GRANTS, N.M. -On September 3, the monthly Coffee With the Managers took place, in which County Manager Kate Fletcher and Milan Manager Candi Williams discussed the potential locations for the freedom monument, trends of local revenue and gross receipts tax, county salary plans, and opioid funds being used for Grants High School sports attendance fees.
Freedom Monument
The county is preparing to install a historical educational display. A national organization called Foundation Forward donated life-sized, sixtypound bronze plates of the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence.
The monument is designed to be highly durable and permanent, with a foundation that goes down three and a half feet into solid reinforced poured concrete to ensure it will stand for the next 300 to 500 years. The county road crew will perform the heavy construction labor to save public funds, but the exact location is still being debated. County Manager Kate Fletcher explained they want a spot where everyone can enjoy them, rather than keeping them restricted outside the courthouse. One suggestion involved placing the display at Veterans Park the people coming from Milan into Grants would be allowed to see it. Another option is the fountain space in front of City Hall, as the fountain is currently underutilized and facing removal.
To make a final decision before Veterans Day in November, the county plans to place an explanatory video on its website and conduct a countywide survey with three source options so that the majority wins.
Local Revenue Trends and GRT
Finance Director Paul Ludi explained that local agencies have been tracking gross receipts tax figures diligently “since Covid hit because we didn’t know what kind of impact [it] was going to have.”
This continuous tracking reveals that the communities are trending upward, with all entities seeing “the most close receipts tax that we’ve ever had.” The data shows an overall growth of $5 million with industries paying taxes to the state. This includes a 71% increase in professional, scientific, and technical services, which is driven by businesses purchasing additional technology, information technology budgets, and cybersecurity infrastructure. Ludi and Manager Fletcher notes that these security needs have caused information technology spending to spike from 1% of the general fund to 10%.
Administration, support, waste management, and remediation services saw a 150% increase. This large increase was linked directly to a $17 million project at Homestake covering the legacy uranium extraction or reclamation process, which was noted to be a huge construction project. These specific gains offset a 50% decrease in the local construction sector, which had reduced gross volume by $10.5 million dollars.
In explaining how these funds arrive, Fletcher outlines a twomonth processing delay from the state. The state collects the gross receipts tax in a given month like June, processes that information in July, and finally issues the distribution to the local governments in August. Fletcher and Ludi explained that they also manually adjust their tracking to add back certain funds. The state takes away a percentage through intercepts, including a portion that the county explicitly dedicated to pay off a loan they obtained for their building HVAC system.
Workforce Stabilization and the County Salary Plan
To ensure transparency and safeguard public tax dollars, the county has implemented the second phase of its standardized salary plan.
Fletcher emphasized that the county no longer allowed arbitrary pay scales or favoritism based on political connections, saying, “we don’t look at the person we look at the job that we need.” To establish an objective system, an independent consulting company cross-referenced every county job description against matching roles within the City of Grants, City of Gallup, McKinley County, Sandoval County, and more. This data determined a competitive average wage for each position.
Addressing recent public rumors, Fletcher clarified that the commission did not grant a selective 12% raise to the sheriff’s office. Instead, “the commission approved three increments up” across the board during the budget process, which equals a 5% cost of living adjustment for “Everybody from the finance director all the way down to… everybody from our work crew.”
The salary plan documentation also served to show the hidden costs of employee benefits.
Behavioral Health and GHS Sports
Marcie Chavez, has officially been hired as the director for the regional behavioral health funding program. Chavez and county leadership recently presented a comprehensive one hundred and thirteen page plan to the state executive committee, securing approval for $9.7 million to spend across a judicial district comprising Cibola, Valencia, and Sandoval counties.
This funding will target critical gaps by implementing mobile crisis units and establishing formal agreements among local agencies and the eight official pueblos in the region to share outpatient treatments instead of duplicating efforts. Chavez noted that the local pueblos “have been working really well together, and they have ideas about how like some of them have their own crisis response services and have their own outpatient services.”
At the same time, the county is using its national opioid settlement funds to cover regular home game athletic admissions for local families at Grants High School, Laguna Acoma High School, and Fence Lake. This program was established because attending games can otherwise cost a family of five over $100 for food and entry, and they want to ensure local families have an affordable, safe place to go.
Lastly, the second annual heavy equipment rodeo at the rodeo grounds will take place on October 8, where seventeen different government agencies will compete in timed obstacle courses using heavy machinery provided by private vendors.