Item 22.2 on the Tuesday, May 17, 2016 regular city council agenda would allow the city manager to spend more than $500,000 at a time from the Region 19 buy board without taking the purchase to city council if passed.
No bidding, no fuss, no muss.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Actually, that does save time and money. The BuyBoard is a cooperative purchasing agreement, so the vendors on it have already be “pre-bid” putting in the best price. There are many of these across the state, all designed to save time mostly, so that govermental agencies do not have to waste time with a bidding process.I believe any vendor can become a part of these agreements. It is the power of large scale purchasing vs. small scale purchasing For instance, the prices on Buyboard SHOULD reflect the price if EVERY organization in the Region 19 service area were purchasing the product, as opposed to just one purchasing. Here is more information about BuyBoard: https://www.buyboard.com
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I have seen items on the Texas buy boards that had the same price for 18 months and computers and printers go down in that length of time. Besides that you have to pay them for their service while still keeping employees hired to do the same thing.
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Damn who in El Paso government wouldn’t like a half million dollar slush funds with little to no over sight to spread around to good buddies in the community.Just get on the list and let the good times roll.
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The limit is already at half a million.
This item would make it unlimited.
Brutus
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And the that limit is per pop, not aggregate. Right?
Half a million here, half a million there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money, but then they think there is a limitless amount of tax money to be had from us minions.
Why is anyone surpised? This is the same city council that gave the city manager the authority to unilaterally negotiate and sign contracts for the purchase of real estate for a new downtown arena.
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This is chicken feed compared to what EPISD does with their money. Check out the board meeting Nov 17 where they give the Superintendent the power to spend any way he wants, and any amount he wants as long as it is spent using one of over 12 buy boards. Also local policy Cl thrown out and none of the buys have to come back to trustees. It is only for about 14 million. A license to steal!
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If you want to look at the board meeting it is Item 10B1 and 10B2 and what made it even funnier was the reason they gave for needing this authority. The TEA knocked 30 days off of the time to spend the money so the EPISD said they needed this authority so they would not lose any money by not spending it on time. They have until August 31 2016. The board still gets information that is not fully correct.
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It all good people! So the city is now in the slow spiral of death from debt it can’t recover from it does not matter let the good times roll right to bankruptcy. El Paso can become the Detroit or Flint of the southwest.
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Is this the same city manager they’ve been investigating for possible ethics violations? Surely city council wouldn’t give even more financial freedom to a person whose ethics and performance they’ve been questioning.
After a lot of self-serving grandstanding by members of city council during the Gonzalez & Romero circus, it’s back to business as usual.
Next up will be another raise for the city manager.
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