Abstract numbers don’t move people. $28.75 million in annual property tax revenue is an abstract number. So let’s make it concrete.
The average salary for a public school teacher in Imperial County is approximately $65,000 per year when benefits are included. At that rate, $28.75 million funds 442 teaching positions annually. The district currently operates with class sizes that routinely exceed state targets. Those 442 positions represent smaller classes, more support staff, and the kind of instructional continuity that determines whether a kid from Brawley or El Centro can compete for a college admission.
A fully equipped fire engine company — apparatus, staffing, training, and operations — costs roughly $2 million per year. The IVDC’s annual property tax contribution could fund 14 fire companies. In a county as geographically dispersed as Imperial, with response times that already strain state standards, that is not a marginal improvement. It is the difference between a structure fire and a neighborhood fire.
The Scale of What Is Being Refused
The $28.75 million figure is recurring — not a one-time construction windfall, but a permanent annual contribution to the county’s general fund. Across a ten-year horizon, that is nearly $290 million in public revenue that would flow to the schools, fire departments, sheriff’s office, libraries, and road maintenance crews that serve every resident of Imperial County.
The project also generates $72.5 million in one-time sales tax from construction materials and equipment — a capital injection that could retire infrastructure debt, repair decades of deferred maintenance, or seed an economic development reserve fund that the county has never been able to build.
These numbers come directly from the project’s economic impact analysis. They have not been contested by the opposition. What the opposition has not done — in any filing, any hearing, any press release — is identify where this revenue comes from if the project is blocked.
The Fiscal Reality the Opposition Ignores
Imperial County operates at the edge of fiscal solvency in normal years. The combination of high service demand, a limited commercial tax base, and a transient agricultural workforce creates chronic budget pressure that every county department director understands intimately. The county has deferred infrastructure maintenance, accepted chronic understaffing in public safety, and watched school facilities age past their useful lives because the tax base simply does not generate enough revenue.
The IVDC is not a silver bullet. But $28.75 million a year — in a county with a total assessed value that makes that number genuinely significant — is not a rounding error. It is a structural change in the county’s fiscal position, of a magnitude that elected officials should be fighting to secure, not fighting to prevent.
Who Pays When the Project Doesn’t Come?
When a school is underfunded, the parents who can afford to supplement it do. When a fire response is slow, the homeowners with adequate insurance absorb the loss. When a county can’t fill patrol officer positions, the residents in areas with the least political leverage feel it first.
The opposition to this project is not being organized by the families in the least-served corners of Imperial County. It is being organized by officials with city salaries and benefits, and by organizations funded by outside interests. The cost of their campaign is being paid by the people who will never see the teachers, the fire companies, or the road repairs that $28.75 million a year would have funded.
That is a choice. And it is being made by people who will not bear its consequences.