Ignorance of the law

December 1, 2013

I have not been able to find anything in our city charter that addresses how vacancies in city council are to be filled.  It appears that our Texas Constitution says that there must be a special election within 120 days.

Texas local government code does have this provision:

Sec. 26.043. FILLING VACANCY IN ELECTIVE OFFICE IN MUNICIPALITY WITH POPULATION OF 384,000 OR MORE.

 (c) If the municipality holds an election to vote on proposed amendments to its charter, it shall at that time submit a proposed charter amendment to provide a method for filling vacancies in elective offices.

We recently had an election to vote on proposed amendments to our charter.

Then again those state laws are probably only considered to be guidelines by our city staff.

We deserve better

Brutus

2 Comments | City government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Disenfranchised and disappointed

November 30, 2013

Ball park

Many of us are upset about the way the ball park happened.

We tore down city hall and the Insights science museum, have spent over $70 million dollars moving city functions, and have done nothing about replacing the museum.

We have sold $61 million worth of bonds for the ball park and are paying for other ball park related things through various city funds.

The voters of El Paso might have approved this but were never given a chance.

Bigger problem.

An even bigger problem for future El Paso taxpayers is the county approving $152 million to build three new health clinics and remodel parts of the county hospital.

Once again voters were not given a chance to consider this.

The county hospital district is going to build clinics with our money and will compete with private practice doctors.  El Paso has fewer doctors per capita than other major cities, yet we are using taxpayer money to compete with them.

Then we will have the ongoing costs of maintaining these clinics.  At the same time the nation is moving toward a system of universal coverage where the national government sees to it that everyone has health coverage.

Why are we building these clinics now?  Why not wait a few years to see if the national program takes hold and then let the private sector and the national government handle this?  Why the hurry?

Why are we taking on local debt when this has become a national issue?

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | Ball park, City government, County Government, Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Suggestion for the EPISD re: wrongdoing

November 29, 2013

The new EPISD superintendent fielded a question from a member of the public on a television show the other day.

The caller pointed out that the husband of a high school principal had been awarded a contract to do some work for the district.  The implication was that this was improper.  I don’t know the circumstances so I can’t say.

The superintendent’s response was that he would look into the matter — and that is where I have a suggestion.

  • If the district wants to be serious about eliminating wrongdoing, it should have a standing mechanism in place that citizens can use to register their concerns.
  • If the district does not have such a mechanism in place now, then we have a failure on the part of the board of managers.
  • If the district does have this kind of mechanism today then we have a failure on the part of the superintendent.

Once again, we don’t know that anything is wrong here relating to the contract that the individual has.

We can see however that the superintendent thinks that this kind of potential wrongdoing is a rare event and that his organization does not need to have a process in place to handle it.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Thanksgiving

November 28, 2013

I have a lot of things to be thankful for.

Among them are the 74% of the voters that took action in our last city election.

We deserve better

and if we keep it up might actually get better.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Brutus

2 Comments | Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Balancing act?

November 27, 2013

The El Paso Times published an article recently about one of our city representatives and the possibility that he might run for county judge.

Quoting from the article:

“He is known for a strong anti-tax stand and often voting against city projects that he feels are too expensive. Holguin often argues that city government should focus on the basics such as streets and parks.”

“Holguin was one of the critics of the way the previous City Council went about demolishing the old City Hall to build a new Triple A-baseball stadium in Downtown El Paso.”

I don’t know if the Times wrote that as criticism or as praise.  Perhaps they were trying to be neutral.

Either way it was refreshing to read something like that in the Times.

You can read the whole article here.

Muckraker

1 Comment | Ball park, City government, County Government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Muckraker

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