Rep. Quintana Proposes Late Cuts For Approved Budget

EL PASO, TX – City Representative Rachel Quintana has placed an item on next Tuesday’s city council meeting that proposes a 2% across the board cut for the finalized 2008 budget.

“It’s a day late and a dollar short…waiting until the 11th hour and 59th minute is just not good government,” said El Paso Mayor John Cook, in response to Quintana’s motion.

Earlier this week, the El Paso city council voted to pass the $292-million dollar budget for 2008. Quintana was one of three City Representatives that voted against the budget.

City Manager Joyce Wilson tells ABC-7 Quintana asked her to provide a list of what services would have to be cut to make the 2% budget cut possible.

Cook was surprised at therequest. He tells ABC-7 Quintana had plenty of time to propose budget cuts before Tuesday’s budget vote. “We just went through…this will be the seventh week of the budget process where we looked under every stone…the time to have done this was two to three weeks ago,” he said.

City Representative Steve Ortega echoed Cook’s comments when asked about Quintana’s last minute request. “The time to do that was within the past six weeks,” he said, “over the last month and a half we’ve been having budget hearings.”

Ortega tells ABC-7 the proposal would force the city council to start the entire budget process all over again in order to make cuts other representatives want. The majority of the cuts would probably have to be made to the police and fire departments, he said.

Representative Eddie Holguin, who along with Quintana and Melina Castro unsuccessfully voted against the budget earlier this week, said it is not too late to make changes. “Reducing what people pay in taxes is always a good thing… I think she’s trying to lower the tax burden on the citizen’s of El Paso and that’s great,” he said.

The time and date for that has already passed, said Cook.”I’m hoping that this is because Miss Quintana is a new representative and doesn’t really understand the process.”

Quintana was not available for comment.