From ElPasoMatters.org:
Between 2015 and 2025, the number of El Pasoans under age 65 grew by fewer than 4,000. The number of those 65 and older jumped by more than 42,000, including almost 15,000 who were 75 or older.
El Paso County is aging rapidly, Census Bureau population estimates show, which is reshaping a community long accustomed to a population much younger than the national average.
. . .
Multiple factors are driving the aging of El Paso – longer life spans, a steep decline in births, declining immigration, and continuing losses of young adults leaving El Paso for other communities in search of economic opportunities.
Those ungrateful kids. Don’t they know that the taxpayers of El Paso have spent more than a billion dollars to fix the city?
What about the ballpark? The Natatorium? The Children’s Museum, and the Mexican American Cultural Center? What about the water parks? Weren’t they supposed to stop the exodus?
Making El Paso more attractive to local young people was only one of the rationales for all those projects. Another reason we built them was to attract new businesses, to offset the onerous property tax burden born by residential property owners.
Here’s the QoL poster boy, Tripper Goodman, in the July 29, 2012, El Paso Inc.:
“This is an economic development issue. More importantly than anything, that is what people need to understand,” he says of the [2012 Quality of Life] bond.
. . .
“It would be a transformational change for this community,” Goodman says.
How’s that working out?
Those QoL bond projects, and the multiple other projects built off the same blueprint, definitely changed this community.
And not in a good way.
But don’t worry. El Paso Matters is on the job:
Population trends influence nearly every aspect of our community — from schools and housing to workforce development and economic opportunity.
El Paso Forward is a summit hosted by El Paso Matters that brings together regional leaders for a morning of thoughtful discussion grounded in data, diverse perspectives and informed dialogue. Through expert presentations and panel discussions, attendees will explore what today’s trends mean for tomorrow’s opportunities in El Paso.
El Paso Forward builds on El Paso Matters’ ongoing reporting about the issues shaping our community. Read some of our recent stories exploring the trends, challenges and opportunities influencing El Paso’s future.
I don’t suppose this will be an autopsy of what went wrong. A post mortem for El Paso’s future.
Look who some of the sponsors of this event are:
- The El Paso Electric Company
- Houghton Financial
- WestStar
- The Law Office or Steve Ortega, PLLC
- Marathon Oil
Well, they should certainly get to heart of this issue. I mean, they all sat ringside as our local leaders sold out the taxpayers and ratepayers and residents.
Wait. Weren’t those sponsors the same people, or proxies for the people, who sold us all out?
Do you suppose that people could be leaving El Paso because taxes keep rising, the streets are crumbling, and our local institutions are more concerned with their own financial success than the well being of the people who actually live here?
Do you suppose people might be leaving because even life-long residents were made painfully aware that local governments regard them as second class citizens?
I’m sure that El Paso Matters will ask the really tough questions from the panel of experts they convene. However, there is, as of yet, no announcement of who the members of this panel will be.
But I’m going to bet that it’ll be some members of the El Paso Chamber. The Borderplex Alliance. Maybe a representative of the Hispanic Chamber, and maybe some other hangers-on with their fingers in the pie.
(You know, I’ve always suspected that the Borderplex Alliance, nee Paso del Norte Group, was more concerned with protecting the entrenched businesses than really recruiting new businesses. Just a suspicion. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.)
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the conclusions that this El Paso Forward roundtable arrives at are that El Paso needs more Quality of Life amenities to stanch our diaspora. Say, a deck park. Maybe a downtown arena. Maybe some Public Private Partnerships. Those are always a lot of fun.
Or maybe this conference is just a way for the robber barons to funnel more money to one of their media partners without passing paper bags of cash under the table at our last remaining Luby’s.
A couple of weeks ago El Paso’s English language almost-daily ran this ad for consecutive days.
Suspicious, eh? A two-page color ad running for multiple days in a newspaper that has about 3,500 dead tree subscribers.
Was Project Jupiter trying to buy some favorable coverage from a one of the last available corporate news sources?
It used to be a lot easier to pull the wool over the public’s eyes when everybody was pulling at the same time. Now, not so much. Too many news sources, like Facebook and Tiktok and El Chuqueño.
Too many voices and too many places for those voices to be heard.
Including the Comments section. Here below.