elpasospeak

Evidently city council is considering raising the franchise fee on our residential  trash collections from $1.10 to $4.00 per month.

Help me to understand this please.

The organization that picks up our trash is a city department.  How can a city charge a franchise fee on a department that it owns?

Does that mean that we might see franchise fees slapped on top of our ambulance service, police department, fire department, tax department…heck every department the city runs?

This is not a fee, it is a tax.

This is absurd.

We deserve better

Brutus

It shouldn’t surprise us that some of our city officials have difficulty telling the same story:

City council is considering slapping a city sales tax on our electricity and natural gas purchases.

What for?

The city’s chief financial officer was recently quoted in a Times article saying:

Cortinas said reimposing the tax would generate about $3 million for El Paso that would go toward funding Fire Department equipment and vehicle replacement.

“We thought this was the right opportunity to make sure we don’t fall behind on replacing our fire equipment,” Cortinas said.

Another story

The city representative for district one (west side) wrote this in his recent weekly message:

 In regards towards the proposed Utility Sales Tax, it would create 3million a year that could be dedicated specifically for street resurfacing of which there is currently no dedicated source of funding for street resurfacing by our city.

Whatever

Maybe we should ask some other city officials.

We deserve better

Brutus

Since the city seems to have difficulty obeying its own ordinances maybe this suggestion would help with our roads.

Should there be a city ordinance that says:

All new roads must be uneven surfaces that have at least a two inch bump or depression every ten linear feet.

Utility man holes must not be level with the street.  They must be at least three inches higher or lower than the street surface.

Utility companies must excavate part of every new road within six months of the original paving.

When patching the trenches that the utility companies make they must replace the asphalt with asphalt of a different texture than that used on the original road thus creating a rumble effect on vehicles using the road.

All patches must be depressed at least two inches below the original surface.  When this is not practical the patch must end up at least two inches higher than the existing road surface.

We deserve better

Brutus

Our mayor’s recent actions relating to the reporter from El Paso Inc. are disturbing on many levels.

Among them:

• The mayor takes the reporter to task for filing public information act requests.  The reporter is following the correct procedure.  He also seems to be looking into more things than other reporters in town.  We thank him.
• The mayor accuses the reporter of attacking his integrity.  No, the reporter wrote that the mayor failed to turn over information that he is legally obligated to turn over.  Could it be that the mayor understands his own level of integrity?
• The mayor has stated that he will refuse further interviews with the reporter.  Maybe if he had a better handle on his ego he would sit down and work things out.  Instead we hear “I’m important–I don’t have to talk to you”.
• The mayor addressed his email to the reporter and to the reporter’s boss and colleague.  Why would he do that unless he wants to cause harm to the reporter.

There are of course other aspects to this mess.

Wouldn’t we all be better off if the mayor followed the law?

We deserve better

Brutus

The city’s proposed budget book for next year is out, all 936 pages of it.

From the third page:

This budget will raise more total property taxes
than last year’s budget by $20,818,484 or 7.6%,
and of that amount $4,650,483 is tax revenue to be
raised from new property added to the tax roll this
year.

There you have it.

After they wrote that gem they decided to raise the tax rate even more (to just below the point where the voters would have to approve it), and are considering slapping sales tax on our electric and natural gas bills.

We deserve better

Brutus