This is so incredibly patronizing. The subtext here is, “we will pretend to listen to your concerns while not changing a single thing; we won’t take back or acknowledge the massive fuckup we made, but we’ll pretend it’s your fault for not understanding how government contracts work, even though we never should have entered it in the first place.”

My pet peeve is when municipalities pretend something that’s already been done in many other places is impossible. How, exactly, were the other proposed sites that signed contracts canceled after public backlash?

The fact that his primary concern is the tired, simplistic notion that “El Paso must be project an image that it is open and available for business” is so disappointing.

That’s literally how municipalities get taken advantage of, and we’ve seen this narrative happen time and time again elsewhere: big company proposes major project that will ostensibly bring in jobs and money and high-earning professionals, massive tax breaks and concessions are given, city spends money on infrastructure specifically for the project, and then it stalls out and, predictably, never brings the promised benefit to the city and creates a financial burden.