The City of El Paso, which boasts the highest property taxes in the nation, has been on a taxpayer-funded downtown redevelopment spending spree. Along the way, the city leaders are also destroying the Mexican character of the city. They are erasing Mexicans from the culture and attempting to replace it an Anglo-centric cultural identity as envisioned by the Glass Beach project.

The reason that the local government has been allowed to tax local homeowners into oblivion is because they have the resources to hold you all at bay. As many of you know, there is an ongoing rebellion to protect the Duranguito community and stop the City from building a sports arena with 2012 bond money. Rebellions of this type are very seldom successful because the government entity has the money to litigate those in its path into oblivion.

It takes money to hold government entities accountable.

Consider the City’s legal action in Austin for a declaratory judgement. What the City was attempting to do was to get an Austin judge to issue a ruling that its actions were legal. The narrative is the City needs the declaratory judgement to sell the bonds to fund the project. Hidden in that reality is that the City was also seeking a court order to end all current litigation and stop any new litigation against the project.

Like before, the City was banking on the opposition’s inability to fund litigation against the taxpayer-funded armies of attorneys at the City’s beck-and-call. Not many people have the financial resources to fund a lawyer to litigate against the City in Austin, and thus the City usually prevails with a court order authorizing its actions and ending legal opposition to its projects.

Dee Margo, the mayor of El Paso admitted this to KVIA on Sunday.

Margo was complaining that “outside money meddling in local affairs”. Margo was quoted that the “meddling” was a “real concern.” Margo added that Max Grossman’s lawsuit to stop the destruction of Duranguito was “being paid for by an oilman outside of Houston that is trying to determine what is best for our community.”

What Dee Margo is saying is that it is not fair for Grossman to use someone else’s money to fight the destruction of the Duranguito neighborhood. What Margo ignores is that the City is using someone else’s money – taxpayer funds – to further tax the people of the community. What’s worse is that it is apparently lost in Dee Margo that Grossman’s own money – property taxes – is being used by the City to litigate against those opposed to the use of bond money for a sports arena at the cost of a Mexican community.

Now you understand why the local taxing entities feel empowered to tax you for playgrounds for the rich and why they are usually successful. Dee Margo told you so.