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Lily Limon, candidate for District 7 city representative.<\/p>\nThe El Paso City Council on Monday was to hear a proposal from the city\u2019s Capital Improvement Department to implement a monthly fee for residents and businesses citywide to create a dedicated fund for street repairs \u2013 a basic service city leaders for decades have struggled to adequately fund.<\/p>\n
But the so-called transportation user fee was deleted from the agenda in a 5-3 vote without discussion or a presentation from city staffers who put the policy proposal together. The proposal wasn\u2019t up for a vote, but the discussion was meant to be the first in a series of meetings and public presentations before a vote on whether to implement it took place in March.<\/p>\n
The fee was pitched by city staffers as a way to create a dedicated revenue source specifically for road maintenance and repair, which City Manager Dionne Mack has consistently said is underfunded by tens of millions of dollars annually. The proposal included three fee scenarios: monthly fees on homeowners of $4.40, $7 or $11.37.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Businesses in the city would have also paid the user fees, which were larger than the household fee and depended on the size of the business.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
By deleting the item from the agenda, city leaders or council members can place the proposal on a future agenda for consideration \u2013 though it was unclear Monday whether that might happen.<\/p>\n
District 7 city Rep. Lily Lim\u00f3n led the push to kill the proposed fee discussion. City representatives Chris Canales, Josh Acevedo and Deanna Maldonado-Rocha voted against deleting the item.<\/p>\n
Lily Limon, candidate for District 7 city representative.<\/p>\n
Lim\u00f3n didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment. Canales called to have staff present the user fee information publicly, but didn\u2019t garner enough support.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The idea behind the transportation user fee was to create a pot of cash to repair roads, rather than issue debt to fund road maintenance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The city in recent years has largely funded street repairs with certificates of obligation \u2013 debt that doesn\u2019t require voter approval \u2013 and general obligation bonds approved by voters. In 2022, voters<\/a> approved a bond issue which allocated $237 million for street repaving and reconstruction, lighting and other amenities.\u00a0<\/p>\n The city allocates about $10 million per year from its operations budget funded primarily through property tax dollars, including $7 million for residential streets and $3 million for collector and arterial streets.<\/p>\n Robert Cortinas, the city\u2019s chief financial officer, said during a press conference last week that funding street maintenance with debt is unsustainable because of the interest cost and fees associated with issuing debt in the form of bonds for ongoing street repairs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf the city were to go out and issue $100 million of bonds, issue debt, that\u2019s about a 25-year payback,\u201d Cortinas said. \u201cYou\u2019re talking about that $100 million costing the city about $166 million. So, you\u2019re talking about $66 million just in interest costs in the 25-year time period.\u201d<\/p>\n The city maintains over 6,100 streets that span more than 2,400 miles. A city analysis found that 50% of the city\u2019s streets are classified as fair to very poor condition. And 52 miles of city streets need to be entirely reconstructed \u2013 meaning they\u2019re too damaged to only be resurfaced.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cortinas said resurfacing a mile of road costs about $1.5 million, while reconstruction costs about $14 million per mile of road. He framed the user fee as a long-term cost-saver because it would have given the city enough money to resurface roads consistently rather than deferring maintenance until roads deteriorate and have to be reconstructed.\u00a0<\/p>\n The city\u2019s chief engineer said keeping the city\u2019s street pavement in good condition would require resurfacing around 4% of the city\u2019s streets every year at a cost of about $75 million. The proposed fees would have generated between $29 million to $75 million in revenue each year.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe city currently has about $1.3 billion of debt outstanding that we need to pay off in principal, so we don\u2019t think that that\u2019s a sustainable source to be able to continue to issue debt for the maintenance piece,\u201d Cortinas said. \u201cIf we don\u2019t do something soon, eventually we\u2019re going to run into a situation where streets will not be able to resurfaced.\u201d<\/p>\n City officials said the fee could have been added onto El Paso Water bills, which already contain additional fees including for city trash bins and garbage service.\u00a0<\/p>\n On Monday, before deleting the user fee agenda item, the council went into executive session to discuss, among other things, a lawsuit filed against the city<\/a> by former state Rep. Joe Pickett in March 2021 that argued fees the city tacks onto water bills in El Paso are unlawful.<\/p>\n The $6 environmental services franchise fee charged on garbage collection bills was ruled unconstitutional by District Court Judge Patrick Garcia in March 2024. The city is appealing the ruling, but Pickett insists the new fee proposal that city council killed could have resulted in the same situation where not all of the money would have gone toward its intended purpose: street repairs.<\/p>\n