ElPasoMatters.com has A Q&A with Joe Pickett on his upcoming run for City Council, in which City City spokesperson Laura Cruz-Acosta says
the city has a strategic plan, developed with input from stakeholders from across the community, which serves as a roadmap that enables the City to address decades of neglect in the areas of public safety, streets and quality of life such as parks, museums and libraries.
Now wait a minute. Tommy Gonzalez has been City Manager since 2014. And now they’re playing the “decades of neglect” card? Some of that neglect has to fall on Tommy Gonzalez.
[Ms. Cruz-Acosta] said the plans and actions to address these issues came directly from resident input provided during the budgeting process and at various community meetings. Cruz-Acosta said the City’s budget process, implemented seven years ago, provides constant two-way communication between staff, council and the community. The city conducts a public survey for community feedback regarding the budget.
Remember the Chime In survey that Ms. Cruz-Acosta is calling resident input? Lower taxes is never an option in that survey. If they want public participation in the budgeting process, they should include lower taxes as a choice.
Doesn’t speak well for Joyce Wilson and staff, eh? We won’t know what they say after Tommy leaves, as it’s pretty clear that most of us will not live that long.
When Tommy finally leaves town he will leave a slime trail that’s at least twenty yards long and a coupe yards across.
And, again, I ask: why did the City go from a strong Mayoral form of government to a City Manager? We not only are deeply in debt for years to come, but we have literally pissed away millions and millions to pay for these people and their bloated staffs and their neglect.
It was to modernize like other big cities and get rid of the back room cronyism that so characterized the strong mayor form of good ol’ boy government here. Then Wilson pulls the biggest crony deal in history and tells the Times it was totally transparent and everyone knew about it! I wouldn’t say in print that anyone was bribed, but she and CAC have been well taken care of by the Cabal since leaving the city employment. In a low pay town, six figure jobs are still a nice way to show appreciation for “work” well done.
Maybe we are moving on from that.
I think I remember that there was an extremely low input numbers associated with the Chime in.