City council refuses to listen

September 27, 2017

At the Tuesday, September 19, 2017 city council meeting representative Noe moved to delete item 15.2 from the regular agenda based upon advice from the city attorney.

His motion was immediately seconded without discussion.

The agenda item:

Discussion and action on a Resolution that the City of El Paso declare a moratorium on all demolition permit actions pertaining to properties within the MPC footprint area, including but not limited to issuance, reissuance, or execution of new or existing demolition permits, for a period of 90 days.

While it is conceivable that passing such a resolution might cause legal complications for the city, we don’t see how having a discussion about it would.

Deleting the item was a blatant effort to keep the demolition opponents from having an opportunity to speak.

It seems that we have now reached a point where council not only does what it wants but it refuses to hear from the public.

Without regard as to where you stand on the issue, it seems that people should be allowed to express their opinions.

We deserve better

Brutus

13 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Ballpark funding

September 26, 2017

Remember how the increase in the hotel occupancy tax was supposed to pay for the ballpark?

Take a look at this:

The city has been collecting about $2.9 million each year from the increase.

Now look at this:

The principal and interest due in 2017 will be $4.27 million.

The shortfall will have to come out of your house occupancy tax.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Council agenda manipulation?

September 23, 2017

This came in from Jud Burgess:

Mayor Margo was busy making sure no Duranguito supporters went beyond their 3 minutes, including a priest for Sacred Heart Church speaking on behalf of Bishop Mark Seitz.

 
I watched him give a signal and nasty look to the city clerk EVERY time a speaker hit the 3 minute mark.
 
Click on this link to watch video of his obvious and reprehensible attempts to control time to the second, even towards a priest representing Bishop Seitz.

He wanted to make sure and limit to the absolute minimum every speaker advocating on behalf of Duranguito.

Remember new Mayor Margo wanted to limit speakers to one minute?

Today’s city council meeting ended up a FUSTERCLUCK when Mayor Margo refused to let anyone else talk after some city staffer purposefully removed an agenda item which had several Duranguito supporters scheduled to speak, depriving people of their free speech rights.  Nice little trick but no cigar.

And the other little trick was visually censoring Duranguito speakers images as they talked from the video screen, and then showing video of pro-arena anti-El Paso history advocates when they spoke.

Stranger than fiction.

22 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Shifting sands

September 21, 2017

Could it be that we are being played?

The chief financial officer of the city retired right in the middle of the budget process.  We wrote about that in Strange retirement.

The former chief financial officer of the city was featured in a Times article the other day  where she said that the process of giving a big contract to one of the superintendent’s cronies was not “transparent”.

The superintendent probably is not happy with her.  Will he ask for her resignation?

If that happens she will be out of work, but fortunately for her the city has a position open.

Does the new mayor like her?  She served on the appointed board of managers of EPISD while he did.  They arranged for her to go to work for the district the first day Texas law allowed a former board member to become an employee.  She appeared in a published picture of the new mayor’s announcement of his run for mayor.

Stay tuned.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | City government, El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Another year older and deeper in debt

September 20, 2017

It looks like we will need to update our banner that shows El Paso’s local government debt totals.

The city’s 2015 comprehensive annual financial report showed the total pension liability at about $392 million.

The external audit for 2016 reports different numbers.  The audit firm pegged the 2015 liability at $417.5 million.

Getting worse

Unfortunately the audit tells us that the 2016 figures are even worse.

The city employee’s pension fund net liability increased from $126.7 million in 2015 to $195.1 million in 2016.  The 2016 number is 153.9% greater than the 2015 number.

The fire pension net liability grew from $105.8 million to $162.6 million, or 153.6%.

Police pension net liability grew from $185.0 million to $212.7 million, yielding 114.9%.

Our combined liability stands at $570.4 million.

Look for yourself

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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