City debt budget

April 24, 2015

The city’s financial reports for the first six months of fiscal year 2015 reveal a lot about what they are doing.

They budgeted forty million dollars for the year to make principal payments against our debt.  At the six month mark they had made no payments, zero.

They also budgeted 51 million dollars to make interest payments.

Yes they budgeted more money to make interest payments than they did to pay down principal.

There is good news in that of the $51 million they only spent $23 million.  We don’t know why but if this shows up as real savings it will be good news.

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Life on a diet

April 23, 2015

Looking at the city’s financial reports for the first six months of fiscal year 2015 and at the revenue shortfalls that are occurring it is interesting to see how they are doing with spending.  We would hope that with revenues not meeting expectations management would cut expenses.

The police and fire departments are spending consistently with what was budgeted for them.

The office of management and budget has spent 24% of their full year allotment after these first six months.  At this rate they will spend only 48% of their budget by the end of the year.  You might think  that this department would be running on all cylinders instead of being strangled.

The city manager’s office has spent 76% of their annual budget.  At this rate they will be at 152% by the end of the year.

In the quality of life area we have the parks department at 40% so far for the year, public health at 41%, and our libraries at 44%.

Economic development is at 37.35%.

Some things never change.

We deserve better

Brutus

6 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Short again

April 22, 2015

The city’s financial results for the first six months of the fiscal year are now out.

Building permit fees are important since they are indicators of growth in our tax base and our community in general.

How did they do?  Well for commercial building permits the numbers show that we are 16% below their projections and for residential building permits we are underperforming by 29%.

The shortfall in fees looks like it will be less than one million dollars of revenue but the important thing is that our new construction is not happening like they have projected.

That means that the current taxpayers will be paying more of the debt than we were told.

We deserve better

Brutus

9 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Anyone else?

April 21, 2015

We received an email the other day in which the sender alluded to acts of violence and vandalism aimed at people who were openly vocal about the whole ball park/city hall process.

S/he indicated that someone even contacted Facebook and demanded to know who was behind a particular account.  When s/he refused to give Facebook identification the account was closed according to the writer.

Is this an isolated case?

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Explanation from the Times

April 20, 2015

Could it be that the Times is working to overcome their challenges understanding ethics?

Their editorial the other day contained some real gems when read in light of their coverage of the last few years.  They wrote:

“But truth isn’t particularly important when you have an agenda to promote.”

Yes, we’ve seen that from the Times.

Near the end of their editorial they printed this:

“Being repeatedly wrong won’t deter the spreaders of misinformation.  They will continue to prey on the fears of some people for their own benefit — to raise money, build audiences, gain votes.”

I guess they are telling us not to expect them to change anytime soon.

They closed with:

“The frequent canards don’t help us on that journey, but they can’t be allowed to deter us.”

We agree.

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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