This article is about the lousy back-room process used to push through a public EV charging station project that will be located on public property across the street from the Healing Waters Plaza.
Whether you favor or disfavor the city competing with private companies or electric cars is not the point of this article. The point is that after the fact we are learning the community was in favor of the project and thus willing to pay some undisclosed amount pre-build and post-build in “perpetuity.” It’s fraud to get grant money by lying to the granting agent that the public preapproved the project. But since NMDOT, the granting agent, is willing to accept a post-dated resolution attesting to this lie as proof of public approval, their hands are no cleaner than the city’s.
The point is this top-down decision making and expenditure of public funds is authoritarian and oppressive and typical of Truth or Consequences government–until City Manager Gary Whitehead was hired seven months ago. But this project predated his arrival.
I write this article in hopes that it helps the city correct and prevent this type of authoritarian process in the future. Whitehead appears to already be correcting such procedures. But I also write this article for the people, so many of whom seem utterly unaware or indifferent to democratic processes, without which a government can easily become a criminal enterprise that exploits and strips its people of money and rights.
The public’s ignorance of and indifference to their local government’s processes has always been worse in T or C than the other dozen local governments I have reported on in the last 20 years. I realize I’m preaching to the choir. If you are reading this article, you are not among the indifferent and ignorant. Maybe you will nudge your city commissioners to do better, or you will make sure you vote for city commissioners who do more than give lip service to the concept of transparency and democratic processes.
At the Oct. 8 city commission meeting the city commission passed a resolution that states they are in favor of the grant application to be submitted to the New Mexico Department of Transportation to build an EV charging station. The only problem is that the city already applied for the NMDOT grant and received the money. The city commission rubber-stamped it, and the project is a done deal, like it or not.
I’m sure that many months ago the city commission was asked by either Electric Department Director Bo Easley or Assistant City Manager Traci Alvarez if they would approve applying for a grant to build an EV station. I’m sure, pre-Whitehead, that no information or actual grant application, marketing analysis, cost analysis, needs assessment or public consensus were sought or given. And the Oct. 8 packet doesn’t give the date of the city commission’s initial approval. It was a vague notion then and has gone unreported or discussed until it’s a done deal.
Sure, the city commission had the option of turning down the $640,000 from the NMDOT at the Oct. 8 meeting. Instead they approved a resolution that whitewashes the fact that there was no community involvement or reporting. The resolution flat out lies that the community approved of and was in favor of the project. This is how public projects are done and how public money is spent until Whitehead has been here long enough to get to the beginning of the project pipeline.
The Oct. 8 city packet includes the grant application, which should have been made public and discussed months and months and months ago.
The grant application has no date on it, doesn’t state who authored it, and reveals some unnamed city employee or employees have been working on this project for “several years” with two company “partners,” Somos Solar and Go-Station. The grant application doesn’t say who hired the companies or how much they have been paid and what they were hired for. How much city staff time and at what cost to the people is also not included in the nonexistent cost analysis.
The claim this project is several years old may be a reference to Electric Department Director Bo Easley’s 2021 attempt to build a slow charging station at the same location, not with grant money, but with local customers’ electric utility fees. It was ill-thought-out then and I wrote about it, doing a lot of research the city should have done. https://sierracountysun.org/government/t-or-c/city-of-t-or-c-plans-to-build-electric-vehicle-charging-stations-apparently-without-market-study-or-cost-benefit-analysis/
Easley didn’t get a yes or no from the city commission in 2021, but evidently he has proceeded clandestinely. How much he spent on the first attempt should be disclosed and added to the people’s costs for this second iteration.
This second version appears to be an improvement, since it will result in a Level 3, direct current charging station being built that takes about an hour to completely charge an electric vehicle. The 2021 request was to build a Level 2, alternate current charging station that takes eight hours to fully charge a vehicle.
Only after the fact is the public told, via this grant-application disclosure Oct. 8, that the station will have solar panels, but whether they are to offset the cost of lights, the EV charging costs and what these savings might be is not revealed. And this contradicts what Easley has said in the past–that the city has maxed out its solar allowance. The city signed an agreement with its primary electric wholesaler, Sierra Electric Cooperative. The city is not to supplement its electric supply beyond 2 megawatts of solar, which is the size of the solar farm it has contracted with since 2015. Let’s put solar panels up to power well water pumps since we leak 47 percent (last count) of our produced water. Let’s power out lift stations with solar, especially the vet’s home, since its moribund lift station leaves it with low water pressure (the biggest complaint by its residents, I’m told). If the city has more solar capacity, let’s seek grants to power more of the city that way. Or has Mr. Easley the exclusive right to decide how much solar the city uses and where?
Only after the fact is the public told that the city will assign a per kilowatt price for customers using the charging station, “once applicable demand charges are confirmed,” whatever that means. At least it’s not free, with utility customers being forced to pay unwillingly to subsidize tourists in perpetuity, just until demand charges are confirmed. Who knows how much has been spent over the last four years or so for engineering, planning and staff time that the public has paid already.
The grant application claims, falsely, that T or C should get the grant money because no Level 3 charging stations exist within 52 miles. The Holiday Inn Express near Walmart has had a free Level 3 charging station prior to my 2021 article. Level 3 charging stations have since been built at the Comfort Inn & Suites and the Fast Stop in Elephant Butte. The city is directly competing with local businesses, which should be a policy decision made by the city commission with the public giving their views.
Only Mayor Rolf Hechler asked a question or made a comment before the vote came up on the resolution. He asked if the $13,000 for 24/7 network management and monitoring fees are a one-time expense or a yearly expense. Easley responded, “I don’t know.”
No matter. The city commission approved the resolution that expressed approval for going after grant money for an EV station that has already been submitted and funded by the NMDOT.
The city commission checked the box. The NMDOT won’t release the $640,000 unless it has a piece of paper saying the community approves of and wants this charging station at this location. Evidently NMDOT has no problem with public money going to projects the public had zero say so in, as the date of the resolution reveals.
The next item on the agenda was the exact same resolution, but this time to go out for NMDOT EV charging station funding a second time. City Manager Whitehead is correcting the order of events. But no second grant application attended the resolution, no public hearing was held, no fact-finding or cost analysis was offered. Whitehead said the second charging station will be right next to the other one and will be the same. Why bother pretending public consensus sought on the second replica of the first makes any difference?
Because some of your information seems inaccurate as far as I can tell, or at least lacking detail, I don’t know what to think about the rest of the article. How familiar are you with driving and charging an electric vehicle?
It doesn’t take an hour to charge at a level 3 station unless you’re down to your last electron. Twenty to forty minutes is more normal.
I realize you’re criticizing the process by which the EV charger was approved. I’m not addressing that topic, but that fact that you also seem to question whether this facility may be needed. I think it is. I often find people waiting behind me to charge at the Fast Stop at Elephant Butte or have to wait my turn. This happens in Las Cruces, too, where there aren’t enough reliable or well-maintained charging stations. There seem to be more EVs on the road than places to charge them.
Is there a difference between the amount of solar capacity needed for an EV charging station and for the other things you propose? I’d love to see them all solar, but these other projects sound like they’d require a lot more capacity. The Dona Ana County Government Center has a solar powered charger (as well as standard electricity powered chargers,) and those panels don’t take up much space at all—just a little roof over the charger. Caballo Lake State Park has solar panels that I think may be supporting the EV charger as well as the visitor center. A small installation, but considerably bigger than what’s providing for a charging station alone in Dona Ana.
The charger at Caballo Lake is free. Where is the free charging station you mentioned in T or C? I looked on Plugshare for a free charging station in town, and none was listed. Where did you get your information? The Tesla supercharger near one of the hotels charges 35 cents per kilowatt hour. Other types of cars need special adaptors to use it, and not all makes of cars have those. It’s basically for Teslas. A charging station for other cars needs to have CCS and CHAdeMO plugs. The charging station at the Comfort Inn has only CCS plugs. If you drive a car that uses a CHAdeMO plug, there’s one place to charge here—the Fast Stop at Elephant Butte.
I realize that many EV owners charge at home, but for travelers and for apartment dwellers, public chargers are essential. A solar powered public charger, all the better, in my opinion.
And it wouldn’t compete with local businesses, Charging stations are not run by local businesses, but by Francis Energy or ChargePoint or Telsa. If a ChargePoint station at a business malfunctions, no one at that business has any ability to repair it. Francis Energy inspects and maintains its stations in our area. My payments don’t go to the Fast Stop as if I were buying gas. They go to Francis Energy. EV drivers use phone apps for direct payment to the charging station companies.
Please contact me if you have questions or corrections.
This article did NOT question the need for a charging station and your criticism is therefore not fair. The article was decrying the lack of democratic process. You missed that point entirely.
We don’t know what the solar panels in the proposed city station will charge, as stated in the article.
I still contend the city is competing with businesses that subcontract with other businesses, which is true for almost any local business. They put stations in their business to attract business. If the city goes into that business they are taking away business from that business. And the point I was making was not whether there is need enough to warrant the city getting into this business. The point was that it is a policy decision that should have been made with public involvement, not foisted onto the public.
The one-hour stat about charging time for level 3 stations comes from Google’s AI. It stated that it takes 20 to 45 minutes to get up to 80 percent, which was too clumsy and weird instead of stating 100 percent, so I rounded up to 100 percent and added 15 minutes. When I just now plugged in a similar question, I got a similar but not matching answer:
AI Overview
Charging at a Level 3 (DC fast charging) station typically takes about 30 to 60 minutes to charge from empty to 80%, though it can be as quick as 20 minutes for some vehicles. The exact time depends on the vehicle’s battery size and charging rate, as well as the charger’s power output.
Sorry, forgot your other question. The “free” station, as stated in the article and in the related and linked 2021 article, is Holiday Inn Express and that info is based on calling that business for the original article. I did not replicate that research. This criticism I will take. I should have been, perhaps, more careful. But the point I was making was that it is false for the city to claim there isn’t a station within 52 miles.