Mayor Eric Adams is ending his administration’s controversial program supplying migrants in metropolis shelters with pay as you go debit playing cards to pay for groceries.
The pilot program distributed the preloaded Credit cards to asylum seekers at hotels-turned-shelters with a household of 4 receiving about $350 every week to cowl the price of groceries and child provides.
The town employed New Jersey-based tech startup, Mobility Capital Finance, in a $53 million one-year “emergency” contract that drew backlash when town didn’t conduct a typical bidding course of earlier than choosing the corporate.
However with the one yr up shortly, the Adams administration determined towards renewing the contract, ABC7 reported.
“As we transfer in direction of extra aggressive contracting for asylum seeker applications, we have now chosen to not renew the emergency contract for this pilot program as soon as the one-year time period concludes,” Adams’s Workplace stated in an announcement to the station.
The town launched this system in late March after inking the contract two months earlier. Since then, town has handed out $3.2 million in pay as you go debit playing cards to some 2,600 migrant households for meals, in accordance with ABC7.
This system was meant to each trim prices and scale back meals waste related to town’s boxed-meal supply service program. Metropolis officers stated quite a lot of the meals within the boxed meals was tossed out whereas permitting migrants to choose and select what they needed to eat reduce on waste.
The Adams administration stated the no-bid emergency contract was awarded to keep away from delays in rolling out the cost-saving program.
Metropolis Comptroller Brad Lander has since revoked town’s skill to award such offers for migrant companies.
The Adams administration didn’t present a motive on Thursday for slicing this system.
A spokesperson for the mayor didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
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