WTUFC Contributes Apple Tree to Community Garden

On hand were Jim Tolbert, President of WTUFC, El Paso City Council Representative Emma Acosta, Brent Pearson , Oscar Mestas and members of the Cielo Vista Neighborhood Association

The West Texas Urban Forestry Council (Los Tree Amigos) and the Cielo Vista Neighborhood Association celebrated Texas Arbor Day today by planting a tree in the Community Garden of the Cielo Vista Neighborhood Association. Oscar Mestas, Texas A&M Urban Forester, and Brent Pearson, City of El Paso Arborist, demonstrated the correct way to plant a tree. 

City Arborist, Brent Pearson, finishes planting the apple tree.

On hand to help plant the tree were City Council Representative, Emma Acosta, WTUFC Board President, Jim Tolbert, and WTUFC Treasurer, Joanne Burt.

Jim Tolbert, Brent Pearson, Emma Acosta

Arbor Day was founded in 1872 in  Nebraska. By the 1920s, each state in the United States had passed public laws that stipulated a certain day to be Arbor Day. In Texas, Arbor Day is celebrated every year on the first Friday in November, the best time of year to plant trees in our climate. The customary observance of Arbor Day is to plant a tree. On the first Arbor Day, an estimated one million trees were planted.

Trees produce oxygen and clean the air. A mature leafy tree produces as much oxygen in a season as 10 people inhale in a year. Trees act as a giant filter that cleans the air we breathe. Trees absorb carbon dioxide which promote climate change.

It is the mission of Arbor Day to inspire people to plant, nurture, and celebrate trees.

The Friday Video: Texas Arbor Day 2015 [The proclamation is well worth listening to.]


For more information:

West Texas Urban Forestry Council (especially tree care page)

EPWU Desert Plant List

City of El Paso Tree Care Manual

This Changes Everything

So how did the vote on the open space $3.2 million go today? There was no vote. Instead the item was deleted and will most probably go to a Legislative Review Committee of the City Council. How did this come about? Rep. Emma Acosta has other plans. What are the other plans for the $3.2 million? More park ponds! This changes the calculus completely.

Already the email is flying between current council members and at least one former member. Dr. Rick Bonart, our hero for his open space trail blazing and his days on the PSB, doesn't want to give an inch on the $3.2 million and he has some good reasons.

Expect meetings and for the Franklin Mountain Wilderness Coalition to get involved.

Can of worms? You betcha.

Stay tuned.

Take the Fate of the PSB out of the Hands of City Council

[As a follow-up to yesterday's blog, I am publishing this op-ed piece written by Dr. Rick Bonart. Rick served on the PSB from 2009 until 2013 when City Council voted him off that Board. Emma Acosta led the despicable charge. David Crowder wrote an excellent piece in the El Paso Inc. regarding the ouster of someone who truly did put the "Public" back in the "Public Service Board".]


As the former citizen advocate from the Public Service Board, I want to comment on El Paso City Council's latest actions regarding the El Paso Water Utilities/Public Service Board - adding a new franchise fee and again proposing to eliminate the Public Service Board. These are horrible ideas.

It has only been a few years since former Mayor Cook convened a blue ribbon committee to review these very issues. The committee recommended that City taxes should not subsidize water rates, nor should water rates subsidize the city's taxes. Follow up studies were conducted and verified that the economic arrangement where the PSB already pays the City ten percent of its revenue is fair and comparable to other cities throughout the region. They also concluded that the PSB creates value for the City!

Ultimately, what’s in the best interest of our community is a sustainable, low cost, supply of water. Availability of water will be this region’s ultimate economic driver giving El Paso an edge in attracting new growth.  The citizens of El Paso have enjoyed low water rates and a reliable supply thanks to the policies of the PSB.
  
City Council’s meddling and undermining the PSB is bad policy. The PSB was established to set rates and policies to protect our precious water resource without political influence. The new franchise fee usurps that principle. It sets the bad precedence of City Council dictating how the PSB handles utility business.

Ironically, certain members of City Council were successful in decreasing Electric Company rates by arguing how harmful high utility rates are to the local economy.  This new fee is nothing more than a back door tax that increases a utility bill.  The franchise fee will be tacked onto water bills; but proceeds will go toward paying for city projects.  By so doing, what you pay for will be more obscure. From water projects to quality of life bonds, it's important that citizens understand the true cost of the projects they vote for. 

This new fee on business will be totally regressive in two ways. First, because it's a set fee per entity, a small mom and pop operation will pay the same fee as a huge corporate entity. Second, it's not tied to consumption. Currently as with your electric bill, consumers have control over the size of their bill by limiting consumption. Tiered water rates have been the most effective conservation measure initiated by the water utility. This new fee removes that discretion.

So why would City Council attempt such an awkward solution for such a relatively small (less than half a percent) shortfall? Surely 3 million in savings could be trimmed from an 800 million dollar budget. The answer is simple. It’s a first step. Once instituted fees and taxes never expire, rather they perpetually increase. This fee is only for non-residential customers, however it doesn’t require a crystal ball to realize residential customers will be ”fair game” and tapped to balanced the next  budget shortfall.

Unfortunately, Council’s assaults on the PSB has become an annual event. Members of City Council threaten to increase the PSB payments to the City, take over and sell off PSB land holdings, add fees, or, as with Representative Acosta’s latest suggestion, dissolve the PSB altogether.


City Council should keep water rates and city fees separate, support an independent Public Service Board, and act to repeal the franchise fee. I’d like to propose a Charter Amendment to require that the dissolution of the Public Service Board rest in the hands of the voters and not City Council. 

Somebody Kill this Vampire Once and for All Times

It's become almost an annual or semi-annual event: an attempt to dissolve the Public Service Board and put control of the water and stormwater utilities directly under City Council control as a department of the City of El Paso. Like the living dead rising from the grave for fresh blood, this attempt has been coming up periodically. 

The most recent sighting of the Vampire came in this message from Rep. Emma Acosta's office:

"Representative Emma Acosta, District 3 authorizes the placement of the following item on the Regular Agenda for the Tuesday, September 9, 2014 City Council meeting:


"Discussion and action to review, amend, or dissolve the City of El Paso ordinance that created the Public Service Board, charged with the management and control of the water, sewer, and drainage systems of the City. To analyze, recommend, and determine the most desirable and best interest of the citizens and rate payers of the City of El Paso, in any changes, amendments, or repeal of the ordinance."

I spoke with John Balliew this morning. Although the motion has been withdrawn, there is every reason to be wary that it will re-appear sooner rather than later because the Vampire has recently drawn new blood in the form of a repugnant, unfair franchise fee which forces EPWU to collect money from non-residential customers in El Paso (read mostly Mom and Pop businesses that are already struggling in El Paso's economy.) PSB did not authorize the fee - Council did. So, as Emma must want to push the point, who needs the PSB?

Several points and please remember them:

We need the PSB as the very best way to preserve our most precious asset: water.

Take over the PSB and start selling the land to the sprawlers (what useful idiots for the sprawlers such as Emma really want) and we will soon collapse our water supply.

Balliew offered a better idea: let the EPWU assume pavement costs when mains break. Invest in newer infrastructure. Council rejected this idea because they really don't want the fee to cover an expense item in the budget - they want it as an ongoing way to raise revenue. 

This Council is NOT business-friendly. They are sprawler-friendly, Schwartz-friendly, Rubin-friendly but NOT business-friendly. They continue to plunder the wealth of businesses and homeowners to pay for the increasing costs brought on all of us because of unchecked building sprawl. Counting city taxes and the franchise fee almost 20% of the water bill paid by one of El Paso's oldest businesses and major employers goes to the City! 20 percent!  Rather than build the wage and salary base of the City in order to enlarge the amount that sales tax pays for city services rather than property taxes, Council raises your property taxes, forces your business to pay yet another fee, and allows the sprawlers to laugh and sing all the way to the bank. BTW, I believe that, in time, it will be obvious that Tommy Gonzalez is the pick of the back-room boys who like sprawl. (It wasn't unanimous you know to choose him and the Mayor really did break a tie. Happy now, former Mayor Wardy? Doug? Jerry?)

So, don't think that the Vampire has gone away. It may take an amendment to the City Charter to drive the wooden stake through its evil heart.

Personal Vendettas Toss Bonart from the PSB

City Council continues to be dominated by politics over policy. The reactionaries are in control. Democracy and progressivism continue to lose out. 

Today City Council voted 7-1 to keep Herr Shoephoerster on the PSB in spite of the fact that he knows something about pacemakers but not a thing about hydrology and stormwater. (Dr. John Walton, a hydrologist and engineer professor at UTEP would have been the better pick.) Schoephoerster is also the Chairman of the PSB and has been pushing for an anti-First Amendment Communications Policy in reaction to the loss of the boondoggle UTEP water project for the Engineering Department over which he dictates as Dean. It was Dr. Rick Bonart who saved us ratepayers from that boondoggle. (By the way, if you haven't, you should read David Crowder's excellent article in the El Paso Inc. about the Communication Policy. A pro-democratic, pro-constitutional document was agreed upon in committee because of the efforts of Dr. Bonart and Mayor Leeser. The entire PSB will vote on it tomorrow.) Niland moved to appoint Schoephoerster even before public comment. Dr. Walton was allowed to speak but those present reported that the members of City Council weren't even listening.

Then came the shameful vote on Bonart's seat. Emma Acosta led the charge against Dr. Bonart. She zeroed in on Bonart's recent organization of a town hall meeting at which the public could meet and hear from PSB candidates for appointment. The meeting was held at the County Building by permission of County Judge Veronica Escobar for no other reason than the fact that Bonart couldn't get an EPWU or City venue - believe it or not. Acosta hates Escobar. Acosta has no political principals only self-serving twitches. Never mind the fact that Bonart was doing something that should have been done all along - let us, the people of El Paso, meet the candidates and then give our input to our City Council reps. Even the resumes of the candidates were not something published on the EPWU web page (or the City page for that matter.) No matter how important the PSB is to and for the citizens of El Paso the good ol' boys and girls want to control the outcome. They don't want your input, people of El Paso. Reactionaries never do. They like their autocratic control too much. Sadly this is what El Paso voted for this last time around and I believe that Mayor Leeser is now beginning to see that those who grabbed on to his coattails are not worthy of his humanity. 

So Acosta ranted and raved and even those who had told others or Dr. Bonart that they would support him, didn't. They know who they are: Ann Lilly, Cortney Niland, Eddie Holguin and Lily Limon. Shame on every one of you for pledging one thing but doing another. The "L" word applies here and I don't mean "Liberal". They voted for Antcliff.

Say-nothing, do-nothing Romero will vote whichever way Ann Lilly or Bob Hoy or Myrna Deckert tells him to vote. I'm sure that he has his marching orders prior to coming to City Council. His imagination stretches only as far as picking up a coke can in a vacant lot. 

It will be interesting to see what the PSB does tomorrow with the Committee recommendation on the communications policy. Expect them to continue to do what the good ol' boys and girls tell them to do (and I include the entrenched establishment at EPWU) regarding stormwater funds. Money will continue to flow to shrubs and sod for park ponds and never for natural open space. It's lazy engineering and popular politics - but not good policy. Moreover, it will be interesting to see whether John Balliew has really been sincere about the pipeline to the Rio Bosque or whether he and others have been stalling to see if Bonart would be reappointed or not.

It will also be interesting to see whether Antcliff is as good of a person as many tell me that he is. Will he be independent? Will he think on his own? Or will he just do the bidding of the establishment which should be his wont as a Republican.

My gloves are now off and are going to stay off. If El Pasoans think that they were kept out of the decision about the ballpark, they should look very carefully at nearly everything that the establishment good ol' boys and girls do on Council and the PSB - and that establishment includes those who fooled all of you with their self-righteous indignation over the old City Hall building. 

Reactionary governments are not there to sustain communities with sound policy. They are there to scratch their own itches and will their own whims with their closed-door, behind the scenes, anti-democratic politics.