Q&A: City council Ward A candidates share strengths, ambitions

Editor's note: The following is the first in a series of question and answer sessions with Portales city council candidates.

Veronica Cordova

Why do you want to be a city councilor and what strengths do you feel you will bring to the position?

I enjoy serving my community. I think my strength is I'm engaged; I try to be at most of the events the city has, and I'm involved in the chamber and MainStreet. Just wanting to see and be part of the success of my community is what I think my strength is.

The Ute water project and water issues In general are always hot topics. Do you support the Ute water project? What other solutions/projects would you like to see come to fruition with water issues and how do you plan to help make them happen?

When it comes to water issues, we need to support any way that we can get water to our community, because if we don't have water, we don't have a community. So yes, I do support the Ute project. I think we need to be proactive with conserving water and being smart about industries coming into our community that will use our water. We need to proactive instead of reactive (with this issue), and I think we need to buy more water rights.

What are other issues within the city you are concerned about and how do you plan to address them?

There's the roads, of course, and more reaction for kids within our community. I think if we have more things for kids to do within the community, there's less opportunities for crime. We have a high teen pregnancy rate. We need to address things like that and maybe get some after school programs. We do have the rec. center, and that's an awesome program, but we don't have any adult recreation that could include teens.

Bringing business/economy to the area always proves to be a challenge, particularly with state funding cuts. Is this a concern for you? If so, what do you hope to accomplish in this area?

That goes back to being smarter about bringing businesses into town. We do need to have more businesses in town and be more vibrant, but I believe that the people we have in positions now throughout the city, such as the economic developer, I think we can work together to bring things in. We have to be passionate about our community and let people know how Portales can help them succeed, because if business doesn't succeed, we don't succeed. If we're not going to help businesses succeed, then why are they going to want to come here? They need to know that we're going to be involved and appreciative that they're coming here and let them know that we can help them get tools to make them successful. How can businesses be successful if we don't come together and support them?

What will be your three biggest goals or areas of focus in your first year as a councilor?

My main one would be to educate myself more with how the council is structured. The other thing would be being engaged with the community as a whole and trying to learn about the different organizations and businesses and the way the city is structured with their different departments. I do understand and know how MainStreet works and how the chamber works, but as far as the city goes, I still need to educate myself on how certain things are done in specific areas. I want to go into the different departments and say, “here I am. Let me understand your business,” so when people are asking me questions, I can explain to someone who's asking me, what is the purpose of this?

And I want to give back as much as possible. I think it's important for the city to see you involved, to see you proactive and doing things.

Michael Lucero

Why do you want to continue being a city councilor and what strengths do you feel you bring to the position?

I wanted to give back to my community. I worked for the city for 27 years, and there were things I didn't understand when I was a city employee, and I thought there were things I could make better for people coming into the city (as a councilor) and explain to them the process of how things work. A lot of things weren't really explained to us back when I worked for the city. I wanted to see more cooperation between the public and the city. After all, we are working for the community.

The Ute water project and water issues In general are always hot topics. Do you support the Ute water project? What other solutions/projects would you like to see come to fruition with water issues and how do you plan to help make them happen?

I do support the Ute water project as an alternative. It's nice to know we have something to fall back on, but we also cannot rely on that entirely. We also need to find solutions that are closer to becoming a reality. I'd like to see more conservation efforts, and I would like to see more water conservation education efforts in the schools and maybe at ENMU. When I worked for the city (as an employee), we could go into the schools and explain how things work and how to conserve the water, and we had little test kits for the kids. On my off hours, I wouldn't mind going into the schools and telling the kids about water conservation.

What are other issues within the city you are concerned about and how do you plan to address them?

The streets for one thing, their infrastructure. You have to have money to do that, so you have to try to find ways to deal with that. We just need to support the street department in any way that we can to get them funding for the equipment they need and so on.

Bringing business/economy to the area always proves to be a challenge, particularly with state funding cuts. Is this a concern for you? If so, what do you hope to accomplish in this area?

It is a concern, but I'd like to see the businesses that we do have succeed and get a firm grasp with everything. We need to look at (new) businesses that don't use a large amount of water that could hire more people locally. It would be nice to establish enough business here to be able to keep our kids here. We need more training programs for businesses to teach youth about their businesses. The city used to have summer youth programs. That's how I first started with the city. The big thing is to keep the businesses we do have in town and support them.

What will be your three biggest goals or areas of focus in your next year as councilor if elected?

I'd like to see the water reuse project get into full operation and see water start being injected back into the aquifer and see the fire station on the north side happen, because the trains blocking the ambulance has been a big concern for my constituents. And trying to see what we have with road infrastructure maintained. I'd like to see more stuff for the youth where the youth would have something to do after school. There may be something there we can look at that I don't know of (at the moment).

— Compiled by Managing Editor Alisa Boswell