How not to try to attract industry

July 1, 2019

The Lincoln Institute and the Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence jointly publish an annual report comparing property taxes among the 50 states.

The report for the 2018 tax year is out.  You can see the whole thing here.

This year’s report lists El Paso as having the highest property tax rate on industrial properties of the top 50 cities in the United States.

The report shows three breakdowns: smaller industrial firms (land and building value up to $100,000), mid-sized firms (land and building value up to $1 million), and larger firms ($25 million).

We had the highest tax rate in all three categories last year.

Is this the way to attract industry?

We will probably read some comments about the local governments granting tax abatements to incoming industrial firms.  Remember that those abatements have a finite life.  After that the firms end up paying the regular tax rate.

The people that operate those firms have to pay property taxes on their homes, or if they are carpetbaggers through their apartment rentals.

We deserve better

Brutus

10 Comments | City government, County Government, El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

All star subsidy

June 21, 2019

This is on the Tuesday, June 24, 2019 city council agenda:

A Resolution authorizing the City Manager or designee to make necessary budget transfers and to sign the Event Support Contract in an amount not to exceed $55,000.00 with MountainStar Sports Group LLC, dba/El Paso Stadium Operations Company for the City of El Paso to host the 2019 Triple-A Baseball All Star Game and Home Run Derby July 7 – 11, 2019.

What do you think of it?

We deserve better

Brutus

11 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

This is not on time performance

June 20, 2019

Can anyone inform us as to the status of the new Sun Metro Brio routes?

According to the Sun Metro website the Alameda route is scheduled to be up and running “Mid 2018”.

The Dyer route is scheduled to be up and running “Late 2018”.

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Closed meetings violations

June 17, 2019

The other day we wrote about apparent open meetings violations that the city committed recently.

The next day in a regular city council meeting their agenda contained the following after showing a portion of the meeting would be in executive session:

“Discussion and action on the following:”

The agenda then listed 12 items that they planned to handle in executive session.

The problem here is that they cannot take action in executive session.  They must do it in open session, which is open to the public.

We deserve better

Brutus

3 Comments | City government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Open meetings violations

June 12, 2019

If the following two documents are correctly done our city council and our city attorney are in flagrant violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act.

They held a special city council meeting on Monday, May 13, 2019.  They posted an agenda that told us that they would be considering seven items.

The agenda for the special city council meeting on Monday, May 13, 2019 can be read here.

The minutes of the meeting reflect an entirely different story.  From the minutes:

“The agenda items for the Regular City Council [meeting] of May 13, 2019 were reviewed.”

According to their minutes they reviewed items from a future city council meeting.  They have the right to do that but it has to be on the agenda of the meeting where they do it.  In this case it was not.

According to their records they did not have a regular city council meeting on May 13, 2019 but they did have one on May 14, 2019.

The May 13, 2019 meeting was a special city council meeting that had a publicly posted agenda.  That agenda did not include the items that were to be considered in the meeting the day after.

However the minutes of the May 13 meeting indicate that they did consider items that were going to be part of the May 14, 2019 meeting.

According to the Texas supreme court “The notice [agenda] must be sufficient to apprise the general public of the subjects to be considered during the meeting. ”

The minutes of that meeting can be read here.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

5 Comments | City government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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