It was apparent from the beginning that the Council members want the Open Space Advisory Board to be more pro-active and less reactive and that they see a need for the Board to become more empowered to carry out its mission of reviewing information and making recommendations to the Mayor and City Council regarding preserving, protecting and acquiring open space for the benefit of all El Pasoans. Mr. O'Rourke clearly voiced that Council wants the Board to be able to have "power and purview" to get to where the City needs to go and to be able to implement the Master Plan and stay on an ambitious schedule.
Representative Susie Byrd made it clear that the intention of Council when giving OSAB the duties of the sunsetted Mountain Committee was the inclusion of the broader responsibilities of the Mountain Committee. The language used by legal when writing the ordinance actually passed by Council had not reflected the intention of Council.
When some staff members tried to minimize the value of the Mountain Committee duties, developer Richard Thomas spoke of his experiences developing an area - an area that withstood the flooding of 2006 because of the MC advice as opposed to the problems experienced at other developments. Mr. Thomas is also a member of the OSAB.
Most of all, Council members got a first hand experience of the kind of contentiousness by staff that members of the OSAB have experienced from the very beginning. I'm not going to go into all of the gory details now - but various staff members kept objecting to the legitimate concerns of the OSAB. I myself pointed out how an action item requested by the Chairman for the next meeting was arbitrarily taken off of the agenda by Parks and Recreation Liaison, Shamori Whitt and that time was of the essence to put it back on the agenda in order to meet with public notification laws. With a copy of the most current agenda in hand, Chairman Rick Bonart and I were able to correct the record when Parks and Rec Director told the Council members that the agenda had been taken care of when it had not.
My example was the least of the problems. Again, Rick Bonart and Charlie Wakeem gave a presentation that included the solutions that will empower the OSAB to fulfill its duties to Council. The LRC directed the City Manager's office to re-do the enabling ordinance for the OSAB to include all of the suggestions made by Dr. Bonart and Mr. Wakeem.
I will post more later. For now, I'm so happy and excited. Let's chug some Fosters and celebrate that today the good guys won. Here's another rousing Waltzing Matilda:
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