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Sam Armijo, Guest Columnist, May 28, 2025, 10:57 a.m.
“During the November 2024 General Election campaign, the highest priority problem addressed by allcandidates was the crushing EI Paso property tax. Essentially every candidate for city or county office (and I was one of them) promised to make property tax reduction a top priority if elected. Not one said that building a Deck Plaza would be their highest priority.
A few candidates from the city’s “Quality of Life” faction quietly mentioned the project during public forums that I attended. Unfortunately, the only candidates for mayor and City Council who had a proven record of not increasing property taxes for two years in a row were not re-elected.
What a shame.
It is now evident that most of the elected officials of the city and county are determined to build a DeckPlaza. They claim it will attract a steady stream of entertainment events, tourists, and money while ignoring the obvious connection between the cost of massive discretionary spending and the impact on property taxes.
City Rep. Chris Canales is an exception. In an April 2025 EI Paso Matters column he stated, “That’swhy I’ve consistently maintained that I don’t believe it would be wise for the city to use hundreds of millions of dollars of its bonding capacity on a deck plaza, essentially taking out a massive loan with an obligation to pay that debt back over a few decades with future taxpayer money.”
I have managed multi-hundred million dollar civil and defense-related projects and businesses. I oppose the Deck Plaza because it will be a costly entertainment facility that EI Paso doesn’t need and can’t afford.
Although the final estimated and costs of construction and maintenance will be based on quantitativeestimates and experience, the actual costs will likely be greater. If our experience with the ballpark and failed arena project taught us anything, it is that our local governments consistently underestimate the construction, maintenance, and operating costs of large capital improvement projects. In contrast, the expected financial benefits to the city have no basis other than unsupported assumptions, unsupported claims, and the unrealistic hopes of the project’s visionaries.
The Deck Plaza will cost far more than the original $207 million touted by proponents and their wealthy backers. Thanks to Max Grossman’s use of the Freedom of Information Act, we now know that the city paid one million dollars for a detailed cost estimate by a reputable engineering and construction company. Their estimate was a whopping $412 million. Proponents don’t talk about this. There is also the matter of maintenance. The much smaller Dallas deck park requires $ 2-2.5 million in annual maintenance costs.
Proponents of the Deck Plaza hope to obtain large grants from the state of Texas and the federal government, thus transferring most of the cost of the Deck Plaza to U.S. citizens who do not live in EI Paso.
This “free-money strategy” is fundamentally unfair, and unlikely to succeed considering the extreme political differences between the city and county of EI Paso and state and federal governments. Most importantly, EI Paso has the worst combination of poverty and property taxes of any large city in Texas.
EI Paso has an 18.9 % poverty rate, and a property tax rate of $2.09/$100 valuation. Our lowest income citizens already struggle to pay their monthly mortgages and rents. It is unconscionable for city and county officials to ignore these realities and insist on adding hundreds of millions of new city and county debts for a totally discretionary entertainment venue.
The citizens of EI Paso must unite to stop them.”
Sam Armijo, retired General Electric Company executive.
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