For most El Paso readers it should come as no surprise that the city’s water utility is looking to raise water bills soon. Along with taxes, the water bills go up to shore up a bureaucracy trying to make the city successful by creating a fake utopia by imposing oppressive taxes on the city’s population. I’ve written about this for years, from the moment that I launched my blog.
The City of El Paso has yet to meet a tax or a service fee it doesn’t raise to meet unsustainable debt service used to fund fanciful quality of life projects that only benefits the city’s elite.
I left El Paso about ten years ago and I haven’t looked back. Why? Because of the taxes. For example, here in Orlando my minimum water bill is $23. It is the bill I get most of the year. In El Paso, in an empty house, my water bill was a minimum of $45 and it will be rising again. My property tax is 30% of what I was paying in El Paso in a much larger house. We know about the El Paso tax situation, so why am I writing about it again?
Because on the last week of December I got a bill from Delgado, Acosta, Spencer Linebarger & Perez, LLC.
If you don’t already know, the law firm is the money collecting arm of the city. The “advisory” showed me just how desperate the City of El Paso is to collect money.
The letter was dated December 16, 2019.
It told me that I owed El Paso $91.00 for an expired meter ticket.
Here’s the rub, since I haven’t lived in El Paso for about ten years, how is it possible I have an outstanding ticket?
Glad you asked.
I looked closely at the notice. It told me that my car, a Toyota, was parked in an expired meter.
Wait, what? A Toyota?
I scratched my head, a Toyota. I haven’t owned a Toyota in over twenty years!
Sure enough, the ticket was issued on April 20, 1993.
Yes, you read that right, the intrepid debt collectors for the City of El Paso is trying to collect on a ticket that is 26 years old!
Somehow, they tracked me down to Orlando from my Cd. Juárez address. I am impressed. I lived in Juárez in the early 1990’s.
The letter conveniently tells me that I should mail the payment to the City of El Paso forthwith, or the City will “take whatever steps necessary to secure payment…possibly including booting or towing” the car.
Oh boy, I’m quaking in my boots!
First off, assuming the car is still being driven by someone, not me, it is likely licensed with Mexican plates. I imported it years ago to meet the legal requirements.
As an immigrant, and someone who at the time of the ticket was crossing the U.S.-México border everyday I made sure to pay any fines I received to avoid issues while crossing the border.
Do I remember this ticket? Nope. Did I get the ticket? Who knows? But if I did and I was aware of it, it is more likely than not that I paid it simply to avoid being hassled at the border.
Regardless, booting or towing the car will do nothing to me.
What can the City do to me for the alleged ticket? Nothing.
There is nothing that the City can do for a ticket it can’t prove that I am liable for.
Obviously, the intrepid people over at Delgado, Acosta, Spencer Linebarger & Perez, LLC. hope one, or two people freak out over 20 year-old tickets and send in their payments. Who knows, they may get lucky that someone still owns a car 20-years after getting a parking ticket on it.
The notice they sent me is just a statistic in a bureaucratic report detailing how hard they are working to get money for the City.
As for me, I’ll just keep laughing at the ineptitude of the City of El Paso.
The notice demonstrates a bureaucracy so desperate for money that it is sending out collection notices on twenty-year-old tickets. How sad is that?
