Proposition 5, fox in the henhouse

April 14, 2013

The ballot language from the city website:

SHALL SECTION 3.20, ETHICS AND ACCOUNTABILITY, OF THE CITY CHARTER BE CREATED, SECTION 3.6 BE AMENDED, AND SECTION 2.2 G BE DELETED, RELATING TO ETHICS AND ACCOUNTABILITY: TO MOVE AND AMEND THE PROVISION GOVERNING THE ETHICS REVIEW COMMISSION TO GIVE THE COMMISSION THE POWER TO ENFORCE ITS DECISIONS BY ASSESSING CIVIL FINES AND SANCTIONS AS AUTHORIZED BY ORDINANCE; AND TO CREATE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INDEPENDENT INTERNAL AUDIT FUNCTION AND A FINANCIAL OVERSIGHT AND AUDIT COMMITTEE TO PROVIDE OVERSIGHT OF THE AUDIT FUNCTION AND REVIEW CITY FINANCIAL POLICIES?

Then in a section titled “What It Does?” the city writes:

“Internal auditor shall be appointed and removed by the City Manager with the approval of City Council.”

What?  Appointed and removed by the city manager?  Are they nuts? Where does it say that in the proposition?  This is a fine example of how city staff intends to write whatever they want into the charter after you approve a general idea.

We should remember the El Paso Independent School District superintendent who is now in jail.  The school board says that they did not know what he was up to.  The auditor reported to the superintendent, not to the board, according to the superintendent.

The rest of the proposition regardless of any potential benefits that may come to us cannot overcome this fatal flaw.

We deserve better

Brutus

5 Comments | City government, El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Not in my backyard, or maybe yes

April 14, 2013

The El Paso Inc. published a great piece about the city changing the zoning of major pieces of town in its March 31, 2013 issue.

The city wants to rezone more than one thousand acres thus affecting thousands of homes and businesses in the Mission Valley and Five Points neighborhoods.

Items 5E and  5F on the April 16, 2013 city council agenda would change the zoning to “Smartcode zone”, whatever that means.

The property owners bought their property under one set of zoning.  Now the city wants to change the rules thus restricting the actions of the owners differently than what they signed up for.

Is “Smartcode zone” a good idea?  I don’t know.

What is missing here is respect for the voters.  We have a city council whose membership is about to change taking the opportunity to force change on us as some of the council members slip into a well deserved state of public oblivion.

How much public discussion do you remember council promoting on this issue?

Why can’t the people vote on this?

Is council afraid that the voters would say no?  Once again does council need to show that they are right and that the citizens are incompetent to manage their own lives?  Is council better than the unwashed masses?

I don’t know how I would vote.  I do know that I hold anything that this council does in suspicion.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, El Paso Inc., Open Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Proposition 4, the blank check

April 13, 2013

SHALL SECTION 3.2 AND 3.3 A OF THE CITY CHARTER BE AMENDED, RELATING TO THE SALARIES OF THE MAYOR AND DISTRICT REPRESENTATIVES, AND PROHIBITIONS REGARDING OTHER EMPLOYMENT: TO PROVIDE THAT BEGINNING IN 2015, THE ANNUAL SALARY OF THE DISTRICT REPRESENTATIVES SHALL BE SET EACH YEAR AT THE SAME AMOUNT AS THE HUD PROGRAM INCOME LIMITS MEDIAN INCOME FOR EL PASO COUNTY, AND THE ANNUAL SALARY OF THE MAYOR SHALL BE SET EACH YEAR AT 150% OF THAT AMOUNT; AND TO PROHIBIT COUNCIL MEMBERS FROM HOLDING ANY OTHER PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT CONTRARY TO STATE LAW?

That is the ballot language for proposition 4, directly from the city’s website.

This would give the mayor and the city council automatic salary adjustments each year.  No matter how much they ignore us or even disobey us they will get a new paycheck.

Go ask your boss for a similiar deal and see what happens.

The El Paso Inc. exposed another example of the duplicity and incompetence of a city staff member in their March 24, 2013 edition.  Evidently the city attorney was out stumping for the propositions (she should not be an advocate, she should see that what the city does and does not do is legal).  The article says that the city attorney said that the salary for a city representative is about $28,000 now and that if the proposition passes it would be about $42,000.  A citizen questioned the $14,000 pay raise and said “I’m voting against it”.

The El Paso Inc. indicated that the city attorney was wrong.  The city representatives get paid $29,000 a year now and would be raised to $50,500 per year if the proposition passes.

Was the city attorney lying or just wrong?  What, if anything, should we believe that she tells us?

By the way, the mayor’s salary would evidently go up to $75,250 from $28,500.

I don’t know how much they should be paid.  I do know that we should control it.  They have little enough allegiance to us now.

We deserve better.

Brutus

Leave a Comment » | City government, El Paso Inc. | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Still uncertain

April 13, 2013

Brutus is working his way through the nine proposed amendments to the city charter.

In Proposition 2 or the shady deal enabling act he comments that he wishes that the actual language being proposed be made available to the citizens so that they can see what the impact of each proposition would be.

I found this document under Red Line Charter on the city web site.

Good, I thought, I can see what they really are going to change.

The document seems to be a working paper that was used by the ad hoc charter advisory committee.  Many of the changes show as “Not recommended by the Ad Hoc Committee”.

What is this document?  Is this what the committee reported to city council?  What portion of it has the council decided to put on the ballot?

What, if anything, does the document have to do with what we are ultimately voting on?

Has the city even determined what the final wording of the charter would be if a proposition was passed?  Why can’t we see the final wording?

Brutus is right, we deserve better.

Muckraker

Leave a Comment » | City government, Open Government | Permalink
Posted by Muckraker

Say you did it, not me

April 12, 2013

I post this as another example of what is wrong down at the city (left click the email to make it larger):

youridea

Reading the email trail from the bottom we have:

The city manager makes a suggestion to a city representative.  She thinks that we should have more LRC’s (legislative review committees).  Legislative review committees are smaller groups of city representatives that meet to discuss issues specific to a specific topic.  This allows city representatives who have a particular interest in a subject to spend more time reviewing issues.

Output from the legislative review committee might go directly to city council or to an LRC of the whole (all members of city council).

This might be a good idea.  Certainly it was appropriate for the city manager to discuss it with a city representative.

Next we see the city representative agreeing.  Once again very appropriate.

Then the dishonesty

Once the city representative and the city manager agree, the city manager becomes dishonest.

“OK  Make it your idea.  Say you discussed with me a couple of times and I concurred that we had lost a useful vehicle for council to discuss issues of interest and concern”.

Who works for whom?  Why does the city manager have to hide the facts from the public and the rest of city council?  Why didn’t the city representative respond that taking credit for the idea was not honest?

I won’t even start on the issue of the suggested serial meeting.

To me this is disgusting.

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | City government, Open Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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