By Lynn Janes

On September 24, 2026, the commission had a regular meeting at the city annex building. Jacqui Olea, interim town manager, called the meeting to order.

The board approved the agenda for the meeting and minutes from August 20, 2026.

New business

Priscilla Lucero, Southwest New Mexico Council of Governments director, said she had just received the final draft for the legislative bill and provided a copy to everyone. She will also be sending it through email to those not present and allow a couple of weeks for review.

Old business

Raymond De la Vega, Stantec, joined online said they had submitted the next phase to NMED (New Mexico Environmental Department). They will stay in contact with them for a few weeks to make sure they have all the information they need and hoped for it to be approved within the next thirty days. He continued with the timeline of applications and contacts to different governmental entities. Lucero said they had been on task and would check back with them in a few weeks.

The water operator sub-committee had not met.

Lucero went over the legislative presentations they had done. They had presented the project to Water and Natural Resources and New Mexico Finance Authority Legislative Oversight. In her opinion both presentations had been very well received and had not seen any red flags. She added they should do a presentation to the Prospectors in December. Laura Phelps, Community Development Manager, Freeport McMoRan, asked Lucero if the presentation should be the same as they did for the others. Lucero told her they would need to update it some with the new information. They talked about having a presentation for Grant County Days. Lucero said they should also be presenting to the governor

Lucero had an update on funding opportunities. She said Colonias funding has been predicted to be $99. 6 million in the third quarter and will be due in April. The water trust board applications will be moved to beginning of the year. Olea asked if the projects they wanted to do with Colonias have to be on the ICIP (infrastructure capital improvement plan) and Lucero said no but would allow extra points if it has been included on the ICIP.

In regards to Colonias funding, she thought it would end up with more than $100 million available that they would be looking at taking 25 percent of that total amount available from Colonias to do specifically infrastructure for housing. It will include water, wastewater, sidewalks and roads. The 25 percent for infrastructure will be 100 percent grant money if doing it for housing. At this time the policies have not been done for that portion of the grants. Olea asked if it could help existing developments and Lucero said yes. They discussed the possible uses for it that could help the communities.

Lucero said with the project all the communities will have a secondary water source and a few places in New Mexico have lost their one and only source for water at times. When they presented this project to the Water and Natural Resources, they had already had 25 emergencies in the state with people not having water. Wells have run dry, or communities have been left without water. One community went without water for three months.

Next meeting will be October 22, 2026 (tentative)

Adjourned