If our current mayor finds a way to take the 1/2% sales and use tax that the county gets away from the county what will happen to our county taxes?
According to recent news reports the city thinks that the money in question comes to about $43 million a year.
Would the county have to raise their property tax rate?
Wouldn’t this end up being a tax increase from the mayor who told us that he would work to keep taxes low?
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
The bottom line is our local tax and spenders are always trying to raise our taxes by putting the expenses in someone else’s bucket. Case in point, the electric company refund consumers get will be less because the city raised their access fee for economic development. Net-net we still get “taxed”. If the economic development funds this increase is supposed to pay for go toward a soccer public private partnership instead of actual economic development efforts I’ll be really unhappy. Our UMC taxes are higher because Vero put the Children’s Hospital on their budget. We are constantly being told something won’t cost us money because the funds are coming from the state or some other grant bucket, but eventually those buckets empty out and we pay operating or maintenance costs. We need to start looking at the total cost impact to taxpayers across all buckets.
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They KNOW the majority of voters / and the local public (who are mostly uneducated and/or don’t speak English and/or don’t read any local newspapers or watch local news and/or understand any of it) and don’t understand ANY of this.
Kind of like a gas station-garage WAY out on a desert road and a lone lady with high heals and long fingernails (and obviously has money) pulls into the gas station with an expensive car that is making steam and dripping water and sell her a new radiator and a new transmission and a tune up for $3900.
( I knew a Realtor that MOVED to El Paso from New York to sell real estate here, BECAUSE the majority of people were soooooooooo stupid to understand anything on a contract. ) and, and, and. . . he TOLD ME THAT, as Matter of fact ! )
Any that are running for Office here, know what the deal is.
Most of the very very educated leave town, so that leaves. . . . . . . .
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The most disturbing part of your comment is that there is an ***hole realtor who feels comfortable sharing with you the fact that he likes preying on “stupid” people. You need to associate with nicer people.
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What is that agent’s name – or is that a bullshit story?
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It was a Private Conversation . . so no, I cannot Give his name, or he’d know who repeated this !
I dont care if you believe it, . . or not.
He was being honest with me about WHY he moved to el paso.
Im sure there are other stories out there, about WHY certain people moved here, but you will never hear them.
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Sounds go me like the realtor didn’t make it in NY.
He must of concluded when he didn’t make it there, he’d make it anywhere.
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If the city had an extra $43MM in unencumbered cash, it would end up in subsidies to Paul and Woody for hotels and office buildings. Then the county would add it to the property tax bill.
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If you are concerned about local taxes, check out this online article:
texastribune.org article, “Going further than prior proposals, Abbott unveils a plan to slow Texas property tax growth,” BY BRANDON FORMBY AND PATRICK SVITEK, JAN. 16, 2018,10 AM, which states: “Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday unveiled a plan to limit annual local governments’ property tax revenue growth to 2.5 percent. To increase revenue beyond that, governments would need approval from two-thirds of voters.”
If you like and agree with the Governor’s idea, let him know!
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I think a tax increase is inevitable. El Pasoans want everything but don’t want to pay. They’re sceaming new streets. The voters wanted ALL the QOL projects. They don’t want to see any fee increase for swimming pools or golf, etc. And now its time to pay the piper.
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Voters who wanted any one of the QOL projects were forced by the structure of the ballot to vote for all of them. Not by accident was the ballot so structured…Want the Children’s Museum restored? Have to vote for that Multipurpose Center, which magically would be turned into a sports arena (oops, we forgot to say that real entertainment is sports!). Some of us voted no, just on general principles…but we were not the majority.
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And let’s not forget the overwhelming “majority” who voted. 30% of registered voters when to the polls in the Q of L bond election. The majority who saddled us with this debt represented about 17% of registered voters. I voted no. I think blaming all voters for this is wrong–13% of us got it right and voted no.
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The QofL bond issue was held at the same time as the 2012 presidential election. Turnout was 48%, not 30%.
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48% of REGISTERED voters. Whether it’s 17% or 48%, participation by less than half of registered voters is shameful.
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We also received a new one-time tax from the EP Electric rebate. Our city leaders decided to take a cut of the public’s rebate, just a few weeks ago.
Pretty easy to grab money in this town.
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