We in Sierra County are living in, and at long last, beginning to understand that we live day to day in a water crisis. What is the justification for allowing someone to withdraw and evaporate a million gallons of groundwater a day during that social and economic crisis?
The gross receipts and lodgers tax revenue figures for local governments don't bear out that low lake levels have caused that much economic damage. Are local governments' emergency declarations crying wolf?
But will this $2.3 million engineering plan and $25 million in construction be done to get water to the airport to attract business? And the people, once again, will be on the hook for building it, in the hopes they will come? Business is special interest. What about the people?
A one-page budget, passed with no questions asked and turned into the Department of Finance and Administration three weeks late. That's the level of fiscal oversight our publicly-owned hospital is getting from our elected officials.
This MOU is too ad hoc, too open-ended, too unpredictable to ensure consistent zoning for new development just outside the city. State law gives T or C extraterritorial zoning authority. I say the city should exercise it, instead of passing this less effective measure.
I predicted the City of T or C's collection center would be used to bilk citizens out of money instead of serving their interests, and that has certainly come to pass. I didn't foresee that T or C polycart customers would be exploited to pay for Elephant Butte's polycart customers.
Only the airport went over budget. The general fund is traditionally budgeted to spend more than it takes in, but the hole was partially covered by about $418,000 more in gross-receipts-tax revenue than expected.
Nearly $84 million budget for a town with a population of 6,000 is a testament to infrastructure neglect and rising costs.
It's amazing how little money the city is spending on making the prior PNC Bank into a police building. That is largely thanks to City Manager Gary Whitehead, who digs out the best price using the design-build procurement method.
It must be tough and expensive to go up against the City of Truth or Consequences with its team of lawyers supplied by the New Mexico Municipal League's self-insurers fund, the city's insurer. Barnes settled for $45,000 and the city admitted no wrongdoing.
I wrongly assumed T or C had about 1,000 acre feet a year to parlay to attract development. The state lost a decade-long lawsuit to Texas and the city's unused water rights could be reclaimed, especially since it's wasting up to 47 percent of its water due to infrastructure neglect.
Basic New Mexico water law will help you understand how the Settlement Agreement which ended the Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado lawsuit will affect your water use and your taxes.
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