Copyright © 2021 Roswell Daily Record
By Lisa Dunlap and Juno Ogle
Roswell Daily Record
Four of the five candidates for the Roswell City Council Ward 4 seat talked about financial accountability, better planning for road improvements and housing needs during the 2022 Municipal Officers Election Candidate Forum held Tuesday night at Pueblo Auditorium.
A fifth candidate, businesswoman Alicia Gilmore, was unable to participate due to health concerns, according to moderator Rick Kraft.
Robert Corn, a local farmer and rancher who has lived in Ward 4 since he was a child, served for 8 years in the New Mexico Legislature starting in 1980 and was a member for two years of its finance and appropriations committee. In 1994, he was elected Chaves County magistrate judge. He then was elected in 2012 for two terms, or eight years, as a Chaves County commissioner. He also has served with several local civic organizations, including in leadership positions.
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Joe Green, owner of Enchantment Pest Control LLC for 25 years, is a lifetime Roswell resident. He is a board officer for a local credit union and has worked with other local nonprofits, church and civic groups. He said that his business experience has involved working with federal, state and local governments and given him experience in budgeting and government bidding. He spoke frequently about his Christian faith and said that his credo is, “always put God first and everything else just works better.”
Darrell Johnson has been chief financial officer for the New Mexico Department of Transportation for almost 11 years. Rather than talk about his background, Johnson used his introductory time to deliver his campaign messaging against increasing taxes, crumbling infrastructure and the need for more police officers.
Daniel Lopez is a self-employed insurance agent and was appointed to the council in July. Prior to that, he served on the Roswell Planning and Zoning Commission for a year. He said although he was born in California, his family has been in Roswell for several generations. He has lived in Roswell since he was 2 and graduated from Roswell High School in 1993 and from Leadership Roswell in 2017.
The first question for all Ward 4 participants was what they would undertake as their “passion project” if allowed to be mayor for a day.
Corn said that he would focus on accountability.
“I am concerned about the accountability of our finances in Roswell,” he said. “I see in the paper this morning about the problem with the municipal judge and the account that he set up, which is the same problem I read about last year.”
City audits discussed in public meetings have indicated that, for two years, external auditors had concerns related to Municipal Court bank accounts. This year, the external audit said the daily bank deposits should not be done by the same court employee who reconciles the banking account. Last year’s audit found that the court had not followed city policy in opening the account. The findings do not allege wrongdoing, and city officials have said that the Municipal Court believes it has corrected the problems.
Corn said that, while serving as county commissioner, the county won several awards for its accounting practices and that the city should be in the same situation.
Green’s priority would be better communication. “I would communicate more and be more transparent with the people and everybody on city council and again with city management,” he said. “Communication is the key to keeping everybody on board and on the same page that we need to do together. We need also to be accountable for our actions, our words and our attitudes.”
Johnson said he would create a report card for all the components of city government.
“I would want to know where our successes were, where our failures were and we could build on our successes because every component of government needs some kind of transparency,” he said. “I would immediately try to build something so everybody at any level at any given time could see where we were going and how the heck we were going to get there.”
Lopez said he would focus on economic development. “If we could bring jobs here, that would take care of a lot of our problems. That will give our citizens choice of employment, competitive wages, which means that they’re not going to just be at their job to bring home a paycheck and hate their job,” he said.
For the second question, the men were asked how well they thought the city was doing in regard to providing street, trash, water and sewer services.
Green said that the city needs to stick to a plan to repair all roads now and in the future.
“I have walked around and I have talked with my friends and family who are in our community, that are in my Ward, and everything keeps echoing on our infrastructure,” he said. “It’s our roads, the wasteful spending, the need for large and small businesses, and beautifying our city and all residential and park areas. We have been neglecting our roads for far too long. It is like kicking the can down the road. And we haven’t done a good job.”
Corn pointed out that road maintenance is funded differently from trash, water and the Roswell Air Center, which have their own enterprise funds. But he noted that good roads are essential to public safety and well-being.
He also said that the city needs to plan better for maintenance projects. He gave a specific example involving McGaffey Street. He said that city crews kept a portion of it from Union Avenue to Main Street torn up a long time for road repairs, then, shortly after reopening it, tore it up again for water line repairs.
“Why didn’t they fix the plumbing while they were there? It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to plan, and we are not doing it,” he said. “We are not doing an adequate job.”
Johnson said the city has done a poor job of maintaining infrastructure, especially water lines and streets. “It’s nice to look up every now and then and see new pavement on my block, but that’s only because they had to fix a water line,” he said.
The fact that there is no sidewalk on South Sunset is a “pathetic joke,” he said, and other parts of town have cracked and crumbling sidewalks. He said the tree-named streets in Ward 4 are particularly bad with 3-inch potholes.
“I know there’s a lot of people that are relying on me to help them with those tree streets and as you get down there, it just gets worse,” he said.
Lopez said before he was appointed to city council, he didn’t think the city did a very good job with infrastructure but his beliefs had changed.
“I do see that they’re investing more in the water system now. They are trying to make changes, which needs to be done, but they’re probably 10 years behind. That’s something we really need to work on and work on now,” he said.
If the city spends more on streets, that would help people increase pride in the city, he said.
The third question posed was what the city could do to address the shortfall in housing.
Corn said the city needs to take a supporting role and help developers and builders.
“Let the builders build and help them with the planning and design and make it easy for them to come into City Hall and get their plans approved so they can go out there and get to work,” Corn said. “I don’t think that is happening based on talking to some contractors that I know around town, that there seems to be a logjam and stuff of paperwork down in City Hall. I don’t know what the problem is, but if elected, I would darn sure find out.
Green said, “I, too, have had a contractor contact me and said, ‘I am going to another meeting to the city council for the ordinances that they keep passing. They don’t understand how we build things and what we can do to move around that and make it more easier. They keep coming up with new restrictions, new ordinances that keep us backlogged, so that we don’t have the time to finish that home or that business.”
“I don’t know if the city should have any dog in that fight,” Johnson said. He said it would be a poor choice for the city to buy land and instead of offering subsidies to developers it should remove obstacles such as making obtaining permits easier.
“Part of economic development is figuring out needs and letting the market figure it out. There’s a lot of great people in Roswell with a lot of great minds, a lot of entrepreneurs that mean business,” he said.
Lopez said the city needs to continue to streamline its permitting process and he’s not a fan of incentives. When he was on the Planning and Zoning Commission, however, he did vote for incentives for a residential development.
“We needed to figure something out. We need some change. We need to see what is going to work so I did vote for an incentive for these builders to try and build these homes. Hopefully it’s going to work. If it doesn’t then we know, then we can go from there on those incentive ideas,” he said.
The fourth question asked of candidates was which person, living or dead, they would most like to have dinner with. All four candidates talked about a love one who had passed.
Corn, speaking in a wavering voice, said, “My wife who has been dead for three and half years because I miss her a lot.”
Green talked for some time about how many people miss their loved ones and said the person he would like to see again would be his mom.
“She passed away a while back, and I didn’t get to have that final dinner,” Green said. “They called me in the middle of the night and told me she had passed away at the nursing home and it was just devastating.”
“I’d have to say my mom,” Lopez said, his voice breaking. He took a moment to compose himself before he said his mother raised six children on her own, working two or three jobs.
“She’s the one that taught me how to be compassionate. She’s the one that taught me how to fight for what I want and to work hard. I’d like to talk to her one more time to have her remind me to work hard for our citizens so they don’t have to work two jobs,” he said.
Johnson said he would choose his father, who taught him sports, ethics and to love God.
“My dad was stellar. He was a heck of a man. I learned the hard way a lot of things in life. We argued a lot, never agreed on politics at all. I would love one more day with him,” he said.
In his closing statements, Corn said that people need to decide if they wanted change or the status quo as represented by Daniel Lopez, the incumbent seeking re-election.
“What I think you have heard is a theme of change except for those who currently hold the office,” Corn said. “If you want the status quo, then you vote for the gentleman way down on the end. He is part of it. All of the incumbents are part of the problems that we have. And I challenge you to make a decision, do you like the status quo? That makes it easy. If you want to see some good, positive change, then you’ve gotta vote for somebody else, and good luck with that because we have a lot of people running in Ward 4.”
To counter Corn, Lopez pointed out he’s been on city council only six months.
“The good, the bad, the ugly before six months ago I had nothing to do with,” he said.
“I’m tired of being stagnant in Roswell and I feel a lot of people are too. The ones that want to stay stagnant, that’s your guy, the one up there in the corner,” he said, gesturing to Corn.
He told the audience to remember what it felt like when they were a child and got a new pair of shoes.
“Like nobody could beat you, like you could take anybody on in a race, right? I want to be the pair of shoes for you, for Ward 4 and for Roswell. I want to run that race to the future, not to the past, take steps forward, not backward,” he said.
Green said that he was led to consider the word “excellence” when preparing for the forum. He said that the believes that God creates people to manifest excellence and, to him, that would mean a united and joyful citizenry, a safe community, opportunity and prosperity and growth.
“I believe in Roswell. I believe in Roswell’s excellence,” Green said. “We are all called to be excellent in everything we do and, if we as citizens of Roswell believe this, we can achieve unimaginable results.”
Johnson said one of the reasons he wanted to be a district administrator for NMDOT was because he saw a lot of government waste, and he wanted to clean up what he saw as waste in the city government.
“I love this great city and this city is just needing help worse than I’ve ever seen it before in my life,” he said. “There’s a lot going on in the city of Roswell right now. We need someone in there who’s going to go in there, clean up waste, improve our streets. Roswell’s got a lot of potential. Let’s make Roswell the best it can be.”
Early voting for the mayoral and city councilor races has begun, and Election Day is March 1. Those elected will begin serving four-year terms on April 1.
To keep up with coverage of this and other elections of local and regional interest, go to rdrnews.com/category/news/elections/
Lisa Dunlap can be reached at 575-622-7710, ext. 351, or at reporter02@rdrnews.com.
City/RISD reporter Juno Ogle can be reached at 575-622-7710, ext. 205, or reporter04@rdrnews.com.
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