It was the chief financial officer (CFO) of the city
The video of the May 28, 2013 El Paso city council meeting shows the city manager saying that it was the CFO’s idea to bring the proposed $10 million dollar increase in spending for the ball park before city council.
The city manager offered to take the $5 million for street and sidewalk improvements off the table and then actually handle them the way we thought they would be when the money was originally allocated.
The other $5 million was to be for contingencies.
Council threw a fit. No way, no how would they approve the $10 million at this point.
So how did the CFO think she could put the city management team in the horrible situation that they found themselves in at that city council meeting?
I suggest arrogance. I think she thinks that she has the right to decide what money will be spent and that our job is to shut up and pay it to her. She seems to think that we have no power.
Remember she is the one that told us that city hall could be torn down and we could find new facilities for $33 million. $63.9 million and climbing broke out the true costs at the time. Today the costs that we have been able to identify so far put that number at over $70 million.
She told the public and council that the changes to the Times building would be Minimal due to condition of building. We then saw the city spend millions to change the building, tear down what they re-modeled, and build it again. The saga continues.
She is behind much of the folly that has been occurring with our city government. Now she has caused unbelievable harm to her colleagues, her boss, city council, the team owners, and a candidate for mayor. Word on the street is that the city manager is taking this hard and is considering resignation.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
No one has been treated more poorly and unjustly in this whole affair than city engineer Alan Shubert. After witnessing this week’s council meeting, I even feel badly about having ever personally questioned his competency. Shubert was never even brought into the loop until the 9th inning. He was never asked to render an opinion or contribute to the development of the cost estimates that Mountainstar and city management pitched to city council and that they collectively sold to the public and acted on. Once all the back-slapping and cheering was over, the top city executives dumped this mess on Shubert. Wilson feigned surprise that he nor anyone from engineering was consulted even though she and Studer were driving the Mountainstar bandwagon. As best I could see, Studer was nowhere to be found during this week’s meeting.
But what really was disgusting was watching Courtney Niland make Shubert the whipping boy so she could star in her own little theatrical drama and play to the camera. She chastised Wilson just to make her theatrics appear to be genuine, but she dumped her real nastiness on Shubert. When she suggested resignations, she only mentioned Shubert and Studer, not her gal pal Wilson. That underscores her lack of genuineness What also seemed to slip by a lot of folks was Niland’s statement that Shubert and others are not allowed to speak out publicly. NIland basically said that she and council represent the public and that he works for them, so anything he and other city employees have to say must be run through council first. That seems to have been the problem with this project from the very beginning. Niland and others want to filter information and tell us only what they want us to know. Her e-mails to Wilson insisting that they keep information about Mountainstar just between the two of them is proof of that.
What Niland is really upset about is that she and her friends didn’t have time to figure out a way to cover the extra $10 million without causing a public uproar before it could get approved.
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You can line up 10 engineers and every single one of them will have a different opinion on the competency of Shubert. I don’t get the whole drama – nothing happened – $10M was not added. End of discussion. Move on people. Read Cook’s comments to KVIA – he said council knew about this beforehand but they like to grandstand and they did.
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Without public awareness and then public reaction the items would have passed. Asking the public to “move on” plays into their hands.
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Whether Shubert is the world’s greatest engineer is no the point. I think all of us would prefer to be treated with dignity and respect rather than being castigated to satisfy someone else’s ego or political agenda.
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And she is now one of the “managers” at the EPISD and is working her fuzzy math magic at the county. Charming thought.
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Rumor has it that Alan was handed the ballpark as a way to get him out of Engineering. Joyce didn’t like the way things were going in that department, and was trying to ease him out. Come on, do you really get the head of a department to handle a project like that? He’s been set up for failure from the start.
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So don’t publicly castigate a city employee unless its Joyce Wilson? Chauvinist.
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If you’re going to play the sexist card, you should deal it to Ms. Niland. She’s the one who asked for the resignations Ms. Wilson’s two male subordinates, but not that of her friend Ms. Wilson. Ms. Niland let her friend off with a small dose of false outrage to get the ball rolling to appear fair and balanced. Ms. Niland’s drama queen outrage was solely to deflect attention away from the complicity and incompetency of the council members who railroaded us.
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