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Once in awhile we catch an El Paso politician in an outright lie.
EPISD Trustee Alex Cuellar told Mark Ross of ABC-7 XTRA that his Board would not raid the fund balance in order to balance the budget for FY2026. KVIA published the video interview on May 30.
On June 3, Max Grossman addressed the Board of Trustees and promised Cuellar that he would eat his words and vote to raid the fund balance within three weeks.
Sure enough, on June 18 Cuellar cast one of the five votes to draw $6,082,990 from the fund balance, which stood at 66.5 days at the end of FY2025.
Yesterday we confirmed with EPISD Superintendent Martha Aguirre via text that the FY2026 budget adopted on June 18 includes a deficit of $6,082,990 that will be drawn from the fund balance by default unless there is a revenue windfall or cost-saving measure to prevent that from happening.
Thus the fund balance, which stood at 80.8 days on July 1, 2024 is now at about 62 days, down 23%.
The bottom line is that Cuellar brazenly lied to the public during his KVIA interview when he stated “we’re not gonna raid the fund balance” because he then voted to raid the fund balance.
He should resign.
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