T or C’s solid Waste Collection Center expansion would exploit polycart customers on behalf of Turtleback Mountain Resort’s new homeowners!

The City of Truth or Consequences Infrastructure Capital Improvements Plan public hearings are Wednesday, April 22. There is a public hearing from noon to 1 p.m. before the city commission’s regular 4 p.m. meeting and a second public hearing afterward from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

This is the only “planning” the city commission engages in throughout the year and it is a very superficial process. One public hearing is required by law.

But what good is a public hearing on future capital projects if no information on the state of the city’s assets is provided?

Each department, especially water, wastewater, electric and solid waste should have an internal asset management plan that projects out at least five years. The plan should be brought to the city commission and public each year before the ICIP and budget are passed. The ICIP is due to the state July 1 and the final budget is due to the state July 31. Now would be a good time to present those asset management plans.

The city bought iWorQ software over three years ago, an asset management program. Each department should now have input their inventory of assets and rolling stock (trucks, vehicles) and their condition and their lifespan into the centralized system. There should be an asset management plan that schedules and estimates maintenance costs and schedules and estimates replacement of assets and estimates those costs. I have asked for these documents but haven’t received them yet.

Without this information I don’t see how the city commission or the people can prioritize capital projects. We have to prioritize because our tax dollars and utility fees are already stretched to the limit. Both taxes and utility fees have increased greatly over the last four years to pay for crisis-level repairs and capital projects for the water, wastewater and electric utilities–and continue to rise.

The poverty rate in the city is 34 percent, one the highest in the U.S. and New Mexico. The utility fee increases are a regressive tax that hits the poor the hardest. Blithely asking the people what capital projects they would like without providing information on the state of assets, emergency repairs needed and how much their taxes and utility rates will have to be increased to take on a capital project is irresponsible.

This year, as in prior years, the city staff provides the prior year’s ICIP list to the city commission and public as the sole preparation for prioritizing capital projects for the next five years. In a recent article I linked the 2027-2031 ICIP list of projects put together last year, which is page 53 of the city’s April 25 commission meeting: https://sierracountycitizen.org/citizens-should-prep-for-infrastructure-capital-improvements-plan-public-meetings/ 

This year’s ICIP is for the years 2028 through 2032.

One item on last year’s ICIP is expansion of the solid waste collection and recycling center, which is slated to start in 2027. It’s to be done in “stages,” the 2027 stage estimated at $1.5 million.

The collection center is a perfect example of cutting the people out of any decision making and then charging them a lot of money that would have been better delivered by a private company at lesser cost. By regularly putting a solid waste collection service contract out to competitive bid private companies would remain responsive to customer wants, needs and complaints and to keeping costs down.

Instead, then-City Manager Juan Fuentes, with a compliant, rubber-stamping city commission, held no public hearings on the collection center concept, location, financing or construction. Fuentes asked all local governments to use the city’s polycart and dumpster collection service and only the Village of Williamsburg agreed.

The city took out a $1.26 million loan at 3.96 percent interest over 14 years, which will total over $1.67 million, the final payoff this year. The collection center was built right next to the city’s only well field with only French drains for waste runoff. The land was donated by the state for “recreation,” which might have been chosen as the spaceport visitors’ center site, but now blights the city’s major entrance corridor.

The Parkhill solid waste rate study showed that the polycart customers are overpaying, while all other services are underpaying, essentially forcing the polycart customers to unknowingly totally pay for “free” recycling that costs about $250,000 a year. The study shows that by 2028 polycart customers will have overpaid $2.5 million, while commercial dumpster customers’ fees will not pay for $912,000 of that service’s costs and the weigh-station customers’ tipping fees will not cover $1.442 million of that service’s costs. So the polycart customers’ over payments will subsidize and cover the recycling costs, dumpster costs and collection center’s costs. See: https://sierracountycitizen.org/poly-cart-customers-are-exploited-mercilessly-by-the-city/

The polycart users’ over payments will also cover capital projects, which is defined by the New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration as any building or equipment purchases over $5,000. Last year the solid waste department received a $300,000 truck and during the April 14 budget hearing they asked for another $330,000 truck. The costs of trucks has skyrocketed in the last five years, making the purchase of rolling-stock even more onerous for polycart customers.

For the last five years Solid Waste Department Director Andy Alvarez has been trying to capture Sierra County’s and Elephant Butte’s waste hauling business with no plan, no cost analysis, no contract worked out with those government agencies. He has never considered the costs and burdens he is placing on T or C and Williamsburg polycart customers, let alone the benefits to T or C residents who he is supposed to be serving.

He asked twice for a garbage collection truck that was then priced around $250,000 five years ago and four years ago that he would use in Sierra County and Elephant Butte. He assured the city commission, “I think I can make some money for the city.” The city commission was enthused and ready to spend the public money until I repeatedly raised objections. The lack of intergovernmental contracts probably stopped the truck purchase, but who knows? The city commission remained mute and just didn’t follow through.

Last year and this year Alvarez said the city needed to expand the solid waste collection center in order to accommodate Elephant Butte’s proposed 500-home development by Turtleback Mountain Golf & Resort.

You see, Elephant Butte hired a private solid waste collection company to collect their polycarts and that company takes most of that trash to the city’s collection center, which cost is subsidized by T or C and Village of Williamsburg polycart customers.

The residents of T or C and the Village of Williamsburg MUST have and pay the city for polycart service by law and are captive payers. The city can keep exploiting and overcharging them and it looks like they intend to double down on this exploitation.

I ask all polycart customers to show up to the April 22 noon or 5:30 public ICIP session to protest this project being anywhere on the ICIP list.

Elephant Butte should have to build its own collection center or pay a significant past-due fee to cover the $1.67 million construction cost of the existing T or C collection center, future costs of expansion and pass a law that traps their residents into using T or C’s polycart-collection service. Only then should Elephant Butte be allowed to use the T or C collection center or for an expansion to be considered. The same goes for county residents. Out-of-county businesses and residents should have zero access to the T or C collection center.