Let’s talk but not fix the problems

July 3, 2016

Item 32.1 on the Tuesday, June 28, 2016 city council agenda discusses the results of the city’s annual audit.  It is marked “for notation only” meaning that council cannot take action after hearing of the problems.

Problems?

From the backup material:

• Financial Audit: A finding related to the City’s year-end closing procedures which were not adequately performed. Resulted in initial errors in year-end balances and required several audit adjustments and delayed the audit issuance.

• Grants Audit: Of the 8 housing projects selected for review by BKD, the City did not verify eligibility information for 3 housing projects within the past fiscal year. In addition, the City did not maintain and was unable to provide the tenant application files for one housing project, and therefore BKD was unable to verify the tenants’ eligibly and rent being charged to the tenant.

• Grants Audit: Of the nine housing project selected for testing by BKD, the City did not perform inspections of units as required on four housing projects during fiscal year 2015.

Let’s see:  wrong, late, unverifiable, and uninspected.

Those are pretty strong words coming from our external auditor.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Dopes

June 30, 2016

The Times continues to sink to new lows.

The Wednesday, June 29, 2016 issue headline was “Socorro man arrested in cocaine case”.

Ho hum.  If every cocaine arrest deserved a headline they would have to start issuing special editions.

More important

At the bottom of the front page they reported that our city manager has proposed a 2017 budget that would increase our taxes by 7 per cent.

Our mayor says he will veto it.

Thank you mayor.

We deserve better

Brutus

7 Comments | City government, El Paso Times | Permalink
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Council exerts some control

June 29, 2016

It appears that city council may have done the right thing in their May 31, 2016 meeting in regard to a proposed change to the outdoor lighting ordinance.

In Goose, not gander we wrote about the introduction of an amendment to an ordinance that would allow the city to ignore the rules that we have to follow when using outdoor lighting.

At the second reading of the ordinance on May 31 it was amended to exempt splash pads and the “airport corridor”.  That corridor starts with the egg beater things at Airport Road and I-10.

An assistant city attorney read the proposed ordinance changes to council and for the record.  She did not specifically say that the portion of the amendment that would allow the city to ignore the rules whenever they want was going to be removed.  Instead she stated that two new sections (one for the splash pads and the other for the corridor) would be added to the ordinance.

Watching the video many of us would assume that the new ordinance would only allow the two exceptions.

Then again you just cannot tell when dealing with these people.

For the time being (until we can read the final draft) it looks like the right thing has happened.

As a side note, it is hard to understand how when the law requires an ordinance to be read twice they can make changes at the second reading that make the ordinance different from what it was in it’s first reading.

Brutus

 

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Climbing to the top

June 28, 2016

After seeing that El Paso had the third highest residential property tax rate of America’s 50 largest cities in 2015, we set off to find out what it would take to get to number two or even to number one, the highest.

Milwaukee Wisconsin had the second highest rate in 2015 at 2.675%.  El Paso was third at 2.640%.

That means that our tax rate only needs to go up three and one-half hundredths of a percent to tie with Milwaukee.

Milwaukee’s rate went down in 2015 from it’s 2014 rate.  El Paso’s went up.

The Ysleta school district is in the process of selling $430 million that their voters authorized.

It appears that the El Paso school district is going to ask for permission to sell around $400 million of bonds.

The city is selling certificates of obligation and bonds.

Second place

Don’t be surprised if the 2016 numbers put El Paso in second place with the second highest residential property tax rate among America’s 50 largest cities.

Can we be first?

We would have to beat Detroit at 3.809%.

Who knows?  Our politicians are talented that way.

We deserve better

Brutus

10 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
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Failing so change the measurements

June 27, 2016

Item 28.1 on the Tuesday, June 28, 2016 city council agenda is another example of a failing project.

In August of 2011 city council awarded a four year grant to The Hub of Innovation.  The backup material contained this statement:  “This item is to approve funding for programs that encourage entrepreneurship, innovation and technology in order to create higher paying jobs within the city.”

Jobs

Job creation was an important part of the $4 million grant and the grant required the organization to come before council and demonstrate achievement of certain goals:

hubgrant

They were required to facilitate the creation of at least 224 full time jobs in the first four years.  That averages out to about 55 new jobs per year.

Then in August of 2015 city council approved a four year extension of the grant lowering the city’s contribution to $250,000 per year.

hubreport1

Few new jobs

The Hub’s first presentation to council under the extended contract has this slide:

hubreport2

It shows that they have only created 4.4 jobs out of the 12.5 that we should have seen in the first half of their year.

Their proposed solution is to change the requirements removing the hiring goals completely and replacing them with the requirement that they make more presentations as per the chart below:

hubreport3

We deserve better

Brutus

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