City Manager Dionne Mack demands overhaul in property maintenance tracking
As El Paso leaders are addressing the closure of the Gateway Hotel, some officials described the inspection process and what changes could be made.
We immediately checked, as you heard from our building official, are there any other things in the queue that you know may be slipping through the cracks?" said new El Paso City Manager Dionne Mack in an exclusive interview.Elected leaders including Mayor Oscar Leeser addressed how the Gateway Hotel was able to operate without the proper licensing for years. Tony De La Cruz with the Planning and Inspection Department described the department's relationship with the hotel.
"In these cases, what we're looking at is a lot of property maintenance issues that were neglected by the property owner," said De La Cruz. "Through our enforcement and inspection actions, we were ensuring that they were bringing up those components, but they were not. They were deteriorated at a much faster rate than the owner was keeping up."
Mack said the City needs to find a better way to track developments at places like the Gateway Hotel.
"I think what we certainly learned through this process is we need to ensure that everybody who might come in contact with the issue of concern throughout the city has a way to funnel that into some central process or place where we can then look at it at a higher level, to make sure we're not seeing a trend going on."
De La Cruz said the City is dedicated to changing its communication processes so this situation doesn't happen again, though details weren't immediately forthcoming. For the Gateway Hotel to reopen, Mack said she needs to see substantial progress.
"I would like to see in this, personally, for everything to be fixed," Mack said. "Before you talk about people coming into the facility, not having a piecemeal approach, which I think, you know, compromises the way that people live in a facility."
El Paso Fire said it conducted yearly inspections at the hotel.
Mack spoke with KFOX14/CBS4 on the sidelines of a Thursday press conference.
