Recognition and Awards

GRANTS, N.M. – The Cibola County Commission meeting began by honoring Jaunita Rodriguez for her 30 years of service to Cibola County. She was presented with an award recognizing her dedication to the community. The meeting then continued on to the discussion of road improvements. A list of roads that are most in need of repair has been put together. Kate Fletcher, the county manager, presented pictures of these roads and explained they are currently working on figuring out how many miles of damaged road they have to address because of flooding. One of the roads pictured had flooded into a muddy river due to having no infrastructure. Fletcher then thanked the road crews for the hard work that they had put in over the summer and moved on to the Local Assistance and Tribal Consistency Fund. This is about federal funds that they are giving to counties only. She mentioned that this had been previously covered when they applied for it. They received $3.1 million this year and plan on receiving $3.1 million again next year. This is a one-time, two-year fund.

Fletcher said, “My thoughts are this, and I want you to think about it, see what you think. There [are] options, like I said. We’re going to have six million dollars that we didn’t even think we were going to have. We were working on the public safety side of this. County’s responsibility on roads is huge. I’m suggesting to think about utilizing that money for our roads… The amount of money that we have put into certain roads have been extortionate. Material gets put in; it disappears. So, what we’re going to do… we’re going to have an audit, and we’re going to look at the main five roads that we have spent a hell of a lot of money on material, and see if we can upgrade it.” They mentioned the possibility of using chipseal instead of dirt to try and prevent roads from being washed out and needing to be rebuilt. The audit will need to be completed first before that is determined. They plan to have an idea of how it can be spent wisely by the next meeting on the 17 of November.

Fletcher also took the opportunity to mention that, by the next meeting, she also hopes to get the Affordable Housing Act in place so they can publish it. She said that there are housing shortages with the local population and they are currently short 500 houses. This ordinance will be put in place so that they won’t violate the anti-donation clause when assisting new housing projects.

Paul Ludi, the finance director, then said that Cibola County has been selected to work with the New Mexico Finance Authority from Santa Fe. The county has done multiple loans with them before. They are trying to start an outreach where they go around to every county to give presentations on what they can do to help the local governments and department heads with decisions and cash flow issues. This meeting was held on Nov. 9 at 10 a.m. at district court, 700 E. Roosevelt Ave. The meeting then moved on to celebrate the Best Practices Award presented to Cibola County at the 25th Annual NM Infrastructure Finance Conference for their outstanding achievement in the field of finance. Fletcher congratulated her department heads and the commissioners for their efforts that made this possible. Ludi also took a moment to show appreciation for members of the team that deserved recognition as well. The achievements of Paul Ludi, Wendy Self, and Christina Dominguez were also individually awarded as well for their contributions.

The next Regular Commission Meeting will be on November 17 at 5pm. A special meeting will be held on November 17 beforehand at 4pm to canvass the votes.