Texas waking up to problems with buy boards

May 15, 2014

Our local governments (particularly the city) have unfortunately been buying from buy boards instead of using competitive bidding.

Many of the buy board evaluations are little more than “beauty contests”.  Competitive pricing is frequently a minor component in the evaluation criterion if at all.  Some contracts are awarded because a seller offers X% discount off a manufacturer’s list price.  The fact that another manufacturer may have a lower list price is not part of the consideration.

While buying through a buy board allows an institution to “pick their favorite vendor”, the purchase seldom produces the best economic result.

Market conditions change and issuing a real bid for a product or a request for proposals for a service often can provide better economic and performance results than buying from a buy board.

The problem with bidding is that local governments have to do their jobs and that is too often an inconvenience to them.

Here in El Paso much of the remodeling of the various city hall buildings was done through buy board purchases and was not bid.  Schools in Houston benefited to the tune of 4% of the money that we spent since that was the fee that the buy board charged the vendor for the privilege of being listed on the board.  This happened because the city did not want to take the time to develop specifications and take the projects out to bid.  They were in a hurry to get out of the old city hall.

Turning around?

Now it seems that the Texas legislature is becoming aware of some of the problems with buy boards.  This  article talks about some of them, including the fact that vendors were allowed to write their own bid specifications.

For those readers that are new to this blog you can enter “buy board” in the search window on the right side of this page to see some of the articles that have been written about in the past.

They tell a story of waste, mismanagement, favoritism, and just plain unfairness.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

2 Comments | City government, County Government, Purchasing, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Arguing against the citizens

May 14, 2014

According to the El Paso Times our city council has met and decided to offer the job of city manager to the fellow from Irving.

It seems like he will fit right in over there since, as the Times has written,  he may have had “ethical lapses”.

The Times does a great job of pointing out that city council met in executive session to discuss the candidates.  They then came back into regular session and  adjourned without action.

At a press conference later in the day the city announced that it had directed their search firm to negotiate with the candidate.

Council cannot vote in executive session.  Evidently they did.

Enabler

Our city attorney has once again abandoned her responsibility to the citizens and is condoning what council has done.  The Times wrote:

City Attorney Sylvia Borunda Firth argued that negotiations can begin behind closed doors as part of the deliberation process and are not considered a final action. If negotiations are successful in this case, she said, the proposed contract will be up for council vote. The public vote to accept or reject the agreement would be the final action, she said.

High road

Our city attorney seems to consider the citizens to be her opponent.  She watches council violate their own rules as well as state rules regularly without stepping in.  Her trivializing of mistakes as “Scrivener” errors seems to me to be intellectually dishonest.

As far as open records are concerned, we all know her record.

Our elected officials can get away with many types of legal violations as long as they believe that their attorney has said that what they are doing is legal even if it is not.

I hope that when we change city attorneys we will get one who helps council to do the right thing.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

 

7 Comments | City government, Open Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Second round of rail crossing closures

May 12, 2014

They’re back.

Item 15.1 on the regular agenda of the May 13, 2014 city council meeting proposes the closing of yet another rail crossing in the five points area.  This time they are after Maple street.

The April 23, 2013 city council meeting had a long and contentious discussion about the closing of several other crossings.  The closures were made necessary in order for the ball park to be built.  Our city administrators failed to tell us that we did not own all of the land under our old city hall.  The railroad extracted the street closures as part of the deal to sell the city the sliver of land.

Train wreck explained parts of the issue.

Public outreach

At the 2013 meeting several people including the then superintendent of schools for the Ysleta district complained that they had not been informed about the closings.  The public asked for more time.

Some city council members as well as members of city staff maintained the position that the city had done a remarkable job of reaching out to the public.  Another city council member pointed out the truth.  The city had conducted meetings about “quiet zones” for the railroad.  Quiet zones can be created without closing rail crossings.  The city failed to tell the members of the public that the kind of quiet zone they were talking about would close streets.

Once the die was cast some city council members repeatedly asked city staff for assurances that there would be plenty of public notice if further closings were going to be contemplated.  City staff made the appropriate promises and assurances.

Surprise, surprise!

Just one year later the city and the railroad are back at the table.  They want to close Maple street.  Have the public safety agencies, the schools, the citizens, the property owners been warned?  I have not heard a word.

A change in management at the city may be the only way that we can change their secretive method of operation.  City staff frequently lies to the citizens and city council.  People need to go.  We do not need a continuation of the current administration.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

New tax rate comparison

May 11, 2014

If having high property taxes are our goal then maybe we should hire a city manager from one of the 6 large cities in the US that have higher property taxes than us. That’s right, according to the Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence we had the 7th highest property taxes of the 50 largest cities in the US in 2013.

No income tax

Some would say that we rank so high because we have no income tax in Texas.  The numbers show that our effective tax rate on a $150,000 home was 2.446%.  Houston is in Texas and had a 1.896% rate.  Seattle has no state income tax and had a 0.941% rate. The average rate of the 50 largest cities was 1.507%.  That puts our tax rate at 162% of the 50 city average.

No income

U. S. News and World Report ranked metropolitan areas with the highest poverty rate in 2011.  El Paso ranked 6th highest with 24.3 percent of our population living below the poverty line.

Temporary improvement

The 2009 Minnesota report put us in 6th place.  The 2011 report showed us at 5th place and the 2012 numbers had us at 4th place.  We went down to number 7 this year because we paid off some debt, not because we had lower taxes for maintenance and operations. Without voter approval our representatives  in local governments have seen to it that the debt numbers will increase soon.  Several of the recent tax and spend initiatives have not hit our tax bills yet.  The county has approved $150 million for new medical clinics that the hospital chief executive  thinks we need to “repurpose”, in other words spend some other way than what he sold the county on originally.  We have the city hall destruction and the remodeling of the buildings they moved into.  Street reconstruction bonds are being issued. The voters themselves approved over $500 million in quality of life bonds that have not been issued yet and thus are not part of our tax bills yet.

Operating income declining

EPISD is forecasting a $17 million dollar shortfall next year.  It looks like they will go to the voters to get permission to have a tax increase. The various boards are trying to deal with the debts of the children’s hospital.  Some say that the number is above $59 million.  Every dollar that they do not pay is a dollar that the county hospital must absorb and that means higher property taxes for us.

The city just dealt with $7.35 million of required budget cuts because forecast revenue is short of what they wanted us to expect.  Our chief financial officer is a finalist for the job of city manager.  It looks like she may well be qualified to help us raise our tax rates.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Wink and a nod

May 10, 2014

None of our elected city leaders seemed to be concerned about the ethics of the money swap that the city engaged in with the state of Texas last week.

The state had money that could only be used for pedestrian wayfinding and facility enhancements related to pedestrian access.

The city had money that it was going to spend for wayfinding and facility enhancements related to pedestrian access.

The two governments decided to swap money with the state funding the pedestrian things and the city giving the state money for aesthetic enhancements to bridges.

Both sides agreed to swap $10 million each.  I give you 10, you give me 10.

City staff wants us to believe that this is tied to another $6 million or so that the state was already going to spend.

Either way you look at it the money swap was designed to circumvent rules that control how money is to be spent.  The city manager once again presented a crisis situation to council–do it this week or lose the opportunity.

The intended result would have been that the city got both their pedestrian improvements and beautification money for the bridges over I-10 near downtown.  Council may have been able to divert those funds away from the bridges toward public safety lighting projects around town.  I guess that we will have to see if that can be done.

They seem to think that rules are made to be bent.

We deserve better

Brutus

2 Comments | Ball park, City government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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