Officials, community inaugurate Portales City Hall

City officials and community members gathered Monday morning to make it official that Portales has a new city hall.

The new Portales City Hall was formally inaugurated with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 10 a.m. Monday. The ribbon cutting was followed by a presentation of a large painting in the new city's hall's conference room, then cupcakes and beverages and unguided tours of the building.

The painting was presented by Karl Terry, executive director of the Roosevelt County Chamber of Commerce, who said it was donated to the city by the family of Ruth White Burns, the wife former Portales Mayor Mike Burns.

The painting, which depicts cattle and cowboys stopping for water at Portales Springs in the 19th century in a time before railroads arrived in the 1890s. The painting subject's site is a few miles east of Portales, Terry said.

The artwork was painted by LaWanda Calton, a Portales artist who gained some notoriety for her paintings of southwest scenes, Terry said. Calton died in February 2021.

The painting donated to Portales City Hall on Monday was the cover of a book entited "A Man was a Real Man in Them Days: Pioneers of the Llano Estacado--1860 to 1900" written by Ruth White Burns and her mother Rose Powers White, Terry said.

The building that now houses City Hall, located at 1028 Community Way in the southwest part of town, replaces a building located downtown at 100 W. Main, City Manager Sarah Austin said.

In an interview with The News in May, Austin said the old city hall had been in use since the 1960s and could not "meet the electrical and the internet needs of 2023."

In addition, she said the old building did not have enough office space. The new building, she said, has 27 offices, of which 26 are being used.

The lobby of the new building also hosts bill-paying windows for the New Mexico Gas Co. and the city's water department.

While the ribbon-cutting was held on Monday, Austin said the building had been occupied for two weeks before the formal opening.

The city purchased the Community Way building, which recently had housed state Income Support Division offices, about six months ago at a cost of $600,000, Austin said. The money came from federal American Recovery Act funds allocated by Congress to help in recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another $300,000 has been set aside for remodeling, Austin said, of which $100,000 has been used.

City Council meetings, she said, will still be held at the Memorial Building, 200 E. Seventh St.