Public Utility Advisory Board recommends slightly lower water-rate hike than published ordinance

by Kathleen Sloan | February 25, 2020
4 min read
​The Truth or Consequences Public Utility Advisory Board was presented with some last-minute options on water-rate increases and balked at first on making a decision on the spot, but then did as City Manager Morris Madrid requested and approved a slightly lower rate increase than the published ordinance. 

The PUAB meeting was held Feb. 24, a week later than normal, and two days before the City Commission will vote on the same item.

Madrid controls the PUAB agenda, although it is the City Commission’s citizen advisory board, which should have more autonomy from the City Manager’s control. However, the City Commission’s agenda is also determined by Madrid in the board’s current incarnation, which may change after the March 3 election, with three of the five seats to be filled.   

Since three members of the PUAB are City employees, the point of the citizen advisory board—eliciting the people’s will on utility issues—is further diluted. The citizens’ views are squelched and narrowed to three minutes, just as they are at City Commission meetings.

Madrid did not relay any public comment from the three town halls to the PUAB, making them likely an empty exercise. 

Madrid designed the agenda to block discussion of the $9.4-million water project that was never presented to the PUAB, the City Commission or the public. The project, however, is the reason for the rate hike. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is loaning $5.4 million and granting $3.9 million for the project. As a condition of the loan, the City must increase its rates. 

The agenda narrowed the meeting’s focus to the rate hike, as laid out in the published ordinance. 

Two members of the public spoke against the ordinance. 

Ron Fenn, who is running for City Commission Seat 5, asked the project be delayed and the ordinance set aside. He called the ordinance’s proposed 56-percent rate hike “onerous.” 

He noted $3 million of the project will fix the chlorination system at the Cook Street Station and nearly $6.5 million will only replace 11,000 linear feet of concrete asbestos pipe downtown or 15 percent of the “extreme-risk piping” at $530 a foot. “It needs more study,” Fenn said. 

It will cost about $42 million more to fix the rest of the extreme-risk piping, Fenn said. 

“Are we going to double the rates for every $10-million loan?” Fenn said. “This rate business is totally wrong . . . We should do a special tax assessment to pay for infrastructure repairs.” 

Fenn pointed out “it isn’t equitable” to make the poorest people “living in a single-wide trailer” pay the same amount as downtown business owners to fix the water pipes. 

“I also don’t trust the numbers we are using,” Fenn said. 

He was referring to the water-rate study done by Karl Pennock, who works for Rural Community Assistance Corporation, which is subcontracted by the USDA to ensure loan conditions are met, such as a rate hike, before disbursing loan money. 

A key factor in the study, Fenn said, is the assumption the average person uses 6,000 gallons of water a month. “That is 2.7 to 3 times the national average,” Fenn said. “How many other numbers are wrong?” 

Ariel Dougherty also gave public comment. She has attended the three town halls held by the City on the water rate hike.

“There has been a lot of public frustration that commercial rates are not separate from residential rates. I urge you to reconsider the rate structure,” Dougherty said. “Downtown businesses should be paying more. I urge you to vote the ordinance down.”

The PUAB members gave no response to public comment. 

In a last-minute change to the agenda, Madrid had Karl Pennock present three options that varied little from the published ordinance’s 56-percent rate hike.  All three options would still raise about $1.4 million a year, which will pay the note on the loan, debt reserve, short- and long-term asset replacement. 

PUAB Chairman Jeff Dornbush asked Madrid if the board was “expected to make a decision tonight,” with little time to consider the new information. “Yes,” Madrid said. 

PUAB Member Ron Pacourek said “We can’t take action on it tonight, because the ordinance is wrong,” since its rate differs from those in Pennock’s three options. Madrid said the ordinance is a draft and can be changed. 

Pacourek also refuted Pennock’s numbers. He spoke with the “water department head,” who confirmed the water department never ended a year in deficit. Pennock’s study goes back six years and shows all but one year ended in the red. 

Neither Madrid nor Pennock responded to the conflicting information.  

The PUAB voted for the middle of Pennock’s three options. The base rate will go from $8.15 a month to $15.50 a month, but it includes 2,000 gallons, unlike the current base rate. The City will charge $2.71 for each 1,000 gallons up to 7,000 gallons, instead of the current $1.75. 

The published ordinance, which was not approved by the PUAB, states the base rate would go up to $18 a month and include 2,000 gallons. 

The ordinance states the rate increase will occur April 1. It also states water rates will go up another 3-percent July 1, 2021. The PUAB vote did not address subsequent rate increases. 

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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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