The Tuesday, October 7, 2014 city council agenda has an item on it that once again shows who they think is important. The answer certainly is not the taxpayers.
As part of the destruction of city hall and the moving of city departments into several buildings the city leased about 8,000 square feet of office space in what we now call the Wells Fargo building.
The department that the city placed in the space is the city tax office. Taxpayers must now go to the 3rd floor of the building in order to do any city tax business that they want to do in person. At this point no other city office that they have told us about is in that building. Before they tore down the old city hall a taxpayer could go in, conduct his tax related business, and then drop by his city representative’s office or the mayor’s office to speak with their elected officials.
Placing the tax office in a building away from every other department and away from the elected officials has resulted in less opportunity for taxpayers to communicate with the city officials. The tax office was probably chosen as the department to be banished to a separate building because it would limit communication.
Now citizens have to pay for parking when they go to the tax office. The most convenient place to park is in the Wells Fargo parking garage if space is available.
Part of the lease agreement that the city signed required the landlord to provide parking for the city tax office employees “within walking distance” of the offices.
That evidently has become inconvenient for our city employees. The agenda item proposes a no-cost modification to the lease that requires that the parking spaces be made available in the Wells Fargo parking garage. Walking distance seems to have become inconvenient for our employees.
If they pass the amendment and the parking garage is full then taxpayers will have to do the walking.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” ~ Hanlon’s Razor
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Here’s another option. Make a little bike station at the nearest parking area somewhere close to the WF building and let the employees ride a bikes to work! How fun! How environmentally Kosher! How progressive would this be! They could even add some special bike lanes to add icing to the cake! Awesome!
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Government is becoming increasingly inaccessible to the citizen, and not just at the local level. It is as if they want to do their thing for the people funding their campaigns and not be bothered with the inconvenience of voters who pay their salaries.
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I went to the tax office in the Wells Fargo Bldg when the city first moved it there. I seem to remember the tax office stamped my parking ticket so there was not charge. That could have changed.
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It is not just visits to the tax office that require paid parking. There is almost no public parking at any of the three City Halls. And if you are planning to attend a meeting that might last more than two hours, too bad if your parking meter expires and you get a ticket.
The consistent message is “We Don’t Want You to Bother Us.”
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This was one of those no-bid non-compete leases that Wilson gave to O’Rourke’s father-in-law who owns the building.
The EP Inc wrote about this and if I remember correctly in typical Wilson arrogance she said she didn’t have to bid the lease out.
The CFO and Budget Office are also in the Wells Fargo Building.
Interesting that both Wilson’ s “rising stars”, the fuzzy math lady CFO and the budget officer, have resigned.
Considering the appalling shortfalls in revenue projections presented by these 2 hopefully somethings may get better.
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Along that same line. . . .
To get people from showing up and challenging their property tax or actually the Property Appraisal. . . . the City could move the Central Appraisal Offices downtown.
Most people would NOT go downtown, so more of the over priced and wrong appraisals would stick.
You know, if a private person/business, built a Convention Center with 5 acres of free parking, next to also a hotel or two, out in far east El Paso, the downtown convention center would be. . . . . . . . empty.
They could also build a matching theatre with 500 more seats than the Chavez Theater and. . . . .. no one would bother with going downtown at all.
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H777 makes a good point. I have never figured out why all these hotels are built in El Paso but none have ample convention facilities like one or two very large meeting rooms and plenty of smaller meeting rooms for a good sized convention. If they did that they could easily beat out all the existing facilities downtown, the Marriott, and the Wyndham. That’s one reason why so many conventions won’t even consider El Paso.
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It’s time for the”citizen” to stop paying the corporation called the City of El Paso
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