Saturday, July 7, 2007

Socorro USDA office to close

Services will be offered out of Los Lunas office

Louis Calderon El Defensor Chieftain Intern

The Socorro USDA Rural Development office will be shutting down for good on Friday, July 13, because the state of New Mexico will close five of its 10 offices in accordance with a newly developed business plan.

Beginning Monday, July 16, the Los Lunas office will service residents of Socorro and Catron County, while the Carlsbad office will service residents of Lincoln County.

The changes will not only occur statewide, but they will occur nationwide, in an effort to make the programs offered by Rural Development more efficient.

"I clearly want to see a geographic dispersion of programs around the state," said Ryan Gleason, USDA Rural Development state director.

Even after closing down five offices, there will be no layoffs or pay cuts. Gleason said employees at the five offices to be closed would have employment opportunities at the other five offices still in operation.

The employees will have to either relocate or commute, however. Gleason said some of the employees chose to retire, while others applied for different openings or chose to find employment elsewhere.

Gleason attributed these changes to two major problems: employment and accessibility.

Nationwide, Rural Development had a reduction in full-time employees. New Mexico had a full-time equivalence of about 54 workers.

New Mexico wasn't providing access to all of the programs that were available. Gleason said out of 80 programs authorized by Congress, the state was only using about 35-40 programs regularly.

"We're finding that most communities in New Mexico weren't getting good access," Gleason said. "I believe that everyone in New Mexico pays a lot of taxes and they should benefit from these programs."

Rural Development will now expand services in all of its program areas, including housing, business and community programs, such as water and wastewater projects. Offices were only providing service in housing programs, and the residents who wanted service in Rural Development's other programs were at a disadvantage and had to travel to the state office in Albuquerque.

When Gleason learned of the changes, he went around to every office and showed the employees the data. He solicited information from the employees to get their input on the matter and took it all into consideration.

"It was as collaborative a process as possible," he said.

There were suggestions of moving more employees into certain offices to help reduce the workload. There were also opposing viewpoints by the employees about who should be the top priority. Some felt the taxpayer should be the No. 1 priority, while others felt the employer should be the No. 1 priority.

With the idea of using all of the programs available, Gleason said each office will send one person to each community to discuss the different programs they can benefit from.

"We want to improve the presence in the communities," he said.

Offices will now be responsible for delivering every available program, and the state will be responsible for training employees about the programs.

"This will give the employees the opportunity to learn about a variety of programs for career advancement," Gleason said.

With the closures, there will only be five Rural Development offices plus the state office. The five offices will be distributed geographically in all parts of the state.

The times and office days for the Catron, Lincoln and Socorro counties will be released when they are available.

lcalderon@dchieftain.com

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