Fire the Trustee

(See bottom for some very important dates regarding the City Comprehensive Plan Re-Write and a presentation about the Rio Bosque by John Sproul.)

Imagine that you have a trustee in charge of managing your financial portfolio. You go to this manager and say that you have decided to make some changes in your financial plans. The manager tells you that you can’t. You want “abc”; she insists you want and need “xyz”.  As she has done so many times before, she tells you that her investments for you assure that your fees for her services are kept low. You tell her that is not true but she keeps insisting that it is. You’ve noticed that she makes a number of claims that aren’t true. You realize that your goals and objectives have diverged.  You also realize that your trustee shares very little with you and makes non-transparency a regular policy.  What do you do? I’ll bet you take your assets out of that account. I bet you fire your trustee and go get another one.

Overwhelmingly people at the Dover Kohl-led charrette process involving the Scenic Corridor and the Westside (NW El Paso) Plan said that they just don’t want to develop any of the acreage in the Westside Plan. (Read No-Build IS the Option at our blog.)  Nobody wanted the old plan that many remember was written in spite of objections.  Big “X’s” marked that plan at the hands-on session. “Why sell the land for development?” was the key question. The PSB, the land manager, our “trustee”, will tell you that selling land will keep water rates low. From an open records request, we learned that PSB land sales from 1999 to 2009 were about $4 million per year. For the last two years those sales amounted to less than $500,000.  Land sales only amounted to 2% of the yearly revenue including water, stormwater, and wastewater – not enough to keep rates low by any means.

Now factor in some more things. Once land is developed, guess who takes over the cost to maintain the infrastructure and provide the services for the new development? You do – and it’s much more than keeping the pipes working and the sewer flowing. It’s schools, fire, police, roads, more and more. You can count on paying for these expenses from now on until eternity.

Except it won’t ever go for very long. There’s an 800-pound gorilla sitting next to our land manager: water supply. We have more land than we have water. Development doesn’t pay for itself. We are in fact subsidizing developers. Costs for water will increase as we depend more and more on desalinization and imported water. (By the way, imported water from farmland to the east of El Paso County is not at all a sure bet. Word is that there are lawsuits popping up.)

Land sales may have made some difference in the past. (May have – I don’t really know and I’m just guessing.)  But with increased population and water customers, the benefit from land sales decreases. Things change. Unfortunately our trustee has not – a trustee you will remember who will tell you straight to your face such things as a piece of property being “natural open space” when that land is nothing more than a vacant lot in the middle of a long-established neighborhood.  (What do you do with your trustee? Take your assets elsewhere. Fire your trustee. Go get a new one.)

It’s becoming clear. People want to preserve land not sell it for development and subsidize developers. People want to re-vitalize our downtown. People no longer believe tall tales about land sales and water rates.

Here’s another 10 reasons why protecting El Paso’s Scenic Transmountain Corridor is important to protecting the Franklin Mountains State Park.

2 more things before we go:

Come hear wildlife and conservation biologist, John Sproul, this coming Thursday, February 2^nd, at 6 p.m. at the El Paso Garden Center, 3105 Grant Avenue. (Map) The Trans-Pecos Chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists is sponsoring this presentation open to the public.  Many of you know that the Rio Bosque, an important ecological treasure and wildlife habitat, is in critical danger. The drought, challenges with water, and underfunding from the City have led to a park on the verge of dying.  Sproul and a handful of volunteers daily truck water from the nearby Bustamante Plant into the park where they hand water the trees. Bottom line: come hear Sproul.

By the way, elpasonaturally likes what the El Paso Times editorial board had to say about wetlands in their op-ed piece on work at the Fred Hervey Water Reclamation Plant in Northeast El Paso. All the same arguments can be made for the endangered Rio Bosque Wetlands Park, another City Park that the Parks and Recreation Department spends zero dollars for – but then they haven’t budgeted for trails, connectivity or open space.

Finally, as many of you know, an item to take action on the City’s Comprehensive Plan Re-Write (Plan El Paso) was deleted from last week’s CPC meeting. It seems that some at the Chamber of Commerce want more time to give additional feedback.  This is a euphemism for a delay tactic to scuttle the plan. This Plan has been vetted for nearly two years now. (You can read the complete draft of volume 1 and volume 2 of the Plan El Paso document online.)  More than 2500 people participated in 100 meetings and 20 hands-on-sessions. Plan El Paso has been discussed by numerous groups, stakeholders and the press. Nobody can say that we can’t make a decision on it now. As citizens who care, mark your calendars now and be heard at the following upcoming meetings:

Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee

Monday, February 20, 2012, 10 a.m. to Noon, 10^th Floor City Hall

City Plan Commission

Thursday, February 20, 2012, 1:30 p.m., 2^nd Floor City Hall

Legislative Review Committee

Thursday, February 23, 2012, 1:30 p.m., 2^nd Floor City Hall

City Council

Tuesday, March 6, 2012, 8:30 a.m., 2^nd Floor City Hall

You can bet that the Chamber and those forces who hate the new landscape ordinance, hate open space, hate the Open Space Advisory Board, hate anything but concrete, asphalt, sprawl and water meters will be present at each meeting. (See above about subsidizing developers.) City government needs to see and hear us as well.