Joyce Wilson Sees Streamlining as Key to El Paso's Success

City Manager Joyce Wilson recognizes Judy Gutierrez for 15 years of service to El Paso

"It's like pushing an elephant up the mountain," City Manager Joyce Wilson said as she described the burdensome rules and regulations that often hold down El Paso and its economy. "This is the most regulated environment I've ever been in," she told central El Paso residents who attended Council Representative Susie Byrd's monthly breakfast this morning at Tierra del Sol.

When it comes to delivering needed services within the restraints of a tough economy, Wilson is the expert as the past few years have well demonstrated. She intends to do more through streamlining department processes, being more customer-friendly and utilizing technology. The City Manager wants a growing economy but a safe and healthy economy as well.

Ms. Wilson recognizes the frustrations with business licenses and the 5th Floor of City Hall in general - frustrations voiced by many candidates in the current City Council elections. Wilson sees a need for offering multi-year licenses while discontinuing licenses for businesses such as shoe shining. She wants to cut back on inspections such as those on restaurants with proven good records while focusing more on those places of business with repeat offenses. Providing better cashier services and doing more business electronically are just two more ways to make doing business with the City more efficient and customer-friendly.

In addition, Wilson sees the need for constant feedback and evaluation. Even her own recent organizational changes are being evaluated for unintended structural consequences. The City will soon hire booking officers so that police will spend more time on the beat and less time with paper work. Just one booking officer means being able to afford 5 or 10 more full time police officers. The City is looking at more solo patrols and a "311" service to take on the bulk of the current 70-80,000 calls to 911 monthly!

Although Joyce Wilson does not see a major change in direction with a new City Council with 2 or 3 new members, she does see the need for that new Council to do more strategic planning especially in the light of even more cuts in funds from the State and the Federal governments. Maintaining the level of services and quality of life which El Pasoans expect becomes more difficult with the current financial restraints especially if nobody wants to raise taxes.

Representative Byrd was out of town so her Legislative Aide, Judy Gutierrez, hosted this morning's breakfast. Joyce Wilson surprised Judy by presenting to her a pin, certificate and letter recognizing Judy's 15 years of service to the City of El Paso. For 6 years Judy worked with the police department in 911 services. She then worked for 3 years in Economic Development where she became noticed by Mayor Caballero's assistant, Susie Byrd, who hired Gutierrez as her assistant after a brief phone conversation. Residents of District 2 have since benefited from Judy's service and Judy has become well-known, well-respected and much loved throughout the District and the City of El Paso.

David Almonte's Expertise Benefits All El Pasoans

It's tough times at the City of El Paso. With revenues down (sales tax down 4.5%, bridge revenue down 12%, building permits down 25%), keeping essential services while trying to protect jobs is just not easy. Knowing where to cut and where to save and knowing how to get there is overseen by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, David Almonte.

Mr. Almonte spoke yesterday at Representative Byrd's District breakfast at Tierra del Sol restaurant. Ms. Byrd always has good speakers - but Almonte is one of the best. He knows his subject well, communicates well and connects with his audience. Budgets and numbers are just not the most exciting topics to most of us. Yet, Almonte personalizes the subject by mixing anecdotes with hard numbers. When he tells you that his first responsibility is to the taxpayers and that he will find the best product at the best price, you know that he is not just sincere but expert.

Whether it is collective bargaining with fire and police unions, crunching numbers, analyzing staff levels or ensuring that public safety and health are indeed the first priorities, Almonte's expertise benefits all El Pasoans.

I was sad that more were not at the breakfast to hear him. With the 4th of July holiday weekend upon us, many regulars just weren't there yesterday. Hopefully, Representative Byrd will ask him back to speak again soon.

Be sure to read City Manager Joyce Wilson's budget message and see the schedule of budget hearings. Let's hope that Lisa Turner isn't the only citizen of El Paso who cares to attend the budget hearings.

What's the Best Leadership for Tough Economic Times: Joyce Wilson

El Paso is fortunate to have the calm, steady, conservative, no-nonsense leadership of City Manager, Joyce Wilson. Ms. Wilson spoke this morning at Mayor Pro-Tem Susie Byrd's monthly Thursday public meeting.

To be sure El Paso is not as touched by the economic downturn as are other cities throughout the country. Our housing market is relatively stable and there have been no significant declines in property evaluations. Wilson did say that sales tax collections are down as are bridge revenues. The latter were down as much as 20% in January from the previous year and 10 to 15% overall for the start of 2009. Fortunately, Wilson premised the current fiscal year budget on higher energy costs and the cost of gasoline and other fuels have actually decreased by 50% over the last three quarters.

There has been a construction slow-down but that has also had a favorable effect on the City budget. Contractors are bidding city projects more competitively.

Our steady-handed City Manager said that, in spite of the worldwide and national economic crisis, she would keep capital improvement projects on schedule and pursue IT improvements so El Paso could catch up with other places technologically. She happily reported that as much as $21Million dollars from the stimulus package for transportation is coming our way and would help to complete the loop around El Paso.

As she contemplates the budget process for the next fiscal year, Joyce promises not to take any draconian measures. Her assumption is that the economy will not turn upward until the end of the year or into next year. Therefore, she will start the budget process at $10Million dollars less than the current year without compromising police and fire protection as well as streets, infrastructure and IT improvements. By budgeting conservatively, Ms. Wilson will prevent El Paso from overspending in a bad economy and will position El Paso to gain a stronger footing should the economy begin to improve before the end of the year.

The City Manager next commented about the PSB and stormwater management. In spite of what critics say, she pointed out, the PSB is accountable to the people of the City of El Paso through the elected City Council. On March 31 the PSB will go before City Council for approval of a master drainage plan and capial improvements.

Wilson lauded the PSB's for its quick and effective development of a stormwater management plan and for putting into place the groundwork to reduce future risk of flooding.

A variety of topics were touched on through questions by the audience. Concern that the drug wars in Juarez might spill across the border was on the minds of many. Ms. Wilson explained that all levels of law enforcement (city, state and federal) are in communication about the violent situation across the border and that they are also in touch with their counterparts in Mexico.

Wilson assured everyone that she and law enforcement officials feel comfortable that we will not have a spillover of violence into our city. However, if we do, Wilson said that "response will be very fast, very swift and very strong."

It's good to know that, in good times or bad, El Paso has Joyce Wilson's strong, steady hands and her wisdom guiding us.

City Manager, Joyce Wilson, Takes Action on Escarpment

Yesterday I wrote our City Manager, Joyce Wilson, about the damage done to and littering of our Mayfield "Park". Here is what I wrote:

"Ms. Wilson,

I am writing you as a board member of the Newman Park Neighborhood Association.

There is a lovely natural escarpment that has graced our neighborhood for decades. Neighbors often fondly refer to it as “Mayfield Park” even though it is not an actual city park. (It is, however, city property.) This escarpment sits at the western end of Savannah, Frankfort and Memphis Avenues. Mayfield Terrace and then the Franklin Mountains describe its western boundary. It is home to mesquite, Palo Verde, creosote, quail and desert sparrows to say the least. Foxes frequent it and even our Franklin Mountain female cougar has been spotted there. It has been visited by serious birdwatchers. It is a lovely place.

Recently the City replaced water and sewer lines in the alleyway between Savannah and Frankfort. City workers and the contractors that the City hired littered the area with their lunch bags, plastic grocery sacks, drink cartons, plastic water bottles and so forth. Chief Justice David Chew, his wife, Mandy, and Judge Chew’s sister, District Court Judge Linda Chew, all pitched in to clean up the litter. Additionally, the workers crushed brush and broke tree limbs with their backhoes and dirt movers.
They simply plowed through without any consideration to the natural beauty of the escarpment.

Since workers littered and molested landscape at this project, you know that they are doing so on all other projects all over the City. You know that those who supervise are complicit.

With all of El Paso’s great efforts to make this a more beautiful city and to
encourage people to pick-up and clean-up, allowing (through neglect and failure to supervise) city workers and hired private contractors to litter and to destroy natural landscapes seems to be sending a mixed message and to be counter-productive to any program to make El Paso a cleaner and more attractive city.

Is there a possibility that a policy can be drafted that requires workers and their supervisors to use litter bags and to be mindful of natural surroundings with failure to do so resulting in some significant penalty? Can a similar policy be written that requires private contractors to do the same with failure to do so resulting in being taken off the official list of City contractors for a significant period of time? What I have in mind is not just a memo to department heads and supervisors, but a serious, deliberate, protracted effort and program to make workers, supervisors, department heads, contractors, etc. responsible to the environment. Mere memorandums about the problems will not result in a genuine shift in values.

As always whenever I write a message such as this, I volunteer to do whatever I can to assist the City in dealing with these issues. I assume that, if I’m “complaining”, I should be willing to pitch in and be part of the solution whatever time that it takes. For nearly twenty years now, the Chews and Bob and Jeanne Foskett have been good stewards of Mayfield “Park”. They have kept it clean and cared for. Mr. Foskett has even created lovely, natural signs telling hikers and walkers the names of some of the trees and shrubs. I’m sure that the Newman Park Neighborhood Association under its Park Partner Agreement can help maintain this beautiful setting. If all of us together can get creative, we can find ways to love this place and all other such open, natural spaces in our neighborhoods throughout El Paso.

Thank you for all the great work that you are doing for the City of El Paso. I am very grateful to you and very appreciative of your leadership."

She responded:

"Thanks for bringing this problem to my attention. I will follow up with City engineering staff to determine who was the contractor on this particular project and what oversight we provided. I also will have someone to go out and look at the site and assess whether or not the contractor can be made to repair any damage to the natural area. We can include provisions in our contracts to ensure that contractors who do business with the city also do not violate any environmental codes and policies such as you describe. I will make sure we are doing so as a matter
of practice going forward, if we do not already specify this in our agreements. The same applies to City employees. We have administrative policies governing all sorts of conduct and behavior and I can work with HR to formally address these expectations as well.

I concur that we must set the standard if we are going to be assertive in enforcing compliance with our environmental codes, as well as encourage our citizens to be attentive to our community’s appearance and cleanliness, as well as its natural spaces.

Best to you for 2009. Thanks for the efforts you and the association are making on behalf of the City and your neighborhood."

Now that is leadership!