Today I will stand before the El Paso City Council to advocate on your behalf that they do not raise our taxes. Below is what I plan to say. At the bottom, there is a link to download my Policy Brief that I will ask that it be entered into the record.
Today, I am again asking you to select the No-New-Revenue (NRR) property tax rate. If you do, El Paso homeowner’s property taxes will not increase in September.
At the August 4 Council meeting, I proposed approximately $21 million in budget deferments and reductions as a practical way of adopting the NRR without affecting essential city services. Instead of evaluating or adopting any of those recommendations, the Council increased the proposed budget and selected the “Voter Approval Property Tax Rate” of $0.809387 per $100 valuation. This is the highest tax rate that can be adopted without going to the voters.
As elected officials you have the power to impose the highest property tax rate allowed by law without an election. I urge you not to exercise that power against El Paso homeowners who are already overtaxed. They will be forced to pay more to the many other taxing entities in the County. Their electric bills are skyrocketing, groceries cost more, gasoline costs more. And now, instead of cutting spending, the City Council also wants more.
There are additional opportunities to cut spending as shown in Policy Brief.
The upcoming budget ordinance identifies programs such as a wellness benefit of up to $150 per employee and payments for employees assigned additional Lean Six Sigma duties. In the eleven-hundred-page budget, I could not find how much these activities would cost. If every one of the City’s 6,500 employees receives these payments that amounts to almost $1million dollars. I doubt that these activities and expenditures are more important than property tax relief.
The biggest additional opportunity in the proposed budget is the 65-day reserve fund. Although the staff maintains that this fund is untouchable and a best practice, the Government Finance Officers Association defines 60 days as best practice. If the City Council reduces this unrestricted reserve fund by just 5 days you will release $9 million dollars to the general fund and still leave over $370 million dollars in the reserve fund to run the city for two months.
By adopting these adjustments to the proposed budget, combined with the spending cuts recommended previously, this Council could easily adopt the No-New Revenue property tax rate, still provide adequate funding for essential City services, and finally give homeowners a break. I request that this graphic and policy brief be entered into the record. Thank you.
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