My second reading of Tuesday’s city council agenda picked up this absurdity:
We all know that city hall is scheduled to be torn down and the city council has been busy buying up and renting properties to find new, temporary facilities to house city staff.
In fact in So much for quality of life I wrote about the city moving 75 city employees into a recreation center and “inconveniencing” some of the public.
Now item 12 on city council’s regular agenda proposes to lease the Albert Fall Mansion to Texas Tech for $1 per year.
You may recall that the city recently spent almost $1.2 million to remodel this 5,430 square foot historic building. The city then asked people to lease it and evidently has concluded that giving it to the Texas Tech system for $1 per year is the best use of the property.
Could we have moved one of our displaced city hall departments into the facility and saved some of our tax money or left part of a recreation center open to the public?
Why are we subsidizing Texas Tech? They have their own budget.
How much of our money does the city want?
Could they have left the kids in the recreation center and moved a city function into the beautiful, newly remodeled building?
We deserve better.
Our kids deserve better.
elpasospeak 
I would be curious to know what other offers, if any, were received from other parties that were interested in occupying the Fall Mansion, especially if some of those might have been from for-profit enterprises. Surely, they had someone willing to pay more than a dollar.
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