Latest ball park numbers

August 16, 2015

Our  city council met back on March 17, 2015 in their special form as the Downtown Development Corporation.

We have written before about them not posting their minutes.  Don’t look.

In this most recent meeting they got to look at the 2015 financial projections.

You might recall being told that the ball park would not cost us any money at all.  Revenues would pay for it we were told before we voted to increase Hotel Occupancy Taxes.

Then as things started to crystalize we were told that we would have to subsidize the ball park with general fund revenues up through 2018.  The only people that can argue with a straight face that those funds are not property tax funds (which they are not allowed to use for this project) are our city officials.

In the March report we now are being told that the subsidies will have to continue until 2023.

The report also shows the cost of the ball park (before financing) at $76,020,750.

How can that be when on June 18, 2013 council made a big show of telling us that our cost would be $64,000,000 and not a penny more?  Well, the team coughed up another $12,020,750.  That brings us to the $76 million number.

What they don’t talk about is that they actually got $65,073,891 from the sale of the bonds instead of $64,000,000.  Then  also took $1,857,868 from previous Hotel Occupancy Tax collections making a total of $2,931,759 more than the promised $64 million.  They used that money to pay for public art and bond issue costs.  Both projects were directly related to the ball park but needed to be removed to maintain their story that we were only spending $64 million.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Pie in the sky

August 15, 2015

El Paso Inc.  published an article the other day that told us that our airport has had a 20% decline in traffic since 2006.

At the same time we are spending $45 million to build a new expanded rental car facility.  In New and de-proved we pointed out that our previous chief financial officer told city council that they should expect a 1% increase in vehicle rentals each year and that the increase would help pay for the new garage.

In Airport wrong, not Wright Brownfield gave us the story.

To add insult to injury the airport took half of our short term parking away to facilitate the construction.

The truth has come out now and we can see again the damage done by the previous regime.

We deserve better

Brutus

7 Comments | City government, El Paso Inc. | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Cable or cabal?

August 14, 2015

Is there no end to this mess?

The city manager announced a week or so ago that he was going to shake up the capital improvement management team.  He called upon the lady who runs our airport to head the team.  Now the city will do a better job.

This week we saw a presentation about the status of San Jacinto Plaza made to city council by the new boss.  This was the cover sheet of the presentation:

sanjacinto08042015

We were told that the project will have to wait while a specially engineered cable is manufactured and delivered from Germany.  No one has told us how we got into a situation where what we are building is so exotic that we had to go to Germany.

The cable is one of several that will fasten the pavilion cover to the special columns.

The picture above does not show columns or a cover for that matter.

Is this a sign of things to come?

We deserve better

Brutus

17 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Higher standards

August 13, 2015

I’m still thinking about the land deal that we wrote about the other day in Privileged few.

The result of the deal is, I think, a good solution.  The city continues to have two easements on the property, one being for sidewalks and the other for utilities.  The property has no apparent value to anyone other than the building owners.  The community will benefit from the improvements that the owners have promised to make.

The part that bothers me is how they did it.  A city council member asked that the item be taken out of order from the agenda, presumably because the owner’s representative was more important than the other people waiting to be considered by city council.  The public never heard the owner’s name.  It is a high profile one–one that has been at the center of several controversies lately.

The property was sold for $10.  You can argue that it is worthless to anyone other than the owner but that would just be an argument.  An appraisal should have been done and the property should have been sold for the appraised amount.  By itself the property is probably of little value but combined with the buildings it adjoins it is probably worth more.

Some will argue that the way it was handled was the most efficient one.  In this case we should not be talking about efficiency.  Instead the focus should be on public perception.  If the deal had been for the fair market value of the land and the item had been handled in order from the agenda, the citizens would have seen a city government acting transparently and responsibly.  Instead we have the stigma of another special interest getting their way.

It seems to me that they ignored two of the city’s stated goals:

5.) Promote Transparent and Consistent Communication Amongst All Members of the Community
6.) Set the Standard for Sound Governance and Fiscal Management

Doing this deal the right way would not have cost much money or time.  The owners would have done their reputation some good.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

3 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Capital Improvements Department

August 12, 2015

This came in from Helen Marshall:

Did you notice that when you tried to look at the San Jacinto Plaza cam, it is managed by “Capital Improvements Department?”  Mr. Gonzalez has axed engineering and created a new department; city council was informed but has not discussed or approved this.  The new department has “reached out” to private corporations HNTB and Freese and Nichols.  Interesting that HNTB has moved its El Paso offices from the Eastside into the Mills Building.  At least the HNTB employees will get a good view of what is not happening at the Plaza in front of the Mills Building….

http://www.elpasoinc.com/news/local_news/article_9d277082-3f7c-11e5-9de9-0bee4b5844ee.html

 

5 Comments | City government, El Paso Inc. | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »