Faint praise

February 15, 2014

Stop the presses!

The downtown management district just published a report that says downtown events  (presumably special events, not everyday events) drew almost 134,000 people last year.

The twenty one events generated “more than $1.5 million” or a whopping $11.94 in spending from each person.

Talk about underwhelming.

In fact if that is what the downtown management district has been able to bring to us they should be embarrassed.

Good grief.  We taxpayers give away more than that in corporate welfare every year.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Overstepping his authority

February 14, 2014

The chairman of the El Paso Independent School District 2007 Bond Accountability Advisory Committee recently wrote a guest column for the El Paso Times.  You can read it here.

The chairman tried to explain why his committee recommended taking $57 million that was allocated to a new high school in the northeast and spending it on other things.

The district’s voters approved a $230 million dollar program that was to fund specific projects.  This is the district’s list of those projects.

The chairman evidently feels that the voters gave the district $230 million to spend as they please.  We did not.  We gave the district permission to spend the money on specific projects.

As an example, if the proposed project list had included $100 million to build a private country club for the school board the bond issue probably would not have passed.

Forgetting his place

The bond committee has a charter.  This is part of the charter:

The Committee is also charged with oversight of the 2007 Bond budget in order to assure that bond proceeds are expended in a manner consistent with the budget.

The charter does not say that they are charged with oversight of the bond budget as amended by the school board with whatever changes they decide that they want.

Violated

Many of us voters were made more comfortable with the bond issue since a committee of taxpayers would see to it that the school district spent the money they way it was sold to us.

Now it turns out that the oversight committee has as little respect for the voters as the politicians do.

How can we trust the bond process?

We deserve better

Brutus

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Biting the hand that feeds you

February 13, 2014

Plans were announced recently to build a $64 million dollar hotel on airport land.  The hotel is to have 220 rooms and 80,000 square feet of retail space.

It is being touted as being of four star quality.

That’s good

Having 220 high quality rooms should be good for tax revenues, right?

Well actually the city gave the hotel developers tax breaks.  Among them is that they will not have to pay hotel occupancy taxes for 11 years.

That’s bad

Hotel occupancy in El Paso is down.  Now we have a situation where existing tax paying hotels will have to compete with a new hotel that has tax advantages.  That could mean that up to 220 rooms a night will not be paying hotel occupancy taxes, the supposed prime source of funding for our ball park.   According to an article in the El Paso Times:

It is to receive millions of dollars in city incentives, including property and sale tax rebates and won’t pay land lease fees for three years under a 40-year lease with the airport. The City Council approved the incentives and lease in May.

I don’t know why the Times article neglected to mention the hotel occupancy tax abatement.  Most of us can probably guess.

Call me crazy but I don’t think that we should use local tax dollars to hurt local tax payers in favor of out of town interests.

Locally beneficial

Well there is one local company that is probably interested.  The company that has assumed operations for our local contractor  that is building the ball park expected to be hired as the building contractor according to the Times.

Bad plan

Airport traffic volumes have been declining for at least the last ten years.  If the city wants to encourage an upscale hotel they should look at having one built at our nationally ranked municipal golf course.

It seems to me that making El Paso a golfing destination would offer us better economic hope than cannibalizing existing trade.

We deserve better

Brutus

9 Comments | City government | Permalink
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Correcting a correction

February 12, 2014

A recent piece in the El Paso Times was about how our local refining chief might have met with someone that works for a group that might oppose the affordable health care act.

My initial reading of the piece left me upset because of what I perceived as unfairness in the piece.  I calmed down and read it again and saw that there were parts of the piece that balanced the coverage, at least partially.

This post is not intended to be about how the Times is probably upset with our local guy for allegedly not sharing the Times’ political position.

Interesting

What I also  found interesting is that the Times (whose factual, grammatical, and spelling deficiencies are legion) chose to try to correct some language that they found in an online comment.  The Times published:

“This is an organization ran (sic) with money from the Koch brothers (.) (T)hey do not have your best interests in mind…”

While there is no code of federal regulations relating to the use of sic (that I know of), common usage indicates that “sic” should be contained within brackets and italicized.  The term indicates that the quote or phrase was printed exactly as originally written, including any errors.

Muckraker

6 Comments | El Paso Times | Permalink
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The revised truth

February 11, 2014

The city’s chief financial officer (some say chief fibbing officer) is scheduled to make a presentation at the February 11, 2014 city council meeting.

The topic?  “1st Quarter Budget Report”.

Not good news

According to her presentation that was posted with the agenda, sales taxes for the year will fall short of budget by 3.39%.  Fines collected will fall short by 5.38%.  Property taxes look as though they will come in almost one-half percent above budget.

Residential building permits look as though they will fall short of budget by 14.95%.

Property taxes are a reflection of what has already been built and taxed.  Building permits and sales taxes indicate current economic activity and they show that our local economy is not doing well when compared to what they budgeted.

Limited

She does indicate “Projections based on limited information”.

Limited particularly in truth.  Her presentation does not say anything about the shortfall in hotel occupancy taxes.  See More shortfalls for that dose of bad news.

The presentation indicates “Based on limited information, revenues will under perform by $3,635,006“.

Information may be limited but the six dollars is intended to convey accuracy I guess.

What to do

They plan to cut expenses.  Actually they will do that right after adding one million dollars to the city attorney’s budget.  Evidently suing the Texas attorney general and whoever else they don’t like is getting more expensive.

Fire and police will take the biggest hits at about half a million dollars each.

No growth

Her report tells us that total employment in our area was 300,176 in 2012 and is down to 296,226 in 2013.  We evidently sold 466 new homes in 2012 and 386 in 2013.

Trust me

I suppose her presentation might end with “Trust me–this time I know what I am talking about”.

You can see the whole report here.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | City government, State Government | Permalink
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