Learned something

January 16, 2014

The article the other day about how El Paso ranks as the safest major city in the United States ended with a comment about quality of life in our city.

Safety, housing, pet friendliness, and our ranking as the best city in Texas to raise a family were discussed.

What we did not talk about however was education.  How does public school education in El Paso compare to the other major Texas cities?

I went to www.schooldigger.com.  The site provides rankings of cities and school districts nationwide.  They base their rankings on scores that students receive on standardized tests.

Surprised

What I found surprised me.  The site lists results for 853 cities in Texas.  Their results for the eight largest cities in Texas are:

CITY                     RANKING            SCORE

AUSTIN                       343                   .595
EL PASO                      442                   .523
ARLINGTON                 516                   .476
HOUSTON                    579                   .418
SAN ANTONIO              613                   .394
DALLAS                        652                   .361
FORT WORTH               676                   .338
CORPUS CHRISTI         682                   .333

The best ranking would be one and the best score would be .999.

While many of us feel that our children are not receiving as good an education as we did in the old days, El Paso ranks second only to Austin when looking at the major Texas cities.

Yet our local paper continues to flog the school districts.

We deserve better

Brutus

10 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

We’re number one

January 15, 2014

The fact that El Paso was once again ranked the safest large city in the nation was significant enough that the El Paso Times wrote about it on page one of section B.  I suppose the front page needs to be reserved for whatever issues the Times decides to promote.

We were also ranked as the best city in Texas in which to raise a family.

As for per animal lovers we were ranked number two.

In the “best cities for home buyers” we were ranked number four.

So if we are the safest major city in the nation and the best place in Texas to raise a family, what is our quality of life problem?

Is the quality of life drum being beaten to promote spending?

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Plaza contract

January 14, 2014

It seems that the construction contract to once again rebuild San Jacinto plaza is going to be back on the city council agenda this Tuesday.

A closer look at the plaza deal explained the situation at the time.

City staff pulled the bid award off the agenda at the last minute.

Now it appears that the item is back on the agenda for approval.

Something is going on here and watching council’s actions will tell us a lot.

I still wonder why 30 bidders picked up the bid package and only 3 responded.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Bidding is such a hassle

January 13, 2014

The January 14, 2014 city council agenda has several purchasing department items on it, including some more activity from buy boards.

Agenda item 6.1 proposes the purchase of 7,000 of those recycling and refuse containers that we use in El Paso.  The backup material proposes that the purchase be made through the Houston based buy board that the city likes to use.  The backup material states “The city has made the determination that purchasing from this cooperative offers the most  cost-effective pricing”.

The price will be $51.39 for each of the 96 gallon containers.  Shipping will be another $13,800, bringing the total purchase to $373,580.

Bidding must be expensive

If I am correct the supplier must pay 4% of the purchase price to the buy board as part of their administrative fee.  That comes to over $14,000.  How much would it cost the city to issue and conduct a bid for this item?  Would it cost $14,000?  Would the vendor lower the price by 4% since the buy board would not participate?

Might some other vendor come in with an even lower bid price?

Remember that the 4% benefits school districts in Houston.   Isn’t that nice of us?

Not being an expert

Purchasing must be complicated so I need to be careful here to not make it look too simple.  I decided to try to figure out what other cities pay for their garbage cans, so I entered “96 gallon bid” into my search engine.

Within a second or two I got 26,3000 results.  The third item down gave me the results of actual bidding.

As it turns out, the city of Bay City, Michigan wanted 1,000 units in September of 2013.  The low bid was $47 each versus the $51.39 our city wants to pay.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | City government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Bring the senate in line

January 12, 2014

At the national level I would like to see us repeal the 17th amendment to our constitution.

At one time the states had a real voice in the national government.  Senators were appointed by their state legislatures.  If a senator wanted to be reappointed at the end of his term, he needed to be mindful of what his state wanted him to do at the national level.

The 17th amendment changed that and now senators are elected by the voters of their state.  A state legislature would have a much better chance of influencing  a senator who is off the reservation than would individual voters.

I wrote about this in Introduction, my first post to this blog.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Cato

2 Comments | Federal Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Cato

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