I received the link below from Tim Holt and asked him if I could attribute it to him.
His response:
Sure..
Schools district spending per student:
2 Comments | 
El Paso Independent School District | 
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Posted by Brutus
This one is a surprise, even to me.
Item 15.2 on the Tuesday, April 19, 2016 city council agenda reads:
Discussion and action on the award of Solicitation No. 2016-513 Lease of Unmarked Police Vehicles to Acme Auto Leasing, LLC., for an initial term estimated award of $7,966,800. The award is to include a two (2) year optional amount of $5,311,200 for a total five (5) year award of $13,278,000.
That works out to more than 2.6 million dollars a year for unmarked vehicles. If you read the backup material you will see that they plan to get:
30 intermediate sedans, 2 door
30 intermediate sedans, 4 door
30 full size sedans, 4 door
30 full size pickups, 2 wheel drive, extended cab
30 full size pickups, 2 wheel drive, crew cab
30 full size pickups, 4 wheel drive, extended cab
30 full size pickups, 4 wheel drive, crew cab
10 passenger vans, mini
10 passenger vans, full size
That comes to 230 vehicles. According to their 2014 annual report the police department had 1,017 officers.
The money to pay for the vehicles appears to be coming from external grants. Other than about half a million dollars a year worth of confiscated funds that could be spent on something else, none of the money appears to be coming from our local pockets. Instead the money seems to be coming from our federal pockets.
I wonder who will pay for the gasoline?
Hopefully they won’t have Connecticut plates.
We deserve better
Brutus
5 Comments | City government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
I wrote this post the other day and had it scheduled for publishing:
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The Times ran a front page article the other day telling us about the home season opener at the ball park.
I suppose that promoting the team is a good idea.
I wonder though why I don’t recall seeing a front page article promoting the Miner’s new season.
On second thought I don’t need to wonder why.
We deserve better
Brutus
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Then the day after the original article the Times took more than half of their front page to tell us about the arrival habits of the fans.
They also ran an editorial that was an advertisement for the new food items available at the ball park.
We deserve better
Brutus
4 Comments | Ball park, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
I’m confused.
The Times reported the other day that the Texas Association of School Business Officials is telling EPISD that they have 70 more maintenance workers than The Association of Physical Plant Administrators suggests for schools.
According to the report EPISD has 198 maintenance workers but only needs 128.
If that is the case, why is it that many of our schools are in such disrepair that the district is considering demolishing them and building new facilities?
We deserve better
Brutus
11 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
The Times published two articles in their Saturday, March 2, 2016 edition about the mess at the city’s purchasing department.
In the first the Times points out that city staff wants to cancel a request for qualifications for services to manage the construction of their quality of life projects. Once again the city has asked companies to spend significant amounts in the hope of getting business only to have the city cancel the process once it has the vendor’s financial numbers. You can read the whole article here.
I suspect that the winner here would not have been who the city wanted and so cancelling the bid is a way to regroup and bring the issue back up when they think that we have forgotten.
Some potential bidders will not even respond to a city request for bids because they feel their chances of winning good business are nill.
In another article, “Questions surface over city engineering bid” the Times points out that in 2014 the city conducted an accelerated bid process for engineering services that was cancelled after their presumed favorite was not the best choice.
The city’s procurement process is often not fair. It is often rigged in such a manner as to make their choice of vendor the winner. They use different tricks but the result is frequently the same, either their choice of vendor wins or they cancel the bid.
We’ll write more about the specific tricks they use in future posts.
We deserve better
Brutus
1 Comment | City government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
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