Now the county has begun discussions about building a new jail facility to replace the one downtown.
According to newspaper reports the downtown jail costs about 26 dollars a day more to run per bed than the jail annex in far east El Paso.
Cost estimates for a new jail are not available yet. Hopefully no one will ask the city chief financial officer.
If a new jail is built, what will happen to the old one?
Will they downsize it and open a few floors for other purposes? There might be some advantages to creating cells for our local officials who end up getting sentenced to jail. Maybe we could house them in the vacated sections so that they can serve their time while still holding office hours.
My guess is that the old jail will have to be torn down — after all it cannot possibly be made usable as anything other than a jail, we will be told.
Remember that after the public calms down about the ballpark and the wasteful move of city hall we will have to face the fact that city officials have told us that their plan is to move city functions to temporary facilities while plans are drawn up for a new municipal complex closer to the “government corridor”.
Yes, the plan is to tear down the old city hall first. We all know that they have done that already. Then they will refurbish a few old buildings downtown as temporary quarters for city functions. They are doing that now.
After the dust has settled they plan to try to build yet another city hall closer to the county and feral buildings downtown. After all it is more efficient to have everyone in the same building.
What about the buildings that we are remodeling? Those will be sold to developers who will then profit from our remodeling. I wonder who in town has the money to buy those buildings?
Where oh where?
Don’t be surprised to find that the land under the current county jail turns out to be the site they propose for the new city complex.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
I bet your prediction is correct. The new city government complex (not merely a City Hall) on the current jail site.
Whenever these folks start wanting to tear down a building, they immediately start a campaign to communicate all the deficiencies of the building they wish to destroy and the huge cost to correct those deficiencies.
Soon, we will be looking back, calculating the remodeling cost per year of occupancy. In the event that building is sold in the near future, it is unlikely that downtown real estate prices will have risen sufficiently for us to recoup the total amount invested in both the purchase and remodeling of the Times building.
It’s no wonder that investors with government connections see a bright future for El Paso’s construction industry.
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The first thing we have to do is to eject all those on CC who got us into this mess as their terms expire. And we have to make sure they understand why they got the boot, like Stole-Ur-Vote Steve. We need a CC that listens to the voter, not to Fosterwood & Co.
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