Why is Truth or Consequences spending $250,000 a year perennially and $350,000 this year to supplement the golf course when it only has 5 members and 0 to 5 rounds of golf being played a day, and made less than $10,000 last year, as reported by City Manager Gary Whitehead at the Jan. 16 city commission meeting?
Because the city commission, when it set goals for Whitehead when he was hired late last February told him “to fix the golf course,” he related, which entailed upping the $250,000 a year subsidy to $350,000. Whitehead said $300,000 comes from the general fund (read taxpayers’ property and gross receipts taxes) and $50,000 from lodgers tax receipts.
But that’s not really a very good answer to “why?”
And by the way, how did the golf course get into such bad shape with a $250,000 a year subsidy?
But back to “why?” Why aren’t such policy decisions by the city commission discussed during budget sessions? Why do we have to learn about it nearly a year later? What is so secret about the city commission’s goals for the city manager? Why can’t we the people know what the city commission’s priorities are and why they are their priorities?
Spending 4 percent of the city’s $6.8 million general fund and nearly 10 percent of the half-million or so lodgers’ tax fund on the golf course is galling when the rate payers are facing exorbitant increases.
Water and wastewater rate increases were also on the Jan. 16 agenda, offering high relief of essential and nonessential spending.
The city commission accepted a water and wastewater rate study, which for some reason has been put off since October 2025 when they were first asked to accept it. The whole study wasn’t included in the packet then, only an indigestible Powerpoint presentation. The whole study in the Jan. 16 packet is nearly as cryptic. If the suggested increases are adopted, those rates could increase 25 percent.
This proposed sewer rate increase is on top of the 5 percent per year increases since 2017–a 45 percent increase without taking into account the 5 percent increase on top of the 5 percent increase from the year before. Sewer rates have risen 65 percent over the last 9 years if the compounding is taken into account.
This proposed water rate increase is on top of the initial 50 percent rate increase in 2019, nearly 10 percent rate increase in 2020, nearly 6 percent rate increase in 2021 and consumer price index increases in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, which I lost track of. Water rates have risen about 100 percent or more since 2019, with compounding taken into account.
Electric rates went up substantially a year ago, the rate study adopted incorporating increases year over year for the next five years.
Polycart rates have gone up 5 percent a year over the last nine years or so, another 65 percent increase during that period. Solid waste fees for commercial dumpsters and those bringing waste to the weigh station and charged tipping fees are finally being billed more, but still not enough to cover operational costs, let alone pay their share for recycling and truck replacements and debt and capital projects. That’s still all being paid by polycart receipts.
These rate increases are paying for years and years of neglect of these essential services in order to pay for the golf course, the swimming pool, the airport, the Sierra Economic Development Organization, Fiesta, tourism advertising and other nonessential services.
And what have we achieved? What have we gotten out of it? Can we have some sort of accounting? Is the city keeping any kind of accounting?
I looked at the 2024 U.S. Census estimates for T or C. Population down another 1.9 percent, below 6,000. High school graduates, 87.8 percent. Only 19.3 percent with college degrees or higher. A whopping 22.4 percent with disabilities. Only 42.8 percent older than 16 who are employed. Only $23.5 million in accommodation and food service sales (2022, latest data) compared to $65.5 million in healthcare and social assistance receipts revenue. An appalling $29,000 median income per household and $20,300 per capita income. And poverty is up from 33 percent in 2020 to 34.8 percent in 2024.
As we all know, water, wastewater and electricity are essential and utility rate hikes hit the poor the hardest. The city has added to that burden by passing a law making people take city polycart service at nearly $36 a month.
Yet the city commission is spending $360,000 a year on the golf course? How much is being spent on emergency water repairs? I examined the budget and couldn’t figure it out. Two years ago I confirmed Smithco was paid $360,000 from July to November 2023, which is about $72,000 a month for emergency repairs and $864,000 a year:
In addition, the city crews do emergency repairs daily. And Whitehead said at the Jan. 16 meeting that another firm had also been brought on besides Smithco to handle emergency leaks. And for all this expense and trouble, last I heard, from water/wastewater supervisor Jamie Foreman, the city is still leaking at the enormous rate of 57 percent last summer, which is the worst season because water demands are higher.
And the city commission, behind closed doors, decides to sink even more money into the golf course, which has continuously lost money since time out of mind and gets a few players a day instead of alleviating the burden on rate payers?
The obliviousness to the people’s burden was evident in Mayor Rolf Hechler’s statement on the water and wastewater study. He attended the New Mexico Municipal League’s three-day training for new city commissioners earlier in the week, along with re-elected Destiny Mitchell and new Commissioner Chaz Gilines. The NMML “strongly recommended” that “enterprise funds have to be self-sufficient,” and therefore, “we have to make this [rate hike] work.”
Does he, along with his fellow commissioners, not know that the golf course is an enterprise, as are the pool and airport, and should, under good governance, be self sufficient? Hechler is in the third year of his third four-year term. Michell is going on her fifth year, Mayor Pro Tem Amanda Forrister is in the third year of her second term, and nearly a year was added to her first term when the city went from holding local elections in March to having the county run its elections, seating winners in January, so she’s approaching her eighth year.
Are they intentionally oblivious to the burden rising utility fees are placing on the people? I think the secrecy of their priorities, their goals for City Manager Whitehead, show they are aware of how the people would react to their choices. Just like the purchase of the new police building, the people are informed, as an afterthought, after the fact.
Hmm when 250 k could really go eles where..its only making 10k ..where again is that 250k really going ?