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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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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Not in my backyard, or maybe yes

April 14, 2013

The El Paso Inc. published a great piece about the city changing the zoning of major pieces of town in its March 31, 2013 issue.

The city wants to rezone more than one thousand acres thus affecting thousands of homes and businesses in the Mission Valley and Five Points neighborhoods.

Items 5E and  5F on the April 16, 2013 city council agenda would change the zoning to “Smartcode zone”, whatever that means.

The property owners bought their property under one set of zoning.  Now the city wants to change the rules thus restricting the actions of the owners differently than what they signed up for.

Is “Smartcode zone” a good idea?  I don’t know.

What is missing here is respect for the voters.  We have a city council whose membership is about to change taking the opportunity to force change on us as some of the council members slip into a well deserved state of public oblivion.

How much public discussion do you remember council promoting on this issue?

Why can’t the people vote on this?

Is council afraid that the voters would say no?  Once again does council need to show that they are right and that the citizens are incompetent to manage their own lives?  Is council better than the unwashed masses?

I don’t know how I would vote.  I do know that I hold anything that this council does in suspicion.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, El Paso Inc., Open Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Proposition 4, the blank check

April 13, 2013

SHALL SECTION 3.2 AND 3.3 A OF THE CITY CHARTER BE AMENDED, RELATING TO THE SALARIES OF THE MAYOR AND DISTRICT REPRESENTATIVES, AND PROHIBITIONS REGARDING OTHER EMPLOYMENT: TO PROVIDE THAT BEGINNING IN 2015, THE ANNUAL SALARY OF THE DISTRICT REPRESENTATIVES SHALL BE SET EACH YEAR AT THE SAME AMOUNT AS THE HUD PROGRAM INCOME LIMITS MEDIAN INCOME FOR EL PASO COUNTY, AND THE ANNUAL SALARY OF THE MAYOR SHALL BE SET EACH YEAR AT 150% OF THAT AMOUNT; AND TO PROHIBIT COUNCIL MEMBERS FROM HOLDING ANY OTHER PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT CONTRARY TO STATE LAW?

That is the ballot language for proposition 4, directly from the city’s website.

This would give the mayor and the city council automatic salary adjustments each year.  No matter how much they ignore us or even disobey us they will get a new paycheck.

Go ask your boss for a similiar deal and see what happens.

The El Paso Inc. exposed another example of the duplicity and incompetence of a city staff member in their March 24, 2013 edition.  Evidently the city attorney was out stumping for the propositions (she should not be an advocate, she should see that what the city does and does not do is legal).  The article says that the city attorney said that the salary for a city representative is about $28,000 now and that if the proposition passes it would be about $42,000.  A citizen questioned the $14,000 pay raise and said “I’m voting against it”.

The El Paso Inc. indicated that the city attorney was wrong.  The city representatives get paid $29,000 a year now and would be raised to $50,500 per year if the proposition passes.

Was the city attorney lying or just wrong?  What, if anything, should we believe that she tells us?

By the way, the mayor’s salary would evidently go up to $75,250 from $28,500.

I don’t know how much they should be paid.  I do know that we should control it.  They have little enough allegiance to us now.

We deserve better.

Brutus

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Posted by Brutus

Now that you’re watching

March 5, 2013

According to an El Paso Times article city council may be having second thoughts about their proposal to cripple the Texas Public Information Act.

Council voted unanimously to approve the ordinance on its first reading last week.  They are scheduled to consider it again today (Tuesday March 5, 2013).

The Times points out that a “barrage of criticism” might cause council to reconsider and “go back to the drawing board” with the ordinance.

Reconsidering is a good idea.  The legal mess that this ordinance would cause would cost us a lot of money.  Texas has a good law — it appears that the rest of the state can live with it.  Some members of our council want the right to conduct public business without the public having the right to see what they are up to.  Going back to the drawing board is a bad idea.  It would be another waste of our time and money.

The Times article suggests that some council members believe that the proposed ordinance is not well written.  It would appear that some of them have finally gotten around to reading it.

That brings up the point of this post.  According to an El Paso Inc. article this weekend the proposed ordinance was drawn up by the law firm that is representing the city against the Attorney General of Texas who had previously ruled that the city must turn over documents that were requested through the Public Information Act.  City council does not want to release the documents.

  • Why are we wasting our taxpayer money and time in a mean-spirited fight to deny the public access to its’ documents?
  • If certain city council members object to disclosure why don’t they fund the lawsuit themselves?  The Attorney General is on the side of the citizens.  Council is opposing us and is using our money to do it.
  • The outside law firm did a poor job drafting the ordinance.  Are they competent?  How much are they getting paid to sue Texas and try to keep us in the dark?  How much are they getting paid to write the proposed ordinance that has now been so thoroughly criticized?
  • Should they be fired?

Where was the City Attorney on this?  How did this even get on an agenda?  Was this reviewed?  Was council advised that the proposed ordinance is “a can of worms” to use the Mayor’s words?  Is council now pretending that this was not what they intended?

It is good that the Times has started to pay attention to what is going on at city hall.  If they want fresh front page articles to replace their constant reiteration of problems over at the El Paso Independent School District, all they have to do is read city council agendas and start thinking.  They won’t even have to make up problems.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, El Paso Inc., El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times, Open Government, State Government | Permalink
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