Electric bill increases

March 31, 2017

El Paso Electric has filed a petition with the Texas Public Utility Commission asking for permission to increase it’s rates.

While they propose to raise the average monthly bill by 10% they are asking for permission to raise the rates they charge our public schools and city and county governments 15.5%.

Currently their “general service rate” (smaller commercial customers) is $.06927 in the summer and $.03408 in the winter (per kilo watt hour).

Schools and local governments pay $.10817 in the summer and $.09071 in the winter (per kilo watt hour).

Our local governments are already being charged more than our businesses.

This, of course, is added to our tax bills.

We deserve better

Brutus

 


EPISD–Fortune overlooks our superintendent

March 30, 2017

Fortune magazine evidently does not recognize the situation with our EPISD superintendent.

The magazine recently recognized UTEP’s president Diana Natalicio as one of the world’s greatest leaders.

Our superintendent has told us that he has “one of the hardest jobs in America”.

Fortune did not include him in their list.

We deserve better

Brutus


Mayoral forum

March 29, 2017

Stuck with the quality of life vote?

March 28, 2017

It would appear that we will not be allowed to have an election to revoke permission for issuing the bonds for the arena.

There may be more recent case law, but the most recent case we can find dealing with the issue is the 1932 appeals court case Orr v. Marrs.

In that case the voters approved a bond issue for a school district.  Subsequently three-fourths of the registered voters signed a petition asking that the bonds not be issued.  The school board agreed and issued an order rescinding the vote of the taxpayers.

From the court’s decision:

It is fundamental that voters of a district can only exercise such powers as are conferred by statute, either expressly or by implication. All powers not expressly or by implication conferred are excluded. The power to rescind the former vote for the bond issue not being expressly given by the statute, it may not be, it is believed, reasonably implied. The power to vote on a bond issue implies the power to vote against it, but not to vote to rescind it after it has been regularly authorized.

If the Legislature had intended to grant the right of withdrawal of the vote, it could easily have been expressed.

New laws may have been passed that would allow a vote to rescind a bond vote but we have not been able to find any.

Just don’t issue a contract

At this point it would appear that our only hope of not building the arena is for city council to fail to authorize construction.

If they do nothing the arena will not be built.

That would open up the possibility of a mandamus action that would seek to compel each city representative to vote to approve construction.  A problem there would be that each city representative could vote no on a proposed construction contract if they thought the contract was not in the public’s better interest.

We deserve better

Brutus


A very “HOT” teacher! says:

March 27, 2017

This came in via the “Your comments” button:

Answers please…..how can our students in EPISD be expected to do good on the STAAR test when it is above 90° in the classrooms. Can we please take out a loan from Cabrerras generous raise to pay for someone to turn on the air conditioners at our schools for our students?
It would be interesting to see which schools already have air conditioning turned on. Could it be Cabrerra”s childrens schools or our board members favorites?? Wake up people….the preferential treatment is worse now than its ever been.
EPISD students deserve BETTER!