EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — El Paso City Council will be presented with the proposed budget for next fiscal year at the start of budget meetings next week.
In a roundtable held Thursday afternoon, July 3, City Manager Dionne Mack and other City officials presented the key highlights of their proposed budget, which she said will be “flat,” and invest in areas El Pasoans have said are their priorities.
“It’s a pretty flat budget. We’re working on making sure that this year it’s about stabilizing operations across the board. We don’t have a tremendous amount of new initiatives that we’re funding,” Mack said.
Mack said the proposed budget took into account feedback from the El Paso community.
“This year we had an opportunity to not only go out into the community and talk to them about what their priorities were through budget townhall meetings, but we also had the highest response rate for our time in survey. And so, what we saw out of that survey was a focus on infrastructure, on public safety, quality of life, and economic development,” Mack said.
Mack said the proposed budget will reflect a continued focus on investing in the City’s Police and Fire departments. Mack said the investment will be directed toward improving both departments’ infrastructure and on growing their workforce.
According to the City, nearly 80% of the increase to the proposed budget will be directed to the Police and Fire departments.
“It’s a $19.4 million increase year over year that is going to help us be able to support 120 new police cadets. We also have some new incentives as a part of the collective bargaining agreement that will come in place. For El Paso Fire, we’re making sure we’re taking care of existing staff, but also we have 48 new firefighters who are on board that were previously being funded through grants,” Mack said.
City leaders said the budget also proposes to more than double the city’s Over 65 and Disabled property tax exemption from $20,000 to $45,000.
To improve City infrastructure the budget will allocate $10 million for street resurfacing projects, $1.5 million for traffic safety projects at intersections, and $17.4 million for City vehicles, equipment, and facilities.
With all 2012 Quality of Life Bond projects now completed and facilities fully operational, the City proposes to continue increasing investing into City parks. The budget proposes an added $500,000 for park amenity replacements. That would increase the total investment into Quality of Life projects to $1.5 million.
Mack said that the goal for the proposed budget was to keep it simplified and stabilize operations across City departments.
With a largely new-look City Council set to review and decide on a new budget for the first time, Mack said she’s confident her staff did its due diligence in breaking down the budget for them, and that the budget is in line with what council members want to prioritize.
“We want the council to ask the difficult questions. We want them to be very comfortable because the budget that’s adopted in August is theirs. We’ve made sure that we provide them briefing opportunities. We’ve tried to make sure that we’re aligning to what we know are their critical priorities. But a council of this size who’ve just come in, they can’t know the level of detail, in terms of every single solitary contract. And so we’ve been working on making sure that they’re well educated on that,” Mack said.
“I’m very confident that they are prepared to ask those questions, and that my staff are able to respond to those and that we have sufficient time to pivot if we need to in any area that we’ve made a recommendation in,” Mack added.
Following next week’s City Council meetings, City staff will hold budget meetings throughout El Paso. You can find the schedule and locations below.
• Monday, July 7 at 9 a.m. at City Hall, Council Chambers, 300 N. Campbell
• Tuesday, July 8 at 9 a.m. City Hall, Council Chambers, 300 N. Campbell
• Tuesday, July 15 at 6 p.m. at Beast Urban Park Recreation Center, 13501 Jason Crandall
• Wednesday, July 16 at 9 a.m. at Veterans Recreation Center, 5301 Salem
• Wednesday, July 16 at 5:30 p.m. at Veterans Recreation Center, 5301 Salem
• Tuesday, July 23 at 10:30 a.m. at Nolan Richardson Recreation Center, 4435 Maxwell
• Wednesday, July 23 at 5:30 p.m. at Irving Schwartz Library, 1865 Dean Martin
• Tuesday, July 29 at 5:30 p.m. at Memorial Senior Center, 1800 Byron
• Wednesday, July 30 at 6 p.m. at Municipal Service Center, Cotton Patch Room, 7968 San Paulo
• Thursday, July 31 at 6 p.m. at Westside Command Center, 4801 Osborne
Key Dates in the FY2026 Budget Process
• July 7–8: Budget presentations
• July 31: Presentation of certified property values and introduction of proposed tax rate
• Aug. 12: Public hearing on budget and tax rate
• Aug 19: City Council adoption of the FY 2026 budget and tax rate
For more information, visit www.ElPasoTexas.gov/budget.
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