City Rep. Melina Castro fielded questions from the public and news media for an hour at candidate forum that her challenger, Carl Robinson, missed Wednesday morning.
About 32 people stayed for the forum at the Northeast YMCA but several left upset about Robinson’s absence.
“I see no point in staying,” Judy Todd said on her way out. “With only one candidate, how can you have a forum?”
Robinson withdrew from the forum Tuesday, saying he needed to look for his 18-year-old granddaughter who ran away from her home in Arizona and came to El Paso.
Robinson was a guest Wednesday afternoon on Paul Strelzin’s radio talk show. When a caller asked Robinson about his granddaughter, Stelzin answered for Robinson saying the young woman was found shortly before air time.
Later Wednesday, Robinson confirmed that his granddaughter had been found and said he is now back on the campaign trail.
He and Castro have committed to appear for a face-to-face debate on KVIA-News 7 at 10:30 p.m. Sunday. Robinson also said he will meet Castro at an El Paso Press Club candidates’ forum next Saturday at 10:30 a.m. at the Northeast YMCA.
The first question for Castro at Wednesday’s event from moderator Joe Oliva, host of the Saturday morning Ray Pearson Forum, was about the $30,000 check Castro recently used to pay off a judgment from the 2005 lawsuit against City Attorney Charles McNabb that she lost at the district court level.
She paid the money after McNabb himself ruled that a provision of the City Charter bars anyone with a debt to the city from taking office. One troublesome legal question is whether a judgment that is under appeal constitutes a debt to the city.
“Where did those funds come from?” Oliva asked.
Castro, who has declined to answer the question ever since turning in the check at a City Council meeting before the May 9 city elections, again declined.
“It is a personal matter,” she said of the lawsuit that has cost the city more than $50,000 so far and is pending before the state’s Eighth Court of Appeals. “It is a legal matter … and because it is a legal matter, my attorney has said not to comment.”
Asked by the Rev. Lyle Davis to list her top three accomplishments during her four-year term, Castro said she was instrumental in preventing the development of Castner Range, an expanse of military property on the east side of the Franklin Mountains.
She said she did so early in her term by calling attention to the Army’s interest in selling some of the land along Patriot Freeway near TransMountain Road.
Second, she said, she was also instrumental in keeping the city’s Archaeology Museum from being moved from TransMountain Road to Downtown. It was, however, a newspaper report about that plan that alerted museum volunteers and supporters, who rallied in opposition.
The third accomplishment she cited was her involvement in the city’s initiative to build a new Sun Metro terminal on the site of the Northgate Mall.
Her positive role in that project is clouded, however, by the fact that it nearly went down to defeat in December when Castro and city Reps. Rachel Quintana and Eddie Holguin voted against it and other transit projects. They did so because the Northeast terminal and other projects were to be partly financed by certificate of obligation bonds sold without voter approval.
City Reps. Steve Ortega and Beto O’Rourke joined them in voting no on the Northeast terminal, arguing that if Castro would not support her own project, they wouldn’t either.
The project’s 5-3 defeat was turned around when Mayor John Cook, the former Northeast representative, asked someone to change their vote. O’Rourke did so, creating a 4-4 tie that Cook broke with a vote for the terminal.
Castro defended her vote at the time and again Wednesday saying she had thought other funds were available to finance the project but when she realized that certificates of obligation would be used, she had no choice but to vote no.
She proposed that the project be put on hold until the next 2010 bond election when it could be put on the ballot. The city staff contended that a delay would result in the loss of the opportunity for federal stimulus funds that could keep the city’s cost down.
On Tuesday, Castro voted for the $2.7 million purchase of seven acres at the Northgate mall grounds for the terminal, with 80 percent coming from federal funds and 20 percent from city bonds funds.
Castro said that she has consistently voted against the use of certificates of obligation and what she regarded as unjustified city expenditures. She questioned whether Northeast residents would get that kind of representation from Robinson.
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To reach David Crowder, write to dcrowder@epmediagroup.com or call (915) 351-0605, ext. 30
