About The Valley: La Junta Council Feb 7, 2022

Description: About The Valley with The City of La Junta...City Council Action and Highlights from Feb 7, 2022... Includes: Liquor License Approvals, Council Meeting Time Changed to 6pm, Power Provider Discussion, and More...

Sponsored by:

This is Adrian Hart with your Southeast Colorado News on seconews.org 

It's "About The Valley" our podcast program that is all about the people of Southeast Colorado.

We're here with La Junta City Manager Rick Klein and City of La Junta Mayor Joe Ayala. Good morning guys.

Ayala: Good Morning Adrian.

SECO News: Alright, now we know that folks are going to listen to this at all hours of the day, that's the beauty of the podcast.

Ayala: Good day Adrian. 

SECO News: Good day, good evening, whatever we need to say... To those listeners we appreciate you taking the time to be with us and listen to this program, of course we make it available on Spotify, we're going to be adding it to YouTube, and other platforms including Anchor, and of course, seconews.org/podcasts - That gets you all of our podcasts free access seven days a week.

Alright, city council met last night and I saw you had some interesting public participation, so we're going to do that in a separate article, but we're going to to through the itinerary and what action council took.

Ayala: The first thing I do want to mention, Adrian, is that we have an invocation at the start of every meeting, and this meeting Ed gave the invocation and we had a moment of silence for Jim Herrell. Jim Herrell was a key member of this community and he was big in not just this community, but in the world of dinosaurs, and all education. Jim was a really big figure, and he's going to be a big loss for us.

He was my principal when I was a little boy. Later on we became friends, he was actually a client of mine. We're sitting in these meetings and I keep saying, "Mr. Herrell, Mr. Herrell," and he says, "Joe call me Jim, stop calling me Mr. Herrell, but it was just so ingrained in me, but that's going to be a tough loss.

Klein: A tough loss. 

Ayala: For this whole area, so I do want to mention that that came up and we did take a moment of silence for him. 

Klein: A great La Juntan, a great historian, a great principal, educator...

Both: A Great Person.

SECO News: He's going to be missed.

Klein: After citizen participation we went to new business and we set a hearing application for a hotel/restaurant, liquor license by The Steakhouse LTD...Where is it?

SECO News: That's at K-Bob's!

Klein: The old K-Bob's.

Ayala: So, it was most recently Papa Gigi's, is that correct?

Klein: Papa Gigi's, yes.

Ayala: For someone who wasn't around way back when K-Bob's was around.

SECO News: Thank you Joe for bringing it right back around for the whole audience.

It is hard to relate when you've been here your whole life and you know those landmarks. Earlier we were looking at some photographs and Rick was saying, "You know where that bridge is, it's by El Azteca." I'll bet some folks remember prior to El Azteca being at that location because they moved it there in like 1984.

Ayala: Wasn't it called Mexico City?

Klein: Yeah, it was Mexico City, 1948.

SECO News: Oh, '48 there we go. We've got the historian in the room, so anyways let's make some history, we're taking notes on what happened last night at city council.

Klein: So we set the public hearing for March 21st at 5:30 and that will be a half hour before the city council meeting because we did switch from 7 o'clock to 6 o'clock, and I do like that a lot better.

Ayala: And we want to make sure to get that out there because I did see some people walk in late again last night. The meetings are now at 6 o'clock. The first and third Monday of every month unless there's a holiday and then it will be on that Tuesday, but it's at 6pm now.

SECO News: Bumped it an hour earlier so you guys can call it a day sooner, I would hope.

Ayala: Yeah we get out of work and we just want to come straight here, not go back home and then start the day back over.

SECO News: I totally get it, you get that hour of limbo and it's hard to be productive.

Ayala: It's hard to get back out, yup.

Klein: So, we went to liquor licenses and we had an application for a special events permit by Our Lady of Guadalupe Saint Pat's Parish and Michael Perez is the event manager. The Event is their annual Saint Patrick's Day Dinner/Auction to be held March 12, 2022 from 4 pm to 11:59 at 202 Lincoln Avenue and that did pass six to zero.

We had an application for a renewal of a fermented beverage off premise liquor license by Walmart, which actually passed six to zero too.

So one of the next big items that we did have was a resolution authorizing the sale of the real property, and this did pass six to zero, and this is 207 Colorado Avenue, people should know it by The Core Building. Sangre De Cristo Hospice is buying it, and they are going to own all their buildings in all their towns.

Ayala: We got in for everything we put into it, but the bigger thing too is we added jobs. 

Klein: We added jobs.

Ayala: So, not only was that sale a success, we're trying to get out of that arena and letting the public sector do their own thing, but we didn't lose money, and we added jobs.

Klein: Actually we leased it for those two years and we got those payments, and that in addition. So, folks you can take a building in La Junta, Colorado and recondition it and the value will be there.

Ayala: There may be another opportunity coming up, so stay tuned on that.

Klein: That's right. There will be one coming up. So next we had a resolution extending the terms of the Arkansas River Power Authority board members. Whenever you have a board that goes for so long, you've got people who leave during mid-terms, and all of a sudden you've got everybody getting off at the same time, and you have to stagger them. So, what this did is just reset that stagger. So, Gary Cranson will stay until December 31, 2025 on the ARPA board and Loren Sutherland's term will be up at the end of 2023 on December 31st.

Ayala: Two good guys right there.

Klein: Two great guys right there, dedicating their retired life to helping out La Junta, so my hats off to them, and that did pass six - zero.

Ayala: And we had a nice meeting in Denver at Action 22 with Rick Riegel, from ARPA, as well as Guzman Energy, so there's going to be some news coming on that soon too.

Klein: And Guzman, you know is going to be the new provider for our electricity for all of our ARPA communities, so we're looking forward to working with them, I think that they've got some good things that they are going to bring along with some lower electric prices.

Ayala: Some solar too maybe.

SECO News: Good.

Klein: and we're going to start talking to them about getting a solar operation down here too and they're interested, and it works. It would work here.

SECO News: Yeah, because we've got our, whatever the statistic is, 265 days of sunshine, or whatever they say. 

Klein: Yup, and we have that industrial park where we could upgrade the substation and wield that power back around.

SECO News: Plug it into the infrastructure and save a buck and pass it down to the community.

Klein: That's right. Alright, Damon Ramirez talked about the Girls in the Middle program.

SECO News: Oh yeah, we've got that press release running. We can put a link on that and we'll give you guys all the details on the Girls in the Middle Conference up at Otero College.

Klein: With that we adjourned the meeting.

SECO News: Alright, very good, well thank you so much for taking the time, Joe, Rick, do you guys have anything to say in closing?

Klein: One last thing, there's a lot of big pressure in America right now for - they call it the great renegotiation on salaries and stuff and we're seeing a lot of pressure. Every city that I'm out there talking to is feeling the same type of pressures on wages and we have to do something and we're going to meet with city council in a couple weeks and go through and see what kind of adjustments that we can make. We've got to pass a one percent sales tax because of all the inflation that's coming off on materials and wages.

Ayala: In order to stay competitive, in order to get things accomplished without cutting out something else from the budget, that's something we're going to really look at doing. Me and Rick have started this process we will get as close as we can to get it done, but we're going to need the people to get on board as well too. So, be on the lookout for that, that's coming down the pipeline. We're going to be looking at ways that we can get everyone taken care of, we want to make sure that we have roads that are drivable and having employees to maintain those roads. We're looking at that, that's coming down the pipeline for us.

SECO News: Alright, very good. For Rick Klein, La Junta City Manager and Joe Ayala, La Junta City Mayor, I'm Adrian Hart, and this is "About The Valley."

Related Content:

James E. Herrell Obituary

23rd Annual Girls in the Middle Conference Registration Now Open

Share

Tweet

Follow SECO News on Facebook.
Subscribe to the SECO News YouTube Channel.