Gee, all this time I thought the city commission and city managers over the last four and a half years weren’t explaining to the people why they took certain actions was because they were willfully uninformed and preferred to “trust” city staff to run the show.
I have come to understand that the city commissioners give superficial answers or no answers because they think the people—me in particular—are too stupid to understand them.
Harrelson, at the November city commission meeting, said bloggers, such as myself, can’t understand what she has been advising (that we should write positive and not negative stories so people come here and spend money). She further suggested it was a “comprehension problem,” not uncommon in Truth or Consequences. She works in the public schools “and 24 percent are special ed,” Harrelson said.
I laughed then, but not at the December 13 meeting. Thinking us dim comes with an authoritarian corollary. The city commissioners know what is best for us and can therefore bypass us due to their superiority. That puts the people at the bottom of the organizational chart, even though in a democracy the people are supposed to be at the top.
It was a six-hour meeting, the city commission choosing to meet only once in November and December, causing a back log of needed governmental actions. I left around the three-hour mark and did an Inspection-of-Public-Records-Act request for the audio file the same day. I received it yesterday.
As in the past, I had gone to the mic during public comment to add a bit of public pressure to the commission. This has worked. At least I’ve gotten a few blurted responses from Mayor Amanda Forrister and City Commissioner Shelly Harrelson, which is better than the utter unresponsiveness I have received from my emails.
I asked the city commission not to approve two items that would result in Smithco Construction of Caballo and Global Maven Enterprises of Las Cruces being awarded “on-call” contracts.
More than a month ago, city staff issued a “request for proposals” for “on-call” services. The RFP stated its “purpose” was “to solicit sealed proposals to establish a contract through competitive negotiations for the procurement of a pool of responsive contractors for the City of Truth or Consequences to provide full on-call as-needed to repair and replace infrastructure projects.”
I reminded the city commission that they had used the same “on-call” procurement process about four years ago for architectural and engineering services. This resulted in city staff being able to hire these expensive professionals without seeking city commission approval.
Given only three minutes, I did not state the obvious—that city staff, by hiring these professionals were controlling the beginning of the capital-projects pipeline and thus the priority of projects. I also didn’t have time to point out that these projects often didn’t come to light until staff presented a request for the city commission to approve a grant/loan application, usually for multi-million-dollar projects.
I did point out that these on-call awards made capital projects processes non-transparent and resulted in millions of dollars being spent.
I didn’t give examples of such projects, but here are a few for the reader:
-The renovation of the armory as a police station and the re-hiring of the architect to update that five-year-old plan were not brought before the city commission. Estimate: $4.5 million.
-The redo of Ralph Edwards Park and the hiring of a landscape architect and Wilson & Co. were not brought before the city commission. The cost of this project has never been given to the public.
-The downtown water project and Wilson & Company’s hiring to help with the grant application did not come to light until the grant application/loan was brought to the city commission. This is about a $9.5- million project.
I pointed out to the city commission that it is supposed to determine policy and city staff is supposed to carry it out. I said that city staff presenting the city commission with on-call services awards bypassed their duty to determine the policy of whether outside companies should be hired in the first place.
I suggested that it might be cheaper to hire city staff capable of doing the work rather than going to outside firms.
I asked the city commission to pass policies to control procurement of professional services and to make it more transparent. I also asked that any outside firm hired and paid more than $20,000 show up on the city commission’s regular agenda item for procurements over $20,000.
City Commissioner Shelly Harrelson said the city is using Smithco and other outside companies to do various jobs “because we don’t have the staff or money to do it ourselves.”
If I could have responded, I would have asked Harrelson, “But we have money for outside professionals? They’re working for free?”
Of course a cost study should be done to determine if it would be cheaper to hire staff and to purchase the equipment needed to do major water-leak repairs in-house. The city might have to increase its salary offers to attract engineers or contractors to this small city. But given the 60 years of neglect and massive repairs the city’s water infrastructure requires for years to come, it is not unlikely that in-house would be cheaper.
Forrister at least recognized that we possibly could hire in-house professionals to do the work. “The jobs are open and anybody is welcome to apply,” she said. “If we had the staff, the work would already be done.”
When the agenda items came up hours later, no members of the public remained and the city commissioners were freer in their remarks.
Harrelson suggested that the city should post where waterline work is going on in the city “without financial figures,” on Facebook. “They can’t see where the money is going,” Harrelson said, and this might assuage that problem. She’s right. I’m too stupid to understand how this would help.
Several city commissioners and city staff speaking at once said such postings were already being done to warn people of water shut-off periods. To do more would be a waste of time because “people still wouldn’t understand.” I couldn’t tell from the tape who was talking.
City Manager Angela Gonzales, in an irritated tone, said fixing a city block’s worth of water pipe “costs $45,000 and people can figure it out.”
Thanks for that tossed-off rule of thumb Ms. Gonzales. That ought to inform the public sufficiently where its money is going.
The central issue was totally ignored—that the city commission was not overseeing projects and expenditures, that they were protecting a shadow government and a rule by hidden administrators spending public monies.
Acting as if I had accused the city staff of illegal procurement procedures, Gonzales, in broken sentences, said they follow the very complex procurement rules laid down by the state. Without claiming responsibility for initiating the on-call RFP, she explained that city staff didn’t have the “expertise or the equipment” to work on leaking waterlines that are four-feet deep or more. She said the city was already using Smithco and Steve Bell, inadvertently confirming my assertion that city staff hire outside professionals without city-commission oversight. Gonzales said only two firms responded to the on-call RFP, Smithco and Global Maven Enterprises. “I think Global Maven is for equipment or something,” Gonzales said.
Assistant City Manager Traci Alvarez, when asked, was also unsure what service the city was seeking from Global Maven. (An online search reveals that the company is based in Las Cruces and offers general construction and landscaping services.)
The city commission didn’t care that the service was unknown and approved awards to both companies.
Alvarez said that all professional services costing more than $20,000 do show up on the regular agenda item, “unless the city commission approved a grant for the project.”
Considering the vast majority of the city’s projects are partially funded by grants, Alvarez confirmed my assertion that capital projects are not transparent. $31 million of this year’s $53 million budget are for capital projects.
Harrelson is right that not being able to follow the money is a problem. But not being able to figure out who is making the decisions to spend the money and why is also a problem. A problem for those who just can’t understand what the city staff and city commission are not bothering to tell us.
Time to request an audit(s) by the State Auditor?