Council Accepts City Clerk’s Resignation
By John Earp
During a specially called meeting of the Jal City Council this past Tuesday, the council voted to accept the resignation of long-term City Clerk Molly Sanchez. The meeting included an executive session which lasted over three hours to discuss personnel matters, during which Sanchez and City Manager Wes Hooper were called in to join the executive session. Also listed on the agenda for the executive session were potential right of way acquisitions on East Merryman and donation of city property. None of the specifics of what was discussed in executive session were revealed to the public.
Under New Business, the first order of the agenda had originally been to discuss and act on acceptance of the City Clerk resignation, followed by discussion and action on appointment and swearing in of the new City Clerk.
When the discussion was opened by Mayor Little concerning the City Clerk resignation, Councilor Seifts noted that the discussion should be done in executive session, and made a motion to that effect. The motion to go into executive session prior to the new business passed unanimously, with the council leaving the chambers into the conference room.
After the council came out of executive session, the council voted unanimously to accept City Clerk’s resignation. The next order of business was to appoint Adela Rodriguez as the new City Clerk, with the mayor nominating her and the council voting unanimously to confirm her appointment. She was then sworn in by the mayor. All councilors were present for the meeting with the exception of Lorenzo Chacon.
After the meeting was adjourned, Rodriguez shared with The Jal Record that she had served as deputy city clerk for the City of Jal for four years prior to becoming the director of the Jal Senior Center, also mentioning that she had been to clerk school, but because she moved over to head up the Senior Center, she hasn’t yet gotten her certificate. She also said she has her associate’s degree and is pursuing her bachelor’s degree from New Mexico State University.
Resolutions which were discussed and passed in the special meeting were a Request for Proposal for Fire/EMS Quality Assurance/Quality Improvement Consulting Services, a professional services agreement with New Mexico Local Government Law, LLC, and a professional services agreement with Domenici Law Firm, PC. It was explained in the meeting that the City’s agreements with two separate law firms was necessary so that if one firm can not provide necessary services at any given point due to their workload, the other firm can.