The City of El Paso’s Bond Overview Advisory Committee (BOAC) is charged with monitoring the City’s expenditures from the 2012 Quality of Life Bond, which cost the taxpayers $473,225,000.
Tomorrow, January 22 at 4:00pm, BOAC will meet in the Main Conference Room of City Hall at 300 N. Campbell St.
According to the agenda, City staff will update the committee on expenditures for the Children’s Museum, Mexican American Cultural Center, Multipurpose Performing Arts and Entertainment Center (Arena), and trails and trailheads.
The City has failed to post the backup for tomorrow’s meeting and, as far as we can tell, this is the fault of City Engineer Yvette Hernandez, Assistant City Attorney Roberta Brito, and Elsa Rodriguez of the Capital Improvement Department.
Moreover, the City has failed to post any BOAC agendas or minutes from June 7, 2022 until the current agenda for tomorrow, leaving the public and media completely in the dark about several meetings.
The incompetence and lack of transparency are stunning, especially since we pointed out problems with posting BOAC agendas more than 30 months ago.
We are talking about citizen oversight of the issuance of hundreds of millions in taxpayer-funded general obligation bonds and certificates of obligation!
What is the City trying to hide?
None of this is the fault of the members of BOAC, who have sometimes had to twist arms just to gain access to the information they requested so they can do their jobs.
BOAC CHAIR PROVIDES US WITH AGENDA BACKUP
BOAC Chair Dr. Rick Bonart was kind enough to provide us with the meeting backup for tomorrow since the City refuses to comply with the law.
You may download the backup here.
There you will see that the QOL Bond projects have run $63,607,763 beyond the original $473,225,000 budget.
We guess the City does not want us to know that.
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