[Editor's Note: This is part 5 of a multi-part series of articles on almost six hours of Grant County Commission meetings on Feb. 11 and 13, 2025.)
By Mary Alice Murphy

This article on the Grant County Commission Feb, 11, 2025 work session continues the county department head report, with the next one coming from the Emergency Manager Scot Fuller.

Fuller said the hazard mitigation plan went up to the state on February 3 to be approved by them. "I put the plan on the county's website for public review comments for two weeks comment. I'm hoping that people will look at it and tell me how to improve it."

He said the state would look at it for about a month and then it would go to FEMA itself for the actual approval."We're looking at FEMA approval by sometime in April, beginning of May, and after that, part of the last piece is that it comes back to us for a formal adoption by the Commission, and we'll have a fully approved and adopted hazard mitigation plan. Most people don't realize how valuable this document is. It opens the door to so many grant funding opportunities, public mitigation grants. There's a whole chapter in there, the last part on mitigation activities and all those once they're in there, they're all open for me for FEMA funding. So it's good to have them all listed, and that makes them all eligible for FEMA funding."

Fuller said the agreement with the state has been signed for the Wildfire Protection Plan update. "Well go through the RFP (request for proposals) process and hopefully soon select a vendor to complete the project. I think we have until the summer of 2026 to get that completed and back to the state for their approval under the New Mexico Counties Wildfire Reduction Community Outreach grant. I'm starting to work on that. I work with SkyWest media. We've developed some some nice rack cards to go out; about 2000 of those are going to be out. And we're also working on some public service messaging. It's all going to be related to getting people to understand how important it is to protect one's property."

He noted other other grants out there, such as for generators, and "we're trying to work to start that procurement process in this county. But one of the problems we had was a temporary hold on all grants a couple of weeks ago, but they kind of rescinded that. But the problem is, I think it put some stipulations where
they want to ensure the grants align with the new ideology of the current administration. I spoke with the Department of Homeland Security yesterday, and hopefully they'll have it all resolved in the next week or two, and we can keep on moving on."

Fuller said (District 1 Commissioner) and Chair (Chris) Ponce had asked for a report every month on code enforcement. "So, Code Enforcement Officer Fernandez put this together for the month of January. As most of you, know, she was off for quite a bit of time last year, and she just came back sometime before Thanksgiving. She's coming back at it again right now. She did eight court filings two weeks ago for cases, and she got one court date assigned for next week on one case. She's got a lot of complaints about the junk yards in the county, but we really don't have an ordinance to enforce. And there's a lot of these pending cases, which eventually may wind up with intervention from the Commission to help resolve them. "I know three of the ordinances, two of them in the 2022 solid waste one. We will eventually come to you to enforce and probably need to get back to the property owner to enforce it. Once she did get back to work, she's been working pretty hard in the last few months.

District 3 Commissioner Nancy Stephens asked: "I understand people can complain about enforcement issues, but is there any availability for our code enforcement officer to just drive around and assess potential risks, like structures that might be a risk. Do they have time to do that?"

Fuller replied that she does that routinely, just kind of as a preventive measure.

The next report came from the Airport Manager Rebekah Wenger.

She began her report by thanking last year's commission for improving snow removal equipment for the airport. "On January 9, we had a snow event out there that was kind of unique for us. The snow came in, and then the temperature started dropping. Ordinarily, we just drive up and down on the runway with our trucks to just try and break it up and wait for the sun to come out. This was a unique opportunity for us, where we had everything ready to go, and we kept the runway open. My guys are very comfortable with the equipment now, so this is really a big thing for me. It was a really good test for us. We now have all the equipment we need to be able to keep the runway open, and also manage other aspects of our facility maintenance. So thank you again."

She said she thought all the commissioners had received an email from the U.S. DOT (Department of Transportation) about the county's Essential Air Service being extended through the 28th of this month. "I wish I had a better explanation of this right now, but I don't. We actually had our bids for them in July. We were required to provide our comments by August, and every month, I keep getting the same thing; we're just waiting for some assurance. I've spoken with Advanced Air, and they said that they're getting the same assurances that we are, and you know they're supposed to proceed as normal. As soon as I have any more information, I'll be providing that to you. This month, we were required to submit our year end stormwater monitoring reports for the year that goes to the EPA. We didn't have any issues, but the EPA now has a new proposal out for what is called the natural pollution Discharge Elimination releases on the stormwater that comes off our facility. To date, we have not been required to do discharge monitoring. We go out and we have a strong event. I take a look at it, make sure that we don't have a problem. Now there's talk about having our airport sector involved with a lot of others to have to do specific analytic sampling, which would really drive up the cost of the program. I have a background of environmental management, so I can handle it myself, but we would have to do testing, probably looking at over $6,000 a year, and this is for a five-year contract working with the state Airport Managers Association.

She said they were trying to get cohesive response from the state, as well as other counties. "We'll pretty much be stuck with all these requirements for the five-year contract."

Wenger continued: "I will be meeting with the tanker base on the 26th of this month (February), which we didn't use last year. Some of you may not know about our tanker base. Last year, they were turning around a really big plane, and they put the tip of the wing into one of the hangers. So, when they came in and did their safety review, they basically just shut us down. This year, they had a lot to catch up on, as far as paperwork and training. They feel that they're in a good position. We're all concerned, of course, that this is going to be quite a fire year. On an operational standpoint, the airport is in good position. Our fuel farm is fully functioning. We have capacity. We have the trucks we need. So we're ready. We'll be on top of it, so hopefully we'll try to work out logistics and placing plans,
but we're ready."

The next article will begin with the Planning and Community Development Director Joseph Holguin presenting his report.

To visit the previous articles, please go to https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/grant-county-commission-work-session-021125-part-1 ; https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/grant-county-commission-work-session-021125-part-2  ; https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/grant-county-commission-work-session-021125-part-3  ; and https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/grant-county-commission-work-session-021125-part-4