Saying it doesn’t make it so

December 5, 2013

Our strategic thinkers are scheduled to ask city council for approval to change some of our city statements at the December 10, 2013 meeting of council.

Self promoting

The city’s current vision statement is “To be a high-performance, customer-focused organization.”

The proposal will be to change the vision statement to “The City of El Paso is a high-performance, customer-focused organization”.

Evidently they think that if you say something often enough it becomes true.  I would think that if they were customer focused they would have included some citizens in the feedback process.

Less community

They want to change the city government’s mission statement from “Dedicated to outstanding customer services for a better community” to “Dedicated to providing outstanding customer services for a better El Paso”.

This change goes right over my head.  I don’t understand what they are trying to say.  Why drop community and replace it with El Paso?   Hopefully the blog readers will be able to explain it.

Cost be damned

They propose changing the statement of core values to:

We value:

  • Excellence
  • Integrity
  • Respect
  • Accountability
  • Our People

I think it would be nice if they included cost effectiveness, but then again they aren’t paying the bills.

New direction

Thankfully they do include this statement in their presentation for council and the public:

We will ensure continued financial stability and accountability through sound financial management, budgeting and reporting.

Maybe this way we can avoid having a promised $30 million move of city departments that has cost us more than $70 million so far, or having to spend an extra $17 million because of a failed bond issuance, or maybe we could actually build a ball park for what city staff told us it would cost.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | Ball park, City government | Permalink
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What are the rules here?

December 4, 2013

The Times published this in it’s recent article about our city representative who has announced his candidacy for county judge:

City Attorney Sylvia Borunda Firth said the city could wait until the next uniform election date or follow the recently amended El Paso City Charter. The charter provides that when a special election is required, the city can schedule it for the next uniform election date or the date of the next election that will be conducted by the county elections administrator. That choice is up to the council, Firth said.

Article 11, section 11B of the Texas Constitution has this:

(b) A municipality so providing a term exceeding two (2) years but not exceeding four (4) years for any of its non-civil service officers must elect all of the members of its governing body by majority vote of the qualified voters in such municipality, and any vacancy or vacancies occurring on such governing body shall not be filled by appointment but must be filled by majority vote of the qualified voters at a special election called for such purpose within one hundred and twenty (120) days after such vacancy or vacancies occur.

Further the blog Anson Mills posted this from the state election code:

Section 41.007(d)  “No other election may be held on the date of a primary election.”

I believe that the state constitution trumps the city charter.  If so, the city attorney is wrong.

Is the city attorney telling us that the city is going to fight the state again?

Please set me straight if I have missed something.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Shut up and eat kid

December 4, 2013

The Times ran an article the other day about how the Canutillo Independent School District is trying to increase participation in their free breakfast program.

They must be having problems giving away their free food.

The district benefits from federal funding for the meals.  They also receive more federal assistance with technology purchases when a higher percentage of the students eat the free breakfasts.  If not enough kids can be counted in the government give-away the district does not get as much money for their high-tech egos.

Self reliance discouraged

A district official was quoted as saying “Some of them eat at home…”.  Heaven forbid!

She went on to say “… some of them get here early enough, but they just want to go and play with their friends.”  Imagine that.

Government for all

The district’s solution is the Grab and Go Breakfast program.  The students are given a breakfast bag as they enter the school.  According to the article the students “can eat healthy breakfast foods while they are on their way to class or during the first few minutes of class”.

I guess eating trumps learning.  Maybe in the future they can serve a buffet lunch during fourth period and then maybe have happy hour at the end of the day.

The district should probably plan to buy some more garbage cans.

Taking the cake

One mother was quoted this way “Sometimes we come late because there is a lot of traffic, so I don’t get to bring them to breakfast.  So this has been really helpful for me and the kids because I know they are eating.”

That darn traffic!  Without the government helping me I might have had to get up earlier and do part of my mothering job.

Those kids deserve better

Brutus

12 Comments | Federal Government | Permalink
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Strategic insights

December 3, 2013

Please read Aren’t we lucky?  before you read this post so that you are up to speed.

The outside facilitator interviewed the “STRATEGIC THINKERS” and asked questions relating to eight areas.  The published document lists the results.

The agenda appears early in the document

The most common answer to the question “What should we SUSTAIN” about city government was “City Manager form of government”.

This gives us insight as to what the agenda was here.  No mention was made of El Paso being the safest major city in the nation thanks in part to our police department.  Similarly our low fire insurance costs were not mentioned.

They aren’t through with our checkbooks

The question “What should we CHANGE?” asked about city wide (not city government) weaknesses.  Only three of our 17 strategic thinkers mentioned “Growing tax burden”.  

When asked “What should we CHANGE?”relating to the actual city government seven of our “STRATEGIC THINKERS” responded  “Disrespecting / scrutinizing staff in public” while two of them thought we “Need to balance progressive tone with financial impact on the City”.  Do you think?

Forget the law

When addressing potential threats to their agenda the question “What should we AVOID?” was asked, “Legal not supporting innovation or creativity” ranked in the top answers.

When the avoid question was asked about city government, “Not appreciating the VALUE game” was one of the answers.

Game?

Our city government is a game?

We deserve better

Brutus

7 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Aren’t we lucky?

December 2, 2013

The city has just gone through one round of a “STRATEGIC THINKING/ STRATEGIC PLANNING PROJECT” and a presentation is scheduled to be made to city council December 10, 2013.

An outside group was brought in to facilitate the project.  This group is headed by a former public service board member who has been doing similar work for the public service board now that he is no longer on the board.

The Version 1.10 FINAL DRAFT as well as a copy of the presentation planned for council are available on the city’s web site.

The 32 page final draft document refers on page 18 to three groups of stakeholders:

  • Taxpayers/Community
  • City Staff/Employees
  • City Partners/Vendors/Contractors

It then refers to the “STRATEGIC THINKERS” who participated in the planning project.  Predictably, none of the strategic thinkers were citizens or suppliers to the city.  They were all city employees or elected officials.

Strategic Thinkers

Who were the people who participated in planning our future?  Page 5 of the document shows us this:

strategic thinkers

Stupid public

Not having community input in this kind of project makes good sense if the goal is to plan at the city employee level.  To try to categorize it as being capable of representing their list of stakeholders is nonsense.

Subsequent posts about the content of the plan should prove interesting.

In the mean-time please be comforted that we have a group of strategic thinkers working to determine what is best for us citizens.

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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