At 8:30 a.m., Española interim city manager Joe Duran had already been working for over two hours. While city hall hadn’t been open that long, Duran usually starts his fieldwork early, he said, and is in and out of his office all day. Even when he leaves for the day, the city is never far from his mind.
On this particular Tuesday morning, Duran marks his arrival in the office by checking his emails. He makes corrections to a public works committee agenda before going over expenses that have been put on his desk for approval, among them $428.44 for a new door-opening button for the city hall receptionist’s desk and $4,000 in monthly legal fees from Stein & Brockman to continue to protect Española’s river water rights from the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project.
Around 9 a.m., Duran hops into a white Jeep Liberty with red and blue stripes. This is where he will spend most of his time this morning as he simultaneously checks that all the rainwater from a recent batch of thunderstorms has drained properly and keeps all the various appointments he has throughout the city.
His tour started close to home as he stopped by the park on Vietnam Veterans Memorial Road. He briefly stopped to talk to a park employee about clearing weeds from a pathway and picking up any needles that heroin users—“technicians,” as Duran calls them—leave behind on a nightly basis.
Four city employees maintain all the parks that dot Española. Only two are hired on a permanent basis.
Duran continued from the park and inspected gutters and drainage ditches around North Coronado Avenue. Most of the drainage areas met his approval and he pointed to larger ditch he said he hopes to convert to a recreational field one day. This task used to be the job of city street supervisor Anthony “Hawk” Trujillo. But after Trujillo left for a similar position in Los Alamos, Duran has been splitting Trujillo’s duties with city street employee Elijah Mares. Duran and Mares will be splitting duties for the foreseeable future as they wait for the city to hire a new supervisor, Duran said.
As Duran’s path takes him eastward, he punctuates his inspection by meeting with Planning Technician Larry Valdez of the city’s Planning and Zoning Department and Melissa Riggs, a South McCurdy Drive resident who wants to convert one of her properties into an office building.
Riggs owns two adjacent properties where she already runs a children’s therapy clinic as a home occupation. She had more ambitious designs for the other property, planning a full-scale office building where other therapists could rent out the rooms.
But as Duran and Valdez began to tabulate the changes needed to convert the house into an office, it became increasingly clear that Riggs’s ambitions far exceeded her funds. The most pressing problem throughout the house was its noncompliance with commercial business standards created by the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Duran cited a lack of ramps, sufficiently wide doorways and a handicap-accessible bathroom as barriers to the conversion. He estimated that it would take $150,000 to $200,000 “easy” to transform the house into offices.
As Riggs expressed doubt at the financial feasibility of the project, Duran showed disappointment that he and Valdez had to bear the bad news over a project they personally liked.
“We have to be the bad guys,” he said.
As Duran and Valdez said their goodbyes to Riggs and the menagerie of dogs, cats, horses, and goats she keeps on the properties, she admitted defeat.
“It was a nice pipe dream. It really was,” she said.
While Duran continued to inspect the drainage areas, he admitted that there’s “a frustration” in having to work so many tasks.
He said he’s eased up recently after stress from work caused an increase in his blood pressure and blood sugar levels. He said good time management and “mental health days” where he could take time off from work as his preferred methods of combating the stress.
But today wasn’t a mental health day and it wasn’t even halfway over. After checking on the status of a resident’s construction and calling Mares to clean up a large water puddle on a corner of Calle Redonda, he met with RMCI contracting employee Dean Martinez, who was doing some routine programming at the El Llano water blending facility. The city’s wells 4 and 7 pump water to the facility where it is treated before going into a tank for later drinking water distribution.
Duran’s day seemed to revolve around water, as he moved from drainage water and drinking water to sewage water by checking on the status of the KDCE Lift Station.
When Duran arrived, RMCI construction crews were draining water out of the lift in order to resurface the walls and install new pumps and control boxes. After driving to the Murphy’s Oil construction site and granting a request, Duran slowly wound his way back to city hall. As he drove up Veterans Memorial Park Road, he took a quick peak at the park. The weeds had yet to be cleared.
He returned to his office to find a note from his godson detailing a trip to the library and a binder filled with the city’s vehicle insurance policy. He glanced over the policy and some other paperwork on his desk and then decided to take his lunch break. He still had follow-ups, building permits and citizen complaints to go over before his day ended.
He might look over pending building permits, he said, after he arrived back at his bright blue house on Corlett Road where he has multiple campers out front.
Camping, he said, is his relief.