T or C’s legislative request for $20 million in emergency waterline repairs—the engineering plan

The city had two waterline-emergency-funding bills being considered during the now-closed legislative session, with only one of them being a possibility at this point.

Senate Bill 95 got stuck in committee and never made to the floor before the session ended Feb. 15. It was a request for $20 million from the state’s general fund.

But even before the legislative session ended, it appears it was unlikely the governor would pass SB 95, which was the same bill T or C’s Senator Crystal Diamond Brantley sponsored last year.

During the Feb. 14 city commission meeting, Mayor Rolf Hechler said he and City Commissioner Ingo Hoeppner went to Santa Fe to speak to Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham to advocate that she approve the $20-million request. Lujan Grisham left them with the understanding that she would throw in $2.4 million if T or C’s local representatives, who sponsored SB 95—Diamond Brantley and Representatives Gail Armstrong and Tara Jaramillo—threw in $500,000 each of their capital outlay money.

When the three local representatives came to T or C about a year ago to hear local governments’ legislative requests for the 2023 session, they said that Diamond Brantley had about $1.5 million in discretionary capital outlay money that she could distribute throughout her whole district. Armstrong and Jaramillo said they had about $500,000 each for their entire districts. Therefore Diamond Brantley would have to give a third of her money and Armstrong and Jaramillo all of their money to T or C. This does not seem likely.

Diamond Brantley gave none of her capital outlay portion last year to the T or C waterline emergency, although she was the sole sponsor of the same bill last year. She criticized Lujan Grisham this year during a committee hearing on the bill, telling fellow senators that “the governor ignored this bill” last year, despite the dire straits of T or C’s water system.

House Bill 148 did pass this session, but it’s a monster that includes 65 water projects throughout the state. The 65 projects would cost $275 million, but only $124.6 million is available, according to the analysis report attached to the bill, prepared by the Legislative Finance Committee. T or C’s project may or may not survive the cut. It is a request for $16 million for emergency waterline replacements.

The projects will be winnowed by the Water Trust Board, with other agencies also weighing in, including the New Mexico Finance Authority and the New Mexico Environment Department, according to the analysis.

The HB 148 analysis states that to qualify:

-“relevant planning studies,” such as preliminary engineering reports, design analysis or technical reports must be completed. I submitted an IPRA for the engineering reports related to the $20-million request last year and for the $20-million and $16-million requests this year. Last year I was given the extremely broad preliminary “City Wide” engineering report prepared by Wilson & Company September 2021, which is available on the city’s website. This year I received the same city wide report and one addressing just emergency waterline replacements. The latter, also prepared by Wilson & Co., is attached below.

-the city “must have met expenditure thresholds for prior awards,” which probably means the city must have spent what it was awarded in the past. Un-expended awards are a problem the state has tried to crack down on since Governor Susanna Martinez was in office.

-the city provides “some level of local match.” Hechler said the city received $1.6 million from U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich last year for water emergencies, which will be offered as a 10-percent match by the city. The city reduced its request from $20 million to $16 million to meet the minimum match requirement, evidently unable to come up with $400,000 more in match money.

The percentage of the grant/loan will be determined by the NMFA, the analysis states. Last year the average was 83-percent grant and 17-percent loan.

The analysis for SB 95 states that T or C will not be eligible to receive any legislative appropriation, including Water Trust Board money, “until its annual financial audit is finalized, submitted, reviewed and made publicly available by the Office of the State Auditor.”

The city was supposed to turn in its annual financial audit by Dec. 15, 2023, but has not done so. It is unclear how long the city has to get that in before the Water Trust Board disqualifies the T or C project for funding this year.

The Wilson & Co. engineering report below is titled, “Funding Emergency Scope Summary.” It appears to have been written a couple of years ago, since it cites pipe-leak numbers and their locations from 2022. Emergency replacement of 18 percent of the water pipes costing about $17 million in construction and $3 million in design is shown in the report. There are two locales shown on the map for pipe replacements; the area south of Sierra Vista Hospital, and the “metal streets” branching off of and including Veater Street.