Increasing our debt

December 14, 2015

At today’s (Monday, December 14, 2015) special city council meeting one of the things that they plan to discuss is increasing the debt cap placed on the city.

Item 2 on the agenda reads:

Discussion and action regarding the proposed amendment to the City of El Paso Debt Management Policy to consider an increase to the debt cap.

Really very special

Why is this issue being discussed in a special city council meeting instead of a regular city council meeting?  Could it be that very few people attend the special meetings, often because they do not have items on the agenda?  Or maybe they know that the minutes of special council meetings are published much more slowly than those of regular meetings?

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

More financial fallacy

December 12, 2015

I doubt that there is any real possibility that our former city manager (who gets paid by the workforce commission) is planning to hire the former chief financial officer of the city to publish a report on our unemployment rate.

One thought is that they could  publish a negative unemployment rate with more people working than there are workers.  Since so many El Pasoans have to work more than one job to make ends meet one could use the formula:

Total number of jobs / Total number of workers

and come up with a number showing more than 100% of our people working.

It’s all good El Paso.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

4 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Cloak of darkness

December 11, 2015

Our city council is using yet another technique to hide their actions from us.

As we know the regular council meetings are video recorded.  Citizens can access the videos and see who said what.

They are having more and more “special” meetings.  Those are not recorded although many of them are held in the same room as a regular meeting.

Some topics handled in recent “special” meetings:

  • Ethics ordinance
  • Road pavement plan for the next few years
  • Bond advisor mess

We deserve better

Brutus

6 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Well done

December 10, 2015

I went for a ride this Sunday and ended up downtown for a while.

City of El Paso department of transportation workers were installing new traffic lights around San Jacinto Plaza.

What I saw was pleasing.

There were about 16 city workers there that day.

I never saw a single one of them idle.  They worked as a well orchestrated team with each one seeming to know what his part was and even watching the others to see if someone needed help with a heavy or awkward device.

They spoke with each other in English.

Adjacent to the project was our decimated plaza.  There was no one person working on that.

I tip my hat to the department of transportation.

Brutus

5 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

More to the bond story

December 9, 2015

With the story about us spending $22 million more for the ball park bonds because city council decided to hold off selling them until after their election we seem to have forgotten just how bad the bond situation is.

 

2013aTaxExemptBonds

According to this chart the city does not expect to pay any principal at all until August of 2023.  At that point they show a $17.6 million balloon payment.

Please don’t think that we are only facing $45 million in debt on these bonds.  They also sold ones that are not tax exempt and account for another $15.6 million.

2013bTaxableBonds

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | Ball park, City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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