Sinkhole City

December 23, 2019

This came in from Max Grossman:

Friends,
On December 10, Moody’s Investment Service announced that in the event of a recession of similar severity to the 2008-09 downtown, El Paso will be one of four cities (including Detroit) in which “adjusted net pension liabilities will rise by more than 100% of revenue.” I guess we had better pray that the economy holds up and that the stock market does not suffer a major reversal, otherwise we’re toast!
Earlier this year, State Data Lab, a subsidiary of Truth in Accounting, whose mission is “to educate and empower citizens with understandable, reliable, and transparent government financial information,” declared that “El Paso is a Sinkhole City without enough assets to cover its debt.” And that was based upon financial data from 2017!
I have stated it many times and will state it again. The City Manager, Mayor, and City Council Representatives have placed us on a financial path that could lead to disaster. Even as our homestead tax burden is second only to Detroit, they still insist that our government should be in the entertainment business, providing us with stadiums and waterparks.
Lord help us.
Max
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We deserve better
Brutus

15 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Truth in advertising

December 22, 2019

City staff recently made a presentation to city council on their new Strategic Regional Marketing Plan.

I think that their logo is kind of clever.

They start with the fact that three cities dominate the region:

Then they join them into one combined presentation:

In the spirit of truthfulness maybe the white square in the middle should be black to represent the economic black hole that we live in.

Their subtext could include:

  • Spend a night in El Paso, we have the highest hotel motel tax rate in the state of Texas.
  • Buy a home in El Paso, we have the second highest homestead property tax rate of the 50 largest cities in the United States
  • Come to Juarez, most people don’t get killed

Las Cruces is looking pretty good.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Better care, less cost

December 20, 2019

“Constructive” suggested the other day that the blog discuss areas where the city could cut services and expenses.

The fire department sends pumper trucks and sometimes ladder trucks on ambulance calls.

The justification that I have heard is that sometimes the ambulance crews need physical assistance.

Lubbock uses “fox trucks”.  They are pickup trucks equipped with medical response equipment that can arrive before an ambulance has time to get to the scene.  Pickups are faster than ambulances.  Ambulances are faster than fire trucks.

In New York city they call them “fly-cars”.  Paramedics in sport utility vehicles get to the patient and start rendering care while waiting for an ambulance to transport the patient.

The patient gets faster treatment, the city spends less money handling the call.

We deserve better

Brutus

6 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Put the streets on a diet

December 19, 2019

Further to “Constructive’s” idea that we list city services and expenses that could be cut, let’s address the width of our streets.

The city forces developers to build unnecessarily wide streets that eventually get re-striped and effectively get made narrower to traffic.

Among other deleterious effects:

  • Less land gets sold to homeowners and thus fewer homes are built on the land.  These lost homes would be paying property taxes to our local governments.
  • The wide streets eventually have to be repaved.  It costs more to repave a wide street than a narrow one.
  • Housing becomes less dense thus increasing the cost of public services because of the extra distances that have to be traveled.
  • The city has to paint more lines on the street in order to “calm” traffic

We deserve better

Brutus

 

14 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Thanks sucker

December 18, 2019

City council and city staff are making it quite clear what they believe our role as taxpayers is.

We are no more than mules who haul our tax money down to city hall and give it to them to spend as they wish.

After the $416 million public safety bond was approved city staff told city council that they did not want a citizen advisory board to participate in the bond spending.

The most common objection to creating the board seemed to be that the board would delay construction.

They probably think that they are smarter than all of the citizens of the city and that no lowly citizen could give them any advice that might make the projects better.

Pay attention to the fact that our mayor voted to break the tie and deny the creation of the board.

Shame on him.

We deserve better

Brutus

12 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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