Well folks, it’s J.W. Dance time.
Our City Manager sees the writing on the wall and even her quintet will be shocked when they find out how broke the City is. Oscar must have some inkling but until he’s in office and can get the financials, we(he)doesn’t know how bad it is.
The CFO whose estimates have had one thing in common and that is they are more than 25% of what are the estimated final figures. The cost of the implosion City Hall, the Move, the Stadium, the Streets and on and on, are at most, as they finally admitted, guesstimates. As one noble Pol put it, you’ll know when we finish. Trust us.
Brutus estimates 1 billion, which is twice our yearly budget. Anyway you cut it, if you lease it, borrow it, you still have to pay it back with interest. (What was that show, “so you want to think like a fifth grader or something like that?”).
So get ready for the “exit dance ala Jimmy Durante”.
style: Exit, Stage left!
Let’s have it:
step-kick step-kick,
shaking straw hat in right hand,
cane under left arm,
singing,
Hello Fort Meyers, Good-bye El Paso.
elpasospeak 
El Paso Inc’s interview with outgoing Mayor John Cook this week is very enlightening. He says that, just as everyone has suspected, Joyce Wilson and the Mountainstar principals worked behind the scenes for a very long time to engineer the ballpark deal. When Foster/Hunt told Cook about the impending deal, Josh Hunt told Cook not to worry about public opposition to demolishing city hall. Cook says that Mountainstar told him taxpayer opposition would not be an issue — just to trust them on that.
Cook goes on to basically admits that Mountainstar and Wilson colluded to deprive the citizens of a vote. Mountainstar principals and city management rigged the ballpark deal so that the taxpayers could only choose between a hotel tax or shouldering the tax burden personally. What Cook does NOT admit is that he and many of the council members willingly and knowingly participated in and approved the scam, even though he himself had already determined that the taxpayers had been intentionally disenfranchised by wealthy developers and the city manager. He admits that the artificial rush deadlines were all part of a charade, which was again part of the strategy to take away the rights of taxpayers.
Does this qualify as deprivation of honest services, the term used in so many of the other local corruption cases? El Paso is not too big to fail, but many of our local leaders are too big for their britches and too big to care.
Cook will fit in well in the grand new vision for downtown. He wants to open a bar after he leaves office.
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My, My My, all the Times fish wrapper can print is how Oscar misses debates and forums.
How many votes has Steve Ortega walked out on?
Hopefully, Oscar is studying the budget and getting some sound advice. He told you up front he would not be going to any forums, he told you he was visiting with the citizens who may employ him. He is going to have a pile of debt to manage.
I would be ashamed if I were John Cook, Joyce Wilson and those going out of office to admit that I had taken millions in tax payer dollars in salaries and benefits and not trained or allowed people who work at City hall to carry on without me.
A good leader delegates authority and assumes responsibility.
City staff sure must be incompetent if they can’t work through a transition. Guess we need to fire all of them.
Better yet send them to Florida with Joyce.
Oscar will not put up with people who are unable to produce without macro management.
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When Drama Queen Joyce gets the boot, do you know who the perfect replacement for her would be?…..Me! l mean think about it – l already have a proven track record of being snotty, crude, and disrespectful. lf the number$ don’t add up, l’m also pretty good at shifting the blame onto someone else. And even though all of this out-of-control spending goes against my small, responsible government, libertarian beliefs, l’m willing to suspend those beliefs in order to continue with the progressive status-quo. And l’m willing to work for just 80% of what Joyce was making! l HAVE to have this gig because l already purchased brand-new penny loafers, a cape, crown and septor, so l look like l mean business.
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Who is his secret backer with such a large ban roll for a credit line and a fanchise?
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