District 4
They approved the deal. Then they changed the rules.
Cynthia Boyar Trejo voted against starting negotiations to end Meta’s incentive agreement. Her next regular election is not until 2028. District 4 residents do not have to wait that long to demand accountability.
Why residents are organizing
El Pasoans have every right to ask who City Hall is working for
What happened next was confusing. According to organizers, they received incomplete instructions and changing answers. They also learned that the City planned to calculate the number of required signatures using an election that Boyar Trejo did not win.
- A trillion-dollar corporation received decades of tax breaks.
- Meta was given a chance to review and try to shape a community-benefits proposal before Council acted.
- Boyar Trejo is not up for regular reelection until 2028, but District 4 residents do not have to wait that long to respond.
Petition signing locations
Find a pop-up signing event
Registered District 4 voters can visit a scheduled pop-up location to sign the recall petition in person.
No public pop-up events are listed right now
Check back soon or volunteer with the campaign to learn where signature collection is happening next.
Campaign timeline
Timeline of events
These events explain what led District 4 residents to begin the recall effort and where the campaign stands now.
- Key event
June 9, 2026
Nearly 200 El Pasoans confront City Council
The Council rejected an effort to begin negotiations that could end Meta’s incentive agreement.
A total of 183 people signed up to speak at an El Paso City Council meeting about Meta’s hyperscale data center. The Council chambers reached capacity, and the meeting included hours of public comments.
Residents raised concerns about how the project could affect El Paso’s water, electricity costs, environment, roads, and quality of life.
Item 37 asked the City Manager and City Attorney to begin negotiations to end the incentive agreement with Wurldwide LLC and Meta. The item failed by a 5–3 vote.
Representatives Josh Acevedo, Lily Limón, and Chris Canales voted for the item. Representatives Alejandra Chávez, Ivan Niño, Art Fierro, Deanna Maldonado-Rocha, and Cynthia Boyar Trejo voted against it.
The agreement gives Meta an 80% city property-tax rebate. The first phase lasts 15 years, and incentives could continue for as long as 35 years across all project phases. The City estimates that combined City and County incentives could reach up to $550 million.
Many residents felt City leaders were protecting a trillion-dollar company instead of fully investigating possible long-term harm to El Paso.
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After the Council vote
District 4’s representative supports the Meta project
Residents believed she could cast this vote without facing regular-election accountability until 2028.
Representative Cynthia Boyar Trejo voted against beginning negotiations to end the Meta incentive agreement.
The data center is being built in Northeast El Paso, inside District 4 — the district she was elected to represent.
Boyar Trejo had recently started a four-year term. Her term does not end until January 2029, and her next regular election is scheduled for 2028.
Residents believed she could cast the vote while assuming District 4 voters would not get another regular chance to respond until 2028.
Residents believed she could vote this way because the next regular election was not until 2028. The recall changes that.
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After the Council vote
District 4 residents decide to take action
Residents began organizing so District 4 voters would not have to wait until 2028.
After the Council vote, a small group of District 4 residents and other community members decided to start a recall campaign against Boyar Trejo.
The campaign began with local residents who believed their representative had placed Meta’s interests ahead of the people living in her district.
A recall would allow District 4 voters to decide whether Boyar Trejo should remain in office, without waiting until the next regular election in 2028.
- Key event
June 17, 2026
Residents formally file for a recall
The 60-day clock started once organizers filed their notice of intent.
Organizers filed their notice of intent with the City Clerk on June 17, 2026.
Once the paperwork was filed, the clock started running. Organizers had 60 days to collect thousands of valid signatures from registered District 4 voters.
Every day was important.
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Recall process begins
The City provides no complete recall packet
Organizers say they did not receive one complete set of rules for the process.
According to recall organizers, they expected the City Clerk’s Office to provide a packet explaining the recall process.
They needed clear information about the deadline, the number of signatures required, the correct petition forms, the rules for collecting signatures, and how petitions had to be turned in.
Organizers say the City did not provide a complete recall packet after the filing. When they asked about the packet in person, they were left with the impression that no such packet existed.
They began asking for basic information, including the final deadline, exact signature requirement, sample petition forms, circulator rules, voter information requirements, notary and affidavit requirements, signature-checking rules, and petition turn-in instructions.
According to organizers, the answers were limited and often incomplete. Meanwhile, the 60-day deadline kept getting closer.
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During the recall period
Local media defends the City’s limited response
Residents were asking for clear rules, not for the City to run the campaign.
Local coverage focused on whether the City Clerk was legally required to guide organizers through the recall process.
But residents were not asking the City to run the recall campaign for them. They were asking for one clear and complete set of rules.
Residents should not have to guess how to follow a legal process — especially when they have only 60 days to complete it.
How can residents meaningfully exercise a right guaranteed by the City Charter when the office administering the process provides no single, complete explanation of the rules?
- Key event
Community-benefits process
Questions emerge about Meta’s role in the community-benefits process
Reporting showed Meta had a chance to review and try to shape proposed community-benefits language.
Investigative journalist Aaron Montes reported that Boyar Trejo’s office communicated with Meta while she was developing a proposed community benefits agreement for the data center.
Boyar Trejo sent her proposed language to Meta before it appeared on the City Council agenda. Meta then suggested different language, crossed out part of the proposal, and asked to discuss why the community-benefits-agreement approach was challenging for the company.
The final language was not changed. Still, the communications showed that Meta was given a chance to review and try to shape the proposal before the Council acted on it.
A community benefits agreement is meant to create protections and promises for the people affected by a major project. When the company receiving tax incentives is allowed to help shape that process, residents have reason to question whose interests are being protected.
A community benefits agreement is supposed to protect the community — not be controlled by the corporation receiving public incentives.
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Signature requirement dispute
The City changes its explanation of the signature requirement
Organizers say the City later told them to include undervotes in the signature calculation.
According to recall organizers, the City Clerk later told them that the signature calculation had to include undervotes from the November 2024 general election.
An undervote happens when someone casts a ballot but does not vote in a certain race. In this case, those voters did not choose any candidate for District 4 representative.
Counting those ballots would raise the number used to calculate how many recall signatures were required.
Organizers say this requirement was not clearly explained when they filed the recall paperwork.
- Key event
Six-day delay
Organizers ask the City to prove the undervote requirement
The City withdrew the undervote instruction six days after organizers asked for proof.
Organizers asked the City Clerk to show them the law, ordinance, election document, or City Charter section that required undervotes to be included.
According to organizers, the City did not correct the information right away.
It took the City Clerk six days to withdraw the undervote instruction after organizers asked for proof.
During those six days, the recall deadline continued to get closer. Organizers were left planning their campaign around information the City later took back.
How many signatures would residents have collected under an incorrect requirement if organizers had not challenged the City’s interpretation?
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July 23, 2026
Residents report sharply higher electric bills
Local reporting connected higher bills to newly approved El Paso Electric rates and summer pricing.
KVIA reported that some El Paso Electric customers saw much higher bills after new rates took effect alongside summer pricing. One resident said her bill rose from about $35 to $182.
El Paso Electric said the increases reflected state-approved rates for infrastructure and reliability costs, plus seasonal summer pricing that charges a higher rate for residential usage above 600 kilowatt-hours.
For residents already concerned about the Meta data center’s demands on local utilities, the report added urgency to questions about who pays when major infrastructure needs grow.
- Key event
July 28, 2026
Reuters reports Meta and BlackRock’s $14 billion El Paso data center venture
The El Paso data center was described as a 1-gigawatt AI campus expected to begin operating in 2028.
Reuters reported that Meta and BlackRock announced a venture to develop and operate the El Paso data center campus, with development costs of about $14 billion.
According to Reuters, BlackRock-managed funds would own 80% of the venture and Meta would retain 20%. Meta would lease computing capacity rather than directly owning and funding the entire campus.
The report said the campus was already under construction, designed for 1 gigawatt of compute capacity, and expected to begin operations in 2028.
For District 4 residents, the size and financing of the project reinforced why local questions about water, electricity, public incentives, and accountability could not be treated as small or abstract concerns.
A project described at a national scale still lands locally — in District 4, on El Paso’s water, electricity, roads, and public decision-making.
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August 5, 2026
Northeast town hall scheduled on Meta, water, and electric utilities
Representative Trejo announced a town hall with City, water, and electric officials as residents continued asking utility questions.
KVIA reported that Representative Cynthia Boyar Trejo promoted a Northeast El Paso town hall for residents with questions about the Meta data center, water service, electric infrastructure, and related topics.
The report said the meeting was scheduled at the Northeast Regional Command Center and expected to include El Paso City Attorney Karla Nieman, El Paso Water CEO John Balliew, and El Paso Electric CEO Kelly Tomblin.
The town hall showed that utility concerns were not separate from the recall conversation. They were central questions for the district where the data center is being built.
- Current stage
August 6, 2026
Recall organizers challenge the City’s 4,233-signature threshold
Organizers said they would ask a court to require the City to calculate the recall threshold using the runoff election Trejo won.
KFOX14/CBS4 and KTSM 9 News reported that recall organizers challenged what they described as an unlawful signature requirement for the petition. KTSM reported that community organizer Josh Dagda filed a Petition for a Writ of Mandamus in district court against the El Paso City Clerk.
According to KTSM, Dagda said the lawsuit asks the court to compel the City to comply with controlling Texas law and the City Charter when calculating the signature threshold for recall petitions.
Organizers said the Charter requires signatures equal to 20% of the total number of votes cast in the election in which the officer was elected. KTSM reported that Dagda argued Trejo was elected in the December 2024 runoff election, which would produce a 786-signature threshold instead of 4,233.
KTSM also reported that organizers had gathered more than 1,000 signatures, which Dagda said exceeded the threshold if calculated using the runoff election.
KTSM reported that attorney Brian Kennedy said a home-rule city’s charter controls over an ordinance when the two conflict, and argued that the November 2024 general election did not elect anyone because the race went to a runoff.
The City stated that it calculated the requirement under the City Charter and Ordinance No. 8066 using the November 2024 general election, producing a 4,233-signature threshold. The City said it respected the organizers’ right to seek judicial review and would respond through the legal process.
The dispute is not only about a number. It is about whether residents get a fair, usable recall process under the election that actually put their representative in office.
- Key event
Current stage
Residents continue the recall effort
District 4 residents are still collecting and verifying signatures despite the disputed process.
District 4 residents have continued collecting signatures despite the confusion.
They have had to deal with what organizers describe as incomplete instructions, changing answers, a six-day delay in correcting the undervote instruction, and a signature requirement they believe is based on the wrong election.
The campaign is trying to collect more signatures than the City says are required. This does not mean organizers agree with the City’s calculation. They are collecting extra signatures because some may be rejected and because the City’s instructions have already changed.
Public reporting has confirmed that the campaign is continuing to gather and verify signatures from District 4 voters.
Timeline entries are based on public records, public meetings, and linked news reports where available.
Accountability findings
The pattern is clear
01 First, City leaders approved decades of tax incentives for one of the richest companies in the world.
02 Then, five City representatives refused to begin negotiations that could end the agreement after nearly 200 people signed up to speak.
03 Because Boyar Trejo is not up for regular reelection until 2028, residents had reason to believe she could cast that vote without facing voters soon.
04 When District 4 residents started a recall, organizers say they received incomplete instructions and changing answers.
05 According to organizers, the City told them to count undervotes. Six days later, after organizers asked for proof, the City took that instruction back.
06 The City is still calculating the required signatures using an election that Cynthia Boyar Trejo did not win instead of the runoff election that made her the District 4 representative.
The rules should not change after residents decide to use them.
When a trillion-dollar corporation receives decades of tax breaks, helps shape the process meant to protect the community, and residents encounter changing rules when they seek accountability, El Pasoans have every right to ask: Who is City Hall working for?
Volunteer
District 4 residents do not have to wait until 2028
If elected officials believe they can ignore residents until the next regular election, they need to be reminded who they work for. Volunteer to help District 4 voters decide whether Cynthia Boyar Trejo should remain in office.
- Collect signatures
- Talk with District 4 voters
- Support bilingual outreach
No campaign experience is required. The volunteer form opens through Action Network.
Frequently asked questions
What is this site for?
This site gives District 4 residents a plain-language timeline of the Meta vote, the recall filing, the disputed instructions, and the current signature effort.
Why does the timeline mention organizers’ accounts?
Some events describe what recall organizers say they were told during the process. Those sections keep that framing clear until public source links and records are added.
How can I help?
The campaign needs volunteers for signature collection, District 4 voter conversations, bilingual outreach, and accessibility feedback. The volunteer form opens through Action Network.