Nick Seibel of the Silver City Daily Press covers top stories each week on the Silver City Report. This week, we learn of Grant County Commissioners raising elected county officials salaries and more.
Susan Morée:
Grant County Commissioners voted to raise salaries. Tell us about what happened and how much are these folks going to be able to make?
Nick Seibel:
You know, most county employees are represented by public employees unions. They negotiate for their salaries, but for the elected officials and for their appointed deputies, those salaries are set by the county commission periodically, and there's no other way for them to get more money. One of the things that kind of came out of that is that as regular employees got cost of living raises, new people were hired on, some folks in county government were being paid more than these elected officials that were heads of major departments of county government.
Susan Morée:
That sounds problematic.
Nick Seibel:
It definitely was a problematic situation. In fact, Chris Ponte, who's the chairman of the County Commission, said, when we first started talking about this, I was like, you people are nuts. We want to talk about raising our salaries and other people's salaries. Like, you're just going to make people pissed off. He said, but as we studied this and really kind of looked at what this meant, he said, I kind of came to understand that this really is something we have to do something about. So, the commission had several sort of pay grades that they were looking at, and they decided to go to the kind of the high end of the middle. So, future Grant County sheriffs beginning next year will be paid $92,000 a year, while assessors, clerks, and treasurers will go to $90,000 a year. Probate judges will be paid just over $27,000, and future Grant County commissioners will be paid just over $33,000 a year. One of the interesting situations is two of the commissioners are going to be elected this November, and this only applies to future elected officials. So, for the next couple of years, two of the five county commissioners are going to be making more money than the other three until the next election cycle for those folks two years from now.
Susan Morée:
That's a little awkward.
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, it's definitely an interesting situation. Certainly, though, they talked about it a lot. They all know what they're getting into. So it'll be weird and it'll all work itself out eventually, I suppose.
Susan Morée:
And Western New Mexico University is auctioning off some sofas. Tell us about that story.
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, it's wild. It got posted on social media. Somebody posted like, if I didn't know what this headline was about, it would be really, it would be really funny. Because I mean, the headline was WNMU to auction off controversial sofas. But certainly, if you've been following the university, Over the last couple of years, the controversy about former President Joe Shepard and his spending, which some people were really bent out of shape about, other folks thought was not really that big a deal. A couple of symbols of that were a couple of custom furniture that he had made for the president's house at the university. Well, the new president is coming on board, and one of the things that they've decided to do is to auction off those sofas to the public. That'll be actually happening online for auction at govdeals.com. So something folks can look out for. If you're looking for a custom sofa with a story, there will be one available for you soon online.
Susan Morée:
And what will the money that Western will receive from these auctioned controversial sofas, what will they do with that money?
Nick Seibel:
They didn't specify, but I mean, it basically will just go to the general fund of the university. It'll be money that'll go back into the operation of the institution. So just like any other surplus property that the university auctions off, it'll go back to support the operations.
Susan Morée:
Okay. And we got some good news and some bad news from Santa Clara, right? They're raising some rates, but they also built a bike park. Tell us about that.
Nick Seibel:
Their costs have been going up, like with everything else. And so the Village of Santa Clara voted a 4.6% raise in water and sewer rates, basically because of the Consumer Price Index and rising costs for providing those services, which are a big chunk of that small community's budget. But that small community is kind of becoming the recreation hub of Grant County. They opened last week their brand new bike park. And there were already kids out using the park. One kid whose family had gotten their children bicycles because the park was being built and they wanted to use it. But drawing young people from all around Grant County there, it's right next to the Splash Park and right next to their city park there in Santa Clara where they have the Music in the Park series. So definitely a nice little hub. And a couple years ago, they built a nice walking and biking trail parallel to US 180 between Santa Clara and Bayard. So really young people can get from Bayard to Santa Clara to use those facilities without having to, you know, have mom and dad drive them, which is kind of a cool thing. So definitely making some things happen in the Village of Santa Clara.
Susan Morée:
All right. Where can readers find these stories, Nick?
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, we debated what to talk about this week because there is so much to find at scdailypress.com.
Happy 4th.