elpasospeak

Item 7.1 on the March 3, 2015 city council agenda indicates the sad state of affairs at our engineering and purchasing departments.

The city went out to bid for the Zoo’s African Wild Dog Exhibit.  Three firms responded with bids.

Now the city wants to reject all of the bids and start over.  This language is part of the agenda backup material:

Recommend rejection of all bids.  Upon further review of all components of the bids submitted various factors were identified:  the Competitive Sealed Proposal Process was not the most effective bidding mechanism for selecting a qualified contractor for this project, references in the technical specifications with regards to the requested qualifications could have been better identified, and the past performance evaluation does not clearly represent projects associated with the requested technical qualifications.  The project will be re-bid as lowest, responsible bidder highlighting the required experience

In other words, we want someone else.  The city clearly has the right to reject all bids and start over.

In this case they did a poor job defining the experience that they were requiring and ended up wasting the time and money of three local businesses.

Let’s see how this situation supports the achievement of some of the city’s stated goals:

We deserve better

Brutus

City council has authorized the formation of an “Ad Hoc Charter Advisory Committee”.

Our mayor told us that he would bring the issue of the type of government (city manager or strong mayor) to the voters at the next election where city charter amendments can be made.

Looking at the video of the city council meeting the other day it appears that our city manager and at least two of our representatives want to limit the issues that the charter committee considers.

They spoke of making changes that cause inefficiencies in city government.  There are evidently parts of the charter that contain language that was more appropriate when we had a strong mayor form of government but are now inconsistent with the city manager form of government.

If they are successful in limiting the ideas that the committee can consider then we probably will not be given an opportunity to vote on the form of government that we have.  The possibility of returning to two year terms for the representative instead of the new four year terms probably won’t be considered either.

The city manager should stay out of this issue.  He has a conflict of interest.

The mayor should see to it that we get what he promised.

We deserve better

Brutus

We now have a flap about the cultural center that we voted for as part of the 2012 quality of life bonds.

City council passed an ordinance that called for the quality of life bond election.  The ordinance specified the language to be used on the ballot.  Evidently the ordinance specified a “Hispanic” cultural center but the language on the ballots specified a “Heritage” cultural center.

Was this done deliberately?  Did someone change the language in the ordinance with the belief that the changes would make the issue more likely to pass?  Who is responsible for making certain that the two documents are precisely the same?

We now hear that our city attorney believes that the language on the ordinance should decide the issue, not the language that we voted on.  Incredible!

How many of us would go to a restaurant and order a steak and then not object when brought tuna?

We have a problem here with how the wording was changed.  That should be looked into and the culprit should be exposed.  How can this not be fraud?

We also have a problem with a city attorney that once again thinks that the voters should be ignored.

We deserve better

Brutus

The public art plan for 2015 recently presented to city council was informative.

We plan to spend $250,000 at the zoo Chihuahuan desert exhibit.  The explanation is “An artist to be selected to work with the zoo administators and designers to explore opportunities in the area.”

Explore opportunities.  This money is not even for the design or delivery of a project.  It is going to pay for talking about doing something.

The plan reminded us that they city paid $240,000 for an artist to design the leaves that adorn the Brio stops on Mesa.

Those leaves are not the right ones for the Alameda Brio project.  The city wants to spend $300,000 for someone to design something more Alameda-ish.

And the leaves are evidently appropriate for the Dyer Brio project either.  They want $300,000 to give to someone for a special design for the northeast.

How long does it take to design something like this anyway?  Does the artist sit at a desk day after day and generate version after version of a proposed design?  Would this take a full time effort for a whole year?  At $300,000 how long would most of us have to work?

This thing is evidently going to be placed at the UTEP round-about by April of this year:

No kidding.  All that for only $500,000.

We’re not against public art, but at these prices?

We deserve better

Brutus

Just south of the Glory Road transfer station we have a deluge of buses coming from the west side heading downtown.

The 11 route extends from the Camelot apartments on Stanton all the way to the downtown transfer station.  The bus comes to each bus stop every 65 minutes.

Route 14 covers from Redd and Westwind to the downtown transfer station.  A different bus comes by every 35 minutes.

The 15 runs from the west side transfer station to the downtown transfer station.  These buses arrive every 35 minutes just like the 14.

We also have the Brio that runs on that route every 10 minutes during peak times.

The result is that we have a bus every 6 minutes from near Glory Road headed downtown.

We could do better

Routes 11, 14 and 15 could drop their passengers off at Brio stations and serve their neighborhoods more frequently.

Route 11 would take 15 minutes to run from Camelot to Glory Road (with a deeper neighborhood penetration) if the bus would drop its passengers at the Glory Road transfer station and then head back into the neighborhood.  It could service each stop (one inbound, the other outbound) every thirty minutes instead of every 65 minutes.

Route 14 could drop its passengers at a Brio stop on Mesa at Festival and cut its travel time by 1/2 or double its frequency in the neighborhood.

The only reason Route 15 makes sense to me at this point is that the Brio does not stop at regular bus stops.  The distance between the Balboa Brio stop and the Festival stop is 1.2 miles.  If you live in the middle you have a half a mile hike to catch a Brio.  Between the Monticello Brio and stop and Executive Center you have about 1.5 miles.  Contrary to what the Sun Metro web site says, stations are not “about a mile apart”.  The 15 could turn around at Glory Road leaving its passengers to take the Brio downtown.

Clang, Clang, Clang goes the trolley

When they start building the streetcar lines Oregon street will be a mess.  The river of buses go both north and south on Oregon and a major part of the road will be closed for construction.

Once the construction is over the buses will have to swerve out of their lane in order to pass the streetcars that have stopped to pick up or drop passengers off.

We deserve better

Brutus