City Approves Debt; Taxes Might Increase

The El Paso City Council has approved taking on about $64 million in debt to pay for what it calls necessary projects – a move that could potentially increase your taxes in the next few years.

The city won’t start taking on that debt until about 2014, at which point, depending on factors such as city revenue and an increase in home valuations, your city property tax bill might increase.

Out of the $64 million in certificates of obligation, $21.5 million is for a new city information technology system. The city manager said the current IT system is slow and antiquated.

There’s also $10 million to reconstruct Montwood Street on the east side, a street familiar with flooding.

Also, $6 million will go toward bringing the last part of the Pasodale neighborhood in the Lower Valley up to par with city standards by building drainage and sidewalks.

There’s also more than $7 million in the plan to replace several fire stations, among other projects.

City representatives also approved increasing the amount of your annual property tax bill that goes toward debt. Currently, only 25 cents of the tax rate goes toward debt. They authorized potentially increasing that number, if necessary, to 27 cents. The current tax rate is about 61 cents per every $100 of value of your house. Once calculated, the city increased by 8 percent the portion of your tax bill that can go toward debt service.

“It’s stuff that we really have to do. We don’t really have a choice, but to repave these streets, pave these alleys, build these fire stations; it could result in a tax increase, it could not. It really depends on things that we can’t quite see right now,” said City Representative Beto O’Rourke.

The city is also going to look into other funding sources, in case there are other ways to pay for the projects to avoid the debt, though it is approved.

Only Representative Eddie Holguin voted against the move.

One political candidate said he thought it was unfair for the current city council to pass on debt to future elected leaders. “In less than 30 days, half of this council may be replaced and the fact that you are going to indebt the future council and put the contrain of 66-million dollars on their back that they can do nothing about is irritating”, said Ric Shecter, who is running for the city council seat that represents the Upper Valley and parts of the Westside, including Kern.