Troubling

October 16, 2015

Time will tell and it has.

Two years ago we wrote Deja vieux.  The post was about how our EPISD superintendent was using the services of the search firm that got him his job to find new talent to bring into EPISD.

The post went on to address a $20 million dollar contract that the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) gave without bidding to a firm that the CPS chief executive officer used to work for.  The chief executive officer was also listed as a senior associate for the search firm that found our superintendent.

Looked fishy

The CPS situation did not look good and we wrote that we hoped that our new superintendent would recognize that the situation with the search firm did not look good.

According to this article in USA Today the CEO is  getting ready to plead guilty to taking kickbacks in return for issuing the no-bid contracts.

Our situation

We have had no indication from anyone that our superintendent had anything to do with the wrong-doing.

The current question is: are we still using the search firm?

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Earn our trust

October 2, 2015

The folks over at the Ysleta school district are going to try again.

Earlier this year they held an election seeking approval for $451 million in bonds.  The voters turned them down but it was close.

Now four months later they have announced that they will hold another election in November seeking $430 million.

Last time they published an extensive list of what they were thinking of spending the money on.  This time they have not issued a similar list yet.

Part of the problem the voters had is that the district reserved the right to change how we were told the money would be spent.  This graphic was available on the district’s web site:

yisdproject list

Another issue is the belief that many voters have that our local governments cannot handle major construction projects well.  Since the failure of their bond election we have seen the city bungle construction projects and not move forward on the quality of life bonds that the voters gave them back in 2012.

We have a children’s hospital in bankruptcy.  Our county hospital is losing money without even considering the money that the children’s hospital owes it.  The county allowed the hospital to sell $152 million worth of bonds to build new clinics that would save us $17 million a year in the emergency room according to the hospital administrator.  We have not seen the clinics and we have not seen the savings.

EPISD voted to repurpose $59 million that the voters were told would build a new high school.

The city can’t even build a one square block park, even at the outrageous price of $6 million.  The engineering department has essentially been eviscerated and the city has hired two out of town engineering firms.  Local firms need not apply.  We approved $473 million in bonds for quality of life projects three years ago and have seen nothing significant produced.

My sense is the public knows that YISD needs money.  The voters might be more apt to approve their requests if a more reasonable approach was taken.  They should ask for some money for a deserving project, say around $50 million.  Then they should complete the project thus proving to us that they will do what they promise and that they can handle the construction.

They need to prove that they can handle the money if we give it to them.

We deserve better

Brutus

8 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Wrong answer

September 20, 2015

We have now learned that EPISD’s report of severely declining enrollment was wrong.

Mistakes happen but something is wrong when an error of this magnitude gets by without getting caught.

We should hope that the superintendent takes steps to avoid this kind of thing happening again.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

6 Comments | El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

More money for EPISD

August 26, 2015

The “penny swap” initiative proposed by the EPISD went to the voters and was approved.

Taxpayers will not pay more money because of this but the state will contribute about $9 million more to the district each year.

That means we will be paying down our bond debt by about $4 million less each year.  According to a recent article in the Times:

The district is expected to pay off its debt on time despite the changes, EPISD interim Chief Financial Officer Art Martin told the El Paso Times this week.

If the voters had rejected the initiative their tax bills would have gone down.  Instead they voted to keep their bills the same and take $9 million more a year from the state.

The district took a gamble when they unilaterally lowered the interest and sinking fund tax rate by the same amount that they wanted to raise the maintenance and operations rate.  Now they are telling us that they will find a way to fund bringing debt payments back to their former rate.

We’ll see.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

2 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Send the message

August 22, 2015

apathykills3Just showing up to vote sends a message to our elected officials.

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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