Joint powers agreement vote postponed

PNT Staff writer

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The Portales Municipal Schools Board of Education postponed a vote of a joint powers agreement between Eastern New Mexico University and the Portales Municipal Schools for construction and operation of a new football stadium on the university campus.

Superintendent Jonnie Cain recommended the postponement because of the language in maintenance cost of the stadium.

“I just want to see if Eastern has the same idea of what routine maintenance is as we do, so there is no question on that,” Cain told the board.

Cain reported that the cost of routine maintenance for Portales High School will not exceed $2,000 a year. If maintenance for plumbing, seating or what the board agrees to be routine maintenance is needed then the school would pay about 8 percent of the costs.

Another expenditure is the school will pay estimated $1,000 a football game for security, cleaning and other game-related expenses such as lights and water.

Portales Schools will not have to pay for practices if the team uses the field only for games.

Cain said if ENMU decides to make an huge improvements to the stadium that will not directly benefit the school then the school does not have to pay for it and its ownership will be lessen.

Tickets sales will go to back to the school and the concession revenue is still being discussed and will be finalized at a later time.

Board President Rod Savage said he liked the idea of having organizations from the school work the concession, while Cain discussed having the athletic department run the concession.

Cain said ENMU has the naming rights for the stadium, but Rams will be a part of the name nevertheless. There will also be two locker rooms in the stadium, one for the Rams and one for the Greyhounds. The Rams locker room will be used as the visitor’s locker room when the Greyhounds play.

Inez Rodriguez, vice president of the board, said the new stadium will bring more revenue to Portales as more people will eat the restaurants after the game or the teams will stay overnight. Portales uses Greyhound Stadium, which is eight miles north of the city on U.S. 70.

Rodriguez said with the old stadium, many teams stayed and ate in Clovis and never stepped foot in Portales.

The board will address the joint powers agreement again at the next school board meeting April 14.

Other highlights from Monday’s meeting include:

• The office of president, vice president and secretary were voted on,

Savage is president, Rodriguez is vice president and Antonio Sanchez Jr. is secretary.

• The board recognized the district bilingual spelling bee champion Karina Montes Morales, a seventh-grader at Portales Junior High, the Southeast New Mexico Science and Engineering Fair winners and the Portales High School girls basketball team for winning the state championship.

• Approval of a resolution to authorize the notice of issuance and sale of $2.75 million general obligation school bonds. This is half of the $5.5 million bonds voted on in February. Paul Cassidy from RBC Capital Markets recommended that the board sell the bonds to New Mexico Finance Authority as they will make more money selling to the authority then in a private or public sale. The rest of the $5.5 million in bonds will be sold in two years.

• March 30-April 4 will be the 2015 spring break dates as it will be after state basketball and the state’s testing. The district schools’ staff voted on the dates and most of them voted for this week.