El Paso City Council Approves Tax Increase

In a razor-thin vote, the City Council on Tuesday approved a budget for fiscal year 2012 that will increase property taxes for residents within city limits.

In fiscal year 2011, a resident with a home valued at $100,000 paid the city $653.70. For 2012, they’ll pay $658.40. That’s an additional $4.70 per year.

Initially the city manager had presented a balanced 2012 budget, but also said parks, libraries, and streets required more money for improvements.

After two months of revisions and budget hearings, the city allocated an additional $1.7 million to what City Rep. Steve Ortega called ‘vital city services.’ The additional money consists of $300,000 for parks and land management, $400,000 for libraries and half a million each for streets and an equipment fund. The equipment money will mostly go toward more police patrol cars so that police teams can split up and cover more ground.

“The constituents that I represent have very clearly told me ‘we want better police response times, if we have parks, we want them maintained.’ And you can talk to my assistant in my office about the number of complaints we get every week concerning core services. If we do core services, I want to make sure we do them right,” said City Representative Steve Ortega who voted for the increase.

Newly-elected city rep. Cortney Niland was not convinced. “In the absence of value, people question costs. Yes, we approved $500,000 for street maintenance. But the majority of that is going to go toward re-striping. I don’t think our constituents are really going to see the value in that. When they say they want street maintenance, they want repaving of streets, fixing potholes”, she said.

Representatives Ann Morgan Lilly, Susie Byrd, Carl Robinson and Steve Ortega voted for the increase. Repesentative Michiel Noe, Emma Acosta, Cortney Niland and Eddie Holguin voted against it. Mayor John Cook broke the tie, voting for the increase.

Byrd said underfunding parks last year is what got the city in this situation – where they have to spend more money bringing them up to par. “Let’s not just do enough to get by. People expect a park that they can run around in and enjoy and that has grass, you know, those are some basic simple things,” she told the rest of council.

In an effort to avoid a tax hike, the city, last year slashed about $300,000 from the parks budget.

Representative Carl Robinson said he had heard from his constituents. “They says ‘why are my streets not paved, why don’t we have adequate police on our streets, we want to maintain our safety?’ So I have to balance those issues. Some say don’t raise taxes, others, the majority say take care of us,” he said.

But Acosta said the city’s 10% unemployment rate and constituents on a fixed income was enough to make her change her mind and not support the tax increase. “I have to listen to some people who put me in this office and when they come and they talk to me and they tell me that they’re on a fixed income, it’s difficult for me to say, too bad so sad,” she said.

Lilly, who represents the Upper Valley and parts of the Westside said she had only received one negative comment about the increase. “I’ve had a different response, I had one constituent who told me that $4.70 was a real bargain,” she said.

The budget will also provide for two new police academies, a new fire station, additional parks, a library book fund and more recycling opportunities.

“It’s in our best interest to look at other sources of revenue instead of constantly going back and increasing the taxes by slides amounts just to do things that i don’t really think are going to provide real value for tax payer dollars”, said Niland.

No members of the public spoke during Tuesday’s final budget hearing.