Two days after our City Council voted 5-4 to terminate Tommy Gonzalez without cause under provision 6.1(d) of his contract, Dee and Adair Margo published a letter in the El Paso Times demanding that City Reps. Brian Kennedy of District 1 and Art Fierro of District 6 be recalled.
Someone should explain to them that when you fire an employee without cause, it is inadvisable to state a cause.
The Margos declare that Gonzalez “has moved our city forward with big muscle steps,” that under his leadership we were the most inoculated population for COVID in Texas, and that presumably, thanks to him, “we are financially sound with a good bond rating.”
In their estimation the four City Council reps and Mayor who voted to terminate Gonzalez “are in the way” of progress and Kennedy and Fierro, who have served only two months, must be removed from office.
Mr. Gonzalez, by all accounts, has accepted his termination with dignity and affirmed that the City Council was within its rights to end his employment.
But the Margos are not used to being told “no” by anyone and are not inclined to accept the result of Tuesday’s democratic vote.
They cannot tolerate that the “first Mexican-American to be recognized for his leadership and excellence by the Malcolm Baldridge Foundation” will not be able to serve through 2029 as they and their friends in the Upper Valley and Coronado had planned.
Yet the Margos have no issue with displacing Mexican-Americans from their homes and demolishing a barrio, even as Adair gives tours of the Segundo Barrio to her adoring supporters.
We all remember how Dee promised to “hold the line on taxes” but then presided over three property tax hikes, pushed for the issuance of hundreds of millions of dollars in non-voter-approved debt, supported huge cost overruns on the QOL bond projects, and fanatically supported building a half-billion-dollar arena in Duranguito.
If the City still has a good bonding rating, it is certainly no thanks to his administration.
In any case, Dee certainly didn’t fool the citizens of El Paso, who gave him only 20.46% of the vote in his bid for reelection in December 2020.
And then there is Claudia Lizette Rodriguez, who was also run out of office after only one term, losing to Art Fierro in December by a 13-point spread. She and Adair are now co-promoting the fatally-flawed arena feasibility study that was voted out of existence on January 3, with the vain hope that it will somehow land back on a City Council agenda for a re-vote.
It seems clear to everyone except for the Margos that their agenda has been absolutely and repeatedly rejected by the voters of El Paso, who suffer from confiscatory taxation and massive deficit spending and are sick to death of paying for the pet projects of our local Oligarchs.
The good news is that we now have City Council reps and a Mayor who are committed to righting the ship, and they deserve our full support.
Have a marvelous evening.
Max
Photo Credit: Jorge Salgado, El Paso Inc, 2017