This is my response to mayor Dee Margo and city manager Gonzalez’s spin-infected column titled El Paso on the Move in last week’s Times. (note: originally intended as one of my “3 minutes with Mayor Dee Margo and City Council” presentations at City Hall but I woke up sick).
A prime example of our city leaders using the El Paso Times as a propaganda platform allowing them to spread half-truths and misinformation designed to confuse El Pasoans regarding local issues.
We deserve to know the truth about things but this administration is driven by an agenda that requires the twisting of facts to get accomplished.
I get that your are El Paso’s self-appointed cheerleaders and feel you have to have a pep rally whenever you talk about the state of the city, but there is such a thing as reality.
You cheer about a resurgence in historical preservation, yet you have no qualms about destroying El Paso’s oldest historical Latino neighborhood along with several potentially historic buildings, including the Chinese Laundry, El Paso’s last remaining architectural touchstone representing our Chinese community.
You cheer about developing a comprehensive master plan for reimagining Cohen Stadium, but you don’t mention how and who will pay for that.
You cheer about the $15.5 million investment in the Westside Pool Natatorium that accommodates 680 El Pasoans, when the City will only pony up $5 million for a Latino Cultural Center to represent 565,000 Latino El Pasoans and our sister country of Mexico across the Rio Grande.
You cheer about downtown businesses and hotels adding to our sales tax revenues and offsetting our property tax burdens, yet you neglect the bedrock downtown businesses key to revitalization while lavishing tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars in tax incentives to hotels that contribute nothing to revitalizing downtown. Corporate welfare at our expense.
And you cheer about building the sports arena that you insist El Pasoans voted for in 2012, despite the City’s bait and switch scam that you are well aware of. Judge Meachum has forbid the city to build the multi-purpose center to accommodate sports yet you continue to punish El Pasoans by your pathological insistence on overturning her legal decision.
Bottom line? Your Borderplex Alliance 1 percenter buddies are the ones flourishing while the vast majority of taxpaying El Pasoans continue shouldering the financial burden to fund your pet projects.
If your going to cheer, we ask that you do it honestly.
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On another note, Thursday, October 26 I filed a grievance against City Atty Borunda-Firth with the Texas Bar Association.
I won’t go into the details other than to say I included several instances where I believe she has compromised her position as city attorney. I also attached the 8th Court of Appeals document regarding the Contempt of Court proceedings that you and mayor Margo somehow managed to find a way to circumvent this time around.
We’ll see if they determine there is any merit to my grievance.
There are many citizens that feel that you have been derelict in your duty as you continue to exploit loopholes in your efforts to aid and abet the City with many of the legal situations they are currently mired in.
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