How much can you afford?

August 23, 2016

The Wednesday, August 17, 2016 front page of The El Paso Times was a doozy.

All of the articles were about potential tax increases from local governments.

Our city council wants a 5.29% tax increase.  The mayor vetoed their motion.

Our county hospital wants to raise their tax rate the maximum amount they can without triggering an election that would require approval by the voters.  Even with that increase they are projecting a $19 million deficit.  Keep in mind that this is a situation left to us by our former hospital administrator.  The new guy has only been on the job about a month and is the inheritor of this mess.

The El Paso Independent School District is calling for a $668.7 million bond election because of declining student enrollment.  Elrichiboy pointed out in Count Your Blessings how fortunate we are that enrollment has not reached zero.  If the bond issue passes school taxes will go up 15.25%.  At least we get to vote on this one.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

EPISD bonds–silver medal

August 22, 2016

If they had an olympic contest for the highest tax rate in the nation it looks like El Paso would come in at second place in another year or so if the EPISD bond issue passes.

In Climbing to the top we wrote that El Paso taxpayers only had to clmb over an effective property tax of 2.675% in order to be higher than Milwaukee.  The report we got our numbers from put us at 2.640%.

The city, county, and hospital district are working hard to get us a silver or gold too.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Paying for our schools — businesses

August 21, 2016

If a primary purpose of our public schools now is to develop competent workers, shouldn’t those businesses pay a portion of our education costs?

Right now the local portion of the costs are paid through property taxes.

If businesses are beneficiaries of our investment in education shouldn’t they help pay the bill?

Could they pay based upon their number of employees?

Would a percentage of the total payroll be more appropriate as a way to recognize the earning power created in our schools?

Some may consider these to be absurd alternatives to our present system.

We need to do something to fix our financing system for education.

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

A bad lesson

August 17, 2016

We were given another unfortunate example of how probably well intentioned government officials can overstep their authority.

This note was emailed to Coronado high school parents earlier this month:

Hello Parents:

This year all students are required to create an account with ApplyTexas.org. Students who need schedule changes or have been unable to print out their schedule online and are coming to registration to get their schedule, will not be able to do so without proof of registration on Apply Texas. In addition, Freshman and Sophomores must apply to El Paso Community College.   Juniors and seniors must apply to both EPCC and UTEP. This is done through the ApplyTexas.org website.

***************************************************

It would be nice if our schools spent more time teaching students about liberty.

In this case not only are the students being forced to do something that they may not want to do, but the community college and UTEP are also being bombarded with applications that have to be processed even though the students have no intention of attending those schools.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

 

 

7 Comments | El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

EPISD bonds–which is it?

August 16, 2016

A few days ago EPISD’s chief financial officer told the community that the district plans to issue the bonds in three separate offerings.  Most of us would understand that to mean that the district will need time to handle the locally unprecedented amount that they are planning to ask for.  The simple fact is that they have never handled anything this big.  In fact they are still wrestling with a much smaller bond issue almost ten years after we authorized it.

Now the chief financial officer is telling us that they plan to complete all of the projects within five years.

Bunk!

We deserve better

Brutus

 

10 Comments | El Paso Independent School District | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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