Aldridge Welcomes Competition in Races
By John Earp
In our continuing coverage of as many of the current candidates for public office in Jal who are willing to share their unedited, unfiltered thoughts with the voting public, this week we present our interview with current Jal Mayor, Mr. Stephen Aldridge, who is running for reelection. As always, we endeavor to quote the candidates in their own words, verbatim to the extent possible. We hope more candidates will contact us to share their point of view with the voting constituency, but we will never beg anyone to “Please talk to us.” In sharing these interviews, our only goal is to let our readers know what each candidate stands for in his or her own words.
When asked, “What made you want to run again to be reelected as mayor?” Aldridge said, “Well, there are a number of things that I’d like to see finished. We’re working on some stuff I’d really like to see finished up.”
When asked, “What are some of those things?” he said, “I think the big one are the water issues, the protests that we’ve had on the last seven, eight years. Some of the housing needs that we see that we’re working on currently. I think we’ve got some good leads on low income and moderate-income housing that I think are real good. We’ve still got some roads and the water treatment infrastructure, roads, water. You know, we had the big meter project. We’re about to complete that. I think there’s eight or nine meters that aren’t there. There are a couple of streets that we’ve got coming up on the map and co-op and money from the state. I don’t mind serving the people here.
When asked, “What are some of the things that you’ve been able to be a part of since you’ve been the mayor that you feel like you’re, I guess you’d say the most happy or proud of having been a part of, significant things that you feel like that you all have been able to accomplish. I think we’ve done a good job of securing our water supply. Our potable water is the Pecos Valley Alluvium, and the majority of it is in Texas, but we’ve reached a settlement with all but one of the protesters. We’ve made it so that it’s to the city’s advantage and trying to preserve that water for the future. We’ve continued to work on the wastewater treatment plant, for that that we need to put together good use. We had Colonias money. The transmission line, we’re building a redundant transmission line out of the West Field into town, trying to stop some of these leaks. We’re building redundancy in our transmission line out from our well field. We’ve had enough money saved out of those projects of Colonias funds, grant money. They were able to replace it continually. Yeah, I’m really proud of the fact that the city, the schools and the hospital district and Woolworth Trust have been able to collaborate on a number of projects to the betterment of the community. We have an indoor walking track and weight room that’s being completed on the west wing of City Hall. That’s a collaborative effort. The schools, the hospital district, and the city collaborated on getting fiber optics here. The city owns its own fiber optic network. I’m not sure there was another one in the state. Being able to utilize local entities to provide for the community really stands out in my mind. That and the fact that we have drilled multiple new water wells, tried to repair and refurbish the older wells that were really about way past their prime. We’ve been able to get out of that section that the city has over into different portions, and deeper portions of the PVA [Pecos Valley Alluvial]. Our hydrologist and our water team think we’re in the deepest part of that Monument Trough out there. Okay. The guy with the deepest is straw is going to be in better shape. The PVA, the majority, we can’t do much about what they have right of capture over there and they have conservation districts, but it is entirely different than what we have over here. Midland purchased a ranch out there in late 60s with the idea that it was going to be part of their future water supply. Yeah, there’s a lot of people with straws in that thing. We, if my memory serves me right, completed nearly 11 miles of roadway projects and utility improvements. Every time we peel back the street or start to rebuild a street, new water lines and sewer lines go in. And next year, there’s another mile of roads, and those are from MAP money, and I know those are acronyms that most people don’t understand, but MAP money and Co-Op money and transportation money from the state, those are grants. I told this number of the other day, the construction cost for the funding for those things were $22 over $22 million. But the city has only had to come up with $3.4, $3.5 million. That’s almost $7.5o in grant money for every dollar that city’s spent. And we’re proud of that. It comes from developing and maintaining networks in Santa Fe and Roswell, where the district office is for DOT. That’s pretty big to me. The new wastewater treatment plan has been fully designed. We had Colonias money and grant money and USDA loans, but we think we found a better way to go outside that design. We’re tracking that down. It’s going to cost us a lot less. We won’t have to go into a lot of debt to get that done.”
When asked, “If someone were to ask you, ‘Why should I vote for you,’ what would your response be?” Aldridge said, “This is my home. This is my children’s home. It’s my grandchildren’s home. My root is here. I lived elsewhere for seven or eight years while I attended college and wrote newspaper in Artesia. The rest of my life has been here. I kind of built my life around service, taught school for 20 years, my wife for 31 years, we’re retired here and not moving anywhere. I feel like I have a good grasp of city government, especially at the local level and the state level, the restrictions that are put on municipal government, by state statute. I understand the aggravations. My willingness to listen to people and try to be responsive to their needs. Well, I’m interested not only in where we’ve been, but where we’re going. To my mind, what we’ve tried to do in the last seven, seven and a half years, eight years, is rebuild the infrastructure so that the young ones, the next chapter coming after us, don’t have to. They don’t have to live crisis to crisis as far as our infrastructure goes, Band Aid to Band-Aid, but we have the opportunity with the revenue stream we’ve had because of the frack play here, to utilize those funds and rebuild our infrastructure. A lot of times, what we find is what was put in the ground or whatever was available in the El Paso warehouse that day. So we’ve got a hodgepodge of stuff. It wasn’t mapped well, and now we’ve got mapping. We know where the valves are that we put in. So this next bunch behind us don’t to have to fight the same battles we do, and they can use their good imaginations to try to figure out where this community goes 30, 40, 50, 50 years into the future. Well, you know, another thing is the new EMS building. We have the capability to run three ambulances and it’s fully staffed. We’ve increased the capabilities of the EMTs. We’ve got intermediates that allow us to do more in the back of the ambulance while we’re trying to get people to medical care. That’s something else. You know, we live in a special place. It’s the most unique city that I’ve been to in New Mexico, for a little old town in corner of New Mexico.”
Referring to the current field of candidates running for office in Jal, Aldridge added, “In my second term, there wasn’t a single contested seat at school board or hospital board or city council. It’s good to see competitive races. You know, we live in a representative democracy where we give people the opportunity to select those that they think will best represent them and take care of what we’re supposed to.”