Congestion Mitigation

February 18, 2014

Not being an engineer, to me congestion mitigation is the same as coughing.

I guess they want us to cough up more money.

Item 3.4 on the February 10, 2014 city council agenda increases the cost of the ball park.

The September 25, 2013 El Paso Times editorial had this statement in it:

“Mayor Oscar Leeser made it clear the city will not add another cent to the now-$64 million project. He and City Council deserve credit for being firm on that.”

Crossings

The agenda item considers the construction of two pedestrian crossings over the depressed train way into the new ball park.  The project amount is set at $2,875,410.

This money clearly is part of the ball park cost and adds almost $3 million to the total.

Under “AMOUNT AND SOURCE OF FUNDING:”  our city engineer entered “NONE”.

Not so

The project requires an agreement between the city and the state titled “LOCAL TRANSPORTATION PROJECT ADVANCE FUNDING AGREEMENT For A Congestion Mitigation & Air Quality Improvement (2014 CMAQ STP-Flex) Off-System Project”.

The second page of the backup material is a proposed resolution that states “for a total project amount of $2,857,410 with a local contribution by the City of $239,976”.

That works out to 23,997,600 more cents when the mayor and council evidently said not a cent more.

And climbing

One document says no local money will be spent.  One page later a document says that $239,976 will be spent.  Then attachment C of the same document says that the “Local Participation” will be $545,400.

You can read the whole mess here.

Not one cent more

The vast majority of the project will be paid for with state and federal funds.

It seems obvious that someone was not telling the mayor and council the truth when they said no more money would be needed.  Otherwise I doubt that they would have said “not one cent more”.

Will council ever hold anyone accountable?

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | Ball park, City government, El Paso Times, Federal Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Correcting a correction

February 12, 2014

A recent piece in the El Paso Times was about how our local refining chief might have met with someone that works for a group that might oppose the affordable health care act.

My initial reading of the piece left me upset because of what I perceived as unfairness in the piece.  I calmed down and read it again and saw that there were parts of the piece that balanced the coverage, at least partially.

This post is not intended to be about how the Times is probably upset with our local guy for allegedly not sharing the Times’ political position.

Interesting

What I also  found interesting is that the Times (whose factual, grammatical, and spelling deficiencies are legion) chose to try to correct some language that they found in an online comment.  The Times published:

“This is an organization ran (sic) with money from the Koch brothers (.) (T)hey do not have your best interests in mind…”

While there is no code of federal regulations relating to the use of sic (that I know of), common usage indicates that “sic” should be contained within brackets and italicized.  The term indicates that the quote or phrase was printed exactly as originally written, including any errors.

Muckraker

6 Comments | El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Muckraker

El Typo Times

February 8, 2014

A recent comment on this blog came from an El Paso Times reporter.

He explained:  “A lot of people don’t realize this, but the people who do second edits on stories and build pages in EP don’t just do that for the Times. They do it for five New Mexico papers as well.”

It appears that part of the editing and production of the Times is done by a team that may not be controlled by Times management.

If that is the case and I were running the Times, I’d be furious.  The grammatical and spelling errors as well as the lack of effective editing contribute to the poor perception that the public has about the Times.

The title of this article is not meant to be cruel.  It reflects one of the many names that I have heard the Times called regularly.

Ask around.  Many people will tell you that they have not read the Times for years.

It now seems that part of the problem may have been exposed.  I hope that they can get control of the situation.  I think it would go a long way to improving their credibility with the readers.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Tell me a story

February 6, 2014

Part of the dialogue the other day resulting from the post Timely irony was this comment from a Times reporter:

If you think we’re missing an important story like this, don’t just assume that we’re pulling our punches because it’s Foster. Email Bob, Ramon Bracamontes, Armando Durazo or Melissa Martinez and ask for coverage. Feel free to email me, too, but unless it’s a state story, what I’ll probably do is foward it to one of the people listed above because they have the power to assign them. Humans being what they are, a note that is laced with abuse probably isn’t going to be read with more alacrity than one that isn’t.

Let’s do it

I have my own list of things that I would like the Time to do impartial stories on.

Feel free to make your suggestions as comments to this post or email the Times people directly.  Please remember to filter the venom as much as you can.

Let’s see what they can do.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Too true

February 3, 2014

Brutus wrote about the city manager’s recent speech to a group downtown in City manager speaks of “undue tax burden”.

I followed the link to the El Paso Times article and read that she had said something else disturbing to me:

 “Some times you have people who have really great visions and are really forward thinking and sometimes they are a little ahead of their time and they push the envelop a little to [sic] far and a little too fast. But you have to do that to make change. We did a lot of really great things and I am really proud to be a part of the organization and the community.”

Too far, too fast

I googled “define too” and got this definition: “to a higher degree than is desirable, permissible, or possible; excessively“.

In other words more than they should have.

Try these explanations  and see what you get:

“Officer, I wasn’t speeding too much”.

“I didn’t steal too much”.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you too badly”.

Proud

It seems that her quote may define her administration.  I think she was saying that the end justifies the means.

That is precisely how we get out of control governments.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Cato

 

2 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times, Federal Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Cato

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