Blame city council, not the city manager

April 5, 2017

Some have said that the city manager and his crew did the wrong thing in trying to foist an issuance of 40 million dollars of certificates of obligation primarily in order to fund shortfalls in the quality of life project funding.

Watching the video of the presentation before council we see that members of city staff had previously been asked by city council to come forward with suggestions as to how to fund the shortfalls.

Some might argue that city staff should have come forward with better suggestions.  They would be right.

However, from what we can see the city manager acted in accordance with the instructions that city council gave him.

Unfortunately we did not see council asking the city manager to provide solutions that did not involve spending additional money.

Many of us know that the problem here is that the prior city manager, mayor, and city councils provided us with under-estimates of what the projects would cost.  This was either an act of omission or commission but in either case the taxpayers are the ones that will pay for their acts.

It is unfortunate that we are not hearing discussions about de-funding some of the projects.  They might start with the arena and the cultural center.

Those are luxuries.  We have necessities like roads that are not being funded.

We deserve better

Brutus

12 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

City out of control

April 2, 2017

Let us know if we don’t have the facts here.

  • Ethics complaints were filed against the city attorney, the mayor, and some city representatives
  • The city attorney hired a law firm to act as outside legal counsel and to review the issues
  • The outside legal counsel dismissed the complaints against the people who hired him

Rabbit hole

We don’t see a provision in the city’s ethics ordinance for anyone other than the city attorney or the ethics review commission to dismiss a complaint.

If the outside counsel only made a recommendation to the ethics review commission we might suspect that he was doing his master’s bidding.  For the outside counsel to unilaterally dismiss the cases against his masters is a clear conflict of interest.

The chairman of the ethics review commission disagreed with the dismissal.

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Electric bill increases

March 31, 2017

El Paso Electric has filed a petition with the Texas Public Utility Commission asking for permission to increase it’s rates.

While they propose to raise the average monthly bill by 10% they are asking for permission to raise the rates they charge our public schools and city and county governments 15.5%.

Currently their “general service rate” (smaller commercial customers) is $.06927 in the summer and $.03408 in the winter (per kilo watt hour).

Schools and local governments pay $.10817 in the summer and $.09071 in the winter (per kilo watt hour).

Our local governments are already being charged more than our businesses.

This, of course, is added to our tax bills.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

4 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Mayoral forum

March 29, 2017

Leave a Comment » | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Stuck with the quality of life vote?

March 28, 2017

It would appear that we will not be allowed to have an election to revoke permission for issuing the bonds for the arena.

There may be more recent case law, but the most recent case we can find dealing with the issue is the 1932 appeals court case Orr v. Marrs.

In that case the voters approved a bond issue for a school district.  Subsequently three-fourths of the registered voters signed a petition asking that the bonds not be issued.  The school board agreed and issued an order rescinding the vote of the taxpayers.

From the court’s decision:

It is fundamental that voters of a district can only exercise such powers as are conferred by statute, either expressly or by implication. All powers not expressly or by implication conferred are excluded. The power to rescind the former vote for the bond issue not being expressly given by the statute, it may not be, it is believed, reasonably implied. The power to vote on a bond issue implies the power to vote against it, but not to vote to rescind it after it has been regularly authorized.

If the Legislature had intended to grant the right of withdrawal of the vote, it could easily have been expressed.

New laws may have been passed that would allow a vote to rescind a bond vote but we have not been able to find any.

Just don’t issue a contract

At this point it would appear that our only hope of not building the arena is for city council to fail to authorize construction.

If they do nothing the arena will not be built.

That would open up the possibility of a mandamus action that would seek to compel each city representative to vote to approve construction.  A problem there would be that each city representative could vote no on a proposed construction contract if they thought the contract was not in the public’s better interest.

We deserve better

Brutus

11 Comments | City government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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