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Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, assigned to streamline and restructure the sprawling city government, said he intends to have a system in place within months where any debt to the city can be settled through multiple methods, including cellphones, ATMs and banks.
“If you make it easier for people to pay, more people pay, and they pay more quickly,” he said.
The city this week issued a request for information from financial institutions that could offer the diverse payment routes as quickly as the end of the year.
Goldsmith said he wants to make “totally obsolete” the need to ever make a payment in person.
In office for just a few weeks, Goldsmith also is focusing on improvements to the city’s extensive purchasing system.
He said that’s going to take a little longer than expected because “the procurement process here is Byzantine.”