On Tuesday August 18, the City Council will decide on a budget for the City of El Paso for Fiscal Year 2027. Here is an explainer of the proposed budget, including discussion of what’s changing, why the property tax rate is proposed to increase, what it means for El Paso taxpayers, and how you can be involved.
Join me for a District 8 Community Meeting on Monday, August 17, 2026 at 5:30 PM at the Central Fire Station. My guest speaker will be El Paso Fire Department Chief, Jonathan Killings who will present on the El Paso Fire Department. This meeting will be an opportunity for you take a tour of the newly opened Central Fire Station, which consolidated the Fire Department Special Operations Division from multiple stations into one large one. It is, without a doubt, one of the City’s best facilities.
As always, I’ll also provide updates on what’s happening in City government and in District 8.
The meeting will take place at the Central Fire Station, 201 S. Florence Street. On-street parking is available around the Central Fire Station on Florence, 1st, Ochoa, & Campbell. We look forward to welcoming you!
From marching in the 19th Annual Sun City Pride Parade and funding improvements to Pride Square to opioid response and a new roof for a District 8 recreation center, swipe through for updates from recent City Council meetings as well as what l got up to from June 24 to July 7, 2026.
Cryptocurrency ATM kiosks are increasingly being used by scammers to steal life savings from vulnerable people, particularly seniors. Scammers impersonate the IRS, Social Security Administration, law enforcement, or even businesses or local utility companies, and then pressure victims to deposit large sums of cash into a crypto ATM. Once that money is converted into cryptocurrency, it is virtually impossible to trace or recover.
I placed an item on the City Council agenda to help protect El Pasoans from these scams. My proposal would require cryptocurrency ATMs operating within the City of El Paso to display clear bilingual fraud warnings, require users to acknowledge common scam tactics before completing a transaction, and make it unmistakably clear that government agencies and other reputable organizations will never instruct someone to make payments through one of these machines.
I’m also working with State Representative Joe Moody, who is developing legislation for the next session of the Texas Legislature that would ban cryptocurrency ATMs statewide. This local action is intended to provide meaningful protections for El Paso residents while that broader effort moves forward.
The City Council will consider my proposal during our meeting on Tuesday, July 21, 2026. It is on the agenda as Item #20. To make your voice heard, you can sign up to speak at the meeting using the link in my bio, submit your comments in writing for the official record, and also email your City Councilperson.
We can’t stop every scam, but we can make it harder for scammers to succeed and give people one more opportunity to recognize that they’re being targeted before it’s too late.
Join me for a District 8 Community Meeting on Wednesday, July 15, 2026 at 5:30 PM at City Hall. My guest speaker will be Fernando Liaño Berjano, Manager of Climate Programs at the City’s Office of Climate and Sustainability, who will present about the department’s work including the comprehensive Climate Action Plan recently adopted by the City Council. My academic and professional background is in climate and sustainability work, so this is a topic I’m excited to discuss.
As always, I’ll also provide updates on what’s happening in City government and in District 8. The meeting will take place at City Hall, 300 N. Campbell Street.
Remember, free parking is available after 5:00 PM in the City Hall parking lot across Campbell Street. We look forward to welcoming you!
Join me on Thursday July 2 for Café con Chris. This isn’t a community meeting; more like office hours. I will be at Monstera Deliciosa Café located at 2830 Yandell Dr Suite A, from 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM.
Drop in, have a cup of coffee on me, and chat with me about whatever you’d like. All are welcome!
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Acompañame el jueves 2 de julio para Café con Chris. No será una junta comunitaria sino algo más informal. Estaré en Monstera Deliciosa Café, ubicado en 2830 Yandell Dr Suite A, de 8:00 AM a 1:00 PM.
¡Date una vuelta, disfruta de un cafe por mi cuenta, y platica conmigo de lo que gustes! Todas y todos son bienvenidos.
Join me for a District 8 Community Meeting on Monday, June 8, 2026 at 5:30 PM at City Hall. As has become my tradition, I will personally present a first look at the City’s preliminary budget for fiscal year 2027. I want you hear about it directly from me; I think I owe that to you as your elected representative. This year, the draft budget was shared with the public six weeks earlier than usual and at an earlier stage of development to allow for more engagement and input from constituents.
Sasho Andonoski, Director of the City’s Office of Management and Budget, will also be on hand to answer people’s questions, and we plan to show you a new Budget Simulator tool that will allow you to play around with the numbers yourself and provide us your feedback online.
The meeting will take place at City Hall, 300 N. Campbell Street. Remember, free parking is available after 5:00 PM in the City Hall parking lot across Campbell Street. We look forward to welcoming you!
“We ultimately want the same thing as the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce: a network of international ports of entry that serves the region effectively and efficiently. Achieving that requires cooperation, long-term planning, and investment across the entire regional system, not last-minute attempts to overturn a publicly supported decision.
“The Borderland region does not have to choose between commerce and community. With thoughtful planning and continued investment in our regional ports system, it can, and must, have both.”
This week, the El Paso City Councilmembers and County Commissioners with ports of entry in our districts published a joint opinion piece about the importance of supporting the federal government’s already-approved plan for a $600 million investment in the Bridge of the Americas Port of Entry, in the face of an last-ditch attempt to undo it despite broad public approval.
Read our full op-ed here.
A friendly reminder to all that today is the last day of early voting in the 2026 Primary Runoff Election. There are important statewide and judicial races on the ballot, and today is the last day to cast your vote before Election Day next Tuesday, May 26.
Swipe through for a listing of all of the early voting locations. There are multiple polling sites in District 8 and many more across El Paso County, and you can vote at any location. I like to mix it up, and I voted at the Shoppes at Solana this time. Different sites close at 5pm, 6pm, or 7pm (as indicated on the list), so pay attention to those times as you make your plan to go vote!
Get out there and make your voice heard! You can find more information at www.epcountyvotes.com.
Today, I proposed a new policy direction that the City of El Paso should not actively recruit or incentivize future hyperscale data center development. This agenda item will be considered by the City Council on Tuesday, May 26, 2026 as Agenda Item #22.
We know much more now than we did even a few years ago about the massive electricity, water, and infrastructure demands associated with large, AI-supporting data center facilities. As a desert community, we have to think carefully about what kinds of growth align with our long-term future. In my opinion, hyperscale data centers aren’t the right fit for the Borderland.
Your engagement on this issue will be critical to its success. To participate, you can sign up to speak at the meeting (in person, by phone, or online), take a few minutes to email your representative on the City Council, and submit your comment on the record to CityClerk@elpasotexas.gov.
Swipe through for more information and ways to get involved.
From the City of El Paso receiving a tenth straight clean external audit result and paying down debt early to save on interest costs to the Council approving a slate of climate projects and updating parking enforcement regulations for new technology, swipe through for updates from recent City Council meetings as well as what l got up to from March 19 to April 14, 2026.
Misleading water-related ads designed to look like official notices about water quality are showing up on people’s front doors across El Paso. They deliberately create confusion, and in some cases lead people to spend money on services they don’t need.
I’ve placed an item on the City Council agenda to address this. My proposal is simple: if a business is advertising certain water-related services, the ad must clearly say who it’s from and that it is not affiliated with or endorsed by any government agency or public utility.
The City Council will consider my proposal on Tuesday April 28, 2026. It is item #62 on our meeting agenda. To make your voice heard, sign up to speak during the meeting at my link in bio or email your comments to CityClerk@elpasotexas.gov and reference item #62 in the subject line.
Let’s cut out this deceptive practice and protect El Paso consumers.