CBS12 News Team

West Palm Beach taking bids to install GPS on city vehicles

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- How would you feel if someone was looking over your shoulder while you're at work everyday? There is a controversial plan to keep closer tabs on West Palm Beach employees. The city is taking bids to install and maintain GPS tracking devices in some city vehicles.

It appears the city of West Palm Beach wants to keep a closer eye on where its employees are, where they're going in city vehicles, and whether they're speeding.

The city is taking bids from firms to install and maintain a minimum of 110 GPS tracking devices in city vehicles. The city utilities department already has them in some trucks, so does the city parks department. By the way, city police cars and city fire trucks do not have them.

City utilities director David Hanks told us in an e-mail: "We want to track locations, productivity, speeds of vehicles, determine best route patterns, ability to respond to customer complaints about speeding vehicles, and other complaints about vehicles being in various areas."

"I really feel that most of our people, all of our people are working really hard. And doing what they're supposed to be doing, so that's not what were doing. We're not out to get our employees," said Mayor Jeri Muoio.

The mayor told us their intention is not to spy on city employees.

"We just want to keep track of what's happening and as I said we only do it in certain places at certain times, with very key jobs," said Muoio.

Some say putting GPS trackers in city vehicles may make workers more efficient.

"Our mandate is to make sure that we are, we are getting the services done that the taxpayers pay us to do," said City Commissioner Kimberly Mitchell.

How do city utilities workers feel about having GPS tracking devices in the trucks they drive?

An information packet we got from the city doesn't say how much money the city plans to spend on GPS tracking devices for city vehicles. But the deadline for bids is next Monday.

Tuesday, May 1 2012, 02:34 PM EDT

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