City secrecy part four

June 15, 2015

Our city attorney’s public admission that she has not enforced city council’s agenda rules in the past got me to thinking about her evidently perceived  need to protect council from the public in order to keep her job.

She has done the wrong thing.

According to the Texas Municipal League legal staff’s paper “The City Attorney:  A Reference Manual”:

“While a city attorney may report to and accept certain directions from city officials, it is the attorney’s duty to act in the best interests of the city as a whole.”

The city–that’s you and me–we are the city.

As city attorney/parliamentarian she should see to it that city council acts according to the law.

She is there as an adviser, not a participant.  It is not her place to be an advocate for or against anything on the agenda.  She is there to provide legal advice, not set policy.

She should only speak when asked to do so, unless a law or rule  is about to be violated.

Particularly inappropriate is when she chimes in to help justify some action that city staff wants to have approved.

It would be nice if she spent as much time seeing to it that the rules were followed as she seems to spend as a partisan actor.

This council needs to assert control.  Council meetings are between our elected officials, the city manager and the citizens.

The back bench is where the city attorney should sit.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

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Two QOL projects to be killed

June 14, 2015

The approved budget of the Westside Pool is $13.4 million dollars. To help pay for this augmented design, City Council directed staff to delay construction of improvements to Westside Community Park and a new park in the Coronado area of the Westside. The development of those projects, also funded by 2012 Quality of Life Bond, will commence after most of the other Quality of Life Bond projects have been funded and only if funds remain available.

In other words the parks will be sacrificed.

You can read the official statement here at the city’s web site.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Lucy’s coffee shop

June 13, 2015

I am really happy to report that the previous reports about Lucy’s coffee shop downtown having been closed were wrong.

Click over to  elchuqueno.com to see the story.

A previous post on the blog had shown a picture of the coffee shop with a large sign that indicated that they were closed.  I too took that to mean that they were out of business.

Fear is a powerful emotion and in this case led us to the wrong conclusion.

This makes things better.

Brutus

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Not shocking, just par for the course

June 12, 2015

They’re about to do  it again.

Item 4.1 on the consent agenda (that’s the one where there is no discussion) of the city council meeting to be held Tuesday, June 16, 2015 is listed as:

That the City Council approves the change order for the expenditure of additional funds in the amount of One Hundred Ten Thousand and 00/100 Dollars ($110,000.00) to BASIC IDIQ, Inc. for the relocation of electrical service equipment and feeders above ground to below ground for the San Jacinto Plaza Redesign Project, Solicitation No 2014-043.  An additional seventeen (17) days will be added to term of contract number 2014-043.  The new contract sum, including this construction change order is Four Million Nine Hundred Fifty Six Thousand Six Hundred Sixty Eight and 52/00 ($4,956,668.52).

There is backup material and it tells us a lot, including:

“The contractor installed the electrical service equipment above ground.  This change order will allow for electrical equipment and feeders to be placed below ground.”

Huh?

We should assume that someone at the city was watching as the power equipment was suspended in the air.  Now that the work is done we will pay to have the new stuff ripped out and put underground.  Were the plans vague?  Has the city decided that they now have extra money and they want to upgrade the plaza?  Could it be that this change order is a way to funnel more money to the contractor?

More conflict

The backup material indicates that 17 days will be added to the term of the contract.  They don’t say whether those are calendar days or are work days or maybe biblical days.

Unfortunately the contractor’s proposal to the city says:  “This work will add approximately five weeks to the overall timeframe of the project”.  We don’t know if that means 35 calendar days or 25 work days, to say nothing about how we can quantify approximately.

The contractor’s proposal was for $123 thousand.  The city’s project manager crossed that amount out and wrote $110 thousand and initialed the change.

The five week extension was not changed.  Curious, isn’t it.

See for yourself:

plaza110thousand

The backup material shows this as change order number 6.  One through five must have been doozies.

I guess it would just be to much for us to expect that the city would be precise.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

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Wrong if you do it, but not if I do

June 11, 2015

Our county judge has been complaining publicly about the fact that the children’s hospital is using an out of town law firm to handle their bankruptcy.

She fails to point out that the county and the county hospital both use an out of town firm to handle their bonds.  The same lawyer seems to be at the bottom of some of El Paso’s most controversial issues.  He is now with the law firm of Norton Rose Fulbright out of their Dallas office.

Searching the web you will find that the firm has a few local clients:

  • The City of El Paso (evidently including the ball park)
  • The County of El Paso (evidently including the clinics and the children’s hospital)
  • El Paso Independent School District (evidently including the corporation that wants to issue the bonds for the new central office)
  • El Paso County 911 District

They may be involved with other local governments, time will tell.

This graphic comes from a presentation that the county hospital was using to sell us on the children’s hospital bond issue:

epchteamofexperts

At the time the lawyer was with his own firm.  He evidently later joined Norton Rose Fulbright.

The county judge is certainly being disingenuous when she complains about the children’s hospital while she is doing the same thing.

We deserve better

Brutus

6 Comments | Ball park, City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
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