What will he do?

May 21, 2013

Many of us say that this election cycle has been about city management, not the city manager.

Incredibly the city manager has taken action that may make the runoff elections about her too.  This article in the El Paso Times explains a lot.  She is requesting a 5% pay raise above what she currently gets paid, which is about $239,000 according to the article.

This puts the city councilman who is in the runoff for mayor in a strange position.  If he endorses the raise he risks angering the 78% of the voters who did not vote for him in the first election.  If he declines then he is biting the hand that feeds him.  What will he do?  We might not find out until after the runoff.  He should be asked.

The timing of this request is remarkable.  “I want to be in good standing at the time the new Mayor and council take office in late June” was the quote attributed to her by the Times.   One might think that the current city council should evaluate her past performance since the new elected officials will know less about her performance.  Then again you might think that the current city council should leave it up to the soon to be elected one since it will be their job to manage her.

To me the self-centered, selfish nature of this request and its timing are unfortunate.

I would hope that city council would consider her request seriously.  I offer some points that they might want to consider also:

Her request for a 5% raise would give her much more than council gave city employees last year.  My recollection is that some city police officers did get a raise last year, but it was around 1.8%.

We have found no evidence that she has called any citizens “crazies” recently.  Then again many e-mails are tied up in an expensive lawsuit against the attorney general of Texas that the city is paying for with our money.

While redevelopment is important to her, the plan to spend the bond money that she recently had presented to council does not provide anything for a new children’s museum or to replace the vital Chelsea swimming pool anytime in the next three years.  You can read more about these issues in Shovel ready.

Her plan to relocate city departments since city hall was going to be torn down displaced citizens from a popular recreation center with city administrators.  So much for quality of life talked about this shameful act.

City purchasing uses buy-boards to avoid competitive bidding.  One particular board that the city has spent millions of dollars through requires that 4% of the money spent be given to Houston school districts, not ours.  See More of Our Money for Houston.

Her $33 million plan to move city hall is now well over $70 million.  $63.9 million and climbing is the last detailed accounting.  We will have to wait for projects to be completed before we will know the total  We were either lied to or management is incompetent.

Since a small piece of land that the ball park will sit on was owned by the railroad the city had to bend over backwards.  Fireworks talked about how the city agreed to close many railroad crossings through town without consulting with the public or other government agencies.  The resulting inconvenience will be massive.

In her haste to build new city facilities much money was wasted.  The saga continues showed us how the city manager forgot her place and how her new office was to be larger than the mayor’s.  More money was wasted when newly remodeled space that was never occupied had to be torn down so that larger offices could be built for the mayor.

Now the city wants to kick the ground lease paying El Paso Independent School District central office off airport land with a resultant cost to the taxpayers of about $40 million while the city gives an out of town university virtually free use of other buildings.  See Plane wrong.

This list could go on much longer.  You get the idea.

Some will say that many of the items above are the result of city council actions.  That is true.  What also is true is that the city manager gets her way with city council and that she is behind what happened in most of the list.

Please do not post a comment about how I hate the city manager.  I do not.  Council has failed in their responsibility to manage her.  The city manager has stepped over the line and actively creates policy when it is her job to implement what council decides.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Cato

7 Comments | City government, El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Cato

Plane wrong

May 21, 2013

I wrote in $40 million conflict about how the El Paso Independent School District may have to tear down it’s central office and build a new one because the land it sits on is owned by the city.

I wandered over to the district web site to see if I could find the results of their discussion.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that the video coverage was available and that there was an index tying the agenda items to the portion of the video involved. You can experience that here.  If you want to see the video of the agenda item click on “Item 10E 5 Item 12”.

No action was called for.  The chief financial officer of the city did not say a word, which was appropriate conduct.

What struck me is that EPISD is paying the city through the airport over $132,000 dollars per year for the lease of the land.  Compare that to the $1 per year leases that the city has given Texas Tech (Union Depot and Fall Mansion).  I don’t understand how the airport and the city can justify kicking the local school district off the land while it gives away land and buildings to a state funded university.

Does the airport need the land?  Can a compromise be reached where the district vacates the portion of the property that is dedicated to the school buses?  Could the administrative building stay where it is?  The voters may not spontaneously give the district $40 million for operating expenses, but it seems certain that if they are forced to  cough up $40 million for a new building that the voters will certainly not want spend even more money on the kids.

As an aside I notice that the district web site has a link that should take us to the voting results of past meetings.  Nothing is posted.  I hope that the temporary managers rectify this.

The city could help us here.  I would rather spend the money on the children and the education food chain.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Seeing is believing

May 20, 2013

This is sad.

Our current city councilman who is running for mayor filed two corrections to previous state mandated campaign finance reports on May 16, 2013.  I picked this up from the elpasonews.org web site.  According to the article the candidate under reported $40 thousand in contributions.  You can read the article here.

Actually, it is hard to see.  Not understand, see.  The portion of the document where the contributions are listed uses typeface  that is so small and blurry that even after printing out each sheet and using a magnifying glass it was hard to see.  You can try it yourself.  Scroll down about 10 pages and try to read it.

What is clear to see is in the explanation of correction that is part of an affidavit attached to the amended reports:

“… On May 6th the COH [candidate office holder] identified discrepancies regarding the total contributions and total expenditures previously filed.  Upon further review, the COH identified several bookkeeping errors that led to the unintentional omission of several campaign contributions and expenses.  The COH has since identified the omitted campaign contribution [sic?] and expenditures and included them in this amended Campaign Finance Report.”

Several?

One, two, a few mistakes — I guess that would be human.  Is this the way he proposes to handle our money if we elect him mayor?

Timing

The candidate found the errors on May 6th, five days before the election.  Why did he wait until 5 days after the election before making the legally required corrections?

I note that the other candidate also had to file a correction.  His original report was filed Thursday, May 2, 2013.  His report was filed in person and as we know Thursday is the last day of the week that city hall is open.  The very next day that city hall was open for business was Monday, May 6, 2013 and that was the day his correction was filled.  It consisted of a listing of more expenditures.  Evidently he had already reported all of his contributions as the law requires.  May 6 was five days before the election.

The councilman/candidate saw problems on May 6 and took 10 more days to file the corrections.  He filed his corrections after the election.  I also note that his original report was filed using the new electronic system that the city has so he did not have to sign the incorrect report.

Who?

Who did he leave off his list of contributors?  As I said earlier it is hard to see.  I did find one contribution from a lady that has the same last name as one of the ball team owners.  Go figure!

Times

As of this moment the El Paso Times has chosen not to cover this story.  There was a dearth of news in the Saturday and Sunday issues of the Times this week so the failure to cover the story could not be for lack of space.

We deserve better

Brutus

Leave a Comment » | City government, El Paso Times, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Haste makes waste

May 19, 2013

I’ve been wondering about the salvage process down at the city hall rubble site.  Could we have done better?

Mentions were made in the newspaper that doors and other things were being saved.

I drove by the site the other day and saw that some of the air conditioning equipment had been removed before the implosion.  That is good if we somehow saved some money considering the cost of the chiller — $677,000 (see Why rig a bid when you can fool city council?).

It was a shame that we could not do something with the five year old radio system that city staff was going to be imploded with the building (see City Hall Relocation).  Donating or selling it to another city would have been nice.  We ended up spending $20 million for a new system.  Moving the old one while keeping police and fire running was evidently too hard.

I suspect that we lost significant value because of the haste in getting out of the building and preparing the way for construction of the new ball park.  Think of what one extra month would have allowed us to salvage.

The contract for demolition of the building was a private one between the ball park construction company and the demolition company, so we may never know who if anyone profited from any salvage taken out of city hall.

I don’t bring this up with the claim of any wrong-doing.  I do think it would have been better if the ball park steam roller had gotten into action one month earlier.  We could have saved money.  We now know that it was under consideration for years before it became public.  Thinking about it now we could even have saved city hall by putting the ball park somewhere else downtown.

Haste makes waste.

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

A little help from the Times

May 17, 2013

We are hearing a lot of discussion around town about the Times’ using their editorial policy to slant what they publish.

Maybe suggesting news stories that they could publish would help.

My first suggestion would be a story about how city council is considering ordinances next Tuesday, May 21, 2013 to rezone over 1,100 acres of essentially residential property that was developed decades ago.  It seems that they want to change these areas to SCZ zoning (smart code zone).

You may agree that this would be a good idea or then again you might not.  Either way rezoning thousands of residences without public debate is shameful.  It is typical of this city council.

The article could point out that the items have been postponed twice, probably to consider them only after the election.  One current city council member who could not run again instead chose to run for the EPISD school board.  I can’t help but wonder what the residents of her school board district would have done had they known that she was advocating changing the rules on their property.

Muckraker

4 Comments | City government, El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Muckraker

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