Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

Opinion: City must prioritize before raising taxes

We’ve heard their condescending refrain, like they are speaking to children, a million times: “We can’t live without water.”

But have our intellectually superior city leaders considered the possibility there’s a way to pay for the Ute Water Pipeline project without raising taxes?

It’s called prioritizing.

The way it works is, see, you look at all the taxpayer dollars you have available, then you start paying for the most important things first. Like water. And you keep going until all the bills are paid or you run out of money.

Most of us are familiar with this concept and we employ the priority system every pay day. The house payment and the grocery bill are among the first things we pay. Sometimes -- more often than not, lately – we run out of money before we’re able to go to the movies or play a round of golf.

It’s a bummer. Life is hard.

Welcome to adulthood.

Clovis’ city commissioners meet Thursday for what’s expected to be a 7-1 vote to raise taxes to help fund construction of the Ute Water Pipeline. Only Commissioner David Bryant opposed the plan when it was unveiled last month.

Online rabble rouser Carlos Arias is also opposed. An administrator for Facebook’s Take Back Your Community page, he has pledged an attempt to recall all those who support a tax increase.

Good for him.

Arias has reminded our elected leaders that our economy is struggling, many of us are having trouble paying essential bills, and we don’t appreciate the government piling on.

There’s zero chance, of course, that threat of a recall will inspire commissioners or Mayor Mike Morris to change their minds about funding the pipeline.

And make no mistake. The pipeline must be funded.

Arias, in urging opposition, has mostly talked about the limitations of the pipeline and questioned whether it’s even capable of moving water from Quay County to Clovis, Portales and Cannon Air Force Base. But those issues have been debated since the dam at Ute Reservoir was completed in 1963.

Commissioner Lauren Rowley last month accurately pointed out, “We’ve obligated ourselves to the pipeline money and we have to stand behind that. This project is moving forward; that train has left the station.”

Indeed that train left the station when state and federal governments began shoveling 90% of the funding necessary for the pipeline into the project. Now Clovis has to pay its share.

But it can do so with existing funds.

No, it won’t be easy. Prioritizing is never easy.

When city leaders talk about “quality of life” initiatives, shouldn’t that begin and end with water?

No, selling the golf course most of us never use won’t fund the water pipeline by itself. But the golf course isn’t the only entertainment our government finances. And has the city considered all the tax money we’re about to receive from cannabis sales that became legal April 1?

Arias is wrong to ask commissioners not fund the pipeline project at this late date. He is not wrong in suggesting commissioners let taxpayers vote on the issue.

How about it, city moms and dads? We really do understand we can’t live without water. Do you understand the need to prioritize how you spend our money?

— David Stevens

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