The city commission held two closed-door sessions to determine who would be the next city manager, directing staff in a brief open session on March 8 to offer Angela R. Gonzales a contract. She accepted and starts April 3.
The Republican Party of Sierra County is hoping that you will believe that protecting LGBTQ persons' rights and women's and girl's rights to seek or not to seek an abortion are somehow an impingement of parents' and conscientious-objectors' rights. It's confusing, which is the point.
I've been accused of lying by a hospital governing board member--that the point of forming a hospital district is not to bring in more tax revenue for Sierra Vista Hospital. Then Sen. John Arthur Smith and Hospital Association advisors to the two hospital boards lied too.
Do not be duped by local government officials into signing the hospital-district petition. It will form a new taxing authority that can levy up to 4.25 mills and issue general obligation bonds that would also increase property taxes--taxes in addition to the taxes already being collected.
Utility fees hit the poorest hardest and T or C residents are among the poorest in the nation and the state. For generations the city has wrongly used utility fees to make up for budget shortfalls, and its only getting worse as neglected utilities fall apart.
General obligation bonds are backed by a governmental entity's ability to levy taxes, sometimes described as "the full faith and credit clause." Despite vague ballot language, voters passed the issuance of $3 million in bonds last November, demonstrating faith in T or C government. Will faith persist? Should it?
Just as the lower-court planning and zoning commission blinded themselves to current city code, so did the Truth or Consequences City Commission. Mayor Amanda Forrister and her husband have been granted a kennel permit, making their hunting-dog operation legal, or at least sanctioned by her fellow city commissioners.
The city is falling apart all at once, 60 years of infrastructure neglect coming to crisis, while its debt capacity is exhausted. City officials were real with legislators and they were real back.
So far, good-ole-boy government is enabling Mayor Forrister to remain above the law. The 30 animal-control violations against her and her husband, which include animal cruelty, were not considered in P&Z deliberations and the current kennel law was thrown out the window.
There will be no sunshine on the possible sale of the city's electric utility. If it happens, it will be a private sale to Sierra Electric Cooperative.
Hooray. Fairness under the city's zoning code was in evidence at the Dec. 14 city commission meeting, thanks to Mayor Pro Tem Rolf Hechler. He went through his findings of fact before ruling, as required by law, eschewing opinion.
The next city manager must hold to a course correction, reversing 60 years of water, wastewater and electric infrastructure neglect--Bruce Swingle is leaving in May.
