Can it be?

July 18, 2015

I heard a rumor the other day that I hope is true.

A supplier to the El Paso Independent School District mentioned that in talking with some of the EPISD officials he/she  was told that the district would be curtailing their budget expansion and was actively developing strategies to manage their shrinking enrollment without asking for a bond election.

The district may turn out to need extra money.  If they ask for it I hope that they will consider the failed Ysleta bond issue.  The Ysleta voters might have approved some funds if the school officials had not asked for so much money in a single transaction.

My feeling is that the voters have little trust in the ability of our local governments to effectively manage projects.  Massive cost overruns and extended project delays are the norm lately.  We need to see some successes before we might become comfortable.

Let’s hope that the EPISD administrators have gotten the message.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

 

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

Elective danger

July 15, 2015

Should we now expect to hear that our school buses will not pick up kids next year because the drivers are not properly certified?

Or that our airport cannot accept planes that want to land because we are not keeping our runways clean?

Maybe our ambulances won’t run because they forgot how to tie bandages.

According to the Times our county hospital administrators are scrambling to avoid losing the hospital’s certification.  They have a little less than three weeks to fix their problems.

Surprise?

Back in December we wrote More problems at the county hospital and explained that our hospital had been given an “F” rating by the folks at Medicare and that payments to the hospital would be reduced as a result.

One of the problems was “preventable errors”.  Another was “hospital acquired conditions”.

Think infection.

Now the Joint Commission (the accrediting agency) has come to the hospital and as what must have been an absolute surprise to everyone paid particular attention to the sterilization process.

Were we prepared?  According to the Times our hospital administrator said:  “”Our employees in that area are entry-level type of employees. We’re going to look into raising the statute of that department, management and of the associates.”

I don’t know whether the Times reporter slipped up or if the official actually said “statute”.  They probably meant “stature” but more importantly the hospital did not do anything about the problem when it was pointed out to them in December.

Failure costs money

Now specialists are being flown in and incredibly the hospital has stopped performing surgeries unless they are necessary.  Even then the patients are going to be given the option of going to another hospital (presumably at our cost).

As for elective surgeries, you might ask if the county hospital should be performing them at all.  If we find that the hospital makes a profit on them and needs them to help balance the budget then we have another problem.  That money is being lost while the hospital finally pays attention to what they were penalized for back in December.

Where are our county commissioners?

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Dori Fenenbock EPISD School Board

July 12, 2015

West side El Pasoans have a new representative on the El Paso Independent School District Board.

She has a Facebook page at Dori Fenenbock EPISD School Board.

I hope that she uses the page to communicate with the citizens.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Don’t shift the burden, lower it

July 7, 2015

Evidently the other day as our city manager proposed next year’s budget he said that out of 125,577 homes in El Paso 45,509 are eligible for a senior citizen or disabled homestead discount.

By my reckoning that comes to 36.2%.  Our city is now giving a $40,000 reduction in assessed property value to those eligible.  This does not cap the property tax the senior has to pay.  Instead it reduces the value used to compute the tax.  The formula is:  take the assessed value and subtract the exemption–call that the taxable value–multiply the taxable value by the tax rate giving the tax owed.

On the other hand seniors have their amount of tax owed frozen for purposes of school district taxes.  That means that means their tax bills do not go up regardless of the rate.

School district taxes account for almost 50% of our local tax rate here in El Paso.  The taxes the city assesses are about 25% of our total bill.

Shouldn’t we take this into account as we consider public debt?  How can we expect young people to stay here when we are asking them to pay these bills?

It seems to me that if we spent less our tax bills could be lower.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

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

Take a smaller bite

July 3, 2015

The El Paso Independent School District announced that they are considering a different plan for the school consolidation and refurbishing.  Instead of needing one billion dollars they are now projecting the need for $686 million.

That is good news.  It looks like the district is working to come up with the best solution that they can find.

Earn our trust

Many of us do not trust our local governments to handle bond issue money.  Cost overruns, “repurposing”,  switching projects, and never ending projects  are events that we continue to see and are on our minds.

Much of the money will be used to remedy “deferred maintenance”.  Instead of maintaining our buildings on an annual basis,  past school boards have ignored maintenance in order to pretend to balance the budget.  The result is that they have to ask for bond money when the schools are too run down to continue to operate.

I have a straightforward suggestion.  Instead of asking for all of the money at one time the district should ask for a smaller more manageable amount (say $68 million) and then prove to us that they can handle the money wisely.  They could then come back to us and ask for another tranche after having proven that our money was well spent.

Remember the old saying: “pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered”.

The quality of life bonds at the city have caused us to realize that the city staff does not have the capacity to handle the $400 million that we voted for.  They are going to have to parcel out the construction over a period of time.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

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