elpasospeak

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

The ballot language from the city website:

SHALL SECTION 3.20, ETHICS AND ACCOUNTABILITY, OF THE CITY CHARTER BE CREATED, SECTION 3.6 BE AMENDED, AND SECTION 2.2 G BE DELETED, RELATING TO ETHICS AND ACCOUNTABILITY: TO MOVE AND AMEND THE PROVISION GOVERNING THE ETHICS REVIEW COMMISSION TO GIVE THE COMMISSION THE POWER TO ENFORCE ITS DECISIONS BY ASSESSING CIVIL FINES AND SANCTIONS AS AUTHORIZED BY ORDINANCE; AND TO CREATE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INDEPENDENT INTERNAL AUDIT FUNCTION AND A FINANCIAL OVERSIGHT AND AUDIT COMMITTEE TO PROVIDE OVERSIGHT OF THE AUDIT FUNCTION AND REVIEW CITY FINANCIAL POLICIES?

Then in a section titled “What It Does?” the city writes:

“Internal auditor shall be appointed and removed by the City Manager with the approval of City Council.”

What?  Appointed and removed by the city manager?  Are they nuts? Where does it say that in the proposition?  This is a fine example of how city staff intends to write whatever they want into the charter after you approve a general idea.

We should remember the El Paso Independent School District superintendent who is now in jail.  The school board says that they did not know what he was up to.  The auditor reported to the superintendent, not to the board, according to the superintendent.

The rest of the proposition regardless of any potential benefits that may come to us cannot overcome this fatal flaw.

We deserve better

Brutus