Lying must be a job requirement for City employees to speak to the press.
Here’s our recently minted City Attorney Karla Nieman in an interview with the El Paso Times.
El Paso City Attorney Karla Nieman said the city was not starting demolition efforts Thursday.
Instead, Nieman said officials routinely enter the area because they have received reports of people staying inside abandoned buildings there overnight.
“Two of the buildings have been declared unsafe, and they shouldn’t be in there,” she said, adding that officials also have entered to remove items left behind and to turn off utility functions.
Nieman said the city will file a response to the emergency order, which the court has requested be submitted by Jan. 14.
“It’s unfortunate,” Nieman said in an interview. “We continue to be delayed on the project, and it is delaying our community’s economic development.”
I suspect that Ms. Nieman’s statement if chock full of lies (turn off utility functions?), but I know for sure that when she cited economic development as justification for the “arena,” she was swimming in it.
Numerous studies, like this one, this one, and this one, show that arenas are poor vehicles for economic development.
Even John Oliver recently weighed in on the subject.
You would think that an individual as steeped in abundant living as Ms. Nieman is would realize that building an arena is a bad economic investment. But if you work for the City of El Paso, lying is part of the job.
Just ask Mayor Dee “Hold the Line on Taxes” Margo.
And, lest we forget, our Mayor is still pushing for this ridiculous arena, that never was. What was voted on was a “new multi-purpose performing arts and entertainment facility – an enclosed, modern facility that can accommodate large-venue concerts and other events that we cannot currently handle here,” and, according to KVIA, that Proposition 2 “means $228 million would go to fund museum, cultural, performing arts, library facilities, including a multi-purpose performing arts and entertainment and an interactive digital wall.” I – for one – still do not understand how that became a pressing need for a basketball arena, and I cannot grasp why we should need yet another building that will go largely unused and unoccupied most of the time, and then, not provide adequate parking for those who might venture to it when it is open.