What’s on your mind?
Brutus
Better care, less cost
December 20, 2019“Constructive” suggested the other day that the blog discuss areas where the city could cut services and expenses.
The fire department sends pumper trucks and sometimes ladder trucks on ambulance calls.
The justification that I have heard is that sometimes the ambulance crews need physical assistance.
Lubbock uses “fox trucks”. They are pickup trucks equipped with medical response equipment that can arrive before an ambulance has time to get to the scene. Pickups are faster than ambulances. Ambulances are faster than fire trucks.
In New York city they call them “fly-cars”. Paramedics in sport utility vehicles get to the patient and start rendering care while waiting for an ambulance to transport the patient.
The patient gets faster treatment, the city spends less money handling the call.
We deserve better
Brutus
6 Comments | 
City government | 
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Posted by Brutus
Put the streets on a diet
December 19, 2019Further to “Constructive’s” idea that we list city services and expenses that could be cut, let’s address the width of our streets.
The city forces developers to build unnecessarily wide streets that eventually get re-striped and effectively get made narrower to traffic.
Among other deleterious effects:
- Less land gets sold to homeowners and thus fewer homes are built on the land. These lost homes would be paying property taxes to our local governments.
- The wide streets eventually have to be repaved. It costs more to repave a wide street than a narrow one.
- Housing becomes less dense thus increasing the cost of public services because of the extra distances that have to be traveled.
- The city has to paint more lines on the street in order to “calm” traffic
We deserve better
Brutus
14 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
Thanks sucker
December 18, 2019City council and city staff are making it quite clear what they believe our role as taxpayers is.
We are no more than mules who haul our tax money down to city hall and give it to them to spend as they wish.
After the $416 million public safety bond was approved city staff told city council that they did not want a citizen advisory board to participate in the bond spending.
The most common objection to creating the board seemed to be that the board would delay construction.
They probably think that they are smarter than all of the citizens of the city and that no lowly citizen could give them any advice that might make the projects better.
Pay attention to the fact that our mayor voted to break the tie and deny the creation of the board.
Shame on him.
We deserve better
Brutus
12 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
EPISD–expensive borrowing
December 17, 2019EPISD wants to issue Maintenance Tax Notes in the amount of $17,500,000 to perform repairs on El Paso High School.
Don’t worry you won’t have to vote on this, the board will just issue the notes and send you the bill.
The chart below shows that the district does not intend to pay down any of the principal for another ten years:
Try that with your banker.
Failure to schedule principal payments for the first ten years will cost us over $6 million.
We deserve better
Brutus
7 Comments | El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
elpasospeak 
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