The week of April 28, 2013

April 29, 2013

Brutus started off the week with Fireworks and then also that Monday M. T. Cicero wrote Serendipity call the hand of the Times once again.

Approved but not read by Brutus came out on Tuesday.  City council is getting in the habit of approving a concept and then letting the city manager negotiate and sign documents without council seeing what was done.  I wrote   Are you kidding? about how certain elements of the power cabal want El Pasoans to feel better about the city.  The floggings will continue until morale improves.

Brutus posted Forgetting your place, about how a city representative took the citizens to task in a column written for the Times.  Muckraker followed up with 2b but not really and how the Times wrote another article that covered the part of a topic that their editorial policy wanted us to know about.  M. T.  Cicero had fun with the editorial page writer at the Times.  Dear John was the result.  These were posted Wednesday.

Thursday  saw Losing our shine from Brutus and Propositions explained, but not how they were published from me.  I wondered why if the city needs to publish legal notices in Spanish they don’t use El Diario El Paso.  Desdemona sent a piece about how proposition 2 would make the mayor even weaker to Cicero.  Another “You’re not voting for the Baseball stadium” Ploy reminded us about how the city says one thing and does another.

Brutus started a series of summaries about the proposed city charter amendments.  The posts are cumulative with the most recent one as of this piece being Proposition summaries (4,5,6,7,8,9).  He also posted Bad habit that same Friday.  He wondered why the city chooses to hide things even when they are inevitable.

The posts from Brutus about the propositions continued on Saturday.  If you read the one above you are all caught up with him.  In Sorry wrong number he pointed out the the city attorney, The El Paso Times, and The El Paso, Inc. all have used different numbers when talking about what proposition 4 would do to the salaries of the city representatives and the mayor.  He suggested that their pay increases should be voted on each time and should not be automatic.

Sunday had another addition to the post from Brutus about the propositions and then I wrote Reporting happened.  Somehow a reporter at the Times got a good article published.  It just showed again how blatantly the Times applies it’s editorial policy to news articles.

Muckraker

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Reporting happened

April 28, 2013

I was taken by articles on the front page of The El Paso Times today.

One,  “EP icon, educator Strelzin is dead at 75” was insightful, informative, thorough, balanced — well written.  I enjoyed reading the article and appreciate the information that it provided.

The other “Some question wording of propositions” was shallow and slanted.  It seemed to me that much of the article came directly from the people who want the propositions to pass.  Points that might make the propositions unattractive to voters were not covered.  You can read the articles from Brutus on this blog  if you are interested in the “hidden consequences” of these propositions.

Could it be that the skills of the two reporters are vastly different?  More probably it was the editorial policy of the Times that restricted the content of the article about the propositions.

The Times is like most other daily newspapers in that it is struggling to remain economically viable.

I hope that the editors and publishers come to the realization that the average age of their paper edition subscribers is older than that of their electronic readers.  Many that I know have cancelled their subscriptions in the past years,  not so much because they are angry but because they feel that they know what the Times will print and don’t want to waste time.

Realizing that the older readers will be dying sooner than the younger ones, I still think that the Times would be well served to recognize that many of the older readers have more experience and hard earned wisdom than some of the younger.  In short it is harder to sell a point of view to them simply by saying something is so.

I for one would be happy to read articles that address both sides of the issues.  Leave the editorials on the editorial page.  Become a source of knowledge.

The electronic version is an opportunity to develop a new constituency.  The Times might even find that younger readers would appreciate the value of balanced reporting.

Muckraker

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Proposition summaries (4, 5, 6,7,8,9)

April 28, 2013

Early voting is about to start.  Over the next few days we will cover the proposed changes to our city charter and my thoughts about them.  This will be a serial post in that it will be added to and when finished will cover each of the nine propositions.

Just in time for this series, the city has published their official notices and has actually given us the wording that they will use if we vote for any of the propositions.

Many will disagree with my thoughts about some of these.  Good!

Just go vote your conscience.  Show everyone that elections work.

I wonder how many proposals are turned down.  Then I wonder how many proposals turn out to be a bad idea. 🙂

Proposition 4–no

This doozy would give automatic pay adjustments to the mayor and city council every year.  I doubt you get one.  Your boss gets to decide.  If you don’t like it you may find another job.  Why should we lose one of the few controls we have over this bunch?  I think that their pay should be adjusted.  Why not just make the issue a regular one on the ballot?  See Proposition 4, the blank check.

Proposition 5–no

Proposition 5, fox in the henhouse talks about why having the city auditor report to the city manager is not a good idea.  Look what happened at the El Paso Independent School District.  The text of the changes taken from the notices the city published in the newspaper shows:

“The City Manager shall maintain operational insight over the internal audit function …”

In other words, only look where I tell you to look.

This is a genuinely bad idea in my opinion.

Propositions 6, 7, 8–no

These deal with civil service.  We have not heard a lot of public outcry from the employees (could they be afraid?) or the commission itself.  We even had one commission member tell us that things were ok.  While I respect the commissioner I simply do not trust this current council and administration.  They like to hide their real agenda and that is what I fear here.  I am not against progress, nor am I against change.  Whatever good these amendments might offer can wait until we have a city government that can be trusted.  See Bad Habit.

As an example, if you were to read the long text of proposition 7 you would see a list of actions that a city employee might commit that would be grounds for termination.  The text reads in part:

The following … may constitute causes for discharge, suspension or reduction in grade …

and then lists specific acts like “Refusal to follow”, “Subjecting a fellow employee”, and “Being under the influence”.

However item “N” is grammatically inconsistent.  It reads “Violates the City’s Ethics Ordinance”.  To complete the earlier part of the sentence it should read “Violating the City’s Ethics Ordinance”.

Is this deliberate, or is it just sloppy?  We have a lot of lawyers getting paid by the city.  We even have a city representative that is a lawyer.  Use the search box on the right side of this page to search for “Scrivener”.  You will see several articles that detail how the city uses these lapses.  They have even argued that when the voters approved the Hotel Occupancy Tax increase they actually approved the ball park project even though we were told repeatedly that we were not voting for or against the ball park, we were voting for how to pay for it.

Once again I might vote for Propositions 6, 7, or 8 if I trusted these people.

Proposition 9–no

This would allow the sale of general obligation bonds for “any lawful purpose”.  Evidently there is some current restriction of what city council can sell.  Good!  We have a lot of debt to handle right now and that group already has plenty of ways to take our money.  They don’t need another one.

It would also allow council to buy property (land, buildings, equipment) through lease purchases.  This would allow them to spread costs out over many budget years thus stymieing our ability to force a tax roll back when our taxes raise more than a certain percentage year to year.  We need to be realistic with our budgets and not hide costs.  If we need it we should pay for it when we get it, or have a bond election.

Read Proposition 9 for more.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Sorry wrong number

April 27, 2013

Proposition number four on the ballot deals with the pay of our city representatives and mayor.

In Proposition 4, the blank check I wrote about the issue and how El Paso Inc.  had written that the city attorney was wrong.

Now after the El Paso Times headline article today (here is the link from the Times  but please be aware that as of the moment that I am writing this it does not work–so much for being careful about what you print):

City representatives would get paid “about $42,000” according to the city attorney.  The Times today puts it at “about $47,000”.  The Inc. said the number is $50,500.

The mayor would get “about $63,000” according to the Times.  Thankfully the city attorney was not quoted in the Inc. article.  The Inc. wrote that the mayor’s salary would rise to $75,250.

For crying out loud

How can a voter make an informed decision on this issue?  Try depositing about $1,000 dollars in your bank.  They expect an exact number and so do we.

Based on the way the city has misled us on many other issues I don’t feel comfortable with this.

To me the real issue with this proposition is that the pay adjustments would become automatic every year.

No muss, no fuss.  Voters need not do anything.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Proposition summaries (6,7,8,9)

April 27, 2013

Early voting is about to start.  Over the next few days we will cover the proposed changes to our city charter and my thoughts about them.  This will be a serial post in that it will be added to and when finished will cover each of the nine propositions.

Just in time for this series, the city has published their official notices and has actually given us the wording that they will use if we vote for any of the propositions.

Many will disagree with my thoughts about some of these.  Good!

Just go vote your conscience.  Show everyone that elections work.

I wonder how many proposals are turned down.  Then I wonder how many proposals turn out to be a bad idea. 🙂

Propositions 6, 7, 8–no

These deal with civil service.  We have not heard a lot of public outcry from the employees (could they be afraid?) or the commission itself.  We even had one commission member tell us that things were ok.  While I respect the commissioner I simply do not trust this current council and administration.  They like to hide their real agenda and that is what I fear here.  I am not against progress, nor am I against change.  Whatever good these amendments might offer can wait until we have a city government that can be trusted.  See Bad Habit.

As an example, if you were to read the long text of proposition 7 you would see a list of actions that a city employee might commit that would be grounds for termination.  The text reads in part:

The following … may constitute causes for discharge, suspension or reduction in grade …

and then lists specific acts like “Refusal to follow”, “Subjecting a fellow employee”, and “Being under the influence”.

However item “N” is grammatically inconsistent.  It reads “Violates the City’s Ethics Ordinance”.  To complete the earlier part of the sentence it should read “Violating the City’s Ethics Ordinance”.

Is this deliberate, or is it just sloppy?  We have a lot of lawyers getting paid by the city.  We even have a city representative that is a lawyer.  Use the search box on the right side of this page to search for “Scrivener”.  You will see several articles that detail how the city uses these lapses.  They have even argued that when the voters approved the Hotel Occupancy Tax increase they actually approved the ball park project even though we were told repeatedly that we were not voting for or against the ball park, we were voting for how to pay for it.

Once again I might vote for Propositions 6, 7, or 8 if I trusted these people.

Proposition 9–no

This would allow the sale of general obligation bonds for “any lawful purpose”.  Evidently there is some current restriction of what city council can sell.  Good!  We have a lot of debt to handle right now and that group already has plenty of ways to take our money.  They don’t need another one.

It would also allow council to buy property (land, buildings, equipment) through lease purchases.  This would allow them to spread costs out over many budget years thus stymieing our ability to force a tax roll back when our taxes raise more than a certain percentage year to year.  We need to be realistic with our budgets and not hide costs.  If we need it we should pay for it when we get it, or have a bond election.

Read Proposition 9 for more.

We deserve better

Brutus

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