T or C City Commissioners “don’t understand” police-building referendum

It would be a comedy if it weren’t a tragedy. For the third time the Truth or Consequences City Commission has been faced with a referendum on a new police building financing bond.

Please note, dear reader, that the city commissions past and present have only put financing ordinances to the people concerning the purchase of a new police building. If the city commission had held town halls and public hearings on why the old building isn’t good enough and what should replace it and if the city can afford it given its water and sewer crisis, they probably could have avoided all three referendums.

As a local government reporter covering seven cities and four counties and one school district over an 18-year period, T or C gives the shortest shrift to public input, while expecting them to pay ever higher utility fees and taxes.

The City of Burlington, Iowa took about two years to decide what to do about its dilapidated police building, holding dozens of public hearings and half a dozen town halls on the myriad issues involved, pulling in police-building, financing and other experts to educate city staff, city commissioners and the public.

Two of the three referendums on police-building financing have been brought during the current city commissioners’ watch—Mayor Rolf Hechler, Mayor Pro Tem Amanda Forrister and City Commissioners Destiny Mitchell, Merry Jo Fahl and Ingo Hoeppner.

The March 2024 referendum resulted in the people voting down their ordinance to finance a “public safety building” via a $4.5 million bond issuance. The old armory building and a new one on city golf course property were suggested in discussion. No definitive building was named in the financing ordinance.

Did the city commission take stock on their failure to gain the people’s approval for the project? No.

A few months later, Hoeppner and Hechler, behind closed doors, decided the PNC Bank building, which was up for sale, would be the new police building and made an offer of $430,000 that was accepted by the bank. Only after the offer was accepted did the purchase come before the city commission in a public meeting. The city commission approved a purchase agreement after the fact. The Open Meetings Act requires that all action be taken in public, so the post-action white washing was necessary.

The city commission also approved that $200,000 of the purchase price be paid from the general fund and $230,000 from the police department’s .25 percent gross receipts tax fund.

City Manager Angela Gonzales said the city commission could pay back the general fund and PD GRT fund when the city received money from an as-yet city-commission approved bond debt, dropping the pretense that the city commission may or may not approve the financing ordinance. It too was a done deal, before it was noticed or heard in a public meeting.

The financing ordinance was approved by the city commission for publication at the same July 2 special meeting that was called to purchase the building. That ordinance said the New Mexico Finance Authority would be the bond holder and the borrowed amount was to be “up to” $2 million. The debt would be paid from the “state-shared” 1.225 gross receipts tax, the city’s financial and legal counsel Chris Muirhead said, who is an attorney with Modrall Sperling. That money source was pledged, Muirhead said, because it’s the largest pot among the city’s GRT tax revenues, which would keep the interest rate down and assuage the bank’s risk aversion.

But that ordinance never went to public hearing. Without telling the public or admitting it had made a mistake, and without approving a second, different financing ordinance, the city commission, behind closed doors, changed the ordinance and “published” it again (took out a legal ad in the Sentinel), as required by state law.

This second ordinance pledged a different GRT source. The “up to” $2-million debt (not including interest) would be paid back from the police department’s .25 percent GRT. https://sierracountycitizen.org/new-police-building-rammed-down-publics-throat-again-third-time-is-the-charm/

The city commission approved this second financing ordinance at the Aug. 14 city commission meeting. Ron Fenn, a longtime local activist who has spearheaded numerous initiative ordinances and referendums, informed them this third financing ordinance for a new police building would also go to referendum.

At the Sept. 24 city commission meeting, City Clerk Angela Torres confirmed that 209 signatures were needed on the petition to trigger a special election and 278 signatures had been turned in with 21 of those “purged.”

State law 3-14-17 on referendums states the city commission “shall” pass an election resolution within 10 days of a petition’s verification. The special election is to be held within 90 days of that verification, the law states. Torres therefore placed an election resolution on the Sept. 24 agenda, setting the special election for Feb. 13, 2025.

But Hechler evidently did not read the “shall” in that state law, or chose to disregard the people’s right to referendum city commission ordinances and to even bring their own laws—initiative ordinances, state law 3-14-18 —to a public vote.

Hechler told the city commissioners “we have to make a choice.” The city commission could hold a special election, he said, “and I’m confident we can win,” that is, get the people to vote in favor of the “up to” $2-million bond issue; or hold no special election and go instead to the state legislature and as them for $700,000 to renovate the PNC Bank building.

Hechler’s fellow commissioners went along with Hechler’s framing, demonstrating their ignorance of or disdain for the people’s referendum rights.

During discussion, Fahl said, “I don’t understand why 278 people don’t support the police department.” Fahl demonstrated the same insulting and reductive thinking after the March referendum, chiding the public for not supporting the police. “Shame on you,” she said over the radio and in city chambers.

“We’ve been talking about it for months,” Fahl said, failing to recognize that the PNC bank purchase was done behind closed doors and that city commissioners’ discussion among themselves is not the same as building public consensus.

Fahl did show a slight learning curve from the last referendum. Instead of holding Fenn and other petition circulators totally responsible for the success of the petition, she asked a few people who had signed the petition if they read it first.

State law requires that the ordinance be on all petition pages to ensure that signers aren’t being duped. They can read and know what they are signing. Fahl’s relative signed the petition without reading it, believing what she was told, “that the city one again was trying to fix up the armory and spend $20 million and the commission doesn’t listen,” Fahl said.

Fahl and Mitchell ask City Attorney Jay Rubin if something could be done if he people circulating the petition were misrepresenting the ordinance.

Rubin said the people who signed the petition would have to bring suit in district court. He did not name the criminal or civil action a petition signer could take, but definitively stated that the city commission could not bring suit. Rubin mistakenly said 278 (not 257) signatures were validated by the city clerk. The city clerk, said Rubin, has no authority beyond checking if signers are registered voters in the city and purging the petition of names for claimed misrepresentation was not within her purview. Only the district court could take names off the petition.

Rubin noted that about 70 people would have to bring suit to attempt to expunge enough names to make the petition insufficient.

“We need to better communicate what we are doing,” Fahl acknowledged. “We failed once again.”

Commissioner Ingo Hoeppner said he also did not understand why the people were pushing the bank building purchase to referendum. He too reduced the controversy surrounding a new police building to a single, though different issue. He didn’t understand why the people weren’t accepting his “solution.” He had “cut the cost by $5 million dollars,” presumably referring to the $4.5 million bond in the last referendum and not acknowledging the $2 million bond on the current referendum.  Hoeppner obviously assumes that cost is the only issue for the people.

Hoeppner said, “I work, spending my own time” on such things as the purchase of the PNC building  as well as holding two Monday sessions a month at Ingo’s Café. He appeared to be perturbed that the public had not come to him to express approval or disapproval of the PNC building purchase, not realizing that his secrecy in purchasing the building precluded public awareness and that lack of transparency and public consensus building is why these referendums are happening.

Ironically, Hoeppner said that if the people again vote down the financing bond, the city will have to ask the legislature to fund the building renovation, lessening the amount they can request for the city’s failing water system. “Think of the consequences of what you are doing,” Hoeppner chided the people. Many people, at the mic during public meetings and in comments to the Citizen, said they voted down the bond in March because they wanted the money to go to water projects instead.

Hechler unfairly blamed the petition circulators for misrepresenting the amount to be borrowed, claiming it will be less than $2 million. Hechler and the other commissioners passed the ordinance that states “up to” $2 million will be borrowed. The petition, by law, quotes their ordinance, with the petition’s language being approved by the city clerk.

Hechler also minimized the huge effort of the petition drive, ignoring the possibility he has angered citizens. He emphasized that misinformation drove people to sign and said, “It’s easy to go back to the same people who signed the first petition.” Hechler seems oblivious to the possibility that a solidified faction opposing the city commission may have formed because of the lack of democratic processes. The PNC building purchase could have kindled the people’s resentment of “taxation without representation.”

Hechler called on each of the city commissioners to make their choice—did they want to go forward with the special election or seek $700,000 from the state legislature to fund its remodel.

Only then did Rubin appear to realize the city commission thought they had a choice. After 20 minutes or so of discussion, Rubin corrected them, hazily saying, “I don’t think you have a choice, you have to pass it.”

The city commission unanimously passed the election resolution, setting the special election for Feb. 13, in conformance with the law.