Budget trick

March 24, 2014

Item 11.2 on the regular agenda of the March 25, 2014 city council meeting is a triumph of fact over fiction.

Decrease General Fund appropriations of various City departmental budgets in the total amount of $5,864,151 as per the attached schedule.

Of course there is no schedule attached.  In fact the agenda item is listed as “Discussion and action to approve the following budget transfers”.  City council’s own rules require that the backup material for an item like this must be posted when the item is place on the agenda.  In this case that was last Thursday.  Rules are evidently for you and me, not for our city government.

Good news

The unfortunate good news is that city staff is taking steps to take money out of the budget.  They should.  My guess is that revenues have not met the levels they told us they would when they passed the budget.  Many of us could see that coming.

What departments will be cut?  If the required backup material was made available we would have had an opportunity to know in advance.  As it is we will have to sit back and watch them cut without regard to public input.

By the way, do you remember this February statement from our city manager?

“All of our revenues are meeting our projections so I don’t know what they’re talking about”

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, Open Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Missed opportunity

March 10, 2014

Evidently the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas hosted a seminar in El Paso the other day at the El Paso Independent School District central office.

They presented information about the Public Information Act and the Texas Open Meetings Act.

Unfortunately few of us knew about the event and so did not attend.

What would it have taken for EPISD to have notified the newspapers, television, and radio stations so that more of us would have known about the seminar?  Maybe they did.

Unfortunately many local government employees consider anyone who makes a request under the Public Information Act to be the enemy.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times, Open Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Not my job

February 16, 2014

If you go the portion of the city’s web site where you can look at city council agendas you will see the following”

*DISCLAIMER: Please be aware that only agenda documentation from 2014 and on may be searched via this search bar. Archived agenda documentation prior to 2014 may be found on the ‘2008 − 2013 Archive’ tab and is not searchable. You may contact the Municipal Clerk about any record not found on these pages”.

I wrote a small piece about this in Cover up.

Thinking about it again, the word “disclaimer” got my attention.  I googled “define disclaimer” and got this gem:

a statement that denies something, esp. responsibility.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, Open Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Cover up

February 7, 2014

Take a look at the city’s agenda search page below.

search

City staff asked for new software to change the way we access city council agendas.

The result is that we can no longer search for things that occurred before 2014.

Neat, huh?

Opaque

Any embarrassing details about what was said or done in the past are now effectively hidden from us.

This has to be deliberate.  If the new software cannot handle the old agendas, then leaving the old system up would give us access to past events.

Shameful!

We deserve better

Brutus

8 Comments | City government, Open Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Baseball stadium now part of Quality of Life bonds?

October 29, 2013

I found this on the official site of the El Paso Chihuahuahas:

El Paso citizens approved $500 million in “Quality of Life” bonds, including the building of a state-of-the-art baseball stadium nestled in the heart of downtown to be completed for the 2014 season.

Mistaken

We know that the statement is wrong.  The baseball stadium was not voted on by the citizens.  It was not part of the “Quality of Life” bonds.

Whoever wrote that is either clueless as to what has been happening in El Paso or is trying to change history.

Move on El Paso

Some say that we should stop talking about how the ballpark came about and come together to support it.

Personally I’m inclined to think that supporting it at this point is the right thing to do.  Without our support the situation will become even worse.

As far as stopping talk about how this was foisted upon us, I disagree.  We need to remember this and see to it that our current and future city officials don’t get away with something like this again in the future.  

We deserve better

Brutus

15 Comments | Ball park, City government, Open Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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