You Go Girl!

On Monday, my son and I ran into his basketball coach at mini dribbler's practice. John ran up to his coach with his big Johnny smile. "Coach, are we going to have a team this year?" The coach explained that they didn't have enough boys to make the team. I asked about the girls that played on the team last year. Weren't they going to play? "No," Coach Joey said, "the City won't let the girls play on the boys' teams anymore. They said it is a liability to let the girls play with the boys because the boys might hurt the girls."

Last year, my son John played on an under 10 basketball team at the Marty Robbins Center on the east side. They were undefeated. Two girls played on the team. The leading scorer was a girl. The other team that Coach Joey coached was under 8. They had a couple girls on the team. They were also undefeated. One of their best players was a girl. John's coach, who likes to win, is obviously very upset about losing some of his best players to a rule that doesn't make sense to him.

Johnny's real sport is baseball. He's been playing since he was four through t-ball, onto coach pitch and finally at kid pitch. There have always been girls on his team. One of the best players is a girl named Alisa who played short stop and was always dependable at bat. This was her last year to play on the team because her dad wants her to start getting used to girl's softball.

I played soccer most of my life but always liked playing football. The only opportunity I had to play football was neighborhood football that we used to play in middle of the street with one kid always posted to watch for oncoming traffic. In middle school, I spent a good ten minutes every day trying to convince the football coach to let me try out for the football team. I didn't ask him to put me on the team. I just asked him to let me try out. He refused even though he knew that I could kick farther than any of their punters and at that age, I was just as tough as any of them. Even though he knew that I could compete, he told me that I would not be allowed to compete because I was a girl. I would not have been able to compete in high school. By then, the boys had gotten a lot bigger and a lot stronger.

Studies show that there is little physiological difference girls and boys before the onset of puberty. Since more and more girls are encouraged to play sports from an early age, they have the ability and the skills to compete with boys. So, why won't we let them?

I asked our Parks and Recreation Department for an answer. Here is what I got back: "We do not currently offer co-ed youth sports leagues for programs managed by our Sports Section; we offer boys divisions and girls divisions. Girl players who are exceptional usually play up in age group. There are instances when girl age groups do not have enough players to make enough teams. When this happens, we do allow girls to play on boys teams, but staff also explains that if the girls division does make they would have to move to a girls team. Staff is guided by UIL and NCAA rules which are guided by Title IX. Paula states that she has been offering the program this way for 10 years with much success and has doubled the girls' programs."

I'm glad to hear that we are increasing participation in our girls' programs, but this still doesn't answer my question. If a girl under the age of 12 wants to compete and can compete on a boys' team, why can't she? The answer "because she is a girl" didn't seem fair to me in middle school and it doesn't seem fair to me now.

At Tuesday's meeting, I am going to ask City Council to reconsider the City's postion on this issue.

Thank you!

Well, we made it through Dancing with the Stars. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the cause, either buying tickets to the event or writing a check to Big Brothers Big Sisters. I raised $3,000 through your support. We did not win in any category but had a great time competing. The event itself raised $57,000 for Big Brothers Big Sisters, an organization that helps kids in needs by pairing them up with a community mentor.

Sometimes, its the small things that make it feel like there is movement afoot

Yesterday in City Council, there was lots of heated debate about the Public Service Board and the stormwater utility district and user fees for senior aerobics classes. We didn't get out of the meeting until 4:30 P.M. We didn't break for lunch. The meeting was punctuated every now and then by some drama (Eddie Holguin wanted some advice on how to subpoena Ed Archuleta while an embarrassed council walked out leaving him without a quorum) or a temporary loss of cool (Ray Gilbert screamed, Steve Ortega screamed back, the mayor intervened).

Buried in yesterday's marathon meeting was a request by the owners of 300 Florence to put an historic overlay on their property. The owners are converting an old Trost designed warehouse into downtown lofts. The item was moved and approved with almost no comment or conversation. No passions were inflamed. There was no drama.

There should have been.

This was the first time in over a decade that a property owner has voluntarily signed up to put their property under an historic overlay. With an historic overlay comes a whole host of additional obligations and processes aimed at preserving the architectural significance of a building. It used to be if the City even whispered historic overlay to a property owner, the property owner would lawyer up and charge down to city council to beat those efforts down with a stick.

But we've been trying to change all of that. We re-wrote the historic preservation ordinance to streamline the process and to include tax incentives for both commerical and residential property owners who are willing to invest in old buildings. We waived the $1500 fee required to sign up for an historic overlay. We hired a full time Historic Preservation Officer dedicated to the preservation of our historic assets, rather than depend on a city planner with a pile of other work to do. This last budget cycle we gave the HPO some more staff support. We've been fixing the city's administrative processes which seemed to make it easy for property owners to ignore their obligations under the historic preservation ordinance, but very hard and time consuming and mind numbing for property owners who wanted to do the right thing. We told the City that if we were going to make property owners comply with the historic preservation ordinance that city departments had to do the same with parks and public space in historic districts.

We still have a lot more to do, but a lot of good work has been done so that people who want to invest in preserving an historic property view the City as an ally and a partner in that effort.

Mr. Perez

On Monday night, we stood outside of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Perez' house on Joyce Circle to celebrate a huge victory for the neighborhood: the completion of a drainage project that they had been fighting for for 10 years. We drank hot chocolate and ate tamales and sweet bread. Mr. Perez' sons told me stories about growing up with flooding as an everyday event. One son told me that his friends used to ask if their dad was setting up a bunker because sandbags always surrounded the house.

I met Mr. Perez at one of my first District 2 Community meetings. He came with a crowd of angry neighbors and some photos of what his neighborhood looks like under water. Every time it rains, they explained, the neighborhood floods. No matter whether it is a tiny drizzle or a downpour, it is under water. What finally drove them to my meeting is that one of their oldest neighbors got trapped in her home by a flood of water pouring into her home and had to be rescued by the fire department. Some residents had moved out because they couldn't take the hassle and the property damage anymore. They had had enough.

I called the Streets Department to alert them, thinking I was the first on the scene. Turns out they knew the scene all too well. Every time it started to rain, they had the troops out at Joyce Circle with sand bags. Joyce Circle had been on the books for 10 years but had never been funded. This is what stormwater management looked like under the City. The Streets Department had been asking for the money for this project and other stormwater projects for 10 years but couldn't get anyone to listen. We finally funded the Joyce Circle project using certificates of obligation but not without some resistance from other members of council who wanted to wait and take it to the voters. One of our most basic obligations--public safety and the protection of property--had been ignored and underfunded to the detriment of many property owners in our city. This was starkly highlighted by the Storm 2006.

On Tuesday, the City Council will introduce an ordinance and then hear the issue on December 16 on the stormwater utility brought to us by a citizen initiative petition. The initiative petition was signed by 2,400 registered voters in El Paso. The signers of the initiative petition are asking that the responsibility for setting the fees for the stormwater utility be taken from the Public Service Board and given to city council.

I supported the creation of the stormwater utility, and I supported handing over the fee setting and the management of the stormwater utility to the Public Service Board. While it has been a bruising political battle, I still think it is the right thing to do for our community.

Here is what we were trying to accomplish in the creation of the stormwater utility:

1. One of the biggest deficiencies of the stormwater system under the City of El Paso was the regular and routine maintenance of the system. If culverts are clogged, if inlets are blocked by trash, if retention and detention basins have years and years of built up silt, the system loses its intended capacity to handle stormwater runoff. This is when flooding occurs. This is when property damage occurs. During the public hearings on the stormwater utility, the public indicated that they wanted a system that had dedicated resources to regularly maintain our existing stormwater system.

2. A second defiency of the system under the city was that there was not regular capital improvements made to the system. After the damage from Storm 2006, the City determined that at least 46% of the new projects that we had to undertake in order to fix the system had been on the books for at least 5 or more years, 20% of those (like Joyce Circle) had been on the books for 10 or more years. If we had taken on those projects when they were identified, we would not have seen the kind of damage we did in 2006 and the projects probably would not have cost us that much. During the public hearings on the stormwater utility, the public indicated that they wanted a system that had an annual amount available to begin chipping away at the millions of dollars in capital improvements needed to make the system function better.

3. The final consideration that was very important to me in representing an older area of the city that is more dense is that the system be funded based on a property's contribution to the need for stormwater management. If you own a sixteen acre asphalt car lot, you are contributing much more to the stormwater problem then if you own a a 10-story building on an acre of land. If you own a large home, you are contributing more to the stormwater problem than someone who owns a modest-sized home. Those who contribute more to the problem should pay more or find a way to offset their impact on the stormwater system.

So the stormwater utility got going in March. Since that time, we have seen more regular maintenance of the stormwater system. For example, five retention ponds up near Scenic Drive in my district have been de-silted for the first time in 15 years. The stormwater utility, under the Public Service Board, has begun a master planning process that will determine the priorities for capital improvements. Right now, the recommendations are being reviewed by a community advisory board and those final recommendations will come to the City Council for approval. Once approved, the stormwater utility will begin to make annual capital improvements to our stormwater system. The Public Service Board has responded appropriately to concerns about the fees being too high, but the fees are based on a property owner's contribution to the problem. I think there is still some work that needs to be done on fees, especially working with large property owners to find ways to reduce their impact on the system and thus their fees. I've suggested to the City Manager and will suggest the same to City Council that maybe we assign someone to work with property owners to identify ways to reduce their fees (ex. more landscaping, less asphalt).

So who knows what will happen on Tuesday, but I just wanted to refresh everyone's understanding of how we go here.

Meanwhile, Mr. Perez and the Joyce Circle neighborhood is happy. They told me that this will be the first time they will get to enjoy the rain. Mr. Perez told me once when I visited him during construction with the streets all dug up and workers everywhere and tractors moving dirt and laying pipe, "Susie, this is like Disneyland to me."