As it turned out the Mayor’s proclamation the other day was intended to recognize independents. In Clueless I mistakenly suspected that the city was trying to recognize our nation’s independence.
In this case it was independent businesses that were being recognized.
Shame on me for thinking that someone at the city could make a sloppy error.
Brutus
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Posted by Brutus
An astute reader sent us a link to this editorial.
In a nutshell, some folks in Dallas are proposing a change to their city charter that would require the ballot language used on bond elections to include two numbers: the principal amount, and the amount that the city will have to pay back (principal + interest).
The newspaper wrote in praise of the transparency being demonstrated by their city council.
We deserve better
Brutus
3 Comments | City government, County Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
The El Paso Times has known about the firing of the deputy city manager that we read about in Bridge to nowhere since at least June 21 of this year.
The Times wrote:
Deputy City Manager Jane Shang was put on paid administrative leave and is working from home on some assignments, according to a city document obtained by the El Paso Times.
Linda Bell Thomas, the city’s Human Resources director, said she could not comment specifically on why Shang was put on leave because it was a personnel matter.
Shang, who was appointed deputy city manager in April 2008, will remain on administrative leave through Dec. 31, Thomas said. Shang had been publicly accused by some council members of not responding to their requests and not working to push through projects they had requested.
The Times chose to tell us about the situation as part of an article about our new city manager coming to work.
One would think that the situation deserves it’s own story. Writing what they did in the middle of another article gives the Times the ability to say with a straight face that they covered the story.
Here we have a city employee one rank below city manager who got in a dustup with city council and in the process contradicted what the former city manager said before council. She has been sent home but is still being paid. In fact she will stay home and get paid through December 31 of this year, more than six months. After that she will stay on the city payroll until April 15, 2015 while using her accumulated vacation and sick time. At that point she will cease to be employed by the city.
We might rightly suspect that she is being kept on the payroll to let her earn more tenure in the city’s pension system. Then again that might not be the reason.
Is she being paid to keep quiet? Is she getting preferential treatment because of who she knows? Is the city afraid of what she might say?
Either way this is certainly not the way taxpayer money should be spent. The city has agreed to firing her in such a way that she will be paid out of the city pension fund for the rest of her life. That’s after she has been fired. Why?
Someone at the Times thought enough of the issue to obtain documentation. Then the story appears buried inside another article. Has management at the Times stepped in and thwarted the reporter?
We deserve better
Brutus
22 Comments | City government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
The Tuesday, June 24, 2014 city council agenda starts with MAYOR’S PROCLAMATIONS as you can see below:
I suspect that the proclamation is meant to honor the independence of our country, not a group of independents.
If however the city is honoring those who consider themselves politically independent, I applaud the mayor.
Otherwise maybe we should give Scrivener an award for diligence.
We deserve better
Brutus
2 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
The Tuesday June 17, 2014 city council agenda contemplates the issuance of $73 million more in certificates of obligation under item 6.1 on the regular agenda.
The item is attributed to our chief financial officer, the one that earlier in the meeting has an item to gloat about how transparent the city’s financial department has been.
From the backup material we learn that the certificates of obligation are for the city “to fund and reimburse itself for ongoing capital projects”.
Evidently the city has been using operating money to pay for “capital” projects.
Our award winning financial department has not chosen to tell us how much money they have already spent and on what. Yes they do provide a list of projects (like Country Club Road Construction) but they do not tell us which ones they have already spent money on. Some say that this item is on the agenda to pay for the work that they did to replace city hall.
Why is that important? Well evidently we already had enough money to pay for the projects. Why should we go into debt now and pay even more?
They might respond that they “borrowed” the money from an operating fund (like police or fire or parks) and now they feel guilty and want to give the money back.
They might respond that they really just want to raise cash for some other kind of spending that they think we need, whether we agree or not.
Either way, a transparent document would have told us what we have already paid for and what remains.
We deserve better
Brutus
4 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
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