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Socorro Mayor Ravi Bhasker proposed the purchase of a property to develop a recreational water park.
“I want to present the council with a proposal to acquire the Hefner gravel Pit Lopezville Road,” Bhasker said.
He said the pit was appraised at $137,000 and could serve as a recreational and overflow area for their ditches.
“They say when they get flash floods, they have so much water coming in from the arroyos into the ditches that they need to remove some of that water, and that would be a perfect spot,” Bhasker said.
“If the council would allow me to go ahead and try to negotiate the price with Mr. Heffner, I would appreciate that, and we have the money; we’ve done fairly well with our gross receipts.” Bhasker said.
He said the city has been working with the environmental department on the pond project for about 15 years.
“What they offered was that, if we owned a pond, they would help us, for gratis, develop a landscaping scheme and maybe a camp ground type of thing,” Bhasker said
He said they could have water toys and kayaks; he gave the City of Santa Rosa’s water park as an example.
The council also talked about strategies to revitalize vacant buildings and how they could support economic development. Bhasker suggested using the economic development fund to hire a person to promote Socorro.
Public Comment
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During public comment, Manuel Gonzales, the Socorro Electric Co-op CEO, introduced himself to the council. Councilors thanked him for his service and welcomed him to Socorro.
Councilor Anton Salome asked Gonzales what his philosophy was on industrial rates, for attracting manufacturing companies.
“The way the cooperatives are set up, all our tariffs, our rates, are filed with the PRC, so it’s approved by them. So once that’s filed on there, it’s hard to change those things. It’s not impossible. So I believe in economic development on a given whatever the co-op can assist in, whether it’s deposits, whether it’s looking at a certain miles of line or underground free.” Gonzales said.
Bhasker said his understanding in reaching the PRC suit requires the SEC to develop economic rates.
“I don’t know if you read it. I read the whole thing. You were supposed to develop economic rates,” Bhasker said, “The other thing they said is you need to give us LED lighting rates. So those are the two specific things, I know they said, and that’s the suit that they took the Supreme Court.”
Councilor Damian Ocampo asked Gonzales about his experience with renewable energy.
“We set records in Arizona for renewables,” Gonzales said. “We’re very familiar with renewables, so we take the all and above approach of renewables, where you have to be careful is they don’t pass ramp. So, for example, the battery storage that looks just tremendous. The technology is not 100% yet.”
Councilors and the mayor told Gonzales they were happy he was open to talking and working together on solutions.
“I’m glad that we can have dialog now, and hopefully we can find get creative and find ways to potentially bring rates down for customers, or at least look at it and work it within the community,” Councilor Joel Partridge said.
In other business, Leah Tevis and Rhiannon Vieceli were appointed to the animal shelter committee and Peggy Lopez was appointed to the police oversight commission.
Bhasker confirmed the city would not pay monetary fines for the OSHA violations.
In department reports, Steve Mathieu reported that the siding on the rodeo complex has made a significant difference, and new stables for livestock will be constructed.
Chelsea Jones of the Socorro Library reported on the 100-year celebration of the library and updates to the elevator and stucco. She also said participants from the RISE program will be helping the Friends of the Library move into their new building.
Lloyd Martinez said they will focus on the Finely Gym’s outside and then seek funding for the inside. He also reported preparing Sedillo Park to be ready before the first baseball game.
Mike Lucero reported that the landfill receives about 100 tons of trash a day. Ruby Lopez reported that new gas rates are going into effect on February 1. Michael Padilla reported that the new gym was open to the public and that the Community Arts Party was scheduled for the first Saturday of February.
The next meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. on February 4.
