The voters have spoken.
Both bond issues passed.
Approximately 9% of the registered voters came out to vote.
The bonds passed with roughly 59% voting in favor.
That means that about 5% of the voters committed us to $838 million in debt.
In this case we don’t deserve better.
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Shame,shame, SHAME!
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Sadly, it is true. We have the government that we deserve.
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The El Diario got it right yesterday – “Voters Guarantee More Debt for El Paso.”
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that’s 59% El Pasoans who aren’t paying attention.
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It’s the non-voters who are not paying attention and that’s number is probably more like 90%.
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Or put another way, 18000 people in a city of 843,000 thought this was a good idea. But out city leaders will be touting that this was overwhelmingly approved.
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Actually, the total votes cast was around 31,000, in a city of less than 700,000.
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It’s truly amazing, unbelievable that the EDUCATED people of El Taxo let this very SMALL number of uneducated, uninformed people vote the City, TAXPAYERS, BILLIONS$$$$ into MORE debt, goaded by lies, misinformation from Public Officials, corrupt politicians and in the process vote THEMSELVES a tax INCREASE. WHO do they think is going to pay for all this LIES, BS for the next 100 years or so? WHO is going to provide the MONEY, bail El Taxo out of IMMINENENT Bankruptcy??
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I read where the El Paso Police received Political Contributions of $40,000 and spent 32,799.52 to get the Bond approved. Well the city gave them a good raise so why not but the votes. Also I read where the Mayor is adding $70 million dollars to the arena cost so that he expects to spend $250,000,000 on the downtown arena. What a great good old boys network we have in this city. I am sure Hunt is happy about the mayor raising the money for the arena.
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Less than 8% of registered voters showed up this week.
The City of El Paso’s $413,000,000 public safety bond was voted on by about 31,000 people and passed by a margin of about 6,000 votes. Coincidentally, the City employees about 6,000 people. Opponents of the bond started in the hole by several thousand votes because local government employees almost always support more spending because they see it as protecting their jobs. They also get time off to vote.
YISD’s $425,000,000 school bond passed 6,233 to 4,532. YISD employs 7,602 people. Consider that only 11,000 people cared enough to vote on a decision to spend nearly a half billion dollars. That is nearly $70,000 per yes vote.
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Ugg
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Woody Hunt is playing this city like a piano. The gang here looked out over the landscape, demographic, and money hungry as they are , realizing how all could work to their benefit made their moves. They started forty years ago. Sadly, few pushed back. The gang was betting on it. Just like the drug dealers in Juarez made their moves for their benefit, misplaced families, destroyed the traditions and culture of a place for financial gain. Who cares about true culture, family, legacy, decency, integrity, compassion when you can have all the money and power? Rome wasn’t built in a day although it was burned down in one. If nobody votes, this is not a democracy, and nothing these people have done is overwhelming approved.
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Next time you see Woody, ask him why so few of his businesses and employees are based here in El Paso. He wants taxpayers to subsidize his sports enterprises and shiny new tower because he says all of those things will attract other companies to El Paso, but he has been unwilling to move more of his own businesses to El Paso. Paul Foster also moved Western Refining’s corporate offices to Arizona years ago. The reason influential people didn’t push back is because they wanted to cozy up and get a piece of the action.
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Hunt employs over 7000 people.
Ask him why he has only created 200 local jobs
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The only time I see him is when he is driving around in his Mercedes looking for something else to uproot for profit.
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We should re-write the criteria by which a bond can be approved. There needs to be a 75% turnout of registered voters involved. This way, at least 37.5% of the registered voters will need to vote in favor of the spending.
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It may be easier to require bond initiatives shall only occur during a regular election of the Mayor.
This way at least a bond is decided on a ballot with both a Mayoral candidate and a Presidential election which is typically the highest turnout.
Definitely prohibit special Bond elections in off-year and non-Mayoral regular election years across the board or at least limit the amount that can be asked for in a special election to less than $50 million.
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4 ½ years after the 2012 Quality of Life bonds were approved by the voters, City Council has approved over $330 Million in bonds in a period of less than two years. Earlier this year, the Public Safety Bond was actually part of a much larger bond project that was almost 1 Billion in bonds.
The remaining projects not included in the Public Safety Bonds; $178 Million for Public Safety Vehicles, 260 Million for Street Improvements, $71 Million for Public Health and $10.9 Million for Animal Services. It his highly likely that many of these projects may be candidates for Certificates of Obligation by the next trigger happy Mayor and City Council.
We need a new mayor and council that support issuing CO’s only in emergencies and not to supplement over budget bond projects.
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Why do they NEED high-dollar “Public Safety” vehicles? Just another scam by the corrupt politicians. There are virtually NO Police on the streets of El Taxo. Look around, we all know it’s true. They just going to have mechanics from the motor pool drive them around the city so that it looks like “Public Safety, POLICE”, MONEY?. Just another tax, waste, spend, tax some more by politicians scamming “Us stupid, ignorant peons”??
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