elpasospeak

Discussions about the El Paso Firemen and Policemen’s Pension Fund are beginning to surface.

The citizens of El Paso paid in an extra $210 million a few years ago to bolster the fund.

Now the fund faces an additional $270 million shortfall.

Why?

Newly hired firemen and policemen are allowed to retire at 50 years old!  They get to draw retirement pay for 15 years longer than citizens under social security.

Those hired before 2007 get an automatic 3% increase in their retirement pay every year!

Can’t do it

These numbers simply are not sustainable.  We cannot afford them.

Firemen and policemen often risk their lives for us.  If their work is dangerous and should be awarded then we should pay them more as we go, not mortgage the future.

Let the market decide how much to pay these people.  Post the starting salaries.  If qualified people want the jobs they will apply.  If too few apply, raise the offer.

As for retirement, why have we been put into a position where the taxpayers are forced  into increasing retirement benefits?

Why is there a separate retirement fund for this group?  Why don’t all government employees belong to the same retirement system that the ordinary citizens are forced into?

Ignore the voters

Now members of our state delegation are introducing legislation that would take the funding out of the voters hands.  As it stands now the city charter gives us the right to vote on this funding question.  The legislation would leave it up to our city council.  The legislation is not proposed to be statewide — it would only apply to El Paso.

What an outrage!

Eternal vigilance is the cost of liberty

Cato

This email has deeper ramifications than a first reading would give us.  Left click on it to make it larger.

The city manager is upset with a civil service commission member.  She sends a note to a city representative rather politely asking for a discussion about the member’s actions in a meeting that day.  She evidently felt that the member did not support her.  She asks a council member for help.  That seems to be reasonable to me.

The fact that she misspelled the member’s name is not that big of an issue.  We unfortunately have come to expect that kind of disregard for citizens from the city manager.  The city manager having to “endure” a meeting where someone does not do precisely what she wants the instant that she wants it is not my topic either, after all the city manager seems to feel special and as a result should not have to “endure” points of view that are different from hers, especially from someone she thinks she can control.

Look at the record

The email indicates that there was a civil service commission meeting February 16, 2012.  I cannot find a video of the meeting so I will rely on the official minutes to try to see what could be so upsetting.

Not being able to see the video, I cannot tell if the member was well behaved.  I can only look at the voting record to see what happened.

As best as I can see there were 39 votes.  Ten of them were unanimous.  That means the member agreed.  Fifteen times the member was the only one to vote on a particular side, the rest of the commission disagreed — more on that in a moment.  The member voted with the split commission’s majority five times and voted with the minority eight times.

I know that only adds up to 38 votes, I did not take the time to fix my counts believing that one vote would not make a significant difference.

The vast majority of the member’s solo votes were on the almost 20 rule changes or prospective ordinance issues.  The member evidently felt that the rules did not need to change.  I know that I would be reluctant to make that many rule changes in one meeting.

Significantly those issues relating to individual employees saw the member voting with the majority each time.  The member even voted to sustain the termination of two employees!

Not true

The city manager states in the email that “He refuses to hear any action against any employee…”.  The record shows that to be untrue.  I consider firing an employee an action against an employee.

I did not take the time to analyze the second allegation, “or support any management effort”.  After all, others voted the same way he did except in the cases of the rule and ordinance issues.

Appointees are not supposed to be robots

The mayor and city council appoint citizens to many governing and advisory boards.  We should expect those citizens to vote their consciences.  If the citizen does a poor job in the opinion of those who appointed him, then the citizen should not be reappointed.  The appointees are not there to rubber stamp the wishes of city staff, otherwise there is no reason to have the board.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty

Cato

This is the last of my introductory posts about the proposed city charter amendments.

Once again from the city’s web site:

SHALL SECTIONS 7.4, 7.7 AND 7.17 OF THE CITY CHARTER BE AMENDED AND SECTION 7.23, LEASE AND LEASE PURCHASE, BE CREATED, RELATING TO THE FINANCIAL OPERATIONS OF THE CITY: TO REQUIRE THE CITY TO MAINTAIN A CASH RESERVE IN A MINIMUM AMOUNT OF 5% OF THE OPERATING EXPENSE BUDGET; TO PROVIDE THAT CITY INVESTMENTS BE GOVERNED BY AN ANNUAL INVESTMENT POLICY; TO ESTABLISH THAT GENERAL OBLIGATIONS BONDS MAY BE APPROVED BY THE VOTERS FOR ANY LAWFUL PURPOSE; AND TO ALLOW FOR THE USE OF LEASE-PURCHASE AND SIMILAR AGREEMENTS FOR THE ACQUISITION OF PROPERTY?

• Permit voter-approved general obligations bonds for any lawful purpose
• Permit the use of lease-purchase agreements for the acquisition of property

Evidently the current charter does not allow the voters to approve general obligation bonds for some purposes.  I would like to know what purposes they want to add before I give my approval as a voter.

My problem with allowing lease-purchase agreements for the acquisition of property is that it would allow city council to make large acquisitions that would not add enough to each year’s budget to make the budget subject to voter recall.

Think about this and vote in May.

We deserve better

Brutus

OK, city hall has been demolished.

I have said before that I am personally for the ball park, just not on top of the old city hall and children’s museum.

Now that the building is gone, let’s try to figure out what this has cost us.  I don’t have all of the numbers, they will come out over a period of time.  I can assure you that they will be higher than what I can identify at this point.

Let’s start with the city hall building.  The central appraisal district put the value at over $30 million.  City council paid for an independent appraisal that came in at  a little over $13 million.  For the sake of discussion let’s use the lower number.

Then we have the land.  The site is 5.5 acres.  With 43,560 square feet per acre we end up with 239,580 square feet.  What is the land worth?  We don’t have to guess here, the city has already told us.  In Train wreck we saw the city paying $27.50 per foot to the railroad for  8,684 square feet  of land on the same site.  That comes to $6.6 million.

The city tells us that they will spend $50 million building the new ball park, but Muckraker pointed out in No one will notice that the city is selling $51.4 million in bonds.

We had to cut a deal with the railroad to close 16 rail crossings throughout town.  I won’t count this because the decreased value of the property is coming directly out of the adjacent property owner’s pockets and we will not be taxed for it.

The city had to buy air space over the depressed train way.  Also, the quality of life bonds included $500,000 for a “convention center north pedestrian pathway”.  North from the convention center takes you to only one place, the ball park.  The water utility is paying separately to redo the water and sewer facilities serving the new ball park.  Engineering and traffic studies have been conducted relative to the impact of tearing down city hall and operating a ball park.  Power and communication lines are having to be moved.  I will include none of these numbers in the total right now and will wait for the records to become available.

Then we chose to get new facilities for the city staff.  The city told us that it would cost about $33 million.  In $63.9 million and climbing we saw the totals that were available at that point.

So far then, we have:

Value of old city hall building                              $13.1  million

Value of city hall land                                            $   6.6 million

Construction bonds                                                $51.4 million

Replace city hall                                                      $63.9 million

                                Total known at this point     $135.0 million

As you will recall this number is low in that we do not have all of the individual contracts yet and we are not including interest.

We deserve better

Brutus

From the city web site:

SHALL SECTIONS 6.5-1, 6.5-2, 6.7, 6.8, 6.9-5, 6.10-1, 6.10-3, 6.10-6, 6.10-7, 6.11, 6.12, AND 6.14 OF THE CITY CHARTER BE AMENDED, RELATING TO THE DUTIES OF THE CITY MANAGER AND THE HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR AND THE CREATION OF ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES: TO REQUIRE THAT ADMINISTRATIVE POLICIES AND PROCEDURES CONFORM TO FEDERAL AND STATE LAW AND THE CHARTER; TO ALLOW FOR THE CREATION OF ADMINISTRATIVE POLICIES AND PROCEDURES TO ADDRESS THE FOLLOWING EMPLOYMENT PROCESSES: EXAMINATION PROCEDURES, TRANSFERS AND LAYOFF PROCEDURES, LEAVE OF ABSENCE AND REINSTATEMENT PROCEDURES, THE CERTIFICATION PROCESS FOR HIRE AND PROMOTION, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF STANDARDS OF EFFICIENCY; TO PROVIDE FOR THE USE OF THE RULE OF FIVE IN THE PROMOTION PROCESS; TO DEFINE THE TERM HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR; AND TO RE-TITLE AND RE-NUMBER SECTIONS AS NECESSARY?

Then under “What it Does” we get:

Provides for the establishment of administrative policies and procedures by the City Manager and Human Resources director to address administrative policies and procedures conform to federal and state law and the charter for the following employment processes:

examinations

transfers and layoffs

leaves of absence and reinstatements

the certification process for hire and promotion

Allow the use of the “Rule of Five” in promotions

Add a definition for “Human Resources Director”

Re-title and re-number sections as necessary

Delete provisions relating to matters being dealt with administratively

Delete?

Delete what?  I don’t see a provision to delete anything.  Evidently city staff intends to modify the charter to make some matters that are currently handled by the civil service commission administrative matters that will be handled by the city manager.

Is this a power grab?  I don’t know — the ballot wording certainly does not tell us.  As a voter I might agree with it if the city would give me the details of what they intend.  For now it looks like we would be voting to increase the city manager’s power.

This is another great example of how ballot wording does not tell us what they want to do.

We deserve better

Brutus