The U.S. Census Bureau estimates for cities are out.
According to their Quick Facts, the population of the City of El Paso was 683,080 on July 1, 2016. On the same date in 2015, the number was 681,124.
That’s less than 2,000 people. 1,956. That’s less than three tenths of one percent.
That’s nice. Gives us lots of room to stretch our legs. Spread our wings.
I guess, with our population growth stagnant, we probably wouldn’t have any new development without incentives, huh?
But it kind of makes me wonder why our taxes keep going up. Why does the City’s budget have to increase if they’re not taking care of more people?
If population growth is a measure of the health of a city’s economy, then El Paso is pretty sickly.
Excellent point! And now we know that El Paso has the 3rd highest property tax (2.64%) in America among the 50 largest cities, and the highest among the six largest Texas cities. And yet we are one of the poorest cities in America. I thought we hired this city manager to find efficiencies, curtail spending, and bring our fiscal house in order. All we seem to do is borrow huge sums of money and raise taxes to pay for budget shortfalls, while elite investors walk away with gigantic subsidies for their private projects. There is something wrong with this picture.
Anybody with a marketable skill and the wherewithal ends up leaving.