According to the scope of work presented to city council when they were awarding the contract, the pavers at San Jacinto Plaza were to be installed on a mortar bed over a concrete foundation.
These pictures show what they have done:
We deserve better
Brutus
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City government | 
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Posted by Brutus
A dear friend sent me a copy of the book Democracy in the Dark/The Seduction of Government Secrecy. Reading the book got me to thinking about the secrecy that the city engages in.
Our city council appears to finally be paying attention to the situation at San Jacinto Plaza.
The other day council went into executive session for an extended period and when they came out they told us that they had been advised by the city attorney not to say anything.
They did say that they wanted weekly updates on the situation. Is this so that the public will be informed? The answer is no. The first weekly update was this week and was also in executive session. When council reconvened they did not say a word about the Plaza.
Could it be that the city fears a lawsuit from the contractor?
If that’s the case then the city might be culpable for the delay. If the contractor is right don’t we have the right to know? Shouldn’t we know so that we can demand that changes occur in the departments at fault?
What right does the city have to hide the truth from us?
If the city has done nothing wrong why are they hiding the facts from us? Are they afraid of a groundless lawsuit? That would be strange. The city legal department has used lawsuits to beat people out of what they deserve before.
Secrecy here serves no purpose other than to protect the city. They should make the facts public.
We deserve better
Brutus
6 Comments | City government, Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
The city manager’s 2015 Mid-year Operations Report highlights some of the accomplishments of city staff.
We would normally expect that the list of achievements for each section of city government would start with the most significant ones followed by the lesser but still important ones.
In the case of the economic development group a $40 million dollar capital expansion by one of our local employers along with 1,100 new jobs did not make it to the top of the list. Neither did the investment of $21.5 million by a company from out of town. That deal will bring us 445 jobs.
Instead, the list was topped with “Providing support for the partial relocation of El Paso Independent School District offices to the Downtown area.” Wow! Second on the list was “Coordinating the relocation of the Metropolitan Planning Organization offices to the Downtown area”.
See for yourself:
This tells us what the city thinks is important.
We deserve better
Brutus
12 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
This came in from Tim Holt:
Brutus,
16 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
The city manager’s Mid-Year Operations Report and recent events point out a set of disturbing alternatives. As you can see from the cover of the report, it was published in March of 2015.
The report tells us that the work at San Jacinto Plaza will be finished in April of 2015.
The Plaza looked like this at the end of March of 2015:
We all know that here at the end of May the Plaza is not finished. Why was the city manager’s report so blatantly wrong?
The two possible explanations that I can come up with are either he had no idea of the real situation at the Plaza or the accuracy of his report was not important to him. In other words he was either clueless or he chose to report something that he knew would not be true.
We deserve better
Brutus
6 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
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