I try to keep each article focused on a single issue.
Next weeks council agenda won’t let me do that. There are too many things that they are planning to do to us.
Here is a list of the items that caught my eye on my first reading of the agenda:
- Item 19 on the regular agenda allows the city to sign a lease for antenna space on top of the Wells Fargo building for the public safety radio system. Those antennae used to be on top of city hall. Turns out that city hall was a ten story building and the multiple new buildings they want to move into are not tall enough for the antennae. Cost? $40,800 a year (to start) for ten years. That’s another $408,000 that I will add to the running total of the cost of tearing down city hall.
- Item 18 on the regular agenda asks for permission to change the Bond Overview Advisory Committee (BOAC) resolution. Council created the BOAC so that we citizens would feel that we might get someone honest to watch how the bond money was spent — trust us, we will have civilian oversight. The resolution stated “No member of the BOAC shall hold any other public office of honor, trust or profit in the government of the city, county or state during his or her term of office”. That meant no elected officials or government staff. The agenda item includes “The City Council will consider deleting this provision in order to allow more individuals to apply and be considered for appointment to the 2012 BOAC.” In other words we want to stack the board with our insiders so that we can spend the money without citizen interference.
- Item 17A on the regular agenda asks for permission for to have “City Development Department staff draft an ordinance implementing urban design standards/criteria for public assembly use buildings to include all City of El Paso civic buildings and schools. Furthermore, that staff develop a process by which civic buildings and schools are vetted through an Architectural Design Review Committee to ensure compliance with urban design standards.” In other words they want control over the design and construction of all of our local schools.
- Item 10A on the regular agenda contemplates the establishment of the “Baseball Stadium Venue Project Fund”. Maybe that makes sense. What does not make sense is that it allows the city to use money in the fund to “pay the principal of, interest on, and other costs relating to bonds or other obligations issued by the City or to refund bonds, notes, or other obligations; …” In other words they can steal money from the fund to pay for other things not related to the ballpark. Is this an accidental phrasing? Do they mean they only want the fund to pay for the ballpark? Regardless of their intentions, the language is clear — they want to be able to pay for anything.
I will stop now to let you think about these things:
- $408,000 being spent because the antennae on top of city hall need to be put somewhere else
- Change the bond oversight committee to allow politicians and government insiders to control what is happening
- Let us decide how schools will be built and what it will cost to build them
- Let us spend the Hotel Occupancy Tax on whatever we want to spend it on.
We deserve better
elpasospeak 