EPISD disappoints again

February 19, 2019

The EPISD school board president just resigned.

He evidently told the Times that he no longer lives within the district.

From the district’s policy manual:

A person elected or appointed to serve as a board member must
remain a resident of the district throughout the term of office. A
board member who ceases to reside in the district vacates the office.

Tex. Const., Art. XVI, Sec. 14;

Prince v. Inman, 280 S.W.2d 779 (Tex. Civ. App.—Beaumont 1955, no writ);

Whitmarsh v. Buckley, 324 S.W.2d 298 (Tex. Civ. App.—Houston 1959, no writ)

It appears that the Texas constitution, Texas statutes, and local board policy make are clear.

Question

When did the trustee move out of the district that he represented?

Did he participate in decisions that he had no right to be involved in?

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Executive session participants

February 12, 2019

Rich Wright over at elchuqueno.com wrote the other day about the city’s continuing use of executive session.

I don’t attend many city council meetings so I don’t know who goes into the executive sessions.

For those of you who do attend be on the lookout for who goes in.

Texas law only gives city council members the right to attend executive sessions.  The city attorney must also be present.

Note that the city council members have the right to attend and cannot be kept out unless the issue is about them.

On the other hand city council has the right to request the presence of any of the city officers or employees as long as their presence “is necessary to the matter under consideration”.

In other words the city officers and employees should only be in the meeting as long as it takes to discuss the particular subject that they are involved with.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

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

Traffic investigations

February 3, 2019

We had another tragic event on I-10 last week.

A young man lost his life.

Our condolences go out to the family.

Unfortunately the accident is another example of where the authorities need to rethink their procedures for handling such events.

I-10 was blocked off in both directions for more than three hours.  I’m not familiar with the procedures that the authorities follow in order to investigate and document in these cases.

What I do know is that they take too long.

We deserve better

Brutus

8 Comments | City government, Federal Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

EPISD sells bonds and doesn’t need voter approval

January 23, 2019

A loyal reader sent this to our attention:

EPISD previously created a public facility corporation under Texas law.

They did this to pay for the new central office facilities.

The way it works is that the public facility corporation can authorize and sell bonds without voter approval.  They simply place notices in the local newspaper (how many people subscribe to the newspaper, and of those who do how many ever even look at the classifieds?).  If a voter petition that objects to the issuance does not get filed within 60 days they can issue the bonds.  The petition must bear the signature of 5 percent of the registered voters in the district.

After all you didn’t complain did you?

From there the public facility corporation builds the building and leases it to the school district.

Nifty huh?

We deserve better

Brutus

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

City manager’s legal expenses

January 20, 2019

A reader sent this in:

For your call to open topics, I wanted to point out  that the recent decision by City Council to retroactively pay for Tommy Gonzalez’s attorneys’ fees (from past ethics claims and his defense thereof) violates Texas law.   The Texas Constitution prohibits retroactive payments for past services to public employees, meaning City employees.  For support of this concept, see this web site and the sources it cites to https://fmx.cpa.texas.gov/fm/pubs/paypol/general_provisions2/index.php?section=retroactive&page=retroactive.
When City Council recently decided to go back in time and pay Mr. Gonzalez for something in the past that was not previously agreed upon in regards to his past defense of ethics charges, they made a retroactive payment of the type prohibited by law.   The lone City Rep who was alleged to have leaked this deal was doing the public a favor, but no one seemed to notice that the payment was prohibited by law.   Not even the new City Attorney.  Just food for thought.

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

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