County manager addresses issues
Editor's Note: The
Score conducted this in-depth interview with Sandoval County manager
Debbie Hays on Oct. 31.
THE SCORE: I’d like to thank you for graciously agreeing to participate and being the first interview subject of Q&A for The SCORE. I really appreciate your support of the project. I could tell your enthusiasm at the (Sandoval County) Commission meeting (where the announcement of the launching of The SCORE was made) and I thank you for taking the time this morning. HAYS: Certainly. It’s my pleasure. I think it’s overdue.
BOND ISSUE ELECTIONS
THE SCORE: Let’s start with the breaking news of the day. I’ll let you play one of those TV pundit-types and give your thumbnail analysis about the Sports Complex North (bond issue) in Rio Rancho being defeated overwhelmingly.
HAYS: I have to admit that I have not read the paper this morning and I did not know that it had failed until you came in this morning. I had a gut feeling that it was going to have trouble, and I’m not sure I can explain to you why I thought that other than there are so many major issues going on right now in terms of taxes in regard to Rio Rancho with the CNM, with the potential for UNM. Those are on people's minds. Not to mention that the (county property) tax notices have recently gone out, and while property values have gone up the tax rates have gone down so the net change to people’s taxes is probably minimal. I have not done a complete analysis but I think it is going to be very minimal because the mill rate was cut almost in half.
But I think that’s still on people’s minds. You get your tax bill and even though the net effect is that most people want the value of their homes to go up, we’re in the midst of this recession. They’re reading in the newspaper that homes are selling and homebuilders are having problems. I think it’s natural for people to say, “Gee, even though I’d like to have a big nice park facility, I’m not sure we can afford it right now.
‘I don’t know that people had real good reasoning for it, but I think it’s a general feeling that maybe we need to be more cautious
right now and that people are not feeling comfortable. I live in
Corrales, not Rio Rancho, but I did not see any big campaign. I brag on
the citizens of Sandoval County because think that when our residents are given the facts, give the opportunity to ask questions and really have all the information … (they do the right thing).
Most people don’t have all the information. Very few people know what the county does, know what government does. We’re all vested in our own lives and what directly affects us. It’s sort of what we know about and care about and unless we’re sort of challenged to open up our view and take in more information, we don’t. I’m just afraid there wasn’t enough information, perhaps, provided to enough major groups. My instincts tell me that people are just a little uncomfortable with where the overall economy is. They may not know why they feel that way, but that general malaise – that’s what I would assume happened.
THE SCORE: I imagine as a public official, though you don’t necessarily have anything immediately scheduled as far as referendum or anything that requires voter approval, that general sense and feeling out there has got to be of concern.
HAYS: It does concern me, and it certainly concerns me about the (ongoing) CNM (mail-in vote). I believe that is critical to all of our residents, that we have expanded service. People are utilizing CNM, but it has to be paid for. I’m hopeful there’s going to be enough information out there and people will view the education component as being vital to addressing whatever there concerns are for the future. We still know that education helps us to be more economically stable. I hope that message foes out, because I would certainly be concerned and the taxpayers of this county would be the big losers if we don’t CNM measures – both of them.
PUBLIC SAFETY
THE SCORE: Let’s move on. One of the big things you have been talking about for the past three years is the whole county fire/safety/EMS. When we last talked three years ago you had just hired a new chief and the structure was starting to go into place. Now it seems the whole plan is coming together about like you wanted it to. Am I right?
HAYS: You are correct. It’s been an interesting process. Three years ago we were completing the original plan that was developed back in the early to mid 90s and we had really finally come to the place where we needed some paid staff. And certainly what we have seen is they are very, very busy. And of course the next thing is the chief is saying we need more staff. That’s always the …
THE SCORE: Welcome to the game.
HAYS: Yes. It’s been an interesting development (process), but certainly the chief has done an excellent job working with all the fire chiefs in making an assessment of what equipment is available and how our stations look.
We have entered into a lease agreement with Sandia Pueblo for some land on Rt. 165 which will be the new main station for the I-25 corridor. But we also are in a partnership with Santa Ana to build another station on Santa Ana property, So we have one on each side of the river and we will house a crew in each one because of the gridlock on U.S. 550.
That is coming together. We don’t have the funding for the Santa Ana station, but we do have funding for the 165/I-25 station.
THE SCORE: The Santa Ana is part of the legislative priorities list.
HAYS: Yes. And it’s part of a partnership with Santa Ana. And the chief does have bigger plans for that facility. He’s looking a very innovative mentoring program or partnership with UNM where we would have residents in training and have a training facility there, and begin to get some additional staff while they are in training there. He’s working on that component.
We do have a union now. Our firefighters/paramedics/EMTs voted to unionize. There are 12 of them. That puts a different spin
on everything because there is lot of time that is being spent in
negotiation. In some respects with government it makes it a little harder. I have an open door policy and once you have a union that sort of goes away. I’m no longer at liberty to talk to
them about issues. It all has to go through the process. That has
complicated things a little bit, but I think it’s a result of the fact that almost all fire departments are unionized, so even though they are a small group they want to be a part of the big picture. And it’s just an interesting process.
By and large, we’re working diligently to reduce ISO ratings and certainly continuing our partnerships. We’re in a much better position to be good partners to Rio Rancho in that we can respond and not be totally dependent on volunteers. And that is an ongoing problem in the country – you just have an inadequate number of volunteers.
THE SCORE: ISO ratings – can you explain the acronym?
HAYS: The Insurance Services Office is all about insurance and boy, it can cut your homeowners insurance in half.
THE SCORE: So ISO sets a rating as far as response time and things like that, and obviously the faster the service the more likely somebody is going to get proper treatment, ergo less hospital costs and less insurance payouts.
HAYS: It is actually on the fire side. It is directly related to response times, availability of water, whether standards have been met with sprinklers – things that developers can put into place to bring those ISO ratings down. A ten is the top – it’s like having no service at all. Many fire departments in this state are tens – even with the money that’s going in and the equipment they have, they just don’t have volunteers and water. So the insurance rates on those homes are going to be very high. By bringing it down to even a seven or a six, you can cut your homeowners insurance in half. That is something we are mindful of and are always trying to improve.
THE SCORE: So it’s a benchmark that helps you assess, form an outside perspective, how far you’ve come.
Step back three or four years. If you had been able to look out over the edge and see the plan and the way its developed, are you about where you thought you would be in the process or are you ahead of the game?
HAYS: I think we’ve made extraordinary progress. I think we probably are ahead of the game and that we have been able to attract really highly-qualified personnel to the point we just lost one of our deputy chiefs to the state. Kyle Thorton was our emergency medical services deputy chief, and he was hired away by the state to head up the whole department.
We all know our success lies in our people. I think we’ve done a good job. We’ve still got very fine chiefs and volunteers around the county, and we’ve provide them with resources that were sorely needed. I think things are really moving very positively and we’re very pleased with the progress we’ve made.
COUNTY LANDFILL
THE SCORE: On to another project that was in development about that same time – everything that’s happening at the county landfill. I remember going out with (Sandoval County Commissioner) Jack Thomas and watching him turn the shovel on a facility. Tell us where we are with that and what’s on the drawing board.
HAYS: We’ve had steady progress on the landfill, but we’re not where we would like to be. With the Phase II composting, which would allow us to take sludge from all the municipalities – which was really important to us when we started that project – we have gone through the permitting, which was a long process. We do have our permits. That’s in place. But we have not had the money – we need about $1 million – to launch that second phase. We were hoping for a little closer partnership with the federal government, with the Bureau of Land Management. And while we’ve gotten some money from the Legislature, it’s just not enough to take it to the next step.
That hasn’t been our only focal point, though. Perhaps we could have been a little further along if we had the luxury of just focusing on composting, but at the same time we were in the expansion and permitting of the regular landfill which absolutely had
more importance to all of the citizens of the county. It’s critical.
That has progressed very nicely but the cost of land has escalated in Rio Rancho so rapidly over the last few years that we have a number of parcels that were really crisscrossed with utility and road easements that a few years ago wouldn’t have cost much of anything have just gone up astronomically.
So we’ve been going through that whole process. On some we had to do a little bit of condemnation. A lot of it we were able to do a little bit of trading with AMREP. We basically have all of our boundaries in place now which allows us to go through
the planning and zoning at Rio Rancho. So we’re really still in the
bureaucracy of getting it built. It’s been business at usual – we haven’t turned anybody away, but we’re looking forward to the new convenient stations which are in the process of
being built. I would say by next spring that facility will be built,
the scale house will be built, and it will be a much more user-friendly environment.
We’re
looking forward to that transition for the citizens, because it is
important. It’s a huge operation – closing one cell and then digging and opening new cells, that is just ongoing. It’s a well-run landfill. We’re certainly pleased but we’re all interested – certainly Jack Thomas, before he goes out of office, wants that composting process in place.
THE SCORE: Even if he has to take a shovel and go out there and do some digging himself.
HAYS (laughing): That’s right. And we’re working to increase our recycling efforts. That’s another component. We’re doing a total waste stream analysis and plan for the whole gambit. We know that collectively (we’re) not only looking to Rio Rancho. We’ve had discussions with Waste Management. We have issues of hazardous waste – paints and those things come into play. Those are very costly to deal with, but you need to address them. Otherwise, people dump things in arroyos and throw things in arroyos. We have to get away from that sort of old mentality that we simply can’t continue to allow to happen in this state. We just have to all, individually, take responsibility and work to change those kinds of morays. And having better facilities helps that, but it also takes individual responsibility.
WATER DESALINATION
THE SCORE: Another major project, another time-consuming expensive proposition, is water desalination.
HAYS: A very exciting project. This is another project that frankly Jack Thomas has been excited about for a number of years. It came out of the concept that we know there is a lot of brackish water in New Mexico and we’re all aware of the issues of decreasing good water in our water table: How do we manage it? How do we pay our water requirements to Texas in the compact?
This is something that has been dear to the hearts of several commissioners. At one point, when we had the large influx of Intel revenue …
THE SCORE: With the IRB (industrial revenue bond).
HAYS: We did the IRB, and so we had …
THE SCORE: $75 million…
HAYS: Basically, I think we ended up with $55 million by the time we did the IRB. So the commission at that time really wanted to make sure that they invested those dollars in long-term projects that were going to have the greatest impact on the greatest number of people. One of the things about our commission – and the history of commissioners since I have been with the county – is that they really do have the heart to do the right thing for all people, not just their little district or Sandoval County. I think we’re all aware we’re a part of an economic system, and healthy towns make healthy counties, healthy counties make healthy states. I think we at the county have been very mindful and very generous with our local communities in looking to do projects that have some long-term benefits, and we see desalination in that vein.
If we’re able to produce water at a marketable rate – which we believe we can – and that’s because the cost of water is escalating. I know of some water rights that were just recently sold to a major company at $26,000 per acre foot, and they purchased about 200 acre feet.
THE SCORE: And they probably were happy to get it, too. And that’s scary.
HAYS: And the reality is that Rio Rancho needs water. And all of the major communities have almost open buy offers. Of course they still want it at the old cost.
But the biggest problem is there just isn’t water to buy. If you can get it some of them will pay for it.So we know that desalination can become more viable as the cost of clean water goes higher. That’s the stage we’re at in New Mexico.
When we went out on the Rio Puerco we had a developer that is interested in developing that area. Our interest in partnering with that developer – which is what we are doing, but we’re partnering with a number of people out on that
site – has more to do with being able to support industry than more
rooftops. We have simply got to bring job to this part of the West
Side to reverse the transportation woes that we’re all experiencing.
The only thing that’s going to really change that is if you reverse the flow of traffic.
THE SCORE: You work close to where you live, on this side of the river and this end of town.
HAYS: That’s right. What happens at Mesa del Sol is great, but we don’t need everybody on the West Side going to work at Mesa del Sol. People who live at Mesa del Sol should work there, and the people who are living here should have opportunities to work on this side of the river. We’ve all seen the progression with regard to our river crossings, and they can be stopped. I don’t see any new river crossings in my lifetime in the interior of the Albuquerque area.
It’s all tied together. You’ve got to have water to support industry. You’ve got to have water to support homes. So we actually
set aside $6 million to try to get this project off the ground. What
that means is that we’ve already spent $4.5 million on two wells and on the pertinent testing of those two wells. That doesn’t even get you to the next step of building a desalination plant and being able to deliver water.
THE SCORE: So that $6 million is literally a drop in the bucket.
HAYS: Literally, it is. But we’re optimistic because of the magnitude of the project that we can get support from the federal government and state government, because it is the right thing to do. We are talking to the leaders of Rio Rancho because if the water is improved enough and we’re able to deliver it at a rate that is comparable to fresh water, then our biggest client should be Rio Rancho. That gives us some real options for doing say a revenue bond to build the plant.
We’re really working through all those issues and we are very confident we can make it happen. It’s just tedious – you have to stay on course and you have lots of people involved. Lots of hydrologists, lots of engineers, lots of attorneys. You’ve got all the issues with all the state agencies.
Our first well we hit water at 3,200 feet. Our second we drilled all the way to 6,400 feet trying to get to the bottom to see what’s there. That certainly is well below the 2,500 that has always been the natural cap on the jurisdiction of the state engineer, but the state engineer is not going to sit back and say ‘I don’t have any jurisdiction.’ So we are having to work through all the bureaucracy and all the technology and all the politics. There’s about there tracks we’re working on with water. So far it has been incredible. And if you didn’t have a chance to see that well site, you have to see some of the pictures.
It was phenomenal. It was this huge rig that’s only used for oil
drilling but because of the depth, the magnitude (it was used to drill
for water.)
We are optimistic that it is all going to come together. We have to take it step by step. We’re having a lot of meeting with a lot of potential stakeholders because we want to do it right. Sandoval County does not want to become a water utility. In a sense we may become a utility, but only as a wholesaler.
Though we started out trying to do this as a public-private partnership, the laws not real helpful in that regard. It’s become much more difficult that we thought. So we’re having to work through that. But we think that ultimately that the county will have to be the producers of the water, so that we end up owning the wells, which we do. But of course we have the land owners who are our partners, so there has to be compensation worked out in that regard. Then (it’s a matter of) getting it clean enough to be usable.
We would require the users to actually deliver the water. They’ll have to build (connections) to come to the plant and distribute water. Our portion would be getting water out of the ground, getting it cleaned up.
Frankly,
this water is so clean it is like distilled water, and that doesn’t
taste very good. People don’t want to drink distilled water.
It actually could have multiple benefits in that if Rio Rancho pipes it
and re-injects it into their wells, they will get a better
mix that will help with the arsenic (problem). It’s a cheaper way to
deal with that. We think that there are a lot of very positive things going on. It’s just a matter of taking a step at a time and understanding that it doesn’t happen overnight. We are moving right on down that path.
Every time you ask me about a new subject, I was waiting for us to go into broadband.
THE SCORE: It’s coming, it’s coming. There are just so many other things out there. Broadband has grabbed the headlines recently, but I’ll save that one toward the end.
NEW COUNTY OFFICES/DENTENION CENTER
THE SCORE: Three
years ago the county was using cranes moving cellblocks on top of each
other. You’ve got all the development going on there now. Plus the
judicial complex had just had its ground breaking and the health
commons was going into place. Now the county is looking to move its
administrative offices up in that area. There have been some issues
with the cities (of both Rio Rancho and Bernalillo) as far as utilities
go that required a special meeting of the Planning and Zoning Board in
Rio Rancho a couple of weeks ago. Please talk about all of those in the
general context of building, expansion and consolidating resources in
that area – how is the whole process going?
HAYS:
We acquired that 56 acres in a trade/purchase partnership with the gun
club and the Bureau of Land Management, with help from our
congressional delegation. It has turned out to be a wonderful
investment for the county in that we paid $1.5 million for it and right
now its value is at closer to $30 million. From a standpoint of an
investment, it was a good investment by the Commission.
Our new
Justice Complex has been very successful and we have recently completed
our second phase of the health commons which is located there.
That
land touched Bernalillo on two sides and Rio Rancho on two sides, but
it was actually county property. WE have been working through this
master planned development of that site and had always anticipated at
some point in the future building a new administration building on that
site.
We don’t own a lot of land. Sandoval County does not own a lot of land in other places around the county, certainly has now land of any magnitude here in Bernalillo which is the county seat. So we actually annexed eight acres of that parcel early on into the town of Bernalillo and that’s where the justice complex was located. The district court needs to be in the county seat. And certainly the elected officials need to be in the county seat. We actually began planning for a new administration building six or eight months ago. I had always anticipated that would be the job for a new county manager. That was really my goal, because I thought it would be much more difficult that it has been, though it has not been without its own problems.
One of the things that has moved it more quickly, besides the fact that we are just out of space in this building – if you go and take a look at our assessor’s office and some other offices you’ll see just how jam-packed they are – is that the judges, even though they have a brand new building, they were already feeling like they were out of space as soon as they moved in. That, of course, is a little bit of a sticking point with the commission, as you can imagine.
THE SCORE (laughing): Oh, yeah. Exactly. You’ve got yours first and now you’re complaining already. Wait your turn …
HAYS: At any rate, it is an issue because they are already expecting to get additional judge. This growth has just played havoc with all of our infrastructure, That’s one of the negative sides (of growth) – you need more judges, more DA’s and all of that.
THE SCORE: And more jail cells.
HAYS: And more jail cells …
THE SCORE: And everything that goes with it.
HAYS: So (what’s happening with) that piece is that in talking with the judges, I am committed that as soon as we have a new administrative building that the DA could move into this building (in Bernalillo). So that is the plan for this building, that we would move the district attorney’s office out of there. Then we would be able to do another courtroom and have some additional space. We may have to do some expansion in the future.
But that was the commitment – that we would move on it.
THE SCORE: So that was the easiest way to accommodate a potential third judge.
HAYS: Correct. Right now. So that is the plan – that we would consolidate the district attorney’s office. He also has attorneys in a Rio Rancho office that we’re being asked to pay partially for (office costs), so it would be in everyone’s best interests if we didn’t have those additional costs. We can bring them all here, which then won’t negatively affect the town of Bernalillo.
You may have heard there has been a little bit of concern on the part of the Bernalillo Town Council about the courthouse per se moving off of Main Street. The problem is there is simply not enough space here. We don’t have additional land. We did buy he lot behind us a few years ago for additional parking, and that’s already not adequate. And you’re not going to tear down an historic building, so what is our answer? We don’t have other land in Bernalillo, and we believe that by making sure this building is filled it is not going to negatively impact downtown Bernalillo. It’s not like it’s going to be an empty building. We’re going to be bringing lots of attorneys here – I think they have some 50 attorneys as it is at the DA’s office.
The planning has gone very well for the new administration building. All the elected officials have been very cooperative with our architect. That part has gone very smoothly. It has not gone to the commission for final approval because we’re working on the approvals with Rio Rancho.
We have received our water permits. That’s done. The city of Rio Rancho is providing water for the Justice Complex, and while the town of Bernalillo has said they want to provide the water for administrative building, that water is not proximate to the site. It’s over several blocks and so the cost of moving all of that is much more significant that just tying in at the Justice Complex. It really is in the best interest of the taxpayers that we do whatever is most expeditious and cost efficient.
THE SCORE: And that looks like Rio Rancho providing the water for the administration building.
HAYS: Yes it does. When we started out in this master planning, even thought the county owned that property, we went to the town of Bernalillo and the city of Rio Rancho and offered to create a partnership with some revenue sharing of gross receipts (taxes). This is not going to be a huge generator of gross receipts because it’s primarily government buildings and for a public purpose. The main transportation center was going to be located there, but that’s become a satellite center because we’re building a main transportation center here in the town of Bernalillo near the train station.
There will be some commercial (business on the Judicial Complex site), but it won’t be a huge amount. In light of the town’s willingness to annex the government buildings, and because the county owns the entire site, we didn’t think it was fair that we just automatically annex – we lose gross receipts that way – so we put forth a plan for revenue sharing that would be 40 percent of the gross receipts to Rio Rancho, 30 percent to Bernalillo and 30 percent to the county. We did that in anticipation of the city providing the utilities and thus the extra 10 percent.
That requires us to do a special revenue sharing – the state won’t do it. That agreement, while it went away, we believe we made the commitments in principal and we’re working toward delivering on that. So that is still the plan at this point. The plan that is being played out is exactly what was anticipated in the beginning.
It’s taken us longer to get there that I had hoped. We had to mitigate and remediate the lead (from discharged bullets on the old Gun Club site). We had to move all of those berms that had lead and we had to dig a gigantic hole and move it in and cover it – it will be under a parking lot. Not that sounds easy, but it wasn’t easy when you get into the environment department of the state.
THE SCORE: Anytime you get involved with the environmental folks …
HAYS: It has been a long process. We have not gotten to that stage. If you have been over there you’ve seen those huge earth movers. So we’re moving dirt and trying to get all the infrastructure in on the whole site. We’re hoping to hire the contractor for the facility toward the end of November or first of December to get that moving. The plans are pretty much ready to go. We just need to get our contractor on board.
Going back to the detention center, we moved the magistrate court into the old district court, so we’ve been doing some remodeling there. We need to do a little expansion there. We need a little training facility for the detention center.
And we’ve had some roof leaks. That has been going on for about nine months. It’s been very frustrating for everybody. The new facility went very well. It’s up and running. Then the monsoons hit and the roofing was just not done properly and so we’ve been engaged with all of the nuances that go into tying to get that problem solved.
The major problem for that area, however, is parking. It’s only going to get worse with Wal-Mart and all of that transportation, which is really in the town of Bernalillo. They really have not engaged us in a real dialogue about how they’re going to work that, but it is going to have to be handled or it is going to be a huge nightmare.
We have been negotiations with that developer for some time to purchase about 1.5 acres directly across from the detention center and magistrate court for a parking area, which will also provide a buffer for our facility from whatever is developed on the other side. It will make us a little more self sufficient and a little less impacted in that area.
Other than the leaky roof, things are going very well at the detention center.
THE SCORE: Despite those unanticipated costs (for roof repairs), you still would say that putting it together the way that you did with the pre-fabricated cells was still a lot cheaper than constructing from the ground up?
HAYS: Absolutely. I don’t think that we ever would have stayed within the budget – we had a pretty limited budget, but we were able to stay within it. The only place we’ve now run into extra costs was with the roof.
THE SCORE: A crazy aside here – just a wild thought: What would it take legislatively to move the county seat to Rio Rancho? I know back in the day, hundreds of years ago, as population shifted original county seats were moved. Given all the maneuvering that you have to do between the various municipalities, and that the people in Rio Rancho still are going to think the building is on their property because of the location no matter where you draw the boundaries, would that have made these processes any simpler? Politically, that’s something you may not want to do, but …
HAYS: I don’t think it would make a big difference. I think it is more of a political and historical issue. It’s not unusual that the state capitol is not the largest city in the state …
THE SCORE: It’s number three now.
HAYS: That’s right. In Lea County, the county seat is Lovington, not Hobbs. So it just happens. People are reluctant to change that history. It really, in this case, the two cities are right together, so in my mind it doesn’t make a difference.
THE SCORE: I was just wondering because I know back in the Billy the Kid days you would have a cow town grow up and become the county seat and that was largely for geographic reasons because everybody had to ride their horse to get to the county seat to conduct their business. But as populations shifted to other areas, county seats have shifted in the past. I just never knew what the procedure was – it never crossed your mind?
HAYS: No, because I knew it would just be fighting words for a lot of people, though I do know at one time – at least somebody told me one time – that the county seat was San Luis.
THE SCORE: Wow.
HAYS: It was on the postal route, and there’s not much there now …
THE SCORE: No, there isn’t.
HAYS: But I’ve heard that.
BROADBAND
THE SCORE: That’s an interesting little sidelight. Let’s get to broadband – I can see you’re itching to get to it. Obviously, as a totally online publication, The SCORE’s thought about technology is this: Rio Rancho had its wireless plan that unfortunately didn’t come through. Broadband has had its issues. Digital imaging and that center may or may not happen. Lion’s Gate may or may not be coming, we’re hearing now.
But just like any new technology, you have to try it. My enterprise may fall flat on its face, it may not. Dot com sites have boomed and busted.
So without pointing fingers or placing blame, it was venture you tried and you ran into some problems. I know on the commission agenda tomorrow night there is an item about awarding contracts again (Editor’s note: On Nov. 1, the commission did authorize negotiations with two separate companies to handle the project.) Just kind of summarize where we’ve been, where we are and where we’re going.
HAYS: I still see the broadband project as one of the single most important programs that we could offer the residents of this county, aside from water. We’re not out of water yet, but we know that is a major issue.
Look at where we are in today’s world. I see the United States falling further and further behind other countries in the technology era. For a state like New Mexico, which is sparsely populated, and certainly a county like Sandoval, which is 3,700 square miles with one major population base right here on the edge of it – who is going to look out for those pueblos and those other small rural communities when they don’t even have very good phone service, for one thing? It became obvious to me that unless the county stepped in and tried to provide a bridge that it would not happen for years.
It may happen someday, but I also use the example of the national electric co-operative initiative. You know the Navajos still don’t have electricity. We had an initiative in this country 50 years ago, and we still have places in this county that do not have electricity. And I don’t believe that’s fair. I don’t think it’s right.
Furthermore, broadband is infrastructure. It’s not about brining movies and more entertainment to people. It’s about bringing a resource that’s going to be necessary to live in today’s environment.
I felt from the beginning that we would have the opportunity for providing better educational initiatives and access, better health care access and better economic development access if we had a true broadband system. And I don’t mean broadband that’s being advertised on television. One mega-byte or 1.5 mega-bytes of a T-1 (line) is not broadband.
We don’t have broadband in New Mexico. If you have a fast computer, it goes down to a little pipeline. When it leaves you it may be real fast, but it gets bogged down into a small connection.
THE SCORE: Like a freeway that goes from four lanes down to two – the same traffic is going to go through, it’s just going to have to squeeze through a smaller area.
HAYS: That’s the perfect example. The other issue, however, when we embarked on this project, was that we knew if you took traditional methods that were being developed across the country we couldn’t afford it. Las Cruces, you may have read, did a RFP and they spent a lot of money on a study, and they came back and said it would be $98 million to wire basically the environment and provide the access that everyone wants. If we had done that and been told it was a $100 million project we never would have started.
What we did was look at innovation, saying we wanted to be a living laboratory. We wanted to see technology brought to the table that was going to be specifically designed for our needs. I had someone from the state auditor’s office – not my favorite subject, as you might well imagine – someone from the state auditor’s office said to me, “Well, it would appear that Sandoval County never should have embarked upon this broadband project. Maybe Costa Mesa, California.” Of course, in my turning red and trying to respond politely, I said, quite to the contrary, besides alluding to my electric story, “Are we just supposed to sit back and receive nothing because someone thinks we don’t have enough people or enough resources that we shouldn’t be looking at innovation? But, more importantly, if we can make it work here, we can make it work anywhere.”
We have every challenge that anyone would face -- the distances, the mountains, the rural nature, the urban growth. We really have all the pieces, so that’s why we said we wanted to be a living laboratory. We knew what we were embarking upon was that.
THE SCORE: In a living laboratory, in any laboratory, sometimes things work and sometimes things blow up.
HAYS: That’s right. And what really happened was that our pilot (programs) actually got deployed. They weren’t sustainable and they weren’t commercial grade, but they weren’t supposed to be at that stage. They were supposed to be pilots testing the technology.
In the second year we were moving into building the sustainability so that we could begin to hook up some ISPs and deliver, keeping in mind that just like the desalination we went into this with the idea that we were going to do a public-private partnership. But we ran into the same problems – the laws don’t really lend themselves to this public-private idea, even though we all know that’s what we need to be doing. It’s like how do you find ways to think outside the traditional proverbial box to make things work? It’s always harder.
So as we moved into the second year, that’s when all the questions about the equipment about the equipment that was being deployed (were raised). Part of the problem is that we started pushing our engineer to deliver a market-grade (product) before he was ever supposed to be able to be doing that to try to satisfy some of the nay-sayers.
It’s real easy, in hindsight, to look back and see what happened. I can tell you that the snow, the historical snow that hit in December, took down the whole signal.
THE SCORE: It took down everything state-wide. The state lottery commission couldn’t even sell lottery tickets. If that one is crashing, you know that it’s bad.
HAYS: So ours crashed. The big problem was that we had the engineer – and I did give a lot of latitude, I’ll be the first to admit, because we were in a laboratory environment – and we had a very finite amount of money that we were devoting to it. We had our $2 million and we had $1 million from the state, and we had another $1.5 million that got de-earmarked.
It wasn’t even the money, because we’re not out of money. It was part of the plan. The initial study was that it would cost about $9 million, and we were working toward more like half that the way it was working out.
But it was a five-year deployment. We were in year one-and-a-half when all of the newspaper hype started and all the investigations began. The state auditor decided he would get involved, and the engineer who was working on the deployment had never said he would not deliver that backbone. His last payments were last December and there was no additional money and there was not going to be any additional money until that backbone was up and running.
He never said, “I can’t do it” or “I need more money.” We couldn’t get on Parajito (Mountain) because of the snow – we couldn’t get up there until almost March. That was about the time the state auditor sent in his investigative team and started treating our engineer like he was a criminal. That is the only way I know how to put it. And while we did have some discrepancies – I’ll be the first to say that on some of the billing for equipment wasn’t on our inventory, we weren’t able to locate it – and that’s a red flag and has to be dealt with, and we are dealing with it from a legal perspective.
(Editor’s note: The county filed suit last month filed suit against the two individuals it initially hired to develop the broadband project, Dewayne Hendricks and Jonathan Mann).
THE SCORE: And with internal standards to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
HAYS: And with internal standards, insurance, legal. We’re pretty competent at handling those issues. So the state auditor and his investigative team got involved. And the way that they treated the people who had been our partners – we will never know whether or not he would or would not have finished that backbone, because suddenly of the big, high-profile (media coverage).
This is one of those instances, just like desalination, where we can hit some snags. We’ve invested a lot of money, but you have to take it a step at a time, day by day. And that’s exactly what we’re doing.
To tell you where we are today, we have not missed a beat. The state auditor, by the way, still has not released our audit, despite him sending in about three different teams of people who have been able to find nothing. That has been very, very frustrating, and not got government. I’m sorry, it’s just not been good government and has been a lot of wasted tax dollars. At some point, we will ask how much has actually been spent on these investigations by the state. I know we’ve been asked to provide things three or four times, over and over again. It just really became nonsensical after a while.
One of the good things that came out of all of the confusion and all of the issues that were raised is that it became apparent that I needed a stronger IT staff at the county level. So one of the positive offshoots is that we have created a new information technology department with a multitude of capabilities we didn’t have before.
We’re on a whole new network at the county. We’ve totally rewired this building. And if you talk to Mike Hoag or Mike Good and they will tell you now that we are technically better off than most major corporations. They pulled all the old wire. We have new wiring, we have wireless – we are operating the network off wireless connection that was established under broadband, and we have been for the last 3½ months without a hitch. We have not gone down once. That’s off that first leg, that one piece of the backbone that didn’t go down.
Ultimately that’s not going to be our final pattern. We’re actually going to be going from hardwiring the justice complex. We’re looking at a new tower at the landfill and then shooting over to Parajito from there. We brought in NetLogix to do an evaluation, and they said this project could be completed in less than six months for about $700,000.
(Editor’s note: Hays went on to explain the action the county commission would take the next night by authorizing staff to negotiate contracts with NetLogix and CH2M Hill to complete the program. For a full story on the commission’s actions, click here.)
THE SCORE: That’s the good news. The bad news is that Michael Hoag is leaving.
HAYS: The bad news is that Michael is going on to a lucrative field which doesn’t make me happy, but I know it’s something he needs to do and for him it’s the right decision. But he is going to stay on the oversight committee.
THE SCORE: What does that mean for the project?
HAYS: What’s interesting is that he has put together a really strong team. Mike Good, who was the network administrator, will serve as acting IT director. Mike Good has been involved in all of the RFP preparations and all of the discussions with the new folks.
We’re going to do that for a while. We’re going to see how that goes because the new network is in place, so that piece is done. Right now, rather than changing the direction by bringing someone in from the outside that’s going to want to put their stamp on it, I would prefer to move in this direction for a while.
I don’t think we’re going to miss a beat. We’re going to miss Mike, but it’s not like he’s going to go away. He has offered his continued support of our project. He does understand the vision and that took us a while. It took him a while to understand where I was coming from. He came from a wire environment, but he does get it now. We’ve had a great partnership and I think he’s imparted that information. And of course I’ll be spending more time with Mike Good to try to impart that vision.
Our PTSD project – Sandoval County is the model, the demonstration for the governor’s post-traumatic stress disorder project – we just developed the documentation for it through our broadband and turned it over to the state. It has become a much larger collaborative now. It was kicked off the first of October. It is happening. We have our school collaborative that while it is not broadband dependent, it will be broadband enhanced. As soon as we get that signal to Cuba, it is really going to help the Cuba schools. That collaborative is ongoing with all of our schools. It seldom happens when you have all of your school districts cooperating with each other, but SC has made that happen through our broadband initiative.
INDUSTRIAL REVENUE BONDS/INTEL
THE SCORE: Let’s talk about the industrial revenue bonds with Intel and Santa Ana. Intel is experiencing some job losses. There are some who are critical, saying Sandoval County helped Santa Ana reorganize its finances by backing an IRB and they’re turning around and taking revenue to buy land and invest in competition with the county.
HAYS: We did issue some bonds for Santa Ana, but what the public needs to know is that those were actually taken out of play almost before they were even issued. The federal government came in and audited all of the Native American tribes that had bonds and made them taxable so that those are not in play. They don’t exist anymore.
What the county did was help one of our communities. They were servicing long-term debt with construction debt. They had a problem on their hands that was really unfair. Now that has all been restructured, they’re doing much better financially and I would again throw out that successful communities make successful counties, and successful counties make successful states. We have a number of Native American communities that are a part of our population and success at being to help their residents adds to the economy of the state.
I don’t think there has ever been a very good analysis of what the actual tax turnover is. Whether I am for or against gaming is immaterial, because they are here. I do believe there has not been enough focus at the state level. There’s a lot of money going from the gaming operations to the state, and very little, if any, is finding its way back into the local economy. It’s not the economy I’m worrying about, it’s the impact on the infrastructure because there are needs with regards to roads, law enforcement, all those issues. And there needs to be a better way of bringing some additional funds for local infrastructure.
I think that Sandoval County has done a better job of partnering with the tribes in our county, and we think that’s to everybody’s benefit. We’re all residents of the same area, and we all have needs. By working together, we get better use of our tax dollars. Santa Ana is paying into our regional fire and ambulance. They’re participating to help get money to build this new station. That’s not just to serve Santa Ana, that’s to serve everyone.
As we build these partnerships, everybody wins.
As for Intel …
THE SCORE: It’s not like Intel’s going to default and you’re going to lose $16 billion. And the $55 million or whatever the final total was has allowed you to start a lot of the projects we’ve been talking about, but at the same time the job losses have got to be a concern.
HAYS: It is always a concern when people lose their jobs. We’re obviously hearing more and more of that in other areas. We’re at a time we have to continue to work toward economic development and supporting business. It’s not a time to do less, to get mad and say we ought to take things away. It’s a time when we once again have to look at the global economy and how we support the businesses that are here. And how do we bring in new business to help take up the slack and provide more jobs? Certainly, being able to be in touch real-time with the rest of the world is going to be an asset that we’ll have in Sandoval County with our broadband up and running. And with adequate water, this is a place people want to live. We’ve had this great environment – we want to protect it.
We have to continue to work on that every day. I can imagine that Intel is not happy at having to lay those people off, either. It’s a time we all need to come together, not break apart and cast stones. We’re all really good at being armchair quarterbacks. But when times get tough that’s when Americans get going and look for solutions instead of sitting back and complaining about why things aren’t going the way we think they ought to go. Let’s get together and work out solutions that make a difference.
WRAPPING UP
THE SCORE: We could talk for another hour, but your secretary just stuck her head in for the second time, so I know you’ve got someone else waiting to see you. So here’s the last question: How much longer are you going to do this?
HAYS: A year and two months.
THE SCORE: You’ve got it planned out already.
HAYS: I do. I am planning to retire in December 2008. And boy, will it go fast. I’ve got lots of things I want to see brought to fruition. I’d like to take a look at some of our operational procedures. I’d like to leave things in good order.
A lot of stuff is in my head, as you can tell. I really want to spend this next year bringing these projects as far as we can. Obviously they’re not going to be at a place of completion, and we do have a wonderful staff. But we probably do need to reevaluate some of our operating procedures that would help to institutionalize and get some people the support that maybe I’ve gotten a little lax on. We’re going to work diligently to make sure that happens.
THE SCORE: That will make what, 20 full years here?
HAYS: Actually, it will make 18 full with the county.
THE SCORE: Thank you very much for your time. We’ll sit down again and do it sometime before you leave.
HAYS: Sounds great, and good luck. I think it’s long overdue. I wish you the best.
THE SCORE: Get that broadband network up and going, and that will help me out.
HAYS: We will.
