Don’t go downtown this Sunday morning (March 17, 2013).
Remember that old city hall that we need to tear down soon to make way for the ball park?
As I wrote in $63.9 million and climbing one of the problems with tearing it down is that the public safety radio antennas are on top of the building and the complex electronics that serve them are in the building.
One might think that it would be good to move the system in stages so that our public safety responders would not be without their radio system. As it turned out the city thought that was impractical because of the haste involved in the move. The city engineer said “The intent is to have it up and running before we tear this building down, which means the current system will still be in the building when we implode it”.
The city agreed to pay $20 million to buy a new system through a sole source contract.
Then in Council Deceit we learned that the city found a new roof-top for only $40,800 a year to start. The deal was for 10 years. That is at least $408,000 for roof space that we already had. The $543,000 that we spent to replace the old roof in 2011 evidently was wasted.
Why avoid downtown?
The new building does not have a backup generator that can be used for this project. We need to put one in.
It appears that the backup generator is so big that they will need a helicopter to get it to the top of the 22 story building. By the way, we already had a generator in the old city hall.
Certainly you say, it must be safe to do this. These guys must know what they are doing.
Then why is the city closing down six streets?
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
What? You want me to avoid that garbage dump/northern Juarez flee market that they call a downtown? Well, only if it will make you happy. l’m going to respectfully disagree with your assertion that ‘we deserve better.’ Given the fact that Austin (Texas tax payers) along with D.C. gives us more $ than we give to either of them, means that we actually deserve worse.
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Ouch! How about “we deserve better from our local governments”?
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“Only In El Paso” brings up an interesting point about tax dollars, but the issue is even greater than he/she says. If a substantial number of all the local, state and federal government jobs in El Paso were eliminated, our area economy would crash. We border on being a nouveau banana republic with an economy that is highly dependent on one “crop” — government jobs/spending.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think we’ve gotten a little too cocky because we were not hit as hard as other areas of the country during the national recession. We fail to realize that we dodged the bullet largely because of government spending and the influx of people moving from Mexico to escape the drug wars. So what happens if and when the government spending stops? Maybe Brutus knows.
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And who owns the building that will house the backup (yes a REIT, but who’s the main honcho)? Take a guess… Or do a quick search. The workers subsidizing the oligarchs.
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Wrong! I believe that you and Cato and the few other peeps in this town that are very intelligent deserve better, but the typical brain-dead 915er that continues to support this mindless crap deserve exactly what they continue to choose. Yes, l do sound gruff, nasty and insulting, but that’s because l continue to be even more frustrated with all of this stupidity that this town continues to embrace. Alright, enough of my whining. The first 5 pints of green beer are on me, but after that you’re on your own.
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