Sharon Thomas - Road Extension

Sharon Thomas

City Councilor Sharon Thomas issued the following comments regarding the stalled Special Assessment District process that has effectively ended the construction of a four lane thoroughfare beginning at Thurman Road and extending two miles north to Arroyo Road on North Sonoma Ranch Boulevard.

NewsNM Finding # 1. An order was placed for an expensive property appraisal which included the agreed upon properties in the SAD. The appraisal was completed and paid for. Thomas: Yes, an appraisal is necessary.

NewsNM Finding # 2. A tentative funding commitment for the entire project from the New Mexico Finance Authority was obtained. It had nothing to do with any credit rating of the City of Las Cruces Thomas: This commitment was based on the excellent credit rating that the city has. If the SAD goes to the NM Finance Authority, they will do a detailed investigation into the developer’s financial status. Many of the questions at the April work session were about that issue.

NewNM Finding # 3. The $1 million reimbursement to LCPS from the Special Assessment District continued to be contingent upon the fulfilling of all agreements reached by all parties in January.

Thomas: There is no $1M reimbursement to the LCPS. It is my understanding that such a reimbursement is not allowed by the SAD legislation. I am told that LCPS and the developer were both given this information early on. Therefore, that issue was never before the city council. Also, as stated in today’s LCSN (Las Cruces Sun-News), the school district has always been committed to paying for their portion of the road ($300,000 +) and the utility connections.

NewsNM Finding #4. At the April City Council work session, essentially all agreements were voided and the good faith efforts collapsed when it became clear that every councilor except the mayor had developed a "new" position. These new positions were clearly based on the unsigned and misleading memo distributed to councilors. The city and the developer received communication from the New Mexico State Land Office that the state land could not be included in the SAD without a very time consuming lawsuit so it was left out of the proposal which was accepted by the New Mexico Finance Authority.

LCPS Herb Torres

Thomas: The April session was an information only session. The January resolution states the following: Resolution No. 10-200: A Resolution Declaring the Intent of the City of Las Cruces, New Mexico (The "City") to Form and Implement a Special Assessment District (The "District"), to Fund Street and Utility Improvements for a Two Mile Portion of North Sonoma Ranch Boulevard and to Levy Assessments on Real Property Benefitting from the Improvements to

Pay the Costs of the Improvements and the District. Note the phrase “levy assessment on real property benefiting from the improvements.” Some of the property that will benefit was not included in the proposal.

NewsNM Finding #5. Ironically it was Herb Torres of LCPS who pointed to the fact that Las Cruces citizens will now get precisely what these councilors claimed they wanted to avoid...a temporary low grade, colonias-style, maintenance plagued road, instead of four-lane major arterial roadway at the end of North Sonoma Ranch Boulevard.

Thomas: The “temporary” road is being constructed according to city standards and when further funding is available, the other lanes and multi-modal facilities will be added. This portion of the road is not “temporary” and it will not be torn out.

NewsNM Finding #6. Worse yet, this low-grade road will not be completed in time for the opening of Monte Vista Elementary. Worst of all, LCPS will lose the entire $1 million reimbursement from the business people who were ready to finance the now dead road project.

Mayor Ken Miyagishima

John Moscato

Thomas: Once again, there is no reimbursement available. In addition, a SAD is not financed by a group of business people. It is financed by an assessment on property, a tax that will be collected from builders and/or residents when they purchase the property. It’s not money from the private sector. There are no “business people” ready to finance the road project. Also, if the developer should fail to make payments on the SAD, will the city have to foreclose on the properties and sell them and make the payments?

NewsNM Finding #7. The New Mexico Finance Authority certifies the SAD not the Las Cruces city council. They just have the city staff administer the SAD as is set in law. In every SAD the New Mexico Finance Authority provides the funding and a local entity, in this case the City of Las Cruces administers the funds locally.

Thomas: In order to protect taxpayers, we need to be absolutely certain the developer can be successful and can sell the properties and can make the SAD payments so that the rest of us do not end up with that debt. We have received many complaints about Moscato not finishing projects and leaving people with flooding problems and broken promises (no clubhouse). As fiscally responsible councilors, we need to know what Moscato’s financial situation is. Can we trust him to get the construction up and running and lots and homes selling so that there is revenue to pay back the bonds? Generally, a developer can borrow money from private sources to fund the roads in a new development.

NewsNM Finding #8. The city of Las Cruces administers the SAD locally, the New Mexico Finance Authority makes the financial decisions as to making the SAD money available.

Thomas: Why is it that Moscato needs to use the city’s credit rating and the help of the NM Finance Authority to get funding for this road? If it’s such a sure thing, then the private business entities (business people) ought to be eager to help. If the city signs on to the SAD is that like a parent co-signing with a teenage child for a car loan?

NewsNM Finding #9. There is a huge disconnect between the facts that we at NewsNM found in our interviews and the statements of Las Cruces City Councilor Sharon Thomas.

Sharon Thomas - Road Extension

Tres Amigas Superstation

From the Santa Fe New Mexican - Phil Harris is masterminding an electricity superhighway — a facility near Clovis that will connect the nation's three main power grids for the first time. The Tres Amigas Superstation will link the Western Interconnection, Eastern Interconnection and Texas Interconnection at a point in southeastern New Mexico. It also will provide the transmission capacity that power managers say is needed to handle the renewable energy expected from new solar and wind sources. The hub will allow energy to flow between the grids via superconductor cables in underground pipelines and AC/DC converters. The multifacility project will be built on 22.5 square miles of land leased from the New Mexico State Land Office. Read more here:

Tres Amigas Superstation

Star Parker - Ground Zero Mosque

Star Parker

The “Ground Zero” Mosque project should not go forward and let’s hope that Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf that is behind this $100 million project gets this message and backs off. But given what he is hearing from the liberals in New York, including the city’s Mayor, the congressman in whose district Ground Zero sits, and the New York Times, it’s hard to be optimistic that he will change his mind. Opposition to the Mosque is being portrayed, as the New York Times editorial page put it, as abandoning “the principles of freedom and tolerance.” But the Times makes its own tenuous grasp of reality clear as it goes on in its editorial embracing the Mosque and Islamic Center to say that “The attacks of September 11 were not a religious event.”

Star Parker - Ground Zero Mosque

City vs. Moongate

From the Las Cruces Sun-News LAS CRUCES - The phrase used numerous times in recent years when it comes to describing the growth of Las Cruces still applies. "He who controls the water controls the growth." The fight for water appears to be heating up again as city officials have begun the process that may eventually lead to the condemnation of Moongate Water Co. through eminent domain. City officials claimed last week that Moongate is capable of expanding its water service operations by as much as five times its current size, and that could severely diminish future reserve water supplies for the city. Read more here:

City vs. Moongate

Ted Nugent - Common sense should wield the gavel

by Ted Nugent for the Washington times - This may not be the end, but I think I can see it from here. Ever so hesitatingly and oh so painfully, I hate to admit that I am beginning to wonder why Americans even bother to vote anymore on controversial issues. If the America-hating liberals, socialists and Marxists in charge don't like the outcome of a decision by "we the people," they either sue and get a black-robed, leftist federal judge to declare the results unconstitutional or they get the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to sue for them. Hey, if you can't beat us at the polls, take us to court or sue us in the bizarro world of the corrupt American anti-justice court system. Freedom for sale at what price? The will of the American people is being whittled away in federal courthouses across America. Now it's the will of a federal judge or the threat of a costly lawsuit that charts the course for America. When liberals can't win at the polls, they simply tie up the results in court for years, thereby usurping the will of the American people. What Saul Alinsky rule for radicals does this devilish anti-American ploy fall under? Read more

Ted Nugent - Common sense should wield the gavel

What a collapsing empire looks like

From Salon.com - by Glenn Greenwald - As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay. But a new New York Times article today illustrates as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire looks like, as it profiles just a few of the budget cuts which cities around the country are being forced to make. This is a sampling of what one finds: Plenty of businesses and governments furloughed workers this year, but Hawaii went further -- it furloughed its schoolchildren. Public schools across the state closed on 17 Fridays during the past school year to save money, giving students the shortest academic year in the nation. Many transit systems have cut service to make ends meet, but Clayton County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, decided to cut all the way, and shut down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31, stranding 8,400 daily riders. Read more

What a collapsing empire looks like

Time to end tax withholding

From Freedom Politics by Thomas J. Lucente, Jr. - While it will go nowhere, one Republican Ohio congressman has drafted a bill to institute something for which I have long advocated: Require taxpayers to pay their tax bills directly and put an end to the unconscionable practice of forcing private employers to act as tax collectors. U.S. Rep. Bob Latta last month introduced H.R. 5959, the Tax Education and Accountability Act. The bill would end the law that requires employers to deduct federal taxes from an employee’s paycheck, therefore requiring individuals to pay their own tax liability on a quarterly basis. “With this legislation, taxpayers will have a much better concept of exactly how much money Washington is taking from their paychecks,” Latta said. “Armed with this knowledge, it is my sincere hope that more taxpayers become interested in knowing exactly what their taxes go towards and how severe the out-of-control spending is under the Obama administration and the Democrat Congress. The bill was referred to the House Ways and Means Committee where it will probably die. Still, Latta’s point is valid. If the United States is going to survive the 21st century and remain a somewhat free nation, then the people of this country need to wake up to the biggest national security threat in recent memory. “As our nation faces a record deficit of over $1 trillion for the second straight year and a $13 trillion debt that will hit $20 trillion by 2020, we are on a path toward fiscal disaster and the only way to stop it is for more people to be aware of what is happening right now with the taxes they send to Washington,” Latta said. By forcing Americans to write checks to Uncle Sam, the people will quickly understand exactly how much of their hard-earned money is being stolen by the government and redistributed to others. Read more

Time to end tax withholding

Picking winners, saving losers - have governments learned from past failures?

From The Economist - Industrial policy remains controversial. Defined as the attempt by government to promote the growth of particular industrial sectors and companies, there have been successes, but also many expensive failures. Policy may be designed to support or restructure old, struggling sectors, such as steel or textiles, or to try to construct new industries, such as robotics or nanotechnology. Neither tack has met with much success. Governments rarely evaluate the costs and benefits properly. In America the debate has raged fiercely. The government has long helped business, for instance through the Small Business Administration (SBA), set up in 1953, which guarantees loans to small firms. Heavy defence and space spending has created national champions, such as Boeing in aircraft-making. The government bailed out Lockheed in 1971 and Chrysler in 1979, and raised motorbike tariffs in 1983 to save Harley-Davidson. But efforts to support specific industries and firms have remained sporadic despite calls for a coherent policy. Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior tried to eliminate industrial policy wherever they found it, says Michael Boskin, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Mr Bush. Read more

Picking winners, saving losers - have governments learned from past failures?

GOP senators list 100 worst stimulus projects

Here is the entire Coburn McCain Report -

Washington (CNN) -- Monkeys on cocaine. New windows for a closed visitor's center. Modern dance as a tool for software development. A report released Tuesday by conservative Sens. Tom Coburn and John McCain cited these and 97 other projects as leading examples of misguided or wasteful spending under the Obama administration's $862 billion economic stimulus bill. Titled "Summertime Blues," the report is the third by the two senators targeting projects that they say fail to meet the job-creation goal of spending under the Recovery Act of 2009. The report highlights the extraordinary "waste and mismanagement" of taxpayer dollars, said McCain, R-Arizona. The stimulus plan "was supposed to create jobs. It does not." The "American people have awakened to the incompetency of Washington," declared Coburn, R-Oklahoma. "The rest of the federal government is filled with stuff just like this." Both senators conceded that the stimulus plan has had some positive effect on the economy, but insisted any benefit was due solely to the sheer size of the package, and that its effectiveness had been blunted due its poor design and spending choices. Coburn complained the measure was full of projects that are "stupid or inappropriate," and fail to meet "the common sense test." Read more

GOP senators list 100 worst stimulus projects

Lacking a trustworthy local leadership

Commentary by Michael Swickard - In the last month I have had a front-row seat to a controversy in which the Las Cruces leadership has acted improperly. At stake are millions of dollars and jobs for our local economy. Also at stake is the reputation of our city, with companies wanting to do business but unsure if the city leadership can be trusted. Several years ago a golf course to replace the Las Cruces County Club course was built on the East Mesa as the centerpiece to a large development. Last year a road was put in by the developer of the project to the golf course but the city council said a second road was necessary for the facility to be used. So the golf course has sat as a stranded asset for a long time using water but not generating tax revenue. Read more

Lacking a trustworthy local leadership