City invents dead cam

August 10, 2015

Wanting to take a look at our almost completed San Jacinto Plaza, I wandered over to the web cam that the city provides on their web site.  I got this view when I looked on August 9, 2015:

sanjacintodeadcam

My internet service is indeed high speed, certainly faster than anything that city council does for the proletariat.

The last image available from the “time lapse construction camera” was from July 18, 2015.  It looks like the web cam has been dead for about three weeks.

Then again since the text of the web page tells us that the plaza is scheduled for completion in “early 2015”, maybe we don’t need lack of progress reports.

We deserve better

Brutus

9 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Keeping up with Van Horn

August 9, 2015

Wanting to learn from our city representative, I entered the term “Van Horn Texas public park” into my search engine.  Nothing relevant was returned so I tried “Van Horn Texas town square” with similar results.

Not wanting to give up I poked around some more and did finally find this picture:

vanhorn

Maybe we could copy this if the city ever gets around to replacing the Chelsea pool.

We deserve better

Brutus

9 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Lowering expectations

August 8, 2015

Try as I might I can’t make this stuff up.

The Times article the other day about our local monument to corruption, favoritism, and poor government quoted a city representative.  She was talking about San Jacinto Plaza.

“We’re going to get it done,” Niland said, “but it’s going to be to the level of the expectations that absolutely El Pasoans deserve, because this is our crown jewel and it will be fabulous. It’s going to knock the socks off of Las Cruces, Van Horn and everybody else. It’s going to be fantastic.”

Slow to understand

Now I understand.  Our citizens have had the wrong standards in mind for our city.  Our crown jewel needs to be better than Van Horn’s.  We deserve this.

I suppose that even the people in Van Horn are shaking their heads over this one.

We deserve better

Brutus

2 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Penny swap

August 7, 2015

The El Paso Independent School District is currently holding an election seeking to gain voter approval to lower their tax rate for debt service by 3 cents and to increase their rate for maintenance and operation by 3 cents.  Early voting has already started.

According to the district this would increase state funding to EPISD by $9 million each year.  Our former city chief financial officer is no longer in the district’s picture so I have hope that the number is accurate.

The net effect is an increase in the amount of money that the district receives while not taking any more money from us in property taxes.

The district has published a list of funding priorities that they plan to use the extra money for:

  • Instruction and enrichment
    • Summer enrichment programs
    • Replacing worn out fine arts equipment
    • Spending on athletic programs with a focus on middle-schools
    • Expansion of science labs and career and technical education
  • Pay raises
    • 2.5% for teachers
    • 3.5% for hourly staff
  • School Buses
    • One third of their buses are over 20 years old
  • Academic technology
    • Incorporating technology and electronic devices into daily instruction
    • Expansion of library digital media

I would hope that the district would use part of the money to continue making debt payments as though the tax rates had not changed.

If you live in the district please vote.

We deserve better

Brutus

8 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Reader input August 6, 2015

August 6, 2015

This came in from Xavier Miranda:

We can demonstrate community influence by calling all city council members and demand that the city manager’s $61,000 raise be rescinded. Here is the link to contact them: http://gis.elpasotexas.gov/districting/

This came in from Helen Marshall:

Ms. Niland “asked for patience” about the ever-delayed completion of San Jacinto Plaza, and told us that when done it will be the wonder that El Pasoans deserve.  (Ask yourself what exactly this might mean…given that 90% of the voters do not vote, what might they deserve?)  AND, it will knock the socks off of Las Cruces and Van Horn! 

Wow!  Someday we might even make Ft. Stockton jealous!  And we’ll raise Tommy’s salary another $100K.  

Who’s planning to vote for increased salaries for council and mayor?

 

 

 

4 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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