Here’s an interesting story from KVIA.com:
This week the city has come out with a plan to clear up some street medians with help from schools and non-profit organizations.
A weed clean-up event set to start this Saturday will bring volunteers together for a fundraising opportunity.
. . .
With the city median crew down about 40 percent of their staff, he said in the last six weeks, they have been able to clean up 30 medians out of 300.
“We are doing our best to try to take care of as many medians as possible, we are doing what we can with the workforce that we have,” said Ybarra.
Meanwhile, parents are concerned about where their taxpayer money is going and if it is safe for their children.
“Should our kids be volunteering when we’re paying that much money in taxes for the city, not even to take care of it?” said parent Berta Ramirez.
Look at that. The City is asking for volunteers to help out with the City’s core services.
This week I heard that the City doesn’t even have dogcatchers to round up strays. The City is telling citizens who have corralled loose dogs to let them go.
And the streets are crumbling, and the libraries and museums have cut their hours, and some of the rec centers aren’t open at all.
Pretty soon they’ll be farming out public safety to armed vigilantes.
City Government is a hole in downtown that the taxpayers pour money into.
Did you hear that the water parks are supposed to lose $3.4 million this year? And that’s just operating costs. We’re still on the hook for the $37 million we borrowed to build them.
Curious, innit, what the City of El Paso thinks is important.
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This morning, Montwood was completely closed, from Bob Mitchell to Saul Kleinfeld, evidently for work of some kind. Meanwhile, going west, from Saul Kleinfeld, there was a sizable crew, and a number of city trucks blocking the left lane, while work was being done to clean the median. It is finally getting done there, at least, but seems to be much more of a traffic obstruction than it should be. I guess this is what happens when they neglect regular maintenance. Piss away the money downtown and neglect our streets, otherwise.
I am curious. Among the “sizable crew” did you notice any elected politicians or the city manager? They do a great job spending our tax dollars, and allowing weeds to out number our local population.
Well, I went downtown yesterday with a friend for the Hubble telescope exhibit and lecture at the History Museum, really the first time in several years I have actually walked around there. It was crowded.
My old office at the Main Library is still there but also a huge expansion of the library. Is that for the cultural museum? Last time the library expanded (in 2006 I think) they found several bodies left over from when Cleveland Square was a veterans cemetery. That would explain the paranormal phenomena in the library, especially its sub-basement. I’m wondering if they’ll dig up any more stragglers from 1919 when the cemetery was relocated. When I was there 2011-2013, the Mexican housekeepers did not like to go into the sub-basement after dark.
The construction for the Children’s Museum is spectacular. Only took them 10 years to get it going.
Then we had dinner at Ansons 11 that was also packed with a mostly younger crowd. If fact, downtown was very busy with traffic, people in San Jacinto Plaza, even families with kids riding the electric scooters. Not the DTEP of my experience here the last 26 years.
After dinner we crossed the street to the Plaza Hotel. Have you seen the lobby bar? Unbelievable! Also busy with a younger crowd and we went up the the 17th floor observation deck for after-dinner drinks looking out over the downtown. Ha, two Cointreau’s, just like Victor Laszlo ordered for himself and Ilsa Lund in Casablanca. In my life here I would never have believed something like this would succeed, because my experience of DTEP up to 2013 when I retired was that DTEP was a dead zone. No more! And it is first class, too.
The Plaza restoration has been done with such attention to period detail that it is a must see if you go downtown. I guess if you throw $50MM or so at a few square blocks you’ll get some kind of result and I have to say it is impressive, not excusing the way it was done.
I’m glad you enjoyed downtown, Jerry. On behalf of all the taxpayers, all the working class citizens of El Paso, all the drivers who have to negotiate bad roads, let me say you’re welcome.
None of those places you mentioned contribute more than a dime to the General Fund. Sure, downtown is nice. It should be. Look at all the money we’ve put into it. But I don’t believe that any Fortune 500 companies will be moving to El Paso any time soon. And if they do, they’ll do it on the backs of those same taxpayers, working class citizens, and the drivers who have to negotiate bad roads, because any company moving to El Paso will get sweet tax incentives. The City will have to grant tax incentives because property taxes in El Paso are punitive.
And according to https://kfoxtv.com/news/local/city-invites-community-to-volunteer-to-remove-overgrown-weeds-in-el-paso all 4 weed clean-up events were on the east side. I live in central, which is full of weeds. There are some corners you can’t even see around to know if cars are coming because the weeds are so high.
Sorry, one of the 4 was on the west side. All the others were on the east side.