More Economic Indicators for El Paso

As many of you know, I have been documenting the many indicators for the El Paso economy that the politicians continue to gloss over or ignore. There are two more indicators that show exactly how bad the situation is in El Paso. Although the candidates for the upcoming elections are going to tell you how El Paso is on the verge of a renaissance and how excited they are about it, very few of them, if any, will tell you that raising taxes is the only way to keep the city viable.

Yesterday, the local paper told you about the closure of Bella Napoli, a long-standing restaurant that is closing tomorrow. In the article by María Cortés González, buried deep within the rhetoric the politicos want you to see is the real reason the restaurant is closing down. It is important to note that the restaurant had been business for 52 years. It weathered recessions and national and worldwide economic downturns, but what it could not weather was the current public policy agenda that relies on taxes to build a utopia for the drivers of the public agenda driving El Paso into ruin.

Keep in mind that the building the restaurant occupies is owned by the family that owns the restaurant. When asked about the future, Luis Cordova, one of the owners of the restaurant stated that when he opens a new place, “it will probably be in a rental property which is less expensive than paying property taxes.”

Clearly, the problem for Bella Napoli are the suffocating taxes that discourage businesses from growing the El Paso economy. Rather than invest in its building, the owners of Bella Napoli are looking to sell it because renting a property is cheaper than paying the taxes.

I have written numerous times that the problem with El Paso’s economy is that it does not stimulate new money into the economy, instead it recycles existing money each time diminishing it forcing the taxpayers to pay more to sustain an unsustainable economy.

The other important indicator that is that passenger traffic at the El Paso International Airport was down in January. According to the report by Vic Kolenc, the airport handled “1,237 fewer passengers” than in January 2014. Additionally, the airport saw 49,638 fewer passengers than in December, the previous month.

As I wrote above, the only way for El Paso to keep a sustainable economy is to bring new money into it rather than recycling the existing money over and over again. Fewer passengers at the airport signifies fewer people coming into the city. More importantly, it means that the HOT taxes will not be sufficient to pay for the baseball stadium.

The politicians, though, will ignore these two latest indicators and focus on the upcoming bowling tournament that will temporarily and artificially increase travel to El Paso. They, of course, will ignore that significance of this event being a one-time thing and how it artificially increases the economic metrics.

They will be all over the news media telling how they have made wonderful decisions for El Paso’s renaissance. When the truth emerges, it will be all sorts of excuses like the ones you are hearing today about the El Paso Children’s Hospital.