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
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
Item 26.1 on the Tuesday, August 9, 2016 city council agenda is a real jewel. It reads:
An Ordinance adopting the City of El Paso Bike Plan as the official bicycle master plan for the City of El Paso and to incorporate this plan as an addendum to Plan El Paso.
The backup material includes a 197 page report. This page is part of the Vision and Goals portion of the report:
Objective two has a goal date of January 2017. That’s five months from now. Notice that the current strategy to accomplish the goal is “No current defined strategy”.
Yet they want to make this plan part of our city’s future.
We deserve better
Brutus
6 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
Recently a 21-year-old man was found not guilty of murder by an El Paso jury.
He had been in jail since August 29, 2013 while he was waiting for trial.
This quote comes from a Times article about the situation:
“It’s not a secret. Mr. Montoya (one of the prosecutors) said it in his close, ‘I wish we had proof, but we don’t.'”
We deserve better
Brutus
3 Comments | State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
Our county commissioners are trying to use arithmetic to justify the massive pay raises they just gave themselves.
One of our astute readers gave us a chart showing the Texas counties with large populations and how much their commissioners are paid.
If you take their salary and divide it by the number of people in the county you end up with how much they are paid for each person that they are to represent.
The results:
Bexar (San Antonio) 6 cents
Dallas 5 cents
Harris (Houston) 4 cents
Tarrant (Fort Worth) 8 cents
El Paso 11 cents
We deserve better
Brutus
13 Comments | County Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus
elpasospeak 
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