They pitch these projects as drivers of economic development, but they stifle the monetization of local culture, and tax (literally) the market’s disposable income.
El Paso is poor. Here’s the skinny from DepartmentofNumbers.com:
The Census ACS 1-year survey reports that the median household income for the El Paso Texas metro area was $51,002 in 2021, the latest figures available. El Paso median household income is $15,961 lower than the median Texas household income and $18,715 less than the US median household income.
That means that most El Paso households don’t have money to spend on ballgames or concerts. However, every El Paso household pays sales tax, and property tax. (Even if you don’t own real estate, the property tax that everyone else pays is baked into the price of every loaf of bread, every six pack of beer, and every jug of milk, that you buy at your local grocer. Don’t get me started on rent. Renters don’t get the benefit of the Homestead Exemption that people who own their house get.)
Obviously charging poor people taxes so rich people can go to ballgames or concerts is not only unfair, it’s patently immoral. But there’s another, more insidious, cost to these big entertainment projects.
Money spent on concerts and ballgames is money that can’t be spent at other, smaller, entertainment venues. Like smaller live music venues. Like local theater. Like that new pizza joint that just opened in your neighborhood.
Would you rather visit a city with the same facilities as a couple of hundred cities in the country, or would you rather appreciate a distinctive local culture?
It’s not just money. It’s time, too. Even well-to-do El Pasoans only have a limited number of nights that they want to go out. Every night spent at some national franchise, or copy cutter, big, standardized, off-the-rack, entertainment venue is a night that’s not spent nurturing our local talent.
You may remember the highly touted, award winning, Plan El Paso, in which our city planners hope to turn El Paso into a walkable community. Walkable communities are dependent on all those small, fine-grain businesses, like local coffee shops and bookstores. Those small, fine-grain businesses that are deprived of the income necessary for them to succeed by big, municipally subsidized entertainment venues.
And it’s not just our local mom and pop entertainment venues. Every business in El Paso is competing for the same limited amount of disposable income
Running a small business is tough. Every small business owner knows that. All any small business owner wants is a level playing field. But our local governments have their thumbs on the scale, picking winners and losers in a lot-less-than-free market.
Local politicians are enthusiastically complicit in reducing the number of choices that consumers have available to them. When they promise more quality of life, they’re not talking about your quality of life. My quality of life is better when I have more money in my pocket and I get to decide how to spend it. I don’t need some politician telling me how to improve my own quality of life.
So, how we gonna change this?
Definitely do not elect Renard ! He and his financial machine want the big ticket venues that most El Pasoans cannot afford now and definitely won’t be able to when taxes keep going up!! The park deck over the freeway will just be a perpetual drain on taxpayers of this city and the water it will take in a desert environment is nonexistent and it will never look like the plans they present!
What Cdk says.
We have a history of electing the same old people with lies about their ideas and plans to make life better. We watch when they are elected hit us more property taxes. I don’t think either candidate is great but I’d vote Kennedy before Renard Johnson . Cassandra Hernandez/Veronica Escobar and Beto are endorsing Renard Johnson that’s enough for me to know he is not going to be for El Pasoans.
Bravo, well stated. Keep preaching the good word. Sad the voters didn’t hear it and vote accordingly this year. Though I don’t think for Mayor there were any great options, there were some outstanding candidates for City Council who I wish were more successful.