‘Mean Girls’ City Reps Will Cost El Pasoans $7,000 for Absurd Reason

This is why I’m opposed to any and all new taxes the city wants to raise. It’s not that I don’t think there are worthwhile and important things our money could be spent on. It’s because I know the money we already pay gets squandered in a myriad of sometimes-creative but ultimately foolish ways.

Here’s one for the Greatest Hits of Municipal Waste, though. It’s seems that not everyone on city council wants to sit by Representative Lily Limon. Last November, Rep. Courtney Niland asked to sit somewhere else, citing “distractive behavior” on the part of Limon, including “loudly opening of soda cans” and “unwanted touching”. Now, Rep. Ann Morgan Lilly has asked for a new seating assignment, complaining of Limon “muttering comments under her breath” that distract her from hearing what’s being said during Council meetings.

Here’s where this story goes from comical to insulting to this taxpayer. Changing the seating arrangement won’t be cheap. Did you know it cost anything to move your seating in a conference room? I didn’t but that’s because I don’t live in the Bizarro universe of petty bureaucracy and institutionalized kleptomania.

Make sure you’re sitting down for this...

$6,843 is what it will cost to make sure that Miss Thang 1 and Miss Thang 2 don’t have to sit next to each other. Almost SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!

How could....in what possible scenario….WTF? I moved houses a few years ago. I had a 4 bedroom, 38,000 square foot quantity of stuff that I paid a moving company to move all the way from the Westside to the Upper Valley. Beds, couches, office furniture, my Marvel Legends action figure collection…all of it. It didn’t cost anywhere near six thousand dollars to move all of my earthly possessions from one house to the other.

What could possibly justify spending nearly 7 grand to move one elderly lady from one part of a conference room to another part of the SAME FREAKING CONFERENCE ROOM??!! This is what the City Council chamber looks like:

Everybody seems to love pointing out how crooked and irresponsible corporate America is. But I can guarantee you there’s not one Fortune 55 company in this great land that would spend 7 Grand to move someone’s seating around a board room table. Unless, maybe, they were laundering money or something.

Our City Hall doesn’t have I.T. guys on their payroll already? If they run as efficiently as most other departments of government, they’ve probably got four I.T. techs on staff and three I.T. supervisors who haven’t had anything to do since Janice in payroll spilled coffee on her keyboard back in ’09.

But here’s the problem with government and not just on the piddling local level: why should they try to find a cheaper way to do something (or, better yet, talk to both of these ladies and tell them to act like adults instead of 6th graders who like the same boy). They have an endless supply of cash for this sort of thing from their personal ATMs, the poor, hapless, unappreciated taxpayers. THIS is why I’m against tax raises across the board. Because, there’s plenty of money…IF only it would be spent prudently and with the slightest modicum of austerity. As long as they keep raising taxes, there will never be any reason for them to learn how to move a seat across a room for less than the cost of really nice used car.