By Lynn Janes

The town of Bayard held a regular meeting June 24, 2024. Attendance included Mayor John L. Ojinaga, Pro Tem Eloy Medina, councilors, Eloy Gonzales, Frances Gonzales and Gilbert Ortiz. Martha Salas, city clerk/treasurer also attended.

The council approved the consent agenda. It included attendance to the municipal officials leadership institute, police report May 2024, first line supervisors course for Trevor Jensen, wastewater treatment report May 2024, accounts payable June 24, 2024, and minutes for meeting June 10, 2024.

Old business

The council approved the ICIP (Infrastructure Capital Improvement Plan) list that had been sent by Priscilla Lucero, director, Southwest New Mexico Council of Governments. They had discussed this in the last meeting and had agreed on the order of the projects to list. The ICIP list covered 2026-2030.

New business

Rebecca Shreckengast, Ideum, joined online to give the council a presentation. Ideum an exhibit design company located in Corrales, New Mexico, will be heading the project for the Mine Mill building and she will be the project administrator. She introduced the team that would be working on the project and asked each council member to introduce themselves. They will be travelling to Bayard in the next week or so to visit the site. The first five weeks will be learning about the project, setting a critical foundation for the project. This will include learning from the community the goals, outcomes for the project and a site assessment of the building. Ideum will then formulate a timeline and budget for the project.

The next part will be to formulate a vision of the project and that will take about six weeks, August through first part of September. In that process they will be asking for feedback from the council, community and stakeholders.

Shreckengast said throughout the process they would have access to all documents through sharded Google or Dropbox if needed. If those platforms didn't work, they would make sure to find some avenue that they could always access what would be going on with the project.

By the end of October, they would be ready to wrap it up. They would have a review period at the end of each step. Ideum will have a workshop locally and invite the public and stakeholders to attend. It will be to go over the project and have feedback from those attending.

Ideum will be looking to understand who the customer will be. What kind of an outcome do you want for the visitors? What will be the story you want to tell? They asked for tourism information for the area. She asked them to think about stories and history that would be pertinent. The council mentioned the need to have Terry Humble involved because of his extensive knowledge of the local history. The council brought up the movie Salt of the Earth and the team said they would watch it before they came. Shreckengast asked them to have photos and architectural drawings if they had them sent before they came. Frances Gonzales said most of the documents would be in Boulder, Colorado and the Steelworkers Union in Pennsylvania. They also said that the Silver City Museum had a lot of information.

Shreckengast asked for a list of stakeholders and people with history and stories to contribute. Frances Gonzales said some would not want to come forward because of bad feelings. Shreckengast said, "It is good to know it is a sensitive topic and we will ask permission before contacting anyone."

The council approved the application for Chon Fierro to serve as a board member of the beautification committee.

The council went into closed session.

These meetings have been covered using recordings from Bayard administration.

A recording had not been made of the events after they came back into open session.

The action items listed on the agenda had been concerning employees at the police department and library.

The minutes from the meeting say head librarian Sonya Dixon stormed out of the closed session, slammed the door and handed her keys to the police chief. The mayor took that to mean she resigned.

The action concerning the police employee the council approved following the recommendation of Hector Carrillo, police chief.

The reporter from Grant County Beat had been given a different rendition of the events after closed session than what appeared on the minutes by people that had attended.

The next regular meeting will be held July 8, 2024