El Paso City Council has approved a 10-year master plan for parks and recreation, laying out priorities for shade structures, playground upgrades, recreation center repairs and better trail connections across the city — but the plan itself puts no dollars behind any single project. That decision, city officials say, will come later, one City Council budget vote at a time.
According to KTSM 9 News, the plan prioritizes “adding more shade, seating, improved playgrounds and comfortable places for families to gather” in neighborhood parks, alongside repairing and updating recreation centers, swimming pools and senior centers. It also calls for improving sidewalks, walking paths and bike connections between parks and neighborhoods, with an emphasis on directing resources toward the neighborhoods and facilities with the greatest needs. City officials describe it as a 10-year roadmap for improving parks and recreation across El Paso.
Crucially, the plan does not fund individual projects. Future improvements will depend on available resources and funding decisions made by City Council down the road, the station reports. The city has acknowledged that new facilities bring their own ongoing costs for staffing, utilities, repairs and maintenance — expenses that, officials say, have to be weighed carefully so they don't strain the city budget or put pressure on local taxpayers.
Built on Thousands of Resident Responses
City officials say the plan wasn't drafted in a vacuum. Development included more than 2,500 survey responses, 10 community open houses and five focus groups, according to the city's account relayed by the same report. Dionne Mack said the focus going forward is maintaining existing facilities, improving everyday neighborhood parks and making responsible decisions about future plans, while Pablo Caballero said the plan is meant to guide improvement priorities in a way that reflects what residents actually value.
The city's parks and recreation system currently includes 291 park properties, 10 senior centers, and — per KTSM's reporting — 23 recreation and sports centers, 15 aquatic facilities and 30 miles of trails. A separate snippet from the city's own master-plan document lists somewhat different totals: 21 recreation centers, 13 aquatic facilities and 32 miles of trails. The discrepancy between those figures hasn't been resolved, and this article presents both counts rather than choosing one.
A Decade of New Facilities, and a Widening Cost Gap
El Paso has not stood still on parks investment over the past decade. The city has expanded recreational opportunities through projects including the Westside Natatorium, the Eastside Sports Complex and The Beast Urban Park, which itself includes an indoor natatorium, a recreation center and the Oasis Water Park, per KTSM. The city also opened three additional water parks — Camp Cohen, Lost Kingdom and Chapoteo — along with new recreation centers at Chamizal, Sylvia Carreon and Valle Bajo.
That expansion has come with a cost. The shortfall between revenues and expenses for city aquatics programs jumped from $1.7 million to $5.3 million between 2016 and 2025, according to El Paso Matters. Over that same 10-year stretch, aquatics revenues rose 91% while expenses climbed 178%, with staffing, wage and utility increases adding cost pressure; attendance and revenue growth helped offset operating costs. Attendance at city pools rose from about 220,000 visits in 2021 to nearly 690,000 in 2025 as facilities fully reopened after the pandemic. Water park attendance alone grew 34% between fiscal years 2021 and 2025, the outlet reported.
Where the Money Is Already Moving
Some funding has already been committed outside the master plan itself. El Paso's fiscal year 2027 budget includes $1.5 million for parks and recreation amenity replacements and improvements, according to KFOX14. Separately, the city's shade-canopy work shows how incremental these upgrades tend to be in practice: El Paso adopted an ordinance back in 2018 requiring shade structures at qualifying playgrounds, and the Parks and Recreation Department has since completed eight shade-canopy installations using voter-approved 2022 Community Progress Bond funding.
The department is now beginning work on eight more canopies using the remaining Phase One bond funding, though the city has not announced completion dates for all of those projects, per the earlier KFOX14 report. It's a small but concrete illustration of the master plan's broader structure — priorities get set at the citywide level, but the pace of actual construction still comes down to available bond dollars and annual budget decisions.
For now, the newly adopted plan gives El Paso officials a framework for balancing community needs, existing facility conditions and the city's maintenance capacity over the next decade. City officials say the goal is to provide welcoming, well-maintained parks and recreational facilities that strengthen neighborhoods and improve everyday life — but which neighborhoods see new shade structures, renovated pools or repaired courts first will depend on budget votes still to come.
