By Mary Alice Murphy

Silver City-Grant County Chamber of Commerce president Scott Terry said, at the Dec. 4 luncheon that the chamber and Sun Valley Do It Best Hardware were holding a Christmas decorations contest. He asked people to nominate a home by sending him an email or calling him. "We must have the homeowner's name, address and phone number, so we can get approval to give the information to the media."

He also announced the next meeting would take place on Jan. 8, not. Jan. 1.

The first featured speaker of the day was Amy Miller of PNM. Bruce Ashburn of Silver City's PNM office, said: "I can't tell you how proud I am to be part of her team."

Miller said she works in the PNM office in Albuquerque. "I'm on the road all the time. Silver City is one of my favorite places to visit, but several times it's been raining when I come. I've been at PNM for 11 years. I've never seen it change as rapidly as now."

"We've been in New Mexico for almost a century," Miller continued. "In 2017, we will have our 100th birthday. We have 1,500 employees across New Mexico. In 2013, we had $137 million in payroll, and we purchased $200 million in products and services. I am really proud to be part of a corporation, giving every year a bit over $4 million to non-profits, such as, here in Silver City, The Volunteer Center, the Gospel Mission, Girl Scouts, Mimbres Region Arts Council's Fine Arts Fridays and others. Our employees also spend a lot of time volunteering."

She said PNM and its customers put $300,000 in the Good Neighbor Fund for assistance to families to pay their bills.

Miller updated the audience on issues. "It's a time of enormous change in how we respond to how we're all using electricity. I talk to a lot of student groups."

"Our priorities are reliability 24/7, commitment to the environment, where we are working to lessen our impacts, and affordability," Miller said. "Twenty-two percent of New Mexicans are at the poverty level. We have a Low-Income Program manager. We want to keep affordability first and foremost," she said.

"We will file a rate case by the end of the year," Miller continued. "The main drivers behind the rate case are making fundamental changes to reduce pollution and environmental impact.

"We also need to continue to replace aging infrastructure," she said. "In Silver City, we are replacing power poles and distribution lines.

"We are making changes at the San Juan Generating Station, which is a coal plant that provides the majority of power to co-ops and PNM customers here and in Arizona and California," Miller said. "Several years ago, the EPA came in and wanted to lessen pollutants and haze in the Four Corners area. We hammered out a plan. We decided to propose closing two of the stacks at the power plant."

She said the company uses 23,000 gallons of fresh water a year in its generating of electricity.

The power replacement proposals are before the Public Regulations Commission. "We want to replace the two stacks with a combination of solar, natural gas and nuclear. We would bring in more nuclear power from Arizona. There would be no new plants. Nuclear power has no carbon issues. Some advocacy groups want less coal usage. We will have a 30 percent reduction in coal, starting in early January."

Miller said another commitment of PNM is to add additional pollution reduction components to the remaining two stacks of the plant.

"This has not been done behind closed doors," she said. "The filing is public and then there is a long public process. When we file for the rate change, we will have summaries and they will be available for 1½ years to the public. In our industry, we can't do anything without regulatory permission. Our customers continue to tell us reliability is key. It is critical to economic development. One of the challenges with renewables for the industry is reliability. Storage is not in place. Wind and solar won't keep the lights on 24/7, which is why we are keeping coal and natural gas with the renewables.

"At the end of next year, we will have 15 solar plants and will have invested $270 million on solar," Miller said. "In 2003, the wind industry was brought in. We are adding 100 megawatts in January 2015. Our first geothermal plant is near Animas, with 8 megawatts, which is renewable 24/7.

"We also have a host of energy savings programs for businesses and residences," she said. "Our customers have saved 1 billion kilowatt hours."

The company's effort to help put in solar panels will be structured a bit differently for farms, customers and PNM.

"We are your local power company," Miller said. "We passionately want this community and the state to succeed."

She noted the www.powerforprogress.com website.

The second featured speaker was Kathie Gilbert of the Leadership Program at Western New Mexico University.

"I took the course," Ashburn said, "and you should, too."

"Amy talked about the infrastructure of economic development," Gilbert said. "I will talk about the leadership component, which is human capital. We help people grow."

The program serves the four counties of the region, and "we have had participants from all four, although only one person from Catron County," Gilbert continued. "We seek to address challenges leaders will face. The course provides relevant information about leadership with actionable activities. We promote team building, discuss conflict management and project management, and provide a toolbox of useful facilitating skills. These are needed from Freeport McMoRan down to the mom-and-pop grocery store. Any organization, whether a non-profit or a school, must have leaders."

Change can be a force to meet competition, she said. "We need to be able to manage change.

"It's a nine-day program, with eight days in the classroom," Gilbert said. "The classroom is actually facilitated discussion. During the class, we get to Deming and Lordsburg to visit with businesses and entities. We want to have a sense of place of where people are coming from. Students from Silver City usually don't know much about the other towns."

Part of the course is a project that students work on together. "This past year, was a back up package for those entering emergency foster care, where they go immediately into foster care. CYFD now manages the plan. This was the first group that figured out a way to keep their plan going. These classes figure out things that sometimes the rest of us can't."

She listed 10 reasons for taking the leadership course:
1) Build self-confidence and wisdom with the group;
2) Empower you to succeed;
3) Teach valuable and tricky skills;
4) Encourage introspection;
5) Surround yourselves with other leaders;
6) Help lead you to the next level;
7) Clarify your vision;
8) Teach how to influence people;
9) Build a team; and
10) Teach how to avoid mistakes.

"You also learn how to look at things differently," Gilbert said. "We want a diverse group that can learn from one another and gather broader perspectives.

Ashburn said, for instance, pointing to this author and mentioning The Grant County Beat, "in two or three years, we may have to go online for news. Some think that leadership is the person in charge. There is far more to leadership. There is commitment to a project, and you have to buy into the project."

"Leadership is the ability to understand your project, which might not be the most important to you at that moment," he continued. "Leadership is to get that project done, even if it's not your project. We, those I took the course with, stay in contact and retain our relationships."

Terry thanked Nick Seibel of the Silver City Daily Press for being a sponsor of the treasure hunt, the clues for which are in the newspaper and on Silver City Radio.