elpasospeak

I wonder how many fees that the city charges are not directly related to a service but instead just augment the general fund.

So far I have been able to find these:

El Paso water utilities pays the city 10% of the monies it receives from the sale of water.  In the 2015 city budget the number is estimated to be $11.1 million.  This is in addition to the new fee that is being charged to “non residential” customers.  That fee will bring about $3.5 million to the city.

Our international bridges operate at a profit and contribute $13.6 million to the city general fund after expenses.

From what I can see in the city budget, the sanitation department will contribute $22.6 million.

They also plan to receive more than $49 million in franchise fees, which we know are passed on to the consumers.

We pay almost $16 million each year for storm water drainage, a fee that used to be part of the regular city budget.

There are probably more funds like these.  Maybe our readers can help us to figure this out.

As it is the city is receiving almost $116 million that does not add to our property taxes.  However it is still us providing the money.  Our total property tax bill is about $228 million so the $116 million represents hidden taxes of 50%.

We deserve better

Brutus

So far our new rapid transit system has done more to disrupt traffic than anything else.

Brio, as it is known,  was scheduled to be finished in the summer of this year.  I doubt anyone is surprised that summer has come and gone and the construction is still not finished.

They may be close though.  I look forward to trying the service.  Their plan to have a bus arrive at each stop every ten minutes during the busy periods may make bus travel between the west side to UTEP and downtown practical.

If the service is not successful we will have to increase the subsidy that the city pays Sun Metro.

If the service is successful the merchants that are near a Brio station will have to learn how to deal with the extra cars that will be parked in their lots by the bus riders.

Watching the construction and implementation process it looks like the stations have quite a few components.  These components will require maintenance and protection.  Some of the stations even have solar powered trash compactors.  My prediction is that they will not last long.

Sun Metro is having problems with people thinking that the stations are regular bus stops.  They have even had to put up signs explaining that even though they look like bus stops they aren’t yet.  They would do well to start letting us know what is going on and when to expect the service to start.

We deserve better

Brutus

An alert reader sent me this link to an article in El Diario.

We know that some of the members of city council cannot behave themselves during council meetings.  It seems that one in particular touches and holds another during the course of discussion with the intention of interfering with the touchee’s speech.

The touchee decided to move to the other side of the council table.  The problem with that is that the council table is not wired for that number of council members on that side of the table.  The touchee caused the city representative that used to sit there to move further toward the edge where there are no electronic devices for her to use.

The touchee is wrong here.  She should have found a way to settle the problem with the toucher so that she would not have to move.

The movee (the one with no electronics) is wrong in that she should have refused to move.

The mayor is right in taking the position that he is not going to pay to have the electronics installed.

Council has had to revert to a manual roll call when voting since one of the members has no buttons to push.

Personally I prefer the manual roll call.  We got to see some unexpected votes when the members of council had to publically cast a vote.

These people are not just acting like children.  They are acting like selfish incompetents.

We deserve better

Brutus