ABC-7 Xtra: Sit Down with Mayor Leeser

>> live, where news comes first, this is “abc-7 xtra. >> it’s sunday, september 13th, welcome to “abc-7 xtra. i’m stephanie vaya filling fin maria garcia tonight. for the next half hour we’re talking all things city. the city council has been in the spotlight for the last month. the mayor delivered his state of the city and he put a unique twist on it by changing the format into a question and answer. the move to repave streets when it became known some are fixed even though they were not on the capital improvements list. and for improving a five-figure pay raise after a year on the job. you can reach us at 915-496-1775, abc7xtra@kvia.com, or on twitting at stephanievaya7. >> first, let’s recap what’s happened. >> in the budget session — >> el paso mayor chose a more relaxed state of the city format, moving through the crowd with a q&a rather than behind the podium for his address. >> what’s going on with the city manager’s race? [laughter] >> so that’s the easy question. they get harder from here. >> the first question dealing with the climate on council, discussions getting sometimes tense. >> sometimes we’re a little heated, no ifs, ands or but the busy that. but that adds the flavor to the city. >> last month the city approved a pay raise for tommy gonzalez, city mark, of $61,000 a21% increase. >> we’re not paying him more than he’s worth, we’re paying him what he is worth. >> it’s for gonzalez’s work to save the city money including a deficit in the city budget. >> i believe he has done a good job, a good job. i am not convinced that it is at the level that perhaps my colleagues will claim. >> let’s stop this nonsense that we chastise the city manager when he didn’t even ask for this. >> the sour taste ringling, last week the city rep was criticized for changing the city’s capital improvement plan or cip. it’s a list of more than $200 million of street improvements across el paso. >> the city rap drove around the district and toured the districts and listens to or concerns. isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing? >> one of the projects not on the list, an alley that runs behind two of romero’s campaign contributors. he says the alley was in terrible condition. >> i’m just trying to answer what my constituents want, and doing what i can to make sure we get them what they are asking for. >> during the state of the city, the mayor tried to sweeten things up, touting job growth in el paso, comparing it to a fruit tree that needs time to blossom. >> a lot of people from el paso, the wages ever increasing monthly. there are so many great things going on that, fruit tree is starting to blossom. >> and joining me now in studio is the mayor, thank you for coming in tonight, mayor, appreciate it. >> thank you for asking me to come here. >> first let’s talk about the state of the city. in your opinion what is the state of el paso? >> it’s a great city, it’s great. we’re creating jobs. when we go out and talk to other cities and companies, we’re not looking for jobs, we’re looking for the future. when we start to compare it to a trout tree, we bring high quality companies to el paso, adp, prudential, mesa air. these companies are like a fruit tree. you go to a nursery and you buy a fruit tree and take it home, you dig your hole, plant it, water it, go to bed. you wake up the next day and walk out and go, i’ve been ripped off! there’s no fruit on it, it’s a fruit tree! >> these are 4500, fortune 100 companies that are going bring a great to up to our community. we’ve had almost 6500 jobs, either expansion or creation of new jobs in the last 18 months. that’s what we need to continue to do. the future of el paso is very bright. >> i want to talk more about the job creation in a second. but i did want to ask you why did you change the format this year in. >> it was really important. if you ever go to my office and talk to me, i sit at table. i have a little conference room and i want to meet out there with the people, the people that elected me. i enjoy talking to them. it was really important. i’ve had a lot of comments and they have been great, that people really enjoyed the format. they felt very relaxed and very tuned to the state of the city. >> it was nice to see you walking around the crowd. i’m sure a lot of people were more interested in what you had to say since you were right behind them. >> yes. >> going back to the analogy on the economy and fruit trees. it can take years to bear fruit. so where is el paso in terms of the growth of the fruit tree? >> if we had started 10, 15, 20 years ago, we’d have the great jobs going this way, but we didn’t. we brought within the last 18 months, we’ve got 10 or 11 companies that have expanded to come to el paso. adp went to 2400 team members, they had an opportunity to go to augusta, georgia, or el paso. in august tire marks they didn’t own the property. for the great people of el paso, this would have made the difference. >> what can we expect to see in the next year, in terms of job creation, our economy? >> you don’t see a lot of what we’ve been doing right now. we have about six companies we have been working with and we’re actively going to the companies and talking to them and that makes a big difference. when i walk into their office and the mayor who is a businessman who has started a business and understands the return on investment is one of the most important things, that’s what these companies look at. the quality of life, quality of place. we talk to them and we talk about how the citizens of el paso back in 2012 invested in themselves with the quality of life. that’s important, they say el paso is willing to invest in itself, because we’re asking them to ve invous in us. almost $100 billion come across or borders every year. we’ve been to chicago, to detroit with major waters. we thanked them and they said, we’ve been here 30 years, no one’s ever done that. we thank them for the investment and trusting in our communities, how do we help them to continue to invest and grow. you’ll see a lot of that. we plan on going to south korea, we plan on going to israel to talk to these companies about — we have so many similarities, coming to el paso and expanding their businesses. >> sounds like you’re planting a lot of seeds in your theoretical garden. >> yes. >> you talked about a dysfunctional city council. we’ve seen the bitter arguments from the seat swap just months ago in city council, to others being criticized for stances on certain issues, such as the city manager’s pay raise. should el pasans be concerned that the city council doesn’t always play nice? >> you need to see what’s going on, because they need to have their opinions and they need to go out and talk to constituents and find out the different needs of the districts and bring them forward. we would probably need to investigate and see if there’s a walking quorum. they get pretty heated, probably about a year and a half ago, we have had some very heated arguments. but really, at the end of the day they are all working for one thing, and that’s the important part. the thing they are working for is to improve the city and the quality of life for the citizens of el paso. >> i know that a difference in opinion sounds ideal, because you say it can lead to more in-depth discussion. that’s something you brought up at the state of the city. we’ve seen it dissolve into name-calling and filibusters at that level of government. do you feel it gets to the point where it’s ineffective? >> it’s always important to respect each other and understand that an opinion cannot be taken as a personal attack or have personal attacks. i agree with you, we need to understand that even though there’s a difference of opinion, we always need to respect each other. >> we actually had a comment about this on facebook. steve had said, it seems you and mayor needs to convene a meeting with no childish antics. everybody needs to work together as one. what has mayor can you do to improve conduct? >> we need to continue to work together. he meet with city representatives during the week and talk about issues within their districts and what we can do to continue to work together. continuing to work tomorrow morning, i meet at 7:30 with the first city representative, i’ll meet again tomorrow morning at 7:30 and during the day. every week i meet with city representatives that continue to work together and find out, how can i help you in your district. and is there any differences we need to to work out. it’s been very important to continue the dialogue, every day during the day. >> all right, mayor, we will keep talking about everything going on in the city. before we continue we need to take a commercial break. you’re watching “abc-7 xtra. when we come back we’ll be talking about the city manager’s pay raise, and also if you’d like to share your comments and questions of course you can email us at abc7xtra@kvia.com, twitter, #abc7xtra. give you’re watching >> welcome back to “abc-7 xtra. we’ve been talking with the mayor about the state of the city. el paso’s economy and city council relations. a reminder, we are live and you can join this discussion by calling 915-496-1775 or emailing us at abc7xtra@kvia.com. so mayor, let’s talk about the city manager’s pay raise right now. the council voted this pay raise, meaning he’ll make $300,000 per year. city reps say gonzalez deserves it based on how much he has saved the city and based on what other city managers get paid. how did this come about if you didn’t ask for it. >> representatives put it on the agenda to talk bit and it was brought up. but illustrate not considerable to the 5%. the 5% put it at $251,000. it was an additional $49,000. i said i was not in favor of it because we did have a contract. we had a contract that said we would pay the $239 and evaluate it on a yearly basis and give him 5% based on the evaluation. he had a great evaluation, a 4.64, which was excellent, he was doing a really good job. when council voted on it — and i said at council that i was not for it. at the end of the day i had a couple people call me up and they said, you know, mayor, if you veto that, you’ll be the hero. whatever you want to run for, whatever you want to do, you’ll be able to get elected. that’s not the real answer. if i veto it what will it cost the citizens, the people that trusted me to put me into office. it’ll be probably millions of dollars. our city manager would be looking for a job or not looking for a job, we might have lost him. the market valley is $300,000, to find another city manager would have cost us $300,000. now that we have him at market value, we don’t need to discuss this any longer. next year we don’t need to give him a big raise. if we moved forward and did that next year, i would veto it up front and not allow it to move forward. we put it at market value and we need to continue the evaluation based on his contract. >> so many people vote on their conscience, on principle, why didn’t you do that? >> i analyzed it. if i did it would it cost the taxpayers a lot of money. the answer is yes. i really believe it would have cost us millions in projects that we’re working on today, future jobs that we’re looking for. companies, a lot of them, they don’t know a lot about el paso. they go online and read about el paso and look that we had gone backwards on a raise we gave a city manager, and our word is not that good, we would have had a hard time going out and trying to recruit companies and impossible to try and recruit a city manager. if i veto it will the cost the taxpayers millions of dollars? the answer would have been yes. if you’re delectable elected to do the popular thing and not the right thing, that’s the wrong this i think to do. i really looked and studied it and made sure the decision was the right decision for the citizens of el paso. i said now we’re there, at market value, fair market value. next year we’re not looking at another raise, but evaluation of his performance and a 5% raise if qualified. >> 5,000 get paid less than $61,000. i saw the looks of employees, it was almost 100 pages long. you can understand why this amount of money as a raise is not sitting well with a lot of people. >> it wasn’t a raise, it was an market adjustment. remember, if he had left or we decided we didn’t want to move forward with the city manager, what would it cost to find a city manager with the same qualifications to move the city forward. i said i wasn’t it for, and i said that at the beginning of city council, if there was a 4-4 tie i would not allow it to move forward. it was a 6-2 i can veto anything i want and council can override the veto on a 6-2 vote. they could have overridden my veto. at that point i didn’t have anybody coming forward to say, hey, if you veto it we’ll support you. it was very important we didn’t turn around and look like we were going back on our word and making it almost impossible for the city to move forward. it would have cost millions, and we’ll continue to move forward. but now we’re at market value and it won’t happen again. like i said a minute ago, if we move forward next year, looking at it, i will veto it up front and it will not be able to move forward. >> let’s go on to the city street paving. romero has come under five for streets paved even though they were not on the cip list created back in 2012, and an alleyway between two businesses by those who donated to his campaign. he says he did not add these locations to the list. city leaders maintain they don’t know who put these other streets on this list. how does something like this happen? >> there was a great job of looking at it. we talked about a legislative review when we were — on monday when we were talking about the item on the agenda. and we were trying to look at, do we move it forward, how do we move it forward. she has actually stopped any streets that are not on the 2012 plan, they have stopped until we can move forward and analyze it and bring it forward. she did an outstanding job. we’re going to look at it and move forward. i went back today and looked at the city council meeting, may 24th, 2012, when the cip was voted on. and mr. robinson and ms. acosta brought the issue saying how about some streets that maybe we missed that need resurfacing or maintenance. will we be able to bring them forward and talk bit, and the answer was yes, we’ll be able to do that. that was already discussed, how can we look forward. as long as we stay within the budget we’ll be okay. that was already discussed back on may 24th, 2012. you can look at this meeting. >> we have a comment from facebook i’m hoping that we can pull up real quick. ralph had said please ask the mayor how he feels about taxpayer dollars being used to pave back alleys and dirt back streets instead of much-needed repairs. how do you feel about that? >> that’s why we have to analyze. it was a good job of saying let’s stop and look and see to make sure, did we take care of the streets that need the most fixing. let’s look at the streets that actually need to be fixed. maybe some of the streets put in 2012 were not the important streets. let’s look at it again. >> now, mayor, i happen to live on a street that was not on the list but is being repaired. now part of the street has been broken up in front of my home. i hearsay it said, we’re stopping the repairs. but there’s now broken-up asphalt — >> moving forward, the streets being done need to be finished. but the streets not on the list will not move forward until mother study is completed. >> i wanted that to be clear. >> i’m not the only person who’s probably wondering about that. >> there’s a lot of maintenance and repairs and resurfacing, absolutely, we need to finish those and continue and make sure we take care of the streets that need it most. >> city manager gonzalez was quoted today regarding the controversy. when asked if he was familiar with the work plan, he said he’s working to revamp the street flow. he said i have never worked where my involvement at this level is needed. it’s unheard of, it’s archaic. do you feel they are relying too heavily on the city manager in day-to-day operations? or is this dysfunction with the city council? >> they get a lot of citizen concerns and calls and they need to forward them to whatever department but not dictate what needs to be done. you call up the psb, we have a concern, call them and get ahold of them and do what’s needed to be done. we’re not going dictate what needs to be done. whether it’s government or business, you need to inspect. you can’t micromanage, you too much to do. >> mayor, thank you so much for this. back after the break, you’re still watching “abc-7 xtra. still ahead, your comments and questions. call 915-496-1775 and also reach us and on >> and welcome back. we are talking to mayor oscar leeser about all things city. we have several calls, first to cynthia in central el paso. >> mayor leeser, with all the intention of wrongdoing, why would he be nominated, a stain from the past from the corruption to the planning commission? it seems that favoritism is what the representative is doing now, and not in favor of his voters. thank you. >> as you know, in case people are not sure, it was in the paper today that the person who used to city on the commissioners court has been nominated to the city, indicted but never charged in the corruption scandal. what do you have to say about that? >> council will be looking at it on tuesday and voting whether it should be a nomination or not. we’ll be talking about it and there will be an open dialogue on tuesday on that and other nominations for our boards. >> also phil in the lower valley. >> hi, with all of the new companies moving to town like adp and the airline, how is that improving el paso’s unemployment rate and if so, how much? >> you know, when we took office — and thank you for the question. when we took office the unemployment rate was 9.1. last months was just at 5%. and a lot of the jobs that we’ve create are moving forward. a big percentage of it are still in the future. we’re really excited to see that the job creations and the quality of jobs are coming to el paso. you know, we were talking a little bit, stephanie and i were talking in the break earlier about minimum wage and how do you get minimum wage up. you bring question of quality companies and quality jobs to the city and they pay over minimum wage. other employers in the city of el paso don’t want to lose the people they have invested in, so they pay them more to keep them there. we’ve been working really, really close with utep and community colleges as companies come to el paso to train them and have the correct curriculum for those types of jobs. unemployment is one of the things, when i ran for office, it was one of the things we wanted to really focus on. it’s really gone in the right direction. a couple months ago it was as low as 4.5, way below the national average, el paso had not been below the national average in a long time. >> speaking with minimum wage, we had a comment from susie, if we could pop up that, shawn. she was asking on facebook if you will and could raise the minimum wage here in the city. they were discussing it in las vegas crews assess, as well. is that something you would consider, as well? >> one of the things we did do this year, we would not have any city employees working for less than $10 per hour. all city employees are working for no less than $10 per hour. like i just mentioned, the best way to raise minimum wage is to bring in companies that do pay bigger wages. it becomes natural for other companies to start paying higher wages. >> i think this person was an aci employee. not something you would tackle on a citywide basis and making it an edict or an ordinance? >> the stiff el paso, weaver able to bring that forward for all city employees to be able to get $10 minimum. >> we have a call from carlos on the west side. >> i want to know when the new arena, is it going to take — how many more months or years, and let us know where the location is going to be at. >> the arena approved by the voters. >> there are three signature projects and the arena is one of them. it’s really important that we identify the location. and make sure that we stay within budget and bring it forward. so we’re still out, we’ve been out trying to identify — we’ve selected three different sites. and so we’ve actually started moving forward to see which site we’d be able to acquire all the property need to do put it forward. we’re working on it. the quality of life items were on a roll-out between 10 and 15 years. the three signature projects are — we’re looking at them now because interest rates are so low. we tried to move them forward because the rates are so low and they are the largest projects. we’re working very hard to decide where we could put them where it would be most cost-efficient. >> it was asked, why you projects always overbudget? >> it seems that way, because those are the ones being reported. actually about 80% of all the projects we’re working on right now are on budget and on time. we have some projects that have not been on budget or on time, and we’re working not on time but still on budget for some of them. the majority of projects are on budget and on time. >> one of them that’s a little delayed and in the public eye, is the san jacinto plaza. mike asked, i’d like to know how much monday has been collected in penalties from the contractors. >> we have not collected any because the contract is not finished. it is in the contract that every day it’s been delayed the city will implement a $1,000 fine moving forward. we have to look to see if it was rainy day or what it could be and the final day it’ll be finished. we want it just as bad as everyone to, make sure that project gets completed. >> the contract was supposed to be finished late february, early marx we’re still working on it and like i say, there’s nobody in this town that wants it down now more than the council and myself. >> we’re working hard with the city attorneys manager to move forward to have it depleted. we’re going over some obstacles that are very important. a lot of them make sure we have all the safety items moving forward to finish the project. >> this is the question that comes up, no matter what you ask. if you have someone from the city, someone asks this last question. benefity garcia is asking, are we going to get a big aamusement park like six flags? >> we’re going out to talk to companies and earn their business. one of the things that’s really important, when you want a six flags type of amusement, you work with your surrounding areas. and working with las cruces, 2.5 million strong working together we can achieve a lot. we’re working to bring a lot of things forward. right now we’re working to exdiet the lanes. to expedite traffic from waterson to el paso. we are putting a second x-ray machine to take the mountains back from el paso to juarez. they have been working on that for i can’t tell you how many years. that’lling complete in october, which is huge to continue the quality of life for the citizens of el paso. so we’re working on bringing more amusements to el paso but we have to work together. 2.5 million strong is how we’re working together to bring large companies to el paso. >> okay. you’ve mentioned something before we started this newscast that you wanted to talk about your invitation to washington, d.c. >> and it’s very exciting, my wife and i have been invited by president obama and the first lady michelle obama to go to washington, d.c. and greet the pope next wednesday. so we’re very excited to be going to washington, d.c. and being part of the great ceremony of being with the pope. >> one final question, i just saw this in our email from ruth saying that she lives en northeast by barron elementary. my family has been waiting for the parkings it was supposed to be completed over a year ago, it’s still undone. it’s growing weeds now. they are wondering when this is going to be finished. >> barron park is about 95% finished. the last finishing touches is the swingsets and slides and kind of the amusement part of the park. the sod has been taken and trees have been planted. the fencing is there for safety reasons but it’s about 95% finished. we will move forward within the next week to bring the slides and swings. it’s almost there and it was delayed due to the basketball courts had cracked and we need to do resurface them. the sod didn’t really take and we had to replace a lot of the sod and the trees were not the proper size. we have it finished and looks like you’ll see your park opening very, very soon. >> we’re running out of time. in fact, we’re overtime. but one last question to wrap it up, from brian saying, how does the outlook you foresee for the el paso area en five to 10 years look with several expansions at fort bliss or local universities and our medical community? >> the future has never looked better, you know. you look at fort bliss when we had the cut-down el paso lost 1219 troops. it was the least of all the troops, but one troop is too many. general twitty has really embraced our community and basically el paso and fort bliss has become one community and we work really closely together. el paso will see less cutbacks than anyone else. the medical center field america is building a new building and bringing their facility forward. it’s a huge food forward for our community. also you saw our providence, they are building a new hospital in northwest el paso. these companies all have options. i rember going to dallas and talking to the head for providence and they talked about the investment, the $120 million and said we could go anywhere. el paso is where we see the growth and the future. we see williams sonoma, pottery barn, the grand openings, it was the best grand opening ever in the history of their dos because el paso is on the move and on the right strategy it’s so exciting to see not only right now, next year, but the next five to 10 years in the future couldn’t be better. >> mayor, thank you for coming in tonight and spending your time with us. thank you for all of your questions and emails and comments on twitter. this has been “abc-7 xtra,” ha a great night. >> thank you, and thanks for