[Editor's Note: This is part 4 of the Grant County Commission January 7, 2025 work session and Jan. 9, 2025 regular meetings. This begins the work session review of the regular meeting agenda and presentations made at the regular meeting.]

By Mary Alice Murphy

At the Grant County Commissioner Jan. 7, 2025 work session, County Manager Charlene Webb began the review of the regular meeting, which would take place on Jan. 9, 2025.]

The first presentation, at the regular meeting, was a recognition of Toby Rascon for his 30 years of service in the Road Department. Public Works Director Jason Lockett said he has been doing a great job since 1994, and presented Rascon with a jacket with his name and 30 years of service on it.

Rascon said he didn't know what to say, other than he was getting old. He thanked the county and all his coworkers for the recognition.

Webb said, as it was the first meeting of the year, commissioners would choose their chair and vice chair. Following that would be presentations.

At the regular meeting, commissioners voted to retain District 1 Commissioner Chris Ponce as the chair, and they chose District 2 Commissioner Eloy Medina to serve as the vice chair.

The next presentation came from Grant County Assessor Misty Trujillo, talking about the Property Tax Division. She welcomed the new commissioners as well as the newly elected officials, and congratulated the new clerk, Connie Holguin.

"I've been with the county going on 20 years now," Trujillo said. She noted that she had emailed the documentation for the property evaluation for 2024. "It is conducted annually. We get evaluated by the state Property Tax Division. It determines merit using standards and it focuses on outcome and impact and refers to techniques and process. The audit portion focuses on the financial accuracy and internal control, referring to data and proof."

She explained the evaluation highlights accomplishments achieved during the year; provides recommendations for areas of improvement and identifies any deficiencies that need to be addressed.

Trujillo said the primary responsibility of the assessor's office is to determine and maintain current and correct values of properties. The work is guided by New Mexico state statutes, regulations and industrial best practices. "This public information is for anybody that wants to look it up. Anything in our office is public information, and the only thing that we cannot disclose to anybody is a purchase price of a property. State of New Mexico hasn't passed that yet."

The office mails out the notice of evaluations of properties to all owners in April. The notice of value is letting the property owner know what property they own, what value they have, their legal description, land values, home values, everything is on that documentation. As far as the notice of values, it also will list in the back of it what exemptions an owner may be eligible for.

This notice is not a tax bill. "It is the most important document that you want to open from our department, because that's letting you know what your value is for the year and what your taxes will be based on come November. When that document is sent out in April, you have 30 days to protest that value. So when we send it out and you don't come in and question it, we're assuming our value is fine, stays as is. If you come in and you protest it, what we have to do is we prep it, we reassess it, we find our new comps. It's on a case-by-case basis because every property is completely different."

She said the next big thing the office does is by June 15, they have to certify the property values. "We have to enter in all of our values that we brought in for the year. The state wants to look at everything. It's kind of an estimate of value, because the final values don't come until in October, when we have our final abstracts. It's an estimate, because values are constantly being changed. And not just with our office on protest, we're constantly changing values through Santa Fe."

Trujillo noted that the next big thing is when the state sends the tax rates, so "we can apply them to each account to let them know what the exact tax bill will be. I have a list of checks that I have to do. And then once I'm good on my end, I will submit it to Patrick (Cohn) in the Treasurer's Office. They do their checks on their end. If both of our offices balance or if we need to fix anything. If not, we're good. Then I will submit all of our abstracts to the county manager, Charlene Webb, the finance director, and again, the treasurer's office. So everybody is in the loop with all of the values. And at any time, if anybody needs any of that information, they can give us a call, and we can provide that information to anybody."

"I want to go back to one of our biggest issues in the assessor's office, and not just within Grant County. It's the whole state of New Mexico, land values, commercial values," Trujillo said "New Mexico is a non-disclosure state, and no one has to submit their sell price to us or their purchase price, which makes our job hard, because now we're guessing, we don't know.

"We are at least mailing out a letter right now to property owners that have purchased land or commercial property, and we're encouraging them if they will to disclose their purchase price to us, because at the end of the day, what we want to do is we want to be fair and equitable to everybody. In order for us to be consistent, we need that information to create that spreadsheet, to upload it across the board in the county. I don't know when that's going to be done. I know right now they're trying to pass something to get full disclosure. They've been trying it for years, and I don't know if it's going to happen."

Other things that happen in the office, she said, include handling business and personal property, livestock, grazing property, and manufactured homes. "We do reappraisals, new construction, commercial properties. We handle all the exemptions and handle all the owner transfers. We do a lot in our office."

District 5 Commissioner Thomas Shelley asked if there were a lot of protest each year, and whether they were residential mostly or commercial.

"Protest time is a busy time in our office," Trujillo said. "It depends, every year is different. It could be 100 accounts, 150 accounts or 50 accounts, but it's more or less around 100 or so."

Shelley asked if there were a timeline for resolving the protests.

Trujillo said it was about 90 days. "We work on them as fast as we can, because we have to roll over everything to set the values. I would say that land values are the biggest protests we receive."

District 4 Commissioner Eddie Flores asked if it was possible after a protest for the value to go up.

Trujillo said yes, it was, and the assessor's office provides photos and data entry to prove that the value has increased. "Many do not file permits for changes and when we find them, that often makes the value go up," she replied.

At the regular meeting, the county contracted attorney, Benjamin
Young of Mynatt Springer in Las Cruces, introduced himself. "We've been providing services to the county for five or six years now. It's a pleasure to meet each of you this morning and I look forward to working with each of you."

The next agenda item addressed the monthly Gila Regional Medical Center report from Chief Executive Officer Robert Whitaker, which he presented at the regular meeting.

He congratulated the new commissioners. The report covered statistics from November because the December numbers had not yet been approved by the GRMC Board of Trustees. "We had 97 discharges in the month and fiscal year to date, we've had about 2,020, which is higher than the prior year. Volume has been pretty steady. Surgeries in November were 194, which was a bit lower than usual as surgeons sometimes take time off for Thanksgiving and year-end holidays as well. Year-to-date we were at 1175, compare to 1196 at the time in the prior year. ER visits were 1417, higher than last year. We're sitting at just under 7000 for the first five months of the year. We average about 1350 to 1400 a month. We had 21 deliveries in November about the same as last year, with year to date at 125. Outpatient visits include radiology, lab, cardiopulmonary, physical therapy and things like that. We had 5144 in November and we are seeing higher volumes through this year as compared to last year. For operating revenue we reported $8.7 million as compared to last year at $7.9 million. Year to date, we are about at $41.9 million with $37.7 million for the prior year, so about three and half mission more. Operating expenses in November were $8.4 million compared to $7.8 million last year, so operating expenses were also up over the prior year. Year-to-date operating expenses were $40.5 million compared to $37.2 million in the prior year. In November, we reported net operating income of $345,000 compared to $163,000 in the prior year. Year-to-date our net operating income is $1.4 million compared to an operating loss last year of right around $500,000."

On days of cash on hand, he reported November had 134 days as compared to the prior year of 139. "This isn't cash that we have in a few longer-term investments, but operating cash on hand. We've been around 160 or 170 for a while, but we have made some capital purchases and we're working through some of those items. We also did some significant salary increases as well, so we're doing really well."

Whitaker noted that with the legislative session coming up, "we do have a request for capital outlay for our CT scanner. We need to replace that. We're going to purchase it whether we get assistance or not. But I think the representatives were very supportive when we proposed it, and we think we can get some funding to help with that purchase. We are still progressing on our building assessments. We have another meeting coming up and our goal was to have it finished and prepared for the board at the January meeting. If we don't get it done, it will definitely be by the February meeting. We also purchased new patient beds through the facility, so those are on order and expected to be received in February. We did complete our telemetry system, which is where we can do remote heart monitoring on patients that need that service. So we went through a significant change in our wireless system throughout the facility, as well a significant change with our telephone system. Next is our nurse call system. Those projects were in the range of all three of those projects being about $3 million, so we're wrapping them up. We did receive congressional direct spending from Sen. Ben Ray Lujan for our MRI for $1 million. And we also got approval from the federal agency, HRSA (health resources and services administration) to move forward with the MRI. We have issued a purchase order and are moving through with some things that need to happen with the room and some other services in order to replace the MRI. We also in last year's legislative session received funding through Senate Bill 161 for all 11 rural hospitals. We received our first reimbursement out of $5.7 million. When we incur the expense, we send in an invoice and then they reimburse us. We received about $763,000."

Ponce thanked Whitaker for his report. "It's nice seeing 160 days of cash on hand, but our last commission, including me, we'd rather be a little lower on days of cash on hand and that you guys are using it for infrastructure or equipment, whatever you need."

Medina, who also serves as GRMC EMS director, thanked Whitaker for the almost $400,000 in heart monitors that "put us on the edge of technology to serve our customers. The level of treatment will go up significantly."

District 3 Commissioner Nancy Stephens said she was happy to see money going toward salaries, as it would raise morale.

Ponce also asked Whitaker to set up a meeting with him and the commissioners.

The next article will get into the elected officials' reports at the regular meeting.

To read the previous articles, please visit https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/grant-county-commission-holds-first-work-session-of-2025-010725-part-1  ; https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/grant-county-commission-work-session-010725-part-2 ; and https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/grant-county-commission-work-session-010725-part-3 .