PSB Talks City’s Future Growth Plan

The Public Service Board, which controls El Paso County’s water, discussed the city’s future growth plan at its board meeting Wednesday morning.

The big question — considering the water situation in the Sun City — is which direction should El Paso grow? West, Northeast or East? “We were concerned that some of the land use assignments and some of the consideration with regard to water perhaps were not being properly addressed,” PSB President and CEO Ed Archuleta said of the city’s new comprehensive plan.

Archuleta thinks El Paso’s water situation should be a big part of planning which way the city develops. “There’s a limit, so to speak, in terms of what we should be doing,” he added.

The PSB, which charges impact fees to developers for water and sewer hook-ups, which are often passed on to homebuyers, says the most accessible water is in the Northeast, West and Upper Valley.

“If you go to East El Paso, you get a much more different situation,” Archuleta said. “This has been going on for years and has been acceptable so far. But we believe that it’s time to really say, ‘We think we’ve gone far enough in certain areas.'”

Jason King, Town Planner for Dover, Kohl and Partners, a Miami firm putting together the city’s new comprehensive plan, says it seems as though the PSB’s environmental goals coincide with his firm’s urban design and livability goals.

“It is a lot easier to revitalize places when there are contracts to make it more difficult to move outward,” King said.

Borderland builders and developers, however, don’t like to be told where they can develop. And they voiced their concerns during Wednesday’s meeting.

“What concerns us is not knowing which way to move forward,” said Ray Adauto, Executive Vice President of the El Paso Association of Builders. “The El Paso Association of Builders is obviously concerned with which way development goes and how we proceed from here. Costs have to be part of the decision making in this.”

PSB Board member Rick Bonart said he’d like to see market forces drive in which direction the city develops. And that can be done, he said, by adjusting impact fees in those areas like the East Side, where hooking up to water and sewer lines is projected to be most expensive.

“If we’re not charging enough for impact fees to balance the infrastructure,” Bonart said, “that’s where you can begin to place your influence.”

The new comprehensive plan for El Paso is expected to be adopted sometime in September.

To view the city’s previous 1925 * 1962 plan, click on the following link http://www.curreyadkins.com/The-1925-City-Planweb.html