Infrastructure Capital Improvements Plan—planning ain’t in it

The Truth or Consequences City Commission will likely decide what capital projects to pursue without reference to engineering plans, city department head reports and asset management plans to guide the process, spending millions in public money in the process, just as it has in past years.

And, as the saying goes, if you are not planning, then you are planning for disaster, which is why the city has had waterline, sewer and electric failures and emergencies coming on top of each other since 2021.

State law requires the city commission to identify and rank capital projects going five years out, updating the plan every year. If a project isn’t on the list it won’t be funded by state or federal agencies because those agencies require a semblance of planning and evidence that the public has been informed of where and why their money will be spent, thus giving their tacit consent for such expenditures.

Only kings tax their subjects and spend the money in secret or by edict, but T or C is dangerously close to that practice.

This year, according to Assistant City Manager Traci Alvarez, who runs the city’s capital projects, said the state has moved up the deadline for turning in the ICIP and city commissioners need to get it done by June 26.

It’s very wise of the state to move up the ICIP deadline to correspond with the local governments’ yearly budget deadline. The state probably realized too many local governments are not deliberating on their capital projects in their budget-drafting process, leaving the ICIP work until September, the old deadline. Now local governments will have to at least pretend to consider capital projects at the same time they draft their budgets.

For the last five budgets the city commission has not discussed capital projects. That is astonishing given the various emergencies, especially waterline breakages, not to mention the millions of dollars at stake.

This year’s budget, adopted last July, has about $31 million in capital projects on the books, which is an extremely high amount for a city with 6,000 people. I arrived at that figure by subtracting the operations budget (only $21 million) from the grand total. The capital projects are scattered throughout the budget and coded in such a way as to make understanding impossible.

It looks like this year’s budget and ICIP process will be the same as in prior years. No real planning, no real discussion, no real examination of asset management plans.

Asset management plans should be overseen by department heads and should consist of five years of future planning based on regular inspection of pipes, valves, electrical panels, pumps, etc., with a running tabulation of their age, live expectancy, condition, repair dates, replacement dates and estimated costs.

T or C city commissioners have never used or required asset management plans in deciding the priority, necessity and cost of projects.

This lack of reporting, record-keeping and asset management by department heads is why the city has infrastructure crises. City commissioners are supposed to be a check and balance on city staff but they only praise them. They require no accountability or reporting from them and then rubber stamp capital projects they want.

Wanna hear how Mayor Rolf Hechler and Alvarez explain how neglect of the waterlines became so bad that 43 percent of the water that is treated and pumped at great cost is wasted in leaks?

Hechler, during a senate committee hearing in February in which he was asking for $20 million in capital outlay funds to fix waterlines, was asked by a senator how it got so bad. Hechler said “The leaks weren’t manifest until a couple of years ago.”

Alvarez, at the April 17 budget hearing, said citizens ask her why the city did the nearly $10-million water project downtown first when pipes around the hospital area and Veater Street were more urgent. “The leaks weren’t that bad until a couple years ago,” Alvarez told commissioners she informs citizens.

I wonder if the citizens buy Alvarez’ and Hechler’s pathetic and revealing excuses.

They are confessing they know nothing about capital-projects management by claiming they knew nothing until they saw water running in the street.  It’s their job to plan capital projects so that such emergencies do not happen.

An ounce of reading and study by Alvarez and Hechler would reveal that the city’s 2014 comprehensive plan foresaw the waterline disaster.

On page 73 it cites engineering firm W H Pacific’s 2012 engineering study that showed the city was losing 22 percent of its water due to leaks, “which is considered high. . .” The study and the comprehensive plan had as priorities replacing water lines and creating a 40-year water system plan.

Alvarez, every year, runs the ICIP process the same way. It is so low-information it is a worthless process. She holds two public hearings, as required by the state. She gives the public no information on asset conditions, no engineering reports and no report on current or past capital projects. She never talks about funding sources, the city’s finances or the people’s capacity to pay for such projects. She never tells the people how much of their utility fees is currently going to fix those utilities and why. She simply asks the people attending these hearings what they want. Of course they say things like: We want an olympic-size pool and sports complex that is open all year.

Alvarez also asks city department heads every year what they want. Since they don’t have to draft asset management plans, study engineering reports, take regular inventories or keep records, most department heads are ignorant of what is needed when and why until it breaks down necessitating an emergency repair and purchase that isn’t on the ICIP list. They too give Alvarez wishes, not evidence-based decisions.

Alvarez then gives city commissioners the list based on public and department-head wishes. The city commission, similarly void of information, put together a wish list.

At the April 24 meeting, Alvarez gave the city commission the 2025-2029 ICIP list that they approved last September so they could “think about” what they want on the list this year.

I submitted an IPRA for that list in September, since it was created verbally and on the fly and I couldn’t capture it at the meeting. Alvarez must have modified the list since it was formally adopted, which is supposedly beyond her authority. Supposedly changes to the ICIP would require another public hearing and city commission approval.

The list I received last September had the following projects in the top five:

• Emergency waterline replacement, 2025, $20 million
• Cantrell Dam improvements, 2025, $500,000
• Water meter replacement, 2025, $1.5 million
• Sidewalk improvements, 2025, $2.2 million
• Feasibility study, recreation/greenspace, 2025, $85,000

The list Alvarez gave to the city commission April 24:

• Critical waterline replacement, 2025, $20.2 million
• Cantrell Dam improvements, 2025, $250,000
• Water meter replacement, 2025, $1.5 million
• Smith, Silver and E. 9^th road improvements, 2025, $2.2 million
• Community multi-purpose center, 2025, $12 million

Interestingly, “police department renovation” was on the list I received Sept. 2023 as number 8 with zero listed as the dollar amount for 2025 expenditure. I assumed it was to renovate the existing building on McAdoo Street, since that is what has been discussed and put on the ICIP in past years. The list given to the city commission April 24 still has the project as number 8, but $4 million put in place of zero, which certainly would have alerted me to the fact that this was a much bigger deal and I could have alerted the public.

Instead, the city commission, a month later, passed an ordinance that would have forced the public to spend $4.5 million on renovating the old armory building into a police station. The citizens forced the expenditure to the ballot and voted it down March 19.

Alvarez, the city commission, or both, are deciding how to spend millions of dollars of public money on capital projects in secret. Think of that when you pay your water, sewer, electric and trash bill, or when you pay your property tax, or when you pay over 8 percent gross receipts tax on purchases.

You may want to attend the public hearings on the ICIP when they are noticed by Alvarez in an ad in the Sentinel, as she has noticed them in the past. You may want to insist on better planning, reporting, information gathering, and asset management plans to guide the process.

Or better yet, you may want to insist that the city commission hire a city planner/engineer to run its capital projects and to oversee asset management among city staff.