Monday\u2019s Commissioners Court meeting<\/a>, several commissioners pushed back on Gonzalez\u2019s statements, saying the issue is not that staffing requests were denied, but that they were never formally submitted with the data required for consideration.<\/p>\n\u201cWe have not denied his request for staff. We have not accepted request for staffing,\u201d County Chief Administrator Betsy Keller told the court. \u201cHe hasn\u2019t been able to submit staffing requests the last couple of years\u2026his requests have not been able to be submitted for evaluation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keller said departments must justify new positions by demonstrating efficient use of current staffing and providing metrics. She said Gonzalez \u201cisn\u2019t meeting our basic standard to request staff.\u201d<\/p>\n
County Judge Ricardo Samaniego echoed the frustration.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the hardest things is the discrepancy between what’s coming out of his office and then what we’re trying to accomplish,\u201d Samaniego said. \u201cIt\u2019s confusing the community tremendously.\u201d<\/p>\n
Without extra personnel, Gonzalez said his office could not review title submissions quickly enough, delaying funding for dealerships and even risking lost sales.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said the Westside office \u201cis a low-volume office and is equipped with the necessary workstations to review Dealer work,\u201d and was \u201cthe obvious choice\u201d to repurpose.<\/p>\n
To keep up with the workload, Gonzalez has also begun closing other tax offices one day a week and redirecting staff to help reduce the backlog of electronic dealer transactions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Commissioner Jackie Butler said her office has received an increasing number of calls from residents who showed up at the Eastside Annex to renew vehicle registrations or pay taxes \u2014 only to find the office unexpectedly closed.<\/p>\n
“They\u2019re taking time off work and adjusting their schedules\u2026 and it\u2019s not always easy for them to travel across town,\u201d Butler said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She requested clearer communication from the tax office and potentially a separate agenda item to address closures if they continue.<\/p>\n
El Paso County Human Resources Manager Valeria Fernandez reported that the tax office currently has seven vacancies, with two of those positions expected to be filled in January.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Three recent promotions created openings for two customer relations specialist positions and one intermediate customer relations specialist position.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A vacant accounting specialist intermediate role is anticipated to be filled soon, which will leave an entry-level accounting specialist position open; that position has already been posted and tested for.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The office is also concluding the testing phase for additional customer relations specialist candidates, and an investigator position was recently vacated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fernandez said there are currently 576 pending WebDEALER transactions, a reduction of 305 from the previous week, and noted that the office is scheduled to work two Saturday overtime sessions in December.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Commissioners also pointed out that Gonzalez has used about $11,000 of the $20,000 in overtime funding allocated to his office.<\/p>\n
During the meeting, Keller told commissioners that the large counties she contacted have not added staffing or overtime in response to HB 718, saying many of them conducted early training to help minimize errors before the law took effect.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She noted that only three counties, Denton, Montgomery and Harris, have added new positions, with Harris County hiring 20 full-service deputies as part of the opening of a new office.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The county\u2019s Time and Motion study, expected in the coming weeks, is intended to determine whether the El Paso tax office needs additional staffing and how its operations compare to other counties of similar size.<\/p>\n
Commissioners also agreed they want Gonzalez to attend the next weekly update to answer questions directly about closures, staffing and workflow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gonzalez said he expects a surge in vehicle sales during the holidays, tax refund season, and end-of-year promotions that \u201cwill place us in a backlogged position.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf our workload stays busy, I may not be able to open this office to the public,\u201d he said, adding that reopening is dependent on the Commissioner\u2019s Court approving more resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You can still visit the county\u2019s six remaining locations for registration and property tax services<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — El Paso County\u2019s Westside Tax Office has been closed since Dec. 1, according…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-83728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}