Mayor erases City Commission oversight of City Manager

by Kathleen Sloan | August 20, 2020
4 min read

The Truth or Consequences City Commission went on its yearly retreat Aug. 19, with Mayor Sandra Whitehead instructing new fellow-Commissioners to let City Manager Morris Madrid handle all issues, even those raised by their constituents. 

Whitehead admitted she doesn’t answer emails from constituents. “I forward all my emails to Morris to handle and then he emails me back and I know the issue is taken care of, so we have that audit trail,” she said. 

If her non-communication advice to fellow-commissioners is followed, it would ensure the public cannot petition its elected officials directly, a First Amendment right, forcing all issues to go through a non-elected city employee.  

The retreat was held 40 miles away in Kingston at the Black Range Lodge to make it difficult for the public to attend. Whitehead did not allow this member of the press or the two members of the public to speak to the City Commission—even during the break. “You may not interact with any of us,” she said, further impinging on the First Amendment right to free speech. 

During the first part of the meeting, City Attorney Jay Rubin gave his views on the Open Meetings Act. He did not touch on its essence—that democracy requires an informed republic, which in turn requires transparency in government, including accessible elected officials, meetings and agendas. 

Instead, Rubin cautioned the City Commission not to veer from the agenda during meetings. Ironically the agenda for the retreat was so brief as to offer no real public notice to constituents, as required by the Open Meetings Act. The agenda was a one-liner, “Future goals planning session.” Rubin’s instruction on the Open Meetings Act was nowhere on the agenda. 

Rubin and Madrid used Mayor Brendan Tolley’s city-commission report at the last meeting as an example of going off the agenda, although he was not present at the retreat to respond.

Tolley brought up Rubin’s and Madrid’s legal letter informing two members of the Planning and Zoning Commission, Lillas Urban and Merrill Dicks, they needed to resign. He asked his fellow-commissioners if they wanted to concede their authority to remove members of the board to City staff. 

Rubin told the City Commissioners at the retreat that the law was “gray” on whether the City Commission or City staff could remove the P&Z Commissioners. But the state law is not ambiguous. It states the City Commission shall seat and remove P&Z Commissioners. 

Madrid said “It is much better to handle everything you can administratively.” 

The City Commission reports, Madrid said, “Should be used to inform the public what you’ve been up to.” 

“Did you fill sand bags, did you take water to firefighters,” he said, by way of example. 

City Commissioner Randall Aragon agreed. Having Rubin and Madrid handle it saved the P&Z Commissioners embarrassment. “And I told them that,” Aragon said. 

Aragon also said City staff should handle whether Urban and Dicks should be allowed to continue to live in the commercial district downtown under their live-work special-use permit.  

“It’s not our job to enforce the law. We’re legislators,” Aragon said. 

However, the law in this case is the special-use permit issued to Urban and Dicks. The permit can only be given by the City Commission and it can only be amended by the City Commission, according to city law or ordinance. The permit, as granted by the City Commission, has no restrictions on it. Therefore Morris and Rubin have no authority to “enforce” a nonexistent restriction. They claim Urban and Dicks must vacate the living space because the business was not open four days a week.  

Whitehead and City Commissioners Paul Baca and Amanda Forrister said nothing, also conceding their authority over P&Z Commission membership and special-use permits by saying nothing. 

Forrister asked Madrid to at least inform them in the future, because she got a lot of calls about the P&Z members and was unaware of the circumstances. Forrister even suggested Madrid give weekly written reports instead of reporting openly at City Commission meetings held twice a month, further dimming sunshine on government workings. 

However, Madrid said Forrister should call him. “I don’t know you’re getting calls unless you tell me,” he said. 

Rubin agreed, stating City Commissioners should call him and Madrid on any issue that comes up, giving them fair warning. 

Whitehead, Madrid and Rubin, in the first hour of the retreat, essentially turned the City Commission’s duty to oversee the City Manager’s work on its head, making him the overseer of their work. 

State law 3-14-12 states “The Commission shall appoint a manager and shall hold him responsible for the proper and efficient administration of municipal government.”  

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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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