Under the wire

June 7, 2013

This item is on the Tuesday, June 4, 2013 city council agenda:

5B.         For notation pursuant to Section 2.2.110 of the City Code: receipt of campaign contributions by Representative Steve Ortega on May 2, 2013, in the amount of $1,000 from Shawn/Donna Gray; in the amount of $500 from Rudolf & Sandra Montiel; in the amount of $500 from Evelina Ortega; in the amount of $500 from Robert & Sylvia Ortega; in the amount of $500 from Alan & Caryn Rosen Viterbi; in the amount of $500 from Tracy Yellen; on May 3, 2013, in the amount of $2,500 from Cita Sanders; in the amount of $2,500 from William Sanders; in the amount of $500 from Tenet Healthcare Corp. PAC; on May 6, 2013, in the amount of $500 from Carlos David Bombach; in the amount of $500 from Lupe F/Jesus M. Gonzalez; in the amount of $2,000 from TREPAC/Texas Association of Realtors; on May 7, 2013, in the amount of $1,000 from BNSF Rail PAC; in the amount of $1,500 from Bill Burton Jr.; in the amount of $5,000 from L. Frederick Francis; in the amount of $1,000 from Patricia Holland-Branch; in the amount of $500 from Martin Morgades; on May 8, 2013, in the amount of $1,000 from the Law Office of Ruth Reyes; on May 9, 2013, in the amount of $1,500 from Jack Chapman; in the amount of $5,000 from Charles Jordan; in the amount of $1,000 from Brad & Katherine Kuykendall, in the amount of $500 from William M. & Vicki Yung.  [Representative Steve Ortega, (915) 541-4124]

State law requires that candidates file a report of contributions and expenses eight days before an election.  Our May election was held on the 11th.  The timing of these contributions kept them from being on the eight day report.  I am not claiming that anything is wrong with this.  They could have been as a result of a last minute call for more money.

Reading the list you should see money from the railroad, from the builder of the ball park, from the advertising and public relations firm that the city has been using for ball park related issues, and from people prominent in the downtown renaissance.

Some of these people will need to make amends if the candidate loses the runoff election.

For the record section 2.2.110 of the city code deals with the city manager.  Section 2.92.110 deals with ethics and specifically with disclosure of campaign contributions.

It seems that Scrivener is doing his job.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

3 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Doubleheader

June 6, 2013

City council held a special meeting on Tuesday, June 4, 2013.  The regular city council meeting started at 8:30 AM.  The special meeting was scheduled to start at 9:00 AM.  It actually started at 2:04 PM.

What’s so special?

City ordinance number 17616 established deadlines and procedures concerning city council meetings and their agendas.  The CFO of the city needed to get her agenda item to the city clerk by 12 noon on the Thursday before the council meeting.  That did not happen here.  Rather than wait one week it was decided to call for a special meeting of the city council.  The ordinance requires either the mayor or the majority of council to approve the special meeting.

The posted time of the special meeting was to be 9:00 AM.  That is during the regular city council meeting.

Here once again city staff chose to circumvent the rules and manipulate things so that one agenda item could be heard on Tuesday.  What was so special was that the rules were inconvenient to city staff and so they chose to ignore those rules.

It was still a violation of Texas law.

The attorney general of Texas published “2012 Texas Open Meetings Act Made Easy”.  The following comes directly from the question and answer portion of the document:

17. May a governing body change the time of its meeting without posting a corrected notice
for 72 hours before the meeting starts?

The Act requires literal compliance.  For this reason, a governing body has no authority to
change the time of its meeting without posting the new time for at least 72 hours before the
meeting.47 Nonetheless, it is not necessarily a violation of the Act if a governing body or one of
its committees starts its meeting a little later than the scheduled time. At what point the change
in time would present a legal problem would be a fact issue. Local entities should consult their
legal counsel if they decide to change a meeting time.

They posted the meeting for 9 AM and held it at 2 PM.  I believe this makes any actions taken voidable if someone wants to sue the representatives or the mayor personally.

Deliberations

City council members had a lot of questions.  They were told that the city manager and city attorney had handled the negotiations and contract matters leading up to the proposed contract matters.

Both the city manager and the city attorney were absent.  Council members were understandably upset that they were being asked to take action on an item that was sprung on them as a surprise and that none of the people familiar with the details were available.

Ultimately council declined to do the city manager’s bidding.  Council is upset with the way city management railroads issues, as well they should be.

In this case council stood up to staff.  Unfortunately as far as city staff goes,

We deserve better

Brutus

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

City open records

June 5, 2013

The city has added a new section of it’s web site that allows us to make open records requests.

Follow this link to get to the page.  It looks like the city has made a good start in making it easier for us to make these requests.

As is unfortunately often the case much of what the city has posted on the page is either wrong or incomplete to the point of being misleading.

Texas law controls the handling of these requests.  The city site does point you to Texas sites that are authoritative and complete.

Understanding the rules takes some studying and I encourage you to spend some time learning them if you want to be successful with your request.

I only spent a few minutes looking at what the city has put on the web site.

Issues that jumped out at me at first glance were:

They fail to point out that you do not have to receive paper copies of documents responsive to your request.  You may request to view the documents in person.

Allowable charges vary depending upon circumstances (number, age, and location of documents).

The city will charge $15 per hour for labor but generally may not charge if you are requesting fewer than 50 pages that are stored in one building.  The city says they will charge $3.50 per hour overhead if they actually charge for labor.  Texas says that the maximum overhead charge is 20% which would put the city maximum at $3.00 per hour.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Cato

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Posted by Cato

SAT biased toward whites?

June 4, 2013

This comment was posted in response to SATisfied:

The SAT has it’s own set of issues, including cultural bias towards middle class whites.

I have always assumed that to be true but I had a suspicion that looking at the data would show us even more.

CAMPUS % WHITE STUDENTS % ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED SAT AVERAGE SCORE
Silva Health Magnet 6.2 53.4 1034
Coronado H S 18.5 41.9 1007
Franklin H S 17.4 38.7 979
Burges H S 6.4 70.1 976
Chapin H S 16.3 61 954
Anthony H S 2.6 100 934
El Paso H S 6.6 74.4 909
Montwood H S 5.7 55.9 883
Irvin H S 4.5 86.9 881
Austin H S 5.6 80.6 877
Americas H S 9.7 58.3 876
Eastwood Hs 2.5 58.4 874
Jefferson H S 1.2 90.3 865
El Dorado H S 6 69.6 858
Socorro H S 3.5 85.7 856
San Elizario H S 1.2 90 851
Fabens H S 0.8 90.2 849
Horizon H S 3.5 93.8 846
Mountain View H S 1.4 90.6 842
Canutillo H S 4.4 71.2 833
Clint H S 4.1 78.5 831
Bowie H S 0.3 96.4 826
J M Hanks Hs 1.5 67.7 823
Andress H S 14.6 61.6 818
Bel Air Hs 0.3 79.7 809
Tornillo H S 0.5 93.5 801
Del Valle Hs 0.4 88.2 789
Parkland Hs 3.1 76.3 774
Riverside Hs 0.3 87.1 750
Ysleta Hs 0.5 87.9 739

I am not disputing the statement.  It is still probably right. Something else is also going on here.  Look at Andress with one of the “whitest” student populations and one of the lowest SAT scores.

Then look at Anthony with the fewest “white” students, and with 100% of their enrollment classified as economically disadvantaged.

Something is wrong at some of these schools.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Pay to not play

June 3, 2013

According to a Sunday, June 2, 2013 article in the El Paso Times, the city is preparing to let the Diablos out of their Cohen stadium lease that was scheduled to run through April 2016.

You can’t blame the Diablos.  The city killed them with their AAA baseball deal.

According to the article the city will pay the Diablos $150,000 for improvements that the Diablos made to the stadium.  The city will also grant $110,000 as a rent credit.

We’re not done

The Diablos evidently also owe the city money for past electric bills.  Some think that the electric bills will come to about $100,000.  According to the article the city manager did not have exact figures when the Times interviewed her.

Exact figures?

Figures don’t lie and liars don’t figure.  How can the city manager not know the exact amount, especially after the tongue lashing she took in last week’s city council meeting?

Shameless promotion!

To make matters even worse, the city will pay the Diablos $40,000 to promote the new AAA team during the remaining Diablos games.  What’s wrong with that?  City council agreed to build the ball park — promoting and operating the team is the responsibility of the team owners.

My numbers come up to about $400,000 dollars here.  This is tax money directly out of our pockets.  We should also count the lost revenue from letting them out of the lease early.

I don’t blame the Diablos.  The city has treated them poorly.  For that matter the city has treated us all poorly.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

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