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The deceptive 2012 Quality of Life Bond not only provided for “Museum, Cultural, Performing Arts and Library Facilities” (interpreted to include a multipurpose basketball arena), but also for “aquatic centers,” which gave City Manager Tommy Gonzalez a pretext to build four gigantic Water Parks, with Tracey Jerome overseeing design, construction, and the rollout.
We previously reported the Water Parks lost $1.3 million in 2021 and were projected to lose $3.4 million in 2022, so we felt it was time to take another look at the financials.
We submitted an open records request to the City of El Paso for the budgetary spreadsheet on the four Water Parks for FY 2025 and learned that the $5,597,898 in reported revenues consisted of $2,151,567 from “Services” and $3,446,331 from “Operating Transfers In.”
We asked Edmundo Calderon, the recently retired Chief Internal Auditor, where the $3,446,331 was transferred from and he confirmed it was taken from the Parks & Recreation Department.
Thus, 62% of Water Parks “revenue” is a subsidy from Parks & Recreation, up from 56% the previous fiscal year.
Yup, the Water Parks are utterly insolvent!
We checked the current City budget book and found that Parks & Recreation had total expenditures of $53.5 million in FY 2025, including $4,446,331 in “Operating Transfers Out.” (see p. 552 in attached pdf)
Therefore, 6.4% of the Parks & Recreations budget was earmarked for bailing out the four Water Parks.
UTILITIES ARE CONCEALED FROM THE BUDGET
We noticed the Water Parks spreadsheet we received from the City shows utilities cost only $70,867 in FY 2025, including $15,179 for water. These figures obviously represent only a fraction of actual usage, which was certainly well over $1 million.
Calderon explained to us that Parks & Recreation picks up most of the utilities tab, effectively concealing this expenditure from the Water Parks budget, and that they also pay for the chemicals to treat and purify water.
In FY 2025, Parks & Recreation spent $6,997,960 on utilities, which apparently includes the usage by the Water Parks.
This must be a long-standing practice because the August 2022 audit of the Water Parks revealed that “Destination El Paso collects the revenues and pays for the day-to-day operational expenses for the four El Paso Water Parks, except for utilities.”
HOW DEEP IS THE HOLE?
The City’s FY 2025 Water Parks spreadsheet shows a budget gap of 62%, which is enormous but understated, since the utilities and chemicals are off the books.
A family of four with two children (under four feet tall but above two years in age) pays $72 to enter a Water Park, yet the collection of $2,151,567 for services from all four facilities in FY 2025 covered only a fraction of expenditures.
Meanwhile, the $3.4 million transfer from Parks & Recreation robs our parks of much needed funds for operations and maintenance.
Of course, the $3.4 million transfer could instead be used for a more productive purpose, like repaving our third-world streets!
In our opinion, the Water Parks should be sold to private investors along with the trolleys and Ballpark and our City should get out of the entertainment business altogether so that we can have lower taxes and better infrastructure.
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