Today’s question is “why did the city choose to take the performing arts center lawsuit to Austin instead of fighting the issue here in an El Paso court”?
Could it be that they wanted to avoid local public input by using our money to move the issue out of town and thus keeping locals who could not afford to travel to Austin from showing up to testify?
Or could it be that the city thought they would get a more enlightened judge in Austin–one who believed that governments can do whatever they want regardless of what the citizens ask for?
Or might it be that they wanted a judge that was ignorant of the actual facts surrounding the bond election. Quite simply the issue was placed on the ballot as a “performing arts facility”, not a sports arena.
Either way, the judge saw through the baloney that the city was serving up.
The judge was quite clear in her ruling and in fact blocked what might have been one of the city’s strategies. In addition to ruling that the city cannot build a facility that is suitable for a sports arena, she ordered that the city cannot use funds from sources other than the bond issue to modify or enhance the facility to make it suitable as a sports arena in the future.
Our new mayor was quoted in a Times article the other day as saying “The wording in her judgment is awfully ambiguous–it’s gray; it’s unclear”.
It seemed pretty clear to us but then again we did not completely lose the case like the city did.
Using our money to fight us
News reports have told us that the city has already spent over $800,000 fighting us.
The city says that their next action will be to appeal the judges ruling.
Presumably the appeal will be in Austin.
Hopefully common sense will continue to prevail.
We deserve better
Brutus
Posted by Brutus 
elpasospeak 
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