Things are slow in our local rental housing market.
The chart below came to us from RENTCafe.com at http://www.rentcafe.com/apartments-for-rent/us/tx/el-paso/.
Don’t look for growth in the rental tax base to save us.
Looks like “It’s all good” did not take hold.
We deserve better
Brutus
9 Comments | 
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Posted by Brutus
The Times recently reported that the EPISD superintendent was just given a $45,000 pay hike, “raising his salary to $303,000”.
The Texas Education Agency lists his base pay at $298,843 for 2015-2016.
Does that mean that today’s real number is somewhere around $350,000?
As it turns out the January 18, 2017 article in the Times was wrong. The superintendent’s salary was already at $303,000. A subsequent article in the Times used correct numbers without telling us whether it was the EPISD board president or the Times reporter who had made the mistake.
Then again maybe it was part of the Times editorial policy and not a mistake but a deliberate act.
As a reader pointed out yesterday, the superintendent also gets a $1,200 a month phone allowance. Some are more equal than others was a post that detailed other benefits in his first contract, some of which should get your attention.
The review of the superintendent’s performance was performed in closed session in a special meeting of the board that was held during working hours. Holding it at that time made it difficult for teachers or members of the public to attend.
The pay raise was subsequently approved in open session without any details.
We deserve better
Brutus
8 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
Isn’t it sad that the goals the EPISD board evidently set for the superintendent they hired in 2013 were a “balanced budget, finances and last fall’s passage of the $668.7 million bond issue”?
Many of us might have hoped that the school board would have given the superintendent the goal of improving the education of our children.
The school board president now tells us that “the district will be ‘laser-focused’ on students to improve scores, increase enrollment in college, the military or vocational certification and making sure that students are literate in two or more languages”.
Traditional dictionaries like Websters don’t seem to have gotten around to defining “laser-focused” so we rely here on urbandictionary.com. According to them the term means:
Intensely paying attention to a single object, concept, person, or activity to the exclusion of everything else.
So now which way will it be? Will the district finally ask the superintendent to pay attention to the education of our children or will he be asked to spend our bond funds the way the moneyed interests want the money spent?
We deserve better
Brutus
20 Comments | El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
We’ve never been to a presidential inauguration but from what we can see it is not something that the common man is usually invited to.
We would hope that with the promise to “clean house” the new group might keep things simple and short.
We deserve better
Brutus
13 Comments | Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
Two of our county commissioners were sworn in for their second terms January 1, 2017.
They were both unopposed.
Whether you like their past performance or not, wouldn’t we be better off if there was real competition for political offices in El Paso?
An article in the Times wrote this about one of them:
He said there are a lot of challenges in the coming years, including reducing the cost of jail operations, and reversing the tax burden from residential to commercial properties. He said he expects the county to work toward attracting new businesses to the area to improve the commercial tax base.
We have the third highest tax rates among the top 50 cities in the United States and are headed for second place.
Does that make us attractive to businesses?
We deserve better
Brutus
6 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
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