Former superintendent appointed to county board

CLOVIS — Former Clovis schools superintendent Jody Balch was appointed to Curry County’s Labor-Management Relations Board in a brief commission meeting Monday morning.

“What this does is keep local control,” County Manager Lance Pyle said of the appointment, since otherwise the state would fill the management representative position. Pyle doesn’t expect the role to entail too much work, since the county “has no unions in place or anything related to collective bargaining.”

Commissioners were in full attendance at the special meeting, which lasted all of 18 minutes, and approved Balch’s appointment unanimously.

“I’ve known Jody since he went to grade school with my kids, and I don’t think we could pick a better representative,” District 1 commissioner Robert Sandoval said of Balch, who retired this summer after 39 years in education.

The initial appointment is through the end of August, at which time Pyle will recommend Balch for a one-year term starting Sept. 1.

Also at Monday’s meeting:

• Approval of a professional services contract with law firm Gallagher & Kennedy, P.A. of Santa Fe, to join a lawsuit on unauthorized tax distribution against the state’s Taxation and Revenue Department. Roosevelt County as well as the cities of Portales and Clovis are also involved in the lawsuit. Payment to the firm is on a contingency basis of up to 20% of the award paid to the county up to $4 million and 5% of fees paid beyond that. If no fee award is collected then no fee is paid.

• Report from Pyle on a letter from the Department of Finance and Administration’s Local Government Division, which granted approval of the county’s final operating budget due at month’s end. Meanwhile the treasurer’s office is two months behind in balancing its books, “and it is critical that they are balanced,” Pyle added.

• Approval of a proclamation declaring July 2019 as “National Ultraviolet Safety Month.” According to the proclamation, the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention reports 630 new cases of skin melanomas in New Mexico this year and 50 deaths from skin melanomas. The American Cancer Society cites UV rays, the main source of which is sunlight, as a “major risk factor for most melanomas.”

As presenter Susan Alman summarized, “use sunscreen and avoid skin cancer.”