By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
A citizen thanked several city officials for making themselves available for questions and comments and urged city council members to deal with the city’s debt.
Del Rioan George Solis made his comments during the citizen comments portion of the council’s regular meeting on Tuesday.
Solis began his comments with a thank you.
“This is my third or fourth time coming up to talk to city council. I want to start off by saying thank you to (Mayor Pro-tem) Mr. (Jim) DeReus and thank you to (Interim City Manager) Mr. Manuel Chavez, who were there for the town hall meeting on Aug. 8.
“I really appreciated them taking their time, several hours, out of their lives and away from their families, to come and hear the citizen comments and even citizen complaints, and they did their best to answer our questions and some of the concerns that we had.
“They, by themselves, I know they can’t fix all the problems, but just the fact that they came forward and would offer themselves up for the community, I really, really, appreciated the time that they gave to us,” Solis said.
“It’s just a shame that we don’t have more citizens show up, not necessarily to contend with city council, but to engage with our elected officials,” he added.
Solis said he also wanted to address a topic that concerned him.
“Secondly, I want to bring up – and I know it’s a point of contention – but the budget being almost $100 million behind for the city; at least that’s what I’ve heard. I would ask that the city council, you who are up there are the leaders of this community, would take that seriously and start trying to whittle away at that,” Solis said.
He went on: “I have a son-in-law who works for a multi-billion-dollar corporation, and they are taking austerity measures. They’re cutting back personnel. They’re cutting back their budgets.
“These are smart people. At least, I would think they would be, if they’re running a multi-billion-dollar corporation. I heard in the last couple of weeks, Stellantis, who owns Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge, they’re doing austerity measures, they’re starting to cut back. They’re taking steps to help them with their bottom line, and they’re civilian, or a public company. I would think that the government would have a lot more responsibility to make sure that we bring that money back to us or to balance,” Solis said.
He also spoke about an incident from his service in a federal law enforcement agency.
“When I was in New Mexico as a supervisor there, my supervisor, who was responsible for the budget of that whole station, and one of the things that happened, they lost a piece of equipment that was worth $1,500. They suspended him without pay for three days for just losing that piece of equipment, and my question is to you, with that much responsibility, who’s getting suspended here in the city? Who’s going to be held accountable?” Solis said.
“If we can hold a man in charge of 400 agents (accountable) for losing a $1,500 pair of binoculars, what are we going to do for being $100 million in the hole? That’s all I ask, and I as a citizen see it as very concerning,” Solis finished.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com.
