What the city's future and functionality will be rests largely in the ICIP process. The city needs to up its game in this area to include harnessing the community's support and power. City Manager Gary Whitehead already has game, thank goodness.
We are depleting the Rio Grande Basin faster and faster every year, the groundwater 15 times faster than the river waters, reports the first comprehensive study of consumption in the whole Rio Grande/Bravo Basin system.
Would you rather hear the brutal truth about city finances from a Dutch uncle or get the usual easy-A report from a lax teacher? The former makes the city think about its future and the latter makes it easy to rack up debt.
I don't blame Villagers for not participating in the Infrastructure Capital Improvements Project. The meeting time was changed, you couldn't write in suggestions to the Village clerk, there was only one public hearing and it was only 30 minutes long. Getting the "why" out of trustees' ICIP choices was hard.
Asset management plans are boring. Camelot dreams are not. We are still basing our choice of capital projects on "wouldn't it be nice" instead of "what is the state of our assets."
If the residents and Village of Williamsburg Trustees are not critically evaluating what their under-contract engineers are proposing, if they are just going along, the engineering firm will seek to maximize its profits instead of saving residents money, which appears to be the case.
T or C and the Village of Williamsburg could use storm water to green up, but dump
it, polluted, into the river. We pay nearly $9 per 1,000 gallons to pump and treat sewer water into "effluent" that waters the golf course and parks. It's cheaper to intercept storm water.
Do you think T or C and Williamsburg polycart customers should pay more so rich new homeowners at the Turtleback Mountain Resort can pay less to have their trash hauled and recycle for free? An expansion of the T or C collection center is proposed to accommodate them.
The city must cram capital projects over a few years that should be spread over 20 or so. Must, because the city is leaking 57 percent of the water it produces in warm months. Must, because the city was under an order by the NMED to fix the sewer.
The City of T or C is considering how much to increase water and sewer rates and T or C City Manager Gary Whitehead came to the Village of Williamsburg April 9 Trustee meeting to explain what effect such increases could have on Villagers. It’s complicated, because the Village owns…
Conformance to the Government Conduct Act is largely dependent on government officials self-reporting or checking each other. Or city contractors not offering emoluments and/or rebuffing importuning government officials' requests for employment or kick-backs. The press has a duty to expose a lack of reporting conflicts of interest.
What the city looks like and how well its physical assets serve us is largely decided by the ICIP process, which badly needs the public's goad to improve that process, in the form of public critical thinking, questioning and input.
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