Maybe delay is a good thing.
Take a look at this picture of what our new westside pool will look like if they ever get around to building it:
Kind of Cold War Soviet bland if you ask me.
We deserve better
Brutus
Westside pool project in trouble again
September 13, 2015As Gomer Pyle used to say “surprise, surprise, surprise!”
Item 13.2 on city council’s Tuesday, September 15, 2015 consent agenda reads:
Request rejection of all proposals received for Solicitation No. 2015-727R for Construction of Westside Pool as recommended by the Purchasing & Strategic Sourcing and Capital Improvement Departments.
It is no surprise that the backup information does not give us a reason.
Evidently seven local firms placed bids.
We approved the quality of life bonds in 2012. It is now three years later.
Could it be that the people who put the bond proposals together were wrong? City council already killed some projects that we had approved so that they could fund this swimming pool.
We deserve better
Brutus
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City government | 
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Posted by Brutus
Weakening the mayor
September 11, 2015The proposed changes to our city charter are more sweeping than we are being told.
We already have a weak mayor form of government. The mayor cannot vote on items except in the case of a tie. On week-to-week items that makes the mayor less important than the city representatives.
One of the few powers that the mayor has left is when dealing with the city attorney. The mayor appoints and terminates a city attorney as long as he has the votes of the majority of city council.
Proposed amendment number six would make the council responsible for the appointment and termination of the city attorney (without the mayor’s involvement) and the mayor would not be able to veto the termination of the city attorney.
We deserve better
Brutus
9 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
Motion to enable conflicts of interest
September 8, 2015Here’s another proposed charter amendment that you will get a chance to vote on at the November 3, 2015 election.
Should Section 3.3 A of the City Charter, relating to the prohibitions regarding public employment by City Council members and City employment by former City Council members, be repealed?
Under the existing charter city representatives cannot hold any other public office or be on a public payroll. They also cannot be employed by the city until they have been out of office for at least a year.
Conflicts
The existing rules avoid the types of conflicts that might occur if a city representative was also a school board trustee or if the county judge also became a city representative.
As far as “City employment by former City Council members” goes it looks like Scrivener is still hard at work. Do they mean to imply that a former city council member can employ the city? Do they mean “City employment of former City Council members”? Would this set up a situation where a city representative voted the way the city manager wanted them to vote and in return the city representative got a city job after leaving office?
We deserve better
Brutus
2 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
Letter in the Times
September 7, 2015This from Helen Marshall:
I think he has a point…
City engineering problems may go back to ballpark
The ongoing critique and blame games concerning the problems within the City Engineering Department are troubling.
So far, most of the comments have been shallow and fail to recognize what may be the real problem. Much of the current situation may have originated when the ballpark project was begun.
At that time, the city engineer was tasked to head the ballpark efforts, a Herculean task which left him little time to fulfill his responsibilities of managing the department.
After completion of the ballpark, the engineer was offered a new job which did not allow him to repair any problems that may have developed while his attention was focused on the ballpark.
The other projects in the Engineering Department may have suffered from a lack of leadership at the top.
The people who generated this situation like former Mayor John Cook, former City Manager Joyce Wilson and former city Rep. Steve Ortega should have some responsibility for these failures.
The current city manager seems to understand this and seems to be doing a good job of minimizing the damage.
Alan Jones East Side
5 Comments | City government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
elpasospeak 
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