County pressured to keep up with roads

County road maintenance was under question at the Socorro County meeting last week.

In April commissioners approved a county road maintenance list that was just under 1,200 miles. Commissioner Craig Secatero said two constituents complained to him about the county manager telling them “he could not touch the roads” in Alamo.

“The board of commission gave you a directive in regards to the roads on the Alamo, which is to continue to maintain until otherwise stated,” Secatero said to County Manager Andrew Lotrich at their regular meeting, “Let me refresh your mind, we are the board of commissioners, and you answer to us.”

Lotrich said he hadn’t had any conversations with residents in Alamo in the past five months.

“I would like to know, to be able to clarify, to be able to get this,” Lotrich said.

Secatero said he was reluctant to give the information due to the nature of the conversations being unprofessional.

Lotrich said the roads are being maintained according to policy, and the road department manager has been the point of contact for residents. He said currently, the emergency management and the State Department of Transportation are involved in addressing water flow and culvert issues on the Alamo roads.

Public Input

Marty Greenwood, a resident of County Road 234, spoke during public input about the lack of maintenance on his road.

“We were the first road in the county to get washed out, and we’re the very last road to get a little bit of maintenance,” Greenwood said, “I’m a little bit disgusted, because we’ve been very patient waiting to get that road fixed.”

He said he felt threatened by a comment from the county road manager, who he said told him not to speak to the grader operator.

“I’ve been told several stories, and I feel like I’m lied to quite a bit, because I was told that they were going to fix the road when they got through working on the roads at the Alamo. And I hear this commissioner complaining that they never did work on the road at the Alamo,” Greenwood said.

Village Road MOU

Lorich said he prepared a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to present to the village of Magdalena due to concerns about the disrepair of Tenth Street.

“What we wanted to do was to take the initial steps ourselves, rather than wait for the village,” Lotrich said.

Commissioner Danny Monette said he supported the partnership with the village but was concerned about grader availability.

“I think this MOU is very well written. It states that the county will do it at their convenience, and it says that more than once in there. So I really like that, because we have so many roads, we’ve had so many washouts lately that we’re not keeping up with the projects we need to do,” Monette said.

Lotrich said the county currently has three graders and is considering purchasing two more, which would bring the total to five operational graders.

Commissioners unanimously approved the MOU. The dollar amount allocated for the road maintenance will remain the same as in previous agreements with the village, Lorich said.

Detention center

During verbal reports, Socorro County Community Alternatives Program Director Athena Gassoumis said she has been working with the county manager to budget for medical staff at the detention center.

She said they have ten detainees that require to be housed in other facilities, two for disciplinary reasons and eight due to medical reasons which costs the county $60,000 a month.

“If we could have at least an RN who wants to be a county employee, that would be helpful. It’s kind of a double-edged sword. It takes away liability if they’re not housed in the facility, but it’s also an incredible amount of money,” Gassoumis said.

She said another consideration is that funders are interested in whether the county has medical staff in place, which could lead to additional funding opportunities.

“I hope that you all had an opportunity to see the wonderful report from the detention center and all the photographs of the fair, the county fair, and the ribbons and all the great work that’s being done,” Gassoumis said.

After the report, Secatero said he wanted to direct comments to the county manager about his continued concerns about the detention report submitted by County Detention Manager Eddie Garcia.

“It’s overloaded with photos. There is not enough information. And again I’m going to direct you to meet with Mr. Eddie and tell him that he needs to beef up his report. Did you hear me?” Secatero said to Lotrich, “ I want to make it clear that this report needs to be beefed up.”

After the meeting Garcia said he did not want to comment on the complaint from Secatero at this time.

In other business, Paul Harden, the secretary of the Socorro County Historical Society, gave a presentation about the Camino Real historic trail and the efforts to preserve and mark it. The commissioners approved an amendment to the Joint Powers Agreement for the Opioid Response Collaborative, which changes the process for how other municipalities can join. They also approved a four-year agreement with Puerto Seguro for essential care and maintenance services.

The next meeting will be held at 5 p.m. on November 10 at the Socorro County Annex.