City Reps Limon, Niland Clash Over Pilot Program

don’t yell a me. and don’t talk to me like that. out of respect.thank you very much, i have the floor.” noe: “we are calling the question. thank you.” limon: ” you’re not going to allow me to speak is that what you’re saying?” noe “ma’am, you did get to respond. limon: “i’m on. i’m on … sir.” noe: “i not going to let this digress into another argument.” limon “i’m simply askin a question.” noe: “we’re goi to call the question.” a war of words at el paso city hall. the argument is over a pilot program that allows the city to pay for some overtime costs for customs officers at ports of entry. than you for joing us. i’m rick cabrera. and i’m estela cas. you are watching abc-7 at 5. let’s get straight to our maria garcia with our top story. maria? the program started about two years ago. the city pays about 1.3 million dollars a year for customs agents’ overtime. the purpose is to reduce bridge wait times and spur border trade and the economy. and they get that money by charging crossing vehicles an additional 50 cents. commercial vechiles an additional 50- cents per axel. but city rep. lily limon said there’s no clear evidence the investment is actually reducing wait times. she says the city hasn’t gotten quarterly reports on the effectiveness of the program. that spurred a war of words with city rep cortney niland who said council has been getting the quarterly reports. so did the director of bridges. and niland said though the data is complicated – the city has gotten reports that bridge wait times have slightly decreased: lily limon: 4:11 “is it fair to tax the people and the industry that we’re trying to help out when we’re not seeing much of a decrease in time 7:01 people became very upset very angry because we said we’re going to do this and we really didn’t to the degree we could measure it.” cortney niland: 1:17 “we’ve received no complaints from the vehicular traffic, we’ve seen no complaints from the commercial traffic and in fact what they’ve said is ‘although traffic has increased we haven’t seen it get any worse. we’ve seen slight improvements.” council voted to extend the program another year with limon and city rep carl robinson voting against it. “horrified and appalled.” abc-7 viewer who lives in canutillo tells us she spotted a group