06-Twenty-one-Questions-Brewer-Answers-5-1-06.html

Questions for the Candidates

Answers from Bob Brewer
Posted May 1, 2006

1.    Have you taken the state mandated Open Government training?

       A.    I haven't taken the required Open Meetings training; I have until 1 Jan 2007 to do so; and if I'm reelected, I'll take the training this fall.

      B.   That training is meaningless, however, when rogue District Attorneys initiate political, criminal indictments for emails that clearly don't even come close to an Open Meetings violation. DA Brown has wasted almost $30,000 of Alpine Taxpayer's money on his political email indictments, that he couldn't bring to trial, and that he is now appealing his inability to bring the case to trial.

2.    Is it the “policy” or the custom of the city to make loans to employees?

There is no written City policy for making pay advances to Employees; it's obviously been done casually. The Employee Manual stipulates the pay procedures; since this is the Taxpayer's money, there should be no exceptions to that policy, for any reason. A private business may do whatever it wants, but a public entity should be scrupulously honest with the Taxpayers' money.

3.    The animal shelter continues to be an offense to all humane sentiments. Do you plan to do anything?

        A.    As with all of the City's dozen or more major challenges, all of which require a lot of Council time and more often than not Taxpayer money, this one's a disaster that's been going on for years. Meetings have been held periodically over the years (I attended some last summer), but nothing has been done by any of the parties involved: the City, the Humane Society, and the individual who allegedly has donated land for a shelter.

      B.   The current shelter is on private land, the 06 Ranch right beside the City's Sewer Plant; the public can't go in there without a City escort; and even if you drove in there, no one would be at the locked building 75% or more of the time. I have been to the Sewer Plant twice in my 6 years here, but haven't seen the inside of the Shelter.

      C.   To my knowledge, and speaking for no one else:

             1.    The individual has not submitted any legal papers for the land donation, to either the City or the Humane Society; this contract is not on the table.

             2.    The Humane Society has not made a contract offer of the money they'd contribute, supposedly the $100,000 remnants of a $1,000,000 donation to the HS; this contract is not on the table. The HS also has not worked out any agreement with the City for operation of a shelter; that contract is not on the table either.

             3.    Council found out last night (18 Apr Reg Mtg) that the current shelter is, and basically always has been, in violation of State shelter health standards; it always will be, because it can't be rehabilitated to meet those standards, and would have to be torn down.

      D.   Alpine's shelter needs have been researched in the last year; a 3,000 sq ft building is needed, costing $300,000; that amount is going up weekly, due to materials cost increases. A grant is possibly available to cover about 2/3 of that, so the City would have to come up with about 1/3 of that.

             1.    The City basically doesn't have the money. (Last night, for instance, Council got $75,000 in unexpected, overdue bills from the Lewis and Philippi Administrations.) If the Humane Society would put up their $100,000, under contract, to cover the match requirements, the City could immediately apply for the grant, knowing the match money was at hand; and then, presumably, within 12-18 months we could have a brand new shelter on either the private party's or the City's land.

             2.    This is the Council's responsibility, bottom line. We should get the grant application process started, tell the Humane Society to put up their contribution in a contract, or shut up, and tell the land donor to put the land donation in a contract, or shut up. If the land donor won't give up the land, the City has land we can use, and possibly should anyhow. If the Humane Society won't give up their money, then a new shelter probably won't get built anytime soon, and our current shelter will probably be closed by the state within a year.

4.    Have you been to the shelter recently?

See 3.B. above.

5.    The city spends more than $90,000 annually on a “recycling” fee paid directly to Duncan Disposal and the only actual recycling is apparently by volunteers?

      A.    Council had a Workshop a few months ago, to discuss Duncan's application for a 14% rate increase, on top of 2 recent increases totaling 15%, as I recall. I made a quite legal information request for all of Duncan's records, to try to learn about the disposal process and figure out what was going on; my request was met with mostly defiance by former Manager Philippi, an attack on me and mostly defiance by a Duncan Official, and Meeting Minutes done by Debra Cutting that only reported the first 5 minutes of a 2-hour Workshop. That first 5 minutes was my heated exchange with the Duncan Official, and Cutting's grossly incomplete minutes were obviously just another attempt to discredit me.

     B.    The bottom line is that we still don't know much about Duncan's operation, even though they are legally required to furnish all information, because they have a contract with a City Government and fall under the Public Information Act. In answer to this Question #5, we didn't get their recycling information, and therefore know almost nothing about what Duncan does with the stuff they pick up to allegedly recycle.

     C.    Alpine had an award winning recycling program under Hal Flanders and friends; they later regretted letting the City take the program over; and no one really knows what Duncan is doing.

6.    What specific recycling does Duncan do?

See 5.B. above.

7.    What is the city going to do about the Duncan Disposal contract which expires in September?

I don't know what we're going to do in September, when Duncan's contract expires. Their non-compliance with the Open Records Act makes it extremely difficult for Council to know anywhere near enough to make an intelligent decision. I know the Citizens that are very interested in a recycling program are upset; I know that some Councilmembers are very upset with Duncan's stonewalling about their operation; and I know that Council must do something immediately after the 13 May Election.

8.    Are you aware that the city does not comply with either our own ordinance, state law or a court recorded consent agreement with me. Do you intend to insist on correct administration?

Those on Council who care are well aware that the City records are a shambles, do not meet City Ordinance or State law requirements, and that some have possibly been illegally destroyed under the Lewis and Philippi administrations. I am aware that the City doesn't meet it's legal consent decree with you. I say the latter because some important contracts and other documents simply haven't been found, after weeks of searching.
    Bill Lewis immediately fired the clerk working on records, when he was hired; apparently no work had been done since then, by the City Secretary or anyone else, until Molly Taylor was hired as City Secretary. The new City Manager, Chuy Garcia, is getting more and more frustrated by missing records, and Ms Taylor wants very much to get them straightened out; I'm putting my faith in them to clean up the wreckage left by Lewis and Philippi, but it's going to take some time.
    Ms Taylor wants to look through things herself first before asking for help. Before too much longer we'll need to hire or designate person to be an "Administrative Clerk," a job title that doesn't exist at present, to help Mr Garcia and Ms Taylor.

9.    ORCA grants are so bad that they deserve auditing by the state. Are you going to do anything?

The City Manager is supposed to be looking into the recent ORCA Grant to pave Murphy, which somehow ended up paving Gallego, under the Bill Lewis tenure I believe. The application for that grant may have had some false information in it.
    This action by Bill Lewis, and another action by Karen Philippi in making a false statement to TCEQ, about some barely started park work being completed, is the type of gross misconduct (to put it very, very nicely) from Lewis and Philippi that keeps popping up to surprise Council. Another example of this kind of wreckage is the $75,000 in unexpected expenses from the past that popped up at the 18 April 2006 Council Meeting, $25,000 of which was related to the Murphy-morphed-into-Gallego paving project.

10. We have no policy on utility hookups outside the city (the council appointed part of a committee and promptly forgot to do anything more). Will you enforce a moratorium?

We have a policy of sorts: outside the City, a developer of anything new pays everything; inside the City, basic hookups are paid by the applicant, any work outside the property line the City will pay for, and new development work would depend on the situation probably.
    I spoke to the City Attorney today about this very issue. The committee that was supposed to review all the water/sewer policies is in limbo, pending hiring a new Utilities Director. The applicant deadline may be today, so I'm guessing we'll move forward soon on this. I'm not sure how much of a moratorium there is on anything right now.

11. We maintain a redundant police dispatching system at a monstrous cost. Do you plan to continue this?

I'm guessing that this running of two, 24/7 emergency dispatch systems will be looked at very closely in the next Budget sessions, beginning this summer. I know the County Judge doesn't want to combine the two, probably because it would give the Sheriff more "power," plus the Judge hates the present Council, or at least three of us. Naturally, the City Employees of the 911 system, and the Police Chief, won't like the idea, because it would cost the Chief some of his "power" and some of the Employees their jobs. There is no easy answer to this, but as you said, there's a huge amount of wasted money here. I may have some of my facts wrong on this, but it's definitely another challenge.

12. We maintain a “volunteer” fire department which services the entire area and is paid for by only the citizens of Alpine. Do you plan to continue this?

This fire protection question is related to the previous question in many ways. Basically, the City is 60% of the County, population wise, but the County doesn't pay their 40% of Fire or Ambulance costs, yet balks at helping the City on projects such as paving, for which the County supposedly has better equipment.

13. City salaries are bloated and unjustified, yes or no?

City Employees are very well paid, far better than their Brewster County counterparts, and probably better that the average job in Alpine. All government employees have far better retirement benefits than a private sector employee, simply because private pensions are extremely iffy anymore; all government employees have far better healthcare benefits than a private sector employee, simply because private healthcare benefits are extremely iffy anymore; and all government employees have far better job security, simply because it is very hard to get fried from a government job, no matter how bad one performs or fails to meet the rules. A prime example of the latter is an employee who apparently violated the employee rules several times, got involved in politics several times, failed to produce a proper, legally required report and manipulated another report, got a glowing performance review for all that, and lied to Council in the middle of all that.
    There appears to be no proper review system being used; perhaps there is, but when asked by Council, a recent City Manager said there really wasn't. When Employees lie to Council, there are no repercussions. When Employees cover up things, there are no repercussions. When Employees are given large raises, Council is not told until months later. When Employees cooperate with attempts to suppress Freedom of Speech by Council and Citizens, there are no repercussions. Hopefully most of this is past history, but the system is still broken to some extent.
    Does all this amount to bloated and unjustified salaries? In some cases, yes. Until Council can get the Budget under control and start saving money or paying off debt early, the City financial crisis will continue. That is why I wanted to just put a moratorium on raises until Council knew what was really in the Budget; I was outvoted; and, I still believe the Budget is a mess, disorganized, and not very usable.

14. We have not completed a policies manual. Should we?

The poorly written Policies and Procedures manual is part of the above problem, in the area of employee pay, violation of policy, etc. For instance, the pay scale chart is a shambles, with gaps between brackets varying from $ .25 to over $5.00. Until Council takes control of that mess we're just kidding ourselves; until Council quits giving percentage raises, which creates the messy pay chart, we're just kidding ourselves. The latter is a major reason I voted against any 05-06 pay raises. The Employees don't care; they just want the money; and that's human nature; but I'd like to see a couple of them step forward and say, "Yes, this manual is a mess; we're willing to help straighten it out, on our time."

    There is a Committee working to revise the manual, but it will probably be superficial. The whole thing needs a complete rewrite, shortening, and simplification - a job that would take hundreds of man hours, I believe.

15. The city has no “plan” other than the 2001 GrantWorks plan which we have neither modified nor observed yet we are required to have a “plan” for grants; do you have any ideas concerning a city plan?

In my Campaign Flyer I devote the whole back side to my thoughts for the future. Right now the City is just stumbling along, with no plans for the future, year or capitol improvement (both legally required), paying no attention to the old plan (superficial for the most part), deeply in debt (our biggest problem), and just putting out fires with borrowed money. I believe three of the current Council are aware of this, but we're still fighting the wreckage of the Lewis and Philippi administrations (see several answers above). The Lewis and Philippi administrations wasted between $2.6 and 3 million; it will take years to recover from that debacle.
   With over $2.6 million we could more than pay for the sewer line we need on the east side - to further commercial development, raise the tax base, and raise the sales tax income. The Hampton Inn project has allegedly already moved from the east side to the west side because we have no sewer out east; this makes it far more difficult to raise the grant money for the east side sewer.
If we're going to borrow money, let's do it for legitimate reasons, not subsidies to the Federal Government and private businesses, coupled with lies to a thousand of our Citizens who can't flush their toilets properly. We'll be paying for that misuse of money until 2037, and it was done in violation of the requirements for a long-term and capital improvement plans. The $2.6 million could have drastically cut the $4.8 million we had to borrow to meet TCEQ mandates about water pressure. However, without planning for the future, we'll always be scrambling to put out those fires.

16. The city has failed to audit or establish a base report of the city’s water meter status. Why?

Months ago Council asked Philippi and Sykes for a water meter report; we never got it. We forced Philippi to move on, and Sykes took a better opportunity in Idaho. We're considering an overall change to automated meter reading, but don't have all the facts to make that decision. Naismith Engineering is working with us on this, but it'll be awhile longer before we have a thorough knowledge of our water meter situation.

17. As the previous charter committee discovered, the city’s voting records are a shambles. Do you know what the ward boundaries are?

No, we don't know for sure where the Ward boundaries are; there are legitimate questions about the boundaries between Wards 5 and 4, for instance. There are three versions of that boundary on maps at City Hall. We'll have to ask the company who did the "official" work on redistricting for their (our) records; presumably there would be a text description of the boundaries in that work; those records appear to be missing from City Hall, and were produced under the Lewis administration, who tried a hurry-up annexation to get the Good Ole Boys and Girls candidate for Ward 5 annexed into the City before the filing deadline. Those records are partly missing, and I believe it's quite possible the redistricting records were "lost" also.
    By the way, Brewster County's voting records are a shambles also. Three years ago, I was told by the Voter Registrar that all PO Boxes were being removed from the records; the 15 April 2006 printout still has dozens in Ward 5. The main western boundary of Ward 5 was allegedly moved from 3rd St to 5th St in 2002, as part of the Redistricting, but the Registration Cards of many of those people still show them in City Ward 1, for the last 4 years - incredible!
    Voting is one of the sacred rights in this country. The fact that these records are in a shambles is a travesty, and inexcusable.