Following Richard Florida

April 20, 2017

City officials used a report from Richard Florida to justify their moves toward downtown revitalization a few years ago.

The other day we heard this from NPR:

Richard Florida promotes what he calls the creative class. He has said for years that cities prosper when they attract upscale innovators and entrepreneurs. Make your city a place where the creative class wants to live, and they, in turn, will create jobs.

INSKEEP: Many cities followed that advice. And now Richard Florida faces the downside. The creative class, he says, is creating cities that are massively unequal.

Unequal indeed.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | Ball park, City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

EPISD–$12 teachers

April 19, 2017

EPISD considered approving a contract with an out of town firm to provide summer school classes at their Tuesday, April 18, 2017 meeting.

The purchase would be made through a buy board.  Twenty-six companies were awarded contracts by the buy board as a result of the “bidding” process.

Each of the offerings from the companies were rated on a scale of zero to ten.

The company that EPISD has chosen was rated at 7.2, the lowest rating given to any of the companies.

The services that the buy board authorized the company to sell under their contract were “Paraprofessionals, web technologies, and design”.

EPISD appears to have chosen the “For a summer learning program with a 1:30 teacher to student ratio staffed by certified teachers at $12 per hour” option.

EPISD considers certified teachers to be professionals according to the EPISD web site.

The company’s contract with the buy board does not authorize them to offer professionals.  There seems to be a conflict here.

Will certified teachers work for $12 per hour?  Thirty children per class.  Is that a fair wage?

We deserve better

Brutus

12 Comments | El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Not in our lifetime

April 18, 2017

It is not as though city staff has not told city council how bad the street situation is.

This slide came from a recent presentation made to council:

On the left side you can see that staff is telling council that roads that are not maintained (like ours) should generally last 25 years.

They are also pointing out that with the budgets that council has been passing we are on a 140 year cycle.

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

EPISD–reconsidering central office location

April 17, 2017

It looks like the EPISD board is having some internal dissension about where their new central office should be.

Under the state appointed board of managers the board chose to hire an architectural firm to design a building to be located on Trans Mountain.

The current board recently changed that and is moving forward with the purchase of land and a building on North Stanton.

Now two of the board members have requested that the issue be reconsidered at the Tuesday, April 18, 2017 board meeting.

From the background packet:

(To afford greater transparency for public consumption; to make clear that BEST VALUE for the public and EPISD has been considered for this costly expenditure and that the move will benefit and support current EPISD operational requirements and those of the several decades to follow; and, to have an environmental impact study/survey or the like ,with a statement furnished about the two (2) aforementioned properties that shall be provided to a committee of citizens for final relocation determination.) Presenter: Charles Taylor

Group Approval

MOTION: I move that the Board approve the requested withdrawal; commission an Environmental Impact Study/Survey, or the like, to seek a BEST VALUE statement; appoint a committee of citizens from the 7- single-member Districts to assist with the BEST VALUE determination; and, then provide the EPISD constituency with that BEST VALUE Board decision.

Hmm.  Public input?  Best value?

We’ll see how that goes.

We deserve better

Brutus

13 Comments | El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

City beginning to think about our roads

April 16, 2017

City council has another one of its special meetings scheduled for Monday, April 17, 2017.

They generally deal with subjects that do not require public participation in the special meetings.  Said another way, they handle things that they do not want public input on.

In this case they will be given a presentation titled “Budget Overview” by city staff.

This is one of the slides from the presentation:

Notice that the progress they made this year is that they got permission to have their street inventory and assessment brought up to date.

That is a good idea.  Unfortunately it tells us that they are so far behind paving our streets that they don’t even know how bad the problem is.

We deserve better

Brutus

2 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »