Double your pleasure

January 18, 2014

These slides from the city web site show us the cost of selling bonds instead of saving up our money and paying cash:

2013bTaxableBonds

2013aTaxExemptBonds

So far we have sold two types of bonds to finance the ball park.  We sold 30 year taxable bonds totaling $15,660,000 and 25 year tax exempt bonds totaling $45,125,000.

That comes to $60,785,000.

What will it cost us by the time we have paid them off?  The number comes to $137,286,965.10.

That means that we will actually pay more than 2.25 times what we financed.

Why can’t our governments develop a pay as we go strategy? We would get at least twice as much for our money.

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | Ball park, City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District, Federal Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Contractor friendly?

January 17, 2014

Item 3.3 on the city council’s January 14, 2014 consent agenda asks for an additional $178,000 for an affordable housing development project.

Council awarded the contract in November of 2012.  They now think that they will be ready to bid the project in the first quarter of 2014.  The original amount was $812,000.

Why is more money needed?

According to the backup material:

“Delays in City plan approval have resulted in additional time and costs for the Architect and Engineer.”

I guess city staff was busy with other matters.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

We’re number one

January 15, 2014

The fact that El Paso was once again ranked the safest large city in the nation was significant enough that the El Paso Times wrote about it on page one of section B.  I suppose the front page needs to be reserved for whatever issues the Times decides to promote.

We were also ranked as the best city in Texas in which to raise a family.

As for per animal lovers we were ranked number two.

In the “best cities for home buyers” we were ranked number four.

So if we are the safest major city in the nation and the best place in Texas to raise a family, what is our quality of life problem?

Is the quality of life drum being beaten to promote spending?

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Plaza contract

January 14, 2014

It seems that the construction contract to once again rebuild San Jacinto plaza is going to be back on the city council agenda this Tuesday.

A closer look at the plaza deal explained the situation at the time.

City staff pulled the bid award off the agenda at the last minute.

Now it appears that the item is back on the agenda for approval.

Something is going on here and watching council’s actions will tell us a lot.

I still wonder why 30 bidders picked up the bid package and only 3 responded.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Bidding is such a hassle

January 13, 2014

The January 14, 2014 city council agenda has several purchasing department items on it, including some more activity from buy boards.

Agenda item 6.1 proposes the purchase of 7,000 of those recycling and refuse containers that we use in El Paso.  The backup material proposes that the purchase be made through the Houston based buy board that the city likes to use.  The backup material states “The city has made the determination that purchasing from this cooperative offers the most  cost-effective pricing”.

The price will be $51.39 for each of the 96 gallon containers.  Shipping will be another $13,800, bringing the total purchase to $373,580.

Bidding must be expensive

If I am correct the supplier must pay 4% of the purchase price to the buy board as part of their administrative fee.  That comes to over $14,000.  How much would it cost the city to issue and conduct a bid for this item?  Would it cost $14,000?  Would the vendor lower the price by 4% since the buy board would not participate?

Might some other vendor come in with an even lower bid price?

Remember that the 4% benefits school districts in Houston.   Isn’t that nice of us?

Not being an expert

Purchasing must be complicated so I need to be careful here to not make it look too simple.  I decided to try to figure out what other cities pay for their garbage cans, so I entered “96 gallon bid” into my search engine.

Within a second or two I got 26,3000 results.  The third item down gave me the results of actual bidding.

As it turns out, the city of Bay City, Michigan wanted 1,000 units in September of 2013.  The low bid was $47 each versus the $51.39 our city wants to pay.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | City government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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