Testing the newbies

June 23, 2013

It is disappointing but not surprising that city staff is taking the opportunity to try to increase their power at the very first meeting of the new city council.

Item 1C on the regular agenda is titled “AN ORDINANCE FOR ESTABLISHING DEADLINES AND PROCEDURES FOR PLACING ITEMS ON THE AGENDA FOR CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS AND REPEALING NO. 17016”.

Why?

Ordinance number 17016 was the old ordinance according to this item.  It required council to take a special vote before approving any item where the backup material is not complete  declaring that failure to take action would be detrimental to the interest of the city.  I wrote about this in Sneak Attack.  In other words council needs to be given all the paperwork that they are being asked to approve.

If city staff does not make the material available per the requirements of the old ordinance, and city council votes on the agenda item without the special vote, city council members violate an existing ordinance.  Violating an ordinance is an ethics violation.  That could lead to severe consequences for city council members.

Not explained.

What the backup material for this proposed new ordinance does not explain is that city staff frequently submits agenda items without the required backup material.  This makes it easier to keep council members from doing their homework.

Why now?

City staff has put this on the first agenda of the new council.  The new members are trying to get their feet on the ground.  The new ordinance removes the requirement for the special vote as well as other things.  Staff is trying to get this through before council figures out the rules.

City staff will now be able to leave important documents out of the material that they give to city council without breaking the law.  Council will not know what hit them.

I hope that someone finds a way to explain this to the new mayor and the council members.

The new ordinance is a very bad idea.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Cato

9 Comments | City government, Open Government, Uncategorized | Permalink
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Methinks the lady doth protest too much

June 19, 2013

The word will probably be out by the time this post gets published.

It seems that our city manager will be staying on through the end of the year or maybe  the end of her contract.

That makes dropping the suit against the Texas attorney general even more important (see Now you don’t see it, now you do).

As long as the city manager is in control of city staff it will be difficult to get to the truth about past events at the city.

Texas law gives us the right to review the e-mails that the city is suing to repress.

If there is nothing to hide, let us see them.

This is not about principles.  Principles tend to come in bunches.  If these people have any, this is the only one that I have seen.

We deserve better

Brutus

2 Comments | City government, Open Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Stewardship

June 17, 2013

What were the voters saying?

Was it about gay rights?

Was it about city council ignoring the results of an election?

Was it about downtown, destroying city hall, the ball park?

My take is that it was about competence and honesty.  All in all, El Pasoans are a pretty tolerant bunch.  We tend to live our own lives and pay little attention to the temporary tempests that happen here.

What we have witnessed from the city for the past few years got our attention though.  Tearing down city hall and building a baseball stadium with poor planning is costing us a lot of unnecessary money.  The city chief financial officer told us that it would cost us $33 million to move into new city facilities.  We now know that the number is over $70 million and we are still learning about more.

The city manager admitted in public that the true cost of the stadium won’t be known until we finish building it.  If the project had been handled in a measured manner instead of the “hurry up, we have an emergency” way it was handled, we could have known — down to the penny.  I would have voted for a well planned ball park.

The voters approved $470 million of quality of life bonds last November.  The city hall move and the ball park showed the citizens that the team down at city hall could not or would not manage our money with respect.

It looks to me like they chose the mayor based upon his ability to manage money and his promise of honesty and transparency.  My take on the city council election is that the voters wanted to get away from the rubber stamping mentality seen on council.  The voters rejected all of the candidates the Times endorsed for election to city office.  The runaway train must be controlled.

We have committed to spend almost a billion dollars recently.  I think the voters want to get their money’s worth.

In a word, this was about stewardship.

Eternal vigilance is the cost of liberty

Cato

1 Comment | City government, El Paso Times, Open Government, Purchasing | Permalink
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What else are they hiding?

June 15, 2013

The backup material for item 10A on next week’s city council agenda has some interesting language.

Item 10A asks for approval of a resolution that would approve of the first amendment to the ball park lease.  The modification to the lease requires an ordinance changing the original ordinance.

Here is the language from the backup material:

In addition, due to the bond validation suit and other timing issues, certain language with respect to the financing needs to be amended.

I have no idea what that really means.  The backup material certainly does not explain it.

What I do know is that I don’t trust them here.

We deserve better

Brutus

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The gift that keeps on giving

June 15, 2013

This article in El Diario de El Paso reveals another secret deal that the city has entered into as a part of the city hall destruction.

The city bought part of the Times building for $9.4 million this year.

Then why did the city sign a lease for $4,750 per month in an adjacent part of the Times building for the next eight years last February?  The lease has a sweetheart 3% increase every year, so by the time the lease is over the city will have paid more than half a million dollars.

Does the city need the space?  If so, why wasn’t it part of the purchase?

Devious

I don’t know if the city needs the space or not.  What I do know is that the lease was not about space.  It was about paying the Times back for parking space at the Union Plaza parking terminal.

The Times needed parking space as part of their move to another building.  The city had a parking garage.  The Times evidently did not want to pay for the 150 some-odd spaces they needed.

The city charged the Times for the parking spaces.  In a separate lease the city agreed to pay the same amount back to the Times for the half million dollar lease space.  The deals wash.

Give away

The net effect is that the Times is getting free parking for 8 years.

City council feigned lack of knowledge.  How can that be?  Many of the items that come before council ask to give the city manager authority to negotiate and sign whatever documents are necessary without bringing the deals back to city council.

The Times raised the integrity issue in the current mayoral race when it complained that one of the candidates pulled some of his advertising because he thought his campaign was not being treated fairly.

Hypocrites

Now we learn that the city is giving the Times free parking for 8 years.  I wonder if that has an effect on their coverage.

We deserve better

Brutus

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