The December 17, 2013 city council agenda has an item on it to approve a 614 thousand dollar contract for planning for what is now known as “Multipurpose Cultural & Performing Arts Facility, Cultural Center, and Children’s Museum”.
Sit back and watch told us how the city wants to combine the three separate projects into one project. Tuesday’s agenda item lets us know that the Hispanic Cultural Center project is now a plain old Cultural Center.
The backup material says:
“This contract provides for hiring an urban planning firm to facilitate a community-wide, bilingual dialogue and gather input on these projects. The firm will engage the community in an extensive public input process, develop business plans for the facilities, identify programming options, evaluate appropriate venue sizes and amenities, evaluate and recommend siting options that provide connectivity and serve as a catalyst for revitalization and economic growth in the community.”
An out of town firm is being hired. They will spend about half of their contract with “sub consultants” here in El Paso.
Translation
Extensive
The term “extensive public input process” means that someone will spend 131 hours conducting public forums, workshops, presentations and interviews. There will be a maximum of four meetings to facilitate “extensive public input”. The complete engagement will consume 1183 hours.
Connectivity
I think this means they can pick any place they want as long as it is part of the downtown complex.
Catalyst for revitalization
I doubt that this contemplates revitalizing northeast El Paso and I suspect that most of this blog’s readers would interpret this to mean downtown.
Looking for trouble
It seems that someone anticipates that there may be some trouble with the final report. The consultant’s proposal includes this language:
“Crisis management is not included in this scope of services and if required will be an additional service”.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
The wording of the bond had the projects combined and says “Cultural Center” rather than “Hispanic Cultural Center.” However, the ordinance calling for the bond election specifically says “Hispanic Cultural Center” in the Cultural section. There’s no gettin’ around that.
Click to access Ordinance%20017849.pdf
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Interesting. What exactly is purpose and mission of the Hispanic Cultural Center?
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It’s the combining of these that concerns me. We voted on separate facilities, not a combined facility unless I read this wrong.
Oh well, since when does the city give a s**t what we voted for when half the CC and the CM are working for Borderplex? Woody probably has a patch of ground he wants to sell us and needs to lay the ground work for doing so before Wilson leaves.
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I don’t see that the ordinance approving the bond election (link to that appears in my message below) specifies separate facilities. Could be wrong. I didn’t vote for it so I didn’t look into details.
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[…] Brutus mentions that tomorrow, the city council will be asked to OK a $665,000 contract for urban planning services related to three projects voters approved in the 2012 city bond election: a “multipurpose performing arts and entertainment facility located in downtown El Paso” (read: downtown arena), a children’s museum (read: Insights’ replacement [it closed one year ago yesterday]) and a Hispanic cultural center (read: dunno; like this?). But, the blogging rottweiler has a few things wrong, and misses an interesting connection. […]
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So, enlighten us, oh wise one. Don’t be so coy.
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Neither the contract nor the scope document say anything about combining the projects (except for bundling them under one planning contract). In fact, they are specifically mentioned as separate sites in the documents. But, you missed a big potential conflict of interest therein: http://ansonmills.wordpress.com/2013/12/16/county-judge-candidates-15k-outreach-gig-for-city-raises-eyebrows/
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Stop being so coy. It’s annoying. I’m too lazy to click yet one more link just because you want to promote traffic to your own blog. You would benefit more by actually sharing here rather than trying to tease everyone.
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Another bitch about 15k towards another Escobar competitor when Escobar is gonna spend 150 mill on new clinics and the Taxpayer will be on hook to keep them going just like we are for UMC. Anson is just another blower for Foster and Hunt. Maybe he can get some free plastic surgery from the clinics for the wrinkles around his mouth caused by this excessive blowing.
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