The settlement of Texas’ suit against New Mexico ended the legal proceedings that have so vaguely and abstractly hovered unnoticed over our lives, but the consequences of that settlement will be dominating our lives specifically, concretely (meaning economically), and most noticeably in the coming years.
It's serious, but City Manager Gary Whitehead, with his forthrightness and depth of detail in reporting foibles and fixes and fund raising efforts, instills confidence that the city can handle the problems.
Nepotism requires that city staff pretend the city is an equal opportunity employer while muzzling criticism of leaders. Real talk about the mayor's relations and their fitness to hold their city positions is a fireable offense.
Local and state cooperation will be key in delivering help and recovering from disaster–and a brand new hazard mitigation plan lays out what’s needed.
A new airport layout plan is needed, but nearly $600,000 worth? Why spend time and money on future growth and development if there is no water out there and new water appropriations are limited due to a closed basin? Shouldn't water availability be studied first?
The city commission hasn't bothered to pass an ordinance on tiny homes. Now it's granted an owner a variance to have one in the special Riverside neighborhood, making zero findings of fact, leaving the field wide open for others who want a tiny home.
Lewis Carroll's search for the snark---sailing across the ocean with a blank map in pursuit of what may be illusory--is similar to the city budget and its blank underpinnings and deficit spending. Yet talk of expansion is rife. The city commission evidently believes in snarks.
Serious governance and fiscal oversight is still taking a back seat to chasing "quality of life" projects.
Is the over $5 million to be transferred out of the utilities, as proposed in the interim budget, to pay for "bread and circuses?" Yes. But in what proportion? In ancient Roman senators' flagrancy, as Juvenal satirized?
A couple of days ago, the Supreme Court approved the Special Master’s Fourth Interim Report on the case known as “No. 141 Original Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado.”
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.
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