City council especially clever

August 7, 2017

They’re having a very special city council meeting today (Monday, August 7, 2017).

They plan to:

  1. Discuss and take action on next year’s city budget.
  2. Discuss and take action on the city’s debt management policy.  The policy currently does not allow them issue certificates of obligation for quality of life projects.  They want to throw more money at the projects since they were so underestimated by the previous city manager.
  3. Discuss and take action relative to issuing almost $69 million in certificates of obligation.
  4. Discuss the 2012 street infrastructure program.

When they want to do special things like take more of our money they like to have special meetings to keep the un-special taxpayers out of the meeting.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

 

2 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

What’s it going to be Mr. Mayor?

August 6, 2017

Elrichboy over at elchuqueno.com published a post that details what our current mayor said during his election campaign about property tax increases.

Read it here.

Talk is cheap.

We deserve better

Brutus

8 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Cement Lake

August 4, 2017

Helen Marshall sent this in:

Just a few more dollars in debt coming up when we have to pay for the damage…

Helen was referring to Will the City of El Paso Destroy Cement Lake, a recent post in elpasonaturally.com

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | City government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Stupid bidders

July 30, 2017

Blame it on someone else!

Item 13.1 on the Tuesday, July 26, 2017 city council agenda was a request from city staff to reject all bids for fuel for city vehicles.

It appears that the contract would have been worth about five million dollars a year to the successful bidder.

Why did city staff want to reject the bids?  According to the backup material it was “due to bidders not correctly completing bid documents”.

The city received 13 bids.  Evidently not one of them was smart enough to fill out forms for this multi-million dollar contract.

Could it be that the purchasing department needs to write better specifications?

Or could it be that they don’t like the winning bidder?

We deserve better

Brutus

2 Comments | City government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Too much

July 28, 2017

As we wrote in $10 million that the city says they don’t need:

When we voted it was called a “Heritage Cultural Center” then it was the “Hispanic Cultural Center” and now it is the “Mexican American Cultural Center”.

At the time a city appointed committee that included our district attorney, former county judge, former United States congressman and the former national president of LULAC said that they would raise $20 million to support the center.

According to a recent article in the Times the group and its successors has managed to raise $15,400 in the last two years.

Now a board member of the Mexican American Cultural Institute has told city council:

“When the subcommittee gave their report to the city, it was a different group of people than the organization that became the Mexican American Cultural Institute today.  The $20 million is that subcommittee’s assessment on what would be a viable amount to raise.  That was not a pledge from MACI proper.”

The other day someone from MACI addressed council and told them that they need still more money.

As voters we approved $5.7 million.  City council later voted to add $10 million that we evidently did not need for roads and things like that.  Now the estimated cost will be $34.6 million.

But wait!

As it turns out the center will be too expensive for MACI to operate so it wants city council to pay for the operating costs in addition to coming up with another $18.9 million to bring the total to $34.6 million.

There’s still more!

The group also wants to keep all (any) of the revenue generated.  In addition they want control over what events will be held at the center.

Let’s get real

The simple fact is that this group does not have the public support to build such a center.  Otherwise they would have been able to raise more money.

Thank you city council!

Council would have none of this nonsense.  They unanimously voted to send the group back to the drawing board and set an October 1, 2017 deadline for the group to come back with a better proposal.

Our proposal is that we use the $5.7 million that the voters wanted to spend and call the facility the “Heritage Cultural Center” as the voters approved.

We deserve better

Brutus

7 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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