It’s Saturday.
What’s on your mind?
We deserve better
Brutus
Communication
April 16, 2020Some of the readers have been sending messages on various social and communication platforms that require user names and passwords.
If you wish to send us something please email to brutusep@yahoo.com
Thank you for your continued involvement.
Brutus
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Posted by Brutus
Don’t cut sound governance
April 16, 2020Do they think about what they are saying?
This slide comes from a presentation to city council:
The slide shows proposed reductions in spending by category.
Do we really want them to spend less money on “Sound Governance”?
We deserve better
Brutus
4 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
It’s time to cut back
April 15, 2020Here’s what city staff is telling us they are predicting the budget effect of COVID-19 will be:
The are expecting a revenue shortfall of over $26 million.
These are preliminary numbers. Many of us would expect that number to get worse.
Employee expense is far and away the largest portion of the city budget.
It is time for layoffs.
We deserve better
Brutus
19 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
Another burden
April 14, 2020It’s time to pay the piper.
We were told that our ballpark would be paid for with hotel occupancy taxes. The city raised our hotel occupancy tax to the highest in the state to make that possible.
The state legislature reacted by putting a cap on how much a city can charge–they set the maximum rate at El Paso’s.
As a result the city cannot raise the rate.
When hotel occupancy taxes are not sufficient to pay the debt payments on the ballpark the money has to be taken from the city’s general fund.
Take a look at this:
Don’t expect travelers on Interstate 10 to stop in El Paso when they can go to another city where they will pay less.
Sales tax revenue, franchise tax revenue, property tax revenue–actually all revenue sources for the city are expected to drop as a result of the current COVID situation.
The ballpark will become a larger expense to the general fund at the same time that revenues are dropping.
In Over our navels in debt we pointed out that 57% of our property taxes in 2019 were used to pay for debt.
We need to stop building luxuries until we get our financing in order.
We deserve better
Brutus
13 Comments | Ball park, City government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
elpasospeak 
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