Where is our district attorney?

November 27, 2015

The email from our former city mangler  confirming that city council met in executive session and decided to delay the issuance of the ball park bonds points to another problem.

Texas law allows council to go into executive session for a limited number of reasons.

Discussing bond issuance is not one of the reasons.

Section 551.144 defines the penalty for participating in the closed meeting:

An offense under Subsection (a) is a misdemeanor punishable by:

(1) a fine of not less than $100 or more than $500;

(2) confinement in the county jail for not less than one month or more than six months; or

(3) both the fine and confinement.

I don’t expect that our district attorney will enforce this law.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

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

Happy Thanksgiving

November 26, 2015

Happy Thanksgiving!

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Still handling our money

November 25, 2015

Would it bother you to know that the city’s former chief financial officer is still on the board of directors of the El Paso Firemen & Policemen’s Pension Fund?

That’s what the fund’s website indicates.

With many of the facts about her financial failures now being exposed wouldn’t you think that the mayor would ask for her resignation?

Shouldn’t we think that we deserve to be shed of her?

We deserve better

Brutus

2 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Hard to believe

November 24, 2015

The San Jacinto Plaza situation keeps getting worse.

The latest spin from the city is that the project is delayed because of difficulties with a specially designed cable that will support the canopy for the pigeons.  They claim that they also are having problems with some of the welding.

Many of us question why the city would accept a design that required special cables from Germany.

Now it appears that we are going to have to pay those designers even more money.  The Tuesday, November 17, 2015 city council agenda has an item on it to approve the third amendment to the contract between the city and the designers.

Timeline

June 12, 2014 contract is issued for $500,000.00

December 4, 2014 first amendment is issued raising the contract by $50,000.

February 24, 2015 second amendment is issued raising the contract by $50,000 to $600,000.00

This Tuesday the proposed third amendment will be considered raising the contract another $38,000.

It appears that if you design a project that is difficult to build you can milk the city for extra money as you “supervise” the fiasco.

Its hard to believe that we had to hire an out of town company to design our plaza.  Its also hard to believe that the city is going to spend even more money with this group.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

4 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Miserable Mesa Mess

November 23, 2015

The mess on Mesa this Sunday did not occur.

Had they actually  closed the freeway  for 18 hours, public safety–ambulance, fire and police services would have been paralyzed.

After considering the safety issues think of  the economic ones.  How much time and money would have been wasted crawling Mesa?  What impression  would have we left on the people from out of town that were trying to pass through?

Our city representative on the west side was quoted in an opinion piece in the Times the other day.

“We’re a big city and this is not a bad problem to have at this time because it’s preparing us for the future,” said city Rep. Cortney Niland, who represents much of the area affected by construction. “I know it’s frustrating, and I’m stuck in that traffic, too, but I’m begging everybody to be patient and let’s get through this as best we can. It’s all we can do.”

Accepting failure

She was absolutely wrong.  There were  things that could  be done to lessen the problem.

I spoke with someone who told me that me he talked with the mayor this Sunday.  The mayor evidently indicated that he got a commitment from the people involved to keep three lanes open in each direction.

Thank you Mr. Mayor.

Governing involves more than posturing.

We deserve better

Brutus

12 Comments | City government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »