Preview: Truth or Consequences City Commission Special Meeting, Jan. 29.  Smart-meter moratorium and water-rate-hike ordinance on the docket

by Kathleen Sloan | January 26, 2020
4 min read
The Truth or Consequences City Commission will hold a special meeting at 9 a.m., Wednesday, Jan. 29. 

Three items are on the agenda: 

–A public hearing on the citizens’ initiative ordinance that seeks to place a 10-year moratorium on smart meters within the City’s utility jurisdiction. 

–A resolution setting a special election on the smart-meter ordinance for March 24. 

–A “discussion/action” item to publish an ordinance that seeks to raise the water rates 55 percent, which will then go to public hearing in about a month. 

The smart-meter ordinance, if adopted by the City Commission, would “repeal” and “void” the City’s contract with Landis +  Gyr, which the City Commission awarded a $1-million contract on August 27, 2019. The City has about 4,300 electric-utility customers. The contract called for the installation of that many smart meters and a computerized relay system that would hook into the City’s billing-software system. 

The ordinance would also prohibit any installation or purchase of smart meters for the water utility for 10 years, which the City was planning on doing as money became available. 

The ordinance is to take effect immediately upon passage. 

Over 260 people signed the petition in favor of the smart-meter moratorium, but only 211 were verified as qualified electors, according to Angela Torres, the interim city clerk. However, only 154 electors needed to sign the petition to bring the initiative ordinance to the City Commission, which was supposed to vote it up or down by Jan. 2, according to State law.  

Many residents have spoken at City Commission meetings pointing out health hazards associated with smart-meter electro-magnetic radiation. Others complained the city should spend the money on critical-infrastructure repairs. That Landis + Gyr is the subject of lawsuits for non-performance and other issues formed another topic of residents’ protests against the purchase. The City Commission approving the purchase with no documentation or public input perturbed many residents as well. 

State law says if the City Commission rejects the initiative ordinance, or if it writes a competing ordinance, then the ordinance must go to a special election. 

The second item on the agenda is therefore confusing. It is a special-election resolution, which claims the City Commission has “adopted” the ordinance, therefore the ordinance will go to a special election on March 24. But if the City Commission adopts the ordinance, no special election is required, according to State law. 

The third item on the agenda seeks the City Commission’s permission to “publish” an ordinance that will raise water rates 55 percent. Ordinance legal ads must run in the Sentinel, the official City newspaper, for three weeks. A public hearing on the water-rate hike would then be scheduled. 

The current base rate for the water utility is $8.15, which would go to $18 a month, if the ordinance is adopted. However, under the proposed ordinance, 2,000 gallons is included with the base rate, which would cost $8.15 plus $1.75 plus $1.75 or $11.65 under the current rate. Therefore the base-rate difference between the current and proposed rate is $6.35, a 55-percent increase. If one only uses 1,000 gallons a month however, the increase is almost 100 percent. 

Although one of the City’s rate-increase goals is to encourage water conservation, the new one encourages more water use—up to 2,000 gallons a month, since one pays for it, whether used or not. 

The second part of the rate increase is the cost for 1,000 gallons, the smallest unit the City measures in water usage, which also encourages over-usage. The current rate is $1.75 per 1,000 gallons and the new rate is $2.71, also a 55-percent increase.  

At minimum, a 35-percent rate increase is necessary to hold onto a $9.4-million grant-loan the City was awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which comes with conditions. It requires the City collect almost $1.4 million in water-utility fees a year. Currently it collects about $911,000 a year. 

The loan-grant would fix downtown water pipes, which comprise about 30-percent of the leakiest, oldest pipes. 

The 55-percent increase will allow the city to attack other water-system problems. A 2015 engineering study identified $25-million in needed water repairs, a figure five years out of date. 

According to a September 2019 engineering study, the water system is leaking 47 percent. Water and Wastewater Director Jesse Cole claims 17-percent leakage based on his January 2020 water audit. The Sierra County Sun has requested, but not received the water audit. 

Public Utility Advisory Board Chairman Jeff Dornbusch questioned whether the people should be paying for leaking water at the City-Commission Jan. 22 meeting, and if the rates will be recalculated as the leaks are stopped. 

Karl Pennock of the Rural Community Assistance Corporation, who conducted a water-rate study as a subcontractor for the USDA, the $9.4-million loan-grant agency, said he would consider it. For more information on Pennock’s water-rate study, please see: City’s water rates must go up to get $9.4 million loan/grant, By Kathleen Sloan, January 23, 2020

However, it appears the City is moving ahead with the rate increase before considering finer points raised by Pennock’s water-rate study. The City Commission has also not heard a presentation on the 2015 or 2019 water-system studies or Cole’s water audit. 

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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