Hospital on life support

April 1, 2014

It looks like the chickens are coming home to roost at the children’s hospital and the people involved are blaming each other.

The children’s hospital is not making money, contrary to what we were told when we voted to fund it.  The way their contract with the county hospital works the shortfall will actually have to be made up with county taxpayer funds.

We were told that no county money (other than the bond money to build the facility) would be needed.  Of course that was not true.  Children’s hospitals generally do not make money.  They are funded through donations from the public and, in cases like ours, taxpayer money.

Please don’t think that I am against having facilities that care for children.  Some would argue that private hospitals can do that job.  That is not the point that I am trying to make.  We have the new facility, it is losing money, we need to decide how to handle it.

Deceit

It seems obvious that in our current situation taxpayer money is being used.  The voters were not told the truth when the election was at hand.  Maybe the voters would have decided that we needed the hospital even if it operated at a loss.  Maybe not, but the voters certainly were not given an opportunity to decide based on reality.

The head of the county hospital was given $152 million to build three clinics and remodel part of the old building last year.  Now he is openly talking about “re-purposing” the money.

Both hospital chiefs are under the spotlight at this point.

Don’t be surprised if they both leave.  Then don’t be surprised if our current county judge tries to take one of those well paying jobs.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Never ending debt

March 31, 2014

Item 5.2 on the city council regular  agenda for April 2, 2014 is just another bad deal.

The item introduces a proposed ordinance to refinance bonds (in the amount of $85 million) that were issued in 2005.  The chief financial officer is to make the presentation.

Evidently she will claim that the city will save about one million dollars a year by doing this.

Never never land

The 2005 bonds were actually issued to refinance earlier ones, so they have already done this before with the same bond debt.  Look at the first line under general obligations in the chart below.

bonds

 

What they are actually doing is extending the payout period from August 15, 2026 to December 31, 2039.  Why?  This way the principal payments are reduced and since they have to pay less against the principal hey can use the money to augment the city budget.

Who benefits?

Certainly not the taxpayers or their children.  Bond counsel will get paid, the financial advisers will get paid, there will be money for those issuing the bonds.

The city will be able to take about one million dollars a year and use it to pay for other things.  We know that they are having revenue shortfalls.  This will help them a bit.

In the meantime they are using a trick that will cost us dearly.

We deserve better

Brutus

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EPISD then and now

March 30, 2014

A 1968-1969 personnel directory from the El Paso Independent School District made its way to me recently.

It will take some piecing together but we should be able to compare how the district was run back then to how it is now.

The 1969 book has a very clear organization chart in it.  I have not been able to find a current one on the district’s web site.  That in itself is interesting.

The directory listed 9 high schools.  Today we have 13.

There were 49 elementary-intermediate schools.  Today there are 57 elementary schools.

The biggest change seems to be that we had two intermediate schools back then and now we have 16 middle schools.

I have not found enrollment numbers to compare.

Directly beneath the superintendent we had three assistant superintendents, one each for administration, instruction, and special services (census, records, personnel).

Determining what the first layer under our current superintendent is today is a bit of a problem without an organization chart.  They do list their job descriptions.  There are 15 that have the word superintendent in them.  At this point I don’t know which of these positions is currently filled, but here is the list:

Deputy superintendent of academics and school leadership

Assistant superintendent curriculum and instruction

Assistant superintendent curriculum, instruction and accountability

Assistant superintendent elementary schools

Assistant superintendent high schools

Assistant superintendent lang arts & social studies

Assistant superintendent math and science

Assistant superintendent middle schools

Assistant superintendent research, evaluation, and accountability

Assistant superintendent secondary schools

Assistant superintendent special education

Associate superintendent curriculum and instruction

Associate superintendent human resources

Associate superintendent operations

In addition we have a job description for a chief of staff and a chief, school administration and leadership.

Looking at their web site, they list their academic leadership team.  It consists of 7 people, including a deputy superintendent, chief school officers for areas 1, 2, and 3, an assistant superintendent for C & I and R & E, an assistant superintendent for academic support programs, and an assistant superintendent for special education.

Most of those job descriptions are not listed on the web site.

Are our children better educated today than they were back then?  I hope to see active discussion about this on the blog.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

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Thank you EPISD

March 29, 2014

The El Paso Independent School District has a very nice feature associated with the video coverage of their board meetings.

Each agenda item is listed next to the video frame with a link that will take you to the video for that particular agenda item.

That is a big time saver and contributes to transparency.

For the record this feature was available under the elected board and was not an improvement made by the state appointed group.

Something got better

Brutus

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Cuts revealed

March 28, 2014

The city finally posted the background material for item 11.2 on the March 25, 2014 city council agenda.

They need to cut $7.35 million from the budget because revenues are coming in less than they budgeted at the beginning of the year.

For now they have decided to cut $5.86 million and say that they will control the rest either “through hiring freeze or other operational controls” according to a presentation made by our chief financial officer earlier as part of item 11.1.

The problem?

Sales taxes revenues are turning out to be 3.02% less than they budgeted.  Franchise fees are coming in at 3.94% less than budget.

Fines and forfeitures are short by 23.46%.  Is that why we see so many traffic and parking tickets being issued lately?

Residential building permits are an unfortunate 28.54% short.  So much for growth.

It’s all good El Paso

Who’s getting cut?  The police department is losing $1.24 million.  The fire department will lose $486 thousand.  They are also removing all capital funding for vehicle replacement.

Not everyone is getting axed.  Our city attorney’s office is going from a council approved budget of $3.97 million to $4.8 million.  Most of that money is for outside lawyers.  Suing the attorney general of Texas to keep us from seeing records that should be open is evidently expensive.

To quote the city manager from a letter she wrote a few weeks ago,  “A (valuation) variance of this nature is egregious and on the surface seems either irresponsible or incompetent…”.

I agree.

We deserve better

Brutus

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