In Pre Sneak Attack I wrote about how city council broke the remodeling of the second floor of the El Paso Times building into two job orders. The first one they issued without letting us know — it was for $450 thousand to demolish the old improvements. The second one was for $649 thousand — they had to take it to city council. The city manager called obeying state law “a formality”. See 1 plus 1 not equal to 2.
The net effect is that the city slipped through the $450 thousand and spent a total over $1 million through a buy board where schools in Houston get 4% of what we spend and local contractors do not get a chance to bid.
The contract was discussed in More of Our Money For Houston where city council awarded $4 million through the buy board, with 4% of that going to Houston. I wrote at the time that I wondered why the amount was so large.
The El Paso Inc. cleared that up for us in its January 13, 2013 front page article. It appears that the contractor will start next week doing work at the 811 Texas building. Then on February 15 they are scheduled to start work on the first floor of the El Paso Times building, all this through the Houston buy board.
Remember that on September 18, 2012 the citys Chief Financial Officer told the city council that the improvements needed at the Times building were “Minimal due to condition of the building”. We now know of at least three separate job orders that must have been issued through this buy board on this building that we were told to buy.
The El Paso Inc. article also mentions that the city plans to house council chambers on the first floor. Previously we had been led to believe that council would meet in the main library for a while. Maybe that is still the case. In City Council Chambers the cost to build new council chambers was identified as $800,000 from a city slide presentation.
So what does this add up to? So far:
- $450,000 to demolish the second floor improvements
- $649,000 to build new offices on the second floor
- Unknown amount (so much for open government) for work on the first floor
- $800,000 or so for new city council chambers
That puts us at at least $1,899,000 and climbing. The El Paso Inc. article puts the purchase price of the building at $9.4 million. The Oxford Dictionaries defines minimal as “of a minimum amount, quantity, or degree; negligible”.
Twenty percent is not negligible!
They have not been telling the truth.
We deserve better
elpasospeak 
“We deserve better.” is entirely too polite and accepting. Whatever happened to “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”?
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Howard,
Not accepting at all. I am trying to post something of interest once a day. If I don’t control myself I will sound out of control. My hope is that the citizens will let these governments know how they feel.
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