We are experimenting with a Twitter feed.
For those of you who are interested you can follow this blog on Twitter @brutusep.
Karla Guevara Walton
September 26, 2013
You will notice, in addition to several blog links we have added a Twitter account; Karla Guevara Walton “twitter.com/karlareports”.
Karla is the El Paso Political Reporter of “El Diario”. Not only does she attend the El Paso City and County Council Meetings and other local meetings, she accurately reports what she hears and sees. Pure news. What a refreshing change. Its a good source of what is happening and its spontaneous. Naturally you can retweet if of you like.
As of the example of how she reports occurred when Judge Escobar and the Commishes were told about about the Multimillion dollar Expansion UMC with 3 new County Clinics, the Judge gave Mr. Valenti 2 full hours to make his case. The opposition was cut off at the end of 15 minutes. No mention was made regarding his claim to have made a profit last year and then ask for 50 million Plus for capital improvements of the Hospital.
Whose his Accountant? Sounds like “The Candelaria Arrieta’s Accounting system”, using a dart board. Capital improvements, profits, What’s the difference? We’ll just raise the taxes. Issue bonds.
No mention of operating expenses. Maybe we can call that capital improvement.
We are glad to have Karla as a link and hope that soon she will convince the Diario Publishers to do an English digital edition. If not the whole edition, how about just the El Paso news.
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Posted by M.T. Cicero
Police force size
September 21, 2013Let me start by stating that I respect the job that the El Paso Police Department does, both in terms of quality and relative cost. Our current chief seems to be a no nonsense type who unfortunately has to deal with the city heirarchy. He seems to have been able to keep a low profile and not bring his difficulties with city management out into the public eye.
How many policemen do we need?
I am not an expert on law enforcement issues. I might be wrong in what I am about to say. If so, I trust that someone will set me straight.
Many times when I hear about the need to increase the number of officers, the justification given is in terms of number of officers per population size. The list below shows those numbers for a few cities in the area:
| Citizens per officer | |
| Albuquerque | 517 |
| Austin | 496 |
| Dallas | 356 |
| El Paso | 579 |
| Fort Worth | 496 |
| Phoenix | 491 |
| San Antonio | 606 |
| San Diego | 705 |
The average for these cities comes to 512 citizens per officer, putting El Paso in a position where each officer must deal with more people.
Number of crimes
El Paso is recognized as the safest large city in the United States. Our crime rate is low compared with other cities. The FBI publishes reports that show the total number of crimes (violent and crimes against property) by city. Looking at the numbers based on the number of crimes that each policeman has to deal with:
| Crimes | Officers | Crimes per Officer | |
| Albuquerque | 33,869 | 1,055 | 32.10 |
| Austin | 46,878 | 1,605 | 29.21 |
| Dallas | 62,680 | 3,666 | 17.10 |
| El Paso | 19,270 | 1,078 | 17.88 |
| Fort Worth | 36,986 | 1,505 | 24.58 |
| Phoenix | 70,368 | 3,146 | 22.37 |
| San Antonio | 89,611 | 2,303 | 38.91 |
| San Diego | 37,229 | 1,863 | 19.98 |
The average number of crimes each officer has to deal with each year in these cities is 23. El Paso’s police officers deal with fewer crimes than the average. By the way, I wanted to include Tucson but the FBI says that Tucson does not tally property crimes the way that the other cities do.
Remember that these are not jaywalking or traffic offenses. Violent crimes and crimes against property take more time than simple events.
The size of the police department is a major factor in our city budget. We should at least have a thorough discussion about how big our police department should be.
We deserve better
Brutus
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Posted by Brutus
Lax lawyers
September 15, 2013Scrivener is one city employee that I wish would not work so hard.
We see his name on this blog too frequently. According to Wikipedia a Scrivener’s error is “a phrase which can also be used as an excuse to deflect blame away from specific individuals, such as high powered executives, and instead redirect it to the more anonymous clerical staff.”
An item on next week’s city council agenda is listed as: “An Ordinance amending Ordinance 8065 (Civil Service Rules and Regulations), to amend various sections of Rule Nos. 2, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10 to comport with the recent amendments to the Charter of the City of El Paso, Texas; to delete Rule No. 3 and mark as “RESERVED;” to amend Rule No. 6 to correspond with City personnel policies; and to correct a scrivener’s error in Rule No.2.”
Respect the law
It would be nice if our city staff, especially the city attorney, would take the time to see to it that when we pass a law we pass a correctly worded law.
As previously written by Brutus, “In my book we should expect the city attorney to produce accurate, fair work. The city parliamentarian could catch this for us, but — you guessed it — the city parliamentarian is the city attorney.”
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
Cato
1 Comment | City government, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Cato
Dark age
September 10, 2013Where are we on the ballpark?
Has anyone seen the final designs? Are the construction bids in yet?
What are we getting and how much will be be paying for it?
Isn’t council supposed to be getting regular status reports? The minutes of the May 28, 2013 show council passing a resolution that required council to be given bi-monthly (every other) updates.
Motion duly made by Representative Niland, seconded by Representative Byrd, that the Ordinance be ADOPTED, authorizing the debt only for the amount originally authorized with bi-monthly updates to the Mayor and Council until Ball Park completion plus real time expenditure report and project management status from Jordan/Hunt. Whereupon the Mayor ordered that a vote be taken on the passage and adoption of the Ordinance which when so done resulted as follows…
Are they getting the updates and just not showing us?
These are simple questions that we should not even have to ask.
We deserve better
Brutus
3 Comments | Ball park, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
elpasospeak 
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