Preview: Truth or Consequences City Commission meeting July 22: Final budget workshop, $2.24 million loan, opting in to county running elections

by Kathleen Sloan | July 20, 2020
5 min read
BUDGET

The Truth or Consequences City Commission will have a workshop on the final 2020-2021 budget at the end of the regular meeting that starts at 9 a.m. on Wednesday.

No final budget is in the packet, giving the City Commission and the public no time to study the budget before the last-minute July 22 workshop. The final budget is due to the state by July 30.

The City Commission has also yet to receive a fourth-quarter budget report from the prior fiscal year ending June 30. Without it, the City Commission voted blind on the preliminary budget at the May 27 meeting.

The final budget is not an action item, so perhaps the City Commission will hold a special meeting to vote on the final budget between now and July 30.

REFINANCE, REFUNDING LOAN

City Manager Morris Madrid is proposing the City refund a 2009 loan from the New Mexico Finance Authority. It was originally for $2,046,949 principal, the proceeds to be used to repair “streets, alleys, sidewalks and curbs.”

There is $1,166,036 principal left on the 2009 loan that runs through 2030.

In addition, Madrid is proposing the City borrow an additional $1,076,378 principal for unnamed projects “the city couldn’t afford otherwise.”

This would bring the refinancing/refunding loan amount beyond what it was originally—$2,242,414 principal. The loan would still end in 2030.

The loan will be paid back from the Municipal Gross Receipts Tax, as was the 2009 loan. The City charges one-cent per dollar Municipal Gross Receipts sales tax. One-quarter of the one cent will go to paying off the loan. No mention has been made of the possible shrinking of this money source due to COVID-19, or if it will be sufficient to make the payment. Most businesses were and still are closed in much of the City.

The loan was on a prior agenda, but Madrid took it off because “an even lower interest rate” was on offer from the New Mexico Finance Authority.

But Madrid has not included several exhibits that are part of the loan agreement in the City Commission packet. The City packet does not include the debt-payment schedule or the interest rate, therefore it is unknown what the yearly payment will be, or if the interest rate is low enough to warrant refinancing the loan given the more than $1 million added to the debt.

Without the debt schedule, interest rate and projects proposed to be financed, it is impossible for the public or City Commission to evaluate the wisdom of the refinancing/refunding loan.

Nevertheless, the agenda item will go to public hearing with a dearth of information on July 22.

COUNTY TO RUN LOCAL ELECTIONS

A public hearing will be held on an ordinance that will give the responsibility of running the City’s elections for city-commission seats and the municipal judgeship  to the Sierra County Clerk.

Currently the City runs its own elections in March in even-numbered years.

The State passed a law July 2019 allowing cities to “opt-in” to the county running their elections, switching their election schedule to match the state-level elections calendar to odd-numbered years.

The City had to advertise the opt-in ordinance twice. The first ordinance added one year and nine months to the City Commissioners’ terms to match the odd-year state election calendar. This was deemed too long by the City Commission.

The second ordinance lopped off three months from the City Commissioners’ terms to meet the state election calendar, which is the version going to public hearing July 22.

RIO GRANDE TRAIL PROJECT

About a month ago the City Commission voted to accept a $50,000 planning grant to assess the feasibility of doing a Rio Grande Trail Project.

No information about the project was given to the public or City Commission, although Mayor Sandra Whitehead said it has “been talked about for years.”

Evidently National State Parks Outdoor Recreation Planner Attila Bality is working with the City on the project, because he is giving a presentation on it at the July 22 meeting.

SURVEY ON UTILITY BILL TO DETERMINE CITY COMMISSION MEETING TIME

City Commissioner Randall Aragon put an item on the agenda that proposes a survey to be included in residents’ utility bill.

The survey question asks residents if City Commission meetings should continue to be held at 9 a.m., or be changed to 6 p.m.

In prior discussions it was proposed one meeting a month be in the morning for retirees and one be in the evening for those who work. Evidently Aragon has simplified what was discussed to morning or evening meetings.

This is an action item.

HOW TO ATTEND AND PROVIDE PUBLIC COMMENT

Submission for public input shall be submitted by email to torcpubliccomment@torcnm.org, by fax at (575) 894-6690, or a hard copy can be dropped off at the City Clerk’s Office at 505 Sims Street, Truth or Consequences, NM.

Please submit any input you may have by Monday, July 20, 2020

There will be a limited amount of in-person attendance allowed in the Chambers based on Covid safe practices.

The meeting will be broadcast live through KCHS on 101.9 FM. You may also access the meeting using the information listed below:

Please join my meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone.
https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/809791565

You can also dial in using your phone.
United States: +1 (872) 240-3212 Access Code: 809-791-565

New to GoToMeeting? Get the app now and be ready when your first meeting starts:
https://global.gotomeeting.com/install/809791565

author
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.

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