Limon Stands By Open Letter To Engineering Dept.
our exclusive mountain cam is giving you a live picture of downtown el paso this evening… … where just hours ago, el paso city council grappled with how to be more transparent. but that was just the tip of the iceberg. in the last hour, abc-seven worked to develop a new side to the story we told you about at five… … and talk of a city representative possibly violating the city charter! it all has to do with city rep lily limon writing an open letter to city engineers. in it, she expresses her support for the department. our maria garcia explains why that’s now under fire. maria? rick today – city rep. michiel noe asked the city attorney to publicly say if limon’s letter violated the city charter. the city attorney said part of the letter – did in fact violate the charter but limon stands by her words of encouragement to engineering. saying she wrote the letter after city rep cortney niland told the el paso inc quote: there’s nothing left in engineering. “here was a department that was trashed indicating we dont’ need you we don’t want you we’re going to outsource you and there’s nothing more dangerous than doing that. so dr. noe if there is going to be some reprimand than i will accept it fully.” the city attorney says limon’s letter violated the city charter when it encouraged city employees to contact limon with concerns. city reps are supposed to go through the city manager to prevent politicizing city business. the conversation then spiraled into a myriad of issues. city rep. miiel noe implying limon had asked human resources for sensitive employee information – like justification for pay raises and worker compensatiion claims. then limon and carl robinson accusing a city rep of depleting discretionary funds and dipping into the city’s general fund. and limon taking jabs at larry romero for the recent repaving controversy. “i do not live on the street. i do not have any family members who live on that street. and no one on those streets ever made a contribution to my campaign.” “ms limon, on thing that i have asked everyone is to make sure we respect everyone, each other and we need to do that. i’m happy you stand very strong to your letter but oen thing that ms. firth and everyone has said today is we still have the charter. we were elected to make sure we follow the charter.’ the city is going to look into updating the ethics ordinance to include consequences to violating the city charter. hr admitted they denied a city rep access to employee records. limon denied asking for them. it’s unclear which city rep depleted their discretionary funds and dipped into the general fund. but i’m working on finding that out so stay tuned.. maria, very interesting stuff there. thank you for staying on top of it all for us.
