Miners struck gold!

March 25, 2016

The Sunday, March 20, 2016 front page of the Times featured a half page graphic titled “Revenue Race”.

The accompanying article was about UTEP’s athletic department finances.  Many dollar amounts were cited but I had great difficulty adding up the detail items to come up with their stated totals.

Incredible

The Times actually reported that the UTEP basketball program generated a profit of $129,186 million in the 2014-2015 school year.

That’s 129 billion, and 186 million dollars.

With numbers like that it is kind of hard to justify them charging tuition at all.  In fact they might want to consider free parking for the basketball patrons.

When such obviously erroneous numbers are published, much less on the front page,  we have to wonder if the basic cause is ignorance or incompetence or indifference or maybe all three.

Either way it is hard to believe anything that they publish.

Maybe they should pay attention to their recent editorial where they pointed out that a group’s “actions continue to undermine their words”.

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Do they ever do their homework at the city?

March 24, 2016

Have they done it again?

According to local news reports the city has hired a new deputy city manager to oversee the capital improvement, streets and maintenance, environmental services and mass transit operations.

His job will pay $183,300 per year.

Reading about him on the web, he appears to have many years of experience working at the city level.  Surprisingly he holds only a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering if I haven’t missed something.

Troubling

This Friday, March 18, 2016 BaltimoreSun article might give us pause.  According to the article our new deputy city manager was involved in at least two situations that are reminiscent of what goes on here in El Paso.

According to the “Baltimore Sun”   he received over $14,000 in homestead tax exemptions on a property that he owned that he did not live in.  More troubling, they report that he received a bill from the state and did not pay it until several months later and then only when the Sun asked him about it.

Most of us can probably understand how a mistake was made when he moved out of a house and did not change his exemption status.  Few of us can accept a highly placed city official  not paying the tax bill when the state discovered the problem.

The article also points out that our new guy was involved in a failed speed camera system–“Zaied previously supervised the city’s speed camera system, which failed to monitor the rush of tickets it generated and was shut down nearly three years ago after repeatedly issuing erroneous citations.”  According to other Sun articles the speed camera system was supposed to generate money for Baltimore but ended up costing millions.

Let’s be fair

It could be that the new guy does not deserve criticism for what happened in Baltimore.  He might have been on the periphery of the situations and just got slimed as part of the process.

What we know for certain is that for the money we are paying we could hire someone with much better credentials and with less baggage.

Then again he might fit in well at the city.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

 

12 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Battered trust

March 23, 2016

The Sunday, March 20, 2016 Times editorial started this way:

“Mayor Oscar Leeser and a majority of the City Council appear to believe that repeating the incantation “moving forward” will somehow restore the public’s battered trust in city government.  Instead, their actions continue to undermine their words.”

In a recent article about the ball park bond mess the Times printed this quote from our former city manager:

“After that I expect the city to move on”

The Times evidently thinks it is quite acceptable for our former city manager to tell us what to do.

If they way to talk about battered public trust they should start by looking at themselves first.

The hypocracy from the Times continues.

We deserve better

Brutus

10 Comments | Ball park, City government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Insider?

March 22, 2016

Over the last week, Max Powers discussed El Paso Times coverage of Marissa Marquez’ lobbying gig, while the paper has neglected to report on other elected officials, who also may have conflicts between their elected position and their private gigs.

I’ll add one more case to the discussion, although it doesn’t involve an elected official – Bryan Crowe. Crowe serves as the the City of El Paso’s Managing Director for the Quality of Life departments and a member of the City Manager’s Executive Leadership Team. Yet, formally, he is employed by SMG – a firm based in suburban Philadelphia, contracted to manage El Paso’s convention center.

The potential conflict – SMG is likely to apply to manage the city’s soon to be built “Multipurpose cultural and performing arts center” (re: the arena). The city currently has an open RFP for these services. One would presume that the Managing Director for the Quality of Life departments would be involved in the selection process.

I wonder why the El Paso Times spent such print space questioning Marquez, but has not discussed the potential SMG/Crowe conflict of interest. … Or, the other potential conflicts discussed by Mr. Powers.

Not sure what we deserve.

Caligula’s Nephew

7 Comments | City government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Deja Vu all over again

March 21, 2016

Our county commissioners court is scheduled to consider an economic development plan today, Monday, March 21, 2016.

Among the ideas being considered is the redevelopment of our county coliseum.

Based on events from our recent past we might see something like this being approved:

Cultural, children’s, satellite, ball park, arena, sportsplex

The plan will be to build this vitally necessary facility quickly.  Because our elected officials feel that they are better qualified than us “crazies” the project will be handled with absolutely no public input and all records and correspondence related to the project will instantly eviscerated.

We will probably be told that:

  • They need to do this immediately because a regional roller derby team franchise is available and some other city like Van Horn will snap it away from us if we hesitate.
  • It can’t be built on the existing coliseum site.  Instead the only practical solution is to drain Ascarate lake and use that land for the new facility.  Ascarate lake can easily be moved to where the old coliseum was.
  •  The facility will not cost local taxpayers anything.  Roller derby fans from around the world will voluntarily pay high ticket prices to fund the project.
  • The facility will have no operating costs since with a seating capacity of 12 seats several charitable foundations will do the work.
  • The new facility will actually save taxpayers $17 million each and every year because of reduced trips to the emergency room.
  • Roller skaters deserve a cultural facility.
  • We need to do this for the children because there is no place for them to go for entertainment.
  • The county’s inability to finish the sportsplex is not indicative of what will happen here.  This project will be handled differently.
  • Traffic control, security, and sanitation responsibilities will be foisted on the city.  They have plenty of money.

Help us help you

There will be a small technicality in that the voters will have to approve the project in a special election.  Plenty of false flyers will be distributed to help alleviate our concerns.

Citizens should not be worried about the original plan because it will be changed once the election has been won.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

6 Comments | Ball park, City government, County Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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