Street Resurfacing: City Rep. Romero Denies Wrongdoing

City Rep. Larry Romero on Thursday said it was not he who added streets to the City’s Street Capital Improvement Plan to be paved this year. He took issue with concerns one of those repaving projects favored his campaign contributors.

“I’m looking out for my constituents and doing what I can to make sure that we get them what they’re asking for. If that’s wrong, well I’m sorry,” Romero said.

According to a city document, eight streets in Romero’s district that were not approved by Council in the original 2012 list were paved this year. One of those is an alley between Raynor and Piedras. Campaign finance reports show two business owners with businesses directly in front of the alley donated to Romero’s campaign when he ran for office in the summer of 2013.

The owner of Italian Kitchen donated $150 to Romero and the owner of the Pershing Inn donated $250 cash and another $250 in in-kind contributions. “You guys want to spin it into, ‘well they gave you money so now you’re doing this for them.’ That’s not true. If you had seen the condition of that alley before, unbelievable. I mean I wouldn’t drive through that alley,” Romero told ABC-7. “If you drove through the alley like I did you would know that there were huge pot holes and does that mean just because somebody contributed I’m not going to take their feelings, their suggestions into consideration? I don’t think so.”

Romero is adamant he did not add streets that were not on the 2012 list. Instead, he said he only expressed his priorities to city engineers when asked and which streets got paved after that was up to engineering. “Yeah, I may have said: ‘yeah these streets need to be upgraded more than these other streets.'”

Romero’s home street was also repaved this year even though it was not on the list. “My neighbors – I bet you most of them don’t even know I’m a city rep. But they send in letters to my office, they send in phone calls and messages. ‘Hey, when are you going to do something with our street?'”

ABC-7 obtained from the city a list of streets that have been repaved this year using the debt the city took on for the 2012 streets master list. Romero’s district had eight streets repaved that were not on the list. City Rep. Carl Robinson had one and Lily Limon had three.

Both Robinson and Limon said they also told engineering which streets they thought deserved more attention based on concerns from their constituents, but didn’t give orders.

City reps said that’s because the study used to determine the 2012 list – in some cases used old information from as far back as 2008.

In a statement Thursday evening from the City, officials again emphasized the 2012 list was flexible to constituent concerns.
“In this case, concerns from El Pasoans who live, work, drive, cycle, and walk along these streets every day. As we have demonstrated, when City Council approved this plan in 2012 they clearly envisioned a program which would marry scientific data with responsiveness to customer concerns.
While some streets were not on a list established in 2012, all streets which have been re-surfaced were in need of maintenance and would have been resurfaced.”