Nick Seibel, editor and publisher of the Silver City Daily Press, covers top stories each week on the Silver City Report. This week, the Town of Silver City searches for a new town manager, the Town of Silver City considers a new recycle program and Silver Consolidated is moving some of its sports activities, and more.
Susan Morée:
The town of Silver City still doesn't have a permanent town manager. What are they going to do?
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, it's previous longtime town manager, Alex Brown, resigned effective at the beginning of the year. And since his departure, the assistant town manager, Jackie Alet, has basically been filling in. And there was a lot of momentum among some members, at least, of the town council. keeping her on long term as the permanent manager. And she announced earlier this month at a town council meeting that basically that was not something she was interested in doing. And so since then, the council has really had to make some decisions about how they're going to move forward on a permanent basis. And so at a special meeting that was held last week, they made the decision that they are going to hire an external search firm and do a nationwide search for Silver City's next town manager in order to stay in line with the state procurement guidelines. They basically assigned one of the town councilors to go out and get some quotes from several of the potential search firms and the council can come back at their meeting next month and make some decisions in terms of who they actually need to hire and what the actual cost will be there. Their goal is to have a permanent town manager on board around the 1st of the year.
Susan Morée:
Okay, big shoes to fill to replace Alex Brown, I think.
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, absolutely.
Susan Morée:
Silver City is talking about recycling again. Tell us about that.
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, Silver City, like a lot of communities, had a single stream curbside recycling program for years and years, and actually a good use rate for that among its residents. But that whole model broke several years ago when China, which took most of this bailed single stream recycling in with a lot of plastic waste in particular, they announced that they just weren't going to allow that into the country any longer, which kind of broke the whole model that Silver City and a whole lot of communities were using for the recycling programs. And that was the end of curbside recycling here. Since then, there was a nonprofit that was doing like a regular recycling drop off collection until recently. And there's also a sort of a private outfit that has been doing some subscription-based curbside recycling on a small scale. But one of the things that new Mayor Simon Wheaton-Smith did was have the town council appoint a reuse and recycle committee. And one of the things that committee did was hold a town hall meeting last Saturday where members of the community basically got together and then broke into focus groups to look at what a future curbside recycling program might work in Silver City and how that might be paid for. The big focus is, of course, you have to find an outlet for the recyclables that you pick up. So what do you pick up? What do you do with them? What are some more close to home uses for some of the things that are now going out and being buried in the landfill? One of the top options that came out of that town hall meeting is the idea of a sort of a large-scale recycling or sorry, large scale composting operation that would take yard waste, that kind of thing, combine it with food waste. They feel like that would be something that would have a lot of use from residents and would also have a lot of positive benefits for the landfill because those things when they go into the landfill ultimately end up generating a lot of methane, which is problematic in terms of controlling those emissions into the atmosphere. And one of the things that landfills here and everywhere really struggle with. So they feel like that's a good starting point, but they also have several other ideas for ways that they might be able to move forward and probably more to come on that as well.
Susan Morée:
Okay. And the Silver City is getting ready to close a sports complex. Tell us what's going on there.
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, no formal decisions, but that definitely seems to be the direction that the school district is taking. Silver Consolidated Schools has since 1997 leased what's known as the Ben Altamirano Sports Complex off of the 32nd Street Bypass. It's a complex of baseball, softball, and soccer fields that the school district is in charge of, takes care of, and that the Town of Silver City contributes to utilities and some of the costs there. Back in the 1990s when that was first constructed, it was leased from the state land office for $5,000 a year. And that has since gone up to a little more than $11,000 a year. And if they sign a new lease on that, basically they're looking at that continuing to increase on a regular basis. So since the school district's looking to spend some money from a $24 million bond issue approved back in 2024, they've started looking at how they can improve other fields that are both on school district property and closer to the students that use them so they don't have to worry about transportation back and forth from, particularly, the high school to those fields.
Susan Morée:
All right. And where can readers find more about these stories, Nick?
Nick Seibel:
You can find this and more 24/7 at scdailypress.com.