This slide comes from the city’s preliminary budget presentations for 2020:
Note that they plan to stabilize our tax base next year. That will be hard to do.
They plan to expand the downtown efforts, talk to the other local governments, and work on incentive policies.
In other words they haven’t figured out how to do it yet.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Tommy Gonzalez has a lot of audacity to continue to talk about stabilizing and expanding the tax base on the heels of pushing through the Great Wolf deal.
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The left part of the slide says stabilize and expand the tax base. The right side says they plan to give out more tax incentives to businesses. Looks like they are talking out of both sides of their mouths as usual.
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I agree that they haven’t figured it out yet; but, they seem to be working on it. What would you do? What is your solution? That’s what I want to hear about – solutions.
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Get serious. They haven’t been working on this in earnest. If they were serious about solving the problem, the Great Wolf deal and the land swap would never have happened. They would not have awarded tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks for the new Hunt Weststar Tower. They wouldn’t be talking about a new billion dollar bond. The list goes on.
Most people who comment here have been clear for years that part of the solution is to stop the crony capitalism and vanity projects. You were part of city council when it was giving away money and you didn’t do much to stop the gravy train. You even backtracked on ethics allegations and played victim.
Your soft on city hall comment sounds like a statement from a politician wanting to be back on the inside.
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Jim, they are kicking the can down the road. The right answer is put the remaining Q of L projects up for a vote showing the tax bite their operating costs will add to the budget and listing a budgeted total creation cost so folks can have all the facts before they vote. This vote for us to borrow more money and we’ll stabilize the tax rate crap is a big lie. So is the idea that the city would finally pay for infrastructure instead of wasting it on big donor wants. They realize they are out of money and they still haven’t built Mountain Star an arena for its soccer team, so once again they are trying to pull the wool over voters eyes. The streets in my neighborhood are literally crumbling into small pieces in so many places grass is growing through. I live in the Willows and pay $10k a year in property tax. Our association maintains our medians and pays the utilities on our streetlights. The least the city could do is keep the roads paved. It is time to redirect priorities, not with a billion dollar bond, but by refocusing priorities on the street repair promised in the last bond. Put that to a vote and see what El Pasoans really want.
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I want to hear your solutions former councilman.
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