Analysis: Why Truth or Consequences City Commissioners don’t have to be transparent

by Kathleen Sloan | April 26, 2020
5 min read
The Truth or Consequences City Commission has been passing budgets for years that strip the utilities of spare cash, leaving them to rot, using the money to subsidize “governmental activities,” as shown in financial statements and the state of the city’s utilities. 

Then, when the utilities need to be fixed, the city borrows money, pledging utility-rate revenue as collateral. 

Only about $4.2 million of the city’s current $22.6-million debt is for “government activities,” such as fixing roads and renovating a building for the police department, according to the last five years of financial statements and meeting minutes since June 2018. 

The rest, or $18.2 million, is related to utility renovations or to create a new one–the Solid Waste department in 2013– READ THE FULL ARTICLE –the borrowings backed by utility fees.

Another $5.5-million borrowing is in the offing to partially fix the water system that will bring the debt up to over $30 million. — READ THE FULL ARTICLE 
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The City Commission doesn’t have to be transparent about milking utility funds because New Mexico State law is vague and sparse on city-owned utilities. It only has to hold the occasional public hearing, with public input easily ignored.  

Property-tax revenue is a different story, a major revenue source for most cities, according to the National League of Cities. Tax rates are set by the state and its revenue, if used as collateral on long-term debt, must be voted-on by the public. That forces elected city representatives to present strong arguments for borrowing, usually accompanied by engineering or other studies. 

But Truth or Consequences hasn’t cracked $200,000 in property-tax collections in the last five years, according to financial statements from 2013 to 2018, the most recent available.  

Using utility fees to make up for shortfalls in governmental activities and ignoring utility upkeep means the Truth or Consequences City Commission never has to make an argument or persuade its constituents why it is spending or borrowing money. 

Truth or Consequences, like most cities, has to worry about how to fund governmental activities or the General Fund, to pay for police, fire protection, streets, facilities, fleet maintenance and administration personnel. 

Business-type activities or enterprise funds are usually self-supporting, although the City’s golf course, airport, swimming pool and solid waste department did not pay for themselves from 2013 to 2018.
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The city is somewhat unusual in owning an electric utility. It is clear from the 2018 financial statement that it is the big money earner, with $2.7 million spare cash being transferred out to the General Fund and other funds. 

In earlier financial statements it is not clear the money to make up for shortfalls came from the electric department because the city lumped all the excess cash from the electric, water and sewer in the “Joint Utility Proprietary Fund.” This obscured how well or badly each utility was performing and provided a slush fund to subsidize governmental activities.  

In 2017 the city zeroed out the Joint Utility Proprietary Fund, transferring out nearly $10.2 million, the recipient accounts not made clear in the financial statement. 

In 2016, nearly $4.3 million was transferred out of the Joint Utility Proprietary Fund, with nearly $3.2 million going to the General Fund. 

In 2015 nearly $1.5 million was transferred out of the Joint Utility Proprietary Fund, with $1.375 million going into the general fund, making up 70 percent of its expenditures, the auditing firm doing that year’s financial statements making it clear. 

In 2014 more than $2.14 million was transferred out of the Joint Utility Fund with $1.8 million going into the General Fund, which expended $1.84 million. That means the utilities subsidized 97 percent of General-Fund expenditures. 

In 2013 nearly $2.8 million was transferred out of the Joint Utility Fund with almost $1.86 million going to the General Fund, 88 percent of its $2.1- million expenditures.  

It is clear from the state of the City’s utilities that the money transferred out should have been used to maintain them in good order. 

In a prior article– READ THE FULL ARTICLE –the Sierra County Sun, using City documents, demonstrated the City is losing nearly 20 percent of its electric transmission. The City’s 2015 Comprehensive Plan states the city was losing 15 percent to 20 percent of its electric transmission because of old transmission lines and transformers, demonstrating nothing has been done in four years to stop the bleeding.  

A September 2019 water study by Wilson & Company engineers states the City’s water utility is losing a shocking 47 percent of its water because of old pipes. 

A corresponding sewer study has not been done, nevertheless the city raised sewer rates 5 percent a year, with no sunset. In addition Williamsburg residents’ base rate is $7 more a month than TorC residents’. It appears the City is beefing up the cash in the sewer fund as collateral for a future borrowing to fix the aged and failing system. 

The 2013 expansion of the solid waste department saw fees escalate from $92,000 collected in 2013 to $1.64 million in 2018 to pay for the new transfer station’s operations. Customers pay an automatic 5-percent increase with no sunset. Even with the massive rate increases, it still needed subsidizing. The Joint Utility Proprietary Fund transferred $218,000 into the Solid Waste Fund to make up for shortfalls, according to the 2018 financial statement. 

If Truth or Consequences had to fund its “governmental activities” on its Gross Receipts Taxes (about $4.1 million in 2018) and property taxes, (about $192,000 in 2018), and if each utility had to be self-supporting with profits being churned back into the utility, the City Commission would be forced to be transparent about why and how it is spending money. 

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Kathleen Sloan is the Sun’s founder and chief reporter. She can be reached at kathleen.sloan@gmail.com or 575-297-4146.
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Understanding New Mexico's proposed new social studies standards for K-12 students

“The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”
—National Council for the Social Studies 

Reader Michael L. Hayes of Las Cruces commented: What impresses me is that both the proposed standards and some of the criticisms of them are equally grotesque. I make this bold statement on the basis of my experience as a peripatetic high school and college English teacher for 45 years in many states with many students differing in race, religion, gender and socioeconomic background, and as a civic activist (PTA) in public education (My career, however, was as an independent consultant mainly in defense, energy and the environment.)

The proposed social studies standards are conceptually and instructionally flawed. For starters, a “performance standard” is not a standard at all; it is a task. Asking someone to explain something is not unlike asking someone to water the lawn. Nothing measures the performance, but without a measure, there is no standard. The teacher’s subjective judgment will be all that matters, and almost anything will count as satisfying a “performance standard,” even just trying. Students will be left to wonder “what is on the teacher’s mind?” or “have I sucked up enough.”

Four other quick criticisms of the performance standards. One, they are nearly unintelligible because they are written in jargon. PED’s use of jargon in a document intended for the public is worrisome. Bureaucrats often use jargon to confuse or conceal something uninformed, wrong or unworthy. As a result, most parents, some school board members and more than a few teachers do not understand them.

Two, the performance standards are so vague that they fail to define the education which teachers are supposed to teach, students are supposed to learn, and parents are supposed to understand. PED does not define words like “explain” or “describe” so that teachers can apply “standards” consistently and fairly. The standards do not indicate what teachers are supposed to know in order to teach or specify what students are supposed to learn. Supervisors cannot know whether teachers are teaching social studies well or poorly. The standards are so vague that the public, especially parents or guardians, cannot know the content of public education.

Three, many performance standards are simply unrealistic, especially at grade level. Under “Ethnic, Cultural and Identity Performance Standards”; then under “Diversity and Identity”; then under “Kindergarten,” one such standard is: “Identify how their family does things both the same as and different from how other people do things.” Do six-year-olds know how other people do things? Do they know whether these things are relevant to diversity and identity? Or another standard: “Describe their family history, culture, and past to current contributions of people in their main identity groups.” (A proficient writer would have hyphenated the compound adjective to avoid confusing the reader.) Do six-year-olds know so much about these things in relation to their “identity group”? Since teachers obviously do not teach them about these other people and have not taught them about these groups, why are these and similar items in the curriculum; or do teachers assign them to go home and collect this information?

Point four follows from “three”; some information relevant to some performance measures requires a disclosure of personal or family matters. The younger the students, the easier it is for teachers to invade their privacy and not only their privacy, but also the privacy of their parents or guardians, or neighbors, who may never be aware of these disclosures or not become aware of them until afterward. PED has no right to design a curriculum which requires teachers to ask students for information about themselves, parents or guardians, or neighbors, or puts teachers on the spot if the disclosures reveal criminal conduct. (Bill says Jeff’s father plays games in bed with his daughter. Lila says Angelo’s mother gives herself shots in the arm.) Since teacher-student communications have no legal protection to ensure privacy, those disclosures may become public accidentally or deliberately. The effect of these proposal standards is to turn New Mexico schools and teachers into investigative agents of the state and students into little informants or spies.

This PED proposal for social studies standards is a travesty of education despite its appeals to purportedly enlightened principles. It constitutes a clear and present danger to individual liberty and civil liberties. It should be repudiated; its development, investigated; its PED perpetrators, dismissed. No state curriculum should encourage or require the disclosure of private personal information.

I am equally outraged by the comments of some of T or C’s school board members: Christine LaFont and Julianne Stroup, two white Christian women, who belong to one of the larger minorities in America and assume white and Christian privileges. In different terms but for essentially the same reason, both oppose an education which includes lessons about historical events and trends, and social movements and developments, of other minorities. They object to the proposal for the new social studies standards because of its emphasis on individual and group identities not white or Christian. I am not going to reply with specific objections; they are too numerous and too pointed.

Ms. LaFont urges: “It’s better to address what’s similar with all Americans. It’s not good to differentiate.” Ms. Stroup adds: “Our country is not a racist country. We have to teach to respect each other. We have civil rights laws that protect everyone from discrimination. We need to teach civics, love and respect. We need to teach how to be color blind.”

Their desires for unity and homogeneity, and for mutual respect, are a contradiction and an impossibility. Aside from a shared citizenship, which implies acceptance of the Constitution, the rule of law and equality under the law, little else defines Americans. We are additionally defined by our race, religion, national origin, etc. So mutual respect requires individuals to respect others different from themselves. Disrespect desires blacks, Jews or Palestinians to assimilate or to suppress or conceal racial, religious or national origin aspects of their identity. The only people who want erasure of nonwhite, non-Christian, non-American origin aspects of identity are bigots. Ms. LaFont and Ms. Stroud want standards which, by stressing similarities and eliding differences, desire the erasure of such aspects. What they want will result in a social studies curriculum that enables white, Christian, native-born children to grow up to be bigots and all others to be their victims. This would be the academic equivalent of ethnic cleansing.

H.E.L.P.

This postmortem of a case involving a 75-year-old women who went missing from her home in Hillsboro last September sheds light on the bounds of law enforcement’s capacity to respond, especially in large rural jurisdictions such as Sierra County, and underscores the critical role the public, as well as concerned family and friends, can play in assisting a missing person’s search.

Reader Jane Debrott of Hillsboro commented: Thank you for your article on the tragic loss of Betsey. I am a resident of Hillsboro, a friend of Rick and Betsey, and a member of H.E.L.P. The thing that most distresses me now, is the emphasis on Rick’s mis-naming of the color of their car. I fear that this fact will cause Rick to feel that if he had only gotten the facts right, Betsey may have been rescued before it was too late. The incident was a series of unavoidable events, out of everyone’s control, and we will never know what place the correct color of her car may have had in the outcome. It breaks my heart to think that Rick has had one more thing added to his “what ifs” concerning this incident.

Diana Tittle responded: Dear Jane, the Sun undertook this investigation at the request of a Hillsboro resident concerned about the town’s inability to mount a prompt, coordinated response to the disappearance of a neighbor. From the beginning, I shared your concern about how our findings might affect Betsy’s family and friends. After I completed my research and began writing, I weighed each detail I eventually chose to include against my desire to cause no pain and the public’s right to know about the strengths and limitations of law enforcement’s response and the public’s need to know about how to be of meaningful assistance.

There was information I withheld about the state police investigation and the recovery. But I decided to include the issue of the car’s color because the individuals who spotted Betsy’s car emphasized how its color had been key to their identification of it as the vehicle described in Betsy’s Silver Alert. Because the misinformation was corrected within a couple of hours, I also included in this story the following editorial comment meant to put the error in perspective: “The fact that law enforcement throughout the state was on the lookout in the crucial early hours after Betsy’s disappearance for an elderly woman driving a “light blue” instead of a “silver” Accord would, in retrospect, likely not have changed the outcome of the search” [emphasis added].

I would also point to the story’s overarching conclusion about the inadvisability of assigning blame for what happened: “In this case, a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances, many of them beyond human control, hindered the search that it would fall to Hamilton’s department to lead.”

It is my hope that any pain caused by my reporting will eventually be outweighed by its contribution to a better community understanding of what it will take in the future to mount a successful missing person’s search in rural Sierra County.

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