elpasospeak

Hang onto your hats.

Three of the projects that the voters approved as part of the quality of life bonds were:

• Multipurpose Cultural & Performing Arts Facility
• Hispanic Cultural Center
• Children’s Museum

Each project had a dollar amount attributed  to it when we voted for the bonds.

More efficient to combine

A recent presentation to the bond oversight advisory committee explained this city staff objective:

Combine planning for 3 major assets to leverage collective $205M taxpayer investment

In other words they want to combine the money for all three projects into one big project.

They go on to explain that this will:

• promote tourism
• enhance other venues (is that the ball park?)
• catalyze revitalization
• comply with smart growth principles

What about the children?

Short shrift

Who has the confidence to believe that the city won’t rob money from the children’s museum and hispanic cultural center projects to spend it on the arena?

We deserve better

Brutus

Our new mayor has been traveling around the country trying to make good on his hope of bringing some new employers to El Paso.

He wrote a report a couple of weeks ago where he said two things that I found remarkable:

• First, he said that a message that he heard frequently from the firms that help companies find cities to relocate operations to was that he was the first official from El Paso that they had ever spoken with.  Our suspicion that our economic development team has been letting us down seems to be confirmed.
• The second thing that he mentioned is the perception in other cities that El Paso is a dangerous place to live.  While out of town last week I experienced the same mistaken perception on the part of people from out of town.

Maybe we should consider dropping our new city slogan “El Paso It’s All Good” and use something concrete like “El Paso The Safest City”.

We deserve better

Brutus

This blog normally does not address rumors, it tries to stay factual.

This is a rumor

I heard last week that the choice of the new city manager may be inevitable.  Our current mayor is friendly with a former mayor, the one who lost to the guitar player that just left office.

Could it be that the this former mayor will be the new city manager?

We could do worse

Brutus

Now that things with the move of city hall have settled down, this graphic that I took from the city’s web site just last week becomes significant:

In The saga continues this quote from El Paso Inc. was printed:

The mayor’s former offices weren’t big enough for the finance staff, so they were moved to the bank building until the area is redesigned.  To make room for finance, the internal auditor’s offices have been moved.

Now as you can see the city has the tax office, the office of management and budget, and the chief financial officer in lease space in one of the fancy bank buildings.  There does not seem to be enough room for them in the multiple buildings that the city has been remodeling.

The city web site makes no mention of moving those departments as it does others that are scheduled to move.

Mulligan

The building once known as the Luther building is being referred to as the Mulligan building by the city now.

The September 18, 2012 city council meeting had a presentation from city staff recommending that the city accept the donation of the building.  The city would then need to spend over $13 million dollars remodeling it.  Part of the justification was this statement in the presentation:

The City can utilize the 73,667 square foot Luther building for other City departments (e. g. Fire department Admin) that are currently located in leased space and realize the lease savings.

Guess what?

The fire department currently occupies leased space in yet another building and according to the city’s web site is not scheduled to move into the Mulligan building.

So much for realizing savings.

We deserve better

Brutus

Do you know who I am? was an article about an El Paso district representative that was “under investigation on suspicion of threatening a city employee”.

The case is being handled by the El Paso police department’s special investigation group.

How long does it take to investigate a “he said, she said” case?

What is going on?

We deserve better

Brutus