City representatives spar over bridge pilot program

El Paso City Representatives again sparred at their weekly meeting, a sight that’s become increasingly common.

The argument on Tuesday stemmed from the pilot program council approved in late 2013 to pay for overtime hours of Customs and Border Protection Agents in an effort to reduce wait times at the international ports of entry and spur border trade and economic development.

For the last two years, the City has spent between $1.3 million and $1.5 million a year paying mostly for overtime hours of customs agents. The city gets the money by adding an additional .50 cent toll to vehicular crossers and 50 cents per axel for commercial vehicles. The program was implemented at the Paso Del Norte and Zaragoza ports of entry.

City Rep. Lily Limon on Tuesday again expressed concern there’s not enough evidence to prove the program is effective, citing a lack of “scientific data.” She also said the Council has not been given quarterly reports of the program’s progress as initially promised. “We’re burdening people who are crossing the bridge. And to date we don’t have clear accurate data (this works). People aren’t like signing the praises saying that the wait times are reduced. It’s a hit or miss. We should be giving clear statistics and numbers,” said Limon in an interview.

City Rep. Cortney Niland publicly accused Limon of spreading misinformation, saying the council had received quarterly reports and though the data is difficult to gauge, there is measurable progress on wait times at the ports. “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,” said Niland during the meeting.

She also said despite the increase in tolls on commercial and vehicular traffic, El Paso tolls remain competitive with other border communities. She pointed out people can still cross the Bridge of the Americas for free and pedestrians did not face an increase in tolls.

In what has become common for this council, the conversation quickly became personal. “To sit here and send the message to the federal government that no thank you I know better is disgusting,” said Niland of Limon. “it is sad that just because I want to speak my mind and vote on this separately, I have to be subjected to this criticism,” said Limon.

The City’s Director of International Bridges, Mathew McElroy said the data on the pilot program is “noisy” because of the many variables that go into analyzing it, such as the devaluation of the peso and U.S. and Mexico industrial production. “I don’t want anybody to think that we don’t have data, that we’re not measuring that we’re not trying to get the best turn on investment,” he later told the council.

That explanation wasn’t enough for Limon, who said the City needs clearer, demonstrable evidence to continue paying for agents overtime hours. She added that cost should be shouldered by the federal government. “If it’s working, give us the data show us. If it’s not working then we need to stop imposing an additional tax on people who are crossing.”

As industrial production moves from China to Mexico or the U.S., Niland said it’s essential for the City to send a message with this kind of policy that shows El Paso is investing in the industry. She said it improves job production, a claim Limon is skeptical of.

After several minutes of discussion, Mayor Pro Tempore Michiel Noe stopped the discussion and asked for the vote, despite Limon and City Rep. Carl Robinson’s request to speak on the issue again. “I’m not going to let this digress into another argument,” Noe told Limon. “So you’re excluding us from the ability to speak,” she responded. “No. I’m stopping this argument that you guys are going to perpetuate until who knows when,” replied Noe.

Council voted four to two to continue the pilot program until September 2016. Limon and Robinson voted against it. City Representatives Cortney Niland, Michiel Noe, Larry Romero and Peter Svarzbein voted to extend it. Emma Acosta, Claudia Ordaz and Mayor Oscar Leeser were not at Tuesday’s meeting.