Proposition summaries

April 26, 2013

Early voting is about to start.  Over the next few days we will cover the proposed changes to our city charter and my thoughts about them.  This will be a serial post in that it will be added to and when finished will cover each of the nine propositions.

Just in time for this series, the city has published their official notices and has actually given us the wording that they will use if we vote for any of the propositions.

Many will disagree with my thoughts about some of these.  Good!

Just go vote your conscience.  Show everyone that elections work.

I wonder how many proposals are turned down.  Then I wonder how many proposals turn out to be a bad idea. 🙂

Proposition 9–no

This would allow the sale of general obligation bonds for “any lawful purpose”.  Evidently there is some current restriction of what city council can sell.  Good!  We have a lot of debt to handle right now and that group already has plenty of ways to take our money.  They don’t need another one.

It would also allow council to buy property (land, buildings, equipment) through lease purchases.  This would allow them to spread costs out over many budget years thus stymieing our ability to force a tax roll back when our taxes raise more than a certain percentage year to year.  We need to be realistic with our budgets and not hide costs.  If we need it we should pay for it when we get it, or have a bond election.

Read Proposition 9 for more.

We deserve better

Brutus

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Posted by Brutus

Another “You’re not voting for the Baseball stadium” Ploy

April 25, 2013

 

The Ballot Amendment #2 will read like this:

     Read carefully  

                       SECTIONS 3.5 A AND D, 3.7, 3.9 B AND C, 3.14, 3.18 AND

                                               4.1 B

OF THE CITY CHARTER BE AMENDED, RELATING TO CITY COUNCIL PROCESSES, PROCEDURES, AND APPOINTMENTS: TO ALLOW FOR THE CANCELATION OF NOT MORE THAN SEVEN REGULAR COUNCIL MEETINGS ANNUALLY AND NOT MORE THAN TWO IN A ROW; TO ALLOW THE COUNCIL TO AUTHORIZE LEASES OF PUBLIC PROPERTY AND TEMPORARY USES OF STREETS AND RIGHTS-OF-WAY BY RESOLUTION; TO PROVIDE THAT ORDINANCES AND THE CITY CODE BE MADE AVAILABLE BY CONTEMPORARY MEANS SUCH AS THE INTERNET; TO PROVIDE THAT THE CITY ATTORNEY IS APPOINTED BY THE CITY COUNCIL SOLELY ON THE BASIS OF LEGAL EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS; AND TO PROVIDE THAT THE MAYOR AND REPRESENTATIVES EACH UNIFORMLY HAVE THE ABILITY TO SUBMIT NOMINATIONS FOR THE APPOINTMENTS TO THE CITY’S BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS?

Amendment #2, section 4.1 subsection B: The Powers of the Mayor” read as such:

The Mayor shall……….break tie votes, veto legislation except for City council actions which removes the City Manager………… 

     Notice any similarities?  Any differences?  Coincidence?

If this Amendment passes the mayor will become a pawn, a figurehead.  He will be relegated to kissing babies and giving out “Keys to the City”  (hope he can sing and play some instrument)

Who, I ask you, carefully crafted this this amendment and directed someone to leave out the Beef.  If you know, vote for change and “no” for all 9 amendments ( actually 34 amendments wrapped into 9,  by last count). 

Wake up El Paso.

(Submitted by Desdemona)

 

3 Comments | Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by M.T. Cicero

Propositions explained, but not how they were published

April 25, 2013

Great news!  The El Paso Times in their Wednesday, April 24, 2013 edition published six  full pages of “Legal Notice” to the citizens of El Paso.  Three were in English and three in Spanish.  I thank the Times.

Brutus has been writing about the proposed city charter amendments and has commented that he would like to see the actual text of the proposed change in addition to the ballot language that the city has been publishing.  Now he has it.  We will wait to see what he thinks.

Wait.  Those six pages do not appear to be available in the on-line edition of the Times.  Advertising is handled differently between the two editions.  Could it be that the city had to pay for the publication and the Times was the beneficiary?

The city is required by state law to publish this information.  There is nothing wrong with them paying the Times and the Times making a profit.

What I do question is whether the city also published the notices in El Diario de El Paso.  If they did then I applaud everyone involved.

If they only paid one paper, wouldn’t it make sense to put the English portion in our English language newspaper and the Spanish portion in the Spanish one?  Maybe there is some legal issue here and both sets of notices needed to be in the same newspaper.  I doubt it.  In fact I wonder if the city is even required to publish them in Spanish, not that I have a problem with them doing it.

Is it possible that the city just wanted to give more money to the Times to keep them happy?

Muckraker

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

Losing our shine

April 25, 2013

I’m hoping that a reader will provide an answer to a question that I have been thinking about.

It used to be that our fire department equipment was always shiny.  We would see the firefighters out waxing the vehicles.

Now the red paint on many of the vehicles has faded closer to pink and we no longer see the firefighters out polishing them.

Is there a reason that this practice has stopped?

I am not complaining, just wondering.

Brutus

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Posted by Brutus

Dear John

April 24, 2013

This week’s Sunday Times, with the front page tribute to anointed Mayoral Candidate, had an interesting article on the editorial page about our outgoing mayor by none other than Mr Joe.

Sports writers are generally, pretty funny guys and Mr Joe does does write some funny stuff. They have to be funny, if you think about it. Really, there not many interesting things about baseball games so you make funny. (Well maybe the shortstop and the left outfielder colliding while going after a fly ball….. but I digress).

So picture this: Mr Joe is sitting at his desk, thinking about what to say nice, nice ( that’s a deliberate double ) about our “to be former Mayor”. (Bear with me, the spell check just crashed)

Let’s see:

He had an “open door policy” every Friday for all Constituents.

“Mr. John, the ankle biters Schecter and Gilbert are here to see you ”

“Tell them I’m meeting all day with the Mayor of Dell City”.

“I told them that last week”.

“Tell them its the the Mayor of Ysleta”

Don’t think that will work. He keeps it simple and kisses babies

How about “he plays the Banjo and sings to his constituents“.

“Its a guitar and he only knows 3 chords, C, F sharp and B flat”.

“His singing voice has no vibrato and he’s usually a little off key”.

Or maybe:

“He really was against all the hair brain ideas of the City Council like tearing down City Hall and building a postage stamp baseball field downtown……”

“He just voted…. well… wrong. Only once ………. maybe twice?”.

I got it!

Well, we can say;  “the Devil made him do it”.

Maybe he needs an exorcist?

Does Pastor Brown do this type of thing? He beholding since he has a judgment against him.

Come to think about it, I may have come up with something else.

Now I know

“What was that old Show biz saying: “Never follow a Banjo player“. Well,…. Guitar? Banjo? What’s the difference.

“That should scare the beje_us out of that Mama’s Boy used car salesman along Mister Bagel-guy from taking on our Stevie”.

We deserve better.

4 Comments | Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by M.T. Cicero

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