Mystery solved

August 29, 2014

El Diario and some local radio stations have reported that a dead human was found hanged near the library at UTEP last week.  At this point we don’t know the circumstances or details about the dead soul.

According to a local radio station it is the policy of the Times to not report suicides.  The explanation given is that the Times does not want to publicize these events for fear that the news may spur additional cases.

Now clear

Maybe this can help us understand why the Times does not publicize the corruption that goes on at the city.  They must think that if they do so they might encourage more corruption.  Could it be that we owe them our gratitude?

This could also help explain why our local district attorney will not reveal the results of his investigation into the case where the city representative allegedly assaulted a city employee.  Could it be that he is trying to help the public by not revealing the truth?  If she did assault the city employee and he did let that be known might we have city representatives attacking citizens regularly?

We deserve better

Brutus

6 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Times, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Above the law?

August 22, 2014

The Max Powers blog published an article the other day titled “Hawaiian Hardball”.

The article contained a link to an email from the former city manager instructing the city staff to play “hardball” with an open records request relating to a potential water park.

It looks as though the city was negotiating with a organization and received an offer from the firm.  Then someone (probably a competitor) filed an open records request asking for access to the offer.  You can read the email below:

hardball

Power hungry

In the email we learn that the city manager wanted “to play hardball” with the proprietary portion of the offer.  She did not want to release that material so she decided to use her power and “play hardball”.

If she cared just a little bit about the law she would have known that the city did not have to nor should it have released the proprietary material, so she did not need to play hardball.  She just wanted to.

The Texas Public Information Act gives specific instructions to governments requiring them to notify the owner of the proprietary material and giving the owner an opportunity to object to the release before releasing documents like these.  If an objection was raised the city would then have to take the issue to the attorney general of Texas for a determination.

The general principal is that while negotiations are still being conducted no party should have access to information that would give them a competitive advantage.  How the city might have proceeded with the offer is another issue.

Mean spirited

The city did not have to play hardball.  They simply could have obeyed the law.  I wonder if she knew that.

We deserve better

Brutus

7 Comments | City government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Continuing lies

August 20, 2014

Now the financial expert that was brought in to save the children’s hospital has resigned.

It looks like the ship is sinking.

It was built on false economics.

After multiple studies they finally found one that said it might work, if.

Then the people behind this built a hospital even bigger than the one that the last study said would be marginal.

The children’s hospital needed to be a part of a general hospital, not a separate entity that would draw money away from our county hospital.

The charges from the county hospital were poorly planned.  To this day no one has explained why the children’s hospital has to pay rent to the county hospital when the construction was financed by a separate bond issue specifically promoted to build the children’s hospital.  The charges for services that the children’s hospital has to pay the county hospital are unreasonable.  If children’s was in fact a separate entity they could have at least managed those expenses to be within their means.

The revenue projections, as optimistic as they were, were based on reimbursement from the state and feral governments.  Planning to have a steady revenue stream from those two was just wrong.

Now both hospitals are in trouble.

The children’s hospital chief executive has resigned.  Is the situation beyond fixing, or would the solutions not be acceptable to the people in power who got us into this mess originally?

We will soon get to see the new county hospital budget for next year.  I won’t be surprised if it too is based on false economics.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

7 Comments | County Government, Federal Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Pay as we go

August 13, 2014

Our city charter caps the contributions that the city can make to the police and fire pension funds at 18.5% which is where the city contribution is today.

According to reports the Texas legislature passed a law last year that would allow city council to raise our contribution rate without regard to our city charter.

The law does not require council to do so.  In fact it still allows council to take the issue to the public for a vote.

I would hope that our public servants would take the position that the people have voted and set the maximum rate and that if a they want a rate increase it should be taken to a public vote.

I would hope that our council feels the same way.

To increase our contribution rate beyond what our city charter authorizes may turn out to be legal because of the new law in Texas.

Increasing the rate without having a public vote would be another sign of disregard for the voters.

Some tell us that El Paso is not competitive with other Texas cities in this regard.

That does not make the other cities right.  We should pay our public servants a competitive wage as they are working and not defer our costs by transferring them to a perpetual pension system.    We might have an opportunity here to become more desirable than other cities.  I suspect that if El Paso adopted a compensation system where the public safety employees got paid more as they were working and less in retirement employees from other cities may want to transfer here.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | City government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

A rose by any other name

August 5, 2014

We unfortunately know that El Paso residents have the 7th highest property tax bill of the 50 largest cities in the United States.  Our position will climb when we start factoring in debt service for the bonds that city council has been selling.

We learned last week that for those of us in the EPISD district our city takes 25% of our local taxes compared to a state-wide average of 17%.  The district is getting 46% of those local taxes compared to 54% statewide.  Our priorities seem screwed up.

But wait!

As though the city trough is not deep and wide enough city council is considering raising the city’s tax rate 2.1 cents per hundred dollars of evaluation to 69.9 cents.  That works out to about a 3% increase, or $26 dollars a year on what we are told is the average home (one valued at $124,000).

Wait again!

Council also wants to raise the franchise fee that our electric company is charged from 4% to 5%.  The fee is passed on to the consumers, so you and I will pay it.  If this money was to be generated through property taxes they would have to add 1.45 cents to our property tax rate.

That puts us at an increase of 3.55 cents per hundred.

Keep waiting!

Council is also considering adding another $1 per month to our trash bill.  The city runs that service and it generates a profit that is taken from the department and used by the city.  The bill would thus increase $12 per year or the equivalent of another .96 cents on our tax bill.

Now we are at 4.51 cents per hundred.

The answer is:

City council is also considering imposing a franchise tax on our city owned water utility.  That tax would be added to our water bills thus generating another $3.5 million for the city each year from our wallets.

This works out to about another 1.05 cents per hundred brining us to an increase of 5.56 cents per hundred or about an 8% tax increase.

The mayor is right

He was quoted the other day as having said “It’s not a hidden tax”.  He is absolutely right–it is a tax increase right out in the open.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

 

7 Comments | City government, El Paso Independent School District, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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