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At last week’s City of Socorro meeting, Mayor Ravi Bhasker announced he would prepare documents to formally request from the New Mexico Department of Transportation to reduce the city’s ambulance service area to Socorro city limits if the county doesn’t provide the financial support requested.
“The state statute states the county has to take care of the jail. That’s a state statute. But there’s no state statute that says that we have to provide the ambulance service, other than it was voluntarily imposed on us by ourselves,” Bhasker said.
He said the county has been receiving free services from the city for years, including ambulance, animal control, recreation and library services. He argued the county is not contributing financially to these services despite having the means to do so. Bhasker noted they’ve also given their employees raises while not supporting the city’s needs.
“We’ve been giving it away for way too long,” Bhasker said.
Donald Monette, city manager said that one thing that caught his eye is that the county is proposing that if they are 30% of the call then they control 30% of the income.
“I thought that was pretty interesting; even if they are 30% of our calls, we don’t collect 100% of that 30%, so first of all, they shouldn’t be asking to control our budget,” Monette said.
Bhasker said he would give the county until the next budget cycle in July.
Bhasker said Magdalena would be a separate issue. He believed they were in no financial position to support $80,000 for EMT, but they could potentially help in other ways.
“I would ask them to help us acquire ambulances in the future, and perhaps let us use the new ambulance that they have there and trade us for an older one that they can have if they need it. But again, that’s two different tracks,” Bhasker said.
Although Lotrich is scheduled to be on the next city meeting Bhasker said he would not negotiate with him at that time.
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“It’s inappropriate for the county manager to come and start negotiating with the city council before the administration,” Bhasker said.
Socorro Fire Chief Lawrence Baca said the bottom line is nobody wants to cut services, but they are in a position where they can’t keep up with the call volume.
“We don’t have enough people to handle that call volume, and three people are going to help, but it’s not going to fix the problem. That’s just a minimum,” Baca said.
Fire Academy
Councilor Deborah Dean brought up concerns about the Fire Academy potentially moving to Santa Fe and comments she has heard about the lack of restaurants open on the weekends for first responders who attend the Fire Academy.
“I know it’s not really in our control, but what are the things that we can do to help support these? Can we keep these things in Socorro instead of seeing them leave?” Dean said.
Bhasker said the Fire Academy in Socorro received a $900,000 state appropriation but a $40 million appropriation is being considered for a potential new location in Santa Fe.
He confirmed that he has expressed concerns about moving the Fire Academy out of Socorro and was reassured by the governor’s office and fire marshal that they will still hold events in Socorro.
