Double play

May 27, 2013

I have to hand it to city staff.  They have found a way to put something over on us two different ways at the same time.

City staff wants city council to spend $10 million more for the ball park they are building.

$5 million of the spending is for club and restaurant facilities.  We know that they either knew these were left out of the original plans or they have now figured that they can get away with the additional spending.

The other $5 million is a problem of a worse kind.  This is money that had been previously allocated for other improvements in downtown.  Now they want to use it for the ball park.

This is not my opinion.  The city engineer said so when he said “We could not build the project we have designed without it.”  In other words they designed a facility that they knew would not work without this money becoming available.

No bid

What makes this worse is that this is work that would have been competitively bid.  Part of it is from quality of life bonds that we voted for and were told that the money would be spent wisely and would benefit local construction firms.

Instead of giving local contractors a chance he has decided to give the work to the out of town firm that has the  contract for the ball park.

No bid.  No chance.  Without bids we don’t even know that we are getting fair value for our money.

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Rank high schools

May 26, 2013

Muckraker pointed out the our own Silva Health Magnet High School was recently ranked the 10th best high school in Texas by Children at Risk a Texas based nonprofit that is trying to improve the lives of children.  You can learn more about the group  at childrenatrisk.org.

Silva was ranked as the 10th best high school in Texas!  Fabulous!  Congratulations!

For some reason the Times only pointed out that Silva had been given an “A” by the group.  Personally I would have made it a front page article.

As it turns out there is a lot of information available about the performance of our schools.  Children at risk uses the following factors in ranking the schools:

  • TAKS Commended Reading (5%)
  • TAKS Commended Math (5%)
  • Recommended High School Program (2.5%)
  • Advanced Courses (5%)
  • AP/IB Test-Takers (5%)
  • AP/IB Students Passing (5%)
  • Attendance Rate (7.5%)
  • Graduation Rate (15%)
  • SAT/ACT Test-Takers (5%)
  • Mean SAT Score (5%)
  • Mean ACT Score (5%)
  • Percent Economically Disadvantaged (20%)
  • Reading Gain/Loss (7.5%)
  • Math Gain/Loss (7.5%)

It seems that much of their data comes directly from the Texas Education Agency (TEA).  We might want to argue about some of the metrics and their weightings but at least they apply them consistently in evaluating the schools.

Here are the results of their 2013 analysis of our high schools in the county:

CAMPUS               2013 RANK SCORE
Silva Health Magnet 10 A
Clint H S 105 B
Del Valle Hs 108 B
Coronado H S 195 B
Bel Air Hs 222 B
Riverside Hs 273 B
Fabens H S 331 B
Eastwood Hs 363 B
Franklin H S 371 B
Anthony H S 377 B
El Dorado H S 390 C
Mountain View H S 405 C
Horizon H S 433 C
Socorro H S 467 C
Burges H S 492 C
San Elizario H S 505 C
Chapin H S 530 C
Montwood H S 533 C
Tornillo H S 538 C
J M Hanks Hs 552 C
El Paso H S 554 C
Jefferson H S 573 C
Parkland Hs 614 C
Americas H S 669 C
Ysleta Hs 705 C
Austin H S 986 C
Canutillo H S 1,002 D
Irvin H S 1,042 D
Bowie H S 1,046 D
Andress H S 1,047 D

They ranked 1,171 high schools in Texas.  Getting ranked above  586 puts a high school in the bottom half of the list.

Here is how the average EPISD high school  ranks compared with the other big city school districts in the state:

DISTRICT          AVERAGE RANK

El Paso                           622

Houston                        665

Austin                            681

Dallas                             695

Fort Worth                  902

San Antonio                932

So what is the TEA commissioner so upset about?  EPISD had a crook, he is now in jail.  El Paso outscored all of those big city districts.

I plan to write about other metrics used to evaluate these schools to show how the schools compare with each other.

I would hope that word will get around and that the parents of children in  the under-performing schools will get involved in improving performance.  The numbers will show that community involvement and attitudes greatly affect how well our children do.  It is up to us to see to it that these students do better.

As for all of the schools that ranked in the bottom half of the state, and especially those above 900, for the children I say:

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Just getting started

May 25, 2013

Before even breaking ground on our new ball park the city is telling us that they need $10 million more to build it than the $50 million they told us it would cost.  They also need another $750,000 for design and management work.

Who is responsible for this situation?

Let’s start with the city engineer.  A recent headline article in the El Paso Times quotes him as having said “We could not build the project we have designed without it … We would have to redesign it … It would not be the ballpark the community wants.  It would not be iconic or state of the art.”

The city engineer said that the ball park that the city committed to could not be built.  He was in charge of the technical details.  Is he incompetent, or is he a liar?  Why rig a bid when you can fool City Council? showed us an example of how this individual plays loose with the truth.

Now he tells us that the street and sidewalk “work would have been done by other contractors while the ballpark was built, but that it made more sense to have the general contract oversee the work for better coordination”.  More sense to whom?  His job is to oversee the construction.  This is a no bid give away.  El Paso’s contractors should raise Cain.

Then we have the city manager.  It was her job to see to it that her subordinates did good work.  The city manager made presentations to council selling a ball park that we now know could not be built.  The current decisions being placed before city council must have had her approval.

Demolishing trust pointed out how city staff had found a way to spend $500,000 over and above the $50 million budget building a pedestrian walkway that the ball park needed.  Then it told us about how the city water utility was using customer money to provide new water and sewer facilities to the ball park — once again outside the $50 million budget.

Now the staff wants to use $3 million that was to be used for downtown street projects.  Another $2 million will be stolen from the 2012 quality of life bonds that we approved for the downtown cultural district.  Baseball is not we think of when we speak of culture.  Where is the bond oversight committee?  What committee?  We didn’t promise to listen!  gave us an idea what to expect.

Then we have city council.  Are they part of this lie?  At this point we are in a situation where denying the $10 million dollars could cause the project to fail.  Did city staff fail or did city staff lie?

I guess if I were on city council I would ultimately vote for the $10 million.  I would only do that after I had the written resignations of the city engineer, the chief financial officer, and the city manager.  No resignations, no ball park.  We are going to have to spend good money after bad, but we should not let the same people administer it.

The owners

The team owners are developers.  They know about sidewalks and streets and how they affect projects.  I suspect they knew this was coming.  If one of their employees came to them with a $10 million cost overrun on a $50 million dollar project I suspect that some heads would roll.

The Times article tells us that “the $5 million in contingency funds would pay for amenities such as a bar-restaurant or group and party suites “.  It sounds to me that decisions have been made about how to spend the money.  There is no contingency fund.

Group and party suites will be among the most expensive facilities for the public to buy tickets to.  The profits will be higher on these facilities than on regular tickets.  Who will enjoy the benefit of this extra income after the citizens have spent $5 million?  I suspect that the money will go to the team owners.

The owners have always seemed to me to be good citizens.  Yet they seem to be going along with this two-step theft.  They certainly have not spoken publicly against it.  They benefit from it.  I don’t see how we can trust them in the future.

Not done yet

Like most things we will have to wait to discover the full level of deception here.  Will we end up over $100 million?

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty

Cato

4 Comments | Ball park, City government, El Paso Times, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Cato

Congratulations Silva

May 24, 2013

This article in the El Paso Times tells us that EPISD’s Silva Health Magnet High School was recently ranked the best high school in El Paso county by Children at Risk, a Houston nonprofit.  I thank the Times for pointing that out.

Actually Silva was ranked the 10th best high school in the state of Texas by Children at Risk.  Now that is news.  What is clear is that the students, parents, teachers and staff at Silva are doing a fine job.

Children at Risk explains their ranking methodology on their web site.  Looking at it there are some things that we might quarrel with but at least their ranking method is consistent as it is applied across the state.

The article goes on to point out that Silva was the only high school in the county to receive an “A” rating.  It reported that there were nine county high schools that received a “B”.  Some received “C’s” and some got “D’s”.

Which ones?

Unfortunately the article did not tell us how each of our high schools ranked.  One of the things a journalist should do is read his work from the point of view of the reader.  This is the kind of thing that the public would like to know.

Did the article not cover the basics because of lack of space?  Maybe an editor intervened.  Maybe the reporter did not have time or did not think of printing the detailed results.  Maybe the results would be inflammatory.

I don’t know why they left this out.

Brutus is now hot on this issue and will be publishing more detailed information soon.  The numbers will tell us a lot.

Muckraker

3 Comments | El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Muckraker

Dumb public, dumb

May 23, 2013

According to this El Paso Times article at least five candidates for local office had trouble filing their required campaign reports Friday, May 8, 2013

The city clerk’s office is closed on Fridays like much of the city administration is.  You might remember that the city started a four day week back when they were in the old city hall.  Their stated reason was the energy efficiency to be gained from not operating the ten story building on Friday.  Now that the city has spread out to multiple buildings I suppose there will have to be another justification from the city administration eventually.  Public convenience certainly has suffered as evidenced by the troubles the candidates had.

The alternative was to file electronically.  The city has a new computer system to do this.  Evidently it did not work well.  We can all see that happening with a new system, but would we would have hoped that the thing would have been tested more thoroughly before hand.

What I found troubling in the article was the attitude of the city’s IT (information technology) director.  The article spoke of the comments of two of the candidates:  “Both said the new system was inconvenient and troublesome and needed to be fixed.”  The IT director evidently said “the system is being reviewed to ensure it’s more user-friendly, and he said there was a learning curve on the part of the users and the IT Department that created the program.”

In other words the candidates are ignorant and need to be trained.

I wrote in Phoney about the high salaries the city is paying — above the local pay scale.  Then in Something is rotten in the state of Denmark I addressed another boondoggle from IT.

It would be nice to see the city stop blaming the public and start providing better service.

We deserve better

Brutus

2 Comments | City government, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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