I guess city staff thinks it is time for us to pay up. Since November 2012 this blog has covered the wanton spending that the former city council authorized.
Now the city manager is evidently going to propose a 3.6% increase in our taxes for next year. I wrote in For whom the bill tolls about El Paso being the 5th most expensive of America’s top 50 cities in terms of tax rates in 2011.
Now it appears that we will climb up to 4th position unless the rascals in the other cities can out do our efforts.
Much of what we have been writing about here has not been about the policies behind what city council has been doing. We have been trying to point out that the way they have been doing it is wasteful. The articles are in the archives so I will only post their themes here:
Issuing no-bid contracts for construction work.
Buying through buy boards when in some cases 4% of the money we spend on them goes to out of town governments. This percentage has cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Declaring an unneeded emergency around building the ball park. This caused us to tear down city hall and commit to spend over $70 million (at this point) to relocate city facilities.
Rushing into ball park construction without valid cost estimates. The official ball park cost number is now in excess of $62 million when we were told it would be $50 million.
Tearing down the mayor’s office. Building a new one and tearing it down before even occupying it. Then building an even bigger one because in their haste the city did not plan.
Paying for alterations and moving city departments into temporary facilities throughout the city while waiting for newer facilities to be designed and built as a result of tearing down city hall.
Spending $3 million that a reasonable person would know would not be collected from property taxes on a local refinery. The appraised value of the refinery increased from $280 million to $1.1 billion in one year. A settlement was reached placing the appraised value at $320 million.
We now have the highest hotel occupancy tax in the state. Our tax rate is so high that the Texas legislature passed a bill limiting the tax rates other cities can charge at a rate below ours. El Paso was grandfathered. So much for tourism.
In addition to the proposed tax increase the city staff plans to recommend increasing our garbage bills by $1 per month. Is this to pay for the increased cost of garbage collection? No. Staff plans to use the funds to help pay for other services. This is another tax increase, plain and simple.
There is no denying that these bills now have to be paid. Our hope lies in believing that this mayor and council will do a better job of stewardship.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Many people rationalize our high property taxes by saying that we, of course, do not have a state income tax. They are either in denial or they do not do realize that there are a number of other states that do not have an income tax. Furthermore, I’d rather pay the state income tax in some states than the property taxes in El Paso. People can dream all they want to about making El Paso a retirement haven, but retirees are going to choose to live in a place where their property taxes are reasonable and they pay a small amount of income tax on their limited fixed income. Yes, we have nice weather and good Mexican food, but only if you can afford it.
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Property taxes are high for lots of reasons here, not least of which there are six (?) taxing entities that do not ask each other for permission before issuing debt and increasing spending. The city has approved for issue almost $600MM in new debt (stadium + QoL) and the county $190MM for the useless breeder clinics.
They get away with this behavior because only about 15% of the voters bother to vote, while the rest sit back with their Cervezas and watch the trucks go by on I-10. You think taxes are high now, come back in 5 years when all the Shaplite spending hits your tax bill.
AAA isn’t going to pay your taxes.
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