Pump Was No Surprise: Timberon Water Board’s Emergency Meeting Draws Scrutiny

Timberon, N.M. — July 17, 2026

For six straight days, the only consistent public accounting of the Timberon Water and Sanitation District’s (TWSD) struggling transfer pump came not from the district’s official channels, but from a sitting board member’s Facebook updates — posted to two large public-facing community pages, “Timberon, NM” (roughly 13,300 followers) and “Timberon, NM – UNFILTERED” (roughly 2,200 members), giving the updates a far wider public reach than the district’s own website or noticing practices.

Then, on July 16, the board called an emergency meeting the same day it was held — to approve spending on a pump problem that, by its own director’s account, had not materially changed in nearly a week.

Residents and open-government advocates say the sequence raises real questions about whether the meeting complied with New Mexico’s Open Meetings Act (OMA).

The Timeline

Saturday, July 11 — Director Jesse “JJ” Duckett posted a “Quick Water Update” to the community Facebook group Timberon, NM – UNFILTERED, reporting that the transfer pump at the water plant “is still being used until it can be replaced,” and that it was “currently operating at about 75% capacity.”

Tuesday, July 14, 5:00 p.m. — TWSD held its regularly scheduled board meeting, noticed on July 11 per the district’s 72-hour posting requirement. The published agenda contained no line item referencing the transfer pump; new business covered a director appointment, a bank authorization, standby-fee liens, a potential foreclosure process, a leak-detection crew proposal, and SCADA system expansion. Duckett’s Facebook update posted that same day again described the pump as running at “about 75% capacity” and reported it “will be replaced soon.”

Wednesday, July 15  — Duckett’s update again described the pump at “about 75% capacity,” now stating it “will be replaced Friday” — establishing a replacement date two days out.

Thursday, July 16 — TWSD posted a “NOTICE OF EMERGENCY MEETING,” authorized by Chairman Otis Price, for a meeting the same day at 1:00 p.m. The agenda’s stated reason: “The district’s water transfer pump… is operating at severely decreased capacity and is no longer able to fill the community tanks quickly enough to supply water to all households. This condition is worsening and requires immediate Board action.

The board authorized an emergency purchase not to exceed $15,000. Duckett’s Facebook update posted that same day, however, again described the pump as operating at “about 75% capacity” and again cited the pump as being “replaced Friday” — identical to the prior day’s figures and timeline, with no described change in condition.

So which is it? Severely diminished capacity or 75% capacity? Who made the call? 

Friday, July 17 — Duckett’s update reported the transfer pump “is scheduled to be replaced today,” consistent with the timeline given two days earlier.

The Notice Requirements at Issue

TWSD’s own bylaws (Article 5) require that any public notice state the type of meeting, who authorized it, when it was posted, and the date, time, and place of the meeting, and that the agenda accompany the notice. For emergency meetings specifically, Section 5.06(C) limits their use to “unforeseen circumstances, which demand immediate action to protect the health, safety or property of citizens… or to protect the public body from substantial financial loss,” and restricts the agenda to only the emergency subject matter.

The state Open Meetings Act (NMSA 1978 § 10-15-1) requires public bodies to determine “reasonable notice” annually by resolution, generally interpreted (including by TWSD’s own prior resolutions and comparable special-district resolutions statewide) as: 10 days for regular meetings, 3 days for special meetings, and 24 hours for emergency meetings — with the 24-hour emergency floor further reducible only when “a threat of personal injury or property damage requires less notice.

TWSD’s July 16 notice, posted and held the same day, is questionable at best a violation of state and its own OMA guidelines. 

The Compliance Question

The gap between the district’s emergency framing and Duckett’s contemporaneous public updates is the crux of the concern. The OMA’s “unforeseen circumstances” standard is generally understood to require something that could not reasonably have been addressed through ordinary notice — not a known, ongoing condition that the district itself had been narrating publicly, with a repair already scheduled, for most of a week.

Specific points residents and observers have raised:

• The pump’s performance (75% capacity) was reported as unchanged from July 11 through July 16 in the only consistent public updates available.

• A replacement date (Friday, July 18) had already been set and communicated on July 15 — a day before the “emergency” was declared — undercutting the claim that the board only learned of a worsening condition immediately before the meeting.

• The problem existed, and was known, during the July 14 regular meeting, where it did not appear on the agenda.

• Under the bylaws’ 3-day special-meeting option, the board had time between July 14 and July 16 to notice a special meeting rather than an emergency one, which would have preserved the standard public-comment sign-up window and 72-hour agenda posting.

None of this definitively establishes an OMA violation. But the public record as it stands shows a meeting justified as an urgent, “worsening” development that the district’s own director described, on the same day, in terms identical to the several days prior is a true contradiction. 

A Documented Pattern of Non-Compliance

This is not the Board’s first encounter with state open-government enforcement. In a November 10, 2025 letter, the Governmental Counsel and Accountability Bureau (GCA) of the New Mexico Department of Justice (NMDOJ) — the state office that enforces the OMA — told the TWSD Board of Directors that it had “repeatedly violated the OMA, including as recently as this year,” with some violations dating back to 2023. The letter, signed by Assistant Attorney General Kristin E. Hovie, was based on GCA’s own independent review of the Board’s 2025 meetings combined with several citizen-filed complaints stretching back to 2023.
Among the violations the GCA formally confirmed: the Board improperly closed its January 14, 2025 and January 27, 2025 meetings by citing “attorney-client privileged matters” — which the letter states outright is not a recognized OMA exception; it improperly closed its November 26, 2024 meeting to receive an IT contractor briefing without identifying any valid statutory basis; and it improperly closed its May 24, 2024 meeting behind a vague agenda description and another invalid “attorney-client privilege” citation, during which it discussed transferring TWSD property to the Timberon Development Council. For that May 2024 violation specifically, the GCA determined the Board’s resulting action “must be redone to properly cure the Board’s violation,” noting that curing an OMA violation is not retroactive — it only takes effect from the date the cure is actually made.

The GCA’s letter set three concrete deadlines: all Board members and staff were to complete OMA training by January 2026; the Board was required to “rectify violations in an OMA-compliant public meeting no later than May 2026,” including publicly re-discussing matters improperly handled in closed session and re-voting on any resulting actions “as if they had never been voted on”; and the Board was to report its corrective actions back to NMDOJ. A review of TWSD’s publicly posted agendas from February through July 2026 — including the February 10, April 14, and May 12 regular meetings — found no agenda item reflecting the specific public acknowledgment, re-discussion, or re-votes the GCA’s letter required. Based on the public record reviewed, it is not clear the Board met its own May 2026 corrective deadline, raising the question of whether the same pattern the GCA already flagged — procedural shortcuts around the Act’s notice and closure requirements — is now recurring in the form of the July 16 emergency meeting.

The complete letter of finding by the AG can be found at 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NTBGwjoZaJpJhVtEmKi7rJL-UBYy8EsM/view?usp=drivesd

Attorney General Review

Some residents say they intend to raise, or have raised, the matter with the New Mexico Attorney General’s office, which has enforcement authority over Open Meetings Act violations. This report has not independently confirmed that a formal complaint has been filed via this link: https://secure.nmdoj.gov/ECS/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/ECSIntakeItems/Introduction?i=6

Any such review, if and when confirmed, will be reported separately.

This article is based on TWSD’s official meeting agendas, TWSD bylaws (revised 2025), and publicly viewable Facebook posts by Director JJ Duckett in the group “Timberon, NM – UNFILTERED.” It is intended for informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice or a finding of any violation. Alamogordo Town News will be tracking further updates. 

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