Our city attorney is having difficulty with some of the members of council.
Evidently some of the members want to change the manner in which her performance is reviewed.
She says that the new methods would not be consistent with her contract and has asked council to please respect her contract.
I agree with her.
It would also be nice if she and the team in place before our new city manager came in would have respected the contracts of the city’s vendors.
The old group strong armed and fired vendors with valid contracts frequently.
There are a whole bunch of companies that simply will no longer do business with the city.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
It’s interesting that so many city employees, unlike most people in the private sector, have contracts. Contracts, great benefits, pensions, every holiday imaginable, a 4-day work week, free tickets to ballgames, and whatever else they can extract from vendors and special interests. Plus, as the city manager recently showed us, if you don’t like the terms of your contract, just ask for more money even if the ink on your contract is barely dry. No wonder these people are disconnected from reality. Meanwhile the debt keeps piling up.
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For most it isn’t a contract in the sense of the CM’s contract. It means you are on an annual employment basis and can be terminated just by the non-renewal of your expiring contract. The alternative is civil service which is where employees go to retire before they retire.
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Free tickets to ballgames? Isn’t a conflict of interest to receive gifts from vendors?
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Can you list the companies that no longer are contracting or “want” to work with the city. I believe its many companies that don’t want to work with government entities.
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It’s not my place to speak for them.
We’ll leave that up to them.
Brutus
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Brutus rightfully chooses not to disclose their identities, but I can verify that some companies no longer want to work with the city, even though they are doing work for other government entities.
I don’t know too many companies these days that are not willing to take money from government, especially when government is among the last of the big spenders.
Many companies, however, believe that the El Paso deck is stacked in favor of certain companies, partly through the drafting of specifications and requirements. Responding to RFQ’s and RFP’s requires a significant investment of time and no one wants to do that kind of work if they are not going to be treated fairly in the process. Plus, why do business with a government entity that works so hard to award contracts without competitive bidding.
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