elpasospeak

Our city manager is requiring that items that are placed on the city council agendas be identified with one of the city’s stated goals.

I guess its a six-sigma kind of thing.

This agenda item from the June 30, 2015 city council agenda caught my attention:

Maybe I’m naïve but I don’t see how allowing a bar to open close to a daycare center promotes the visual image of El Paso.

I can see how goal number 2, “Set the Standard for a Safe and Secure City” or maybe even goal number 4, “Enhance El Paso’s Quality of Life through Recreational, Cultural and Educational Environments” might apply but “visual image”?

Do these people ever check their work?

We deserve better

Brutus

The city has a report on it’s web site titled “Amended Continuing Disclosure Report For The Fiscal Year Ended August 31, 2014”.  It applies to general obligation debt.

It shows that the city had $1,046,440,00 in property tax supported debt and the end of it’s 2014 year.  That’s one billion, forty six million, four hundred and forth thousand dollars.

The report shows that each and every man woman and child in El Paso has a $1,526 share of that debt.

There’s more

Not included in the report were bonds that are paid out of “special” revenue accounts.  They included:

$467,100,000 Water and Sewer System Revenue Bonds

$20,075,000 Airport Revenue Bonds

$60,860,000 Municipal Drainage Utility System

$60,860,000 for the ball park

You will notice that the ball park and the storm water system have the same amount of debt.  Actually they don’t.  The correct number for the ball park was $60,785,000 according to another of their reports.  I guess that we shouldn’t expect accuracy in reporting, especially from the city.

Keep in mind that they have yet to issue $423,875,000 in quality of life bonds much less figured out what it is going to cost to fix our deteriorating streets.

We deserve better

Brutus

Does a person’s signature tell you anything about them?

Maybe someone trained in psychology can help us here.

We deserve better

Brutus

The city issued about $200 million of bonds the other day.

We have to pay for the services of bond counsel as part of the issuances.  It looks like the city uses the same counsel for many of its entities including the water utility, the airport, the housing finance organization, and the specially created entity that financed the ball park.

The most recent contract between the city and our bond counsel that we have been able to find is one issued in 2008.  At that time the fees were set at:

The way we calculate it counsel’s paycheck for the recent issuances looks like this:

$35,375,000 of quality of life bonds at one dollar per thousand plus $5,000 to start comes to $40,375 in fees.

$62,000,000 in new certificates of obligation works out to $5,000 to start plus one dollar per thousand up to fifty million dollars and then 80 cents per thousand for amounts above fifty million.  That comes to another $104,000 in fees.

The $110,000,000 in refunding bonds are special.  They demand a higher fee since after all they are by their nature more difficult to justify.  These bonds end up costing us the $5,000 to start, one dollar per thousand for the first fifty million and then 80 cents per thousand for the last 60 million.  Then we have to add another 25 percent bringing the fee to $162,500.  Also consider that when the original bonds were issued bond counsel was paid again.

There were probably some expenses like pencils and photocopies and maybe even some travel.

Jackpot

It looks like the haul for this latest round of debt will cost us about  $306,875 in bond counsel fees.

Considering the fact that we issued more debt earlier this year we would guess that we are pretty good clients.

We deserve better

Brutus