On the city council agenda for Tuesday, March 19, 2019 we have this resolution:
From the RISE web site:
With the inaugural event in June 2019, RISE has developed an innovative approach to identifying, developing and nurturing cycling talent in athletes of all ages and from all athletic disciplines.
Our overarching goal is to help these athletes become cyclists for life, and to help them achieve their personal cycling goals through the development of life skills, creation of a collaborative network of cycling experts, and improve athletic performance on the bike.
This is their inaugural event, yes the first time they have done this.
Evidently wanting to get in on a good thing the city is promising to pay the group $435,000 and to host the event for five years.
This might turn out to be a good thing but no one knows for certain. In particular we don’t know if we will want the company or the participants to come back after the first year.
By the way the city promised to do this back in November we are only learning about the money this week.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
lf l don’t understand this, l hope you’ll cut me some slack because l just woke up and and you’re hitting me with this tidal wave of illogic. So we’re going to pay a company which will train people to feel good about themselves when they jump on their bicycles, and eventually this will cause at least one of our own to win the Tour de France which will somehow benefit the rest of us 915ers. This is truly El Paso.
LikeLike
And from their website, it appears that this is just a two day conference at the convention center that will host speakers and do some testing on attendees. This also appears to be a startup organized by a SoCal marketing guy who lists a lot of folks on his website but doesn’t appear to have traditional job titles outside of a marketing team. Normally conference organizers pay a city for use of a convention center, not the other way around. It appears we have been seduced by a company needing money to host an event. Given that there appears to be no ”local” connection to EP, my guess is our site was selected because we were the only ones willing to pay for an event with no historical attendance numbers. It will be interesting to see how cyclists attending the event appreciate our dry heat in June. Not the best month to lock folks in for a longer EP vacation.
LikeLike
I’d say that some guy in SoCal knows just how to stroke elected reps in El Chuco.
LikeLike
Just more lie, deny, deceive, waste, tax, spend, waste some more. The Empire of CORRUPTION is going to FORCE taxpayers, working people in El Taxo, to PAY people to learn HOW to ride bicycles. These politicians, Public “Officials” are a bigger JOKE, than their original brain farts to create bicycle lanes all over El Taxo and make traffic even worse than it already was, is. Idiocy at it’s worst.
LikeLike
Our city clowncil is proving day after day that they should be wearing Walgreens red noses throughout the year.
LikeLike
What is the point of these events if we have to subsidize them so heavily? All we will ever get are events that require heavy subsidies now that everyone knows city council will give out taxpayer dollars to anyone that asks.
LikeLike
This is a taxpayer subsidy for downtown hotels that have already been given big tax breaks.
LikeLike
The El Taxo politicians, Criminal Empire, never tire of taking money from US. THEY can always increase OUR taxes and take MORE. Inherent corruption, El Taxo.
LikeLike
I cannot believe a half million for this. We had our own local race a few years back that was discontinued. This is an outrage.
The city should not be subsidizing races.
LikeLike
It is not a race and we still shouldn’t be spending money in this.
LikeLike
Everyone screaming about “socialism…” This is simply taking money from the lowly taxpayers, without asking them for approval, and funneling it to “businesses” of council’s choice (or maybe T-Rex has contacts there??…just like we are giving millions to Great Wolf to beg them to build a cheap “resort” here. What ever happened to the idea in capitalism that businesses took risks in order to create profit? The truly sickening aspect of all this is that there is simply no way to force Council, Mayor and Manager to STOP.
LikeLike
Precisely. The $400,000 gift to the cyclists is only one percent of the $40 million that we are going to end up gifting to Great Wolf. That is in addition to several million dollars worth of taxpayer-owned land they get to buy for about $20,000.
LikeLike