A nearly $400 million bond for El Paso County’s hospital districts is set to be decided by voters on Tuesday. One of the proposed projects, if it passes, is a burn center in the city that will double as a critical care center.

University Medical Center officials plan for the burn center to bring resources to El Paso patients who have to be flown in from El Paso to get there, patients like Diane Vasquez-Zimmerman, who suffered severe burns years ago.

“My house blew up in September of 2011,” Vasquez-Zimmerman said.

A gas leak caused the fire in her home. The Army veteran said flames shot through one of the vents she was facing, severely burning 70 percent of her body.

Her son and his girlfriend were home at the time and also suffered severe burns.

A neighbor managed to get in and save her. She said at the time she did not realize how badly she had been burned.

“The next thing I remember was waking up and waking up like this,” Vasquez-Zimmerman said.

He woke up in the Lubbock burn center, where El Paso’s most severely burned patients are taken. Vasquez-Zimmerman lost both hands and a leg. She spent over a year away from home in recovery.

Jon Law, UMC’s District Chief Strategy Officer, said if the bond doesn’t pass, they’ll have to look at the hospital’s annual capital planning to come up with the funding.

“So there are four buckets of projects, the first is mainly improving the main hospital, specifically adding hospital beds,” Law said. “The second is adding a burn schedule.”

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A cancer center is also proposed as a requirement. Combined, both new facilities are priced at $55.5 million.

“I think having a burn center here would help people like me. A lot of patients, people who were there with me were alone because they couldn’t have visitors,” Vasquez-Zimmerman said.

The full price of the bond weighs on the hands of taxpayers.

“About $72 a year over 30 years. On a home assessed as the median in 2024, that is $210,000. The bond does not pay for staff,” Law said.

UMC CEO Jacob Cintron received a raise and bonus approved by the hospital’s board in March after doing well in a performance review.

Hospital records show he earns an annual salary of $878,000. Some against the bond, like Republican Party Chairman Jorge Gonzalez, don’t think taxpayers should be giving the hospital any more money.

“If you look at the hospital’s financial statements, the hospital lost an average of $120 million a year and then you try to reward a CEO?” Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez believes the key to growing medical resources in El Paso is creating competition, giving doctors and hospitals incentives to practice in the city.

“We need to stop the demand for bond money that will create debt on children for the rest of their lives,” Gonzalez said.

As for Diane, her recovery continues both physically and mentally. She prepared for prosthetic hands and had to be flown to Ohio for that as well. Her hope is that people who have suffered traumatic burns like her will one day have the resources they desperately need.

“Just a big building where I would have all the facilities that a burn center would need, burn victims would need,” she said. “There’s nobody here.”

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