Alamo Citizens on Alert

Do you know what's happening in our city? For years, the Alamo City Commission has acted without fear of being held accountable for their actions because many of us have allowed them to operate without oversight. This spring, many of us felt that enough was enough and we are not just dealing with egos and old boy favoritism, but with issues that have directly impacted our welfare. So we formed Alamo Citizens, a community organization open to any resident of the City of Alamo or any Alamo business owner. This blog, our corresponding Facebook page, and Twitter is dedicated to communicating important alerts and information about our fair city. We welcome and encourage feedback from our citizens.

From time to time, there may be pressing issues that you may want to voice your opinion on or even attend a commission meeting to hear the facts and see how our elected representatives are voting. You can stay informed by going to www.AlamoCitizens.org. To ensure you don't miss important information, please sign up to receive our alerts by contacting us here: http://alamocitizens.org/get-involved.html

For years many of us have allowed our mayor and commissioners to act without fear of repercussion. But that changed when many of us were surprised to discover that the commission had voted to change the name of our City's namesake road to the name of our former mayor. So Alamo Road became Rudy Villarreal Road. While we don't really have a strong objection to the former mayor's interest in leaving a legacy by having things named for him, we did object to the choice of the street that was renamed.

Commissioners were put on notice when more than 200 residents filled their chambers and demanded that they act on petitions to change back the name to Alamo Road. On Tuesday, May 7, the Alamo Board of Commissioners signed our resolution to rescind/nullify the renaming of “Alamo Road” to “Rudy Villarreal Road.” But our work is not done. We must wait until the 2015 state legislative session for a resolution that will make it official.

Once we became aware of the favoritism and good-old-boy, backroom negotiations that have often been the basis for contracts, rather than basing decisions on what is best for the City of Alamo, its businesses and its residents, we realized that we must remain vigilant in order to hold them accountable for their actions. And, if they continue to act on their own behalf, rather than on what's best for our community, perhaps it's time we elect new commissioners.

Another issue that directly impacts our health and welfare is the contract that commissioners approved for our city's ambulance and EMS service. Fire Chief Rolando Espinoza presented the commissioners presented a list of complaints and concerns about the ambulance service, Pro-Medic EMS, and information that other cities had canceled contracts with this company because of similar issues. But instead of canceling the service, our commission voted to keep it – even though it takes 1 hour to get an ambulance in Alamo, when it should take only 10 minutes!

 

We want this to be your forum. Contact us with your concerns and comments and let us know how we can help you.