ElPasoSpeak

This is part of an email that came in from Max Grossman:

Vic Kolenc of the El Paso Times just published a report which includes new information on the City of El Paso’s intentions for their “Arena”. Most importantly, City Engineer Sam Rodriguez confirms that the “Arena” will cost around $250 million rather than the $180 million that voters expected. Moreover, he claims “that number could change.” Ladies and Gentlemen, brace yourself for the eventuality that the City will announce an even higher price tag, impacting our property taxes even further! We deserve better Brutus

Once again it is open line Saturday.

Sound off!

Brutus

Sun Metro’s numbers for the first quarter of the 2019 fiscal year are out:

Ridership fell another 5.6% from last year’s lows.

Yet they stubbornly continue to show a goal of more riders this year than last.

If somehow they reached their goal they would still be 19% below where they were back in 2012.

Their cost per trip for the quarter went up 21% from the same period last year.

Isn’t it time that we rethink how our bus system operates?

We deserve better

Brutus

 

Several people trying to get through the traffic mess on alternate routes that was caused by the closure of I-10 the other day have commented to me about the lack of assistance from our local traffic people.

They commented about stop lights that held traffic back when there were few if any cars coming from the perpendicular side of the intersection.

In this day of electronic communication couldn’t we have a system where someone or some computer changed the traffic signal controller to compensate for the massive change in traffic conditions?

Or maybe people could be dispatched to the intersections to manually control the signals to maximize traffic flow.

These situations are bad but measures could be taken to lessen the problems.

We deserve better

Brutus

I cannot think of anything that could more clearly demonstrate the city’s attitude to the public than the below slide:

The city is telling us that they start with their internal project management employees and then involve

• Process (whoever they are)
• Vendors
• Support staff
• User departments
• Stakeholders/utilities
• Admin (that’s the fifth internal group in case you are counting)
• Service/Purchasing/OMB (I guess we are up to 8 internal groups at this point)

And finally after they have all made up their minds

• The public

We deserve better

Brutus

Take a look at this:

The city has been quite efficient on this one.  The above slide came from a presentation that was to be made to city council.

Before city council even considered the issue the project was removed from the city’s list of bond projects.

Elections have consequences.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

 

Rich Wright over at elchuqueno.com makes some interesting predictions about today’s (Monday, February 4, 2019) special city council meeting.

Read his post here.

Our city council has decided to have “special” city council meetings where they deal with things that they don’t want the voters involved in.

Look at this picture taken at a recent special meeting.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

We had another tragic event on I-10 last week.

A young man lost his life.

Our condolences go out to the family.

Unfortunately the accident is another example of where the authorities need to rethink their procedures for handling such events.

I-10 was blocked off in both directions for more than three hours.  I’m not familiar with the procedures that the authorities follow in order to investigate and document in these cases.

What I do know is that they take too long.

We deserve better

Brutus

Its open line Saturday.

Tell us what’s on your mind.

Brutus

Do you remember what EPISD told us they were going to do to Andress high school with the bond money they were asking us for?

They told us that they were going to do “major renovations” to the school.

This slide shows it more clearly:

This snippet came out of their December 2018 monthly report:

What happened to the renovations?

We deserve better

Brutus

 

The November 2018 bond newsletter from EPISD can be read here.

Up until now I was unaware of the fact that as the district consolidates  schools they are renaming them.

Bradley and Fannin are being consolidated with the new name Dr. Joseph Torres elementary.

Dowell, Schuster, and Crosby will become Arcadio Duran, Jr. elementary.

Henderson and Clardy become Dr. Josefina Villamil Tinajero

Lincoln, Bond, and Roberts will become Donald Lee Haskins

Morehead and Johnson are to be named Charles Q. Murphree

Ross and Hughey become Wally Hartley

Terrace Hills and Collins become Tyrone “Bobby Joe” Hill

The newsletter has a short biography of each of the people the schools are to be named after.

We deserve better

Brutus

According to a news segment that I heard on the radio the other day our mayor gave an interview to NPR (national public radio).

When asked about the immigration problem he evidently said something to the effect that our biggest problem is the whole immigration system–that it has not been addressed comprehensively for 30 years.

I agree with the mayor.

We deserve better

Brutus