The need to become forward thinkers, promoters of civility

Some folks might like what I have to say this week, others will not.

And that’s OK.

We all have opinions. I get to voice my opinion here every week freely.

A reader asked what I thought of the ongoing battle between Socorro Electric Cooperative and the City of Socorro. Talk about a loaded question.

So please bear with me when I explain my thoughts and rationale.

Back in the day, when I lived in the hinterlands of rural Minnesota (not far from the Canadian border), our rural cooperative was our lifeline.

When I lived there in the late 1980s, the co-op provided us with electricity, telephone service, propane and propane tanks, and antenna structures. In later years, they added internet service, as well as solar panels and wind generators. It was one-stop shopping.

Recently, I read in their local community newspaper that the co-op would be expanding its all-fiber optic network to the GigaZone to more than 1,500 locations in 2024.

The co-op also announced in an ad in that same paper it would be teaching classes on cyber security in various communities within the rural cooperative’s district.

I’m trying to paint the picture here of services available in a rural area; not unlike rural New Mexico.

The differences are:

1. In rural Minnesota, it’s darn cold in the winter… minus 40 at times—and in rural New Mexico, it’s doggone hot in the summer.

2. One rural cooperative took a progressive view of adding services for its customers to help it survive into the future; the other has avoided adding major additional services for its customers.

3. One is growth-driven; the other is driven by debt.

When I moved to Socorro back in 2018, I was a bit dismayed to learn I couldn’t get internet services at Socorro Electric Cooperative. In fact, I had to go to SEC for my electric services, the City of Socorro for my gas hookup, and Century Link for my internet service—three different entities, where I only had to make one visit for the same services in rural Minnesota… and that was back in the late 1980s.

It’s ironic two years ago, in April 2022, SEC finally considered building a fiber backbone to enhance its performance. At that time, they were designing about 45 miles of a fiber backbone system to connect substations and had secured a grant from the New Mexico Department of Information to start a feasibility study.

From my point of view … it seems as though SEC is entering the broadband game a little too late. If the SEC board had been more progressive in their thinking, this could have been explored 20 years earlier.

Now SEC’s General Manager says the board once again is looking to increase its rates in the next year once another cost-of-service study is done. Only this time, in a KUNM public radio report, the General Manager says the co-op estimates its proposal could be three or four times the original request of $1.2 million.

Ouch!

Another big punch is that the City of Socorro remains committed to forming its own municipal electrical utility.

Why? SEC’s rates are too expensive to lure new business opportunities into our community. SEC’s rates are a deterrent to growing businesses. If rural communities are going to survive and thrive into the next century, we need lower electric rates.

We only have to look north to see what the communities in Valencia County are doing to make certain their towns, villages and cities thrive into the next century. Last week, the Sky Ranch Solar Farm near the city of Belen started turning protons into electrons.

The Sky Ranch Solar Center is a 1,600-acre solar farm, with a 190-megawatt solar array and 50-megawatt, four-hour battery energy storage center.

The array is at the northern end of the master-planned Rancho Cielo area of Belen, west of Interstate 25 and south of El Cerro de Los Lunas.

Even our very own state Rep. Gail Armstrong (R-49) called the project “the beginning of helping Valencia County move forward.” In her opinion, she said. “This is the kind of project we need in New Mexico. I will also say, let’s do all energy and do it responsibly.”

While I can sympathize with the co-op’s financial pain (everyone has gone through tough times in their life); I can also sympathize with the city’s need to move and grow our community.

However, I can’t sympathize with the coop’s continual social media bitter backbiting.

For the sake of humanity have a civil conversation rather than one that is more than a “Katty Karen Catfight” on Facebook. Conversations like that continue to downgrade our communities and our businesses.

Be more like my favorite Indiana Fever basketball player, Caitlin Clark.

Life may throw you a bad pass, but you pick yourself up or get your lip out of your boot and promote the positives.

You might be surprised what a dose of civility or positivity can accomplish.