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    • El Paso County Commissioners approve tax rate and tax law increases
    Idaho

    El Paso County Commissioners approve tax rate and tax law increases

    Madoc Meredith Posted on

    Elida S. Perez
    | El Paso Affairs

    The average homeowner in El Paso County will pay about $12 more annually in county and hospital property taxes—$11 of which will go toward the next tax bill for the University Medical Center of El Paso.

    The El Paso County District Court on Monday unanimously approved the 2024 tax rates for both entities, which make up a portion of the total property bills issued in October and due in January. Taxes from the city, school district and El Paso Community College make up most of the rest of the bill.

    The county’s tax rate, which does not raise new revenue, is 42.6 cents per $100 of value, representing an increase of just under $1 to the county’s share of property tax bills on an average home value of about $200,000. The impact on individual homeowners will depend on the valuation of their property, and some homeowners could see a reduction in their county taxes.

    The county said it had to cut its original budget proposal by about $40 million to avoid passing anything above the no-new-revenue rate – the rate needed to generate the same revenue from the same properties as the previous year. The county is now proposing a general operating budget of about $468 million for the next fiscal year.

    “We have cut our capital improvement funds by $13 million. That’s our working capital for things like cars, replacement computers, radios, vests and things like that. We have also cut other contingent liabilities, such as personnel costs,” said El Paso County Executive Betsy Keller.

    Keller said that while staff had managed to use a tax rate for the coming fiscal year that would not generate new revenue, it was not sustainable in the long term.

    “If nothing changes in terms of our prison population and the cost of running the prison, we will have to do something – future courts will absolutely have to do something,” Keller said.

    The county had published a public notice announcing its intention to adopt the voter approval rate – the highest it could pass without a voter survey – which would have been equivalent to raising the median home value by about $105. Commissioners and staff stressed Monday that the higher rate was published “for public notice purposes only,” as is required for a public hearing. Taxing authorities cannot pass a rate higher than the published rate, but they can pass a rate lower than that.

    The move to implement the no-new-revenue council comes as the county is also asking voters to approve a $324 million bond issue in the Nov. 5 general election. If approved, voters would see an increase of about $60 a year on the average home starting with 2025 bills due in January 2026.

    County commissioners also voted unanimously Monday to approve the University Medical Center of El Paso’s 2024 tax rates and fiscal year 2025 budget. UMC El Paso proposed a tax rate of 21.9 cents per $100 of property value, which raises no new revenue.

    The new tax rate increases the annual UMC portion of a tax bill by $11 for a home valued at about $206,000.

    UMC has a spending budget of $1.67 billion for fiscal year 2025, with property taxes accounting for 9% of the hospital district’s revenue. Hospital admissions, outpatient visits and surgical cases at UMC have increased in recent years and are expected to continue to rise in the coming year, according to UMC’s 2025 budget presentation. UMC also raised its minimum wage to $15/hour last year.

    UMC is also proposing a $396.6 million bond on the November ballot, which, if approved, would result in an annual tax increase of about $94 on median-value homes beginning in the 2025 tax bill.

    The El Paso City Council last week passed a tax rate of 76.1 cents per $100 of value that raises no new revenue, increasing the city’s share of the tax bill on a home valued at about $205,000 by about $3 a year.

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    Madoc Meredith
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