Testing the newbies

June 23, 2013

It is disappointing but not surprising that city staff is taking the opportunity to try to increase their power at the very first meeting of the new city council.

Item 1C on the regular agenda is titled “AN ORDINANCE FOR ESTABLISHING DEADLINES AND PROCEDURES FOR PLACING ITEMS ON THE AGENDA FOR CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS AND REPEALING NO. 17016”.

Why?

Ordinance number 17016 was the old ordinance according to this item.  It required council to take a special vote before approving any item where the backup material is not complete  declaring that failure to take action would be detrimental to the interest of the city.  I wrote about this in Sneak Attack.  In other words council needs to be given all the paperwork that they are being asked to approve.

If city staff does not make the material available per the requirements of the old ordinance, and city council votes on the agenda item without the special vote, city council members violate an existing ordinance.  Violating an ordinance is an ethics violation.  That could lead to severe consequences for city council members.

Not explained.

What the backup material for this proposed new ordinance does not explain is that city staff frequently submits agenda items without the required backup material.  This makes it easier to keep council members from doing their homework.

Why now?

City staff has put this on the first agenda of the new council.  The new members are trying to get their feet on the ground.  The new ordinance removes the requirement for the special vote as well as other things.  Staff is trying to get this through before council figures out the rules.

City staff will now be able to leave important documents out of the material that they give to city council without breaking the law.  Council will not know what hit them.

I hope that someone finds a way to explain this to the new mayor and the council members.

The new ordinance is a very bad idea.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Cato

9 Comments | City government, Open Government, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Cato

Another chance

June 21, 2013

The recent city election has given us another chance to try to make our city manager form of government work.

I hope it does.

In my view the city manager is supposed to take direction from city council, not give direction to city council.  Council should decide what they want and then direct the city manager to implement.  The city manager should be on a leash.  Agenda items giving the city manager “authority to sign all documents necessary to …” are a horrible mistake.

The last eight years we have had a council that allowed such language in agenda items.  The mess that we have seen is largely because of inattention and fear of the city manager.   Some may claim that council does not have time to approve each contract.  Council should as past councils have.  Otherwise the city manager will have too much power and will be able to subvert the will of council while treating the public and those that do business with the city poorly.

What has been missing is a strong mayor.  I don’t mean the strong mayor form of government.   I mean a mayor with a strong personality and strong management skills.  Our current city charter does not allow the mayor to vote except in case of a tie.  My recollection is that under the old strong mayor charter the mayor was in the same situation.

What the mayor has is the bully pulpit.  The mayor operates city council meetings and can call attention to items.  The mayor can explain agenda items and their consequences to city council members.  The last several years the explaining has come from city staff.  Their presentations have been supportive of what the city manager wanted.  Many half-truths have been told.  I believe that many lies have been told.

I hope that the new mayor takes control.  Council members should vote their consciences.  The mayor should help them to understand the issues.  This will take a lot of time on the part of the mayor.  It is the way successful mayors operated in the past.

We need a competent, independent city council, not one that fears the power of the city manager.

The incoming mayor has said that he will put the city manager form of government on the ballot.  He will have to wait two years to do that.  In the meantime we have an opportunity to try again.  It should help clarify our choice in two years.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Cato

1 Comment | City government, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Cato

Clueless in El Paso

June 20, 2013

Watching the Tuesday, June 18, 2013 city council meeting I finally made up my mind about the soon to be former mayor.

I have never been able to figure out why he acts the way he does.  I saw with my own eyes why.

He doesn’t have a clue!

The mayor chose to wrap up the extended discussion about the proposed additions to the ball park.  In his comments he pointed out that since the item was an amendment to an ordinance, the incoming council would have an opportunity to vote on the issue at the second reading of the ordinance next week.

The city attorney had to interrupt the mayor and tell him that he was wrong and that council could finalize the action in the meeting they were in.  He thought that his council’s vote was not final.

I wonder how many other things that have happened he has misunderstood.

He served 6 years as a city representative followed by 8 years as mayor and still does not understand what they are doing.

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Methinks the lady doth protest too much

June 19, 2013

The word will probably be out by the time this post gets published.

It seems that our city manager will be staying on through the end of the year or maybe  the end of her contract.

That makes dropping the suit against the Texas attorney general even more important (see Now you don’t see it, now you do).

As long as the city manager is in control of city staff it will be difficult to get to the truth about past events at the city.

Texas law gives us the right to review the e-mails that the city is suing to repress.

If there is nothing to hide, let us see them.

This is not about principles.  Principles tend to come in bunches.  If these people have any, this is the only one that I have seen.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Delay for rain

June 18, 2013

While we are waiting for the summer monsoon to begin let’s do a recap of where we are with the ball park.

Their numbers are wrong

Various city officials stood before council and made official presentations

The city hall move will only cost $33 million

We are now over $70 million.  The fact is that the city officials had not studied the costs thoroughly  and simply made a presentation designed to get council to vote favorably.

The ballpark will only cost $50 million

They wanted a construction manager at risk — no bidding involved

The construction manager would get to keep a percentage of what was not needed of the construction budget. That was designed to make us think that the ball park could be built for less.

The city manager recently told us that they do not know what the ball park will cost.  They only have 20% of the bids in and will have to wait to see how much it will cost.  No serious study was given to the cost of the ball park before they stood before council.

The owners are not giving up $12 million.  Before this whole deal was sold to city council the owners said that they would donate their profits to charity for the foreseeable future.  The $12 million is being stolen from charity by the city.

Someone else will pay for the ball park

The hotel occupancy tax numbers are only estimates (from the same city staff that has made the other estimates).  There is no guarantee that those monies will come in.  The team ownership is committing to pay us over a 30 year lease.  What will happen if something goes wrong?  I would imagine that the ownership group might have to declare bankruptcy, thus leaving the citizens of El Paso responsible to make the bond payments.

We must do this immediately

Hasty, irresponsible actions were taken because we were told that  the ball park must be open at the beginning of the 2014 season.

Plans for the ball park have not even been drawn up yet.  We need plans first, bidding next, and then construction.  The chances of getting this done in time are negligible.  They always were.

City staff recently tried to buy the Diablos out of their lease of Cohen stadium.  Is it possible that they want the new team to play at Cohen while the ball park is being built?

Cohen is not acceptable

According to city staff, no amount of money spent for improvements to our existing ball park would make it acceptable to league management.

I simply do not believe them.

Now city staff tells us

The team owners are willing pay $12 million more

City staff came before council recently and asked for $10 million more to build a ball park “the public wants”.  $5 million was going to come from previously approved projects for sidewalks and streets.  The other $5 million was for contingencies.

Now the owners themselves say that $8 million more needs to be spent on the basic ball park.  What about the $10 million city staff asked for and got turned down on?  The city manager told us that moving the $5 million from sidewalks and streets  into the project would simplify coordination of the projects.  In other words, the city is going to spend the $5 million sprucing up the areas around the ball park anyway.  That puts us at $50 + $8 + $5 or $63 million without the contingency fund.

As the city manager recently confessed, no one knows what this will cost.  I would have been in favor of a properly researched and planned project.

I think that the ball park should now be built even though the way we got here was horrible.

I hope that the new city council slows this deal down and gets real numbers before we get in even deeper.  At the very least the contracts should be changed to eliminate any penalties to the city if the ball park is not finished in time.  After all, the ball park owners are the ones that are asking for the changes.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

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