City Approves New Districts, Charter Committee
GRANTS, N.M. – The City of Grants accomplished significant work at their regular meeting on September 28. The council’s work included the purchase of a traffic light that will resolve ongoing traffic issues at the intersection of Highway 53 and Santa Fe Avenue, the official creation of a charter committee which will rewrite the city’s charter, and the finalization of the new district maps for the city.
Before the meeting could adjourn, Mayor Erik Garcia raised the possibility of increasing the Gross Receipts Tax in the City of Grants to help support the city’s first responders, namely the police and fire departments. This proposal was met with criticism from Mayor Pro Tem George Garcia and Councilor Beverly Michael, and support from Councilor Zach Gutierrez. The discussion quickly veered into discussion about a video showing Mayor Erik Garcia in a fight with a local citizen.
Fixing the Traffic Light
After months of waiting, Grants citizens and visitors will see the traffic light on the intersection of NM Highway 53 and Santa Fe Avenue replaced.
The intersection had a traffic light which allowed the traffic to flow more smoothly. In May, a group of young adults in their early 20s stole a vehicle from McKinley County, when Grants Police Department realized the vehicle, they were in was stolen, the department gave chase. The result of this accident was a crash which destroyed the traffic light, the city has since turned the remaining three lights on the intersection on a blinking red motion and placed temporary stop signs to help control the flow of traffic which can get congested with traffic at certain times in the day.
City councilors voted unanimously to purchase a $90,787.82 traffic light. The light remains at least two months out due to supply chain issues. The money to purchase the new traffic light will come from the city’s Municipal Gas Tax fund.
After questions from Mayor Pro Tem Garcia about the delay in getting this traffic issue fixed, City Manager Donald Jaramillo said that the project ran into unexpected insurance hurdles and getting estimates was taking longer than the city wanted.
Charter Committee
When the new government took over in April, a priority of Councilor Michael’s has been to update the Grants City Charter. After months of work, the city finally voted to approve a resolution creating a charter advisory committee.
The charter will be made up of seven members.
The city has four voting districts and one councilor for each district. Each councilor will put one candidate forward to represent their respective district in the committee. The other three members will be at-large, meaning they can be appointed from any part in the city.
The committee will stand for no more than one year, and every single member of the committee must be voted on and approved by the city council. All changes made by the committee will need to be voted on and approved by the city council, afterwards, the new charter must go before the citizens of Grants in a vote. The city charter acts as a restriction on the powers held by city government while, at the same time, allowing the people of Grants to have maximum control of their government. It does this by restricting the power of government offices, like the mayor, councilor, city manager, and department head positions while creating checks and balances to keep government in the interest of the citizens.
New District Maps
The Grants City Council has completed the process of redistricting. This is a process which takes place every 10 years, the 2022 redistricting is behind because of COVID-19 and subsequent quarantine periods which delayed the United States Census. The city uses the data from the census to determine the size and ethnic makeup of each of their city council districts. The new districts do not make any significant change to the current makeup of council districts, and cleans up some border lines to make the districts more continuous and smoother.
Councilors voted unanimously to approve the new district map.
Raising the Tax
The most contentious issue of the night was discussion to raise the City of Grants’ gross receipts tax. The city took no action on this idea. This discussion took over more than half of the meeting.
The city’s GRT had been at 8.125 percent, this is the tax applied after making a purchase at a store in Grants. Taking effect in July, GRT decreased to a flat eight percent, this was a change made by the State of New Mexico. Mayor Erik Garcia proposed increasing the tax to 8.25 percent to help raise additional money for the police and fire departments. This proposal brought GPD and Grants Fire and Rescue together, both in support of the tax, to raise additional funds that would go toward retention and recruitment of officers and firefighters.
Pro Tem Garcia and Councilor Michael stood firmly in opposition to the proposal, with Pro Tem Garcia saying that the tax was decreased to give New Mexicans a bit of tax relief during recent inflation spikes across the national economy. He said that raising the city’s tax would be counter to the point of the tax reduction. Councilor Rodarte did not make a statement during discussion over the proposal.
Pro Tem Garcia said, “If we have a quality police chief lead that department then they can adequately use those resources, but in July ’22 police departments received an additional $45,000 plus $1,000 per officer. Beginning July ’23 police departments will receive $95,000 each plus $1,500 per officer… The problem with this GRT, if you look at section four in there it says public safety like [Mayor Garcia] is saying, I agree with you. But then, where is line-itemed at? Public safety can be salt on the road in Winter, so even though we’ve been taking the taxes out, we’re not giving them to public safety.” He suggested waiting to move forward with this vote until a city treasurer can make a cost analysis.
Councilor Gutierrez stood in support of the proposal, mentioning the rising crime in Grants, he said the city needed to stand in more firm support of the first responders. This sis where the meeting became contentious, with Councilor Gutierrez talking about a fight between the mayor and a local citizen. Look to Page A1 for story ### to learn more about this conflict.
The city took no action on raising the tax. The council will meet again on October 26 for a regular meeting.