City manager job will probably go to a local

Betcha ten to one that native Gary Whitehead will be the next Truth or Consequences city manager, although another candidate, from Austin, Texas, Richard Arellano, is much better educated and qualified. 

See their resumes below. 

The city commission didn’t state what its recruitment process would be. I saw the position advertised on the city’s website and the New Mexico Municipal League’s website. The latter said the deadline was around Jan. 10 or Jan. 15, if I remember correctly, but the city’s ad gave the start and end dates as Nov. 15 through Dec. 30, with Dec. 30 ending up being the cut-off date. 

Only six people made the deadline. 

Two were Elephant Butte city managers, David Duvall and John Mascaro, whose short tenures and reasons for departure were unclear. Mascaro has an ongoing whistleblower lawsuit against Elephant Butte. 

The other two were James Theiler of Dallas, Texas, with restaurant experience, and James True of Sierra Vista, Arizona, both with little to no government management experience, their resumes emphasizing their store management experience. 

The city commission held a special meeting Jan. 6, the only agenda item being “city manager interviews” in closed session. 

Although the Open Meetings Act disallows taking action in closed session.somehow, the city commission decided who to interview, narrowing the field by some unstated method. Suspecting that not all were interviewed, I called candidates until one said they weren’t interviewed, which took only two phone calls. 

The city commission pulled the same OMA violation when selecting the last city manager. 

After the Jan. 6 closed session, the city commission, in open session, gave Mayor Rolf Hechler authority “to negotiate a contract,” without naming the candidate. J

Jan. 8, during the city commission regular meeting, there were two items on the closed-session portion of the agenda, one of which was “Pertaining to manager interviews and possible selection,” but no action was taken on this item  in the following open session. 

The Jan. 22 regular meeting has “city manager” on the closed-session agenda, with “possible selection of city manager and approval of contract” as action in a following open session. 

Given the high turnover of city managers, who greatly affect residents’ lives, the public has a right to know what criteria and reasoning the city commission is using in choosing a city. See the following article for more information:

Gary Whitehead is probably the city commission’s choice, since he is from T or C, his sister was mayor and on the city commission for 10  years or so, is a businessman, was a Sierra County commissioner and was the Sierra County Manager. 

They know him and he knows them. He went to Hot Springs High School, the most honored bona fide credential one can have  around here. 

It will be business as usual, most likely. 

For 60 or so years the city commission neglected the water, wastewater and electric infrastructure in order to support deficit spending in the general fund. As a result, we have critical and emergency repairs that need to be done and we are still reacting, reacting and reacting. 

Angela Gonzales, the current city manager, blithely said during the Jan. 8 meeting that last year the city had $45 million on the books for capital projects, but this year we have $80 million. She sounded as if this is a good thing. 

Hechler said that this year is going to be one for planning. But not by the city commission, not by the city staff. The people will pay half a million to have a firm tell us what needs to be done with the city’s electric facility over the next 10 years. We will pay Wilson & Co. engineering firm $50,000 to a update the 2014 comprehensive plan. Wilson & Co. wasn’t named by Hechler, but it also will likely be hired to do an “end-to-end” plan for the sewer system, whatever that means. 

What Hechler doesn’t understand is that we need a city manager who will make sure we have city directors and city staff who map, track and monitor city assets, keeping electronic records of condition, age and maintenance and their related costs, who then schedule staff and work that is guided by that ongoing documentation. 

City departments need to do their own asset management plans five, 10, 15, 20 years out, instead of reacting to 435 water leaks a year, to the 60 year old electric transformer dying, to three of five wells going offline, to sewage backing up into peoples yards and homes–all emergencies happening since 2020. 

Besides, we have had plans the public has paid for that weren’t used to guide staff or the city commission. A plan is just expensive if city management doesn’t implement and use it. 

An outside engineering firm did an electric asset management plan in 2015 that was ignored and never referred to in forming budgets or  taking on capital projects. Wilson & Co. did a water asset management plan in 2019 that was ignored and never referred to in budget or in taking on capital projects. Same thing with the 2014 comprehensive plan. I’ve never heard it referred to in the six years I have attended all but one city commission meeting. 

The city commission has not discussed the capital projects or its budget during its yearly budget sessions in six years, although it was twice and now more than three times the $24-million operations budget. 

The city commission’s utter lack of communication and planning makes it imperative that it hire a city manager who will communicate and initiate a planning process that continues with  subsequent capital-projects going into the pipeline. 

Gary Whitehead’s resume shows he’s a businessman, an entrepreneur, the guy you maybe want for start-ups, but not for long-range steering and planning. 

He has maintained and carried on his businesses while holding public office and while he was the county manager. Business’s goal is to transfer money from people’s pockets into private, corporate pockets. Government’s goal is to serve the people, ensuring and accounting for the expenditure of public funds for the people’s benefit. These goals are at odds and can create,at the very least, the appearance of a conflict of interest. 

His LLCs own a lot of land and buildings. How can city infrastructure, zoning, development and capital projects decisions remain clear of these property interests? It’s worth a public discussion.

It’s rather shocking that Whitehead went from being a Sierra County Commissioner from 1993 to 1999 to being Sierra County Manager from 1999 to 2001 and then back to being Sierra County Commissioner from 2005 to 2008. 

Business and government should not be cozy. 

County and city commissioners should not be cozy with county and city managers, since they are supposed to be the legislative check on the executive employee. That’s part of their fiduciary duty to the people. 

With Whitehead, it’s a big mixed stew. 

Whitehead spearheaded the new hospital and the spaceport, which are two of the biggest public debts on the books, paid for out of gross receipts and property taxes, with not much return on investment so far. Unless you buy the ridiculous Arrowhead Center reports, which is itself a government/private business “partnership.” If you look at the hospital’s and the spaceport’s yearly audits, you know they are struggling. These were not well-vetted projects. They were entrepreneurial projects that didn’t bring the promised tourists or patients or providers or jobs–done on the public’s dime.  

Whitehead’s resume also shows he has had a lot of jobs and has started and closed a lot of businesses. 

Horsin Around Feed & Tack and the nearby storage units at 510 S. Broadway, didn’t make the list of open/closed businesses on his resume, I don’t know why. Whitehead Investments, LLC, with Whitehead listed as “agent,” is still owner of the property, according to the county assessor’s website and the LLC is still active according to the Secretary of State’s website. 

Just up the street, at 2501 S. Broadway, was once Whitehead Chevrolet, which property was purchased by Sierra County after Whitehead closed the business, which is too cozy, in my opinion, for a past county commissioner and county manager. 

At 2060 S. Broadway, Whitehead Partners, LLC, owner, with Gary Whitehead as “agent,” is a new storage-unit business that has yet to open, despite its seeming completion about a year ago. I heard it can’t open until New Mexico Gas agrees to move its transmission substation away from the business’s entrance, which, if true, would show lack of planning before building. 

After construction started, Whitehead sought and received a variance from the city commission. He didn’t want to pay the extra expense to cover the metal building with a wood or masonry facia. Dollar General, just down the road, followed that city-code requirement, which is meant to retain or improve property values and appearances on a major commercial corridor. So now, Whitehead has built three metal-building businesses within a mile and a half of this corridor’s length, largely defining the look of the southern arterial. 

It’s been suggested, twice in the last five years, that T or C could prevent blight by adding an extra tax to unoccupied businesses and properties. Whitehead Chevrolet, Bedroxx, Horsin Around Feed & Tack, and two storage facilities, all metal buildings and shuttered for long periods of time, would have been subject to such a tax.  

Frances Luna, owner, publisher, reporter and columnist of the Sentinel, as part of her excoriation and ouster of present City Manager Angela Gonzales (see link above) said she didn’t have a vested interest in T or C because she lived in Las Cruces. I say that Gary Whitehead has too much of a vested interest. 

Cities often hire a professional at-arms-length head-hunter to oversee recruitment, vetting and public interviews for this reason, but the T or C commission didn’t and hasn’t made the hiring process transparent.

Richard Arellano, just on paper, is much better qualified to be city manager and comes with none of this local enmeshment. 

His resume lists as his primary skill, “culture building,” demonstrating a sensitivity to a city’s need to have staff with an esprit de corp and for the people to feel they are not shut out of government. 

He went to real bricks-and-mortar public universities for his undergraduate and graduate work vs. Whitehead’s BS in business administration from University of Phoenix, a for-profit university with borderline accreditation. 

Arellano has extensive experience in city management with the City of Austin, tackling policy, energy, housing and planning

Best of all, his resume emphasizes that he’s a communicator. 

He worked for a 100,000-customer electric cooperative, i.e., owned by the customers, which has the same service-and-benefit-the-people goals of a city, not the profit-off-the-people goals of a business. He knows how to manage assets and put together long-range master plans for utilities and how to identify funding. 

We’re spending half a million with a private engineering firm to figure out what needs to be done with our electric facility? Arellano could tell us if it’s a good plan or not, whether it’s worth the price–and he could communicate what it says in layman’s terms to the public. 

Given T or C’s water, wastewater and electric infrastructure neglect, the attendant massive utility fee increases and doubling of city property taxes, the people deserve a city manager who is able to correct the bad practices that got us here and give us a short-, mid- and long-range plan for steering our way out of it.  

Arellano is a too-good-to-be-true candidate for city manager. If he is not hired, we should be told why. 

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Kathleen Sloan
Kathleen Sloan

Kathleen Sloan has been a local-government reporter for 17 years, covering counties and cities in three states—New Mexico, Iowa and Florida. She has also covered the arts for various publications in Virginia, New Mexico and Iowa. Sloan worked for the Truth or Consequences Herald newspaper from 2006 to 2013; it closed December 2019. She returned to T or C in 2019 and founded the online newspaper, the Sierra County Sun, with Diana Tittle taking the helm as editor during the last year and a half of operation. The Sun closed December 2021, concurrent with Sloan retiring. SierraCountySun.org is still an open website, with hundreds of past articles still available. Sloan is now a board member of the not-for-profit organization, the Sierra County Public-Interest Journalism Project, which supported the Sun and is currently sponsoring the Sierra County Citizen, another free and open website. Sloan is volunteering as a citizen journalist, covering the T or C beat. She can be reached at kathleen.sloan@gmail.com or 575-297-4146.

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