Good news, El Paso. MountainStar Sports Group wants to save us money. According to this story in the El Paso Inc.,
Paul Foster and Josh Hunt both urged the city to get moving on the quality of life bond projects approved in 2012.
Starting those projects sooner, they said, would save the city millions of dollars by taking advantage of historically low bond-interest rates, while creating jobs and keeping El Paso moving forward, especially Downtown.
You remember MountainStar, don’t you? They brought Triple A baseball
to a new Downtown ballpark that voters overwhelmingly approved in 2012
according to a sentence that appears a little further down in that same article.
Come on, it’s only been two years. Do the editorial puppets think we forgot that our former Mayor John Cook said in the October 26, 2012 issue of the El Paso Times?
“My whole intention is to make sure that everyone is clear that they are not voting on whether or not there will be a baseball stadium, but on how to fund it,” Cook said about today’s news conference. “The decision on the ballpark has already been made.”
Interesting, isn’t it, that MountainStar wants to save us some money on the bond financing? They didn’t seem so concerned about the City’s money when they negotiated the ballpark deal.
In a related note, the El Paso Times’ troll-for-hire has a question:
There must be a reason the ongoing major road and San Jacinto Plaza projects go idle for a day — or days. No activity. Not even three guys in hard hats watching one guy with a hard hat and a shovel.
The reason, of course, is that the City of El Paso is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy after spending more than $220 million on the ballpark and relocating City Hall, and they don’t have the money for other projects. Except now, with property tax receipts trickling in, there’s a little bit for us to spend on catching up.
The developers have been pulling the strings at City Hall for too long, and they seem determined to drive El Paso into bankruptcy . What could their motive be? Is it that they want to take control of the City’s land holdings out of the control of the technocrats at the Public Service Board, and put them into the hands of the politicians?
That should turn out well.