City of Alamogordo Capital Meeting Advocates Want Priority to Water, Streets, Community Gardens

The City of Alamogordo held a well attended public meeting on the City's 2026-2030 Infrastructure Capital Improvement Project Plan (ICIP) this Thursday, June 6, 2024 at 5:00 PM at the Sgt. Willie Estrada Memorial Civic Center located at 800 E 1st Street Alamogordo. 

The staff on site consisted of the Ast. City Manager, a project manager, the finance director and one City Commissioner Mr. Tapley. The meeting hosted and conducted by the city grant writer Deborah Osborne. Commissioner Sharon McDonald was mentioned as planning to attend but double booked. The staff said she is a regular at almost every public meeting. 

Staff thanked the participants and said this was one of the most well attended and vocal discussions of any public input meeting they have had in recent memory concerning capital requests.

Deborah Osborne named the top five projects in the city's five-year Infrastructure Capital Improvement Plan (ICIP) for 2025 through 2029. A handout was provided listing the many projects on the list with water system improvements as the dominant item on the 5 year plan.

There were minimal road improvements listed and staff justified that decision as suggesting there are other funding sources for roads projects. The commission must affirm a 5 year list that is compiled by staff as suggestions and the commission approved list must be turned into the state by July 11th. 

More public feedback is encouraged with emails to be delivered to dosborne@ci.alamogordo.nm.us and copied to the city commissioners who’s email addresses are found at 
https://ci.alamogordo.nm.us/Directory.aspx?did=60

There were several supporters of With Many Hands Alamogordo and Community Power New Mexico advocating for water projects, the on the schedule community gardens project and fencing need, and for public space to be created to host community organizations.

Leaders for both organizations, Courtney McCrary and Evan Lambert spoke and their supporters had a large contingent speak on their behalf and on behalf of funding water and road projects. 

One gentleman raised concerns about the browning of the golf course grounds and the loss of over 100 members due to a failure of upkeep even though the course has received several million in state funding grants the last several years for water line improvements. Staff said it was being addressed.

A few others in the audience raised a concern that the drying and decay of the golf course was not unique, that several of the area parks were falling into brown spaces and disrepair despite past funding. 

Another individual raised a concern about maintenance and upkeep of the cemetery and that the flat headstones are severely neglected. He suggested funding should be prioritized as well as effort towards improving maintenance. City staff said a new wall near the entrance would soon be upgraded. The constituent said he had family in the cemetery and the city neglect is a concern and disrespectful to his family and the families who’s members are laid to rest at the cemetery. 

Much discussion focused around water and there are many water projects on the list but the city team emphasized that being on the list is no guarantee of funding but does increase the ability to seek funding. 

Further dialogue evolves around a potential holding pond up be built in the city that would have recreational benefits and fishing but the primary purpose would be water storage; that project peaked much interest but it is not the highest priority and is not yet funded. 

There was also discussion on traffic mitigation and two former police and sheriff’s department officers asked why the city no longer had a dedicated traffic enforcement department focused on speeders and reckless drivers. Mention was made of the two flipped cars on Wednesday and excessive speeding down First, Scenic, Aspen, the inner city and lack of response times by APS. City staff suggested staffing continues to be an ongoing issue and they recently secured grants that could pay double time to increase scheduling for traffic enforcement officers. 

There were grumblings by several folks around city government communications and transparency and the Ast. City Manager emphasized that Rick Holden the new city manager was focused on cleaning up past issues, increasing transparency and that new systems of public communications and transparency systems were being considered and would soon be implemented especially around the areas of city budgets, spending and accountability systems for transparency. 

The meeting covered a lot of information in a very short period of time but sentiment from most participants after the meeting was they were glad they attended and happy with the level of feedback they were getting from the city staff hosting the meeting. 

A question was raised as to why more of the commissioners nor mayor were not there, but he staff explained they would be presenting an overview of the public meeting to the commission at the next regular meeting. 

Commissioner Tapley was present and spoke of his appreciation to hear the feedback directly and of seeing a larger than usual and engaged audience. 

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