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
elpasospeak 
Meanwhile, isn’t this still the city that forced a bar out of business a few years ago, for some trumped up reasons? While I really have trouble with the idea of banning bars from locations close to Day Cares, I also have trouble understanding why, since most bars do the most business after Day Cares are closed for the day. Whatever the reasons, I have to wonder who benefits from this particular bar being allowed to open?
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Is there a Bar deficiency in El Paso..That is the question.
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There you go once again expecting people at city hall to think. Yes, they are drunk from drinking their own Kool-Aid.
Maybe all the scribes and proofreaders have been reassigned to help with the inspections at San Jacinto Plaza. That’s probably why none of the city staff have picked up on the fact that the new plaza pavers were not installed on top of mortar and concrete as documented by Brutus in https://elpasospeak.com/?s=concrete. Or maybe they have and they simply ignored it.
Even with citizens clearly pointing out where the project is not being built to spec, these obvious failures in oversight don’t seem to be part of the city council discussions about the San Jacinto folly. City manage is letting the project proceed without things like the pavers been corrected.
We deserve to get what we are paying for, not what incompetent city staff accept.
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Has there ever been any evidence that writing to a blog instead of directly to the City Council that makes decisions has had any effect? Oh, I forgot, writing directly to the City Council rarely has any effect either. I guess we’re just talking to each other guys.
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You make a good point, but given that there is evidence that members of City Counci and city management don’t read very carefully (if at all), then writing to them is a waste of time and energy. Commenting here is free therapy and a lot less aggravating than trying to deal with city government.
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OH, but Ms Niland is in Europe celebrating her re-election, I am sure that she will take care of this when she returns.
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This item, 12.1, on the June 23 agenda about sale of alcoholic beverages, not a bar, a store that will sell alcohol. I learned this by listening to a local TV news story (KVIA) because I too have been mystified by this continued use of goals for actions that don’t fit. Stores that sell alcohol, like grocery stores and other chain merchandise stores, are going to be open at the same time as day cares. This action by the Council, aided and abetted by the staff and City Manager, makes no sense, but worse than that, is potentially harmful to children and families. I heard one Councilman interviewed say that they plan to change the ordinance so that it will prevent this type of action in the future (grandfathering in a new store where an old store that sold alcohol used to be before the day care went into the shopping center). When they allowed day care uses in shopping centers they (who?) forgot that stores typically in shopping centers will potentially sell alcohol. A few people must have been asleep at the wheel when that happened. The City is a complex organism and requires a lot of strategic thinking to avoid these kinds of things. Will the strategic goals we now have prevent this type of thing in the future? I have my doubts. Staff is now forced to figure out a goal that does not fit an action and like the Sleeping Beauty story, force it to make it fit – to the detriment of the Kingdom – the citizens of El Paso.
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Are we picturing the toddlers wandering down to the store and getting a bottle of Sly Fox?
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Regarding my last comment, the item you posted 17,1 (what date?) is a bar, but my comment to a previous item about alcohol sales in stores in shopping centers with day care centers on another date still holds, using this Visual Image strategic goal makes no sense.
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June 30, 2015
Thank you for being involved.
Brutus
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I found a clue about the Visual Image Strategic Goal on the city website, Government section, City Manager section, Reports section, there is a Mid-Year Operations Report. It lists each strategic goal. For Goal 3 “Promote the Visual Image of El Paso” it shows – 3.1 Provide business friendly permitting and inspection process and 3.2 Improve the visual impression of the community. Permitting and inspection includes things like food permits. It also includes Plan El Paso and development Master Plans, sidewalk retail vending, housing ordinance, building permits, zoning applications, special event permits, and an assortment of licenses and applications. It says nothing about the original landscape identity of El Paso – the Chihuahuan Desert which is being clear cut by every new subdivision and ignored by inappropriate street landscaping. So, the idea of Visual Image set forth in the City’s Strategic Goals is to destroy our Nature and God-given visual image and identity and replace it with a built environment which local city staff and elected officials think is more attractive. Sad.
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