Mayor, councilors disagree on land purchase fix

August 03, 2010

Belen’s mayor and city councilors failed to take action last night to fully satisfy an order from the Office of New Mexico’s Attorney General directing the city to correct five violations of state law related to a land purchase.

In January 2009, the city paid more than $619,000 to purchase approximately 14 acres of land near the Camino del Llano interchange that the previous administration sought to use for ponding to address flooding off the west mesa.

In October 2009, December 2009 and February 2010, the former mayor and city council violated the New Mexico Open Meetings Act (OMA) multiple times by failing to tell the public about its discussion of the land acquisition, which occurred behind closed doors.

According to the attorney general’s office, the current mayor and city council need to correction the violations.

An assistant attorney general in the attorney general’s office provided detailed instructions for addressing each violation:

The corrective action necessary for the October 5, 2009 meeting is correction of the minutes to show [the] subject matter discussed in executive session on that date and the legal authority on the motion for executive session. Corrective action for the February 8, 2010 meeting during which the Council ratified the Camino Llano property also is a correction of the minutes to indicate how each member voted or, in the alternative, that the motion passed unanimously. The Council does not have to re-vote on the matter on those dates, as the minutes for each of those meetings indicate that a vote did occur.

Because the December 7, 2009 minutes do not reflect that an executive session occurred or that as a result of the executive session, the then-mayor should proceed to negotiate purchase of real property, corrective action for the December 7, 2009 meeting does entail the present Council voting on whether to authorize the then-mayor to negotiate the purchase of the property. This will satisfy OMA, even if the resulting vote is contrary to what may have occurred then. The fact remains that the Council ratified the purchase at [a] subsequent meeting, as reflected in the February 8, 2010 meeting minutes.

During last night’s council meeting discussion, Councilor Jerah R. Cordova proposed four motions that he believed would correct the violations, including three motions to correct the minutes mentioned above, and one motion to authorize or not authorize the former mayor to negotiate the land purchase.

Cordova, however, wasn’t willing to make the motions because he wasn’t on the city council at the time and wasn’t present during the executive sessions in question.

Councilors Mary Aragon and Lorenzo Carrillo similarly expressed concern with having to vote to confirm what was discussed behind closed doors when they weren’t present, including voting to authorize or not authorize the former mayor to negotiate the purchase.

Because only Mayor Rudy Jaramillo and Councilor Wayne Gallegos were in office when the violations occurred, they would be the only two who could confirm the discussions.

Jaramillo said he didn’t recall the discussions. The city attorney has said the discussion occurred, and Jaramillo said he took the city attorney’s word on that. The city attorney was not present at the meeting.

Gallegos didn’t comment on the closed-door discussions.

City officials confirmed that the vote at the February meeting was unanimous, but no motion was made to correct the minutes of the February meeting to reflect that unanimous vote.

In the end, Aragon moved to reject the attorney general office’s recommended corrective action. Her motion failed for lack of a second.

No further action was taken.

Posted in: Reform