7-23-2024 7:28am

New Cloudcroft Administration Uncovers Disturbing Budget Concerns

Chris Edwards Editor

On July 22, 2024 the new mayor of Cloudcroft, Vincent Turner led a meeting of the village council which addressed some deep concerns and distrubing findings when it came to accountability and budget filings for the village during 2023.

In April of 2024 the Cloudcroft Village Mayor Vincent Turner hosted a 3 day budget review with Veteran Trustees James Maynard and Gail McCoy and newly elected Trustees Timothy King and Trustee Tabitha Foster. The point was a deep dive into prior budgets and a review and planning for 2024.

Signs that something was amiss soon appeared after the villiage trustees had done their deep dive as reported by KALHRadio.org and AlamogordoTownNews.org as
as reported in a prior story of the announced resignation of the Cloudcroft Police Chief, Mike Testa. Following his resignation Village Clerk, Shaela Hemphill, resigned. Her resignation was a shock to some trustees, after receiving praise for managing her first budgeting session for 2024. Then came the resignation of Deputy Chief David Sanchez and Officer Calib Bruce effectively immediately and leaving only 1 officer to remain; Officer Chris Swanson.

Since that time police resources are being addressed and a new village clerk was hired.

With the hiring of a new village clerk Julie Pinson, who was hired on July 1st 2024 and she bas uncovered a plethora of missed filings for village taxes, fees, defaulted loans, and unreconciled bank accounts.

Mountain Top Accounting CPA Julie Speer, who was contracted by the village after the annual budget retreat. Her role is to investigate, report and analyze and she continues to dig deeper into the village’s finances and has found significant issues.

A special meeting of the Village Trustees was called on Monday to bring transparency to what has not been filed and to draft s plan of action.

What has been discovered is a series of missed filings:

The Government Gross Receipts Tax has not been filed since April of 2023
The Wage Withholding Tax has not been filed since January of 2023
The Workers Compensation Fee (WC-1) has not been filed since March of 2022
The Water Conservation Fee has not been filed since July of 2022
The 940 and 941 Employment Taxes have not been filed—the last time they were filed was unknown at the time of the meeting.
The village was in default on three bank loans, and;
The last banking reconciliation was completed on January of 2023

Specific to unpaid payroll taxes the concern is what is unknown, at this time no one knows how much money in total may be owed, including penalties and interest as payments are made the Federal Government will send a statement of any further missed filings and those will have to be paid.

Mayor Turner did report to the trustees that “we've already wrote one check for almost a quarter of a million.”

Mayor Turner hopes that the proactive hiring of a third-party forensic audit as reported prior by the Cloudcroft Reader would put Cloudcroft in good graces with the state and federal agencies and organizations of which the village owes back payments.

Since 2022, the earliest disclosed date of missinv filings, the Village office has undergone lots of staff turnover.

The Cloudcroft Reader has been deep into reporting on the village situation and in their reporting reached out to the former clerk for comment as the findings do not reflect well on her tenure. Her response,

Hemphill said,

“I’m not necessarily surprised about the meeting; however, I believe it should have been addressed a while ago. The Village had been behind on many things for over a year.

This isn’t something that was hidden or kept secret from the mayor [and] council.

Some of us (myself included) were juggling multiple positions with little to no training despite asking for assistance and training. We were just trying to keep our heads above water the majority of the time.

This has been an ongoing issue and I’m glad steps are being taken to finally resolve it so the new staff doesn’t have to bear the same burden the previous staff did.

I’m genuinely glad to see that the new staff has the support of the mayor and council that the previous staff lacked.

I honestly hate that this is the situation; I care about this community immensely and hate that I had to step away under the circumstances I did. However, I’m hopeful things are going to get better for the Village soon.”

Ms. Vega declined to comment to the Cloudcroft Reader. KALHradio.org radio personality on behalf of AlamogordoTownNews.org's Anthony Lucero is on the case and is attempting to gather further comments.

A link to the interview by Anthony Lucer for AlamogordoTownNews.org on KALHRadio.org may be found at:

https://youtu.be/boKjxaJ7ZPM?si=le1SV3s7wXHASknC

A link to view the most recent special meeting of the village of Cloudcroft can be seen at:

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/yCq6HYFobnztmbu7/?mibextid=WC7FNe

Stay tuned to AlamogordoTownNews.org ane KALHRadio.org for further updates.