Hurting the team

May 30, 2013

It was the chief financial officer (CFO) of the city

The video of the May 28, 2013 El Paso city council meeting shows the city manager saying that it was the CFO’s idea to bring the proposed $10 million dollar increase in spending for the ball park before city council.

The city manager offered to take the $5 million for street and sidewalk improvements off the table and then actually handle them the way we thought they would be when the money was originally allocated.

The other $5 million was to be for contingencies.

Council threw a fit. No way, no how would they approve the $10 million at this point.

So how did the CFO think she could put the city management team in the horrible situation that they found themselves in at that city council meeting?

I suggest arrogance.  I think she thinks that she has the right to decide what money will be spent and that our job is to shut up and pay it to her.  She seems to think that we have no power.

Remember she is the one that told us that city hall could be torn down and we could find new facilities for $33 million.  $63.9 million and climbing  broke out the true costs at the time.  Today the costs that we have been able to identify so far put that number at over $70 million.

She told the public and council that the changes to the Times building would be Minimal due to condition of building.  We then saw the city spend millions to change the building, tear down what they re-modeled, and build it again.  The saga continues.

She is behind much of the folly that has been occurring with our city government.  Now she has caused unbelievable harm to her colleagues, her boss, city council, the team owners, and a candidate for mayor.  Word on the street is that the city manager is taking this hard and is considering resignation.

We deserve better

Brutus

8 Comments | City government, El Paso Times, Open Government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Just getting started

May 25, 2013

Before even breaking ground on our new ball park the city is telling us that they need $10 million more to build it than the $50 million they told us it would cost.  They also need another $750,000 for design and management work.

Who is responsible for this situation?

Let’s start with the city engineer.  A recent headline article in the El Paso Times quotes him as having said “We could not build the project we have designed without it … We would have to redesign it … It would not be the ballpark the community wants.  It would not be iconic or state of the art.”

The city engineer said that the ball park that the city committed to could not be built.  He was in charge of the technical details.  Is he incompetent, or is he a liar?  Why rig a bid when you can fool City Council? showed us an example of how this individual plays loose with the truth.

Now he tells us that the street and sidewalk “work would have been done by other contractors while the ballpark was built, but that it made more sense to have the general contract oversee the work for better coordination”.  More sense to whom?  His job is to oversee the construction.  This is a no bid give away.  El Paso’s contractors should raise Cain.

Then we have the city manager.  It was her job to see to it that her subordinates did good work.  The city manager made presentations to council selling a ball park that we now know could not be built.  The current decisions being placed before city council must have had her approval.

Demolishing trust pointed out how city staff had found a way to spend $500,000 over and above the $50 million budget building a pedestrian walkway that the ball park needed.  Then it told us about how the city water utility was using customer money to provide new water and sewer facilities to the ball park — once again outside the $50 million budget.

Now the staff wants to use $3 million that was to be used for downtown street projects.  Another $2 million will be stolen from the 2012 quality of life bonds that we approved for the downtown cultural district.  Baseball is not we think of when we speak of culture.  Where is the bond oversight committee?  What committee?  We didn’t promise to listen!  gave us an idea what to expect.

Then we have city council.  Are they part of this lie?  At this point we are in a situation where denying the $10 million dollars could cause the project to fail.  Did city staff fail or did city staff lie?

I guess if I were on city council I would ultimately vote for the $10 million.  I would only do that after I had the written resignations of the city engineer, the chief financial officer, and the city manager.  No resignations, no ball park.  We are going to have to spend good money after bad, but we should not let the same people administer it.

The owners

The team owners are developers.  They know about sidewalks and streets and how they affect projects.  I suspect they knew this was coming.  If one of their employees came to them with a $10 million cost overrun on a $50 million dollar project I suspect that some heads would roll.

The Times article tells us that “the $5 million in contingency funds would pay for amenities such as a bar-restaurant or group and party suites “.  It sounds to me that decisions have been made about how to spend the money.  There is no contingency fund.

Group and party suites will be among the most expensive facilities for the public to buy tickets to.  The profits will be higher on these facilities than on regular tickets.  Who will enjoy the benefit of this extra income after the citizens have spent $5 million?  I suspect that the money will go to the team owners.

The owners have always seemed to me to be good citizens.  Yet they seem to be going along with this two-step theft.  They certainly have not spoken publicly against it.  They benefit from it.  I don’t see how we can trust them in the future.

Not done yet

Like most things we will have to wait to discover the full level of deception here.  Will we end up over $100 million?

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty

Cato

4 Comments | Ball park, City government, El Paso Times, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Cato

Congratulations Silva

May 24, 2013

This article in the El Paso Times tells us that EPISD’s Silva Health Magnet High School was recently ranked the best high school in El Paso county by Children at Risk, a Houston nonprofit.  I thank the Times for pointing that out.

Actually Silva was ranked the 10th best high school in the state of Texas by Children at Risk.  Now that is news.  What is clear is that the students, parents, teachers and staff at Silva are doing a fine job.

Children at Risk explains their ranking methodology on their web site.  Looking at it there are some things that we might quarrel with but at least their ranking method is consistent as it is applied across the state.

The article goes on to point out that Silva was the only high school in the county to receive an “A” rating.  It reported that there were nine county high schools that received a “B”.  Some received “C’s” and some got “D’s”.

Which ones?

Unfortunately the article did not tell us how each of our high schools ranked.  One of the things a journalist should do is read his work from the point of view of the reader.  This is the kind of thing that the public would like to know.

Did the article not cover the basics because of lack of space?  Maybe an editor intervened.  Maybe the reporter did not have time or did not think of printing the detailed results.  Maybe the results would be inflammatory.

I don’t know why they left this out.

Brutus is now hot on this issue and will be publishing more detailed information soon.  The numbers will tell us a lot.

Muckraker

3 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Muckraker

Dumb public, dumb

May 23, 2013

According to this El Paso Times article at least five candidates for local office had trouble filing their required campaign reports Friday, May 8, 2013

The city clerk’s office is closed on Fridays like much of the city administration is.  You might remember that the city started a four day week back when they were in the old city hall.  Their stated reason was the energy efficiency to be gained from not operating the ten story building on Friday.  Now that the city has spread out to multiple buildings I suppose there will have to be another justification from the city administration eventually.  Public convenience certainly has suffered as evidenced by the troubles the candidates had.

The alternative was to file electronically.  The city has a new computer system to do this.  Evidently it did not work well.  We can all see that happening with a new system, but would we would have hoped that the thing would have been tested more thoroughly before hand.

What I found troubling in the article was the attitude of the city’s IT (information technology) director.  The article spoke of the comments of two of the candidates:  “Both said the new system was inconvenient and troublesome and needed to be fixed.”  The IT director evidently said “the system is being reviewed to ensure it’s more user-friendly, and he said there was a learning curve on the part of the users and the IT Department that created the program.”

In other words the candidates are ignorant and need to be trained.

I wrote in Phoney about the high salaries the city is paying — above the local pay scale.  Then in Something is rotten in the state of Denmark I addressed another boondoggle from IT.

It would be nice to see the city stop blaming the public and start providing better service.

We deserve better

Brutus

2 Comments | City government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Xtra! Xtra!

May 22, 2013

I’ve been thinking about how the Times can’t keep it’s editorial position separate from it’s reporting.

We see them using their publication to hurt candidates with front page articles that are political in nature.  We see bias in many of their political and governmental articles. There was a day when we could expect them to keep their opinions confined to the editorial section.

News articles were supposed to be fair and balanced. Maybe what they should do is publish what little fair reporting they can offer on the editorial page.  They could use the rest of their newspaper to spew their opinions and biases. That way we could turn to the single news page and trust that it was accurate and fair.  We could read the rest of the paper for entertainment.

An alternative is that they could publish an extra edition once a month or so.   This edition would have fair reporting.

Unfortunately when I ask people what they think of a particular article in the Times I am hearing “I don’t read the El Paso Times” more and more.

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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