Rising tensions on El Paso’s City Council came to a head last week when representatives and Mayor Renard Johnson took the rare step of reversing a decision made an hour earlier.
One council member said the reversal was vengeance over unsuccessful efforts by three city representatives to reopen the city’s decision awarding incentives to Meta Platforms Inc. for a data center in Northeast El Paso.
Caught in the middle of the vote reversal is funding to maintain homeless services after federal funding expires in August.
“The meeting devolved a little bit in terms of how the conversation was going, and there seemed to be some interpersonal fighting that maybe triggered some of the council members to change their votes,” city Rep. Chris Canales, who co-sponsored the plan to spend $430,000 from next year’s budget to keep open the Welcome Center in South El Paso, told El Paso Matters. “To me, that’s devastating. I’ve been working on this for months.”
The City Council initially voted 6-2 to allocate the American Rescue Plan Act interest earnings to the Welcome Center, operated by the Opportunity Center for the Homeless, during a special meeting about the next fiscal year’s budget Tuesday, June 23, that began 30 minutes after the council wrapped up a nearly 10-hour regular meeting.
Canales initially was joined in voting yes by city Reps. Josh Acevedo – the plan’s co-sponsor – Lily Limón, Cynthia Boyar Trejo, Alejandra Chávez and Ivan Niño. City Reps. Deanna Maldonado-Rocha and Art Fierro voted against the plan.
But an hour later, Chávez moved to reconsider the vote, and she and Niño switched to no, creating a 4-4 tie. Johnson then cast the tie-breaking vote to deny the funding.
Johnson said he broke the tie vote because the Welcome Center funding is at a point where “we need stitches and not a Band-Aid.” He said he wants to work with city staff on a longer-term funding solution.
Chávez, before her first vote in favor of the funding, questioned staff about the efficiency of the Welcome Center operations.
“How do we know that the Welcome Center is operating as efficiently as possible before committing to sustaining their operations at that level?” Chávez said during the meeting.
She later told El Paso Matters that the question was no different than what she has asked the city to do with their departments – to make sure they operate as efficiently as possible in case there are potential cost savings.
Chávez said allocating the ARPA funding felt rushed and she wants to look for a more long-term funding solution for the Welcome Center rather than put a patch on it.
Acevedo said he thinks Chávez, Johnson, Maldonado-Rocha and Fierro may have been retaliating against him, Canales and Limón for supporting an effort that could have ended a controversial incentive agreement between the city and Meta for the Northeast El Paso data center at the June 9 council meeting. Chávez, Boyar Trejo, Maldonado-Rocha, Fierro and Niño voted against the motion to reopen the incentives awarded by the City Council in 2023.
“It was really interesting that this change of heart happened so suddenly after the first vote went through, and to me, I can’t think of anything other than this being tied to revenge on the Meta item that happened two weeks ago,” Acevedo told El Paso Matters. “I think this is how they took it out on us.”
Chávez and Niño denied that the Meta vote played a role in their decision on funding for the Welcome Center.
Read more: City of El Paso’s Meta data center incentive agreement to remain in place
“My leadership style is never retaliatory in nature. I don’t think that that would reflect well on my value system,” Chávez told El Paso Matters of the implication that her vote was because of the public backlash following the Meta vote.
Niño said he decided to change his vote to allow the city to look for longer-term funding solutions for the Welcome Center during the ongoing budget process. He said his vote had nothing to do with the Meta backlash.
“We all should be OK to disagree with each other – that’s part of our democratic process,” Niño said.
Fierro and Maldonado-Rocha, who twice voted against the Welcome Center funding, said they did not get briefed that the ARPA interest funding was available until it was mentioned as an option for the Welcome Center that night.
Boyar Trejo was the only city representative to vote twice in favor of the Welcome Center funding proposal and oppose the efforts to reopen the Meta incentives. She didn’t return calls and emails to her office for comment.
Limón said she is not sure why the vote switched and noted some tense moments during the final hours of the evening, but she was devastated that the Welcome Center will not get the funding.
“My deepest concern, though, is that we (the City Council) are split – we are definitely split at this time,” she said.
Johnson said he does not think the City Council is split. He said the heated debate over the Welcome Center came at the end of a long day, and suggested a combination of factors such as exhaustion and hunger may have come into play.
“That’s quite possible, but I think we have a very good, good council. I think you know, we are – our honeymoon is over,” Johnson said of this being the second year the current City Council is serving together.
“We’re hitting our stride, and we’re finding out where our differences are, and some people are very passionate about it. But I think at the end of the day we were elected by the taxpayers to do the work for the people, and that’s what we need to continue doing.”
The reversal sparked a heated exchange during the June 23 meeting, exposing divisions among council members over budget priorities and community needs.
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The vote also leaves the Welcome Center without the city funding supporters said it needed to remain open after Aug. 31.
The city plans to adopt its budget Aug. 18 for the next fiscal year that begins Sept. 1. The city administration will file a proposed budget July 17, which the City Council can change until it is adopted.
The Welcome Center opened in August 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic and migrant surges as part of the El Paso Helps initiative to provide immediate food and shelter and basic medical services to the homeless while individuals were referred to other community providers for extended services.
The center operates as a primary stabilization and triage hub for services and provides coordinated intake, safety, assessment, shelter access and connection to housing, medical and behavioral health resources.
It costs about $720,000 per year to operate the Welcome Center, which works in partnership with agencies like the United Way for homelessness prevention and housing stabilization and Project Amistad for street outreach and housing placement.
The center has helped about 3,000 individuals. Of those, 562 have been helped finding permanent housing placements, 547 have been placed in shelters and program placements and 134 have gotten medical and or behavioral health placements, according to a Welcome Center fact sheet.
“I do believe that the city – in this particular case – made the wrong decision,” John Martin, executive director for the Opportunity Center for the Homeless, told El Paso Matters about the City Council vote against the funding.
Martin said it can take an extended amount of time to find longer-term funding sources and the bridge funding would have taken the Welcome Center through almost another year of operations while a more sustainable solution is found.
Without additional funding, operations will begin to taper at the beginning of August with the center set to close its doors Aug. 31, Martin said.
City staff during the meeting said there was $430,000 in ARPA fund interest savings that would be ideal for a one-time funding use.
The post Mayor’s tie-breaking vote blocks funding for El Paso Welcome Center appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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