Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Clovis’ city commission approved a raise Thursday night for police department dispatchers and shift supervisors.
The raise will cost the city approximately $500 a month or $6,000 a year, plus benefits, City Manager Raymond Mondragon told the commission.
Starting salaries for dispatchers will go from $9.05 to $9.25 an hour. Pay for certified dispatchers, with a year’s experience will be $9.50 an hour, and for dispatchers with Emergency Medical Dispatcher certification will be $9.75 an hour. Maximum pay for dispatchers will be $12 an hour.
Communications supervisors will receive at least a .5 percent increase, with maximum pay at $13.50 per hour.
Police Chief Bill Carey said the raise will go into effect in the dispatchers’ next pay period, with the results showing up on their Oct. 31 paychecks.
Also, the commission unanimously approved instructing Commissioner Isidro Garcia, a board member of the New Mexico Municipal League, to vote for having the league favor state adoption of the entire family of International building codes at a board meeting Saturday.
The state Construction Industries Division has offered a compromise on the building codes issue. It will approve use of the international building and residential codes, but for plumbing and mechanical codes it would use updated versions of the uniform codes. For electrical contracting, it would use the National Electrical Codes, according the CID bureau chief Fermin Aragon.
Mondragon said Clovis’ task force on building codes has voted in favor of adopting the whole family of international codes. Clovis builder Randy Crowder, a task force member, said the Clovis Home Builders Association has hired a representative from the International Code Council to come to Clovis and help plumbing and mechanical contractors better understand the “I” codes.
Travis Denton, a Clovis plumbing contractor, said he much prefers the uniform codes.
“I don’t agree with a lot of stuff I see in the international codes. I don’t agree with adopting the whole package. I hope you don’t go ahead with what you’re doing,” he told the commission.
Bill Nance, a former Clovis building inspector, said he wanted to “strongly encourage” the commission not to adopt codes different from the state codes.
“I don’t care which code they adopt. What I’m concerned about is uniformity. The CID is tasked with developing a uniform code throughout the state,” he said.
In other business, the commission:
n elected Joaquin Madril and Richard Vela to two open slots on the city Planning and Zoning Commission.
n elected Jay Neff to represent Curry County on the city’s Water Policy Advisory Board.
n elected Commissioner Lunell Winton as a city representative to the Plains Regional Medical Center Hospital Board.
n approved a reorganization of the city’s Inspections Department under which Director of Inspections Marcus Brice will be made Chief of Codes Enforcement and the city will look for a new director.
