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Interim Las Cruces City Manager Discusses NM Special Session

As part of the budget fix passed by the New Mexico Legislature during the special session, money from certain capital improvement projects was clawed back.

Interim City Manager David Dollahon says the city has approximately $7 million worth of state capital outlay funding from 2013 forward, and funding from only one project has been slated for a claw back.

“As of now we’ve been notified that the special session identified one City of Las Cruces capital outlay that was $100,000 for improvements for street lighting in the Alameda Depot neighborhood,” Dollahon said. “It would be as simple as street lights for dimly lit or dark areas along streets within the neighborhood.”

Dollahon says Governor Susana Martinez could still return the funds for the project.

“We made outreach as of late last week to request that she make a line item veto of the Alameda Depot lighting project,” Dollahon said. “But we haven’t heard any action, and she has unlimited number of days yet to act on the remaining legislation.”

Dollahon says the city will review the current budget and see what opportunities there are to reallocate resources for the project.

“Probably what would happen is we would continue with our surveying and right of way work from another source,” Dollahon said. “And then once we had that completed we would start incorporating those additions into our regular street lighting program that we have ongoing. So, it would take us longer to accomplish but we would probably do them one or two at a time throughout the next couple of years.”

Dollahon says they are keeping the tight budget in mind with request for capital outlay projects in the next session.

“We anticipate that there won’t be much if any capital outlay,” Dollahon said. “And we’re making plans accordingly. I’m going to limit our requests to capital outlay to what we think can reasonably be financed if we were given a smaller amount.”

Dollahon says in the upcoming regular session they are also watching for potential changes to hold harmless payments.
 

Samantha Sonner was a multimedia reporter for KRWG- TV/FM.