By Lynn Janes

On August 20, 2026, the commission had a regular meeting at the city annex building. Jacqui Olea, interim town manager, called the meeting to order.

The board approved the agenda for the meeting and minutes from July 23, 2026.

New business

Priscilla Lucero, Southwest New Mexico Council of Governments director, said they had a power point presentation ready for the NMFA (New Mexico Finance Authority) legislative oversight committee meeting in Alamogordo on September 2, 2026. She, Laura Phelps, Community Development Manager, Freeport McMoRan, and Alex Brown would be doing the presentation. She wanted others to join in the presentation for the support. Mayor Arnold Lopez, Santa Clara, said Sheila Hudman, village administrator would be attending. Raymond De la Vega, Stantec, said he would be attending. Olea, Bayard representative and Hurley representative will also be attending.

They will be having a presentation to the Water and Natural Resource Committee on August 31, 2026. Lucero asked for the same support at that presentation, and all said they would attend.

Old business

De la Vega had an update for the commission. They had finally received the updated design they had waited for from PNM and made the changes they needed to do on their end. All has been sent for internal checks and should be done the following week. After that it will be submitted to the NMED (New Mexico Environmental Department). The geotechnical investigations have been completed but did not know about the Rosedale path. He continued with some other parts of the plan that had been done. They have submitted a budget that would include $500,000 for property purchase but he didn't know the actual cost at this time.

Lucero said she would be preparing the application for Santa Clara to make the connection to Hanover and the application for Hurley to do the well. She asked De la Vega for any supporting documentation on design that would help the application. At the end of the month Lucero said the funding for Capital Project Development would be released and thought the mining district could receive some of that funding that will be 100 percent grant money. They discussed some of the funding they would be looking at for different parts of the project.

Brown said Lucero had brought up some concerns when looking at the legislative bill brought to her by the water associations that they didn't have any representation. Brown had come up with a way to correct that by them having some input. The board consists of nine voting members and two non-voting members that are appointed by the board. "What we were thinking of doing was recommending that we add one additional non-voting member as a representative of the water associations. That way, they have the direct input into decisions that are being made by the board."

Brown had gone back over the bill and rate increases could be passed with a simple majority, five of the nine would have to vote for it. Every community has two representatives and the county has one. He thought they should change the voting to a super majority when increasing debt would be involved. It would require seven votes.

Brown had also read in the legislation that water systems could ask the commission to absorb them. This would affect Silver City and the entire board as a whole. He felt with the legislative sub-committee they could try to iron out those things to ensure everyone receives proper representation and input.

Lucero wanted to know what the response would be from the other community members. Senator Gabriel Ramos had already given permission to the legislative person to work with Lucero, and she thought Brown should also because of his ideas to rework the legislation. Alex asked the rest of the commission to contact Lucero with their ideas and thoughts.

Lucero asked Brown if he had reached out to Mark Valenzuela, Bosque Advisors, about any changes to the legislation they had based on their view. Brown said he had, and they would be fine with the bill. He had brought up having the water associations have a voting member. Valensuela said it's not a fiscal impact for them and it could harm the bond rating or the ability of lenders to lend to the commission. That had been the reason to make them a non-voting member. Valenzuela also said the super majority vote for debt will strengthen the bond rating for the commission.

The water operator sub-committee had not met.

Lucero went over some of the things that needed to be on the next agenda.

Next meeting will be September 24, 2026 (tentative)

Adjourned