EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) – El Paso city leaders are facing tough choices ahead as a new five-year financial projection shows city expenses are on track to outpace revenue. The shortfall is raising questions about how the city will balance its budget without adding to the burden of local taxpayers.

“Recently, it’s just the value that goes up year over year, and the taxes go up year over year. So it’s a burden for the community as a whole and for homeowners in particular. I feel like the commercial tax base is so much smaller or handles so much less of the tax burden in El Paso, and that that’s hard for all of us,” Kristi Borden, a longtime El Paso homeowner, said.

During a city council meeting last month, El Paso’s Chief Financial Officer, Robert Cortinas, presented five year outlook to City Council.

The preliminary numbers he presented project that with current commitments to invest heavily in the police and fire departments, along with other rising expenses, the city would spend about $204 million more than it brings in over the next five years.

Cortinas explained that property and sales taxes are the city’s two biggest revenue drivers, accounting for 72 percent of the general fund. While he expects that revenue to grow in the coming years, his projections show that city spending will increase at almost twice that rate.

“You can balance the budget year after year with these sort of one-off, one-time adjustments either on the revenue or expenditure side,” Cortinas said. “But at the end of the day, are we properly funding all of the city services that the city provides, or are we meeting the expectations of the community?… as we look to the long term, do we have the available revenue, the available resources to be able to fund the services that we can provide at the level that we need to fund them at?”

With property taxes already weighing heavily on El Paso homeowners, many are worried about how the city will manage to balance its budget without passing the cost on to residents.

Mayor Renard Johnson, who campaigned on a promise to lower property taxes for El Pasoans, was recently asked how he plans to honor his promise to taxpayers as the Ciity faces the tough task of balancing the upcoming budget.

“To lower your property taxes, we have to bring in more of a commercial base to the city of El Paso. Creating a higher sales tax revenue will do the same thing,” Johnson said. “You had a record number of sales tax revenue in the month of December 2025 at $16 million. So creating a higher sales tax ultimately will lower your residential property taxes. We have a lot of work to do in that area.”

Johnson was also asked why the City did not instead adopt a no new revenue tax rate, knowing property tax values were going to rise, thereby causing many homeowners to still see their property tax bill increase.

“So this was the lowest tax rate that, El Paso has had in a long period of time during the budget that we just did. So there’s a lot we got to do there, a lot of work to still do, but it’s going to take a while. We didn’t get there overnight with the higher property taxes. So it just takes a time. You have to make an investment in order to lower the taxes.” Johnson responded.

For many El Pasoans, however, the financial outlook and rising property values remain a major source of concern. Borden was asked if she felt confident City leadership would find a way to effectively lower homeowner’s tax bill.

“I can answer that more definitively when I get my tax bill,’ Borden said. “When I see it stay the same or go down, I would say ‘yes, he’s on track,’ but I mean, we haven’t seen relief in a long, long time.”

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