Congestion Mitigation

February 18, 2014

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

4 Comments | Ball park, City government, El Paso Times, Federal Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Something’s up

February 17, 2014

The February 18, 2014 city council agenda has an item on it that raises an eyebrow for me.

Discussion and action to direct City Manager to create a fun zone in the entertainment district on game days.

OK, maybe I should be optimistic about this but I’m not.  I looked for backup material, but other than an image none is posted with the agenda.

I wonder who will get the financial benefit from this and how much it will cost the citizens?

We deserve better

Brutus

7 Comments | Ball park, City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Not my job

February 16, 2014

If you go the portion of the city’s web site where you can look at city council agendas you will see the following”

*DISCLAIMER: Please be aware that only agenda documentation from 2014 and on may be searched via this search bar. Archived agenda documentation prior to 2014 may be found on the ‘2008 − 2013 Archive’ tab and is not searchable. You may contact the Municipal Clerk about any record not found on these pages”.

I wrote a small piece about this in Cover up.

Thinking about it again, the word “disclaimer” got my attention.  I googled “define disclaimer” and got this gem:

a statement that denies something, esp. responsibility.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, Open Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Faint praise

February 15, 2014

Stop the presses!

The downtown management district just published a report that says downtown events  (presumably special events, not everyday events) drew almost 134,000 people last year.

The twenty one events generated “more than $1.5 million” or a whopping $11.94 in spending from each person.

Talk about underwhelming.

In fact if that is what the downtown management district has been able to bring to us they should be embarrassed.

Good grief.  We taxpayers give away more than that in corporate welfare every year.

We deserve better

Brutus

9 Comments | Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Overstepping his authority

February 14, 2014

The chairman of the El Paso Independent School District 2007 Bond Accountability Advisory Committee recently wrote a guest column for the El Paso Times.  You can read it here.

The chairman tried to explain why his committee recommended taking $57 million that was allocated to a new high school in the northeast and spending it on other things.

The district’s voters approved a $230 million dollar program that was to fund specific projects.  This is the district’s list of those projects.

The chairman evidently feels that the voters gave the district $230 million to spend as they please.  We did not.  We gave the district permission to spend the money on specific projects.

As an example, if the proposed project list had included $100 million to build a private country club for the school board the bond issue probably would not have passed.

Forgetting his place

The bond committee has a charter.  This is part of the charter:

The Committee is also charged with oversight of the 2007 Bond budget in order to assure that bond proceeds are expended in a manner consistent with the budget.

The charter does not say that they are charged with oversight of the bond budget as amended by the school board with whatever changes they decide that they want.

Violated

Many of us voters were made more comfortable with the bond issue since a committee of taxpayers would see to it that the school district spent the money they way it was sold to us.

Now it turns out that the oversight committee has as little respect for the voters as the politicians do.

How can we trust the bond process?

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »