Our city council met back on March 17, 2015 in their special form as the Downtown Development Corporation.
We have written before about them not posting their minutes. Don’t look.
In this most recent meeting they got to look at the 2015 financial projections.
You might recall being told that the ball park would not cost us any money at all. Revenues would pay for it we were told before we voted to increase Hotel Occupancy Taxes.
Then as things started to crystalize we were told that we would have to subsidize the ball park with general fund revenues up through 2018. The only people that can argue with a straight face that those funds are not property tax funds (which they are not allowed to use for this project) are our city officials.
In the March report we now are being told that the subsidies will have to continue until 2023.
The report also shows the cost of the ball park (before financing) at $76,020,750.
How can that be when on June 18, 2013 council made a big show of telling us that our cost would be $64,000,000 and not a penny more? Well, the team coughed up another $12,020,750. That brings us to the $76 million number.
What they don’t talk about is that they actually got $65,073,891 from the sale of the bonds instead of $64,000,000. Then also took $1,857,868 from previous Hotel Occupancy Tax collections making a total of $2,931,759 more than the promised $64 million. They used that money to pay for public art and bond issue costs. Both projects were directly related to the ball park but needed to be removed to maintain their story that we were only spending $64 million.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
BaseBall is NOT FREE..
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And, in the very best spirit of an I-told-you-so: (regarding the proposal to tear down City Hall and build a ballpark) “This will not end well.”
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Overall, this is somewhat confusing. I see that the park is costing us more than they said and that they’ve managed to pull some extra funds from the bond sale and from earlier HOT revenues, but it would be good to see actual numbers of 1. ballpark revenues, 2. HOT revenues, 3. current debt figures, 4. debt payments, and 5. financing payments vs principal payments. Also, where exactly would “general revenue” come from if not tapping into property tax revenues? Who approved and how did we go from subsidizing payments from 2018 to 2023 without any kind of voter participation? Is this Tommy’s plan of the financial manager’s plan and can they keep doing this ad infinitum???
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These numbers probably also do not include the game day operating expenses that taxpayers are also having to foot. Those were overlooked from the start. Just ask your local police department. Mountainstar also jacked up all the prices for tickets, food and beer this year, but they are the only ones making money because of how Wilson and City Council structured the lease agreement. The city can’t even cover its costs out of what it receives under the terms of the agreement. The people responsible continue to be rewarded.
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How soon we forget. The original approved price was actually $52.8 million. The ink wasn’t even dry before it became clear that number wasn’t real.
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I just can’t help myself. I can’t stop laughing! I don’t know why anyone would believe anything that comes out of the mouth of any politician. This is all just so absurd.To paraphrase an old quote, “If you build it…we will pay for it!”
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We need the FBI , the Texas Rangers and the State Attorney General to come to El Paso and have a huge PUBLIC CORRUPTION investigation. The “local authorities” will never do that. They would never find “anything” anyways. ALL of the “Public Officials” , Wilson, Byrd, Cook, Niland, Ortega, Noe that had SECRET meetings with Mountain Star Sports, Foster, ALL had political campaigns AFTER THEY approved the Foster ball field. Do we need to ask where all the “campaign donations” came from? And now all of the MILLIONS just keep adding up.
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Dream on. With the steep increases in the prices of food, beer, and tickets this year, Mountainstar’s profits also keep adding up, while the city gets a paltry amount of money that doesn’t even cover the debt service. But you’ll find your city officials enjoying themselves in city seats and the luxury boxes of their benefactors.
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Charlie Dickerson says
The FBI has to much of a near incestuous relationship with El Paso government they will never real touch more than the tip of the iceberg as to corruption in El Paso. Hey when the FBI is willing to tamper with evidence than cover for entities in El Paso government than Houston we have a problem. This is nothing knew this has been known for at lease a couple of decades. Texas Rangers are no different either.
The ones that should be stepping up to the plate is your Sheriff’s department and DA’ office but sadly they too have taken a powered and look to the other way. They only way to get at this is a private interest spending the money for lawyers investigators and researcher and would take hundreds of thousands of dollars and being able to defends against attacks which would come from local government and others. One would spend tens of thousand of dollar just for the public records much less the cost of fighting local government to turn over these records. Yep it’s not right but it the reality. Believe me from experience that law enforcement are not always the guys in the white hats in such matters. ;O)
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The Sheriff Department, the Police Department, are THE “local authorities”. And all of my time, 25 years or so in El Paso, it’s been ONLY the Feds who have “found” any corruption. The Superintendent Garcia, the other officials in the school, a judge, another judge Anthony Cobos, the “Public Officials in Anthony. All Federal cases. It’s amazing that NO Public Corruption can be discovered by the “locals”. Appears that you know little to nothing about the INTEGRITY of the FBI, Texas Rangers. If there was ever an investigation of all that went on with the City Council, the Mayor and Fosters baseball field that the taxpayers were FORCED to buy for him, well…………………
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Charlie Dickerson says Integrity of local FBI really. Yep we have experience that integrity or in our case the total lack of clearly you are clueless. Oh and we have all the documents to back up what we are saying. In our case out of the FBI, Texas Rangers, Federal Marshal service, El Paso Police department, the El Paso DA’ s office we were the only ones who showed that integrity you are talking about. Geeez believe the fairy tales.
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Apparently YOU got caught, indicted, arrested. Which of course puts the “Integrity” of all these Agencies into question, right? 🙂 I still, will trust any of them more than any local official who wears a badge or carries a law book.
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Charlie Dickerson says: Nope I wasn’t the one being the criminal but agents at the local FBI were criminal in tampering with evidence and yep some in local government were criminals. Had the FBI done their job instead of covering up the head and some in the upper management of your El Paso Central Appraisal District would have go to jail with at least two El Paso police officers. So once again please do believe in the fairy tales. Charlie Dickerson says, ignorance is a choice and you chose poorly seems to be a lot of that that goes around in EL Paso.
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Charlie Dickerson says guess you missed along the way that once head of the local FBI office was indicted and found guilty Hardrick Crawford Jr.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2006/08/texas-fbi-head-convicted/
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Manin the Moon…….who is “we” that you are referring to here?
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mamboman3
That would be my wife and me it’s us who are the we. Yep at the time there were a whole a lot of people that claimed they were with us and had our back but when it was time to stand up and be counted zero, all we got was the sound of crickets which is typical for the key board warrior crowd and those who bitch about local government in El Paso. If Charlie and others do not like the corruption just maybe they may wish to engage the people locally that are suppose to be watching the hen house Wiles and Esparza their running for reelection this year. Also if Charlie is so sure about the corruption then engage the local FBI office and let’s see how far he gets. Then again I am sure he and others won’t that would mean they would have to put themselves on the line and maybe suffer retaliation which believe me it happens. mamboman3 we did not win on our criminal complaints but did win on the civil complaint and wrote all the complaints our self. The D A’s office set on the criminal complaint until the statue of limitation run out. Now if we had been able to spend fifty to a hundred thousand dollar the out comes would have been much different. We did try and get a lawyer ,said to be one of the best in EL Paso to help but he wanted ten thousand dollars up front just to get started and we just didn’t have that kind of money..
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Thank you Manin the Moon for the info. I understand your frustration and hope that these discussions have the end result of coming to some plan(s) of action that will lead to a betterment of our local governing bodies and the way they do things. Although many of us believe they could be criminal acts, that will remain to be seen and for now I’m speaking out here, to city council, and to whoever will listen of the things I believe need to be done better with transparency and with constituents’ involvement.
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Neither are our taxes although we always hear it is free money
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