What are the rules here?

December 4, 2013

The Times published this in it’s recent article about our city representative who has announced his candidacy for county judge:

City Attorney Sylvia Borunda Firth said the city could wait until the next uniform election date or follow the recently amended El Paso City Charter. The charter provides that when a special election is required, the city can schedule it for the next uniform election date or the date of the next election that will be conducted by the county elections administrator. That choice is up to the council, Firth said.

Article 11, section 11B of the Texas Constitution has this:

(b) A municipality so providing a term exceeding two (2) years but not exceeding four (4) years for any of its non-civil service officers must elect all of the members of its governing body by majority vote of the qualified voters in such municipality, and any vacancy or vacancies occurring on such governing body shall not be filled by appointment but must be filled by majority vote of the qualified voters at a special election called for such purpose within one hundred and twenty (120) days after such vacancy or vacancies occur.

Further the blog Anson Mills posted this from the state election code:

Section 41.007(d)  “No other election may be held on the date of a primary election.”

I believe that the state constitution trumps the city charter.  If so, the city attorney is wrong.

Is the city attorney telling us that the city is going to fight the state again?

Please set me straight if I have missed something.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, El Paso Times, State Government | Permalink
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Strategic insights

December 3, 2013

Please read Aren’t we lucky?  before you read this post so that you are up to speed.

The outside facilitator interviewed the “STRATEGIC THINKERS” and asked questions relating to eight areas.  The published document lists the results.

The agenda appears early in the document

The most common answer to the question “What should we SUSTAIN” about city government was “City Manager form of government”.

This gives us insight as to what the agenda was here.  No mention was made of El Paso being the safest major city in the nation thanks in part to our police department.  Similarly our low fire insurance costs were not mentioned.

They aren’t through with our checkbooks

The question “What should we CHANGE?” asked about city wide (not city government) weaknesses.  Only three of our 17 strategic thinkers mentioned “Growing tax burden”.  

When asked “What should we CHANGE?”relating to the actual city government seven of our “STRATEGIC THINKERS” responded  “Disrespecting / scrutinizing staff in public” while two of them thought we “Need to balance progressive tone with financial impact on the City”.  Do you think?

Forget the law

When addressing potential threats to their agenda the question “What should we AVOID?” was asked, “Legal not supporting innovation or creativity” ranked in the top answers.

When the avoid question was asked about city government, “Not appreciating the VALUE game” was one of the answers.

Game?

Our city government is a game?

We deserve better

Brutus

7 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Aren’t we lucky?

December 2, 2013

The city has just gone through one round of a “STRATEGIC THINKING/ STRATEGIC PLANNING PROJECT” and a presentation is scheduled to be made to city council December 10, 2013.

An outside group was brought in to facilitate the project.  This group is headed by a former public service board member who has been doing similar work for the public service board now that he is no longer on the board.

The Version 1.10 FINAL DRAFT as well as a copy of the presentation planned for council are available on the city’s web site.

The 32 page final draft document refers on page 18 to three groups of stakeholders:

  • Taxpayers/Community
  • City Staff/Employees
  • City Partners/Vendors/Contractors

It then refers to the “STRATEGIC THINKERS” who participated in the planning project.  Predictably, none of the strategic thinkers were citizens or suppliers to the city.  They were all city employees or elected officials.

Strategic Thinkers

Who were the people who participated in planning our future?  Page 5 of the document shows us this:

strategic thinkers

Stupid public

Not having community input in this kind of project makes good sense if the goal is to plan at the city employee level.  To try to categorize it as being capable of representing their list of stakeholders is nonsense.

Subsequent posts about the content of the plan should prove interesting.

In the mean-time please be comforted that we have a group of strategic thinkers working to determine what is best for us citizens.

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Ignorance of the law

December 1, 2013

I have not been able to find anything in our city charter that addresses how vacancies in city council are to be filled.  It appears that our Texas Constitution says that there must be a special election within 120 days.

Texas local government code does have this provision:

Sec. 26.043. FILLING VACANCY IN ELECTIVE OFFICE IN MUNICIPALITY WITH POPULATION OF 384,000 OR MORE.

 (c) If the municipality holds an election to vote on proposed amendments to its charter, it shall at that time submit a proposed charter amendment to provide a method for filling vacancies in elective offices.

We recently had an election to vote on proposed amendments to our charter.

Then again those state laws are probably only considered to be guidelines by our city staff.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Disenfranchised and disappointed

November 30, 2013

Ball park

Many of us are upset about the way the ball park happened.

We tore down city hall and the Insights science museum, have spent over $70 million dollars moving city functions, and have done nothing about replacing the museum.

We have sold $61 million worth of bonds for the ball park and are paying for other ball park related things through various city funds.

The voters of El Paso might have approved this but were never given a chance.

Bigger problem.

An even bigger problem for future El Paso taxpayers is the county approving $152 million to build three new health clinics and remodel parts of the county hospital.

Once again voters were not given a chance to consider this.

The county hospital district is going to build clinics with our money and will compete with private practice doctors.  El Paso has fewer doctors per capita than other major cities, yet we are using taxpayer money to compete with them.

Then we will have the ongoing costs of maintaining these clinics.  At the same time the nation is moving toward a system of universal coverage where the national government sees to it that everyone has health coverage.

Why are we building these clinics now?  Why not wait a few years to see if the national program takes hold and then let the private sector and the national government handle this?  Why the hurry?

Why are we taking on local debt when this has become a national issue?

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | Ball park, City government, County Government, Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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