People of T or C left out of loop on city’s legislative priorities

This article is primarily about lousy communication and lack of transparency in how the city spends millions and millions of dollars on capital projects and not explicitly about the capital projects themselves. 

The T or C City Commission, as required by the state, approved its five-year capital projects plan, running from 2026 to 2030, after holding a public hearing on July 15, 2024. 

In New Mexico State parlance, this very important list is called the  “Infrastructure Capital Improvements Plan,” or ICIP for short. It sets priorities. 

The ICIP process, as laid out by the New Mexico Department of Finance, is supposed to be a year’s long process, with city department reports and asset management plans continually being updated and communicated to the people and the city commission. 

The City of T or C doesn’t do this, so the people give lousy input at the ICIP public hearing, if any at all, being too uninformed to comment, which is probably also the case with the city commissioners, who appear to rubber-stamp whatever Assistant City Manager Traci Alvarez puts before them. Alvarez oversees the city’s capital projects. 

The people keep paying higher and higher utility fees, local gross receipts taxes and property taxes to pay for the city’s infrastructure capital projects without much explanation. 

What is really irritating is that city staff and the city commission communicate more with the legislature and the state departments. Sure, they divvy out grants and capital outlay money, but the locals pay out millions too in utility fees and taxes. 

It’s also irritating that the legislators and state departments and the New Mexico Finance Authority, which is T or C’s biggest creditor, along with the USDA, all assume that the T or C government informed its people, listened to them and got their buy-in for the projects on the ICIP and their priority reflects public consensus. 

Mayor Rolf Hechler, during the Jan. 22 city commission meeting, mentioned, with no detail, that the city had let the legislature know what its priorities are (by what method, who knows)and had also informed the city-hired lobbyist, Kathy Elliot, of those priorities. 

I suspected the July ICIP list and the legislative priorities differed, based on past experience. 

Of course I had to submit an Inspection of Public Records Act request to get the information. 

These are the top five projects on the ICIP that was passed July 2024: 

Project                funded       2026     2027    2028    2029    2030    total project cost 

Wastewater 

Treatment Plant

Upgrade             0              $1m       $3m       $3m      $3m    0         $10m

 

Clancy St. Lift    0

Station Force 

Main Improvement            $1.5m      0           0            0         0         $1.5m

 

Sewer Vacuum System    $100k    $300k   $2.3m     $2.3m  0         $5m

Replacement     0

 

Water Infrast. &

Fire Hydrant

Replacement     $12.6 m   $7.25m     0         0            0           0         $19.8m

 

Elec. Substation

Underground

Feeder                0              $1m           0          0            0          0         $1m

 

These are the top five legislative priorities the city is pushing for funding:

 

Wastewater 

Treatment Plant

Upgrade                              $4m

 

Sewer Vacuum 

System Replacement        $400k

 

Animal Shelter                    $240k

 

Lee Belle Johnson

Facility Improvements        $165k

 

Police Building 

Renovation and 

Equipment                           $500k

The ICIP requested $10.8 million for the top five projects total. The legislative priorities top five total $5.3 million in requests. 

Since the people weren’t told what made the ICIP top five a priority, it’s impossible to know if it is dangerous to not push for funding for the Clancy St. Force Main, the Water Infrastructure and Fire Hydrant Replacement and Electric Underground Feeder Replacement. They sure sound important. 

I guess the city can always fall back on an emergency purchase if a crisis hits. 

That’s what happened in 2021 when the electric grid almost went down because one of the two 60 year old electrical transformers went down. We took out a $1.6 million loan with the New Mexico Finance Authority. Too bad the city spent over $1 million on fancy electric smart meters the year before, emptying out the electric fund’s cash reserves. We could have saved a ton in interest costs. Replacing the second 60 year old transformer would seem to be a priority, but someone thought the underground feeder line was even more important and now that’s been de-prioritized. 

When the city suddenly went down from five of its eight wells operating to only two wells operating in 2022, then-City Manager Bruce Swingle informed the city commission he had made an emergency purchase, but the amount was never stated. 

I spoke with the new city manager last week, Gary Whitehead, who started today. He agreed to meet with me to discuss capital projects soon. Hopefully he will change the lack of transparency, miserly reporting and lack of explanation for capital projects and their priority.  

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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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