A Commitment to Our City’s Youth
by District 8 Rep. Beto O’Rourke

Two of the great unmet needs in El Paso are park space and recreational opportunity. If you look at a map of Downtown/Central/South El Paso, you will not see much green space. North of the freeway and south of Schuster, from Santa Fe Street to Piedras Street, there is only one park, Houston Park, and it is shared by three different neighborhoods.

Immediately south of the freeway and north of Paisano, from Mesa Street to Piedras, there are exactly zero parks. South of Paisano, the story is not much better. While Armijo is a good park/recreational/learning complex with its combination of gymnasium, swimming pool, community center, open fields and library all joined together, and Alamito Park (Tula Irrobali) has decent prospects, there just isn’t enough space to serve the population of this part of town.

Despite the efforts of the city’s Parks & Recreation Department, which has pushed for innovative solutions like inter-local agreements with the school districts that allow us to access some of their facilities for after-school programs and community use, there is just not enough capacity to fulfill the need. On top of that, there are no organized sports leagues in South El Paso, no little league baseball, no youth soccer or football.

What these under-served children want and need is the opportunity to play safely in parks and fields, gyms, pools and recreational centers, on teams with their peers where they will learn skills, values and the pride of progressing in a discipline and being able to challenge teams from all over the city. My hat is off to those who have tried their best to deal with this systemic failing. The Parks Department, under-funded for decades and lacking the political leadership that would provide land and recreational assets, is trying its best, and leaders from throughout the community have risen to the challenge.

Sal Muñiz and Monica Cisneros, for example, started a soccer league that more than 100 boys and girls played in last summer. No money, no fancy uniforms, no entry fees – just committed volunteers donating their summers to give these kids the opportunity to play. Our office is working with Sal, Monica and EPISD school board President Lisa Colquitt-Muñoz to see how the community can partner with local schools (like Guillen, situated right between the Magoffin neighborhood and Segundo Barrio), corporate partners like Red Bull (thanks to Marina Monsisvais) and community organizations like La Fe to make sure that we are able to build a sustainable youth sports program in South El Paso.

I will do everything I can to support these efforts and will work with the mayor, council and city manager to develop new opportunities wherever we can. We will also continue to work on the long-term solution that was first envisioned in the 1925 plan for El Paso: a central park that would encompass a vast stretch of south-central El Paso.

In the short term, it is heartening to see the long trend of neglect in Downtown, Central and South El Paso is being reversed by committed community leadership.

The El Paso Lyceum
by Mayor John F. Cook

Globalism, or globalization, is the integration of different economies in order to make them more competitive. It is the increasing interdependence, integration and interaction among people and corporations in disparate locations around the world. It is an umbrella term, which refers to a complex of economic, trade, social, technological, cultural and political interrelationships. In a community struggling to achieve its dreams, perhaps no public function is more strategic than that of economic development.

In my effort to increase globalism in our community and to further our prosperity, I established the El Paso Lyceum. I borrowed this concept from the state of Texas. They are a non-profit, non-partisan organization of individuals from throughout the state who have demonstrated leadership in their community and profession and possess a deep commitment to the state. They discuss and debate the most pressing issues facing Texas. They motivate one another with the sharing of ideas and enthusiasm, and they take what they learn back to their own individual communities and help make policy-makers better
decision-makers.

More than a year ago, we held a regional economic summit attended by key players from our city and our neighbors in Southern New Mexico and Northern Mexico. The summit’s end marked the commencement
of our journey to new economic prosperity and the establishment of six advisory cabinets, which have now grown to eight, and the El Paso Lyceum. The Lyceum is a conduit to capitalize on the efforts set forth by the 2005 Regional Economic Summit. The effort brings together the best of this regional community in public and private sectors to work towards bringing out the best this area has to offer to its current and future citizens.

The Lyceum has amassed almost 100 volunteers who are dedicated to bringing about economic prosperity. They bring forth a new set of economic growth strategies that may seem somewhat radical or revolutionary but that are common among communities that are successful. We understand the need to focus on strategies for wealth creation, providing higher wage jobs and cultivating an environment where new, fast-growing, innovation-oriented companies can be created and nurtured through rapid growth and spin out additional companies like themselves.

The city government has valuable partners that are committed to working with us to achieve our ambitious goals. These partners include all of the chambers of commerce, the El Paso Regional Economic
Development Corporation, the Mesilla Valley Economic Development Corporation, Desarrollo Economico de Juárez (Economic Development of Juárez) initiative in our sister city and the universities and colleges of the region. Coordination and communication of Lyceum efforts with the City Council, Economic Development office and other city agencies ensures that appropriate integration into overall business plans is the objective.

In a relatively short period of time, the cabinets of the Lyceum have begun making solid recommendations to the City Council. The creation of a Regional Mobility Authority, the authorization by the City Council to initiate the Medical Center of the Americas and creation of the Digital El Paso Project Pilot are recent efforts that have been made by the El Paso Lyceum.