elpasospeak

Call me naive but I think I see the hand of a strong mayor acting at city council.

Recently we have seen:

Abandoning the plan to close 8 more railroad crossings

Making the fire department go out to bid for supplies instead of using a buy board

The mayor stating in front of the camera that “there will be no discussion for extensions” of the city manager’s contract.  A national, regional, and local search will be conducted in time to notify the city manager before the 120 day window in her contract triggers an automatic extension.

This has all been done quietly and evidently methodically.

Yes, he has continued some of the city policies that I have disagreed with.  I am hoping that he is doing this because his most important job is to protect the taxpayers.  There might be things where it is better for us if he lets them proceed under strong management.

Yes, he voted to raise taxes.  That bothers me.  But higher taxes will not be so bad if we at least have competent management of our money.  I hope that next year he will know more about the inner workings of the city and will be able to somehow help us avoid the tax cliff that prior councils committed us to.

I hope that he comes to understand that many of the senior managers at the city cannot be trusted to tell the whole truth.  My theory is that some of them are afraid of the city manager and some are just jerks.

A good friend of mine says that Quality of Leadership is necessary for quality of life.

We deserve better

Brutus

Maybe it’s all good for the members of the cabal but if you look at it from the perspective of the workers that will be fired as a result of the  closures announced in El Paso in the last year things don’t look so good.

Leviton        400 jobs

Boeing         160 jobs

Hoover        450 jobs

State Farm  550 jobs

Xerox          490 jobs

Some might say that relief is on the way but according to one of our local newspapers industrial real estate activity has been negative so far this year.

Our new mayor has been saying that economic development, getting new jobs in El Paso, is a higher priority to him than quality of life issues.

I could not possibly agree more with him.  The other local politicians need to understand that without jobs we are in real trouble.  This last city council had the wrong priorities.

We deserve better

Brutus

Let’s revisit the issue of where the ball park is being built.

We have been told that the Pacific Coast League (PCL) insisted that the ball park be downtown.  I personally doubt the truth of that.

I don’t recall Mountainstar or any of it’s principals saying that it must be downtown.  If someone has evidence to the contrary I would like to see it.

We know that certain city officials insisted that downtown was the only place the ball park could be built.

Inconvenient fact

It appears that seven PCL stadiums have been built in the 21st century.  Looking at the ones opened in the last ten years we have:

Werner Park opened in 2011 and is less than three miles west of Papillion Nebraska.  Unless Nebraska has their downtowns in corn fields the PCL obviously did not require this park to be downtown.  It seats about 9,000 and cost $36 million.  I can’t find anything about them tearing down anything to build the park or spending 17 million dollars because they mismanaged the financing.

Aces Ballpark opened in 2009 and is in downtown Reno.  It cost $50 million and seats 9,100.

Isotopes Park is in Albuquerque and opened in 2003.  The citizens got to vote.  Their choice was to build a brand new park downtown or rebuild an old stadium.  They chose to rebuild the old stadium for $25 million.  Once again the PCL did not insist that the facility be downtown.  Their seating capacity is about 13,000.

Our 50 million dollar ball park now will cost at least $61 million.  The park needs to be financed.  It could have been financed for $17 million less if our city financial people had done better.  That puts us at $78 million and counting.

Let’s see–$36 million for Werner, $50 million for Aces, $25 million for Isotopes, and at least $78 million for our mismanaged mess.

We deserve better

Brutus

Item 18 on next Tuesday’s city council agenda is a good one.

Train wreck dealt with the real estate issues the city had with tearing down city hall and building the ball park.  The fact is that the city committed to the actions without owning all of the land that city hall sat on.  The city had to make some deals with the railroad.

The railroad gave the city an option to buy a parking lot next to the new city hall on the condition that the city agree to close eight more railroad crossings.  City council approved the deal.  The citizens be damned.  Well maybe not dammed but dammed, as in blocked from flowing through.

Now the city has decided that in light of the fact that the citizens don’t want the closures and that the closures would cause public safety and traffic problems maybe exercising the option would not be a good idea.

It might also be that we have new members on city council who remember the 74% drubbing that the voters administered in the last election.

The city will be notifying the railroad that it will not exercise it’s option.  Why now?  It looks to me like someone is cleaning up the messes.

We might also be seeing the quiet hand of our new mayor here.  I hope so.

We deserve better

Brutus