The city of Española and Rio Arriba County on Sept. 1 received $1.2 million and $1.1 million respectively. Almost a month has passed and the public has no idea what the two public entities’ plans are to spend the money.
The state has seen fit to drop about $2.3 million on Rio Arribans through the County and city CARES Act funding. All that money in the hands of politicians and their appointees. Pretty scary.
Both entities have threatened meetings and conversations to decide how to best use the money, but nothing has come to the public yet. No public body we are aware of has asked residents what they feel is important, and where the money would do the most good.
State money also rained on the city of Santa Fe. At its Sept. 16 meeting councilors agreed to spend $2 million of its $17.6 million to purchase a local motel. It would not be retained by the city and would serve homeless people. Santa Fe currently helps some homeless people with short-term motel vouchers.
That’s taking action in regard to the homeless problem. Surely much work must be accomplished before a homeless person sets foot in a hotel room, but it’s a start, an obligation of the money, which must be spent by Dec. 31.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports the city plans to spend $3.66 million of its grant funding on a program that would help residents with emergency funds for items such as food, rent and unpaid utilities. Councilors also want to use $5 million to repay the general fund for already incurred COVID-19 expenses.
One councilor urged a schedule of projects, how they’re progressing and how the money is being spent to keep track and work toward the Dec. 31 deadline. What a concept.
This isn’t that difficult. We have many needs in the city and County.
A review of E-911 dispatch logs brings our biggest problems into sharp focus. The virus hit hardest those already just scraping by. Their problems are now pronounced as they have nowhere to go, no services, no answers to their myriad problems.
In one 24-hour period city police responded six times to the same mentally ill person disrupting business or scaring citizens with his behavior. By and large, he’s harmless. Sometimes he’s naked, a very few times he’s had a knife or threatened someone. This man needs a proper psychological review and admittance to a proper facility. We can’t build a facility but surely that money could be used to hire properly trained people (not political hires) to get this man off the streets and his mind back to a functioning state.
City police don’t want to keep running him out of doorways and fast food drive-thrus. They have much more important things to do. There are five other men in the city limits with similar problems.
Probably the second biggest problem law enforcement and first responders face is domestic violence. Many men in the city and County don’t understand what to do when their wife or girlfriend is tired of their abuse.
They won’t leave a residence, they leave and come back (usually drinking), they violate restraining orders, they scream in yards and won’t follow court-ordered child exchange procedures. Clearly most of these men lack the emotional maturity to deal with their problems like adults.
The result is police and deputies showing up multiple times in an evening running a guy off from a house with a frightened woman and often children inside. Not only does law enforcement not want to deal with these situations, they are not trained to be counselors, advocates or child care specialists. The best they can do is arrest a drunk guy so the household can rest in peace.
However, the next day, the ego deflated husband is back at it.
There are many families where the parents don’t know how to raise nor handle their children. They call 911. Law enforcement officials are not parent trainers. Again, multiple trespasses and lawful orders take care of the issues short-term but these children/teens/some adults aren’t magically helped by a court order. They still have many psychological/drug/alcohol/past violence issues.
A few trained professionals working out of the Health Commons (not under Lauren Reichelt) could do wonders.
Other ideas offered to us were improving the abysmal internet service we suffer with in the Valley. This is surely a multi-million dollar issue but could some of that $2.3 million get better access for some users, perhaps centrally located or on a trunk that could be upgraded?
There remains the issue of lack of facilities for youth. The city is ready to spend $3 million over five years to upgrade the Española Senior Center but Ben and Renee Sandoval scrape by in a building that has finite space to help teens.
We get it: seniors vote and pay taxes; teens are disengaged. However, while we continue to ignore teens and children they grow into the problem people you see in the police blotter every week. We’ve got to invest more in them to bring them along and create citizens who care.
If you’ve got an idea that falls in the CARES Act parameters, contact your elected official and give them an earful. Clearly they don’t have any ideas of their own, or we would have heard them by now.