During the April 10 meeting, Truth or Consequences City Commissioners once again awarded “on-call” status to numerous engineering and architectural firms—13 in all. Any company that responded to the city’s request-for-proposals for a laundry list of engineering or architectural services was hired.
Four years ago the city commission allowed the same thing. Assistant City Manager Traci Alvarez came to them with the on-call RFP results and the same en masse hiring of architects and engineers was rubber-stamped by the city commission.
This broad procurement process, initiated by Alvarez without seeking permission from the city commission, allows any department head to hire any firm on the list for any reason, essentially giving them blank checks to the public’s bank account and the authority to start multi-million-dollar capital projects that will also be borne by the public purse.
Only one city commissioner offered resistance, Ingo Hoeppner. He questioned the on-call procurement/hiring process. He preferred that an RFP go out for each capital project, “which would make city commissioners a little more involved” in the capital-projects process.
Alvarez said that it took 30 to 90 days to do an RFP and that sometimes “the money comes in fast and has to be spent quickly.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture loan/grants and other government agencies don’t allow the city to use on-call architects or engineers, Alvarez said, so projects thus funded will have separate RFPs the city commission will see and approve.
Having 13 or so architectural/engineering firms allows the department heads to give out various “task orders” to the firms, shopping among them for the best fit and price for what they want to do, Alvarez explained.
In addition, any bill that comes to over $20,000, Alvarez said, will show up on the regular agenda item, “purchases over $20,000,” which the city commission must approve.
“A perfect explanation,” Mayor Rolf Hechler said.
I call BS on Alvarez. I took exception to the city commission giving SmithCo and Global Maven Enterprises on-call contract awards for water and wastewater projects last December. https://sierracountycitizen.org/city-commissioners-dont-bother-to-explain-because-we-wouldnt-understand/
Alvarez admitted then that the city doesn’t see over-$20,000 purchases for projects related to grants, which is the vast majority of city projects.
I then did an Inspection-of-public-records-act request for SmithCo invoices in the first five months of this year. They totaled nearly $360,000, with only one over-$20,000 purchase of $137,000 coming before the city commission. And even if the purchases had shown up on the over-$20,000 agenda item it wouldn’t matter. The work was done, the company hired, the money promised and as good as spent without city commission approval of the project or a lick of their fiduciary oversight. https://sierracountycitizen.org/lack-of-public-oversight-for-years-public-funds-gushing-out-with-emergency-water-wastewater-repairs/
Alvarez knows how to get around the city commission seeing over-$20,000 purchases. She hired Wilson & Co. for $70,000 to “monitor” the city’s grants, which is supposedly a big part of her job. Only a close perusal of the city budget led me to this discovery that Alvarez has out-sourced part of her duties. https://sierracountycitizen.org/big-pieces-of-truth-or-consequences-operations-budget-goes-to-outside-contractors/
By happenstance, a citizen activist, Ron Fenn, drew my attention to the nearly indecipherable and therefore non-transparent “accounts payable” document in the April 10 city commission packet. It states that Wilson & Co. was paid $18,000, which I strongly suspect is the quarterly payment for the grant monitoring. Breaking the payments up into smaller bites hides the purchase from the city commission and public scrutiny.
I have repeatedly pointed out that the city’s capital projects lack transparency and city commission oversight. This year the operations budget is about $21 million while the capital projects budget has burgeoned to $31 million. There was no discussion of capital projects during the budget sessions that ended in July. There has been no capital-projects report by department heads or Alvarez so far this year. There have been no quarterly budget reports, just a slew of “budget adjustments,” so knowing if city staff is spending within limits is unknown.
But hey, we still have checks, so we must have money.
Is there a way to have a third party audit done concerning the budget?
Any information on who to report these problems to would be helpful.
Thank you for your reporting.
Every city and every county throughout the united states, by law, has to turn in a yearly audit done by a third part.
All of New Mexico’s yearly audits can be found on the New Mexico State Auditor’s website.
Municipal audits for fiscal year 2023 were due Dec. 15, 2023. The fiscal year ran from July 1, 2023 to June 31, 2024.
According to the state auditor’s website, the city turned in its audit very late–March 6.
It stays in “review” by the state auditor for a month or so before it is released to the public.
I went to the state auditor’s website looking for it on Friday and I couldn’t even find the posting that the March 6 audit the city turned in was in review. All that was there were audits previous to FY 2022.
I called the state auditor’s office on Friday and left a message about the disappearing audit and asked what happened to it. No humans there, no response.
T or C has had the same auditing firm for six or more years now. I forget their name. Traci Alvarez keeps renewing their contract. I think there is a state law that after six years you have to hire a different firm. That’s supposed to keep municipalities from becoming too chummy with their supposedly neutral auditor.
I’ve looked at a lot of audits. You can tell by how deeply they dive and what they look at (they only look at samples, not everything, conducting tests to see if they have processes in place to prevent theft, mistakes, fraud) if the company is any good. Of course the city has a lightweight firm that spends its time on the cash drawer at the golf course and stuff like that.
If you get a chance, watch the video on YouTube titled “All the Queens Horses.” It’s about a small town and how a city clerk robbed it of many millions of dollars. Poor fiduciary “controls” and a city commission and mayor who thought she was a great gal.
The video also points out that the required yearly audit does not catch such things as a city clerk’s fraud. What stops fraud and bad bookkeeping and laziness and corruption and incompetence are competent whistleblowers who are inside the system and do the right thing. Whistle blowers in T or C? This town is run on fear and scapegoating. Citizens won’t even attend or speak at city meetings to criticize for fear, and with good reason.