By Lynn Janes

The town of Bayard held a regular meeting November 19, 2025. Attendance included Mayor John L. Ojinaga, councilors, Frances Gonzales, Eloy Gonzales and Gilbert Ortiz. Martha Salas, city clerk, also attended. Mayor Pro Tem Eloy Medina didn't attend.

The town of Bayard made a proclamation for the Cobre volleyball team making it Cobre High Volleyball Week. Ojinaga congratulated them and said they had done a great thing for Grant County and Bayard. "You guys are putting us on the map." He read the proclamation to the students. The girls volleyball team had worked hard, and it resulted in a 3A state championship.

Public comment

Ralf Jimenez, Copper Little League president, came to apologize for not being at the meetings for a while. They will be changing thigs up some. In the past the vice president has been the one to communicate with the council and mayor, but now he will be the one to communicate with them. Everything will be funneled through Jimenez, so they don't have many different people contacting them. He will be planning on attending each council meeting.

Steve Potts has been a resident of Bayard for a number of years. He went over all the reasons he loves Bayard, but he has been concerned about a property on Rosemary Street and Grant Street that has become very dilapidated. An out-of-state investor owns it currently and it needs to be torn down. He stopped and spoke to the code enforcement officer, and they said they have not been working that side of town. He said he would be back and would not disappear. He stopped a month later and the code enforcement officer had not been there, so he left his name and contact information. The officer has not contacted him. He continued with his efforts, but he had no results and the code enforcement officer was not happy with him. The officer had suggested he contact the property owner, but he has no interest in buying the property. He did contact the owner, and they had called back several times and left voice messages, but he didn't return them. Code enforcement had called and said the property has a pending sale and the new owners would be cleaning it up. He questioned when that would happen.

Ojinaga asked Potts to have the matter put on the agenda for the next meeting.

The council approved the consent agenda that included meeting minutes, reports for accounts payable, police department, maintenance, wastewater, fire department, municipal court and library report. It also included attendance to the legislative session by council and city employees, holiday schedule and council meeting schedule.

New business

The council voted to postpone a presentation by Jason Quintana on a community gym. He had been unable to attend. He wants to open a gym in Bayard that would be open 24 hours a day, but has been looking for a building.

The council approved the appointment of Mary Paino to the beautification committee.

The council approved the renewal of the agreement between Bayard and Freeport McMoRan for the wastewater treatment plant project. Salas said it is the same but just needed to be renewed.

The next item on the agenda had to do with the newly acquired Foy property. The council discussed the possible contract with Better City and Teska Associates to assist in the development of the property.

Salas said the city of Bayard had been awarded a grant from Freeport McMoRan (FMI) for the master plan for the Foy property. She had been working with FMI and Priscilla Lucero, Southwest New Mexico Council of Governments. Lucero said when they had purchased the 675 acres, part of the discussion had been having a planned development. This company she had worked with on other economic development in her region. This plan will not require an RFP (request for proposal) because of the small amount. Jason Godfrey, Better City, joined the meeting by phone.

Godfrey said this would be a community-driven process and would be consistent with the character of the community but also raise the bar for development to help improve the quality of life for everyone. They had contemplated doing an analytical analysis and look at the markets and what kind of development they will be working with. This will require a lot of community engagement in various ways to make sure it blends well and will be consistent with the community. After they have all that information, they can create a master plan for the 675 acres, but it would be done in phases. Maybe the first phase would be 50-100 acres. He went on to describe the other phases. They would be sending out RFPs to developers with the master plan. This approach has been successful for them.

The key to the project will be developers know that this will be a community-supported project, and that there's going to be public participation and the community's excited. It really helps the developers be motivated to participate, to present proposals because as a developer their biggest risk will be if the city council and planning commission don't back the project, and it dies. By doing this front-end work like they outlined, then that really de-risks the projects for developers and helps them to move forward.

Lucero asked if any council members had questions. Frances Gonzales said she knew of some projects they had done in Arizona and Colorado. Godfrey said they would be different from this project because this one would start from scratch and the other already had built environments. This project they could do anything

Lucero said something had come up that Best City has not been made aware of yet. In the process of the sale, they had determined that a platted subdivision had been done but don't know at this time if they have any infrastructure. The community already knows they have a housing need and want to make sure and take advantage of what they already have. This will just be the first step, and they have a lot of work to do. Frances Gonzales said, "I think one of the things that I really like is that they have done this in Graham County, (Arizona), where a lot of our Department of Corrections and teachers needed to find housing. They kept the housing at a good price, and they really kept it looking nice." It has stayed that way to this day. In Colorado they had incorporated parks. Lucero said they have a lot of new opportunities. They do need to determine what infrastructure they have and then move forward.

Eloy Gonzales wanted to know what it would be costing Bayard. Lucero said this part would be paid by a grant from FMI in the amount of approximately $59,000. Lucero said they already have an affordable housing plan, and they will be way ahead of the game.

Godfrey added this would be very different because it will be planned and not at the developer's choice. This plan will already be done, and it gives the community leverage with dramatically different results. The council approved the contract.

The council approved the 2026 capital outlay requests. They will be presenting this to the legislative forum for prospectors. Lucero said they needed to set their priorities. They looked at the top three requests. The number one had been wastewater improvements, number two little league renovations (bathrooms) and number three city hall renovations. Four and five on the list had been water system improvements and regional water project. She asked the council if they still wanted those top three and how much funding would they be asking for. She said they should apply for funding from the water trust board because now they would be funding wastewater, and it will be a huge project. They could also apply for colonias funding.

Lucero wanted to put forth $250,000 for the restrooms at the little league and city hall renovations for $550,000 and asked the council if that would be comfortable for them. The council agreed these had the biggest priority. They all spoke to the problems at both locations and how much they needed to address those problems. The council approved the changes Lucero made, and she will take care of the changes.

The council approved the purchase of two vehicles, one for the maintenance department and one for wastewater department. They had received $120,000 of capital outlay funding. They weny to Malloy because they are state contracted and have quotes, one regular truck for $45,000 and a diesel for $59,000. They will be purchasing a diesel truck because in the future, and they want to purchase a trailer that will haul the bobcats to use.

The two departments have agreed to share the truck for hauling. They have also agreed to share some equipment instead of both having to purchase the same thing. This way they can purchase more equipment with the funding they received.

Ordinances and resolutions

The council approved resolution 20-2025 adopting the 2025-2030 Bayard community forest management plan. Salas said this would be for the final plan that had been presented to them at a past meeting. They have applied for funding of $60,000 to do irrigation for two sites. Currently they have planted 16 trees in the park. Tree work has been done and some trees, taking out dead trees and pruning others. Next year they will be putting trees at the community garden.

The council approved resolution 21-2025 authorizing Bayard to enter into the design funding agreement with New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission (ISC). It will also include Santa Clara and Silver City. Salas said this had been brought to the council and they had decided to let Santa Clara use the funding received by ISC. This will be the final agreement. Lucero said this will be a requirement for Santa Clara to be able to move forward and use the funds. Santa Clara will also need to do a resolution and this all will tie back to the regional water project.

The council approved two resolutions 22-2025 and 23-2025 authorizing the purchase by warranty deed of two properties, 610 Rosemary Street and 414 North Railroad Street.
One of the properties had been the one Potts had come to the council to speak to. These will be purchased with the $100,000 funding received for the three mining district municipalities to assist in affordable housing. They each could use $33,000 and Bayard had been able to secure these properties, and the plan is to demolish and remove existing structures and to purchase, plan, design, construct, equip, renovate, and furnish affordable housing. Salas said Sheila Hudman, Santa Clara village administrator, had come to her and asked her to find two residential properties. Both properties had been assessed, title searches done and legal council involved. Bayard city funds will not be used. One property will be purchased for $9,000 and the other $5,000 and it will cost $6,000 to $8,000 to demolish and remove structures. Hudman will be applying for additional funding to keep the momentum moving forward.

Salas will reach out to Potts and let him know about the approval. Salas did add that the conversation Potts said he had with code enforcement did not match with what they said, and she had a body cam on at the time of the exchange.

Lucero had checked out a home manufacturing plant in Roswell and looked at some around 1,500 square feet. They can roll out two homes a day and once delivered takes about 30 days to put up. The homes start at about $250,000. They have only been in business for a short time and had come from North Carolina. The company will be looking at other models they can do. The name of the business is Fortified Structures, and you can look them up online and see what they offer. It will not be a mobile home; it will be transported in pieces and put back together at destination and includes everything. Currently they have been doing work for the town of Silver City, and they will withstand high heat and very low temperatures. "It is pretty impressive."

The council approved resolution 24-2025 for the open meetings act. Salas said they must do this every year and usually do it in December, but she wanted to be ready to move forward in January. This says when and where the council meetings will take place. Every third Wednesday of the month at 4:30 pm. A discussion went on between Salas and Frances Gonzales on where it would be advertised.

The council approved resolution 25-2025 for budget adjustments. Salas said she had quite a few large adjustments, but it had been for a lot of grants that needed to be added into the budget. Insurance had increase more than she anticipated. She thought it would be 10 percent, and it had gone up 20 percent. She would be going over some of the grants when she provided her report later in the meeting.

The council went into closed session

The council came back into open session.

The council accepted the resignation of Johnathan Salcedo, police officer.

The council approved the hiring of Albert Dominguez as a police officer.

Department head reports

Sam Arellano, public works director, said they had been doing vegetation control to have it down for the wintertime. They have also been checking sewer lines, pond, etc. They had put the Christmas tree up early up have it up for Thanksgiving. He continued with a list of the projects they had been doing and had organized the depot so they could find things easily. Ojinaga said people had been happy with the job the department had been doing.

Stephen Estrada, wastewater director, wanted to update the council on staffing. He said Paul Munoz had only been with them about two months but has shown a lot of strength and initiative in different areas of his job and computer skills and will play a key role training new employees. He spoke to a new one that started two weeks earlier and had a lot of enthusiasm and interest. Both of them have been looking at the blueprints of the plant and becoming knowledgeable on the layout.

Estrada continued with a report on the pumps and what had been happening with them in great detail. Frances Gonzales said that would be the best report she had every heard. Estrada said he knew they have been the most expensive department and thought it would be good to give them a better visual of what goes on. He offered to give any of them a tour and added they were fully staffed.

Chuck Gray, beautification committee chair, thanked Arellano and said the city looked good, and the best he had seen it since he moved back in 2012. The committee had voted to use some funds for a turkey drive and Sunday they would be having Bingo. The committee also voted to have six awards for the Christmas display contest. He said he would meet with Salas on exactly what he could do with the beautification committee after he takes his place on the council. He didn't want to leave the committee.

Cordell Jones, planning and zoning chair, did not have anything to present. They had been asked to look at a few proposals that had immediately sent up red flags, so they have had some issues to work through on those. One had to do with dog breeding. On a positive note, the carport Michael Armendarez did, he had followed all the requests, and it came out very well.

Hector Carrillo, police chief, thanked the council for hiring the police officer. He went over some of their stats for the past month of October. They had 195 calls for service which generated 39 reports. The county had responded to only 16 calls for Bayard. They have had a problem with speeding at the Snell Middle School crosswalk and will be doing a special operation. One day they sat at the crosswalk from 7:30 am to 8:00 am and 3:50 pm to 4:10 pm and wrote 32 citations for speeding. They will continue to pick days and running the operation. The officers had clocked people exceeding the speed limit by 15 mph. That had only been about one hour total in one day.

The department had received the two new vehicles a Dodge Charger and Ford Explorer and have been put in service. He thanked the council.

Recently he had attended the Chiefs Association Conference. They had discussed many things including IPRA (Inspection of Public Records Act) which has been problematic across the state.

A banquet had been held by the Chamber of Commerce, and he had not been able to attend but Senator Gabriel Ramos and Representative Luis Terrazas had awarded firefighters and law enforcement for the work on the Trout Fire. He had the plaques Bayard had received to present to the council.

They have been able to raise $3,000 for Shop with a Cop and they can help 24 kids with that from the mining district. Each kid can spend $130, and they mostly spend it on clothes and shoes, but the kid can spend about $25 on a toy.

Carrillo congratulated Ortiz and Gray on winning the election and looked forward to working with them. He commented he knew that Frances Gonzales just had one more meeting with them and he knew they had their ups and downs but enjoyed working with her. He added that the department would be helping with the Trunk or Treat.

Gabriel Gonzales, fire chief, said his report had one fire call for October but they had two others at the same address. EMS calls totaled 20 of which 17 had been in Bayard and 11 in Hurley

They had been training for fire command and confidence and also active shooter training with the other fire departments at Cobre High School. The department will also be doing the Trunk or Treat

Salas wanted to go over some of the grants. They had received $85,000 for the animal shelter. She had requested $500,000. The New Mexico Unit Fund had awarded Bayard $416,000 for the water system and asset management plan $223,000. Planning for the Mine Mill award of $100,000 and a grant she had told them about for $86,000. "We have a lot of things coming up as far as planning and the legislative session coming up."

They will be doing a raffle for the elderly people in need of a turkey for Thanksgiving. Southwest Solid Waste that does the trash pickup donated $250 and the Beautification Committee donated $300. They will be able to buy 47 turkeys. A raffle will be done in a few days, and they will deliver the turkeys with the help of the maintenance department.

She asked that those attending Grant County Days let them know so they can take care of the travel and reservations.

Mayor and councilors reports

Frances Gonzales and Eloy Gonzales did not have anything to report.

Ojinaga thanked the police department for the escort of the girls on the volleyball team. He told the wastewater treatment plant employees they had been doing a great job. He also said the grounds looked really good and he wanted to have them meet with Arellano and find a place to put in a flagpole so the flag can be flown. He had received compliments from the residents about how nice it looked. Someone visiting from out of town commented on how much money they had to spend on the brand new fire trucks. He told him they had not been brand new, and the department just keeps them clean and looking sharp.

Next regular meeting will be held December 17, 2025.

Meeting adjourned.