Political cat fight

May 25, 2017

We live in interesting times.

Our county judge and our EPISD school board president both seem to want to be our next United States congressman.

The Times has been pretty much hands off in regard to the situation over at EPISD.  That is up until now.

Word on the street is that the county judge’s operatives have decided to sick the Times on the school board president and the superintendent.  Unfortunately the situation at EPISD will give the Times a lot to write about.

Some say that the school superintendent and board president are toast.

The board president comes from the moneyed side of the power equation in El Paso.

Will we see her and her supporters now talking openly about the problems over at the county?  Will they put financial pressure on the Times?

Will the editor of the Times be caught in the middle?

Stay tuned.

We deserve better

Brutus

7 Comments | County Government, El Paso Independent School District, El Paso Times | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Property tax rates compared to other cities

May 22, 2017

The “50-State Property Tax Comparison Study for taxes paid in 2015” from the Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence has just been published.

The study is 103 pages long and unfortunately lists El Paso in the lists of cities that have the highest tax rates.  Their numbers as they relate to El Paso are:

Homestead property tax rate–3rd highest among the 50 largest cities

Industrial property tax rate for properties valued between one and 25 million dollars–3rd highest among the 50 largest cities (second highest for properties valued at $100,000)

Apartment property tax rate–10th highest among the 50 largest cities

These numbers are before the majority of the quality of life bonds and school district bonds (EPISD and Ysleta) are sold.

Recruiters needed

Do we have any volunteers for the job of bringing new businesses to El Paso?

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Bound to fail

May 12, 2017

According to the Times a lawsuit has been filed claiming that Texas state senate bill 4 violates the 10th amendment to the United States constitution.

It makes sense that some groups are opposed to bill.  What would make even more sense is if they based their objections on an argument that they can win.

The wording of the 10th is:

The powers not delegated to the United States  by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Evidently one of the statements in the lawsuit is “SB4 supports otherwise to wrest this autonomy from local governments…”.

The 10th does not address the autonomy of local governments.  That is done in our state constitution.

Our state government has powers over our local governments just as our feral government has powers over the various states.

The lawsuit is basically asking a court to declare that state governments have no power over local ones.  Chaos would be the result if that were to happen.

The Times did not mention this.  Maybe everyone involved should read our constitution.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Debt totals

May 5, 2017

Some of you have asked how much debt we have at the other taxing entities in El Paso.

This graphic came from the city’s 2016 certified annual financial report:

Your home cannot be in both the El Paso and Ysleta districts so you will need to subtract out whichever one is not applicable to you.

The debt total for the other taxing entities is almost two billion dollars.  Subtract $400,000,000 to eliminate a school district and you find that the total that applies to you is about 1.6 billion dollars.

That does not include the $668,000,000 that EPISD will issue soon.

Add the 1.6 billion to the $2,455,000,000 that the city owes and the total comes to around four billion dollars.

Your share is about $18,125.

You might keep that in mind when deciding about voting tomorrow.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Your portion of the city debt

April 27, 2017

If we use the United States census bureau numbers there were 220,682 households in the city of El Paso as of December 2015.

The 2.1 billion dollars of city bond debt then divides into just at $10,000 per household.

Those numbers do not include our unfunded pension fund obligations or the majority of the quality of life projects.

They do not include school district debt or county debt.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

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