Otero County Commission to stay at 3 members

ALAMOGORDO - It looks like the Otero County Commission will not be expanding any time soon. 

At their regular meeting Sept. 13, the commission failed to approve the publishing of a public notice of a proposed ordinance to increase the size of the commission.

Otero County Commissioner Janet White made the motion which was seconded by Commission Chairwoman Lori Bies who did so to open discussion.

The vote failed to pass with White being the sole vote for the measure.

Commissioner Susan Flores, who was attending by phone, has been vocal in her dissent for the proposal to expand the commission.

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“I have opposed this all along. We had a public hearing a month ago. I think this is a waste of staff, time and money to have another meeting to do this and Commissioner White knows this. I have three more months in office and I will continue to oppose this,” Flores said. “To have staff do this and make up ordinances and doing this is unnecessary use of the county’s resources to have another meeting to vote on this issue.”

Flores wanted the issue removed from the agenda permanently.

Bies responded that she cannot dictate what another commissioner requests to put on an agenda.

Flores wanted to end the debate by calling for the question, a request that did not happen immediately.

The main reason for the wait was that County Attorney Michael Eshleman did not have copies for the commission and had to retrieve copies.

Even though Flores called for the question, Bies refused to vote on it without first seeing the ordinance.

“We always have a draft ordinance when we are asking for an ordinance and I was surprised not to see it prior to the meeting,” Bies said.

After the ordinance was produced and reviewed by the commissioners in attendance, and some public comment, a vote was taken: White for the publication of the ordinance and Flores and Bies against.

White has said that the reason behind the push for an expanded county commission has more to do with representation of the outlying communities that she represents.

White represents District 1 which is the largest commission district.

The process — as outlined by state statute for a county commission to expand to five members — includes breaking the county into districts that are "compact, contiguous and as nearly equal in population as practicable" to prevent gerrymandering.

This means that the main factor in redistricting lies in population. Which means that the county would have extra representation in the county's population centers.

Following the public hearing, and any subsequent public hearings, the county must then approve an ordinance to redistrict.

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