This from Jerry Kurtyka:
Game #4 – Shock and Awe (Disaster Capitalism)
“…a military doctrine based on the use of overwhelming power, dominant battlefield awareness and maneuvers, and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy’s perception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight.”
- Wikipedia definition for Shock and Awe.
Sound familiar? On June 26, 2012, CC met to consider resolutions for the demolition of city hall and the construction of a AAA stadium in its place financed by the city through an increase in the hotel occupancy tax (HOT). This was supposedly an example of the “public/private” partnership model mentioned in the Downtown Plan, but one where the public had a supermajority of the cost, debt and risk and the private party, Mountainstar, kept a supermajority of the revenues. For many El Pasoans, this came as a shock – out of the blue, so to speak – a political and financial coup d’etat. But not to everyone.
Cindy Ramirez, reporting in the El Paso Times on July 27, 2012, quoted then city manager Joyce Wilson as saying, “The perception is that there was no transparency, and that is absolutely not true,” said Wilson, who added that the possibility of a baseball team and a new stadium had been discussed for about two years. “I believe it’s the most extensive analysis anyone has ever done on any project in the city.”
Clearly, Wilson’s idea of transparency was that everyone who needed to know about it was in the loop, just not the people who were slated to pay for it! The downtown plan several years before that, at least, had a public comment period before it was adopted. The announcement of June 26th was followed by a publicity blitz and full-court press from the PDNG on local media to support the AAA stadium and downplay opposition to it.
It was like a runaway train as the spin from city hall, the Times, PDNG and the team owners spilled forth. It affected us personally when I understood that Insights Museum was to be demolished. My wife was Insight’s interim director at the time and had recently turned the museum around financially. A smear campaign against Insights unfolded when vigorous local support for the museum surfaced with resistance to its demolition, not anticipated by PDNG or Wilson. Insights was a Smithsonian-certified museum that cost the city nothing and was the only STEM education facility for children in town with over 33,000 students visiting it annually. The El Paso Explorium (Lynx Exhibits, a kind of Chuck-E-Cheese version of a museum) was floated in the Times as a temporary location for Insights until the promised Children’s museum materialized from the proposed 2013 QoL bond issue. The EP Times building was slated to replace city hall and an “appraisal” was done by Russ Vandenberg setting its value at over $10MM. CC did not propose a lower price or question the appraisal, even though there was virtually no market for downtown properties; it was a done deal. The spin said we had to act quickly or risk losing the team.
Joe Meunch of the Times coined the term, “crazies” to describe those opposed to the deal (of which the Times was the largest single beneficiary), a term later picked up on by the city manager and prominent local blogger, David Karlsruhe. The city’s CFO presented a business case for the stadium showing a cost of $48MM and a breakeven level of operation.
Everyone was on message. It was Shock and Awe El Paso style, all in only a month!
Two town hall meetings were held and I attended one at the West Side Regional Command Center where Rep. Niland, Wilson and deputy city manager, Debbie Hamlin, tried to explain the deal. People were furious and a straw poll of the audience showed 90% opposed to the deal (though I don’t think to AAA or even to a stadium; more to how it was done and the loss of city hall). Someone asked Niland and Wilson if they were members of PDNG, which they initially denied, but Wilson backtracked to say they were “honorary members.” It was clear who was running our city government. Even The Inc., that normally sides with the movers and shakers, covered the town hall meetings in a piece titled, “Stadium Rage,” and printed a guest editorial by former mayor, Larry Francis, who opposed the stadium. The opposition couldn’t be ignored any longer.
Like me, many were left wondering how this could have happened. We voted to hire a city manager to bring El Paso into the 21st century because back room style cronyism had defined governance here for generations. Now, in the irony of ironies, Joyce Wilson orchestrated the biggest backroom crony deal in the city’s history. It would not surprise anyone today if the city manager form of organization is repealed in a future charter election, a fitting legacy for Wilson. At least when we have a corrupt mayor, we can fire him every four years!
It was all legal. Subsequent open records requests revealed a trail of suck-up to the stadium pimps by Wilson, who appeared to literally represent their interests over the interests of the city. But it was all legal; just not ethical.
In April 2013, I was at a conference in Taos and watched the demolition of city hall on my laptop. I asked myself, how could an elected government decide that the city was so lacking amenities that it was worth it to destroy the trust between government and citizen, trash the careers of otherwise promising young leaders (Steve Ortega), and plunge the city into levels of debt and spending it never had before, and which benefited mostly only a few wealthy investors?
It is called Disaster Capitalism: the opportunism we see after a hurricane or earthquake when favored corporations rush into the catastrophe to rebuild and line their pockets on no-compete contracts. Leaders exploit the crises to push through exploitative policies while citizens are too distracted by the disaster to mount an effective resistance. Only in El Paso, we manufactured the disaster. We are our own Hurricane Sandy! Ask yourself, “Cui Bono?” Who benefits?
The stadium was the start of other big-ticket vanity projects, too. The trolley to nowhere will now be built, a soccer team and new stadium are being floated by Mountainstar, and an $85MM downtown arena is on the drawing board. Who will use it, since El Paso isn’t exactly on the stopover list for Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber? None of these projects have a business plan to pay for them. Watch for another demolition, perhaps of the Haskins Center, Cohen Stadium or the County Coliseum. Disaster capitalism is here to stay unless we take back our city government.
Lessons learned? Where are the adults in our local government? It is as if, someone – not an elected rep, but their sponsor- has the Big Idea. It gets legs, and the next thing you know we are spending mega-bucks on it with no plan to pay for it, other than generalities like, “Trolleys have a 10:1 return via increased property values along their route.“ I mean, the city lost $500K on the stadium in its first season and it was a sell-out almost every game! The city’s theory-of-change is that vanity projects will raise property values and sales taxes that will then pay for their cost. Not! Revenues need to pay for projects, not taxes. This town is already taxed to death and it is the poorest large city in Texas. We can’t run the city this way; we need a new direction.
NEXT – Game’s Over (What Do We Do Now?)
elpasospeak 
Wow, just what I’ve been saying since this stupid baseball park became public. And, I have indeed been one of the crazies ever since. Problem number one (and I warned about this before the ball park deal) is that we did not really need a City Manager (especially the one we had). What we needed was a strong mayor (not the one we had). And, the bigger problem is and was the reason we ended up with a City Manager, and that is that not enough people bother to vote anymore! Go Vote, everybody! Take OUR city back.
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City Hall needs some type of continuity and corporate memory which does not have to be a CM. A CAO reporting to the mayor or executive committee of CC would work as would a COO reporting to CC with finance, budget, economic development and planning reporting to the mayor. That assumes a mayor understands how to use these staff functions to lead in policy initiatives. Why FS reports to a CM is beyond me and an invitation to corruption, like EPISD experienced.
Joe Wardy did understand this IMHO. I can’t say for Mayor Leeser.
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It’s interesting to link recent developments to disaster capitalism. I think they might be more interested in promoting imminent disaster, instead of mitigating existing disaster. A little public bankruptcy can go a long way in the right greedy hands.
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Never waste a good crisis 🙂
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SEC
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Thank you again for an insightful analysis of recent events.
The roots of the ballpark and downtown “revitalization” began around Jan 1, 2000 when a group of prominent El Pasoans met for an organizational meeting/retreat over the New Year’s holiday at an undisclosed location. They were discussing a plan for El Paso’s future. That’s how El Paso, Inc. reported it at the time. This was probably the beginning of the Paso Del Norte group and the progressive agenda that holds us in its grip today. Little did any of us know at the time what was in store for us. This was before Joyce Wilson of course, but she was brought on board quickly. And this week, Joyce Wilson will be one of the recipients of the El Paso, Inc Woman of Impact award. Some impact. Yes, my friends the good ol’ boy system is not dead, with a stake driven through its heart. It has only been reborn in the guise of progressives and crony capitalists, both Republican and Democrat.
Abandon hope all ye who enter here, El Paso.
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Nothing wrong with citizens, especially prominent and successful ones, meeting to discuss the betterment of their community. Too bad the politicians don’t do it more often. The issue becomes transparency and who ultimately pays and benefits, none of which characterize the stadium.
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Nor were downtown “revitalization” decisions such as moving the buses from San Jacinto Plaza made to appear transparent until the public uproar began. The MO of city politicians seems to be go ahead until someone makes a lot of noise, then ask for public input, then do as we (the politicians) wanted in the first place.
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Your statement: “My wife was Insight’s interim director at the time and had recently turned the museum around financially[.]” is quite a statement of puffery. My wife, Mandy Chew, was in fact the last ED and it was she, who returned Insights to financially stability with a healthy reserve the her successor quickly spent. David Wellington Chew
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Sorry, it was major in the red.
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Hold it. I retract that statement as I am not in possession of financial records to verify it. I stick with my original statement in the main post.
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Phrases used by some who reviewed Naomi Klein’s book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” sum up what we are experiencing. One reviewer calls this “predatory corporate behavior.” Another refers to it as the “dark heart of contemporary capitalism.” Yet another came up with what might end up being our reality: “The Profits of Doom”.
Unlike the accepted theory of disaster capitalism, the ballpark wasn’t pushed through in the midst of a disaster like Katrina or war. Nor was a faux disaster created to provide cover so that our leaders and local crony capitalists could capitalize on the crisis by pushing through a controversial and exploitative decision while citizens were too distracted to mount an effective opposition.
The ballpark was the equivalent of a mid-day bank robbery, planned in advance, with multiple police standing in the bank with guns holstered, telling employees and customers to simply do as they are told and give the robbers whatever they want, after which the police help carry the money out of the bank and even give the thieves a parade escort as they drive away in broad daylight, while watching the bank implode in their rear view mirror.
This is not your grandfather’s idea of capitalism. It validates the President’s controversial “you didn’t build that” statement which was taken out of context, but aptly applies to our local situation. Whether we wanted to or not, we built the stadium.
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I thought the phrase was descriptive as a paraphrase, not an exact definition. I loved Klein’s book, “No Logo” that really provoked some existential dialog in the brand marketing community.
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Want to know who the movers and shakers are? Just “accidentally” take the elevator to level 2 of the ballpark. There, congratulating themselves on how smart and well off they are is the El Paso crowd, paying attention to themselves, making more deals, and not watching any games. It is as if we the taxpayers paid for a fancy bar and catering service for these folks, non of whom actually pay for the $7 hot dogs.
Of course, you will be asked politely to leave by the elevator attendant so you will only get a short glance of the beautiful people.
But that should be our goal crazies: Make it to Level 2. Be one of the crowd that looks down on the folks paying full price for their beers and hotdawgs.
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As Voltaire said “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
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The secrets that NO media outlet will discuss are 1. The ballpark is actually taking revenue from downtown restaurants and bars. I can’t find the article now but it seems that there was 12,000 bucks revenue from them. The next quarter, after the ballpark opened, revenue downtown was 15,000 but only 9,000 came from the same restaurants and bars. 2. Anyone want to bet that we’ll never hear where the money comes from to pay the first payment on the bond issue? Last I heard, back in August, the parking fee, the dollar per ticket, AND the Hotel Occupancy Tax for the year added up to around $400,000. Where is the rest of the money coming from?
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Speeding tickets maybe? I’ve noticed an increase in speed traps,
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The general fund which comes from property taxes. It is supposed to to be used fir day to day expenses of running the city only, not meet debt service.
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Joyce as CM had way too much power and independence. I wonder if some of that hasn’t been tempered with the new CM.
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