Never waste a crisis

September 17, 2013

10 year storm

25 year storm

100 year storm

What do those terms mean?

Following the big storm of 2006 city staff went into spasms over the opportunity to use the storm as an excuse to create a municipal drainage utility.  Or, in other words, another taxing entity.  Homeowners with “typical” (according to the utility) homes now pay about $3.00 a month into this utility.

Double tax

Storm water issues used to be paid out of the city general fund.  Creating the utility not only generated another source of revenue for the city, but it gave our city staff the opportunity to move millions of dollars worth of city functions and expenses over to the utility.  Did our tax rates go down?  No.

This statement in the El Paso Times tells us a lot about how effective our efforts have been:  “… the stormwater system in Central El Paso can maintain a 10-year storm now that the Gateway Pond, located at Gateway West and Luna Street, is complete. The Gateway Pond was filled to the top Wednesday and needed El Paso Water crews to pump water out of it.”

Let’s see, we had a storm in 2006 then we built a pond to help us withstand a 10-year storm.  In 2013 we had to pump water out of it to avoid flooding.

I suspect that we will hear that the utility needs more money, after all you can’t control nature.

Be comforted by this statement on the utility’s web site:  “We expect the greatest portion of the capital improvements to be completed within three years.”  They don’t mention any dates.

This is another example of what happens when you take responsibility away from elected officials and vest it in a special organization.  City council can now “look into” the matter instead of bearing responsibility.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

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

Managing a mess

September 16, 2013

Call me naive but I think I see the hand of a strong mayor acting at city council.

Recently we have seen:

Abandoning the plan to close 8 more railroad crossings

Making the fire department go out to bid for supplies instead of using a buy board

The mayor stating in front of the camera that “there will be no discussion for extensions” of the city manager’s contract.  A national, regional, and local search will be conducted in time to notify the city manager before the 120 day window in her contract triggers an automatic extension.

This has all been done quietly and evidently methodically.

Yes, he has continued some of the city policies that I have disagreed with.  I am hoping that he is doing this because his most important job is to protect the taxpayers.  There might be things where it is better for us if he lets them proceed under strong management.

Yes, he voted to raise taxes.  That bothers me.  But higher taxes will not be so bad if we at least have competent management of our money.  I hope that next year he will know more about the inner workings of the city and will be able to somehow help us avoid the tax cliff that prior councils committed us to.

I hope that he comes to understand that many of the senior managers at the city cannot be trusted to tell the whole truth.  My theory is that some of them are afraid of the city manager and some are just jerks.

A good friend of mine says that Quality of Leadership is necessary for quality of life.

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Lax lawyers

September 15, 2013

Scrivener is one city employee that I wish would not work so hard.

We see his name on this blog too frequently.  According to Wikipedia a Scrivener’s error is “a phrase which can also be used as an excuse to deflect blame away from specific individuals, such as high powered executives, and instead redirect it to the more anonymous clerical staff.”

An item on next week’s city council agenda is listed as:  “An Ordinance amending Ordinance 8065 (Civil Service Rules and Regulations), to amend various sections of Rule Nos. 2, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10 to comport with the recent amendments to the Charter of the City of El Paso, Texas; to delete Rule No. 3 and mark as “RESERVED;” to amend Rule No. 6 to correspond with City personnel policies; and to correct a scrivener’s error in Rule No.2.”

Respect the law

It would be nice if our city staff, especially the city attorney, would take the time to see to it that when we pass a law we pass a correctly worded law.

As previously written by Brutus, “In my book we should expect the city attorney to produce accurate, fair work.  The city parliamentarian could catch this for us, but — you guessed it — the city parliamentarian is the city attorney.”

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Cato

1 Comment | City government, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Cato

Local could mean somewhere on the planet

September 14, 2013

The downtown ball park is going to create a lot of work for local contractors.  Right?

The city web site has a section dedicated to the construction of the park.  This sentence tells us a lot:  “For a complete list of bidders and those selected to work on components of the project, please click here.”

Well I did.  We have:

Grant Mackay–demolition–Utah

Berkel & Company–soil retention–Kansas

Night Eyes Protective Services–security–El Paso

Infrastructure Constructors–mass grading–could not find

Berkel & Company–augur cast–Kansas

D’Ambra Construction–augur cast–Rhode Island?

Concrete Specialties–concrete–looks like C. F. Jordan El Paso

W & W Steel LLC–steel–Oklahoma?

Coreslab Structural, Inc–precast–could not find

I certainly did not see any household names that we would recognize here in El Paso.

Maybe now that the big stuff has been doled out some of our El Paso companies will get some crumbs.

Rumor on the street is that the bids are coming in high because of the extremely short time-line and the cost of running crews 7 x 24.

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | Ball park | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

New priority

September 13, 2013

Maybe it’s all good for the members of the cabal but if you look at it from the perspective of the workers that will be fired as a result of the  closures announced in El Paso in the last year things don’t look so good.

Leviton        400 jobs

Boeing         160 jobs

Hoover        450 jobs

State Farm  550 jobs

Xerox          490 jobs

Some might say that relief is on the way but according to one of our local newspapers industrial real estate activity has been negative so far this year.

Our new mayor has been saying that economic development, getting new jobs in El Paso, is a higher priority to him than quality of life issues.

I could not possibly agree more with him.  The other local politicians need to understand that without jobs we are in real trouble.  This last city council had the wrong priorities.

We deserve better

Brutus

6 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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