Commission schedule confuses commissioner

New draft home rule charter introduced

The Taos Home Rule Charter Commission, which has met almost exclusively on Wednesdays since its formation in March, discovered the pitfalls last week of holding meetings that begin at alternatingly different times: Commissioner Stephens Hall misgauged the start time for last Wednesday’s (May 17) meeting, showed up 40 minutes late and, eventually, came in hot.

After listening to several members of the public who participated in a charter workshop session, Hall launched into an invective against the discussion commissioners were having about a new draft charter, which was introduced by Chairman Luis Reyes at the commission’s May 10 meeting. That meeting was aborted, somewhat ironically — Reyes being the CEO of Kit Carson Electric Cooperative — due to what turned out to be a prolonged power outage.

“This particular item was not discussed at the April 26 meeting, so I don’t understand why it’s here,” Hall said. “As far as I’m concerned, we really shouldn’t be discussing this. I think it’s wrong, actually, given what has been said in all of the previous meetings about incorporating public input, when Mr. Reyes, on his own — let me read you something.”

Hall then apologized for being late, explaining he’d looked at the May 10 agenda, which showed a meeting schedule that began at 4 p.m. and figured the May 17 meeting would begin at 5:30 p.m., since commissioners agreed early on to alternate early and late start times every other meeting. The commission’s June 1 meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m.

“I’ll begin with a question that deserves and demands an answer: Mr. Reyes, did you create — that is, did you think through, design, layout and write — the ‘home rule charter draft’ by yourself, or did you have any manner of assistance in creating your draft?” Hall asked.

Reyes, along with Secretary Judy Torres, was absent from the May 17 meeting, but told the Taos News on Tuesday (May 24) that he crafted the draft charter on his own.

“There’s been no influence other than me sitting down and reading stuff in between everything else we do,” he said. “This has been a kind of a labor of love. This is a template and any commissioner or the public can add and delete as appropriate.”

Reyes said he took comments Hall had made previously, about the commission’s monumental work load and tight deadline, to heart.

“I’m just trying to give us a head start,” he said, outlining four elements that he chose to focus on: voting and elections, forms of governance, procurement and purchasing contracts and a minimum wage.

For discussion purposes, the draft charter states: “We believe in the right to a living wage of $25 per hour for all hourly employees, including service personnel, and Reyes said the town could choose to craft its own procurement code to formalize a preference for local labor, construction and other types of companies.”

The third issue Reyes wants the public and commissioners to focus on is the town’s form of governance; specifically the relationship between, and the powers of the mayor, manager and council.

“Do you want a strong mayor, weak council, which basically is what we have today; where a mayor makes all appointments, appoints a manager — the mayor is in a very strong position, plus the mayor breaks a tie,” Reyes said. “Or do we want to give more authority to the council, and maybe there’s five councilors to give an example and the mayor only votes to make a tie.”

The draft charter borrows ranked-choice voting from Santa Fe’s election code, and establishes a process for voter initiatives, recalls and referendums.

At the beginning of the meeting, Commissioner Jacob Caldwell described Reyes’ effort at drafting a charter as “an update on [the charter] Commissioner [Vince] Bowers’ originally drafted, that was fairly comprehensively a combined template largely based on the City of Santa Fe and the Grants charter as a starter point, but really mixing in a lot of the values we’ve heard so far in these meetings.”

Reyes said cultural and economic similarities between the City Different and Taos made Santa Fe’s charter useful to borrow from, while Grant’s similar, rural population and the fact that it is a former mining community — like Questa and, to a lesser degree, Taos, made its charter a good starting point.

“I don’t know if this agenda item is so much for us to discuss that draft as much as it is an effort to make that effort available to the public,” Caldwell said.

All meeting documents, draft charters and miscellaneous reading material and background on municipal charters in New Mexico are available at taosgov.com/578/ Home-Rule-Charter-Commission.

Commissioners also discussed the best way to disseminate information about the pros and cons of adopting a charter, with Mary Lane Leslie suggesting a flier could be included in electric bills, and Vice Chair Eugene Sanchez suggesting water bills as an ideal way to inform Taoseños about the charter commission’s goings-on.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t think we know what we’d put in the water bill well enough to contemplate that right now,” said Jacob Caldwell, who has thus far served as the commission’s resident skeptic. “There’s all these one-page resources, and I don’t think they’d be effective to convey what we’d be wanting people to absorb in that mailing.”