Pitiful police cars

August 16, 2014

Our mayor has told us that bringing new businesses and jobs to El Paso is one of his highest priorities.

Just as most of us would clean up our house before offering it for sale, the city could do some things to make us look better in the eyes of people visiting the community to see if they want to move here.

Our police cars look like we are either broke or don’t support public safety.  Many of the cars have paint peeling off of them.  They look like junk.

They certainly do not convey the image of a healthy city.

We deserve better

Brutus

7 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

One time where the city cannot bully a vendor

August 15, 2014

Pirates as well as hypocrites explained that our city was being sued by a software company for alleged piracy and violation of trade secrets.

Maybe a better term would be thieves.

It seems that city council has now voted to settle the case.  It would appear that somehow someone has told them the truth and they see the futility of wasting money in litigation.

The software vendor attempted to get justice without litigation.  On October 4, 2013 the vendor wrote a letter to our mayor and city council outlining the problems and asking that they stop.  Copies of the letter were also sent to:

Our former city manager

Our former chief financial officer

Our city attorney

Our director of the office of management and budget (OMB)

The first three have been involved in many of the problems that we have experienced lately.  Two of them are gone.  The OMB director is a new name that must now be associated with problems.  Was she acting under orders from the others?  If not we should probably expect to read about her departure soon.

We don’t know the costs the city will have to pay to settle this claim yet.  Don’t be surprised if the final settlement contains a confidentiality clause.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

 

5 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Our hospital is sick

August 14, 2014

It seems that our county hospital chief executive is not very good at forecasting either.

He told us before the children’s hospital was built that it would be self-sustaining, no additional taxpayer money would be needed to operate it.  That bill is now over $60 million and climbing.

He convinced our county commissioners to allow him to issue $152 million in bonds to remodel part of the county hospital and to build three new outpatient clinics.  He forecast that those clinics would save us $17 million a year in emergency room costs.

Then, evidently before he figured out how to spend the money, he sold the bonds.  Read his offer to you here.

Now he tells us there is another problem.  He needs to spend $19 million for a new patient records system before he can open the clinics.  There are two surprises here, the first being that he did not see the need for the system before he made plans for the clinics and the second that such a system would cost remotely near that amount.

The three clinics are supposedly being designed as you read this.

Do these problems stem from a lack of capability on his part or from a lack of respect for the taxpayers?

Either way they amount to one thing–a failure to be a competent steward of our money.

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | County Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Pay as we go

August 13, 2014

Our city charter caps the contributions that the city can make to the police and fire pension funds at 18.5% which is where the city contribution is today.

According to reports the Texas legislature passed a law last year that would allow city council to raise our contribution rate without regard to our city charter.

The law does not require council to do so.  In fact it still allows council to take the issue to the public for a vote.

I would hope that our public servants would take the position that the people have voted and set the maximum rate and that if a they want a rate increase it should be taken to a public vote.

I would hope that our council feels the same way.

To increase our contribution rate beyond what our city charter authorizes may turn out to be legal because of the new law in Texas.

Increasing the rate without having a public vote would be another sign of disregard for the voters.

Some tell us that El Paso is not competitive with other Texas cities in this regard.

That does not make the other cities right.  We should pay our public servants a competitive wage as they are working and not defer our costs by transferring them to a perpetual pension system.    We might have an opportunity here to become more desirable than other cities.  I suspect that if El Paso adopted a compensation system where the public safety employees got paid more as they were working and less in retirement employees from other cities may want to transfer here.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | City government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Voodoo economics?

August 12, 2014

The retired newspaper employee that seems to enjoy reminding us that we were called “crazies” by our former city manager wrote another opinion piece for the Times the other day.

I wonder if he is being paid for his work.  Might it be that he was moved from full time to part time?

This week’s piece addressed the street car system that we are going to get.  His premise was that the real purpose of the system is economic development–it will move tax burden from residents to commercial property owners.

The way I read his article he called us stupid as well as crazy.

I suppose every economic theory can be argued and I am not arguing against the trolley system here.  I think that we would be better served with a different route layout, but I have no illusion that it will operate profitably.

83% discount showed us that Sun Metro loses money every time a passenger boards one of our buses.  Having more passengers might help us but in this case we are adding more capacity before we have the passengers.

Then when we factor in the new rapid transit system (BRIO) that will run up and down Mesa we will have even more vehicles that need to be filled.

The street cars will cost us money to operate.  That money will have to come from taxes.

We deserve better

Brutus

13 Comments | City government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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