Council Welcomes Trustee and Hears Sobering Report from Auditing Firm: January's Village Meeting
Nick Hanna joins village council, auditor delivers damning report, State Police step up, coming road work, and more.
During Tuesday evening’s Council meeting, newly-appointed Mayor Tim King nominated local Air Force reservist Nick Hanna to fill the trustee seat vacated by King’s ascension. Hanna received unanimous approval from the Trustees. His term runs through the November election.
Meet Trustee Nick Hanna
Raised in New York, new Trustee Hanna has New Mexico roots—he and the Village’s grant-hunter, Lauren Groesbeck, share a grandmother who moved to Santa Fe in the 1980s. Hanna and fiancé Dr. Chelsea Bockelman’s family includes a Cloudcroft High School graduate, freshman, and preschooler.
“I’ve got a short amount of time (on the Council),” Hanna told the Reader.
“The opportunity is there; there are a lot of problems that can use another set of helping hands. I’ll be trying to get as much done as I can while I’m here.”
What do you think the biggest village priorties are?
“Finance, accounting. After that, communication. Keeping the conversation positive, and productive with everybody. Keeping the conversation open.”
“I want to hear what people think. Flood the inbox so I can know where people’s concerns are and devote my attention there."
You can contact Trustee Hanna at trusteehanna@cloudcroftvillage.com
The Village Council now operates with an entire board.
What else happened at the January Village Council meeting?
Quiet Mayor, Loud Room
With below-freezing temperatures at the door, the soft-spoken mayor King slowly warmed up as he presided over his second meeting in the packed village chambers.
Veteran Trustees McCoy and Maynard helped work out procedural kinks—is this a roll call or a voice vote?—as the gathering gained traction.
To speed up the village reports, King recently created a portal for them. The portal is part of the council’s monthly info packets, which the public can now view online. Online reporting from department heads, lessees, committees, and advisory boards should potentially save time in the recent marathon-length village meetings.
Thankfully, however, the info-flow continued in situ at the meeting.
As the evening picked up speed, there was a growing healthy back-and-forth dialogue between residents, department heads, and the council. It became more of a group discussion, a question-and-answer workshop—a village talking through issues.
Specifics on their discussions later, but first…
The council appointed Jessica Kovac as Interim Clerk. Kovac has worked as the village’s MVD Clerk since July 2024. She has a bachelor’s degree in Finance with a minor in Risk Management and Insurance from New Mexico State University.
Money, Money, Money
No one knows the Village’s current net worth.
Eric Cardona, the CPA and lead auditor for Cloudcroft’s audit through Las Cruces-based firm Beasley, Mitchell & Co, delivered a grim presentation of the fiscal year 2022-2023’s eleven findings.
Cardona mused that the findings were “more like 20,” but that they would have been redundant.
“There was nothing for us to look at.”
Throughout his presentation, Cardona mentioned staff turnover and a lack of physical and digital documentation of the village’s finances and assets.
“It’s a requirement that you keep a capital asset inventory on site and available for when we walk in. Capital assets are gonna be your buildings, your vehicles, equipment, furniture, things like that. I don't know what happened to the list from the prior auditor.”
“A lot of this was confusing because the prior auditor issued an ‘unmodified opinion,’ which means he walked in and everything was great. So from the time that he left to the time that we walked in, a lot of stuff was missing. One of those was the capital assets list, and that's kind of a hard listing to recreate.”
“My suggestion would be to contact the prior auditor, and see what he has.”
“Payable invoices were never entered into the system. I think they were just received and filed into a box. And there were situations where they couldn’t be found at all.”
“Another thing we found in relation to accounts payable: there was a large sequence of checks missing from the report, so (the clerk) gave us the disbursement register, but there was a big gap in checks, and those checks went unaccounted for. We couldn't determine if the checks were ever used, if they were canceled, if they got shredded or what they were used for.”
The village’s internal control system, or lack thereof, was cited. Cardona said,
“Segregation of duties — it appears is there was one person who received the invoices, one person who wrote it, who printed their check, and that same person signed the check, so there was no oversight into how the money was spent, that's a big internal accounting issue.”
“When we come in, we look at the financial statements, we focus on areas that are at risk for misstatement or for fraud, and we request a report and from that report we request samples. And so the samples are back-documentation for what you spent the money for or for what the money was received.”
“There was almost no backup for anything requested. Nothing at all. So there was nothing for us to look at.”
Beyond the bungled record keeping, missed tax filings, and disappeared assets list, Cardona said the village’s accounting software had large portions of deleted items and lacked the safeguards to prevent that from happening in the first place.
“That was a big concern, just not having records on file, and from what I understood, there was an online storage application where a lot of that stuff got deleted. When it comes to online storage, we're not opposed to you digitally scanning these records in. Still, there has to be safeguards within the software that will not allow a person just to delete information that gets scanned in there,” Cardona told the council.
Beasley, Mitchell, & Co. is currently booked to audit the village books for the past fiscal year, 2023-2024. However, Cardona advised that the council change their contract to enable the firm to help reconcile the village’s banking statements and finances. The village must then contract another firm to complete the ‘23-’24 audit.
The council did not ask many questions. For instance, Page 102 of the audit shows a village General Fund transfer exceeding the budget by $492,021. Where did that money go?
No decision was made regarding contracting the firm to reconcile village accounts.
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Roads, Grants, and Beyond
Colleen Ruiz of Stantec Engineering, a firm based in Roswell and Las Cruces, delivered a proposal for Cloudcroft’s road design.
Public Works Supervisor JJ Carrizal listed some of the village’s steep roads, including Apache, San Juan, Swallow, Otter, and Mescalero, as needing engineering.
Ruiz mentioned the grant that will pay 95% of the costs:
“There's 10 different roadway sections that we hope to have surveyed and designed, this year. It's a very competitive grant that we were awarded, I think 1 in 6 communities were awarded this grant last year and Cloudcroft was was successful. It's a 95% grant, 5% match, which is really financially one of the best opportunities that we have and with NMDOT.”
Village-contracted Grants Writer Lauren Groesbeck approved of the engineering firm, stating that Stantec is a Cooperative Educational Services vendor and the village could use them “without going through the burdensome procurement process.” Groesbeck added, “My recommendation would be that Stantec has been a great partner to us, and I support them.”
In other grants news, Groesbeck told the Reader:
“The Village currently has approximately $600,000 in grant reimbursements submitted to various funding agencies with the expectation that we will see these funds on the books within the next 60 days. “
“These reimbursements cover a variety of expenses, such as work on the wastewater treatment plant and the improvements at the Nivison Community Center, and are pending final review from the funding agencies before the payments can be released to the Village.“
“These reimbursements are for approved project costs that are associated with specific grants.”
After the recent village administration turnover, the grants process should move forward more easily now that Mayor King and Trustee Maynard are formally authorized signatories.
Police Presence
State Police Captain Jay Blakney presented on the department’s upcoming presence on the mountain through a “six-to-twelve-month” operation.
“We will focus on traffic enforcement on Highway 82, zero-tolerance, so be careful what you wish for. Seatbelt, DWI, that's gonna be a major focus as well. I think that's more of an issue in the summertime with more tourists and camping,” Blakney said.
“We'll do some DWI checkpoints in the area in collaboration with Cloudcroft PD, and we'll probably do some joint ones with the sheriff's department, as well.” Blakney continued, “Hopefully you won't be mad at us when we're out patrolling and doing our our job, we're here to help. We have a Chief that started about a year and a half ago. His focus isn't necessarily on the stats, you know, just writing citations. It's more of being in the community, getting to know people, trying to get back to what we used to be as far as what state police did.”
Water, Fire, Ice: Department Heads Address Concerns
When a 3/4-inch water line burst at Zenith Park during the meeting, Public Works Supervisor JJ Carrizal and employee Kris Parks stepped out to shut it off and stop the drain.
Upon his return, Carrizal addressed the council, requesting approval to spend the $55,000 from grant award C2223154. He wanted to use the award to purchase parts for updating the Corona waterline and hoped to secure future monies to complete the project.
“We need to move on it. Either give it back or spend it,” Carrizal said.
Carrizal updated the council on the village’s water situation.
According to Carrizal, Utility Billing Clerk Casey Bowman corrected reports to align billing dates with the water report, so numbers in the report should be more accurate.
Carrizal said the digital-read water meters enabled Public Works to respond to water leaks the day-of through an update on employee’s phones. Currently, the information is routed through the village office, so Carrizal hopes the tech-savvy mayor can change the notifications to send directly to employee’s phones. This should allow Public Works to catch and remedy over-the-weekend water leaks quickly.
Catch up with The Reader: Every Drop Now Counts in Cloudcroft
Carrizal reported that “the well was at 5 feet over the weekend,” and the water restrictions did seem to help. He told the Reader, “This morning, we’re at 71 GPMs going into town, which is amazing.” The water restrictions and leak patrol efforts paid off.
Along with Public Works Water Operator Aaron Foster, Carrizal hopes to host a Water Workshop with the village council. The time and location will be posted 72 hours in advance.
Carrizal shared the process for turning off the water in the village, which he hopes seasonal residents will do:
The village will perform Turn-off and on services at the request of property owners for $25.00 per service if the request is made during normal business hours.
If the water turn-off or on service is requested outside of normal business hours, owners will incur a charge of $100.00 per service.
The council mulled over waiving turn-off fees to encourage homeowners to opt in.
Several citizens spoke up about our water infrastructure, with demand exceeding production, suggesting the creation of a “water resources committee” that could draw from the well of knowledgeable community experts like retired engineers Dana Dunlap and John Snook.
Former Wildland Firefighter Judy Siebenaler urged the council to purchase fire evacuation signs. Her impassioned plea led to a lively discussion on fire safety, the alert and siren system, evacuations, and more between residents, the council, Lauren Groesbeck, JJ Carrizal, and Volunteer Fire Department Chief Erich Wuersching.
Trustee McCoy mentioned the upcoming Otero Working Group meeting, which includes volunteer fire departments, the NM Forestry Division, and other groups tasked with area fire management and mitigation.
“There might be something out there. We will be getting some money, and we'll have a facilitator handling it. We won't handle it, so the auditors will like that,” McCoy said.
Chief Wuersching acknowledged the recent failure of the Genesis cell phone alert test at the September 2024 Fire Forum, explaining that tests differ from true emergency alerts. “There is a signup program (Genesis), but another system we have is called IPAWS, a nationally available program Otero County adopted last year. And that activates any cell phone that's in a region.”
Wuersching continued, “The dispatch center in Alamogordo can draw a bubble on their screen, and every cell phone within that area or driving into that area while that alert is active, we'll get that information, and it's updated constantly, so you really can't avoid it unless you turn your cell phone off.”
Groesbeck mentioned that replacing the hard-wired infrastructure emergency sirens is part of the Village’s Infrastructure Capital Improvement Plan, a measure to safeguard public notice during downed cell service.
The Village of Cloudcroft’s official Emergency Operations Plan is available here.
See you at the next regularly scheduled village meeting on February 18th, 2025.
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