An Introduction to the Truth or Consequences City Commission Candidates

by Kathleen Sloan | January 9, 2020
11 min read
UPDATE, January 20, 2020
January 14 was the day candidates could withdraw and write-in candidates could declare themselves. 

Julie Rackow, a candidate for Seat 2, withdrew, leaving four people running for the seat. 

Kathy Clark, currently mayor pro tem and occupying Seat 4, withdrew, but Sophia Peron filed the empty slot as a write-in candidate. Four people are running for the seat 

Roy Ryder, a candidate for Seat 5, withdrew, leaving five people running for the seat. 

Sophia Peron, in a press release, said she is running to “make TorC an attractive place to live in, visit and relocate to.” 

Under this plank in her platform she would initiate a “year-long community clean-up, start work on getting a new city/county dump, repeal the ordinance which allows mobile homes to be ‘dropped anywhere,’ demand that code enforcement, the fire marshal and municipal judge enforce code.”  

Her second plank is to “open City government to the public.” She would initiate holding City Council meetings in the evening, allowing public comment at every meeting, holding regular town halls and filling vacant seats on City boards.  

She supports the citizen initiative ordinance placing a 10-year moratorium on smart meters. In the past she supported the referendum overturning the City ordinance to spend over $3 million on renovating the Armory as the new police station. She “supported not taking” the Lee Belle Johnson Center to house the New Mexico Spaceport and Geronimo Trail National Scenic Byway organization in 2014. 

End of Update

Original Article
An Introduction to the Truth or Consequences City Commission Candidates, By Kathleen Sloan. January 9, 2020

There are three seats open on the Truth or Consequences City Commission and Jan. 7 was the day for declaring candidacy. Fifteen candidates are running. 

Only 10 candidates ran for four seats in 2016 and seven candidates for two seats in 2018, making this field of candidates unusually large. 

Running for Seat 2 are five candidates. It is currently held by City Commissioner Rolf Hechler, who is stepping down. Ingo Hoeppner, Carol Borsello, Julie Rackow, Randall Aragon and William Jacka are the candidates running for this position. 

Running for Seat 4—Mayor Pro Tem Kathy Clark’s seat—are four candidates: incumbent Clark, Gina Kelley, William Fink and Brendan Tolley. 

Six candidates are running for Seat 5, City Commissioner George Szigeti’s seat.  Szigeti was not elected to his position but appointed by the City Commission to take former-Mayor Steve Green’s seat after he resigned last December. Szigeti is running for the first time. Tony Archuleta, Ron Fenn, Roy Ryder, Amanda Forrister and Martin Mijal are the other candidates. 

In quick interviews, the Sierra County Sun asked the candidates why they are running and what qualifies them to be City Commissioners. 

SEAT 2 Candidates

Ingo Hoeppner owns Ingo’s Art Café at 422 N. Broadway and moved here a little over a year ago after visiting for 15 years to take in the hot springs. 

“I am a visionary person,” Hoeppner said. “I can see the potential the City has and what needs to be done infrastructure-wise, for a greener environment, one that is cleaner and more efficient.” 

“Owning the coffee shop, I am more aware of citizens; I can listen and hear what they are facing. The people’s voice is the main focus. I can represent them at the Commission meeting.” 

Hoeppner has served on the City’s Parks and Recreation Board for three months. He is president of “Acknowledge, Create, Teach Corporation,” founded in 2013 in Alamogordo, a youth organization currently working on an “eco-friendly park” for Truth or Consequences. He also founded “Hot Springs Radio” for local youth, an online radio station that can be found at LiveRadio.com. 

Hoeppner became a U.S. citizen in 2010. He served as a German air-force soldier and military-civil servant, mostly in air-transport supply, office supply and personnel.

Randall Aragon recently ran unsuccessfully for a school-board seat in November. He was City chief of police for two years, dismissed by City Manager Morris Madrid in September for an unstated reason, which could make for an interesting reversal if he becomes one of Madrid’s bosses as a City Commissioner. 

Aragon has had several positions in the U.S. as chief of police during his three decades in law enforcement. 

“I have three layers to my platform,” Aragon said. 
“Community governance, which is similar to community policing, in which you build a relationship between the community and the City Commission.”

“Transparency, reaching out and touching the hearts of the people; every single decision needs to have community backing. We need to draw the community into meetings. It takes more than legal ads and doing what is required by law. We need to do outreach. ‘Your input matters’ is my campaign slogan.”

“Financial stewardship—why are we spending money on this?” 
“I think all of the candidates are civic-minded, but I think it takes more than that,” Aragon said. “I have 20 years dealing with municipal government, management and budgets.” 

Carole Borsello has “lived in TorC off and on since 1997, most recently moving here in 2017 after almost a year spent in Hillsboro.” 

“After 35 years of being in a business workplace, as owner/employer and employee, and with 24 more in personal services as a Massage Therapist, I have had the opportunity to experience my own and others’ lives. Now I want to put that experience to work by sharing my time and skills to improve the future. In every place I lived, I volunteered for service positions, meeting people of all ages, all experiential levels, many beliefs and aspirations. It is my time to put that experience to work in a more public and positive way.”

“I want to see Truth or Consequences become once more a city devoted to the health and well-being of its citizen family, both physically and fiscally. To accomplish these goals, we need heightened financial responsibility and aware accountability, combined with transparency to and for our townspeople.” 

“I seek to act as a liaison between the voters’ needs and the city’s accomplishments by understanding issues fully and representing these to fellow commissioners, so all may benefit. I have had many years in business and personal services to become aware of the delicate balance needed to conserve and grow resources, to refrain from easily-accumulated debt and to serve TorC with dedication and understanding. I seek to bring about problem resolution while promoting the kind of growth the people want right now, with an eye toward improving our future.”

Julie Rackow and William Jacka could not be reached in time for this article. The City used the State’s candidate-declaration forms, which do not require contact information be supplied. 

SEAT 4 Candidates

Kathy Clark has served for six years on the City Commission. She ran and won a two-year term, shortened from four years by a board member’s resignation. She ran again for a four-year term in 2016, easily beating out two other candidates. She currently serves as mayor pro tem. 

Clark owns the Charles Motel and Hot Springs at 601 N. Broadway St. 

She’s running because, “I wanted to make certain that if the people needed me, I would be available. I think I’ve done a good job,” Clark said. 

Gina Kelley was the tourism director in Ruidoso for seven years and the tourism director for Sierra County for three years, moving back to town a year ago. 

“I’ve watched and listened and read and it’s distressing to me that members of our community are so disillusioned with the way our City is run,” Kelley said. 

“I want to open up the City Commission—for transparency.” 
“The frustration has really bubbled to the surface over the smart-meter issue.” 

“I have a lot of experience working with local governments. I’ve written ordinances and worked with communities on what they want. I’ve worked on state legislation and federal legislation. I’ve managed a $1.2-million budget for Ruidoso. I know how to work a budget.” 

“I would like to see our quality of life improve.” 

William Fink has lived here three years and is currently retired. He was a consultant on milk safety for Homeland Security, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of State. 

He has a degree in economics and mathematics with minors in history and political science from Shepherd College in West Virginia. 

“We need transparency,” Fink said. “Right now the government is a closed door and we don’t know and can’t know what’s going on behind it. We need to know how they are making their decisions. It needs to be an open door.” 

Brendan Tolley feels “it is time to give back,” after being “nurtured and supported” by the community since 1993. He believes “if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem.” 

He currently works for the “family business, Mauldin Drilling,” which will allow him to bend his schedule to serve as City Commissioner, should he win. In addition, working on wells has given him an understanding of “the issues with City water.” 

Tolley worked in the City’s electric department “as a lineman,” doing “disconnects and installations.” 

He also worked at the City library. 

“I have a background in banking, so I understand finance,” he said. “I understand manual jobs as well.” 

“The infrastructure is crumbling,” Tolley said. 

“I understand this City Commission has done a much better job of passing a balanced budget and I want to keep on with that.” 

“I want to improve the quality of life for all age groups, so they enjoy it and want to stay here.”

SEAT 5 Candidates

Tony Archuleta worked for The Herald newspaper for 20 of his 25 years as a journalist. Currently he is working as a long-term substitute teacher at the City’s middle school. 

He was covering the City when City Commissioner George Szigeti was appointed by fellow-board members, with Mayor Steve Green voting for his successor before he resigned. Archuleta is still bothered by how the position was filled. 

“George Szigeti didn’t interview for the position, it was a political horse-trading situation. I felt he needed a challenger.” 

“I also feel strongly about smart meters, which I am opposed to.” 
The City Commission voted Aug. 27, 2019 to hire Landis & Gyr to install smart meters for the 4,300 electric customers, a $1-million contract award. 

“I also think the City needs to refocus and reevaluate where we are on the Spaceport. It’s 10 years behind and [therefore] hard to push for a visitors’ center at the I-25 overlook. But it was promised to the community,” among other promises, Archuleta said. 

George Szigeti moved to Truth or Consequences after he retired in 2012 from the U.S. Department of Defense, working as a cartographer and intelligence analyst for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

He served on the City’s Public Utility Advisory Board from 2013 to 2018, when he was tapped to fill Mayor Steve Green’s seat, who resigned in December 2018. 

“I am continuing to run because a lot of people have asked me to continue. I wouldn’t if people had not asked. I stand on my record.” 

Ron Fenn has been a citizen activist for years, attending most of the City Commission and Public Utility Advisory Board meetings for the last decade. He has spent thousands of hours researching the SSA#4 solar farm, the electric department’s operations and capital needs, the water and sewer systems’ operations and capital needs, the solid waste department’s operations and recycling problems, as well as Spaceport America’s lack of economic impact on the area. 

One of his long-term bugaboos is the “handing over” of the public’s Lee Belle Johnson building to Spaceport America for exhibits and the tour-business Final Frontier, as well as the non-government Chamber of Commerce and Geronimo Trail National Scenic Byway organizations. 

He is a strong believer in the anti-donation clause and believes the senior citizens in town have been wrongly deprived of activities there, and the whole town has been deprived of the building as a town-hall meeting and performance space.  

He has met about twice a month with City Manager Morris Madrid since he was hired about a year ago. 

“This is my fourth run for City Commissioner since 2010,” Fenn said, having lost every bid. 

“I don’t like to see what’s happening with our government and how it has removed itself from the people,” Fenn said. 

“Since the city belongs to the people, we need to have a say in how it is governed and not just a cursory, ‘we held a public hearing’ form of governance.” 

“I’ve been very active in watching government actions and protesting when I see things that are wrong.” 

“I’ve had some limited success acting from the outside, but now I think it’s time for me to work from the inside.” 

“I have worked to put issues before the public. The latest is an initiative ordinance to place a 10-year moratorium on smart meters.”

Fenn has a degree in technical theater—“which included all the building trades,” he said. His work experience has been as an industrial-engineering consultant for businesses seeking to improve efficiencies in operations. 

Roy Ryder is running because “People need to know what’s going on. I haven’t voted in 35 years but I signed up to vote so I could run in this election.” 

Research shared “by my colleagues,” revealed the electrical system “is antiquated and very inefficient,” and he is opposed to the City Commission’s intent to install smart meters. 

“There is also the debt problem,” Ryder said. 

For the last four years Ryder has taught “right brain” mathematics to students at the Manzano Christian School—Apple Tree Educational Center. 

He has a doctorate in mathematics and taught at Humboldt State University, where he was also the general-faculty president. 

“I have a lot of committee experience. I was on the budget committee. I’ve been an administrator,” he said, which prepared him to serve as a City Commissioner.

Martin Mijal is “running because I think George Szigeti is leading us in the wrong direction with the smart meters.” 

“I also think there is a lack of transparency. So much is secret.” 
“And the infrastructure. The city was incorporated in 1916 when the dam was being built and in 104 years the streets don’t even drain into the Rio Grande.” 

“We have to do the city manager’s job. If we get a grant, we do it, versus planning and understanding what we need. The City Commission has put their trust in the City Manager Morris Madrid and the Public Utility Advisory Board,” which is not working, Mijal said. 

Mijal has a degree in philosophy and French from DePaul University in Chicago. He has a master’s in counseling, working as a mental-health counselor in state-government facilities before he retired. 

Amanda Forrister could not be reached in time for this article.

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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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