If any of the current city commissioners again run for office, you may want to consider how they handled the 2022-2023 budget.
This is the biggest budget the city has passed. Fifty years (or more) of neglect of the infrastructure has the city disintegrating at an exponential rate and this and future generations will pay for the bad management and lack of planning.
Is better management and planning being demonstrated by the current city commission? There are no signs of it, and I have attended every budget and city meeting except for one in the past three years.
The $46.9-million expense estimate does not match the $42.7-million revenue estimate. The general fund, which basically pays for everything except utilities operations, will expend $6.7 million, despite revenue estimates at $4.2 million.
The difference between expenses and revenue will be made up from citizens’ pockets, who face increased gross receipts taxes, property taxes, water, sewer, trash and electric rates. Only the $3-million obligation bond on the upcoming November ballot will require T or C citizen approval.
The final budget was approved at the July 27 city commission meeting with no discussion and no questions. The commissioners gave high praise to Finance Director Carol Kirkpatrick before approving the budget unanimously.
The final budget was massively different than the draft budget the city commission approved at the end of May. It included a $616,000 salary increase for 80 percent of city workers. In addition, the draft budget only included the $22-million operations budget. The final budget included an additional $25 million in capital projects, never presented or discussed.
In the budget document, capital projects are not well described. This is a document for city-staff insiders, not citizens, or even city commissioners. Projects are referenced by number with no key. The two big water projects are described as “USDA water system improvements,” $7.5 million, and “water system improvements (new),” $8.47 million. An expense of $2.7 million is described as “NMFA projects.”
The city commissioners don’t have to make expenses transparent to citizens because they can simply raise utility fees, avoiding the ballot box, making citizen input superfluous.
The water rates will increase 9.1 percent in August. In 2020 water rates went up almost 50 percent. In 2021, they went up 5.4 percent.
Sewer and solid waste fees have gone up 5 percent every July for the last five years.
City Manager Bruce Swingle warned that electric rates “will go up quite a bit,” in the upcoming year, the exact amount to be determined by a $52,000 electric rate study the city commission approved at the July 27 meeting.
While you are paying these increased utility fees, think about how that money in the past was not churned back into the ailing utilities. “Taxation without representation” has not seemed to anger citizens yet, although numerous water and sewer leaks are making it more evident the money went for other purposes.
Swingle said no money is being transferred out of the electric fund this year (except for over $400,000 in debt payments for electric capital projects). This will probably be the first time that fund has not been raided to pay for other expenses.
In recent years, transfers out of water, wastewater, electric and solid waste averaged between $1.5 and $2 million, but for years prior transfers sometimes went up to $5 million a year.
Figuring out where utility-transfer money goes is almost impossible. In the final budget, transfers are estimated over 13 pages, a labyrinth too daunting and coded to untangle. It appears that the general fund will get $1.5 million in utility transfers and another $1.86 million will be transferred out of utility funds to pay for capital-projects debt.
“The budget is the single most important policy decision the city commission makes,” Swingle told them in May.
Yet the city commission rubber-stamped the budget document with no comment beyond praise for city staff. The governing body is supposed to be much more than a cheering section. In a poor town, without a planning department, it must take the rudder, or 50 years of neglect is the likely outcome. The past often predicts the future, and more of the same is probably forthcoming.
Most of the city commission is new and were not regular attendees of city meetings before taking office. They are probably taking their lead from the more experienced members, who model don’t-ask-don’t-tell behavior. Three commissioners passed the city’s budget for the first time: Shelly Harrelson, Destiny Mitchell and Merry Jo Fahl. Harrelson called into the meeting and was repeatedly dropped and recalled, although her votes on agenda items came through.
Mayor Amanda Forrister is in her third year as a commissioner and this is her second budget. She did not attend the July 27 meeting. No explanation was given for her absence.
Mayor Pro Tem Rolf Hechler served for four years, took nearly two years off and won the commissioner seat last November. This is probably the fifth city budget he has approved.
The city’s budget is over the comprehension of our city commissioners. I’m guessing that is why they didn’t comment or ask questions.
Have the commissioners considered buying La Paloma? Our appeal to tourists is diminished by the closure of those traditional baths, which were a prime community resource. The options that remain are discouragingly overcrowded. If we like to think of ourselves as attractive to visitors, we should also provide a public restroom downtown, perhaps modeled after Hillsboro’s restroom. Another business that once doubled as a community resource is The Black Cat bookstore. It had a far-flung reputation, even in Santa Fe with its many bookstores. How sad that the current owner has chosen to keep the store closed. Then there is the former Latitude 33. Once a charming little eat-in restaurant, you now must text your order to reach the blockaded employees inside. Thinking about our town as a business can focus the current floundering.
I have to disagree, Jane, the town has no business “being in business”. I don’t believe our elected officials know how to manage a golf course or an airport, much less a hot spring/spa. City officials should be doing the business of the city and, where encouragement is needed, provide whatever advantages to struggling businesses it can.
I think T or C should sell the golf course and the airport and put that money into failing infrastructure.
How much money do the airport and golf course cost each year?
It varies. For years it seems the airport and golf course cost about $150,000 a year. In recent years the cost has been closer to $250,000 each. The city cannot sell the airport unless it works out a deal with the FAA and probably the airport division of the NMDOT. The city gets grant funding from them every year and the money is used to maintain the runways, etc. The grants state the city must be the owner for many years to come. The FAA is the biggest grantor. I doubt there would be any money left over after the FAA and NMDOT takes back their parts.
I think many cities have gotten in trouble by chasing after “economic development,” which wasn’t even a governmental thing until the 1980s. Cities are not supposed to make money, especially off the backs of its residents. Their raison d’etre is to serve the people. T or C has long thought of itself as an electric company that runs a town and its residents as customers. It ran that business into the ground. The solid waste department is now expanding its trash service to become the new money maker that will replace the electric department.
Thanks Kathleen.
I still think that the city should eliminate the airport & golf course… If the airport is a wash, so be it. I’m not sure that the citizens of T or C have a base population of good candidates (who want to run for office) who have the economic, political and social background to oversee businesses.
So, we waste 1/2 a million yearly and the taxpayer gets to cover the expenses.
How do we get people to run for City Council with the mindset of the 21’st Century?
How to get people to run? I have seen an influx of new people who are more experienced and better suited to be city commissioners, such as Art Burger and Rick Dumiak, who applied to be appointed to Aragon’s seat after he resigned. The city commission appointed Shelly Harrelson instead. I wrote about it and its still viewable on the SierraCountySun.org website. I think the same clone-like candidates and their unanimous votes and nonspeaking will prevail as long as we have the same voting system. It’s “block voting,” with arbitrary “seats,” not districts, although state voting law says cities shall have at large or district voting. The same block or faction votes in the same “representative.” Pluralistic voices cannot be heard. I have seen the city commission and city attorney quash two “initiatives” the people, that is, Ron Fenn and his cadre, have brought before the commission to put similar questions, such as the voting system, on the ballot. I wonder if it would do any good to float another initiative petition. I think it would take about 260 signatures–20 percent of the voting population average in last four elections–to change the voting system. I favor “limited voting.” Each person gets one vote, even if three or two seats are up. The top three or two vote-getters win. That would break up the block voting and we could get some different “representation” here.
I would help with such an initiative.
Do you think organizing a town hall on voting systems should be a first step?
I would volunteer to research and write up and present how the current voting system works, how limited voting would work and how initiative ordinances are supposed to work.
I would volunteer to write up a draft initiative ordinance for limited voting and its attendant petition.
I would not be interested in arranging the meeting place and promoting such a town hall.
Anybody out there interested in arranging a meeting place for a town hall meeting to present the current and proposed voting systems?
Anybody out there interested in promoting such an event?
Anybody out there interested in researching a different voting system besides “limited voting?” Ranked voting for example.
If I could be so bold, how about you write an article about this problem to bring this very important discussion to the forefront. I suspect few people are diving into these comments.
I am happy to help but am not a meeting/organizer type person.
Thanks for all you do- time for me to donate to this valuable resource!