The city has just gone through one round of a “STRATEGIC THINKING/ STRATEGIC PLANNING PROJECT” and a presentation is scheduled to be made to city council December 10, 2013.
An outside group was brought in to facilitate the project. This group is headed by a former public service board member who has been doing similar work for the public service board now that he is no longer on the board.
The Version 1.10 FINAL DRAFT as well as a copy of the presentation planned for council are available on the city’s web site.
The 32 page final draft document refers on page 18 to three groups of stakeholders:
- Taxpayers/Community
- City Staff/Employees
- City Partners/Vendors/Contractors
It then refers to the “STRATEGIC THINKERS” who participated in the planning project. Predictably, none of the strategic thinkers were citizens or suppliers to the city. They were all city employees or elected officials.
Strategic Thinkers
Who were the people who participated in planning our future? Page 5 of the document shows us this:
Stupid public
Not having community input in this kind of project makes good sense if the goal is to plan at the city employee level. To try to categorize it as being capable of representing their list of stakeholders is nonsense.
Subsequent posts about the content of the plan should prove interesting.
In the mean-time please be comforted that we have a group of strategic thinkers working to determine what is best for us citizens.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
With the possible exception of Oscar “Blank Slate” Leeser, this is just a list of the usual ‘Gang of ldiots.’ Witnessing the ample amount of incompetence, wrecklessness and stupidity this town has recently experienced and is going to continue to experience, l would be embarressed to be on a list titled “Strategic Thinkers.” l guess l will finally mention that l was fortunate enough to have Thanksgiving lunch with a former City Rep. He mostly said what l’ve already known : electing Cook for Mayor was a mistake because he’s a buffoon, having a CM is extremely stupid and unnecessary, Cohen seats more peeps than our future stadium will, looking at the stadium’s blueprints is bad enough but when this ‘thing’ gets built, it’s going to be even more of a nightmare when it becomes a reality, the stadium was being seriously considered way back when Cook first became Mayor, and one of our now-former City Attorneys who helped draft the ballpark agreement, now works for Foster-Hunt. l briefly tried to e-verify the last part of what he said, but couldn’t find anything on the subject, but l guess it’s true. lt wouldn’t surprise me.
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I looked it over and they seem to have got the message that no one trusts them anymore, at least from their SWOT analysis. But when you get to the goals and action plan, that issue is not addressed in any effective way. I mean, the first thing the mayor did (BTW, I like Mayor Leeser and voted for him) was to move citizen comment to the 12 noon time slot, now restored to earlier on the council agenda. That was not a good opening message to the voters who elected him 3:1 over Stole-Ur-Vote Steve.
I recall Mayor Joe Wardy’s inaugural address (in the blistering heat at McKelligon Canyon). The first thing he said was that, “El Paso is open for business.” And I believe he meant it, too.
As long as the Horde (City Hall + EP Times + Borderplex) views people who speak up or oppose their agenda as “crazies,” well there is the problem in a nutshell. El Paso local government just does not know how to socialize and find consensus on major issues and so continues its reliance on cronyism and back room deals, like UMC’s $120MM clinics – one public hearing on the day it was voted, same as the stadium coup. These projects are too important to their backers to be trusted to a public process or a yes/no vote and the Wilson regime has been all too willing to uncritically download their agenda to CC for enactment.
If only that one thing could change… Maybe a real two-party system here could help, but not in my lifetime.
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“El Paso is open for business” could be interpreted in a couple of different ways. As evidenced by the vast corruption, many of our government officials and local business “leaders” took it to mean something totally different.
I would like to think that you are correct about “a real two-party system” but Washington is proof positive that it’s no solution and does not eliminate dysfunction. Plus, let’s be honest. A lot of the shots are being called behind the scenes by high-profile Republicans like Foster, Hunt and friends. They might not be “in office”, but they control those in office through their political contributions and back-room deals.
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What if local elections were along party lines? At least you’d know what candidates of a party slate subscribed to as far as a general party line. As far as I can tell, the local Dem line (when their not playing Hunger Games with each other) is pretty simple: “Pull the lever for us and we’ll keep the juice flowing.”
It works, too, whether for personal or corporate juice. Lately, the corporate juice seems to dominate.
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