What happened to women and children first?

October 27, 2015

A helpful reader sent us a copy of the information technology contract between our county hospital and the children’s hospital.

The copy we received represented the time period from the opening of the hospital to September 30, 3014.  We don’t know if the contract was extended after that.

Along with the contract he sent a copy of a July 14, 2014 report titled “El Paso Children’s Hospital IT Cost Review and Recommendations” performed by (you guessed it) an out of town company.

The report makes many recommendations to change the contract.  The summary view of the financial situation was that the children’s hospital was paying over $7.2 million a year to the county hospital for information technology.  Of the $7.2 million nearly $2.6 million was to pay the county hospital for the information technology portion of the bonds that the taxpayers are already paying for.

The report recommends that instead of paying $7.2 million each year the children’s hospital should have been paying $5.5 million if somehow someone somewhere could justify the children’s hospital paying the bond costs.

Without the bond costs and with what the report writers considered to be the appropriate level of spending for a hospital of that size the report suggested that the annual bill should have been $2.7 million instead of $7.2 million.

Taking candy from babies.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Cloudburst

October 26, 2015

Well its time to look at another delayed project from the city.

utepcloud

This $500,000 project was originally supposed to be finished in April of 2015 according to what we were told in February of 2015.

Then in June 2015 we were told that it would be ready in September of 2015.

October is almost gone and we have seen nothing, not even the first puff.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Posted by Brutus

Taking bets?

October 25, 2015

It was in the middle of November of last year that our  county hospital’s board of managers gave the county hospital administrator a $120,000 bonus.

There was quite a stir among the public about the bonus in light of the poor performance of the hospital and the fact that they had to lay off 56 workers because of financial difficulties.

We should be watching to see what the board does this year in light of the financial failure of one of his pet projects–the children’s hospital and also the certification failures earlier this year.

The administrator’s annual evaluation was on the board’s October 13, 2015 agenda.  The item was tabled and is to be brought up on the November agenda.

We deserve better

Brutus

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How important is that job really?

October 24, 2015

The county fired our first county administrator a few weeks ago.  He lasted nine months.

Is it strange that we have heard nothing about finding a replacement?

Is it even stranger that he was fired because of “personal issues”?

One would think that they would have picked up on those “issues” as part of the hiring process, but then again that would require knowing how to vet candidates for senior executive positions.

Will we see our former city chief financial officer reincarnated as the county administrator?  She has friends over there.  Maybe we could see some of her creative accounting somehow balance the budget over at the county and children’s  hospitals.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Help on the horizon

October 23, 2015

This came in the other day from ManintheMoon:

 

County Attorney Jo Ann Bernal lied about investigating Horizon Communities Improvement Association. Why?
County Attorney Jo Ann Bernal told the El Paso Time reporter Alex Hinojose in a article on  2/28/2011@ 12:00:00 AM MST http://archive.elpasotimes.com/ci_17498314
“Last year, El Paso County Attorney Jo Anne Bernal assigned an attorney to investigate the nonprofit organization.
“We received a call from city Rep. Rachel Quintana’s office who said they had received complaints from several lot owners who wanted to figure out some kind of relief from paying the association fees,” Bernal said. “Unfortunately we could not determine if there was a crime.”
HCIA is the Horizon Communities Improvement Association   which has collected assessment fees for years on many properties in the Horizon City area and for my area has only handed out a few trees many years ago. HCIA has sued at least 20 lot owners in my subdivision for their fees that they take and demand payment but do little to help my community.
Come to find out through an open records request El Paso County Attorney Bernal office did not do an investigation as she claimed to the El Paso Times of HCIA and one is forced to wonder how she determined that no crime has taken place if her office never did an investigation of HCIA or if HCIA was acting forthright in the operation of this non-profit.
E-mail through ORR:
“From: Joanne Bernal
Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2015 4:31 PM
To: Jorge L. Reyes
Cc: Manuel Romero
Subject: Re: Horizon Community Improvement Association



Manny handled the issue which was not really an investigation.  He will call you to brief you.  JAB

Sent from my iPad”
In my ORR never found out what Commissioner Perez office was briefed on about the HCIA by the County Attorney’s Office.
With so many people not being able to sale there land out here before the water and utilities came in and HCIA trying to sue people and just the fraud in the selling of land in the Horizon City area over the years one would think Bernal would have looked at this closer. In addition the questionable seeding program (program for lot owner to seed their lots back to HCIA so HCIA could sell groups of lots to developers) HCIA was running one would think that our County Attorney would want to make sure everyone was acting above board. Who interest was serviced when Bernal’s office looked the other way?
Remember many lot owners out here were  told for years their land had little value because of no water. Who knew that the water and utilities were coming and benefited in making some believe their land was nearly worthless?
ManintheMoon

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Posted by Brutus

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