At a special session Monday morning, the Las Cruces City Council passed resolutions to remedy a violation of a transparency law in regards to selecting city manager Ikani Taumoepeau last year.
The council featured four resolutions for discussion that all centered around the selection of current city manager Ikani Tamoepeau, following the departure of previous city manager Ifo Pili. After announcing that the City of Las Cruces would be accepting internal applications for the City Manager vacancy last February, the council met in a closed session to discuss whether the position would be recruited through outside means or solely with internal applications. It was decided to proceed internally, narrowing the field to three internal candidates, eventually selecting Taumoepeau in March 2024 in a closed session. Last December, the New Mexico Department of Justice found that the Las Cruces City Council violated the Open Meetings Act following an OMA complaint.
The first resolution the Council voted on at Monday’s special session was for the discussion and decision to limit the selection for the position of City Manager to internal candidates only. The resolution passed 5-2, with councilors Cassie McClure and Bill Mattiace voting not to limit the selection internally. During the council discussion before that vote, McClure had this to say:
“At that time, I had no discussions about whether or not this would be an internal or external search,” she said. “The reason I heard about it was a press release. And I had the same questions afterwards: why are we going internal versus external? Because ultimately, I think external might have been a good idea. I think our candidates could have been internally strong enough to compete.”
District 3 city councilor Becky Graham acknowledged pros and cons of selecting a candidate internally or externally, but explained why last March she was for selecting internally.
“I felt strong about internal because of the depth of candidates we had here in the city,” Graham said. “I felt that we had what seemed like a great problem, which was multiple qualified candidates right here.”
The council then moved to discuss and vote on the second resolution: whether to narrow the internal candidate field to the original three: Ikani Taumopeau, Sonya Delgado, and David Sedillo. This resolution also passed, with only councilor Bill Mattiace voting against it.
“I guess I’m going back to the past when I was on council previously,” Mattiace said. “And as Mayor, we had the candidates actually in an open forum in a city council, and they would meet the public. And so that’s the part of the transparency that I’m concerned with, and so maybe my past is influencing what I think is happening in the present.”
The council then moved on to the third resolution, which was a review and discussion for Ikani Taumoepeau for the vacancy of the office of city manager. Councilor Cassie McClure explained why last March she didn’t feel Taumoepeau was the best candidate for City Manager.
“I did not select Ikani as the highest rank,” McClure said. “We did a Rubric filing, and based specifically on his past history of leading cities that were of much less density population-wise than here…I also think that the other two candidates were stronger. So…that’s it.”
District 5 councilor Becky Corran defended her selection of Taumoepeau as City Manager.
“I think at this moment, folks really want to just say we hired the wrong person, and you want us to do something different,” she said. “I believe that this process that we engaged in, and this discussion, was completely above-board. There wasn’t a consensus among us, but we did vote. And I get folks that say, ‘We want someone else.’ That’s not what’s going to happen today.”
After council discussion and public comments, the council then voted to approve their discussion regarding the third resolution of having said discussion for candidate Taumoepeau for the vacancy of the office of city manager.
The council also unanimously approved the fourth and final resolution, which was to “cure and ratify” the council’s prior decision to seek candidates for the vacancy of position of City Manager, and to appoint Ikani Taumoepeau to the position, thus ratifying both his selection and employment agreement, allowing him to stay on in that position. Before Monday's special session was adjourned, Mayor Eric Enriquez made a closing statement.
“As elected officials, we’re elected to do a job. And we did our job,” Mayor Enriquez said. “It’s not in any way to be deceitful or malicious. We wanted what’s best for the city, for the organization, so we can continue to grow and move forward. Adversities, difficulties, challenges, scrutiny: it’s gonna come our way. Can we learn from it? Absolutely. Can we get better? Yes we can. And we will prove that with our actions.”
The next regular session city council meeting is Tuesday, January 21st.
