Recently released emails show our city manager taking sides in local political races.
This page from Mock El Paso Times is one example.
The city manager is certainly entitled to have private political views.
Private
Not public. Certainly not shared openly with elected officials, regardless of which camp they are in.
Our city manager should be an administrator, not a partisan.
Hopefully our city council will make it clear to our new city manager that he/she will need to stay out of politics.
While they are at it they should tell our current one to quit trying to manipulate the political scene and spend more time managing our finances.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Absolutely, right on.
The city manager’s merits can be argued. She gets things done. But blatant political comments like these show she has an agenda. Her only agenda should be the efficient running of the city and what City Council gives her. It’s unethical, not to mention unprofessional, to use city resources to discuss politics with Steve Ortega.
And paa-leeze — the mutual admiration sleeze between Ms. Wilson and Mr. Ortega is stomach turning.
The El Paso public is right to expect non-poitical professionalism in a city manager.
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Wilson says El Paso is fast-tracking. She was right. El Paso just raced from the second strongest performing economy in the nation two years ago, down to #38 on the new Milken Institute study report released this week. Milken underscored the fact that El Paso benefited for a while from Fort Bliss expansion, which has slowed. Wilson’s economic development plan is to raise taxes to build a ballpark to benefit two wealthy families and downtown real estate developers. While our city management has been focused on doing the bidding of Foster and Hunt, our overall local economy has declined.
If Wilson and Ortega swoon and gush over each other as they did in these e-mails, imagine how they and the Cortney Nilands of the world behave when stroked by Woody Hunt, Paul Foster and others with power and money. Then ask yourself if there’s any doubt that these bozos would sell out the taxpayers.
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Really please: Does anybody think a government Job is non-political ???
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So let’s drag out the 2012 emails to try to make a present day point. Disingenuous Brutus. Saw this in fall 2012 when the 7000k emails were made public.
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It doesn’t matter if the email is a year old, 5 years old or a day old. The point is the city manager should not be giving her personal opinion of judge and election outcomes on a Wednesday at 9:57 am (normal work hours) on city email. After hours, on her own email or own telephone. or in her own living room she may say whatever she wishes.
I do not agree with the viewpoint that the city manager is a political position and therefore may take sides. The city manager receives a generous salary to do the work of the citizens of El Paso through directives of city council. The city manager is not paid to express political beliefs on city email.
We deserve someone who will keep his or her personal political beliefs out of the office. We do deserve better.
There will be citizen input into selection of the new CM. One of my first questions would be: How will you separate your personal political viewpoints from your work at City Hall?
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Like it or not, the CM is a political actor in town, elected or not. Comments about her and other political actors should reflect that the comments are aimed at them in their political role, not personal, IMHO. Mayor Leeser, too, is committed to a CM form of government, so it’s not going away.
In my two city hall duty tours I had the opportunity to interact with three mayors and all CC members at one time or another, even having three councilors on my HFC board at one time. I can honestly report that 100% of my city business interactions with these people were positive and courteous and left me with the impression that all cared about El Paso and their districts, and that they were generally fine folks. This is not the impression we get form the blogs, but then the blogs wouldn’t be much fun to read if it were.
I will say that the stadium coup last year has “tested” this other wise positive opinion, but I will make a NY’s resolution to keep my opinions separating the political from the personal, however difficult it may be at times 🙂
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And you chose to do 2 tours of duty in city hall, why? 🙂
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Recruited into two very different jobs at two different times of my life.
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It’s interesting that one response described the stadium coup as “salty.” This is a family blog. There’s no reason to use such inapropiate language. Anyway, let’s examine Queen Wilson’s track record: Singing the praises of San Antonio’s C.M. – that town has the largest major city in per-capita depth in Texas. And she wanted Oligarchy Ortega (the most corrupt and snottiest in the mayoral bunch) to win. Great track record. (whistles facetiously) But nowadays, spending huge amounts of $ over several years to purchase a few things is cosidered “award winning.” BTY- Elaine, l’m only kidding. Tell your pal that l’m telepathically sending her nothing but tons of XOXOs.
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