Fact Check: Rardin Said Six City Manager Contracts Were ‘the Same.’ The City’s Own Records Contradict Him

Alamogordo City Commissioner Josh Rardin told the public that the proposed employment agreement for incoming City Manager Robert Stockwell changes nothing: the same contract, he said, used “six times in a row,with the same severance, the same paid time off, and the same deferred compensation as the last six city managers and so..."

The city’s own records contradict him. Read side by side, the city manager agreements going back to 2012 contain three different kinds of contract, three different severance structures, three different deferred-compensation arrangements, and retirement terms that change from one manager to the next — including a $50,000 benefit written for one man alone. 

Two terms in the Stockwell draft — 180 hours of paid time off handed to him up front, and a $180,000salary roughly 48 percent above the last manager’s — appear in none of the contracts that came before it.

The same contract was not used six times, and the terms Alamogordo City Commissioner Josh Rardin called identical, were not.

The contracts on the record

This review draws on seven city manager agreements executed or drafted between 2012 and 2026: Bob Carter (2012), James R. Stahle (2013), Dr. George Straface (2015), Margaret “Maggie” D. Paluch (2017), Brian L. Cesar (2019), Ricky D. Holden (2023), and the pending Stockwell Draft (2026), Stockwell Agenda Contract. Holden’s 2023 agreement matters most to the comparison, because Holden was the city manager immediately before this appointment and his contract is the closest model for the Stockwell draft.

Each part of Rardin’s claim can be tested against these documents. Each part fails. 

Not one contract, but three

The agreements do not descend from a single recycled form.

Carter’s 2012 document is a “Consulting Agreement.” It engaged him as an independent contractor serving as interim city manager and states plainly that he “is not an employee of the City” and “shall not accrue leave, retirement, insurance, use of City vehicles, or any other benefits.” It carries no deferred salary, no leave, and no severance — none of the terms Rardin says ran consistently through all six.

Stahle (2013) and Straface (2015) share a different format: a numbered-section agreement with a “Compensation and Benefits” article and Public Employees Retirement Association enrollment language. 

Straface’s is explicitly an “Interim City Manager Employment Agreement.”

Only the four most recent — Paluch, Cesar, Holden, and the Stockwell draft — share the lettered “Section 1. Duties” template, and the Stockwell draft’s own redline marks show it was adapted from an earlier “Stephanie Hernandez” version of that form. 

So the contract template or form even changes at least twice across the managers Rardin grouped together. “The same contract six times” treats a contractor’s consulting agreement, two interim-era agreements, and the recent permanent agreements as one document. They are not.

Three different severance structures

Severance is the clearest contradiction of the claim.

Carter received no severance; as a contractor he was entitled to none. 

Straface’s interim agreement also contained no severance, substituting an incentive bonus of up to $15,000 at the conclusion of his term. 

Stahle’s agreement tied severance to length of service on a sliding scale — three months’ salary for up to a year, rising to a six-month maximum after three years.

The flat six-month severance Rardin describes appears only in the most recent permanent agreements: Paluch, Cesar, Holden, and the Stockwell draft. 

That is a term shared by the recent contracts — not, as Rardin said, a term used the same way for the last six city managers. 

Three of those six provided severance on entirely different terms, or none at all.

Paid time off: a credit no predecessor received

Ten days of executive leave per fiscal year does appear across the employment agreements — Stahle, Straface, Paluch, Cesar, Holden, and Stockwell all include it. Carter, the contractor, received none. To that limited degree, the leave allowance is a recurring term.

But the Stockwell draft does not stop where the others did. On top of the 10 days of executive leave and a 22.5-day annual accrual, it credits Stockwell with 180 hours of paid time off up front — “in recognition of the City Manager’s extensive experience and prior employment with the City” — available immediately. No earlier agreement in the set, Holden’s included, front-loads a PTO balance at hire. 

Far from being the same as what came before, the Stockwell draft adds paid time off no predecessor was given, and up front!

Retirement and deferred compensation: two programs, handled differently

Two different programs are at work here, and because both deal with money set aside for the future, they are easy to confuse. 

The first is PERA — the New Mexico Public Employees Retirement Association — a traditional pension that every city employee, the city manager included, is required to join; the city and the employee both pay into it, and it promises a set benefit in retirement based on years of service and salary. 

The second is a 457 plan, a separate and optional savings account much like a private-sector 401(k), in which money is placed in an individual account the employee can draw on later. 

Every city manager has the PERA pension. The 457 is an extra — and whether the city pays for it, and how much, is exactly where the agreements split apart.

On the pension itself, the agreements are not uniform. 

Carter, the contractor, was enrolled in nothing; his consulting agreement states he “shall not accrue leave, retirement, insurance, use of City vehicles, or any other benefits.” 

Straface and Holden were placed in PERA on standard terms.

Stahle’s agreement offered a choice — PERA, or, on filing for exemption, a private-retirement contribution equal to 13.75 percent of his salary. 

Paluch and Cesar were offered a different private alternative, a contribution equal to the employer-paid PERA amount.

Cesar’s agreement went further than any other. On top of the PERA-or-private choice, the City agreed to pay PERA directly for three years of prior-service credit on his behalf — an amount not to exceed $50,000, subject to repayment on a prorated basis if he left within three years. No other city manager, before or after, was given a prior-service-credit purchase like it. It was written for Cesar alone.

The 457 supplement is the piece Rardin specifically called identical, and it is the piece that varies most. 

Carter, Stahle, and Straface have no 457 provision at all. 

Paluch and Cesar may use the city’s 457 — but only at their own expense, with no city money attached. 

Only the two most recent agreements, Holden’s and the Stockwell draft, have the city actually fund the account: if the manager declines or only partially elects insurance, the city pays the cost difference into his 457, up to the IRS annual maximum. 

That is three different treatments — none, employee-paid, and city-paid — of the very benefit Rardin described as the same for everyone, and the city-funded version he may have in mind exists in only the last two contracts, not the last six.

Salary: beyond any precedent

Though salary was not part of Rardin’s specific list, it frames how far the Stockwell draft sits from its predecessors. Stahle was paid $125,000, Paluch $120,000, Cesar $130,000, and Holden — the most recent — $121,375.90. The version circulated to the Commission on June 12 sets initial salary at $180,000 — roughly 48 percent above what the city paid its last permanent manager, and the largest single departure from precedent in the document.

That number shifted as the contract advanced. The template the draft was built on carried $150,000; an earlier markup raised it to $200,000; and the circulated version settled at $180,000. Commissioner Baxter Pattillo sent two versions of the agreement to the commission on June 12, describing the effort in his cover email as “my solo legwork” following an executive session. The records reviewed for this report do not show where, or by whom, the salary was reduced from $200,000 to $180,000.

The verdict 

Rardin told the public that the same contract, with the same severance, paid time off, and deferred compensation, had been used for the last six city managers. 

The records prove otherwise, term by term. 

The last six agreements include a contractor’s consulting agreement that carried no benefits at all and two interim-era agreements written in a different form. 

Severance across the six takes three shapes; deferred compensation takes three more; retirement varies again, down to a $50,000 prior-service-credit purchase the City made for Cesar and no one else. 

And the Stockwell draft adds a 180-hour up-front leave credit and a $180,000 salary that no predecessor agreement contained.

As he framed it — one contract, the same terms, six managers in a row — the claim is false.

Disclosure: The author is the plaintiff in a pending Open Meetings Act enforcement case against the Alamogordo City Commission concerning the city manager hiring process and potential Open Meetings Act violations in the conduct of executive sessions (No. D-1215-CV-2026-00514, Twelfth Judicial District Court). This article is based on seven City of Alamogordo city manager agreements procured via IPRA requests: the 2012 Bob Carter consulting agreement; the 2013 James R. Stahle, 2015 George Straface, 2017 Margaret Paluch, 2019 Brian L. Cesar, and 2023 Ricky D. Holden employment agreements; and the June 2026 Robert Stockwell employment-agreement draft circulated to the City Commission on June 12, and via the agenda for the followup public meeting, together with an earlier redlined markup of the same agreement. Quoted language is drawn directly from those documents. Links to each contract are above to allow transparency to citizens to witness for themselves. 

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