City manager speaks of “undue tax burden”

January 31, 2014

The Times wrote an article about a recent speech the city manager gave.  You can read it here.

She spoke of a “game plan” that is in place.   According to her the voters approved it.  I missed that election.  The Times quoted the city manager as saying:

“So part of it is just figuring out how to execute it, how to executed [sic] it successfully without putting an undue tax burden on the residents and working with the mayor and council on their strategic vision on creating wealth and jobs.”

Undue tax burden

Top of the list is an earlier post that explained that property owners in El Paso had the 4th highest property taxes among the nation’s 50 largest cities in 2012.

At what point would she consider our taxes to be too high?

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Lied to again

January 30, 2014

According to this post from KTSM our EPISD board of non-elected managers has decided to play fast with more of our money.

In 2007 the voters in the district approved a bond issue that included almost $49 million for a new high school in the northeast.   As it turns out the district has decided that it will not need the high school for now.

Rather than not spending the money it seems that the board has decided to “reallocate” it to other projects.  Among the projects:

A stadium for Franklin High.  Currently Franklin has to share a stadium with Coronado High.  It seems to be working but some think that it is not fair to deprive Franklin.  I do.  If we have to spend the money why spend it on facilities that are in fact luxuries when the money could be better spent on educating our children?

A stadium for Jefferson High.  Jefferson opened in 1949.  Talk about deprived.

Andress High will get a 1,000 seat theater for $10 million.  The Plaza Theater seats 2,500.

Irvin High will get about $17 million worth of roofs, windows, and heating and cooling.  I guess maintaining systems is now a capital project.

The original bond issue was for $240 million.  The $57.9 million that they have just reallocated is 24% of the original number.

Trust

I did not vote for this and neither did anyone else when they cast their bond issue ballot.

It is however not a new trick.  As I recall the voters approved a new westside high school 30 or 40 years ago.  The school never got built so the district used the money for other things.  Eventually when the new high school was needed a new bond issue was floated and we finally got Franklin High.

What happened to the bond committee?  Are they still active?

How can we trust these people when they ask for money for a set of projects and once they have it use it for other things?

Please explain to me how this board of managers is better than what we had.

We deserve better

Brutus

24 Comments | El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Seventh inning stretch

January 29, 2014

I don’t know where to start.

I guess the old seventh inning stretch common in baseball is taking on a new role in our ball park construction.  It seems to me that someone is stretching the truth.

El Paso Inc. published an article Sunday, January 26, 2014 telling us that the city’s project manager for the ball park is taking a new job with the city’s water utility.

What’s wrong here

As of Tuesday the Times is silent about this.  Dead silent.  How did the much smaller weekly scoop our daily newspaper?  Can this lack of coverage be deliberate?

As the article points out, two weeks ago the project manager was happy to be working out in the field again.

The city says that a finance man will postpone his city retirement for 60 days to manage the completion of the project.  One of the problems with this is that the contract the city signed says that the ball park will not be complete until the end of August.  There has been talk of playing games during the season if the city will grant certain occupancy variances temporarily.

Who will our finance man consult with when dealing with the construction people?  What does he know about construction other than where to sign the check?   Who will be watching the chicken coop?

The city manager was quoted as saying the project was in it’s last quartile.  The article says the project is 70% complete.  The last quarter starts at 75%.  Then again accurate numbers have never been a part of this project.

Where is city council on this?  The water utility is a city department.  Why not tell the project manager that his new job will start when he finishes the ball park?  Do they want him to go?

Why?

Why would the project manager leave an important project like this and leave us in the lurch?

Could it be:

The project manager was in the way?  Was he insisting that corners not be cut?  Will this give the ball team owners more control over how the park is built like they have publicly have asked for?

Is the ship sinking?

The project manager wanted to get out from under the “sharp elbows” of the city manager?

The project manager giving too many interviews and the city wanted him to shut up?

What looked to me like a case study in how not to build a project seems now to be getting even worse.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | Ball park, City government, El Paso Inc., El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Timely irony

January 28, 2014

I don’t bring you good news today, in fact to me this is sad.

Brutus let me know that one of our alert readers had spotted the same editorial in two different newspapers.

The El Paso Times published this editorial Sunday January 26, 2014.  I am including the screen shot below just in case the Times somehow has difficulty with the web link sometime in the future:

cheatingeditorial

The Dallas Morning News originally published the editorial three days earlier on January 23, 2014.  I had to break their editorial into the two screen shots below because of their picture:

dallascheating

dallascheating2

The El Paso Times did not attribute the editorial to the Dallas newspaper.  They ran it under their byline “El Paso Times Editorial Board”.

Isn’t that plagiarism?  Aren’t we taught that plagiarism is cheating? Who are they to point their finger about cheating?

To me this is a new low for the Times.

I should have asked Brutus to write about this because we deserve better.

Muckraker

47 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Muckraker

Do as we say, not as we do

January 27, 2014

Last week the Camino Real Regional Mobility Authority (CRRMA) board decided to stop selling their toll tags through a company commonly known as a payday lender.

This post is not in support of the payday lenders, particularly their shameful practices.  I hope that the state takes action to better regulate these businesses.

The CRRMA action seems rather hypocritical to me.  Toll tags are a luxury that people buy so that they can drive from one place to another faster than if they stay on roads that the common folk have to use.  I doubt that many people who have the money to buy these tags find themselves in a position where they need to get a payday loan.   I don’t see the harm of them going into these stores.

Toll lanes that are created to offer expedited travel seem to be something that are not designed to help poor people.  Quite the opposite.  Here we have the CRRMA itself essentially making money from an elitist program and then somehow tying that to sanctioning retail facilities that make money from poorer people.

Lottery

Texas has a lottery system that offers several gambling products.  Some people call lotteries “a tax on the stupid”.   Published information indicates that the chance of winning Texas Lotto is about one in 25 million.

Will we see Texas stop selling lottery products through convenience stores?  After all these stores sell products at much higher prices than one can find in supermarkets and discount stores.  Convenience stores also generally sell alcohol and cigarettes.  Maybe Texas should not sell it’s “morally just”  lottery tickets in these places that cater to the weaknesses of human flesh.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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