It’s time for Truth or Consequences city officials and their hired lobbyist, Kathy Elliot of Civility Government Relations, to polish elevator speeches and longer presentations that will convince legislators and our governor to give $3 million in capital outlay to the city.
Citizens, of course, can also call their legislators and the governor’s office to strengthen (or hobble) the city’s efforts.
The legislative session is about three months away, but this lead-up time is when legislators and the governor are listening to local governments and making up their minds.
City Manager Gary Whitehead and Assistant City Manager Traci Alvarez kicked off the lobbying season by reminding city commissioners of the top five “Infrastructure Capital Improvements Projects” they chose in July. The ICIP is what all legislators, the governor and state agencies look at in deciding what projects to fund.
Grant/loans funded by bills are decided based on ICIPs from local governmental entities. Grant/loans go through stringent reviews by multiple agencies and experts. The city is trying for grant/loan money too, many millions of dollars worth, but it is also trying for capital outlay money.
Capital outlay is discretionary money the governor and legislators have to allot to projects they deem worthy. It’s less money than federal or state grant/loans, but it comes with fewer strings attached and agency hoops to leap over and without the crowd of government agency experts looking over your application.
You have to convince far fewer people of the project’s worth. State senators are given about $1.5 million each and state representatives are given about $500,000 each every year in capital outlay money. The governor has much more discretionary capital outlay money. The governor signed a bill last legislative session that authorized about $600 million for local government projects for 2025, which included legislators’ and her own discretionary capital outlay money. It is unknown what that pot of money is for 2026.
Our governor is Michelle Lujan Grisham and our state representatives are Gail Armstrong and Rebecca Dow. Our state senator is Crystal Brantley.
Whitehead has opened up the capital outlay requests to more public scrutiny and potential public support by making it an agenda item in a city commission meeting. In past years the public could only know what was on the ICIP list, not the specific “ask.”
Legislators and the governor have instructed local governments to limit their requests to the top five on their ICIP list, Whitehead said. In a strategic move, he divvied up the top five ICIP projects even further, making three requests to legislators and two requests to the governor.
He suggested that the requests to Dow, Armstrong and Brantley be:
- $500,000 request to design, build and construct the foundation problems with the Lee Belle Johnson building. It has been out of service for four years since the hot springs aquifer welled up and warped the floor. “The foundation is the big issue,” Whitehead said, at the Sept. 24 city commission meeting. He called a contractor and they have looked at the building “five or six times this year, and there is no water,” just the damage left behind.
- $500,000 for Marie Street, to pay to engineer street resurfacing, to reinforce the dam by the golf course, to put in sidewalks and to replace the water and sewer pipes under the street.
- $500,000 for a Multipurpose Recreation Center. Whitehead said Sierra Vista Hospital may be interested in partnering with the city on this project, which would include an indoor pool. The money would be used for engineering and planning.
He suggested the requests to Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham be:
- $1 million for improvements to the wastewater treatment plant. She gave the city $1 million last legislative session for that purpose, Whitehead said, and seems amenable to funding water and wastewater projects. For more information on the WWTP, see: https://sierracountycitizen.org/whitehead-has-a-plan-to-fix-citys-sewer-woes/
- $500,000 to design, engineer and build a second electrical substation north of the golf course. In an interview with the Citizen, Whitehead said the recent electric study recommended this be done farther in the future, but in subsequent discussions with Electric Department Director Bo Easley he was convinced this second substation would fix a lot of the mis-coordination and uneven phasing that were pointed out in the study. In addition it would give greater switching capacity, redundancy and stability to the whole system. Whitehead is going to hold a work shop on the electric study to help explain the findings.
The city commission approved the capital outlay request plan and amounts that Whitehead proposed.