Truth or Consequences budget questions

by Kathleen Sloan | July 7, 2020
4 min read
If you don’t know where you’ve been, you don’t know where you’re going, an adage that applies to budgeting. 

In an effort to correct the scant public information made available about last year’s budget and the upcoming-year’s final budget due to the state on July 30, the Truth or Consequences City Commission agreed to hold a special meeting, open to the public, but not open for questions from the public. 

The City Commission discussed it at the June 24 meeting, new Commissioner Amanda Forrister asking that department heads be there to answer questions. 

That meeting is not yet on the City’s calendar for July.  

The Commission passed the preliminary budget May 27 with little discussion or questions and many missing pieces, with City Manager Morris Madrid stating they could ask him questions up until the final budget was due, leaving them to navigate the parts-and-pieces preliminary budget on their own. The preliminary budget was one among several important items packed onto the agenda. 

The preliminary budget did not include a comparison to last year’s budget, leaving the Commission at sea about what the City Manager Morris Madrid is proposing. 

It also did not include much detail on capital projects, roughly estimated at $16 million, a massive amount for a community of less than 6,000 souls. Madrid has often stated that maintenance on the utilities has been “deferred” too long, and these capital projects are necessary, although no long-range planning or how much it will cost and how it will be paid for has been presented. 

What the ambitious capital projects debt will do to the City’s overall debt load was also not discussed or brought out by the preliminary-budget documents. 

Throughout the year Madrid gave no quarterly budget reports and no year-end budget report is on the July 8 meeting agenda. Therefore if the year-end budget report is ever to appear, it must be at the so-far unscheduled special budget meeting or the July 22 regular meeting, leaving little time to digest a massive amount of information.  

Madrid has also not kept the City Commission informed about capital projects over the past year and department heads weren’t required to give reports about operations or capital projects. 

A few things do stick out in the preliminary budget. 

As usual, the utility funds will be tapped to make up for deficit spending. In other words, the people will pay higher utility bills to fund deficit spending. 

The water department will have $412,171 transferred out, although it will only make $1,165,400 in revenue and spend $1,003,776. About $40,000 will be used to supplement the General Fund and about $100,000 will be used to pay the utility office to bill customers. 

The solid waste department is costing a fortune and has one of the highest payrolls, about $450,000, with an additional $62,000 paid to outsiders for professional services the staff can’t handle. It will have nearly $283,000 transferred out, with $65,000 going to the General Fund. It too will contribute about $100,000 to the utility office. It will charge $2,224,413 from customers and will spend $2,286,278, according to the preliminary budget, spending more than it makes. 

The sewer department will have $246,200 transferred out, with $90,000 going to the General Fund. It will charge customers $1,143,550 and spend $1,023,660. About $100,000 will go to the utility office. 

The electric department will have $1,487,291 transferred out, with $1.29 million going to the General Fund. It will charge customers $7,328,874 and spend $6,539,533. It too pays about $100,000 to the utility office. Its professional services costs are also high, at $132,000, indicating staff is underqualified, and staff training will cost nearly $25,000 in the upcoming year. 

In all, over $2.4 million will be transferred out of the utilities, with nearly $1.5 million going to the General Fund. It is unknown if the nearly $1 million not going to the General Fund is going to pay off debt for utility capital projects or to shore up other departments’ deficit spending. 

It is certain the airport, golf course and swimming pool, besides the General Fund, have deficit spending. Although they are enterprise funds and are supposed to be self-supporting, as are water, solid waste, sewer and electric funds, they are not. The airport will get a $121,000 infusion, the golf course $195,133 and the swimming pool $76,437. 

Given the nearly $1.5-million deficit spending in the General Fund and the nearly $400,000 deficit spending in the airport, golf and swimming pool funds, the City Commission may want to consider $1.9 million in cuts or cost-efficiency savings instead of upping utility fees. 

Since the solid waste department’s spending is extremely high, ways to make it more cost efficient should be examined. Privatizing trash pick-up versus City costs could be priced. The City’s recycling costs and results should also be priced or at least made public. In addition, the City could put out to bid tipping fees and other services it currently purchases from the Las Cruces landfill. It has not done so since it built the transfer station in 2013. 

Without any reporting, it is impossible to know what the residents are getting for its $2.22 million in solid- waste fees and if these services are worth retaining or need cutting back. That also applies to all other City departments. 

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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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