Silver City honors past town manager and commissioner

By Lynn Janes

The Silver City Town Council held a regular meeting June 10, 2025. Attendance to the meeting included Mayor Ken Ladner, Mayor Pro Tem Guadalupe Cano, Nicholas Prince, Rudy Bencomo and Stan Snider.

The council presented Thomas Hernandez, code enforcement officer, the employee of the month award. Police Chief Freddy Portillo presented the award. Portillo said on March 5, 2025, Hernandez had been on routine patrol in the Boston Hill area near Cheyenne Street. He observed a female walking a dog without a leash. He also saw a vehicle in a parking area that belonged to the person walking the dog. Through his investigation he found the license plate to be fictitious, and her identity could not be confirmed. Hernandez continued to investigate, and the next day located the vehicle in front of the public library. Patrolman Jayden Rodriguez assisted Hernandez at the library. The female subject would not cooperate and continued to resist and obstruct. Hernandez and Rodriguez continued to be calm and professional throughout the interaction. In conjunction with CYFD it had been revealed this person had illegally taken her child away from the biological father and across state lines. They later charged her with custodial interference, a fourth degree felony. The child had been reported missing for a year and a half and was taken into protective custody and reunited with the father.

Hernandez's dedication, professionalism and empathy made a tremendous impact on the community. He had gone above and beyond and does every day to investigate quality of life issues. Hernandez thanked them for the award.

The council proclaimed June 22, 2025, James William (Bill) Harrison Day. Ladner read the full proclamation. He had been the town manager 1969-1971 and the first director of the Southwest Council of Governments. He also served as a Grant County commissioner 1993-1994 and a business law professor at Western New Mexico University. Hop Kleinhauer accepted the proclamation. He said Harrison would love to have been there but due to health reasons he could not and is living in the Fort Bayard nursing home. Kleinhauer said he had the privilege of having lunch with him every week for the past two years. Harrison will be turning 103 on June 22, 2025, and served in WWII in the Navy. Ladner will present the proclamation to him at Fort Bayard and asked any of the council members to go with him.

Council comments

Snider and Prince did not have any comments currently.

Cano congratulated Hernandez on being named employee of the month and thanked him for answering her questions whenever she contacts him.

Cano had received a number of calls and even people coming to her home to complain about their water bills that they have seen a tremendous increase. She had done her best to explain. One thing done a little while back was that the city employees had been asked to go around town and see how many trash bins each resident had. They found a lot of people had more than one and that had been the reason for the increase. The residents will be charged for the extra trash bins. To correct this, they need to call city hall and have the extra trash bins picked up or call Universal Waste for a larger one. If residents continue to have the extra containers, they will continue to be charged for them.

Ladner announced he had been contacted by the New Mexico Department of Transportation (DOT) and notified that the state would be improving highway conditions within the town. Last year he and Alex Brown, town manager, had met with them and identified a number of areas within the town that needed to be addressed in terms of safety. Brown said the DOT has funds set aside specifically for safety projects. A study has to be done which they had focusing on the intersection of highway 180 and Swan Street and highway 180 and 14th Street, with highway 90 included. If the study finds a safety need the DOT will be required to fix them. Several years back one had been done in front of the Walmart and that resulted in those changes.

The project will include signing, signal improvements, striping, lighting and other improvements. It will be along highway 180 between mile marker 111 and 123. It will start late summer and will include the intersection of highway 90 and 180.

Questions had been received concerning the cardboard recycling bins. They used to be in the parking lot in front of Harbor Freight. They can no longer have them there, but Southwest Solid Waste has been looking for a new location.

The council approved the minutes from May 27, 2025.

Public input

Laura Schoen said she loves downtown and has a business there. She sees what it could be but felt everyone downtown to be at risk. They have events that should be very prosperous to the merchants every year but have not been. She had been talking to merchants that had been downtown for a number of years and said their income has come down around 75 percent in the last year. When she talks to residents, they say they have not been downtown in years because they are afraid. "One woman was accosted, and she tells everyone she knows. Some say the town is a gem, but they are mistaken but it could be." Tourism has been declining.

Reports

Alex Brown, town manager, didn't have anything to report currently but had asked Bart Roselli, museum director, to give a presentation after William Hawkins, Silver Consolidated Schools superintendent.

Hawkins came to provide an update on a conversation that had started the previous year, right sizing the schools. They had a task force put together and continued working on it. This had been part of the facilities master plan. The task force has been looking at the best way to use the vacant space in the school district and includes 20 people who have an interest and investment in the community and schools. "This was a collaborative effort." They have been looking at many different aspects of the schools needs and buildings. Before they started the task force, a group of 50 people had come together from different parts of the community to make a recommendation to the task force.

The schools have had a declining enrollment since 2003. The facilities have a capacity for over 4,000 students and currently only have 2,200. In the next five years they have predicted it to decrease to 1,930. The elementary schools have been looked at first for resizing by combining.

Hawkins continued by speaking to the general obligation bond that took the property tax from 5.47 mills to 10 mills. SB 9 had failed in the special election. It will be put on the ballot for the November 2025 election to try again.

He came back to the task force, and said they have considered combining two elementary campuses. At first, they considered moving Silver Scholars into another existing school but changed their mind and will leave it as is. He had a power point presentation outlining his presentation with additional information. If they can come to an 85 percent utilization of the facilities the district will save $1.4 million a year.

In this process they had looked at traditional neighborhood schools versus grade banding. He talked a little about both scenarios. The task force has had a lot of dialogue on these and looked at all aspects.

A disturbance stopped the meeting, and Portillo went to address it. The council took a five-minute recess.

Portillo provided a short explanation of what had transpired. They had responded outside to loud banging noises. A man had been banging on the sliding glass window asking for help. Two officers currently are with him to assist.

Hawkins continued with traditional schools versus grade banding. He went over each school and what number of students it had capacity for and what the current capacity is. No matter what they do the same number of staff will be needed as before. June 16, 2025, the final recommendations will be made by the task force. Aldo Leopold Charter School had approached them about the 6th Street School. They also had a museum approach them about one of the spaces.

He said they had a timeline of combining two elementary schools in 2026 and combining La Plata Middle School and Silver High School in 2028-2032.

Cano thanked him, the task force and other committees that worked on this project. She had spent a lot of time thinking about all the options. "I was happy that you are thinking about banding." She had grown up with that. She brought up losing Jose Barrios and the man it had been named for had been a big part of the community history. She hoped somehow it could be kept or used for something else.

She commented that during that meeting they had been able to see what police officers do firsthand. Coincidently Barrios had been killed in the line of duty.

Snider thanked Hawkins for the update. Some tough decision had to be made. He wanted to touch on the history of the 6th Street School. It has been the oldest occupied educational site in New Mexico built in 1812 and the only brick schoolhouse in New Mexico at the time.

Prince said, he would briefly summarize the bottom line they will have four primary changes and went over them and asked Hawkins if he had missed anything. Hawkins added that the SB 9 would be very important to pass in November so they can maintain the schools. Prince agreed with the importance of SB 9.

Prince continued talking about the property taxes and needing that money for schools. He went over all the things that could happen that would cause a need for these funds. He thought they needed money in a general fund available for these issues so they could be addressed. "I know Grant County's property taxes are among the lowest in the nation. It's not correlation, causation but it should not be surprising that the property taxes are so low and issues of this magnitude when it comes to our facilities. Taxes are not always bad." Prince wanted to further note he had been a public school kid, and his parents had been public school teachers, and he thought the tax would absolutely be appropriate.

Hawkins continued to speak to SB 9 and the need to be passed, and Prince also continued to speak on the subject.

Ladner wanted to provide the opportunity for the other council members to speak or people in the audience.

Bruce Ashburn said he had been involved in the process since the beginning. It had not been easy, and everyone had their own protected interests. However, they had come together and been willing to talk about how they could come to some kind of negotiated solution that must be done. The district could not continue to afford to spend $1.4 million a year on the extra heating, cooling and maintenance of the unused space. They had contractors that have been working on these buildings involved in the process and they have said the buildings' age requires they now have to dig into walls and floors to do a normal repair. "Choices have to be made, and they are necessary."

Prince wanted to continue the conversation. He had questions about demographics, enrollment and teacher attrition. He asked Hawkins for data on the other schools such as Aldo Leopold. Hawkins addressed each question he had. Prince then went into deed restrictions of the dispensation properties. Ladner tried to move the meeting forward and Prince had another question about plumbing issues and the high school. Hawkins said they had plans between 2028 and 2032 to address that issue and continued to explain the plans for modernization and plan to use the new mill levy to build a new high school and middle school.

Roselli had come to give a report on the museum. He said he has been honored to have the job as director. His mission has been to put the museum front and center in the community because they play an important role. They have historical pieces that should not be forgotten, museums should not be a place to collect a lot of dust, and they should be active in the community and address needs of that community. "We have some really professional, talented and dedicated staff working alongside more than 70 volunteers." He had three points of impact on the community, state and nation. They had added school programs in the community and two have had peer recognition. They will be serving more school children than ever before this year. For some of the programs the kids come to the museum and some they go out to both school districts. More than 600 students had visited the museum and another 200 had programs delivered to them at school. These have helped support state and local curriculum requirements.

The second point that had generated recognition from their peers was because Javier Marrufo, an amazing curator, made a presentation in Albuquerque at the American Folklore Society on Nuestra Voz, the Chihuahua Hill history project. A person in the audience had been from the American Alliance of Museums and had been so impressed she invited them to come to Los Angeles to do the presentation at the annual conference. The president of the organization in her keynote speech called out Silver City Museum for the project and said every history museum should be doing it.

Roselli wanted to recognize their partnership with LULAC and WILL (Western Institute of Lifelong Learning). He continued to list a number of other organizations they had partnered with, and it included many.

Because of the nurses' exhibit they will be included in a statewide nurses' association magazine that distributes to 25,000 nurses. It had also impressed them enough to have their conference here and use the exhibit for the reception.

The last thing was they hoped to have a book being published this month called Unpacking Silver City. They had commissioned 10 different historians to write a chapter on the different aspects of life in Grant County.

Bencomo said he had really enjoyed the Chihuahua Hill story. He had grown up there and had some stories he would like to share. He had spoken to Marrufo on his experience as a young child when the Brown Berets came to town.

Roselli, they had been looking at doing a play called "Last Angry Brown Hat."

Meeting adjourned