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Las Cruces City Council Approves Issuance of $20 Million In Utility Bonds

In September, Las Cruces voted to issue up to $28.5 million dollars in bonds using revenue from the Hold Harmless GRT tax hike, with 45% of that funding being used toward roads projects. At Monday’s city council meeting, council approved yet another bond to get the most for their money.

Las Cruces is using funding from the Hold Harmless GRT bonds to begin one of the largest road improvement projects the city has ever seen. In addition to the GRT bond funds, Las Cruces City Council approved an issuance of up to $20 million dollars in Utility Bonds to be used in conjunction with the road improvement projects.

Las Cruces City Treasurer Mark Krawczyk says utilities repairs are necessary with street repairs.

“The streets that they’re going to rehab,” Krawczyk said. “The utility has to come in and tear the street up, fix all the utilities under the street, and that money was not provided for in the Hold Harmless bond issued. So, when that passed and we issued those bonds, Dr. Garcia head of utilities said, well if your going to do this and they didn’t allow money for that we need some more money to fix the utilities while the streets torn up.”

Approximately $4.1 million of the funding will be used for gas utility projects, $8.8 million toward water utility projects, and $4.5 toward wastewater projects.

City Councilor Gill Sorg says the street repairs in the city need to get done.

“We have a lot of street in this city that need repairs,” Sorg said. “That need maintenance, and that needs to be rebuilt. Some of the staff have said that as much as $80 million could be used to rebuild and maintain our streets. We’re about that far behind. We’re not going to try to catch up all at one time. There’s too many orange cones out there already.”

City Councilor Miguel Silva says city streets are one of the biggest complaints he hears.

“Especially in the inner city,” Silva said. “The inner city is one that really needs to be addressed in regards to upgrading their streets, roads, so forth.”

City Treasure Mark Kawczyk says this bond funding will allow the city to complete more roads projects with the Hold Harmless GRT funds.

“We would have had to include the fixing of the utility funding,” Krawczyk said. “Or the utility structure under the street in that funding. And this allows us to come along from behind and do that, without using those funds for that.”

The utility bond will be paid for using utility funds the city collects, and utility rates will not be increased as a result of this bond.
 

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