One of the signature projects of the quality of life bonds is the digital wall.
El Paso will be the second city on the planet to have one of these 3 million dollar television sets. The city hoped to get a donor to build an addition to the museum so that the wall could be inside. There were evidently no takers for that million dollar project.
The wall was originally scheduled to be completed in August, 2014. It was later rescheduled to be completed in December, 2014.
We have not heard about it lately so I presume that completion in 2015 is more probable.
Several posts have been written about it in the past. Links to them are listed here for the convenience of our many new readers who probably have not taken the time to search our archives:
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark
El Paso quality of life update
Too many chiefs (By the way I applaud the city manager–he evidently came to the same conclusion)
My prediction is that this thing will be a maintenance nightmare.
I can’t help but wonder how many streets could have been paved with this money. Talk about quality of life.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
If IT was involved with this thing it will be late, except you wouldn’t know because you never received a plan, it won’t work, it will be offline a lot, and they will soon misplace the access codes so they won’t be able to fix it.
I speak from hard experience.
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Brutus,
I am coming to these posts and this issue late in the game. When I heard of this notion of the city funding a so called “Digital Wall”, I had to smile and laugh a bit. Nothing says, “El Paso, Texas” like spending millions of tax payer dollars on projects or programs that will go no where and do nothing. Our school districts have this down to a ‘science’! Why shouldn’t the City play the game too, right?
A Digital Wall? Really!? We’re actually going to build this massive TV in a museum that is severely under attended. And, they are actually really buying the notion that people will travel to EL PASO to see it?
And, the content on this rather expensive device will be the history of El Paso? Hmmm….. Like most US cities, El Paso does have a little bit of history. Some of it is really cool and some of it… not so much. Just like every other US City.
The whole thing can be summed up in a chapter in a book or finely detailed on a modestly sized web page.
But then, that is not what this is really all about is it? Please correct me if this is way off the mark; but, it seems to me that this would make a really nice toy for the “movers and shakers” to use in entertaining their “mover and shaker” friends… fat cats, politicians, drug lords… Whoever it is these people call their peers.
It will be big. It will be expensive. It will be shiny. And, it will give at least the appearance… the illusion… of a city at one with modern technology.
We shouldn’t be surprised.They WILL build this thing. After all, we’re living in a city where they demolished a perfectly functional City Hall and a semi functional science museum to build a baseball stadium in the middle of down town! There are people in the baseball leagues around the nation that use our story to prop up parties that are losing their festive energy… I wonder if our millions of dollars spent is worth their laughter at our expense. And, I wonder if the good people of Denmark will also have a laugh or two at the small imitation of their idea here in the desert southwest…
-Chaucer
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I think you misunderstand their motives.
I believe that the motive for the construction of the digital wall was so that City employees could visit Copenhagen on a city-funded trip. Copenhagen is the only other city in the world to have a digital wall.
It was part of the QoL bond deal: something for everyone.
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It is to be launched on February 14, 2015.
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All this for one of the poorest cities in the country with a lousy tax base….what a joke! Talk about a city that doesn’t know how to manage its finances. Our city reminds me of a poor family that wins a $200 million lotto and winds up broke in 5 years!
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We also have some delusional people who made some money and now consider themselves visionary Midases. Interestingly, however, their new plays to increase their personal wealth are funded in part or subsidized by taxpayers. They have hedged their bets with public money. Funny how these self-proclaimed conservatives, who disdain government handouts or government interference, do like corporate welfare. It’s all about the money.
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I propose that the snappy video wall include an electronic digital counter to show the minute by minute increase in local public debt.
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Like all technology, TV’s, computers and monitors . . . .
it will be out of date the moment it is installed.
Screens will have to be replaced over and over and over.
There will be dead pixels, dead fairies, and broken gnomes.
The program that runs this thing will have glitches and have to be upgraded from
time to time.
There may be hacking and we’ll see programs run by North Korea and Iran.
There may be viruses that have to be fought daily that turn the thing on and off.
El Paso does not have an IT base of super-programmers to handle this so one will have to be hired and moved to El Paso at great expense for 24-7 service. Have you see those dumpsters and trash heaps that have piles of broken or out of date monitors? Well, look no further than the trash dumpster behind the museum as the screens fail, one by one. . . . and pixels die.
As you see and KNOW from your own computers, everything will have to be replaced every 3-4 years or it just won’t work. Microsoft discontinues programs all the time. All programs are replaced from time to time. When you buy a Brand New Computer. . . it comes with instructions on how to Update it ! Hello ! And as soon as you connect it online, it is now subject to viruses and malware. The military has separate computers that have big messages posted on them: DO NOT CONNECT THIS COMPUTER ONLINE! . . ..for computers that are used for interoffice and general programs, letters, etc., because they KNOW as soon as it is connected online. . . . it becomes subject to viruses, no matter how good the Anti-Virsus program is.
Technology should not be financed beyond its life span. So, How long are the Quality Of Life Bonds financed for? Oh, yes. . . . the City ( YOU Taxpayers ) will be paying interest on this for 10-20 years past the time it died, fizzled, and parts no longer available.
Step 2: How much will it cost to REMOVE this after it dies?
In the meantime, it will also be used for Private Parties for the Fosters and the Hunts to show Home Videos and videos of them. . . laughing and laughing and having a good ol’time, and highlights of baseball games.
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