Well they’re still at it.
The city council vote to not put restrooms in the eventually to be finished San Jacinto Plaza got me to thinking about how I could have missed notification of such an agenda item. I went to the city’s web page and searched for the agenda item. It was nowhere to be found.
I did find this document which is the report of the minutes of a special city council meeting that was held on Monday, December 15, 2014.
epcc12152014specialcouncilminutes
Huh?
They held a special city council meeting on Monday, December 15, 2014. Where was the required public notification that the meeting was to be held? Back at the city web site this is what showed up when a search for any special meeting in 2014 was entered:
State law requires council to post notification of any council meeting 72 hours before the meeting “in a place generally accessible to the general public” unless there is an emergency.
Our courts have ruled that posting notification on a bulletin board outside of city hall fulfills the requirement.
A reasonable citizen would probably conclude that the city posts it’s special council meeting notices on the city web site along with the regular meeting notices. Why else would the drop down box have a provision for searching for special council meetings?
The trick here is that the city can comply with state law by posting an agenda on a bulletin board while tricking us to believe that they will post the notice on their web site. No notification, no pesky public.
By the way, council had another special city council meeting on Tuesday, December 16, 2014. The regular city council meeting was adjourned at 11:52 on that day and the special meeting was convened at 12:08 in a different room at city hall. I guess they could move the entire council away from the public in only 16 minutes because they have restrooms at city hall and don’t have to go next door to use some business person’s facility.
Adding insult to injury, the special city council meetings are not video recorded and made available for the public to view after the fact.
This is disgraceful and mean spirited.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
‘Executive sessions’ are one way to keep the public in the dark, but looks like we’ve gone to ‘special meetings’ that are probably better called ‘private meetings.’ Unabashedly unprofessional….but thanks to the creep city attorney, most likely “legal???”
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Talk about really, really special… The county medical examiner position is so special that county court had to recruit and hire a non-U.S. citizen. The county claims there are no qualified U.S. citizens willing to do this job for the mere $300,000 per year that it pays. That means the highest paid county employee will not even be a U.S. citizen. It seems citizenship doesn’t mean a lot these days. The county court is cavalierly glossing over the possible legal issues, which means this move will likely cost us even more in legal fees, mistrials, or court costs at a later date.
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The Rescue Mission, Salvation Army and other organizations that work with the homeless would probably have had something to add to that whole debate about public restrooms.
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Last night on Channel 7 (ABC) Extra show at 10:30 PM, Dr. Noe and Bernie Sargent were discussing some of the bond issues, and the question of no restrooms at the Plaza renovation came up. Dr. Noe said that council chose not to put public restrooms at the Plaza because it would cost about $500,000 to do so. Wow! I find it hard to believe that when City money is involved, the cost of public restrooms would cost $500,000. If that is actually fact that the restrooms would cost that much, I’d say our contractors for the Plaza are taking El Paso citizens for fools. I’d like to hear the true story on the restrooms actual cost.
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Looks like we are ill informed on this subject. First off you can get on a list to be notified by email of all meetings. Second you can go to this page and select what meetings you are interested in to see if one is scheduled. http://home.elpasotexas.gov/meetings.php
Want a video just file an ORR.
As for the restrooms these were self cleaning restrooms which accounted for their high cost. Plus given the amount of money being rebated every week the restrooms costs don’t even register so there is no excuse not to include them.
As far as Executive sessions go you can file a writ of mandamus with the Court if you believe something funny is going on in Executive session.
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Thank you.
I see that the special meetings are below the regular ones. I think that the web page for the regular ones is misleading.
Brutus
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Misleading the public is standard operating procedure for El Paso city government. The marketing of the QOL bonds was a perfect example.
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