District 3 county commissioner, Shannon Reynolds resigned from his position, Dec. 8th after 7 years on the board.
Abigail Salas:
Tell me about your time as commissioner.
Shannon Reynolds:
So, I ran for my first office as treasurer lost. But I got so close to winning for somebody who no one knew that they said you need to run for another office. So, I ran for commissioner. And at the time, there were a lot of problems in the county. Our fire department had just been rated at 10, which means they weren't able to put out fires. And I said, that's the first thing I'm going to focus on. And within six months, I was able to get the rating from 10 down to five or seven, which brought the insurance policies, homeowners' policy, but everyone in the county back in line. And over the last eight years, we've actually gone from a volunteer fire department that had only one paramedic to now having almost 100% fully paid staff in the fire department and ambulance service that we were actually contracting out to AMR. And our rating is now still at five. I was able to secure $1.6 million funding in order to move us from 800 MHz service to 700 MHz service. So what that meant is now, if let's say there was an automobile accident on Highway 9 going to Luna to, you know, Deming, then if there was a van accident and somebody saw the accident, drove another 10 miles and called in and said there's an accident, we sent out one ambulance, but the ambulance had five or 10 people in it, they had no way of calling for backup and getting a different people, additional people there. Same thing for the sheriff's department when they showed up. If it was an encounter with multiple, you know, multiple people, they had no way of calling back up. So, by actually going to the 700 system and putting up a couple more towers over the last couple of years, we now have a county where everybody in the county can communicate with each other. So that's another huge thing I think I've accomplished in the last eight years. So, the fire department and Mesilla Valley Regional Dispatch Authority.
Abigail Salas:
Do you have a message for your constituents?
Shannon Reynolds:
I do. I do. You know, we don't get paid a lot of money. As a matter of fact, the money that we get paid is less than it takes to support a family of three, two or three in this county. And my message is to people who look at elected officials and say, you know, I wish they would do a better job. Well, I think the officials that we can get would wish you would make pay us more money so we can get more people to actually step up to the opportunity. But the reason I do it for that kind of money, and I've done it for that kind of money, is because I think to myself and I look at myself and I say, you know what, if I can make one, just one decision that positively impacts the entire population of the county, I've positively impacted and changed the lives of over 200,000 people. And if I can do something like what I did with the ambulance and the fire department and even Mvrda, okay, to help save lives, then I've not only impacted the first generation, but I've also impacted their children and their children's children. When I think about my career and I think about what I've done and as hard as it's been, and sometimes I'm working nights, weekends, five days a week, seven days a week, traveling to Santa Fe, traveling to Washington, you know, all this stuff, being away from my family for a couple of days, not having enough personal time to get all my own stuff done here at the house, I have to ask myself, Was it worth it? And I have a resilient yes. Ok, because I was able to accomplish at least three things that I can point to in my career as a county commissioner that have changed the lives of everyone in the county.
Abigail Salas:
What's next for you? What's after this?
Shannon Reynolds:
Well, right now I can't. I can't talk a lot about next year, but I can tell you that I have signed up with a one of the consultants that worked with the county. And he's willing to put my resume up on his website and try to get me some corporate sponsor or corporate paid opportunities to do some training. As when I was working, I actually did executive briefings for two of the companies I worked with. I actually developed a really good sales training and a really good human resources training and also presentation training that I can deliver, and I've delivered for almost 20 years in business. So, I'm going to take those skills that I used when I was working and offer them up as contract skills to other companies doing kickoff meetings and sales trainings and things like that. I've had a couple contact me already about it. So that's my initial plan.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham will appoint a successor to finish his term, which ends this year.
