Heads I win, tails you lose

January 29, 2013

Our local governments have been giving away the store.

This example is a proposed lease of a parking lot that the city seems to think that they need for either the new city hall or the 801 Texas building (even though they told us that they would not need this parking lot.  See No parking zone.)  The landlord is the railroad company that also owns the train tracks next to city hall.

This is a ten year lease.  The amount to be paid will automatically increase by 3% each year, compounded.

Many leases tie their rate increases to the Consumer Price Index that is published by the general government.  The published number changes each year and for the last ten years has been beneath 3% — it was even negative one of those years.

Why give away 3% in advance?  Maybe because you think that inflation will come back with a vengence during the 10 year lease and locking in a mere 3% is smart business.

Then why does the lease let the landlord “redetermine” the rent every 3 years?  The landlord wins either way!

Are they competent to manage our money?

Or could it be that as FedUp wrote yesterday that this is a way to give the landlord a blank check for something else?  Rumor has it that the new ball park will require building over the sunken train way that is next to it.  Some say the site is not large enough for a ball park without building on top of the train way.

Is leasing this parking lot part of they way the city plans to pay the railroad for the right to build structures over the train way?

We deserve better

Brutus

1 Comment | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District, Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

No parking zone

January 28, 2013

There they go again.

The city wants to lease a parking lot for either the new city hall or the 801 Texas building. Either way they did not tell us the truth.

This is really pretty simple.

On September 14, 2012 the city chief financial officer made a presentation to city council and to the public. This was to try to convince us to move city hall. The plan was to move into a few buildings. It was all figured out.

The main part of city staff would move into the Times building and its parking lot. One lot, singular, not two lots. The building was in great shape, needed “minimal” improvements and the lot could handle our parking needs.

The city subsequently bought the building and has spent a lot of money remodeling it. They got their parking lot too.

Now do they want another parking lot for the Times building — or do they want it for the 801 Texas building that we were told in the same presentation had ample parking?

Step one:

  • Start with the same presentation from the city’s chief financial officer.
  • You can see the page here 801TexasParkingPortrait
  • The chief financial officer told us that the building had “ample customer parking in city-owned lot and streets”.  Ample is defined as “
    enough or more than enough; plentiful”.

Step two:

  • Next Tuesday’s (January 29, 2013) city council agenda has as item 14 “Discussion and action that the City Manager be authorized to sign a Lease of Property by and between the City of El Paso and Union Pacific Railroad Company for approximately 43,800 square feet on Mills St., between N. Ochoa St. and N. Virginia St., El Paso, Texas, the property to be used primarily for City employee/visitor parking.”
  • The lease, with it’s automatic 3% price increase per year, comes to over $611 thousand.

We were told that if we bought the building, parking was “ample”.  Now they need to lease an acre of land two blocks over.

The told us that they needed to buy one parking lot with the Times building.  They did.  They told us that the 801 Texas building had ample parking.  They want yet another parking lot now that the other purchases have been approved.

That’s another $611 thousand that we should add to the cost of the move.  My numbers come to over $66 million and raising  for a project that we were told would cost $33 million.

Will city council speak up?  Will they remember?  Are some of them part of the lie?

Is this deliberate lying or is it gross negligence?  Either way —

We deserve better

Brutus

 

2 Comments | City government, Purchasing | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Double Standard?

January 27, 2013

In an earlier article Efficient, hardworking city staff I wrote about the “Score Summary Form” and how city staff had produced a definitive analysis of a complex project in just one day.  The form boiled all of their hard work down to four ratings, 1, 2, 3, and 4.

I wondered about the consistency of the reviews and about several other things.

Compare that with these two pages (801TexasRanking) that are the comparable documents supporting the decision to award a contract on the 801 Texas building that the city just bought. You should be able to right click on the document to rotate it–sorry.

While the second page indicates that the city expected to conduct this analysis in one day also, the rating was not published for 8 days.    Maybe the fix was not in on the 801 Texas building.  Look at the numerical values (they are on a scale of 1-100).

Why the different rating systems?  Is it possible that in the case of 801 Texas the city was actually interested in doing a rating instead of rubber stamping a decision that had already been made?

I wonder why the firm that got the ball park contract did not bid on this one.  They did bid on the Luther building and got it.  That means that they were good enough to get two contracts but did not even bother to bid on a third?  What gives here?

What would the result have been if the 1-100 scale had been used for the ball park?

I suspect that when the true story finally comes out it will not be a pretty one.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Zero visability purchasing

January 26, 2013

Item 12B (1) on the November 13, 2012 city council agenda requests permission to issue a purchase order in the amount of $560,406 for computer equipment.

Once again these items were not competitively bid — they were purchased from a buy board.

The backup material does not tell us what quantities or models are being purchased.  We have no idea if the prices are in line or not.  You can see the backup material here.

This is a pretty common occurrence with computer items on the city council agenda.

We all know the problems with buy boards not being competitive.

The backup material asks the question “Is there an urgent need for the product/service?”  The department answered “yes” since the equipment was to be used to “refresh” (replace) existing equipment.  Urgent?  Not at all!

Items 12B(2) and 12B(3) totaling a little more than $608 thousand have the same lack of detail.  Just give me the money.  Let me spend it without oversight.

It appears that the information technology department does not want us to know what they are up to.

We deserve better.

Brutus

2 Comments | City government, Purchasing, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Put ’em in jail

January 25, 2013

I often hear local citizens express their desire to have our local functionaries put in jail for their actions.

Unless you look closely at the things they are doing you might conclude that they are all illegal.  The horrible truth is that the cabal that has seized our local governments is being careful from a legality point of view.  They seem to decide what they want to do and then examine the rules and bend them to their favor — just to the point — but not quite — of being illegal.  Some of their actions may in fact prove to be illegal, if we can get to the truth.

Getting our local prosecutors to help us is not going to be easy.  Note the absence of the district attorney’s office in the well publicized public corruption issues in El Paso.  For that matter when has this district attorney prosecuted any public official?  The word around town is that he will not do it.  The county sheriff could investigate and then press charges, but he is known to be a close friend of our city manager.

There may be other law enforcement agencies that could help but our chances right now are slim.  I suspect that those acts that may be judged to be illegal will mostly be violations of Texas laws, not those of the United States.  All of that is conjecture until hard facts surface.

When we elect or appoint these people we expect them to do what is right.  Unfortunately we have local governing bodies that ignore that and do what their cabal has designed.

It looks like our more likely remedy is at the ballot box.  Yes, even those rights have been stolen from us.  The various efforts at recall and at initiative have been systematically foiled by one form of parliamentary chicanery or another.

Remember though that a city election is coming in May.  We will have an opportunity to elect four council members plus a mayor.  Get active.

I believe that one of the mistakes that has caused our current situation is that we changed the City Charter to elect council members for four years instead of two.  With four years of office council members evidently feel that the public will not be able to touch them while they do what they want.  We have seen efforts at recall squashed through technicalities.

We need to go back to two year terms.  Unfortunately that will require a change in the City Charter.  Even more unfortunately you and I cannot change the City Charter.  Proposals to change it must come from city council — the very rascals that would benefit from leaving the terms at four years.  Even members of the United States congress must stand for election every two years.  We cannot continue to put our representation on auto-pilot for four years.  Look what has happened!

As you decide who to support in the May elections you might want to condition your support on a pledge from the candidate that they will allow the term length issue to be put before the public in a charter election.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Cato

1 Comment | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District, Federal Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Cato

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