El Paso county commissioners call for hiring of county manager

Thursday marked the latest in a series of logistical headaches for El Paso County, and it’s prompting a majority of county commissioners to express a need for a county manager.

El Paso is the largest county in the state without a centralized office to oversee day-to-day operations. The county has a budget of roughly $300 million.

Thursday’s issue was relatively minor compared with the Sportspark renovation delays, low Ascarate Lake levels, and Vanpool problems.

Commissioners were updated on the $3.2 million Eastside Jail Annex roofing project, which is now going on a nine-month delay because of rain damage. The county needs to order materials for the upcoming second phase of the project by Monday, or the supplier’s prices will go up nearly 15 percent — or tens of thousands of dollars out of the 2012 bond project.

Commissioner Vince Perez said he’s upset commissioners were just Monday learning about that price hike. The public works department said it first heard about the increase a month ago. The auditor’s office said they found out about two weeks ago.

County Budget and Finance Manager Wally Hardgrove said it should take his office about a week to get something like this on the agenda, and a county administrator could help streamline the process by serving as a liaison between the court and the county’s handful of department heads.

“Have somebody who executes the will of the board, of the court, of the council,” Perez said. “And that person is the point person for department heads. It just makes government much more efficient. Under the current system, all department heads have to come and make requests and sometimes have to talk to individual commissioners.”

Commissioner Sergio Lewis said a county administrator isn’t the answer, because only about 15 percent of the county’s employees don’t work in the office of an elected official.

“Where’s the oversight? Where’s the management?” Lewis asked. “Are the certain department heads that have been having these issues truly doing their job to the maximum potential and providing the service to the taxpayers that they should be?”

County Judge Veronica Escobar said she wants to put a discussion about hiring a county administrator on the agenda in the next six weeks. She said she’s been voted down multiple times — receiving no votes from current commissioners Lewis and Carlos Leon.

“Any nonprofit, you have an executive director that executes the will of the board,” Escobar said. “And the board is in charge of the budget, policies, planning, forward thinking. The board doesn’t run the organization day to day.”

As for the pressing purchase order for jail annex roofing materials, the county delayed taking action until Monday.