elpasospeak

Early voting is about to start.  Over the next few days we will cover the proposed changes to our city charter and my thoughts about them.  This will be a serial post in that it will be added to and when finished will cover each of the nine propositions.

Just in time for this series, the city has published their official notices and has actually given us the wording that they will use if we vote for any of the propositions.

Many will disagree with my thoughts about some of these.  Good!

Just go vote your conscience.  Show everyone that elections work.

I wonder how many proposals are turned down.  Then I wonder how many proposals turn out to be a bad idea. 🙂

Proposition 1–no, no, no

A vote for this limits our right to petition for grievances.  Moving the city election to November would mean that more people vote (because of state and national issues being included) in a given election.  We must have signatures equal in number to 5% of the number of people who voted in the last city election in order to get a petition certified.  Proposition 1, authorizing nothing also explains how the ballot language is defective and might be the cause for legal battles.

Proposition 2–no

Absolutely no!  This would allow city council to lease city property by simple council resolution instead of the current requirement that it be done through an ordinance.  Resolutions can happen in a single meeting of council.  Ordinances require multiple meetings and official notifications to the public.  Read Proposition 2 or the shady deal enabling act.

Proposition 3–yes

This would allow the sale of alcoholic beverages in “mixed use developments” whatever they are.

I suspect that this has something to do with the ball park but have no facts supporting my suspicion.

Personally, I think that we should allow bars on every street corner, even in residential areas.  That way some people would not drive drunk.

Proposition 4–no

This doozy would give automatic pay adjustments to the mayor and city council every year.  I doubt you get one.  Your boss gets to decide.  If you don’t like it you may find another job.  Why should we lose one of the few controls we have over this bunch?  I think that their pay should be adjusted.  Why not just make the issue a regular one on the ballot?  See Proposition 4, the blank check.

Proposition 5–no

Proposition 5, fox in the henhouse talks about why having the city auditor report to the city manager is not a good idea.  Look what happened at the El Paso Independent School District.  The text of the changes taken from the notices the city published in the newspaper shows:

“The City Manager shall maintain operational insight over the internal audit function …”

In other words, only look where I tell you to look.

This is a genuinely bad idea in my opinion.

Propositions 6, 7, 8–no

These deal with civil service.  We have not heard a lot of public outcry from the employees (could they be afraid?) or the commission itself.  We even had one commission member tell us that things were ok.  While I respect the commissioner I simply do not trust this current council and administration.  They like to hide their real agenda and that is what I fear here.  I am not against progress, nor am I against change.  Whatever good these amendments might offer can wait until we have a city government that can be trusted.  See Bad Habit.

As an example, if you were to read the long text of proposition 7 you would see a list of actions that a city employee might commit that would be grounds for termination.  The text reads in part:

The following … may constitute causes for discharge, suspension or reduction in grade …

and then lists specific acts like “Refusal to follow”, “Subjecting a fellow employee”, and “Being under the influence”.

However item “N” is grammatically inconsistent.  It reads “Violates the City’s Ethics Ordinance”.  To complete the earlier part of the sentence it should read “Violating the City’s Ethics Ordinance”.

Is this deliberate, or is it just sloppy?  We have a lot of lawyers getting paid by the city.  We even have a city representative that is a lawyer.  Use the search box on the right side of this page to search for “Scrivener”.  You will see several articles that detail how the city uses these lapses.  They have even argued that when the voters approved the Hotel Occupancy Tax increase they actually approved the ball park project even though we were told repeatedly that we were not voting for or against the ball park, we were voting for how to pay for it.

Once again I might vote for Propositions 6, 7, or 8 if I trusted these people.

Proposition 9–no

This would allow the sale of general obligation bonds for “any lawful purpose”.  Evidently there is some current restriction of what city council can sell.  Good!  We have a lot of debt to handle right now and that group already has plenty of ways to take our money.  They don’t need another one.

It would also allow council to buy property (land, buildings, equipment) through lease purchases.  This would allow them to spread costs out over many budget years thus stymieing our ability to force a tax roll back when our taxes raise more than a certain percentage year to year.  We need to be realistic with our budgets and not hide costs.  If we need it we should pay for it when we get it, or have a bond election.

Read Proposition 9 for more.

We deserve better

Brutus

I plan to offer my thoughts about the nine  propositions to change the City Charter over the next few days.

Chime in.

El Paso’s voters will be asked to approve or disapprove of several changes to the City Charter in the May 2013 election.  This post is one of several where we will discuss the propositions.

Proposition 1

In Strike two I pointed out the fact that this proposition does not contemplate action.  There is no verb in the opening clause (or any other one for that matter) that takes action.

Some thoughts:

• Unless council takes some kind of action to fix the ballot language for this proposition, it will be a magnet for legal challenges.  The safe thing to do is to scrap this proposition and bring it back in another election if it is still desired.
• The proposition would move the city elections to happen on the same day as the November (national) elections.  Some will argue that moving to November will increase voter turnout.  Maybe it will.  That might also have the effect of reducing the turnout for school district elections which will still be held in May.  We should be paying more attention to our school district boards and who we elect to put on them.
• The initiative would allow a future city council to increase the number of district representatives from eight to ten if our population reaches one million people.  The initiative does not say how quickly council could make that decision, so a future council could elect to stay at eight members even after the city reaches the one million person mark.  The proposition does not specify what source will be used to define when we have reached the higher population.  Concievably council could pass a resolution or commision a study that declares El Paso to have one million people.  This is sloppy and unnecessary.  The proposition should leave the choice of the number of members on council up to the voters.  We should not be laying this booby trap — the voters should be making the decision as to how many members council has, not the council itself.

I post the ballot language directly from the city website:

SHALL SECTIONS 2.1 A AND B, 2.2 E, 2.3 A, 2.4 A AND 8.7, OF THE CITY CHARTER, RELATING TO THE CONDUCT OF ELECTIONS, CITY OFFICERS, AND TERMS OF OFFICE: TO MOVE THE CITY’S GENERAL ELECTIONS FROM MAY IN ODD NUMBERED YEARS TO NOVEMBER IN EVEN NUMBERED YEARS BEGINNING IN 2018; TO REVISE THE REQUIREMENTS FOR FILING FOR OFFICE TO CONFORM WITH STATE LAW; TO PROVIDE FOR THE SCHEDULING OF SPECIAL ELECTIONS ON DATES WHEN THE ELECTION WILL BE CONDUCTED BY THE COUNTY ELECTIONS ADMINISTRATOR; AND TO PROVIDE THAT THE COUNCIL MAY TAKE ACTION TO INCREASE THE NUMBER OF DISTRICT REPRESENTATIVES FROM EIGHT TO TEN AT SUCH TIME AS THE CITY’S POPULATION REACHES ONE MILLION?

Trojan horse

There will be a lot of discussion about how this proposition might increase the turn out in city elections.  If it is enacted it would certainly hurt school district elections because they would basically be separate elections with the city leaving the May ballot.

A secret motivation here is to make recalls and other citizen petitions much harder.  The way it works now a petition needs the signatures of 5% of the voters in the last city election.  Combining the city election into the November election would increase the number of voters and make getting 5% much more difficult.

Legal battle

We also have to be very careful with this proposition because of its poor wording.  If it is passed we will probably have an expensive legal battle because of its lack of authority for action.  We might be better off doing this next time if the voters want it.

It also has a problem with multiple subjects.  Some will undoubtedly say that there is only one subject — election.  Increasing the number of city representatives has nothing to do with an election.  This flaw will make the proposition subject to legal challenge if it is approved by the voters.

Study the proposition and then vote in May.

We deserve better

Brutus