El Paso’s population growth used to be robust. Right up till 2012.
From 2010 to 2012, the population of the City of El Paso grew by 3.8 percent. After 2012, El Paso’s population growth essentially flatlined.
So what happened?
In 2012, in an effort to get El Paso voters to support a half a billion dollar Quality of Life bond proposition, the City of El Paso and a bunch of well heeled businessmen embarked on a new marketing campaign. Their effort was to convince El Pasoans that El Paso needed to spend the money for the bonds because El Paso sucked.
Can you imagine any city endorsing a pitch like that?
Then they started comparing El Paso to other cities in the United States. “Look at Oklahoma City,” they said.
I imagine that some El Pasoans looked at Oklahoma City and made the jump. Or they moved to San Diego, or Austin, or Phoenix, because, you know, El Paso sucked.
To garner citizen support for the bonds, the local businessmen promised everything to everybody. Swim moms got swimming pools. Animal lovers got money for a big zoo expansion. It was feeding time at the pig trough, and everyone bellied up. The collective greed was more powerful than common sense.
Rising property taxes were another incentive for El Pasoans to relocate, and the bond projects played a big part in increasing property owners’ tax bills.
And then there was the ballpark. The imminent arrival of the ballpark was announced on a Thursday because state law mandated that City Council agendas needed to be posted four days in advance. Otherwise, City Council might have snuck it through in a midnight session. City Council approved the ballpark the following Tuesday, leaving little room for discussion. Their arrogance enraged lots of El Pasoans, maybe enough for them to pull up stakes.
(You can find a pretty comprehensive timeline of the shenanigans at https://eptstadiumscamtimeline.blogspot.com/.)
I don’t care if El Paso doesn’t grow. I think we’re fine, just the way we are. I never thought we had to spend half a billion dollars to fix El Paso, because I never thought El Paso was broken. But the timing of the inflection point, when El Paso’s population growth turned from robust to stagnant, indicates that whatever those captains of industry thought they were doing didn’t work. They hurt El Paso. El Paso isn’t as cool as it used to be. People used to move to El Paso. Now they run from it like it’s on fire.
We don’t need more people, but we need an El Paso that more people want to live in.
Do the businesspeople in El Paso really care about El Paso? Or do they only care about their slice of it?
Do our City Council Representatives really care about El Paso? Or do they only care about campaign donations?
Of course, you can’t really kill El Paso. El Paso is dependent on, and supported by, the government, and, so far, the government isn’t, perhaps unfortunately, going out of business. According to the City of El Paso’s Department of Economic and International Development, six of the top ten employers in El Paso are either government entities or school districts. Two are hospitals, and one secures temporary workers for transient employment. Walmart ranks tenth. (One, InteLogix, is actually located in Park City, Utah.)1
(Curiously, in its statistical sales pitch for economic development, the City of El Paso relies on data for the County of El Paso. I guess the City needed to boost its stats by including San Elizario, Canutillo, and Fabens in its summary. And how about this bit of doublespeak I lifted from ElPasoTexas.gov: “El Paso, the largest city on the U.S.-Mexico border, is home to 884,432 residents, making it the 6th largest city in Texas and the 22nd largest in the United States2.” We all know that the population for the City of El Paso is holding steady at about 680,000.)
I guess they’re still trying, bless their hearts.
In this mountain desert, population growth cannot be the only measure of “goodness.” We may have already passed the limit for sustainable population!
Wish we had limits on sprawl …but that’s apparently a good thing to the developers..
Oh well. Happy Monday!
See my comment below—The City doesn’t seem to mind sprawl.
As for growth, we live in a desert and it’s getting hotter. There are limits to everything.
Greed is a powerful thing, innit? I learned a long time ago to appreciate what I’ve got, and to be content with my life. Too many folks don’t want to make the effort. As usual, Rich has got it right, and we are likely to stay stagnant for a good while yet, until we start to lose more and more people.
You say stagnant, Bob Moore says declining, the City tells developers to invest in El Paso’s Real Estate Market, “El Paso’s rapid population growth offers developers significant opportunities” . .
Contact us to inquire about how you can achieve your financial goals * EP Dept. Economic Development.