elpasospeak

Once the city has moved out of city hall, I wonder if they will go back to the five day work week for administrators.

You might recall that the city manager wanted to save money by going to a four day week, thus saving the cost of heating and cooling that white elephant that we built in the late 1970’s.

City departments are now spread to the winds.  The city web site gives us this information.

Now that the departments are no longer centralized is the utility saving argument still the one that will be used?

Or has this actually been about delaying requests for public information.  The city has ten business days to respond.  Not opening the offices on Friday gives them one extra day per week by their interpretation.

Maybe not being open on Fridays works to their advantage keeping the public from contacting city council.  City council agendas are published late Thursday afternoon.  Try to reach your city representative on Friday to discuss a concern you might have.  A well raised concern might cause a city representative to look into a matter.  As it is now, if you contact them on Monday there is little time left for a city representative to perform an inquiry.

Then we have the quality of life issue.  Remember the lives that term refers to are the ones of city management.  Several articles have been posted about that subject on this blog.  If you have not read them enter “quality of life” in search box on the right side of this page.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Cato

The ill conceived ordinance that would have put the city in conflict with the Texas Public Information Act was taken off the table at this week’s city council meeting (3/5/2013).

The public and the newspapers did a good job on this one by paying attention to what council was up to and making our voices heard.

The item was originally placed on the February 26, 2013 agenda.  The city representative from district 2 (soon to be termed out of office) made the motion to accept the proposed ordinance at its’ first reading.  Council then decided to retire into executive session to get legal advice.  When council came out of executive session the motion was passed unanimously without any discussion.

Then the public got involved.

The ordinance was on the March 5 agenda for the mandatory second reading.  This time the same city representative asked that the item be removed from the agenda and re-written.  The representative made comments about how the proposed ordinance did not accomplish what council was trying to do and how poorly worded it was.  The city attorney offered to bring the author (from an out of town law firm) to the podium to try to explain what was written.  The representative declined indicating that the wording was not salvageable.   Council voted unanimously to delete the item from the agenda.  The activist city attorney then asked if it would be acceptable to bring the issue back as a resolution instead of as an ordinance.  Our city representative said yes.

What happened here?

Council loved the proposed ordinance before the public got involved.  If they voted for the ordinance without reading it then we have one set of problems.  I believe they knew what it said and were hoping to run it through council before we were aware.

Once the public got involved council ran from it like it was a Public Information Request.

Where was the city attorney on this?  Why are we paying an out of town law firm to generate such junk?

This kind of thing goes on every week at city council.

Thankfully we got what we deserve this time.

That is until they try to sneak something through next time.  It will probably be in the form of a resolution.  Resolutions do not need public hearings so they can do this as part of a consent agenda.

We deserve better

Brutus