Not being an engineer, to me congestion mitigation is the same as coughing.
I guess they want us to cough up more money.
Item 3.4 on the February 10, 2014 city council agenda increases the cost of the ball park.
The September 25, 2013 El Paso Times editorial had this statement in it:
“Mayor Oscar Leeser made it clear the city will not add another cent to the now-$64 million project. He and City Council deserve credit for being firm on that.”
Crossings
The agenda item considers the construction of two pedestrian crossings over the depressed train way into the new ball park. The project amount is set at $2,875,410.
This money clearly is part of the ball park cost and adds almost $3 million to the total.
Under “AMOUNT AND SOURCE OF FUNDING:” our city engineer entered “NONE”.
Not so
The project requires an agreement between the city and the state titled “LOCAL TRANSPORTATION PROJECT ADVANCE FUNDING AGREEMENT For A Congestion Mitigation & Air Quality Improvement (2014 CMAQ STP-Flex) Off-System Project”.
The second page of the backup material is a proposed resolution that states “for a total project amount of $2,857,410 with a local contribution by the City of $239,976”.
That works out to 23,997,600 more cents when the mayor and council evidently said not a cent more.
And climbing
One document says no local money will be spent. One page later a document says that $239,976 will be spent. Then attachment C of the same document says that the “Local Participation” will be $545,400.
You can read the whole mess here.
Not one cent more
The vast majority of the project will be paid for with state and federal funds.
It seems obvious that someone was not telling the mayor and council the truth when they said no more money would be needed. Otherwise I doubt that they would have said “not one cent more”.
Will council ever hold anyone accountable?
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
You just opened Pandora’s box. I believe the pedestrian crossing was included in the original ballpark budget, which makes the city council’s actions of greater concern.
Here’s what the El Paso Times’ Cindy Ramirez wrote in a Q&A on July 15, 2012:
“A preliminary study by Turner Construction shows design and construction costs of about $39 million; $2 million for a pedestrian crossing; and $2 million to demolish the City Hall and Insights buildings. The $50 million allows some wiggle room in construction, though any surplus would be deposited into the debt service fund to help pay off the construction, used to provide additional parking or deposited into a capital repairs reserve fund for future maintenance.”
They are now using state taxpayer funds which were not originally intended to be a source of funds for this project. This is really pretty simple: the ballpark is more over budget than we even know and that city management, council, and the car salesman are once again engaged in a manipulative shell game to obscure the truth. They are also once again robbing Peter to pay Paul Foster.
The only “wiggle room” in this situation is the wiggle room that is allowing city management, city council, the mayor and the Mountainstar principals to continue to do these things without any personal consequences.
Ms. Ramirez stated on July 15, 2012, that the answers in her Q&A were provided by city officials and the Mountainstar principals. If she were not so busy these days serving as the de facto public relations person for downtown redevelopment, perhaps she could have done some reporting on the disconnect between the July 2012 statement and the actions taken in the February 10 council meeting. Then again, maybe she and the Times chose to ignore the discrepancy and deception.
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How about we don’t do it and, if it is so essential, Woody and Paul cough up the money?
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Technically, the local gov’t participation of $545k is coming from something called Transportation Development credits ( which come from Fed and State monies). Once again it seems they moved money given to the city for street repairs, sidewalks and road improvement to use for the ballpark. This document details the amount of money granted to El Paso by this program and I did not see anythinf about this pedestrian crosswalk. El Paso numbers start on page III-359…..
Click to access 2014_utp.pdf
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Mayor,
Why did you go back on your promise?
Sent from my iPhone
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