City of El Paso wants to take politics out of street repairs

While the city of El Paso is still grappling to come up with a way to pay for ballooning costs in street repairs and reconstruction, one path is clear.

City officials want to depoliticize which streets are pushed to the top of the list.

The issue was discussed at a special city council meeting on Monday.

Rep. Claudia Ordaz said the decision on which streets are in critical need of repair should be left to city experts and not city politicians.

“We should depoliticize the process because we shouldn’t be invovled. That could be very messy as we have seen in the past,” Ordaz said. “As far as prioritizing certain streets, and so on and so forth, or moving this street, no. I just think that was an inappropriate process. It happened back when Mr. (Larry) Romero was here and that was a big issue,” Ordaz said.

Former city rep. Romero was reprimanded by the city’s Ethics Review Commission after it concluded he violated the city’s ethics ordinance when he added streets and alleys to a list of areas that needed repaving, securing a privilege for himself. The reprimand was the highest penalty the commission could impose given that Romero had already resigned from his position.

“We are not engineers. Our obligation though is to report a street that we have seen or maybe a constituent has reported to us,” said Ordaz.

Mayor Dee Margo agreed.

“The idea is to make sure you (the representative) are fully informed about an item you are aware of or a constituent has made you aware of. And then it is up to staff to respond accordingly as to where it (street) is going to be handled and to provide you with that information and the rest of us as well,” Margo said.

Back in 2012, the city council at the time passed certificates of obligation for about $210 million to repair and reconstruct streets identified in a study.

“To execute those in a timely manner is important as costs certainly do go up. But because that study was so rushed a lot of costs weren’t as adequate as they had hoped for. So when you look at the list itself there are a lot of streets that are unfunded, they don’t have a funding source tied to it at the moment. And since that was done in 2012, six years later there is more wear and tear on our streets,” Ordaz said.

The city has approved a new traffic study that will include traffic flow.

“It’s imperative that we have this new study, do a city-wide study that takes into account other factors that weren’t included in 2012. Because I think that was put together in about two weeks,” Ordaz said.

Ordaz said in Febuary city staff gave the council and mayor an update on unfunded critical streets in dire need of repair. Those streets alone totaled $44 million dollars. The city has committed to funding those, staff is still working on compiling the money and will bring a plan back to council.

The new council and mayor is asking to see how much all of the streets repairs and reconstruction will cost.

“And it’s going to be a sticker shock number it. So those are going to be difficult conversations the we are going to have to have together. Sometime in August I am assuming they will have some information to show us,” Ordaz said.