We unfortunately know that El Paso residents have the 7th highest property tax bill of the 50 largest cities in the United States. Our position will climb when we start factoring in debt service for the bonds that city council has been selling.
We learned last week that for those of us in the EPISD district our city takes 25% of our local taxes compared to a state-wide average of 17%. The district is getting 46% of those local taxes compared to 54% statewide. Our priorities seem screwed up.
But wait!
As though the city trough is not deep and wide enough city council is considering raising the city’s tax rate 2.1 cents per hundred dollars of evaluation to 69.9 cents. That works out to about a 3% increase, or $26 dollars a year on what we are told is the average home (one valued at $124,000).
Wait again!
Council also wants to raise the franchise fee that our electric company is charged from 4% to 5%. The fee is passed on to the consumers, so you and I will pay it. If this money was to be generated through property taxes they would have to add 1.45 cents to our property tax rate.
That puts us at an increase of 3.55 cents per hundred.
Keep waiting!
Council is also considering adding another $1 per month to our trash bill. The city runs that service and it generates a profit that is taken from the department and used by the city. The bill would thus increase $12 per year or the equivalent of another .96 cents on our tax bill.
Now we are at 4.51 cents per hundred.
The answer is:
City council is also considering imposing a franchise tax on our city owned water utility. That tax would be added to our water bills thus generating another $3.5 million for the city each year from our wallets.
This works out to about another 1.05 cents per hundred brining us to an increase of 5.56 cents per hundred or about an 8% tax increase.
The mayor is right
He was quoted the other day as having said “It’s not a hidden tax”. He is absolutely right–it is a tax increase right out in the open.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
I think you have your decimals in the wrong place, it is not 2.1 cents, it is .021cents. I read 2.1 cents and that to me is 2 dollars and 10 cents. It is confusing !
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I don’t know how you read “dollars” when Brutus put the word cents right after the number in plain sight. It is 2.1 when you put the word “cents” behind it. That is equal to .021 dollars, the latter being what you use for calculation purposes. If you want to obsess over grammatical errors and typos, read the Times.
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The increase in 2.1 cents per $100. First you need to find out how many one hundreds are in your house valuation. If your house is valued at $150,000 there are 1500 one hundreds in your house. You would then multiply 1500 by .021 to find how much more you will be paying in taxes according to the City. Now use Brutus’ number of .0556 to find out how much more you’ll actually be paying the City.
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To say the least it is distressing when all we see from our City Council (this one and the one that preceded it) are huge expenses incurred without taxpayer input (remember that ball park cost way more than $64 million, or $72 million; it also cost us a City Hall), important, even vital, expenses ignored (City Police Cars are falling apart), work left undone that needs doing badly (city streets that are a flat disgrace). And, now they want us to pay more and more and more for more things that THEY come up with. We do indeed deserve better.
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We need a Truth in Taxation ordinance so they can’t disguise tax increases with fees and franchises:)
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I commend to you and your readers an article appearing in “BREITBART” July 23rd by Jess Fields entitled “El Paso’s Proposed Unnecessary Tax Increase”
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The real question is, paying these increases for what? If we had any PLAN in front of us that committed these funds to street improvement all over the city…but I really have to ask, how the devil did these streets get so bad? I have driven all over Europe and Latin America, and it’s really shocking that city streets can be this bad. Are they using substandard material and charging for the good stuff? What is it?
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