Day Two: Making a Budget

Hannah Dean reports on day two of three of the Village of Cloudcroft Council Budget Retreat.

This year’s retreat was the first live-streamed and open to the public at the Village Office.

As day two of budget talks commenced with the Pledge of Allegiance, yesterday’s sobering mentions of the “hard job” the council faces ahead seemed to echo within the village chambers.

Police Chief Mike Testa gave the first presentation of the day. There was an air of cooperation as the council guided him through his first budget as a department head, rearranging some funding from the Law Enforcement Protection Fund to ease the police budget’s strain on the village General Fund (GF.)

Village Clerk Shae Hemphill noted that with the suggested budgetary changes for the police department’s funding sources, the village would no longer be in deficit, other than with the Water and Sewer fund expenditures. The proposed changes shifted the Police Department’s draw from the GF from $593,750 to $557,750– a drop from 32% to 30% of the GF expenditures.

Discussions were held over interagency transfers of equipment and vehicles and code and ordinance enforcement. Turner said, “We have got to have some enforcement. In one quadrant [of the village], there are 15 homes about to fall or have already fallen.”

Judge Mark Tatum represented Municipal Courts with newly-appointed Village Court and Planning and Zoning (P&Z) Clerk Laura Robertson. Tatum requested expanded hours for Robertson and commended her work.

Now in his 31st year as Fire Chief, Erich Wuersching presented on four budgets: the Fire Department Fund, Fire Protection Fund, Emergency Medical Services (EMS), and Ambulance Fund.

Most of Wuersching’s budgetary needs are fulfilled by state funding and grants. The department hopes to acquire a $450,000 grant to pay for a new fire engine and partially retrofit it. Another sizable request of $400,000 for building maintenance will be decided through a grant in the fall of this year.

The Volunteer Fire Department (VFD) will find out in two weeks if it has received a Special Projects Grant of around $60,000 to provide two CPR automated machines to be stationed in our ambulances.

The department is composed of 29 volunteer firefighters. Four of nine current EMT responders “on the mountain” live in Cloudcroft.

The council revisited the discussion of the Village Maintenance Department’s request for new fire hydrants with Chief Wuersching. He informed them that “we do have critical areas in the village. Areas that, when tested, drop below pressure.”

He also said that the VFD could fund hydrant flow-testing, but “we can’t buy water infrastructure. I want to be included in the selection process.” Outdated infrastructure, like an 8-inch main where a standard 14-inch should be in place, further linked the fire department’s needs with village maintenance. As with nearly every department, crosstalk about the Geographic Information System (GIS) arose.

On GIS: the most recent Water System Modeling for Cloudcroft (from 2014, funded by Cloudcroft Fire and EMS) concluded that “all three hydrant Field Tests revealed system pressures under 20psi. This means the community is unsafe during fire flow testing and fire events at the gpm required to fight the fire.”

The mapping showed that one hydrant Field Test revealed a negative pressure, which “means that not only is the community unsafe, but the water lines themselves are under a vacuum and may collapse during fire hydrant flow testing and during fire events.”

Yikes.

The Fire Marshall primarily sources the Fire Protection Fund and depends on our area’s Insurance Services Office (ISO) rating. A pressing issue is structure insurance and national insurance companies dropping coverage for Cloudcroft homes.

Wuersching informed the council that the underwriter program FireLine pulled area data on fire management and safety—to feed to insurance companies for risk assessment. Previously unaware that the fire department and forest service data was being used in such a manner, Wuersching said the discovery “was shocking. Now, we need to understand how we attack that. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer.”

After a welcome lunch break, Lodger’s Tax Fund (LTF) Committee Chair Karl Campbell submitted LTF recommendations to the council for approval: $117,000 for the Chamber of Commerce, $12,000 for the Pioneer Museum, $5,000 for Keep Cloudcroft Clean, and $2,000 for Rails to Trails. The LTF requested approval for the purchase of Rentalscape technology, which would use data collection from multitudes of listing sites to suss out short-term rentals that are in noncompliance with the lodger’s tax.

Turner asked if $25,000 of LTF monies could be designated for Christmastime decorations to help the village live up to our brand-new “Christmas Capital of New Mexico” name.

Other public space wishes cropped up: Turner proposed working towards building a “beautiful amphitheater” for Zenith Park. Maynard suggested using more public bathrooms as a “backstop for a live music stage.”

Finally, Village Clerk Shae Hemphill presented on the Finance and Administration Fund, the third largest expenditure for the GF. Discussion of salaries and benefits meandered into redistributing accounting and payroll to different positions within the village office. However, accounting and payroll will be farmed out to Mountaintop Accounting for the next six months. Discussions of job descriptions and which positions merit full-time hours were tabled with a “wait and see” approach for the coming months.

As talks drew to a close, line items for the remaining budget were addressed a much faster clip.

When dangers loom—fires, inadequate water systems, dropped insurance coverage—it was heartening to see careful considerations given to our infrastructure, safety, and well-being. All the greater if the proof is in the funding.

I’ll see you tomorrow for day three of the budget retreat. You can check out our coverage of day one here.