Bob Moore, El Paso Matters President and CEO, covers top stories each week.
Scott Brocato:
Let's start with the first story: after hours of tense debates, a divided El Paso City Council adopts a budget and raises taxes.
Bob Moore:
We've talked a few times in recent weeks about these tax proposals that El Paso governments were presenting, and the initial proposals were to basically go for the maximum rate that was allowed without having to ask voters for approval, which is about 5% over the prior year rate. Both the city and county proposed that kind of rate. And then this week, both of them backed off to some degree. The city council lowered its tax rate by just a little bit. So instead of having like $120 impact on an average home, it's $105 this year, which is tough for people right now. We've got inflation just chewing through things. And in El Paso in particular, we're dealing with suddenly very high electric bills and very high water bills. So people are feeling the strain. And that obviously played a big role the city council discussion, but they also talked about the needs the city has; and if they don't face the needs this year, they're just kind of kicking the can down the road.
The big ticket items continue to be public safety: the firefighters contract is up this year, the police union's contract is up next year, and so those are really driving costs in there. So what the city wound up cutting back on a little bit was money for animal services and some parks and improvements and things like that. And so they lowered the budget a little bit and kept the tax rate down just a hair.
The county, on the other hand, cut about $45 million out of its budget proposal and got the tax rate down to what's known as the "no new revenue rate," which is what they need to raise the same amount of money on the same properties that they did a year ago. Even with that, the tax bill on average value homes going to increase by about $40, simply because the valuations of residential properties increase much faster than commercial properties, so homeowners continue to sort of bear the brunt of the tax situation in El Paso.
Scott Brocato:
Well, we've talked about the changing population a few times and how it will reshape the region's future. There was recently a summit with El Paso Matters and experts discussed that very thing.
Bob Moore:
Yeah, and so basically what we did is we took some of the conversations that you and I have had over the last couple of years and put them on a stage and invited a couple of hundred people to come out and listen to it and then really begin to try to explore some solutions, particularly in three main areas.
One is K through 12. We know the enrollment is declining rapidly there. The second area is workforce. That's kind of the next ripple effect as fewer and fewer kids get out of school, there's going to be fewer and fewer people entering the workforce. And then finally, this issue of housing, which is interesting because even though our population has been flat to down in recent years, the number of households is growing because people are living in smaller and smaller family units.
And so how do we build housing infrastructure for El Paso that meets those needs? And we didn't get any final answers out of that, nor did we expect to. But we kind of view this as the kind of the starting point of ongoing community conversations about what these changing demographics mean for El Paso. As we talked about a couple weeks ago, we've got an aging population here that's going to have quite a bit of impact. We know we're losing more and more young people.
So it's a community that has a number of challenges. And we're not alone: these are trends that are going on across the country, including in Dona Ana County. So there's not going to be a magic solution, but we do have a chance, I think, to sort of claim some hold on our destiny that these demographic trends don't have to continue the way they are. We do have some ways up to impact that, and I think we need to decide as a community where we want to go.
Scott Brocato:
And finally, Texas Governor Greg Abbott was in El Paso recently, and he proposed legislation capping administrative spending in schools.
Bob Moore:
So this is the second time Governor Abbott's been here in the last few weeks, which should tell you that there's an election coming up, and you'd be right. This time he spoke about the public education system. He was kind of vague on some of the details, but basically the overall proposal was that 70% of a school's budget should go to the classroom. And he really didn't define what he meant, but obviously what he's trying to suggest is that schools are spending too much money on administration and not enough on classrooms. And that is something that you hear from teachers as well.
But he really wasn't specific on what counted it as a classroom expenditure and what counted as an administrative expenditure or a support expenditure. And Claudia Lorena Silva, our education reporter, kind of looked at local school budgets, and most of our schools in our area are spending about 10 to 11 percent of their money on what is clearly administrative functions. which means that the other 90% is going elsewhere.
So the question becomes, what's classroom spending? And the easiest example for people to process is, we pay for buses to get kids to school. Is that a classroom expense or not? And one of the pushbacks on the governor obviously was that the state has cut funding for years and years in real dollar terms and increased strains on schools. They also have begun this vouchers program that's going to divert money that could have gone to traditional public schools and charter schools and send it to private schools. But at some point we have to look at the revenue that we're putting in the schools as well. So that will be a very lively debate between Governor Abbott and Gina Hinojosa's Democratic opponent heading into the November election.
Scott Brocato:
All right, and where can folks read about those stories and more?
Bob Moore:
Stay up to date with all the most important news in our region at ElPasoMatters.org.