Talk is cheap

June 13, 2013

Tuesday, June 11, 2013 the appointed board of managers of the El Paso Independent School District voted  unanimously to limit public access to address the board during their meetings.  I wrote about that in No comment allowed.

Watching the video of the meeting I learned that:

The proposal came from both the superintendent and the board of managers.  The superintendent has helped make it more difficult for the public to take exception with his actions.  The only path of appeal that I know of when someone disagrees with the superintendent is to bring the issue to the board of managers.  We previously had a superintendent that had the auditing function report to him and not the the board — look what that got us.  Now our interim superintendent has made it more difficult for the public to bring attention to his actions.

The new policy also forbids those few members of the public that get to speak at the board meeting from using the names of students and employees as well as the positions of the employees.  So if you want to speak about the superintendent you might refer to him as the person sitting three positions to the left of the the president of the board.

No show for show

The board member that is also the chief financial officer of the City of El Paso was absent during that vote.  According to the El Paso Times the chief financial officer was opposed to the agenda item.

Why was she late?  Was she too busy?  Did she want to avoid the issue?  Does she have time to do her job on this board?

If she was opposed to the issue, why didn’t she ask for reconsideration of the item?  If she really felt strongly about the issue why did she remain silent?

Posturing

Maybe her statement to the Times had a different motive.  Her boss at the city is considering moving to Florida.  The Times ran an article this year about how she might be a good candidate to become the next city manager.

Claiming to oppose shutting down public comment while not taking action to preserve it is just plain grandstanding in my opinion.

It looks like this board now ranks worse than the elected board of trustees as far as public access is concerned.

Eternal vigilance is the cost of liberty.

Cato

Leave a Comment » | City government, El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times, Open Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Cato

Desperate Times

June 10, 2013

I would be embarrassed.  It is one thing for an error to creep into a reporter’s article in a newspaper.  Editorials however reflect on senior management at the paper.  To have an error in an editorial, much less multiple errors, tells us a lot about the quality of their product.

The El Paso Times edition of Sunday, June 9, 2013 either shows how desperate they are or how little they really care about facts.  This is a link to the editorial.

Let’s not discuss their opinion at the moment.  Let’s discuss why we might even consider listening to them.

Major mistake

The Times wrote “And that’s why it’s important that Steve Ortega be elected major”.  Major?  After a few years would he be able to appoint himself Emporer?  Then again maybe he should join the army.

Feral spending

Later in the editorial the Times incredibly  states that the voters of El Paso granted “approval for more than $700,000 million in quality of life projects…”.  I hope not much more.

The number they used equates to $700 billion dollars.  Those kind of numbers used to only be thrown about by the government in Washington DC — you know, the feral goverment.

The incredible shrinking budget

The editorial page writer for the Times put the number at $700,000 in an article on the same page that day.  That’s might be enough to build a new press box for the Times.

We heard you the first time

The Times previously endorsed their candidate.  Now they devote over 95% of their editorial page to trying to help the same candidate.

With friends like that who needs an opponent?

Muckraker

2 Comments | City government, El Paso Times, Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Muckraker

No show

June 8, 2013

I heard some talk about the Times not covering the Tuscon Padres AAA baseball team results so I thought I would go look for myself.

League attendance

Team Yesterday Total Openings Average
Tucson Padres 4,139 67,921 28 2,426
Tacoma Rainiers 0 86,911 24 3,621
Reno Aces 0 119,692 27 4,433
Omaha Storm Chasers 0 96,627 21 4,601
Nashville Sounds 8,161 138,325 30 4,611
Colorado Springs Sky Sox 5,505 112,299 24 4,679
New Orleans Zephyrs 6,898 132,061 27 4,891
Iowa Cubs 0 116,330 22 5,288
Salt Lake Bees 0 143,788 27 5,325
Oklahoma City RedHawks 0 136,248 25 5,450
Las Vegas 51s 8,015 152,754 28 5,456
Memphis Redbirds 6,274 174,547 26 6,713
Fresno Grizzlies 0 194,848 28 6,959
Albuquerque Isotopes 0 188,001 27 6,963
Round Rock Express 0 205,510 28 7,340
Sacramento River Cats 10,167 236,270 31 7,622
 
The team is moving to El Paso next year.  I guess the good news is that there is a lot of room for improvement.
By contrast the AA San Antonio Missions trail the Texas league with an average attendance of 4,002.  A 2012 El Paso Inc. article told us that average attendance last year was 3,696 for the El Paso Diablos.  The Diablos are  an independent team.  They are not AAA, or AA, or even A.  They are categorized outside of  minor league baseball. 
El Paso loves a winner.  I hope that we support the team.  If we cannot improve the attendance numbers this whole ball park deal will get even worse.
We deserve better
Brutus

7 Comments | El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Pay to not play

June 3, 2013

According to a Sunday, June 2, 2013 article in the El Paso Times, the city is preparing to let the Diablos out of their Cohen stadium lease that was scheduled to run through April 2016.

You can’t blame the Diablos.  The city killed them with their AAA baseball deal.

According to the article the city will pay the Diablos $150,000 for improvements that the Diablos made to the stadium.  The city will also grant $110,000 as a rent credit.

We’re not done

The Diablos evidently also owe the city money for past electric bills.  Some think that the electric bills will come to about $100,000.  According to the article the city manager did not have exact figures when the Times interviewed her.

Exact figures?

Figures don’t lie and liars don’t figure.  How can the city manager not know the exact amount, especially after the tongue lashing she took in last week’s city council meeting?

Shameless promotion!

To make matters even worse, the city will pay the Diablos $40,000 to promote the new AAA team during the remaining Diablos games.  What’s wrong with that?  City council agreed to build the ball park — promoting and operating the team is the responsibility of the team owners.

My numbers come up to about $400,000 dollars here.  This is tax money directly out of our pockets.  We should also count the lost revenue from letting them out of the lease early.

I don’t blame the Diablos.  The city has treated them poorly.  For that matter the city has treated us all poorly.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Balk

June 2, 2013

This is strange.

Both El Paso Inc. and the El Paso Times made mention in their Sunday editions of  a deal between the city and the Diablos essentially paying the Diablos to go away.

The Times even went so far as to say that the item is on the city council agenda for Tuesday.  I went to look at the agenda.  I do not see the item.  I had someone else look.  Unless I missed it, the item is not on the agenda.

What happened?

Somehow both the Inc. and the Times got word of a deal in the making.  It was planned to happen Tuesday.  The item did not make it to the agenda.

Did someone at the city forget to register the item?  That’s possible given their general inability to get things right.  I doubt it though.

Did the massacre at last week’s city council meeting make the city think twice about risking further outcry before the upcoming runoff election?  That’s where my money is.

Sloppy

These people are unable to manage a press release, much less the city.  I will leave it to Brutus to handle the sordid financial details.

Muckraker

6 Comments | City government, El Paso Inc., El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Muckraker

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