officials plan to present the survey findings about trash cans to a consultant the city plans to hire to provide advice on ways to improve Visalia’s waste-management system. The survey didn’t give a clear indication whether the majority of residents would prefer separate trash cans, Visalia City Manager Steve Salomon said. “I think with the [near] 50-50 split in the question, we need to do more work.”

Lynch’s success with creditors would avert bankruptcy for the city, whose incinerator debt amounts to almost seven times its annual general-fund budget. He said he plans to submit his proposal late next month to Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court, which must approve it.

“All stakeholders” have agreed to his plan, Lynch said. “While they realize this may be an imperfect situation for each of them, everyone understands a cooperative solution is most certainly in everyone’s best interests.” The crisis in Harrisburg, a community of almost 50,000 residents, stemmed from financing an overhaul of the ultrasonic sensor. Surrounding Dauphin County and bond insurer Assured Guaranty Municipal, a unit of Hamilton, Bermuda-based Assured Guaranty (AGO), have covered skipped debt payments since 2009.

Under his plan, the Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority would buy the incinerator, which a unit of Covanta Holding Corp. (CVA) runs. Lynch said today other claims, such as those from Assured Guaranty and Dauphin County, must be resolved before the sale, which may be late this year.“Assured Guaranty is committed to working cooperatively with the receiver and other stakeholders to finalize a recovery plan that both restores the city’s fiscal health and respects the rights of creditors,” Ashweeta Durani, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. The relief from future liability for Harrisburg residents after the transaction was described by Lynch as a “critical step” for the city’s recovery. He said his blueprint would stabilize the municipal budget through 2016.

“We’re pleased with the progress,” said Amy Richards Harinath, a spokeswoman for Dauphin County, in an interview. “We’re happy to avoid a long and costly bankruptcy.”Also under Lynch’s plan, the Pennsylvania Economic Development Financing Authority would take over city parking garages and outdoor lots under a long-term lease from the Harrisburg Parking Authority, the agency that owns them.

Chicago-based Standard Parking Corp. (STAN) would run the 8,991-space system. AEW Capital Management LP, a Boston-based property manager, would oversee the real estate involved, and both would receive fixed fees.

In defense of public-private partnerships

Pitchforks raised, a mob of critics pounced on an article I wrote recently for the New York Times in which I dared to assert that the city of Detroit could have benefited from selling or leasing some of its infrastructure assets to private investors in return for large, up-front payments, a reduced debt load and a chance to improve public services under a more efficient, business-minded operating model.

My essay advocated a new wave of public-private partnerships (P3s) for U.S. cities — and I cited several prominent success stories, among them the Chicago Metered Parking System, which transferred 36,000 on-street parking meters to a concession run by Chicago Parking Meters LLC (CPM), a company backed by private equity investors. The 75-year contract, commenced in 2010, delivered $1.15 billion to the city and has been cited as a model for how to run a municipal parking guidance system.

Not so fast, say the detractors, including Reuters’ MuniLand blogger Cate Long. They carped that the article did not mention that I represented investors in several of the P3 transactions described, including CPM (even though my professional bio highlights my role in each of the deals – the Times has since updated the piece accordingly). More seriously, they claim that the CPM partnership has been an abject failure. “The city got ripped off, and continues to get ripped off each day because of this travesty,” said one responder. MuniLand’s Long called it a “municipal scam.”

In fact, this “scam” helped Chicago rank number one in the world for on-street parking in a 2011 IBM Global Parking and Transportation Survey. Among 20 major cities surveyed worldwide, Chicago drivers needed the shortest time to find a space, had the fewest tickets and fewest disputes over spaces, and suffered the least emotional and economic pain over parking, which as any driver will attest, is high praise. In its 2011 Annual Privatization Report, Reason Foundation noted that CPM’s “state-of-the-art maintenance system makes it one of the most sophisticated operations in the U.S.” Reason added, “The Windy City is now an international leader” in parking.

How did such accolades occur in so short a time? Perhaps it’s because CPM invested $35 million in upgrades, replacing the old single-space meters with 5,000 pay stations that accept credit and debit cards, feature an online refund option and provide 24-hour customer service. Drivers will soon be able to digitally feed the meters with their smartphones. The advent of CPM also helped to expose what the Chicago Sun-Times called “widespread disability parking abuses,” with “able-bodied people using relatives’ placards, fake placards and even stolen placards to park for free,” sometimes for days. The practice caused both the city and CPM to lose millions of dollars in revenue, leading to passage of Public Act 097-0845, which established strict criteria for free parking and to reduce incidence of fraud. Reason Foundation noted that under CPM, local residents and small business owners —  including those in Chicago’s ethnic communities — reported a marked increase in available spaces in their neighborhoods.

Chicagoans have benefited in other ways from public-private partnerships, including those involving the Grant Park parking garages and Chicago Skyway toll bridge. A report entitled “Examining Parking Privatization as a Fiscal Solution” published in Government Finance Review stated, “The money received in these deals has been used to pay off debt associated with building Millennium Park, improving the infrastructure of neighborhood parks, funding programs for low-income residents, settling budget deficits, and establishing a long-term reserve fund.” Noting the enormous expenditures needed to renovate the city’s troubled parking system, the report concluded that “Maintaining these garages would have become a significant burden on the city. Leasing the garages allowed Chicago to place the repair obligations on the private operator and free up capital for other projects.”

The hue-and-cry over my article illustrates a fundamental fallacy of those who would bash P3 deals — that they dupe cities to hand over crown-jewel assets to Wall Street barracudas. Nothing could be further from the truth. Municipalities retain control over the assets they lease and over any payments owed to the concessionaire over the life of the concession. P3s are subject to strict procurement laws — and any increases in fees are governed by strict regulatory approval.  Control over the underlying assets remains with the municipality. The concession contracts impose stringent performance standards on the operator which, if not performed, allow the municipality to terminate the concession. Many P3s also include a revenue share with the municipality.

What is certain is that most cities can’t provide the level of investment needed to create and maintain infrastructure and related services that are fit for 21st century usage. The professional management and innovative technology a private operator brings to public infrastructure is value enhancing. Meanwhile, it’s the investors who assume the risk in taking over delivery of services for many decades to come. Even then, returns on P3 investments are a far cry from the alpha earned on hedge funds, more in line with an investor-owned electric utility.

And there’s another point: P3 deals rehabilitate more than public conveniences. Often, the transactions deliver vital services for sanitation, transportation or healthcare. For a partnership structured to privatize the municipal water and waste systems of Bayonne, New Jersey — another deal in which I advised investors — the private capital used to fund the concession was critical in replacing decades-old pipes and meters. In this case, serious public safety concerns – including main breaks, contamination and boil water advisories — were addressed by a P3.

For Detroit, the die is cast. As a result of its Chapter 9 filing, the Motor City will have to sell some of its non-core assets to cover $18 billion in liabilities. Let’s hope that Detroit’s emergency manager is able to partner up with some patient, long-view investors willing to invest in the city’s future for generations. And may other strapped towns avert their own bankruptcies by welcoming more private investment in public infrastructure. For any U.S. city today not even to consider a P3 option would be the real scam.

SEC tries ‘Al Capone’ tactic to put SAC’s Cohen

In the end, Greenwich billionaire Steven Cohen, one of the most successful hedge-fund managers of his generation, could end up getting banned from the business he dominated for an error of omission, not commission.

In an administrative action that constitutes its first formal salvo against Cohen, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleged he failed to supervise two wayward portfolio managers and ignored “red flags.” The agency stops short of accusing the owner of Stamford-based SAC Capital Advisors of insider trading. While the proceeding may result in his being barred from managing other people’s money, it won’t carry the potential penalties available if the SEC had sued him. It also pales in comparison to a grand jury indictment for securities fraud, and the 20 year prison term a conviction could bring.

Instead, the SEC claim that Cohen should have known two of his subordinates were using material, non-public information to rack up hundreds of millions of dollars in trading profits will be easier to prove. The regulator will have a lesser burden of proof and won’t have to deal with all of the protections afforded a defendant in a lawsuit, let alone a prosecution.

“They are using an Al Capone-style tactic,” said John Coffee of Columbia Law School, referring to the prosecution of the Chicago gangster in 1931 on charges of tax evasion. “The SEC is aiming at his kneecaps, not his jugular. This is a little like catching John Dillinger entering a bank with a submachine gun and charging him with double parking.”

The SEC, which seeks to ban Cohen from the financial industry for life in the Car park management system, alleged he received “highly suspicious” information that should have caused any reasonable hedge-fund manager to investigate the basis for trades by subordinates Mathew Martoma and Michael Steinberg.

Cohen may find some guidance in how to respond to the agency from Rajat Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs director charged in the Galleon Group insider trading probe. Gupta sued the SEC after it filed an administrative action against him, saying he wanted the SEC to sue him so he could fairly defend himself. After both sides dropped their actions, agreeing any SEC matter would be in a federal court, Gupta was indicted by a federal grand jury. The SEC sued him, too.

An SEC administrative proceeding is held before an administrative law judge, not a U.S. district judge or federal jury. The administrative law judge will rule “no later than 300 days” from the date which the order was served, the agency said.The administrative law judge, in Washington D.C., will hear testimony and issue a determination, parking system, said Tom Gorman, a former lawyer with the SEC’s Enforcement Division who is now in private practice.

After the administrative judge issues a ruling, the SEC makes the final determination, evaluating the facts supporting the allegations. Cohen may appeal to the federal appeals court in Washington, which handles such regulatory matters.But unlike if he were sued by the agency, Cohen won’t be entitled to evidence collected by the government, a distinct advantage if its only goal is to put him out of business.

SAC spokesman Jonathan Gasthalter has said the agency’s action against Cohen “has no merit.” Kevin Callahan, a spokesman for the SEC, didn’t return a call seeking comment.SAC oversees $15 billion, about 60 percent of which is money from Cohen and employees. Cohen, whose net worth is estimated at about $9 billion, has returned 25 percent a year in his funds since founding his firm in 1992, after taking half of the profits in fees, a record unsurpassed by other equity hedge-fund managers.

SAC portfolio manager Mathew Martoma, 39, was charged by the U.S. in November with insider trading. Prosecutors accused him of helping Cohen’s hedge fund reap at least $276 million by trading on illicit tips about an Alzheimer’s drug. SAC’s Michael Steinberg, 41, was indicted in March by a federal grand jury in Manhattan for allegedly earning more than $1.4 million by trading on illegal tips about Dell and Nvidia.Both men, who were also sued by the SEC for insider trading, have pleaded not guilty in the criminal cases brought by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, and are scheduled to go to trial separately in November.Regulators alleged Cohen, 57, ignored the suspicious actions of his subordinates and signs that pointed to malfeasance, in a failure to properly supervise that allowed the alleged illegal trades to take place.

In the administrative action, the agency for the first time described Cohen’s alleged personal involvement in trading activities with the two subordinates, including a claim that Cohen sold off hundreds of thousands of shares of Dell in August 2008. The SEC said the sale came after Steinberg sent Cohen an email that the U.S. alleged included nonpublic information about the company’s disappointing earnings set to be reported days later. The agency doesn’t allege that Cohen knew that the information was illegal, a prerequisite to any prosecution of Cohen for insider trading. Instead, the SEC said he failed to supervise the men after receiving information that should have caused a “reasonable” hedge fund manager to investigate the basis for the trades.

The nature of the agency’s action against Cohen, in effect a disciplinary action that occurs internally, caught many by surprise, since it comes after years of scrutiny by federal authorities, both civil and criminal.”If they put Steve Cohen out of business, it’s not normally something you would see from a failure to supervise case,” said Hillary Sale, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. “You see failure to supervise cases in the broker-dealer world, but not with a fish this big.”

The SEC proceeding against Cohen was brought July 19, just days before the agency faced a five-year statute-of-limitations deadline stemming from trades sparked by Martoma’s tips made in late July 2008.The agency action now puts the regulator at the forefront of the U.S. investigation of Cohen and his hedge fund.The government’s six-year insider-trading crackdown on fund managers, analysts and insiders at technology companies has resulted in charges against more than 80 people and convictions against 73 people.Prior to last week’s filing, the government’s major actions against alleged inside traders and their associates have largely been tandem federal enforcement efforts — pairing simultaneous charges by Bharara’s office with a lawsuit by the SEC.

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal, citing unidentified sources, claimed federal prosecutors had concluded they didn’t have enough evidence to charge Cohen by the end of this month for crimes related to Martoma’s tips. “This matter has been investigated for months,” said Tom Gorman, a former lawyer with the SEC’s enforcement division, now a partner at Dorsey & Whitney in Washington. “Clearly the SEC does not have the facts to bring an insider trading case or they would have brought it.”

Gorman said the SEC’s action was based on two criminal insider-trading cases that have yet to go to trial. Should either Martoma or Steinberg be acquitted, it could damage the SEC’s proceeding, he said.While he wouldn’t address the Cohen case specifically, Bharara took the unusual step in a speech last week of pointing out that prosecutors have other statutes, including conspiracy, that can push back any statute of limitations deadlines.

School hires curriculum director

The board heard a presentation about the Student Council trip to Las Vegas to attend the National Association of Student Councils National Conference. They then approved the previous meeting minutes and the updating of Policy 414 which concerns staff payment for jury duty.The board approved five legislative priorities for the Iowa Association of School Boards. They want the IASB to focus on development of the Iowa Core, sharing incentives for schools, supporting allowable growth, supporting greater flexibility for use of the management levy and opposing unfunded mandates.

In transfers, Kandi Moorman transferred as secretary at Garfield to secretary at Central, Emily Sayres transferred from kindergarten aide at Central to secretary at Garfield, Tom Belloma transferred from maintenance at Lakeview to distract-wide maintenance, Brandon Clark transferred from special education aide at Lakeview to maintenance at Lakeview, Cindee White transferred from special education aide at Centerville High School to PK-12 library aide, a new position, and Merry Dudley transferred using her recall rights from a special education aide at Lakeview to an open K-2 Title I teaching position.

Several new employment contracts were also approved. They included Alexis Kauzlarich as seventh grade volleyball coach and Rita Teater as custodian at Lakeview. Laura DePrizio was recalled to fill a position as elementary special education teacher and Jeri Bradley was recalled to fill a new elementary teaching position. Rose Moon, Lakeview secretary, also had a slight contract adjustment okayed.

The board also approved contracts for the new curriculum director and the new activities director/high school assistant principal. Rhonda Raskie was tapped to take the curriculum director position and Greg Fisher was chosen to be the new activities director/assistant principal. Raskie is currently a secondary special education teacher within the ultrasonic sensor. Fisher has had experience as a high school principal at Gilbert and Charles City, as a middle school principal at North Cedar and as an assistant principal at Applington-Parkersburg.

The board then heard from each of the principals about student assessments. PK-2 principal Dianne Fatka and 3-6 principal Terri Schofield each spoke about the DIBELS testing being used to track student achievement throughout the year. The tests are given three times a year to test reading abilities and clear progress can be seen throughout the year with students moving into proficiency. Schofield said the test also matches well with results that the school received from the Iowa test, with a 93 percent match between those who tested proficient on DIBELS and those who were deemed proficient on the Iowa test.

Junior High principal Bruce Karpen and High School principal Roger Raum spoke about trend lines. Each of the principals had looked back through several years of data to track the growth rate of students. In both of the principals presentations, the students showed good growth in most areas.

The board accepted a bid from Hill’s Sanitation for garbage pick up in the next year. They also approved fuel bids from MFA and Bratz. A milk bid was accepted from AE Dairy and a bread bid was accepted from Bimbo Bakeries. The board also approved EMC for their business protection insurance. The board approved renewing the district’s subscription to Iowa School Finance Information Services. They also approved a service agreement for Power School, the district’s student reporting system, with Grant Wood AEA. The board also approved the concurrent education services agreement for 2013-2014 with IHCC.

The board received bids for parking lot updates at the high school and Lincoln Elementary. There were four bids for each project. The board accepted the low bid for the high school project from Evers Construction of $68,400. The board decided to hold off on the Lincoln project for now.The board approved changes to the K-2 handbook and also okayed renewal of the employee assistance program. They then approved sports official’s contracts.

The board then heard administrator’s reports. Fatka said she had met with the preschool teachers to get ready to take over the preschool administrative duties in the upcoming school year. Schofield reported that there is an open sixth grade teaching position, but she believed it would be filled quickly. Karpen reported that the district was approved for six AmeriCorps positions for the Parking assist system, two at Lakeview, two at the junior high and two at the high school.

Each position requires a $6,500 match from the district. Raum reported that he was in the process of filling the open math position at the high school and had started to conduct interviews. Buildings and Grounds/Transportation Director Mike Zintz updated the board on the search for a new Suburban. Zintz informed the board they could purchase a new vehicle valued at around $48,000 for about $33,000 at government price. Superintendent Tony Ryan also updated the board on the sale of the Cincinnati and Mystic Elementary buildings. According to Ryan the sale is still in progress. Zintz said the contents of the buildings as well as some things from Central and the high school will be sold at auction. The board then approved financial reports before adjourning.

Brown was a ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, as well as the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He was also a member of the Veteran Affairs Committee and the Committee on Small Business.Brown also served as a state representative for three terms and as state senator for five years. Tickets for the dinner are $50 and available through Sweeney’s re-election campaign at ElectJFS.us or at the door.

The office is located temporarily in Room 109 of the Hartleb Technology Center. Initially, services will be limited to individuals who want to apply for unemployment insurance benefits through the state’s new online application system. During this transition time, other one-stop career center services will be available at the center located in Lawrence at 439 South Union St.

This temporary move is a cost savings measure necessitated by the federal budget cuts. However, it also provides ValleyWorks and NECC the opportunity to better serve the unemployed and underemployed in the area, connecting them with valuable education and training opportunities. In the fall, pending approval from the Merrimack Valley Workforce Investment Board (WIB) which charters ValleyWorks, the career center will move to a larger space on campus, where a broader menu of career development services will be offered.

An open house for the program will be held at NECC Riverwalk, 360 Merrimack St., Building 9, Entry K, Lawrence, on Tuesday, July 30 from 4 to 7 p.m. College to Career staff will assist students with the college process, facilitate access to support services, and help them find a job when they have completed their certificate program. Certificates can be completed in as little as eight months, and the curriculum is strongly focused on the workplace, including an internship. Programs include health care, computer information sciences, and advanced manufacturing.

Mary Campbell of Methuen, who was a hairdresser for 30 years and most recently an administrative assistant, learned about the program at the ValleyWorks Career Center last fall and quickly enrolled. She will complete a Certificate in Help Desk Technology this fall, and plans to continue on for an associate degree while working full-time. Campbell is confident that her internship in the IT Department at Northern Essex will lead to a job troubleshooting computers and she is also interested in data management. “I never thought I would be at this point,” Campbell said. “It’s truly an amazing feeling.”

The Dementia Rescue Missions

On the afternoon of November 23, 2012, Sam Counts left his home on East Ninth Avenue in Spokane Valley to pick up bread from the grocery store. Simple enough. He had just gotten back from Christmas shopping with his wife of 45 years, now also his full-time caretaker. Counts, 71, had been diagnosed with dementia less than a year earlier. Hanging onto normalcy before the disease progressed further, Sam’s daughter Sue Belote would visit him several times a week, and he would still call her on the phone, she says. Sam’s doctor had said it was OK to drive, as long as someone else was in the car. On this Friday, Sam got into his white 2012 Kia SUV alone.

After two hours Donna called her daughter, worried. “I don’t know what to do. Dad didn’t come back and he never stays away this long,” she said. Three hours after he left, the family reported Sam Counts missing.The next morning, Saturday, radio and television outlets reported versions of the same story: a local man missing, trim, six feet tall, last seen in a red-and-black jacket, jeans and white tennis shoes. A description of a car and its license plate number was included.

Over seven frantic days, with the help of the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office, friends and family led a search that spanned parts of three states. They enlisted the help of a family friend who worked for the parking management system to flyer local buses, and former colleagues of Counts in the postal service put up missing person photos in post offices. In the meantime, the family faced public criticism. Why was he allowed to get into the car alone? Why didn’t he have a cell phone?

Wandering behavior has become increasingly familiar. Yet Washington is not prepared to deal with this emerging public health threat. Few police departments have policies or training to educate officers on Alzheimer’s or dementia. An Amber Alert-like system set up in 2009 to help find wandering people is underused, its coordinator acknowledges, and bills to create a formal Silver Alert system like those in more than 20 other states foundered in both houses of the state Legislature this year.  Washington is also one of just six states that haven’t even started work on a statewide Alzheimer’s plan, even as the population at risk of wandering surges.

Over the same five-year period, at least 33 Washington residents with dementia who wandered have been found safe, according to news media reports. In each of those cases, law enforcement became involved either as a result of a missing persons report filed by family or a caretaker or when alerted to unusual behavior by a member of the public. King County Search and Rescue has responded to 10 cases involving Alzheimer’s or dementia since the start of 2012, all of which ended safely. Countless other cases are not reported to the police, not reported in the media, or both, according to experts.

There is no mandatory waiting period to report endangered adults as missing. That can happen in the first hour that a dementia sufferer is missing, authorities say.The number of people at risk is increasing. In 2010, 110,000 people aged 65 and older with Alzheimer’s lived in Washington, a 33 percent jump since 2000. By 2025, the Alzheimer’s Association expects there to be 150,000. And six in 10 Alzheimer’s patients will wander.

The question that a growing coalition of search and rescue professionals, caregivers, and policymakers across the nation face is this: How do we stop people with Alzheimer’s or dementia from going missing — and how do we design systems to bring them home safely when they do?It was more than a year before Sam Counts went missing when his family first started to worry that something might be wrong. They started noticing changes, like how he’d no longer push his grandchildren on the tire swing hung from a tree outside the house when they called for him. He was increasingly forgetful.

Even so, doctors were slow to make a diagnosis. That didn’t happen until one of Counts’ daughters, a registered nurse, flew out to Washington to stay with her parents for a week, keeping a daily journal of his behavior. Soon after, Counts was put on a drug regimen to try to slow the loss of memory that had been carefully documented in the notebook his daughter gave to the Car park management system.

“Maybe that’s what changed (the doctor’s) mind, I don’t know,” Sue says. But she remembers clearly her mother’s phone call when the dementia diagnosis was official. “I just was devastated. As soon as you hear the word, like cancer, it’s like everything flashes through your mind what your loved one is going to experience.”

The science behind Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, which is a symptom of Alzheimer’s but can also be caused by a host of other maladies or injuries to the brain, is still emerging. There is no cure for Alzheimer’s; there’s not even a surefire way to slow its progression.

The most common type of the disease appears to start in a part of the brain called the temporal lobe, up above the ear, says Dr. Kristoffer Rhoads, a neuropsychologist and memory specialist at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, as he rotates a plastic model of a human brain in his hands.

He points to the hippocampus. “In here is a critical piece for new learning and memory, especially short-term memory,” he says. “In the early stages of the disease, the structures are still there, but they’re not running well.”

As the disease progresses and more parts of the brain begin to atrophy, patients may lose the ability to perform more complex day-to-day tasks like driving. Medium-term memory can be affected, essentially taking individuals back in time to where their only memories are of homes and workplaces from years and even decades earlier.

On foot, wanderers tend to stay in the community, and most are found near where they were last seen. Seventy-five percent are found within 1.2 miles in flat, temperate areas such as Eastern Washington, and half are found within half a mile, according to Robert Koester, author of Lost Person Behavior and a speaker at the most recent state search and rescue conference. If someone with dementia gets stuck while wandering, or encounters an obstacle, he is likely to sit down and end up hidden away. When a vehicle is involved, the search radius immediately grows, but there is still an intended destination in most cases.

“Their characteristics are very predictable, in a bad way,” says Dr. Meredeth Rowe, a professor at the University of South Florida College of Nursing. Wanderers aren’t able to seek out help when they are lost. They won’t answer when their name is called. They can’t tell if they are too cold, too hot, or need a drink of water.

DEA head office receives six-star rating

It is the first government building in South Africa to achieve a 6 Star Green Star SA rating and also the first 6 Star-rated green building in the City of Tshwane. The project was awarded the highest score for a large commercial office space of this magnitude by the GBCSA.

The DEA is demonstrating its commitment to market transformation in the built environment of South Africa. “This is an exceptional illustration of the public and the private sector working together to deliver an out- standing example of green building,” says GBCSA CEO Brian Wilkinson.

The certification signifies leadership from the DEA in green building and shows its dedication to sustainable design by all its stakeholders in this sizeable public–private partnership (PPP) project.

“The building has specific targets for energy and water efficiency and an industry-first, sophisticated energy-consumption mechanism that has never been implemented in any other project in the parking system. It also uses renewable energy and a unique facilities management system that [includes] a rigorous penalty regime to reward operational efficiency and penalise poor performance,” comments Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa.

A significant benefit of this PPP structure is that contractual obligations for all participants ensured that all costs, timelines and green specifications were clearly outlined and successfully met during design and construction.The PPP structure will also ensure that the building is operated optimally over the next 25 years so that it stays green throughout its life span and achieves the environmental and resource savings envisaged at the outset.

“Through this building, we will set an example for other organisations, which will, of course, benefit the environment and future generations,” says Molewa.Once construction is complete and the building is occu- pied, the DEA head office will also submit documentation for its ‘As-built’ Green Star SA rating, which ensures that the original intentions in the design phase have been adhered to.

The project used three- dimensional building modelling extensively upfront, enabling the professional team to identify and resolve potential issues before they emerged and to improve integration and coordination.The project brief specified that energy consumption in the building should not exceed 115kWh/m2 a year, which was a goal that required optimal building orientation from the start and intense modelling and efficiencies.The roof of the building is almost entirely covered with solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and will supply almost 20% of the building’s energy needs.

The northern parking area hosts a large concentrated PV system, which tracks the sun during the day and supplies power to the electric vehicle (EV) charging station for the DEA’s EV pilot project.The building has also been designed to consume 30% less water through several water- saving devices installed throughout the Parking assist system, such as a rainwater harvesting system and water-wise indigenous plants for landscaping with efficient irrigation systems.

The landscaped entrance includes a vertical green wall, roof gardens and a wetland component facilitating storm- water runoff. A natural veld component surrounds the parking and building areas.Green buildings represent responsible investment and reduced liability. The finan- cial benefits of green buildings are realised through savings on energy and water over the long term.

Mitch Kupchak selected Derrick Caracter in the June 2010 draft and then allowed Jordan Farmar to depart in free agency. He was replaced with Steve Blake and then management secured deals with new players in Matt Barnes and Theo Ratliff.The old Lakers teams from the 1980s are the last ones to appear in four straight NBA Finals. They accomplished the feat from the 1981-82 season to the 1984-85 campaign.

The regular season coupled with the playoffs are particular taxing both physically and emotionally. Consequently, teams that keep their core mostly intact simply have not been able to make four consecutive trips to the championship round.The early 1980s Lakers added big contributors in James Worthy and Byron Scott during their four-year finals run.

Conversely, the Purple and Gold made a few tweaks in the 2010 offseason, but they simply were not sufficient. Kupchak traded Sasha Vujacic in December 2010 for the services of Joe Smith, but the new Laker barely got into games.The Lakers were swept out of the playoffs and also lost out on head coach Phil Jackson who entered retirement at the conclusion of the series. The 11-time world champion’s departure left the franchise without a headman.

The Laker brass sought to dissociate themselves from the former coach’s influence and essentially jettisoned all members of Jackson’s coaching staff. Brian Shaw was an assistant on Jackson’s coaching staff at the time and shared as much with Sports Illustrated’ Ian Thomsen.

The Purple and Gold settled on a coach with a strong defensive background in Mike Brown. The new Laker coach had previously enjoyed some success with the Cleveland Cavaliers and the front office felt as though he could steer the team back to its glory days.

Los Angeles faced some complications with their plans because the league faced a work stoppage. After a long and arduous process, a new collective bargaining agreement was signed in December 2011 and the Lakers made a splash on the very same day by acquiring Chris Paul from the New Orleans Hornets via trade.David Stern famously vetoed the move and the players involved in the trade essentially remained with their teams. However, Odom was one of the players that would have relocated based on the trade and felt betrayed in some respects.

Amid reports of his unhappiness, the Lakers quickly traded their top reserve player to the Mavericks. Odom’s departure was a huge blow for the team given that he typically logged heavy minutes late in games alongside Pau Gasol.

Free Northumberland car parking plan proposed

A major change has begun in Northumberland which will see controversial car parking charges scrapped – apart from in those communities which want to keep them.Drivers visiting popular market towns will be able to park free for the first time in many years if long-running campaigns by traders for the removal of charges are supported by councillors and residents.

The Labour administration on the county council is delivering on its pre-election pledge to allow local communities to decide if they want to have parking fees or not.Initial meetings are being arranged with town and parish councils in places where charges are currently in force – including Morpeth, Rothbury, Corbridge, Hexham, Berwick, Holy Island, Bamburgh, Seahouses, Beadnell and Alnwick.

These will lead to the development of community-based parking plans, including the option of getting rid of charges unless local councillors believe they should stay for traffic management purposes.The process is aimed at ending what many claim is the unfair current system, which involves charging in rural communities and free parking in major towns such as Ashington, Blyth, Bedlington and Cramlington.

Charles Robinson, who chairs Morpeth Chamber of Trade’s car parking working group, said he was hopeful the abolition of charges was now in sight.“Morpeth should have the opportunity to enjoy free car parking, like our neighbours in Ashington and Blyth have done for many years.

“We would still like to see a county-wide scheme of free parking rolled out, rather than it being left to individual town and parish councils, but at least the Labour administration is now getting on with the issue.“We are in discussions with our partners in Berwick, Alnwick and Hexham because this is a county-wide issue.

We are very much aware that there needs to be traffic management, but a disc-controlled free parking system worked very well in Morpeth until charges were introduced.“It is nonsense to suggest that free parking will lead to traffic chaos.”Labour county council leader Grant Davey said: “We promised to give local people the final say over free Car park management system, and that’s what we intend to deliver.

“We’ll provide support so that town councils such as Berwick, Hexham, Morpeth and Alnwick can get on with a locally produced traffic management plan which suits local needs, not the needs of County Hall.“We’re hopeful that both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats will decide that it’s now time to take the politics out of parking and get behind this plan.”

Peter Jackson, leader of the council’s Conservative group, said they would have introduced free parking for all Northumberland residents, leaving just visitors to pay.He said the process adopted by Labour was complicated and bureaucratic, and there was no timescale on it. “We fear there will be strings attached to this offer of free parking, and no consistent free parking across the county,” he added.

Parking in the city — on public or private property — is obviously a parochial matter. But I choose to tackle it today simply on the issue of transparency and accountability. After all, there is no existing government agency that is directly tasked to “regulate” public and private parking fees, and to an extent this puts the public at a disadvantage.

Take the case of Rockwell’s Power Plant Mall, which only recently announced changes in its parking rates. The mall used to charge a fixed fee or flat rate of 45 for every parked vehicle, regardless whether weekday or weekend/holiday. And obviously, without time limits.

Moving forward, the same rate will apply but only on weekdays. During weekends, however, when more people patronize the mall, the same 45 rate will be good only for so many hours, and exceeding hours will be charged extra. Moreover, motorists that insist on parking in no-parking zones will be fined 1,500.

Going by the “current” or prevailing pricing systems in other malls in the city, the Rockwell formula is actually fair. Ayala Malls already charge 40-45 for the first few hours, and then it charges extra for exceeding hours. And, penalties for parking in no-parking zones are also nothing new.

But taken independently of what is the prevailing pricing system in the market, the unilateral action by Power Plant management begs the question: what significant improvements have been undertaken with respect to mall parking that actually merit a fee/rate increase? Frankly, I haven’t seen any.

And one cannot exactly claim that a motorist “pays” for security, or insurance coverage for damage. Private parking property owners issue disclaimers with respect to their responsibility and liability in such cases. Simply put, one pays a fee only for space, but actually parks at one’s risk. Perhaps the rate increase is due to inflation?

Then there is also the question of whether or not business establishments should be legally mandated to provide a minimum number of “free” parking slots for patrons, at least for persons with disabilities,Parking assist system, and other similarly disadvantaged groups. Add to these facilities where people can comfortably await public transportation.

This is an old issue that has even gone through congressional hearings. And obviously, private property owners do not violate any laws by arbitrarily raising parking fees. They are well within their rights to impose rates or fees that they deem necessary. And as users of such parking spaces, motorists should pay.

But is there no ounce of public interest involved in this that car owners have no choice but to simply grin and bear any increase in parking fees? One can always argue that anyone who can afford a car should be able to afford parking. But borrowing the argument in favor of rent control for housing, and with parking spaces primarily being rental spaces, shouldn’t there be some regulation here?