City Manager Madrid resigns after two years in office amidst signs he may have been pushed

by Kathleen Sloan | February 11, 2021
8 min read
Morris Madrid
Public dissatisfaction with Madrid, expressed at commission meetings and, increasingly, on social media "may have weighed on him," Commissioner Randall Aragon said. Source: Facebook

Truth or Consequences City Manager Morris Madrid resigned during an executive session following the regular meeting of the city commission yesterday, Feb. 10. The topic to be discussed behind closed doors was described generically as “personnel matters” on the regular meeting’s agenda.

Whether the agenda item was placed by Madrid himself or at the request of a commissioner cannot be determined because of the prohibition against commissioners’ revealing details of executive session deliberations, especially those concerning personnel.

Two city commissioners were willing to discuss their personal reactions to Madrid’s submission of his letter of resignation during the closed session. Their comments suggest that the resignation was both unexpected and unwelcome.

City Commissioner Randall Aragon, in an interview with the Sun this morning, said of the Madrid’s resignation: “I was surprised.” He added: “Everybody has strengths and weaknesses. Mr. Madrid had a real forté in finance and working with grants. They just kept rolling in—it was mind-boggling—and funded a lot of infrastructure improvements.”

Mayor Sandra Whitehead, in a separate interview, said: “I personally felt Manager Madrid was a big asset to T or C. The commission as a whole reluctantly accepted his resignation.”

But there are other indications, pieced together from a variety of sources, that Madrid may have been pushed out and that his departure might have been weeks in the planning. All these clues point to an intervention by City Commissioner Frances Luna, who had challenged Madrid’s performance or judgment at nearly every commission meeting since her appointment to that body in September 2020.

Luna did not return the Sun’s phone call asking for an interview to discuss whether she played a role in Madrid’s resignation.

MADRID’S DEPARTURE SAID TO BE A GIVEN WEEKS AGO

Two sources told the Sun they heard several weeks ago that Madrid was soon to be removed.

T or C resident Rick Dumiak, whose veracity was questioned by Madrid after Dumiak complained publicly at several commission meeting about the continuing trash problem at Rotary Park, picked up a hint about Madrid’s possible departure “two or three weeks ago.” While walking his dog in Rotary Park, Dumiak told the Sun he was approached by a gentleman he didn’t know. The man knew him, asking: “Are you the guy on Facebook talking about having to pick up the trash” in the park?  Dumiak acknowledged he was indeed the author of frequent social media posts about the problem, one of which was accompanied by documentary photographs.

“Don’t worry,” the stranger said to Dumiak. “Morris is on his way out.”

Larry Mullenax, a municipal airport advisory board member interviewed by the Sun on another matter, said yesterday evening, “I am not surprised,” when told Madrid had resigned that day. “I heard about two weeks ago, from a county official, [Madrid] was on his way out because he wasn’t doing anything.”

Luna was a Sierra County commissioner for eight years before she “termed out” on Jan. 1. The Sun recently published an article documenting her closed-door strategizing with her former colleagues, Sierra County Commissioners Jim Paxon and Travis Day, about the expenditure of Spaceport America gross receipts taxes.

LUNA’S PUBLIC CHALLENGES OF MADRID

Even before she became a city commissioner, Luna had a bone to pick with the city manager. In a Feb. 28, 2020, opinion column in the Sierra County Sentinel, owned and published by Luna, she criticized Madrid for not submitting a 2020 capital outlay request to state legislators. An article written by Etta Pettijohn appeared in the paper the same day. Based on interviews with state Senator John Arthur Smith and state Representative Rebecca Dow, it reported that Madrid had declined to see the local keepers of capital outlay monies when they made a special trip to his office to collect paperwork outlining T or C’s 2020 capital outlay requests.

On July 22, 2020, Luna appeared before the city commission, rising to speak during public comment. She criticized Madrid for threatening to cancel Zane Kiehne’s hangar lease at the municipal airport because of FAA regulations that, in her opinion, were being too harshly interpreted by the city.

“Zane spends $1 million a year,” in Sierra County and environs, Luna said, making it essential that the city not anger him by refusing to renew his hangar lease for $1,600 a year.

During the Oct. 28, 2020, city commission meeting, now a sitting commissioner, Luna criticized Madrid for closing city offices in response to a spike in area coronavirus cases. “It’s premature, closing our offices to the public because of one case [of a city employee testing positive],” she said, “and I never heard from City Manager Madrid who or what department or when that was.”

Luna noted that the state’s emergency public health regulations did not contemplate closing government offices. “Government offices are not on the New Mexico Environment Department’s rapid response list,” she said. “We are an essential business.” Luna added that Madrid, alone, should not be making such decisions.

At the same meeting, Luna chided Madrid for not following up on her request to hold a town hall meeting concerning the funding of a new indoor pool, using gross receipts tax revenues. At a previous commission meeting, she had instructed Madrid to research the city’s remaining taxing capacity, but he had not provided that information.

“I don’t know why we can’t get these things done,” Luna said, “so we can be of service to the public.”

At the commission’s Dec. 16 meeting, Madrid unveiled a proposal for a six-block, $12 million development that would constitute a new civic center, shifting focus away from downtown revitalization efforts. The architectural renderings and maps had been developed out of the public eye and without city commission approval. Luna dismissed the elaborate plans, stating they were “beautiful, but it will never happen,” because the proposed site regularly floods during rains. 

During the Jan. 13, 2021, city commission meeting, Luna again expressed displeasure with Madrid’s handling of capital outlay requests. She was referring to the presentation Madrid had made to state legislators last December. Among the three requests Madrid presented was a $1.2 million MainStreet Truth or Consequences project to revitalize three block of Foch Street. During Madrid’s presentation, Representative Rebecca Dow informed the city manager that project had already been funded, leaving the city with only two requests to be considered by the legislators. “[Madrid] didn’t even know it had been funded,” Luna pointed out to her fellow commissioners.

At the same meeting, Luna criticized Madrid for not informing the city commission in advance that the police department was going to install cameras that collect license-plate data on the town’s busiest streets. “This is seriously unnerving,” she said of the city’s newly acquired ability to track the movements of private citizens.

DID PUBLIC PRESSURE PLAY A ROLE?

In a city press release announcing Madrid’s resignation, issued about five hours after the executive session ended, Madrid was quoted as being “thankful for the opportunity to have served, and been a part of, the City . . . .  I will keep the friends and fond memories forever.”

T or C city manager Morris Madrid's resignation letter

His resignation will take effect March 5, the press release said, with Community Development Director Traci Alvarez taking up his duties on Feb. 20.

Aragon said Alvarez was Madrid’s choice to be acting city manager. Aragon approved of the decision, saying of Alvarez: “She’s magic.”

Madrid told the Sun yesterday evening he didn’t wish to comment on his reasons for resigning “at this time.” Whitehead indicated Madrid is preparing his own statement. “I would give him that respect” of speaking for himself, she said. As of press time, no statement from Madrid had been released.

Aragon speculated that growing public pressure might have prompted or contributed to Madrid’s decision to step down.

“A city manager has a shelf life of three or four years,” he said. “You have to keep everybody happy—internally and externally. It’s quite a task. You look at what was going on Facebook.”

Aragon may have been referring to a recent flurry of comments on Facebook in response Rick Dumiak’s query whether the community wanted to see Madrid replaced.

Dumiak recently resigned as the Planning and Zoning Commission’s chairman, stating Madrid had impugned his integrity and honesty.

On Jan. 28, the day after Madrid had questioned Dumiak’s truthfulness at a city commission meeting, Dumiak posted the following query on Sierra County NM Square’s Facebook page.

“So I am curious how many TorC residents would sign a petition to present to the city commission to tell the commission to remove our current city manager and start the process to hire a new city manager? Just a yes or no will work as a comment. I am trying to gauge support. Based on yesterday’s city commission meeting, I feel we can no longer trust our city manager to do what’s right for the residents.”

The post received 125 comments, the majority of them saying they would sign the petition. Dumiak also said he received “a lot” of private messages from people who didn’t want to comment on Facebook, but wanted him to know they would sign the petition.

Dumiak did not act on these findings.

During yesterday’s city commission meeting, Whitehead and Mayor Pro Tem Amanda Forrister defended Madrid. Dumiak had misunderstood, they said. Madrid didn’t call him a liar.

THE TERMS OF MADRID’S CONTRACT  

The Sun asked for Madrid’s most recent contract and received the first one he signed, dated Jan. 7, 2019. It is a one-year contract for $95,000 a year.

Madrid confirmed in a Feb. 10 email to the Sun that he was “granted a two-year extension on my contract around Dec. 27, 2019, give or take a week.” He did not receive a raise, the Sun reported at that time.

The terms of the contract were not updated when the extension was granted. If the contract is enforceable, it requires Madrid to give 30 days’ notice of his intended departure. His resignation date is about five days shy of the requirement.

The contract states that Madrid will receive what any other city employee is due upon departure under current city rules governing accumulated vacation and sick days and benefits. But he will receive no severance pay.

Additional reporting by Diana Tittle

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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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HAVE YOU SEEN?

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.

3 thoughts on “City Manager Madrid resigns after two years in office amidst signs he may have been pushed”

  1. Isaac Eastvold

    In the aftermath of Mr. Madrid’s two years, I would like to know how much the city now is in debt compared to when Mr. Madrid was hired and the long-term impacts of paying off that debt. If it comes from the GRT to repay loans from the State Finance Authority, how does that affect T or C taxpayers? Will the payback shave the budget for departments, and does it limit using GRT wiggle room for projects that make more sense and have greater citizen support?

  2. David Dawdy

    Part of a manager’s job is to manage the departments under his authority; Madrid’s hands-off approach to the department managers’ budgets was probably popular with them and politically correct. I’m sure like anyone, Mr. Madrid had his good and bad points. From what I hear he was not a vigorous hands-on manager that a small city like T or C really needs. I wish the commissioners best of luck in finding a replacement who will challenge their historical assumptions and lead us to a more prosperous future. Maybe someone who can galvanize the many citizens who could do more if they had a manager who actually lived in T or C.

  3. Rick Dumiak

    I am not sorry to see Mr. Madrid resign but I do wish him well. I do not feel he had the cities best interests at heart. He may well have been a “good boss” but his people skills were sorely lacking. In addition a city manager should return calls and emails from the residents. It is my hope that the city commission will seek input from the residents during the hiring process. Perhaps a citizens board can be part of the hiring process. I for one have many years of experience hiring upper level managers and would be happy to assist in any way with the interview process and I am sure there are many more residents with professional experience that would also be happy to help. As others have said, the city manager should be a resident of TorC and a housing allowance could be part of the employment offer to make sure that happens.
    I am looking forward to the hiring process and I hope the city commission will seek out the communities help with the hiring process.

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