Preview of Truth or Consequences City Commission May 27 meeting

by Kathleen Sloan | May 23, 2020
5 min read
After months of spare agendas, the May 27 Truth or Consequences City Commission’s meeting agenda is bulging with important items. The agenda is determined by City Manager Morris Madrid and Mayor Sandra Whitehead.

The City’s preliminary budget, in most cities, would have comprised several meetings on its own.

The most important items include:

LOCAL ELECTION ACT ORDINANCE:

The City Commission will consider whether to publish an ordinance that would hand over local election duties to the Sierra County Clerk, an elected position.

If the City Commission decides to go through with the ordinance, it will probably come to public hearing next month.

Currently the City Clerk runs city elections, which is not an elected position. Elections take place the first Tuesday in March, with newly elected city commissioners and the municipal judge taking their seats April 1.

If the City Commission adopted the ordinance, about eight months would be added onto each city commissioner’s term. Mayor Sandra Whitehead’s term, for example, under city-run elections, would end March 2021, but under the county-run elections, would end December 2021.

REFUNDING STREET LOAN:

The City Commission will consider whether to publish an ordinance, which would come to public hearing in about a month, which proposes to borrow nearly $1.08 million principal to “refund” the remaining debt on a loan taken out in 2009. The original loan was for over $2 million, the money to be used to fix streets, put in curbs and sidewalks. The loan is with the New Mexico Finance Authority, as would be the refunding loan.

The documents in the packet do not include a debt schedule. Therefore it is impossible for the public to know what the refunding-loan interest rate is and therefore if the refinancing of the debt is economical.

The administration and financing fees are also not included in the documents. The pay-back period is not in the documents, the yearly pay-back amount, the principal, the interest are all unknown. If any cash beyond the refunding of old debt is included in the loan, it is also unknown.

The 2009 loan is being paid off at between $95,000 and $100,000 a year through 2030 at nearly 3.7-percent interest. According to the most recent audited financial report—fiscal year 2018-2019—the remaining debt owed was $1.2 million principal, which was the balance after nearly $100,000 was paid in 2020.

The debt was paid from the first .25 percent of the municipal Gross Receipts Tax collected from local businesses, a portion of which is disbursed back to the City by the state. The new loan will tap the same source, with an intercept agreement with the State to deposit the payment directly to the New Mexico Finance Authority.

It is unknown how the likely reduction in Gross Receipts Taxes, due to the coronavirus pandemic, will affect the loan.

BACK TO WORK RESOLUTION:

The City Commission passed a back-to-work resolution April 8. At the May 7 meeting the City Commission agreed to form an ad hoc committee under the guidance of City Commissioners Randall Aragon and Amanda Forrister to get public input and modify the resolution.

The new draft resolution goes beyond the current Governor’s executive order, which allows non-essential businesses to open at 25-percent capacity according to the fire marshal, through May 31.

The new resolution takes effect May 27 and states non-essential businesses may open at 50-percent capacity.

There is a clause in the resolution stating the Governor’s order takes precedence, therefore the draft resolution’s amendments are dead on arrival.

A City may pass back-to-work resolutions more stringent than the Governor’s order, but may not pass resolutions that are less stringent.

PRELIMINARY BUDGET RESOLUTION:

The City Commission will consider whether to pass a preliminary budget resolution. The preliminary budget is due to the State by June 1. The final budget is due to the state “before July 30,” according to the city packet.

The budget proposes spending about $22 million.

The General Fund, which pays for all governmental services, as opposed to enterprise services, such as the electric, water, wastewater and solid waste utilities, will expend $6.1 million of the $22 million.

The General Fund will only bring in an estimated $4.1-million in revenue, and will make up the deficit spending with an estimated $2-million transfer from the electric, water, wastewater and solid waste funds.

The General Fund revenue appears to be inflated. It uses last year’s figures to estimate Gross Receipts Taxes, the largest source of revenue for the General Fund. The budget again estimates GRT will be $1.7 million, amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has shuttered businesses.

BOARD MEMBER POSITIONS:

The City Commission will consider appointing all three board member positions it has on the Sierra Vista Hospital Governing Board.

The City and other local governments own the hospital. The Governing Board runs the day-to-day operations and is comprised of community members. The Joint Powers Commission is the big-picture, ownership board, comprised of elected officials.

For the second time the board is asked to reappoint Peggy “Cookie” Johnson to a second three-year term. The City Commission, at the last meeting, said it wanted to review all applicants for the board position. City Commissioner Amanda Forrister said she knew of at least one other applicant, but no other applicants are included in the city packet.

There are two other positions vacant on the governing board besides Johnson’s seat, whose term expires in June. Bruce Swingle, Sierra County manager, was a temporary appointment. His positon with the county precludes having him represent the City’s interests on the board. The other position was held by Lori Montgomery, who resigned.

The City Commission will also consider whom to appoint among them to serve on the Joint Powers Commission. Kathy Clark and Rolf Hechler had served, but did not seek reelection and are no longer on the City Commission. Evidently Mayor Sandra Whitehead and City Commissioner Paul Baca have been serving in their stead, according to the city-packet document.

HOW TO ATTEND:

According to City Clerk Angela Torres:

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 in the Utility drop box at 505 Sims Street, Truth or Consequences, NM. Please submit any input you may have by Monday, May 25, 2020.
 
The in-person attendance for this meeting will be limited to the City Commission, Critical Council and Administrative Staff. The meeting will be broadcast live through KCHS on 101.9 FM and will be available by:

Please join my meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone.
https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/442433725

You can also dial in using your phone.
United States: +1 (224) 501-3412

Access Code: 442-433-725

New to GoToMeeting? Get the app now and be ready when your first meeting starts:
https://global.gotomeeting.com/install/442433725

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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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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