Sold Out

March 14, 2013

Many El Pasoans were secretly sold out by city council when they approved the new ball park.

Tearing down Insights and city hall, buying buildings, and remodeling them have ended up costing us a lot more than the $33 million that council told us it would take.  The number keeps growing but is now over $70 million.  $63.9 million and climbing was the last article where the numbers were detailed.  Since then we have seen other costs.  We will have to wait to figure out the total.  Council and city staff are burying the projects and we will not know about some of them until the paperwork is done.

More recently we learned in Shoes dropping that when we went to the polls and approved the funding for the new ball park we were not told that we did not own all of the city hall site.  Imagine — tear down two modern buildings, spend more than $70 million dollars to move, contract to build a ball park for $50 million plus whatever other money they can hide from us — on land that we do not even own yet!

The El Paso Times gave us a peak at what is coming in their rather understated article on March 13, 2013.  It seems that securing the land for the new ball park made spending $5 million to rebuild the Carolina bridge and create quite zones “necessary for the city”.

Oh, and by the way, the city will need to agree to close several railway crossings as part of the land deal.  Those of you that travel through the crossings today have been sold out by city staff and city council.  Public input evidently is not necessary — we know that they consider us to be “crazies” and enemies of progress.

The crossings at Cedar, Birch, Maple, Elm, Estrella, Cebada, Boone, and Cadwallader are evidently eight of the ten crossings they want to close.  If this causes you inconvenience, I suggest that you think of the great public utility we will all gain from the ball park.

Carolina bridge will be closed “for some period of time”, but you ought to be able to find an alternate route.  Grant Street, Rio Grande Avenue and Arizona Avenue will need to be converted to two-way streets “to ease traffic congestion and railroad crossings”.

“This is just fantastic” one city representative said.

Remember to vote in May.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Tell us what you really think

March 13, 2013

Item 7B on the March 12, 2013 city council agenda proposes to award up to $207,380 to an out of town firm for computer software.

The backup material states:

  • The City of El Paso’s Municipal Clerk’s Office and the Communications and Public Affairs Office are in need of software solution [sic] that will enhance their services, streamline their current process, and allow for easy distribution of information to staff and the general public.

That sounds pretty good.  Will we be able to reduce our labor budget because of this?

What does not sound good is that once again the award will be to the “highest ranked” proposal, not the most cost effective one.  Cost accounted for 25% of the evaluation points.  Of course the award is to an out of town vendor.

Unfortunately this is business as normal at the city.

What is unusual here is what they told us in the backup material:

  • Currently Municipal Clerk Staff do not have the technology to automate the creation of an electronic agenda, record meeting minutes, and meeting discussions. Incorporating this technology will help the department efficiently increase productivity to posting information for citizens and provide the public an innovative way to access audio/video, documents, agendas, government transcripts and broadcasting without the hassle of allocating City IT resources to manage and maintain the stream of information posted online.

Hassle?  Keeping the public informed is a hassle?  These people have even stopped trying to hide their disdain for the public.

We need new leadership.

Vote in May.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, Open Government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Oink!

March 12, 2013

Item 12B on the March 12, 2013 city council agenda proposes to authorize another $2 million for the remodeling of our new city hall.

We will add this to the running total.

As usual the city wants to do this without bidding. They plan to use another job order contract.

You can use the search feature on this page to look for other articles about this. A new slant to an old “profession” gave us details about this particular contract.

Recent activity shows the city awarding $4 million dollars to this firm last November. Another $3 million was awarded to two other firms in January. Now they want another $2 million.

That is $9 million since November that could have been competitively bid to local contractors but instead will go to city favorites.

At this rate of spending the relocation project is spending almost as much money on construction as it is on building demolition. Build, tear down. Build, tear down. Or is it tear down, build? Either way it is a waste of our money.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Local losers

March 11, 2013

Item 6 on the March 12, 2013 city council agenda suggests awarding a $488,000 contract to an out of town company for library audio visual equipment.  The firm had the “highest ranked proposal”, not the lowest cost one.

Two well known El Paso firms submitted lower offers — a lot lower.

Did the local firms not meet the specifications?  I doubt it.  Submitting offers takes time and money.  It does not make sense to waste time and money making an offer that you know does not meet specifications.

Something else is going on here.

Maybe someone will come forward and help us understand.

We deserve better

Brutus

Leave a Comment » | City government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

True confession

March 10, 2013

Under the title ITEM 10 — RELATED TO THE RELOCATION on the March 13, 2013 city council agenda the city wants to spend $1,221,468.90 for new hand-held radios.

A previous post $63.9 million and climbing revealed the $20 million dollars the city is spending to replace the public safety radio system that they plan to destroyed when they implode city hall.

We might have given the city the benefit of the doubt and thought that these new radios were normal operating expenses — replace worn out units, add new units.

The city has chosen to categorize them under relocation, so we need to add this money to the growing sum that moving city hall is costing us.  An earlier post,  City Hall Relocation told more about the egregious lies the city has been telling us.

A bit of organizational nonsense can be found in the backup material:

  • “This purchase also allows these entities to procure new equipment to establish a transitional plan for their departments for the cutover expected March 31, 2013.”

Use new equipment to establish a transitional plan?  Help me please.

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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