It’s highly unusual for a town or village to pass a budget that is mostly taken up with capital projects, but the tiny Village of Williamsburg, with a population of about 450, passed such a budget at its July 9 meeting.
The budget estimates it will spend $6.47 million, only about $670,000 of which will be for operations and maintenance and yearly debt payments. The balance, about $5.8 million, will be spent on capital projects.
The VOW trustees passed a budget based on a one-page summary, which was not included in the packet only recently made available to the public on the village’s website. I asked for the complete packet documents, and Clerk Amanda Cardona sent the “budget summary.”
Cardona gave clarification about the vaguely labeled expenditures, which revealed the large amount to be spent on capital projects.
“Legislative appropriation,” $880,000, will be spent on facility, street, drainage and flood-control improvements, Cardona said.
“Other state funded,” $ 3.96 million, is money from the state’s “transportation project fund,” Cardona said. This state fund requires only a 5 percent match from the local government. It will be spent on West Riverside Drive, East Riverside Drive, East Veater Street Hyde Street and Doris Lane.
“Bond proceeds,” $904,000, is what’s left from a 2024 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant of $2.9 million and loan of $1.25 million totalling about $4.17 million. The money was spent on relining the village-owned sewer lines and replacing the two lift stations. All that remains to be done is to put in the lift stations’ control systems, the components of which are late in arriving.
The “streets” budget line item of $120,000 will be used to for regular street maintenance, but also to pay the 5 percent match on Transportation Project Fund projects. I estimated about $60,000 will be spent on such grant matches.
I was worried about possible debt the village may be racking up in taking on so many capital projects.
According to the yearly audit, available on the New Mexico State Auditor’s website, as of June 30, 2025 the village had about $2.3 million in long term debt, most of it related to the $4.17 million sewer project, only $700.000 or so related to employee and trustee retirement benefits.
The village will pay about $41,000 a year for forty years through 2065 to pay off the $1.25 million loan required by the USDA for the sewer project, according to the audit. The interest is 1.38 percent, but it must be paid monthly, so it comes to nearly $360,000 over 40 years, which is nearly 30 percent of the $1,587,460 total debt. This is a very expensive way to borrow money, although the 40-year life of the loan makes it appear innocuous.
The village also has high sewer rates so it can make the monthly payments that go up 5 percent every May. I’m a villager and pay nearly $30 a month to flush less than 1,000 gallons through village pipes. That is twice the City of Truth or Consequences’ sewer rate, which owns and operates and processes the village’s sewage at its wastewater treatment plant. The village made over $113,000 in revenue in sewer charges in fiscal-year 2025, according to the audit.
Mayor Deb Stubblefield told me at a May trustees’ meeting that the village plans to repave all its roads eventually and has made road projects a priority over the last several years “because that is all the village owns.”
This ambition explains the nearly $5 million in street, drainage and flood control projects in the FY2027 budget. But even if the village only has to match 5 percent of the costs, that is $250,000. That is a lot for villagers to bear, especially in one year. There are about 274 households in the village. If the match had to come from their pockets, each household would have to pay about $906 in a year.
Gross receipts might cover the match money needed for road projects, the village’s largest source of revenue besides state and federal grants. The village made about $426,000 in gross receipts taxes in FY2025, but that was an unusually good year due to highway construction. About one-fourth of that goes to pay its yearly share of the Sierra Vista Hospital note for the newish wing.
I hope the village trustees’ road ambitions do not exceed reasonable GRT estimates, which goes into the general fund.
The FY2027 budget summary only lists major funds’ expected revenue, and states the general fund will take in about $318,000 and spend nearly $393,000, so the village is already expecting to dig into its cash savings from prior years to make ends meet. How about slowing down capital projects taken on instead?