Council uber all

September 24, 2014

El Paso Inc. wrote in their Monday, September 22, 2014 post (www.elpasoinc.com) that Uber is now operating in El Paso.

Uber is a jitney service where people can use their smart phone to arrange a ride instead of taking a taxi.  Users say that the service is quicker and more convenient than using our traditional taxi companies.

Part of the Inc.  post included this:

“I’m all for it,” said city Rep. Claudia Ordaz, City Council’s newest and youngest member. “I think this is a good opportunity for the city to look at the vehicle-for-hire-regs and maybe revamp them so that services like this can abide by the rules.”

Our city representative says that she’s all for the new service, even though it appears to be illegal to do this in El Paso.

Rules

Many of our elected officials seem to have difficulty remembering that our laws must be obeyed.  If we don’t like them we should change them.  If this service is truly illegal in El Paso, then what she said is irresponsible.  A better response might have been “the City needs to look into how we want to handle this.  I think that I would vote for an ordinance that would allow Uber to operate legally”.

Instead what we saw was a city representative once again deciding that they have the authority to violate or encourage others to violate our laws.

We deserve better

Brutus

8 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Inc. | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Progressive regression

September 22, 2014

While doing research for the post about El Paso Country Club’s original location I ran across the Sunday, August 30, 1914 edition of The El Paso Morning Times.

The newspaper was applauding El Paso’s growth.  According to the article the population of El Paso 30 years prior (1884) was 500 people.  By 1914 it was over 60,000 people.  Yikes!

The newspaper printed “a brief list of some of the things that El Paso has”.  One item on the list caught my eye:

“Thirty-seven miles of finely paved streets”

Oh for the good old days!

It seems that our progressives have taken us backward.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

12 Comments | City government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Wrong date and time at the Times

September 20, 2014

Our El Paso Times continues to misinform its readers.

The Monday, September 15, 2014 edition has a front page article that claimed:

“The city will consider making a zoning change today that would restrict where payday and car loan companies can set up shop.

The zoning amendment is up for discussion and action at today’s 8 a.m. City Council meeting.”

Not true

City council meets on Tuesday.  This Monday a “Legislative Review Meeting of the Whole” was scheduled.

The meeting was to start at 9 a.m.

No action can be taken during the Monday meeting.  They must wait for a city council meeting to take action.

The issue is scheduled for a public hearing before council Tuesday, September 16.  Members of the public should express their thoughts about the issue at the Tuesday meeting.  I wonder if anyone attended the Monday meeting intending to speak.

The online edition of the Times contained the same mistakes earlier in the morning of the 15th.  In reviewing the online edition while writing this post I see that the Times has corrected its errors online.  This was done without telling us that they changed their article.

At least with the printed edition of the Times we have proof of what they publish.  With the online edition they evidently feel it is okay to change their story without telling us that they have made a change.

It’s hard to believe that the reporter does not know the difference between a city council meeting and a legislative review meeting.  Does that mean that the article was published too early?  With that being a possibility, why wouldn’t the reporter refrain from using the word “today” and instead write the actual date being referred to?

We deserve better

Brutus

 

4 Comments | City government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Supporting our charities

September 19, 2014

It will probably take a while to count up the money but I am eager to hear what local charities will be the recipients of the profits from the first season of baseball.  El Pasoans supported the team with over 8,000 attendees per game.

The team ownership went on record telling us that their profits would be donated to local charities back when the whole ball park issue was being sold to us.  This article in El Paso, Inc. told us “During the controversy over the plan to demolish City Hall to make way for the stadium, MountainStar Sports agreed to raise the city’s return on the stadium and to donate any profits it receives to local charities.”

We might reasonably expect that their first year expenses were higher than what will be normal.  There is no provision in their contract with the city to allow us to audit their books.  That’s the city’s fault.  I’m not saying that the owners will lie to us.  Quite to the contrary I expect that they will be honorable.

Let’s hope to see great benefit to our local charities.

We should not expect however what our former city representative and candidate for mayor told us to expect.  The El Paso Times  wrote this in an article:

“Both families understand that quality of life is part of the equation to making El Paso more competitive for jobs,” Ortega said, adding that the group has pledged the first 10 years of revenues to local charities.

Of course he was in office at the time so we should expect that he would not distinguish between profit and revenue.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

3 Comments | Ball park, City government, El Paso Inc., El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Digging a hole

September 18, 2014

I find irony in the fact that the city is trying to restrict access to payday lenders while the county has become a payday borrower.

The people in charge of our county hospital have let it  get into such bad shape that they need to borrow money now against next year’s property tax income.

According to the Times, things have gotten so bad over at the hospital that the hospital needs to borrow $20 million from next year’s $69 million in property  tax income.  That’s 30 percent of their paycheck.  Try that yourself.

According to hospital management if they are not allowed to borrow the $20 million they will lose out on $45 million from the feral government.  Evidently even the feds have financial standards — ones that we will not meet unless we take the payday loan.

Management wants to borrow the money now and pay it back February 28, 2015.  The cost will be $75,000, two thirds of it will be interest and one third loan origination costs.

Any one of us that told our bank that we need to borrow 1/3 of our salary for five months in order to make ends meet would be told no.  Not only no but let’s call your current loans since you are obviously in deep trouble and we might not get any of our money back.

It looks like our county hospital does not have to operate with a balanced budget.  Evidently they are allowed to borrow money against next year’s tax income.  What will happen if the city starts to use this technique?  Is this a new way to mortgage our futures?

We deserve better

Brutus

 

 

2 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Times, Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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