LCPS Verifies Essential Elements of Council Inaction

News New Mexico met with highly placed representatives of the Las Cruces Public Schools yesterday. The goal was to either verify or learn important new facts associated with an emerging policy snafu involving the Las Cruces City Council. In the meeting, LCPS officials verified virtually every important fact this site has reported over the last few weeks related to the blocking of a Special Assessment District critical to this area.

Like LCPS officials did yesterday, Mayor Ken Miyagishima (left), in an interview on our daily radio show on Wednesday July 7th also confirmed what we have been reporting. News New Mexico posse members and citizens that regularly attend city council meetings have also confirmed the essential facts related to the inaction. The facts are fairly simple:

Though the Special Assessment District funding never came to a vote, it seems that every councilor except the Mayor appears to have supported a policy that amounted to a refusal to accept $10 million dollars of unencumbered private funding for the extension of North Sonoma Ranch Boulevard. The city was NOT "at risk" for a single dollar.

In stonewalling, the council has now created a very expensive and open-ended set of complications for the day-to-day operations of Monte Vista Elementary School (right). These include the safe transportation of school children over a substandard road. This unexplained action has forced LCPS to do a "change order" for the building of a second access road to this school. Forced last minute plans at LCPS now call for the building of a sub-standard road with no provisions for flood controls. Clearly, according the mayor and other interested parties, LCPS will waste funds to build this temporary road.

Thus far no city councilor other than Councilor Dolores Connor (left) has stepped forward into the public spotlight to defend their position. Connor, who is vacationing this week, has agreed to appear on News New Mexico on Tuesday July 20th. We are anxious to hear her views on this subject since no vote has been cast yet. All other city councilors have refrained from public comment. Each has merely responded to inquiries from their constituents with vague insinuations that News NM is "spreading misinformation." No councilor except Mrs. Connor has stepped forward to our open invitations to clear the air and make their case.

Based on public statements by the Mayor, private statements by high-ranking officials at LCPS, many citizens that regularly attend city council sessions, as well as the property owners in question, News New Mexico asserts that city councilors through tacit neglect are condoning job killing policies. The economic multiplier effect of a $10 million infusion into the Las Cruces economy has gotten lost in the shuffle. Over $600,000 in gross receipts tax revenues alone are being reduced to lost opportunity by council inaction. No doubt there are countless jobs, available for the taking, that are being lost in the wake of the inaction. Additionally, open-ended liabilities are looming for LCPS as it tries to make due with a substandard road based on the inexplicable inaction of council. All of these avoidable calamities continue while councilors continue to stall.
In the end, if News New Mexico, the mayor, LCPS, concerned citizens, and property owners (who are ready willing and able to ASSESS themselves to pay for this road) are mistaken, and citizens are being mislead by misinformation, we anxiously await any councilor’s willingness to step up and make their case in a public forum before we speak with Councilor Connor to determine her position on Tuesday July 20th.

LCPS Verifies Essential Elements of Council Inaction