Swingle brings transparency and reality to T or C’s budgeting process: Part 3
In addition to contending with a $1.6 million deficit in the fiscal year 2021-2022 draft budget, new city manager Bruce Swingle informed the city commissioners that they must play a lead role in identifying departmental spending priorities and cuts. Here are summaries of their discussions of budgeting and policy issues facing the utility office, community service and fleet maintenance departments and the municipal golf course and animal shelter.
Report: Historic drought and record temps expected to continue
New Mexico and the greater Southwest will see little reprieve from the historical megadrought.
UPDATE: Broadband company working to win BLM construction permit for fiber optics network in southern Sierra County
A subsidiary of Sacred Wind Communications, which is working in Sierra County to bring broadband to all residents south of Williamsburg, must notify and obtain right-of-way permission from 1,400 potential broadband customers before the Bureau of Land Management will grant a permit to begin construction of the necessary fiber optics network.
Our big move: Part 4
An occasional series of personal reflections by Jewell on the challenges and rewards of making a new life for herself and her family in Sierra County. Part 4: The author’s aspirational permaculture food forest is beginning to take root.
The Galleries of T or C
Truth or Consequences has long been recognized for its lively art gallery scene. The two dozen-plus galleries listed here feature local as well as international artists.
Mule deer and ocotillo
Last week’s heavy rains produced an infloresence of ocotillo throughout Sierra County, gladdening the hearts of man and beast alike.
Reader at Large: April 16–May 7, 2021
A digest of some of the best and most thought-provoking articles and books enjoyed by the author in the past several weeks
Promising Young Woman
“Nomadland” took the 2020 Oscar for Best Picture, but this also-ran is perhaps the more intriguing movie. The Academy seems to have acknowledged that fact by awarding “Promising Young Woman” an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
Smoking lessons in the time of COVID
Have you ever caught the fragrance eminating from a newly lit cigarette, even outdoors? If you have, then you should be able to understand something that so many people in the country and in this county don’t seem able to understand: this is how COVID-19 is transmitted.
Welcome, Bruce!
Now that you’ve had a couple days to settle in as city manager, please consider implementing these 10 doable fixes that will make the governance of the City of Truth or Consequences more transparent, responsive and effective.
Lawmakers continue secret spending
This year state lawmakers finally made their infrastructure spending public. But each chamber passed, as usual, its own “supplemental appropriations” bill that does not disclose the identities of the legislator(s) who sponsored each of the allocations in the bill and, too often, fails to make clear each allocation’s uses.
New Mexico built a spaceport—but will the payoff of space tourism ever come?
Two conflicting assessments of the Spaceport’s economic impact, released a year ago to little notice in Sierra County, are worth re-examining now as Virgin Galactic’s faces a potentially make-or-break moment with the rescheduled test flight of its rocketship from the Spaceport next month.
T or C water/wastewater director responds to well field concerns in a rare public report to the city commission
Biofouling has “nothing to do with human-made waste or anything of the kind”: Second of a two-part series
Swingle brings transparency and reality to T or C’s budgeting process: Part 2
In addition to contending with a $1.6 million deficit in the fiscal year 2021-2022 draft budget for Truth or Consequences, new city manager Bruce Swingle informed the city commissioners that they must play a lead role in identifying departmental spending priorities and cuts. Here are summaries of their discussions of budgeting and policy issues facing the police and fire departments and the municipal pool and airport.
Third day on the job, Swingle brings transparency and reality to T or C’s budgeting process
In addition to contending with a $1.6 million deficit in the fiscal year 2021-2022 draft budget, new city manager Bruce Swingle informed the city commissioners that they must play a lead role in identifying departmental spending priorities and cuts and devising a plan within two years to end the practice of balancing the budget with transfers from utility fees.
Morris Madrid now CFO at Luna Community College
Former Truth or Consequences City Manager Morris Madrid has been hired as the community college’s “vice president of finance,” according to his LinkedIn profile. The college’s website identifies him as “chief financial officer.”