Preview: Truth or Consequences City Commission meeting, Jan. 8, 2020

by Kathleen Sloan | January 5, 2020
4 min read
What is and isn’t on the agenda as well as what is or isn’t in the information packet are equally important for business to be or not to be conducted at the Truth or Consequences City Commission meeting Jan. 8, 2020. 

Not on the Agenda

Not on the agenda is the local residents’ initiative ordinance that declares a 10-year moratorium on smart-meters, disallowing their installation on business and residential buildings for all utilities within the City’s service area. 

Twenty percent of City voters signed a petition seeking the ban after the City Commission approved the $1-million purchase of smart meters for its 4,300 electric-utility customers. The residents claim smart-meter electro-magnetic radiation cause health problems and the pulsing loads cause fire hazards to older electrical wiring. Other residents protest spending money on an incidental, while serious infrastructure problems remain unaddressed. The vendor, Landis & Gyr, is embroiled in non-performance lawsuits, petitioners stated. 
​
Lack of transparency is another primary issue the public has raised. Nothing was included in the August 27, 2019 agenda packet that would indicate the City Commission was to make a $1-million purchase, nor was the project explained.  
​
By not ruling on the initiative ordinance, the City Commission is out of compliance with State law. It states the City Commission must decide within 30 days of the petition being certified whether it will accept or reject the people’s ordinance. City Clerk Renee Cantin certified the petition was signed by 20-percent of qualified electors Dec. 2, 2019. Therefore the City Commission had until Jan. 2, 2020 to accept or reject the ordinance.   

In an interview last month, City Manager Morris Madrid said the City Commission acted within the timeframe by voting to approve the ordinance’s publication at the Dec. 11 meeting. Although State law does not require publication before the City Commission rules on the ordinance, Madrid would not explain how publication satisfied State law.   

Madrid said the ordinance would be on the Jan. 8 agenda for “final action,” but it is not.   
​
If the City Commission rejects the ordinance, the City Commission is to pass a special-election resolution. The law states it must be passed within10 days after the 30-day window expires. In this case the deadline is Jan. 12, 2020. Thus the delay is usurping resident voters’ authority to decide at the polls whether smart meters should be banned.

On the Agenda

There are three items on the agenda related to an application for a Community Development Block Grant to be jointly submitted by the Village of Williamsburg and the City to replace water and sewer lines on Doris and Mona streets in the Village and to repair the streets after the project is completed. 

  • The first item related to the grant is titled “new business.” Grant-Projects Coordinator Traci Burnette wrote a memo recommending the City Commission approve a completed CDBG application—which is not included in the packet. 

She states “staff” has held three public hearings on the project, two on Sept. 4, 2019 and one on Oct. 21, 2019. The City did not have noticed meetings on those days. 

  • The second related item, under G2, is titled “CDBG Application,” but there is no application. Instead, there is a resolution “authorizing” the submission of the “completed” CDBG application. 

The resolution gives a little more detail, stating the application is for $1.5 million. The City will pay 7.5 percent or $112,500 towards the project, a “cash contribution” from the City’s “General Fund.”

  • The third related item is another resolution. This is an “annual” resolution required by the federal government before CDBG money can be awarded. Ironically, the City must proclaim its commitment to “Citizen Participation,” which includes adopting a citizen participation plan that “includes ways to encourage public input using various methods.” 
  • Under G1 on the agenda is another resolution “authorizing” the application for “financial assistance” from the New Mexico Finance Authority’s Colonias Infrastructure Fund. ​The resolution also “approves the project,” according to Burnette’s                                          memo.  

Burnette’s memo is confusing because it conflates two grant-loans. It states, “The City of T or C was recently awarded approximately $9.4- million for waterline replacement of Main Street District. The project goal is to reconstruct the full street pavement section following the waterline construction to its original street profile, which will enhance safety, drainage and transportation.”

The Jan. 8 and the 9.4-million grant-loan are conflated. The Jan. 8 application is not included in the packet. Just as the $9.4-million loan and grant application for the waterline project was not included in the Nov. 13, 2019 packet, which the City Commission approved, sight unseen. 

The City Commission also did not hold a public hearing on the 9.4-million grant-loan application, nor on the project itself. The $5.4-million loan portion will include about $2.8 million interest over the 40-year-life of the loan, the total coming to about $8.2 million. Customers’ water-utility fees will pay for the loan. 

Water-utility fees are set to go up after the March 3 City Commission election, according to statements made by City Manager Morris Madrid in the last two Public Utility Advisory Board meetings. 
​
The resolution on the Jan. 8 agenda states the application to fix City streets is for $1 million, of which the City will pay $100,000 from “local funds.” 

TAGS: | |
author
Kathleen Sloan is the Sun’s founder and chief reporter. She can be reached at kathleen.sloan@gmail.com or 575-297-4146.
Share this:
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.

Scroll to Top