elpasospeak

The special city council meeting the other day was a disgrace.

Any business thinking about relocating to El Paso would have second thoughts if they had witnessed it.

Most of the meeting consisted of city staff telling us that there past projections on projects were woefully wrong.  They simply will need more money to complete the projects.

Interspersed between items we saw various city representatives and citizens praising or condemning either the city manager or a city representative.

We even had a former city representative appear.  In her best speaking out of both sides of the mouth style she criticized our old “strong mayor” form of government and then criticized our city manager for doing the same things.

The end result of the meeting is that we will be spending a lot more money for the quality of life projects and what little street maintenance we are doing.

We deserve better

Brutus

Referring to the Monday, January 25, 2016 special city council meeting, Helen Marshall sent this in:

I made the mistake of attending today’s Council.  What a disaster. 

The January 2016 meeting of the Mass Transit Department Board had some more bad news.

Sun Metro’s ridership for the first quarter of their fiscal year (September through November) dropped another 7.5% when compared to the same quarter of the prior year.  Costs went up by almost 6%.

At the same meeting they considered increasing the contract for preliminary design services for the Dyer Brio to $2,276,481.00

This is just like our airport.  Let’s spend more when volumes are going down.

We deserve better

Brutus

City staff made a presentation at a city council meeting the other day that addressed our streets program.

Way back in 2012 council approved $136,000 to start to fix some of our streets.  As it turns out the $136,000 did not include a few things:

Maybe we should feel lucky that the cost estimates included some asphalt.  How could a reasonable person present the $136,000,000 without providing for these things?

What will the total come to?  Take a look at the very next chart in the presentation:

The chart above still leaves off cost items that could be significant.

We deserve better

Brutus

City council will have another “special” meeting Monday, January 25, 2016.  They like to handle really important issues at “special” meetings since so few members of the public even know about them.

This meeting is being called to discuss and take action on four issues that are important to us as citizens.

1. Approving a list of projects constituting the “City of El Paso Street Infrastructure Capital Plan”
2. Approving a list of projects constituting  the “El Paso Quality of Life Bond Issue FY2020 Plan”
3. Presentation and discussion on debt modeling for capital projects.
4. Discussion and action regarding a resolution authorizing the City Attorney to sign an amendment to the Engagement Agreement by and between the City of El Paso and Ross Fischer for the purpose of increasing the project budget and new law firm name.

Pretty important

Each of these issues will impact the citizens significantly.  We should be able to give council our thoughts about what they are going to do.

There is a problem though.  We don’t know what they are thinking about doing.

No backup material

Even though city ordinance 018031 requires the backup material to be provided by noon on the Thursday before the meeting, nothing has been posted on the city’s web site as of Friday when this article was being written.

Ordinance 018031 makes this statement:

“WHEREAS, the public is entitled to know in advance which subjects will be discussed and acted upon at City Council meetings so that the public can provide or request additional information, communicate with Council members, arrange for themselves or others to attend Council meetings, and otherwise prepare themselves to express their opinions regarding action of the City Council;”

I’d call the City Clerk and ask that she get the information posted but, as we know, the city is closed on Friday.

So much for transparency.

We deserve better

Brutus