Do businesses pay their fair share in El Paso?

September 15, 2014

Bear with me please, we are going to do a little bit of arithmetic here.  Getting numbers in one place for the El Paso situation has been a challenge.

Several of our local politicians are complaining that our homeowners are shouldering an unfair part of the property tax burden.  Businesses are getting an unfair break according to them.

According to this article in El Paso Inc. local commercial properties were valued a $6.4 billion by the central appraisal district last year.  We have been told that commercial values are flat this year.

The county placed the total value of property in the county at $36.1 billion for their 2014 tax year.

That makes the appraised value of commercial property at about 1/6 of all property.

San Antonio

El Paso is frequently compared to San Antonio as being a place that we should aspire to be more like, success wise.

This article in the San Antonio Express-News tells us that Bexar county’s commercial property values are “about $21 billion” out of their total valuation of $120.6 billion.

That’s about 1/6, just like us.

Tax rates

Now let’s look at the tax rates in the two cities for 2013:

San Antonio’s city tax rate is .56569 per hundred dollars of valuation while El Paso was at .6783 per hundred.  We are 20% higher.

Bexar county was at .296187 while El Paso county was at .4331.  We are 46% higher.

The San Antonio school district came in at 1.3576.  Our Ysleta district has the highest rate of the school districts in the city.  Their number was 1.36 per hundred, virtually the same as San Antonio.  EPISD came in at 1.235.

Larger tax base

Bexar county properties are valued at 3 1/3 times greater than El Paso county’s.  The 2012 population of Bexar county was 1.786 million people while El Paso county’s was 644,964 making Bexar about 2.8 times more populous than El Paso.

Many arguments can be made as to why Bexar has a larger tax base.  Unfortunately we are still left with the fact that we in El Paso  had the 7th highest tax rate among the top 50 cities in the United States in 2013.  That is before the bill for the downtown projects and the quality of life bonds adds even more.

The new city manager was quoted recently about how “wants” somehow become “needs” in El Paso.

Maybe if we started to live within our means and elected competent government officials  we would have a better chance of attracting businesses to town.

One thing is certain however.  At least when compared to San Antonio our businesses are paying the same share of the tax burden.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

 

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

Dwindling Times

September 13, 2014

Talking with M. T. Cicero the other day we discussed a view about what some of the Times’ problem is.

With the ready availability of national and international news on an instant basis through electronic sources, local newspapers have lost part of what made them desirable to their readers.  By the time the daily newspaper comes out many of us have already heard about the out of town issues.

That leaves the Times with the ability to publish local content in a more in-depth manner than the television and radio stations, thus offering their readers something that they cannot get elsewhere.

Unfortunately the Times has chosen to literally sell itself to our local governments and the power group behind the scenes.  No wonder they have nothing to fill their newspaper.

All we get is coverage of publicity pieces prepared by their masters with little to no investigative reporting.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

Different rules for the rulers

September 5, 2014

I am struck by the hypocrisy of the situation over at the El Paso Independent School District.

The other day 16 school district employees were evidently told that their would either resign or they would be fired.  Their offense?  Their GED certificates might have been false.  Many of them were in custodial positions.  These people are hardworking caretakers of our children and our facilities.

Why the ultimatum to resign or be fired?  Could it be that the district was trying to keep their unemployment costs down by scaring the individuals?  Was criminal action against the employees threatened?  In the end we may see the lawyers swoop in on this one and the taxpayers will have to pay the bill for the district’s poor handling of this situation.

On the other hand we have a superintendent that does not have the state mandated superintendent’s certificate that he needs to hold his position.

His contract with the district gives him three years to obtain the certificate.  We will pay for all expenses related to him trying for it, including travel expenses for him and his wife.

We deserve better

Brutus

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

A rose by any other name

August 5, 2014

We unfortunately know that El Paso residents have the 7th highest property tax bill of the 50 largest cities in the United States.  Our position will climb when we start factoring in debt service for the bonds that city council has been selling.

We learned last week that for those of us in the EPISD district our city takes 25% of our local taxes compared to a state-wide average of 17%.  The district is getting 46% of those local taxes compared to 54% statewide.  Our priorities seem screwed up.

But wait!

As though the city trough is not deep and wide enough city council is considering raising the city’s tax rate 2.1 cents per hundred dollars of evaluation to 69.9 cents.  That works out to about a 3% increase, or $26 dollars a year on what we are told is the average home (one valued at $124,000).

Wait again!

Council also wants to raise the franchise fee that our electric company is charged from 4% to 5%.  The fee is passed on to the consumers, so you and I will pay it.  If this money was to be generated through property taxes they would have to add 1.45 cents to our property tax rate.

That puts us at an increase of 3.55 cents per hundred.

Keep waiting!

Council is also considering adding another $1 per month to our trash bill.  The city runs that service and it generates a profit that is taken from the department and used by the city.  The bill would thus increase $12 per year or the equivalent of another .96 cents on our tax bill.

Now we are at 4.51 cents per hundred.

The answer is:

City council is also considering imposing a franchise tax on our city owned water utility.  That tax would be added to our water bills thus generating another $3.5 million for the city each year from our wallets.

This works out to about another 1.05 cents per hundred brining us to an increase of 5.56 cents per hundred or about an 8% tax increase.

The mayor is right

He was quoted the other day as having said “It’s not a hidden tax”.  He is absolutely right–it is a tax increase right out in the open.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

 

7 Comments | City government, El Paso Independent School District, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Take it from the kids again

July 29, 2014

The Texas comptroller of public accounts published a report titled “Your Money and the Taxing Facts”.  The report discusses taxes in Texas.

One subject her report addresses is local property taxes in 2010.  The breakdown was provided with four categories:

Entity                             % of local total statewide

Cities                                        16.78

Counties                                   16.31

Special districts*                       13.38

School districts                          53.52

 *these include hospital and community college districts

Not us

I was surprised to see that:

Our city takes 25.26% of our local property taxes compared with the 16.78% cities take on the average statewide.

Our county is right in line at 16.13% compared with 16.31% for counties statewide.

Our special districts are at 12.61%, thus under the statewide average of 13.38%

And for those of us in the El Paso Independent School District we are paying 45.99% in school taxes compared with 53.52% in the remainder of the state.

Vote for change

Some at the city have called us “crazies” for being concerned about their spending habits.

These numbers need to be justified or they need to be changed.

The simple facts are that we spend almost 8% less of our local tax money on education and almost 9% more on our city government than the rest of the state.

If no other numbers call us to action, these should.  The fact that we have the 7th highest tax burden of people in the largest 50 cities in the United States should have been enough to call us to action.  The fact that we are short changing our children and feathering the city’s nest is just wrong.

We deserve better

Brutus

 

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

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »