I don’t hate El Paso. I’m not against downtown development. What I hate are people who pretend that they know what they’re doing when they don’t, and insist on spending our tax dollars on a misguided hunch.
Take, for instance, the Southwest University Ballpark. The ballpark represents $150 million we could have spent on something that would really distinguish El Paso. Something like free, city-wide high-speed internet access, or a comprehensive bike trail system, or arts education. Instead, we have a traffic-snarling, pint-size, money pit that makes us one of thirty cities in the U.S. with a Triple A baseball team. That puts us squarely in line with towns like Scranton, Pennsylvania; Pawtucket, Rhode Island; and Tacoma, Washington; all of which have Triple A baseball teams.
Or take, for instance, El Paso’s latest branding effort: It’s All Good. I know $300,000 doesn’t go very far the way the City spends money, but we surely could have gotten more than that vapid and meaningless slogan that does less to distinguish El Paso than the ballpark. Why didn’t we hire branding experts instead of an advertising agency? Don’t the suits in City Hall know the difference?
The problem with the ballpark is that the moneyed interests already made up their mind before they brought in experts to justify their decision. And the problem with the slogan is that, even though the City knew they didn’t have the expertise to come up with a branding campaign, they didn’t know the extent of their ignorance, so they turned to the wrong people to help them.
I’m just guessing. It’s not like the City will let the citizens in on their decision-making process. Really I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt, by attributing all their ham-handedness to good intentions gone awry, instead of willful malfeasance.
A 10 second google search could have given anyone interested a mountain of studies showing that the idea of the ballpark being “an economic driver” was insane. They knew the truth, they didn’t care because they were bought and paid for by a campaign contributor. It’s just that simple.
When I was asking my (their) elected officials about the downtown plan I asked them specifically what metrics we could use to determine the success or failure of the project. The answer was crickets along with some blabber about economic drivers. As far as I can see there are no economic drivers with the exception of public money. Where is all the private investment? How much private investment in terms of dollar to dollar as compared to public money would be a success? I would have to think it needs to be at least 3 private dollars to every public dollar. El Paso is just another Stockton California or Flint Michigan….places that gambled public funds to spur private investment…and failed.
Let me know when El Paso snags a real business (aka non call center or retail) from elsewhere that came because of El Paso “investing” in itself.