Commission cuts Bernalillo sewer request


By Eric Maddy
The SCORE

Sandoval County commissioners sent a strong message of rebuke to the Town of Bernalillo on Thursday, cutting a $125,000 request to cover a shortfall in the construction of a solid waste filter from the expanded detention center to the town’s new waste treatment center down to only $19,000.

After sharp exchanges between Bernalillo town administrator Stephen Jerge and commissioners Jack Thomas, Dave Bency and Don Leonard, it was Leonard who volunteered $7,500 from his discretionary fund if commissioner Orlando Lucero would contribute $11,500 from his discretionary fund.

Each commissioner is granted a yearly sum of money he can use to fund projects of his choosing.  Each commissioner was given $100,000 in the current fiscal year that ends June 30.

Leonard represents largely the Corrales area, while Bernalillo is in Lucero’s district. The commission unanimously passed Leonard’s proposal, sleaving Jerge and town engineer Bob Paulette muttering as they went out the door.

“I have no comment yet,” Jerge said. “We are grateful for the county commission’s contribution, but it’s nowhere near the construction costs associated with this project.”

In the printed word that comment might sound like a simple disagreement, but the tone in which it was issued reflected a combination of anger, frustration and bitterness.

The commission has contributed almost $2 million over the years for the entire wastewater project, including $87,000 for a prescreening process to filter out solid waste from the detention center before it can reach the Rio Grande, which could place the town in violation of federal requirements. Initial bids on the filtering process were rejected as too costly, so the town later conducted a second process and received a bid $60,000 lower that previously submitted. At that time the town awarded a contract to RMCI Inc. for $211,916, which is l$124,916 than the county allocated, without consulting the county commission about the higher-than-anticipated cost.

Jerge said the town applied the county money to the revenue source to pay back bonds that funded the construction of the $10 million plant that services the entire town, including the detention center.

Thomas said it was his understanding from county public works director Phil Rios that any of the three proposals would have met Environmental Protection Agency standards.

“I don’t know if we even have another $125,000 in the budget,” Thomas said. “My assumption was when Phil came to us and said it cost $87,000, it cost $87,000. And if it didn’t cost $87,000, my understanding was that Bernalillo would pick up the difference.”

County budget director Leroy Arquero was not at the meeting, but county manager Debbie Hays said the only possible source of revenue would be from the county’s water fund. She said $6 million from that fund had been targeted for use on the desalination project.

“We don’t have that in our general fund,” she said. “It’s a policy decision as to where funds should be allocated. If money is pulled from there, it will be pulled from someplace else. That’s the bottom line. We don’t have any money just laying around.”

 County development director Mike Springfield later testified all $10 million in the county’s water fund has been committed to projects, even leaving Corrales out of he loop for its sewer project in this budget.

“All of your $10 million from the water fund has been pledged,” he said. “I have met with the treasurer’s office to try to get an accounting on whatever interest has been accrued, but to date there is no dollar amount. We don’t know how much is left or if any interest is left.”

Thomas also noted the county has spent about $1.5 million to upgrade its disposal facilities to deal with sludge created in both Bernalillo and Rio Rancho.  Given those previous contributions, Thomas was incredulous that Bernalillo officials would ask for additional funding.

“When it come to the Bernalillo sewer system – and no offense – Sandoval County has more than stepped up to he plate,” Thomas said. “To come back and ask for $125,000 more seems to me like the wrong thing to do. And I think we’ve done the right thing.”

Jerge responded: “My reply would be that the screening would be specifically for the Sandoval County Detention Center. It has nothing to do with the sludge or anything else. We’re up against strict EPA mandates. If any of those solids get past and into the Rio Grande, we’re all going to be dealing with the EPA in a manner we don’t care to.

“We were more than grateful for the first round of financial assistance. But the construction costs and bids were higher than we anticipated, and we feel our request is just. That equipment is specifically to the detention facility. We bore the cost of the engineering involved ad we stepped up to the plate with the real estate involved. We stepped up to the plate to the tune of about $50,000 for the preliminary engineering plus an eight-acre lot we have out there that’s worth $200,000 even. We have a quarter of a million dollars into it also. Now we don’t have a final product.

“it’s not a Cadillac, but it will suffice to take care of he solids that are coming from the detention facility and are being dumped into the town’s wastewater treatment facility. The costs are what they are.”

Leonard pointed out he project received $400,000 from former District 1 commissioner Bill Sapien, brining the total county contribution to $1,987,000. He also noted that an agreement between the county and town identified the $87,000 as “full payment of a commitment” for the discharged water and the town’s obligation was to apply the “county funds for the full purchase and installation of the strainer.”

“I don’t think it’s fair for the town to have to bear all of the costs for the discharge that’s coming out of the county facility,” Jerge said before deferring technical questions to Paulette. The engineer said at the time the county committed the $87,000 no bids had been accepted.

That prompted Bency to call Rios forward on the matter. Rios said when the county made its $87,000 pledge, “It was preliminarily engineered. It hadn’t gone out to bid, but they had gone out for pricing to see what the market would bear. I don’t know why right now he market is higher for this type of sewer project. We did take what we thought was sufficient money to be able to recommend to the commission to allow the town to be able to build its treatment facility.”

 Rios disagreed with the characterization by both Bency and Thomas that the initial $89,000 was a “soft number.”
 
“The engineer makes an estimate, and our assumption has always been the engineer makes a high estimate enough to be able to give us (flexibility to accommodate increasing costs),” Rios said. “What we require from our engineering firm is not to give us numbers that we have to factor in by the time it gets bid out because sometimes these projects take six or eight months.

“When you call them soft numbers I believe what we had were pretty close to our numbers at the time. We believed the engineer would have given us good numbers.”

Thomas pressed the issue even further with Rios.

“Talking about hard and soft numbers, were your numbers soft enough that we would be $125,000 short?” he asked. “Or were your numbers hard enough that you put (flexibility) in, even with the anticipation of he price going up?”

“Because we didn’t do the numbers, we believed the numbers that the engineering firm that works for the Town of Bernalillo (Wilson & Company) was giving us good numbers.”

Rios confirmed that the county shared its estimates and proposed contribution with the engineering firm.

Leonard pointed out, “We have put more (money) into Bernalillo than we have into Rio Rancho, and we still have one major community that is going to be moving forward on a sewer project we have an obligation too. That’s Corrales.”

Noting the commission’s attitude, Rios quickly said, “Mr. Chairman, I’m gong to go and sit down” at his seat at the back, drawing a laugh from the audience.

Bency suggested that Bernalillo use some of the gross receipts tax money being generated from the new Wal-Mart, which is technically located in Bernalillo even though it is along NM 528 and will draw many of its customers from Rio Rancho, to leverage a low-interest loan from the New Mexico Finance Authority to make up the difference.   

Jerge said the town had considered such a proposal but the town was already using those funds with the Finance Authority on other projects. He declined to say what those projects were.

In the only other agenda item that drew any discussion, the commission unanimously approved a reorganization of the county’s information technology department. Bency questioned the price tag of such a move and wondered if the proposal couldn’t wait until after budget hearings later this month.

“My concern is that we’re only three months away from the end of the fiscal year, and next month we have our budget hearings,” Bency said. “My question is why can’t wait until the budget time to do this and see what the dollar ramifications are at the same time. My concern is approving something that looks like organizational change without seeing the dollar ramifications yet. “

But Hays said the reorganization would actually save the county some money in salary costs, though she did not say how much.

Bency said he was a strong supporter of the IT department and wanted to make sure all county departments were working toward getting on the same computer system. Currently different county departments utilize different computer systems so, for example, the clerk’s office can’t necessarily share information electronically with the assessor’s office or the development department.

“When it comes to the new administrative building, we should build the IT department first and everything else around it,” Bency said. “If you don’t have communications, you don’t have anything. I think it’s critical.”

Department director Mike Good said the reorganization would make it easier for the county to develop an internal “intranet” where departments could more easily share information.

“I think having a person in an IT operations manager role will be more effective in addressing such a situation simply because a help desk manager really focuses on the help desk activity. If you have someone actually managing software and he operations of the county on a holistic basis, we will have someone spending more time delivering such a product.

“Currently that’s my focus, but I’ve got a lot on my plate right now,” including the county’s troubled broadband project. A proposed contract CH2M Hill for completion of the broadband project was tabled Thursday night.

“The drive behind this is creating some redundancy within the staff so that it’s a team, not just individuals assigned to a particular task.”