City wants property owners to clean up weeds, trash

Snow and rain have helped weeds grow in this vacant lot on Coal Avenue in downtown Gallup and throughout the city, giving property owners more work to keep their land in compliance with city codes. [Photo by Jeff Jones/Independent]

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — City residents and business owners who've been letting their weeds grow a little too tall or their trash pile up a little too high should be hearing from City Hall soon.

By a unanimous vote, the City Council agreed to step up enforcement of Gallup's grooming codes.

For the past four years, City Manager Eric Honeyfield said, the city has been cracking down on unsightly commercial properties. It's demolished several abandoned motels, torn down 27 dilapidated billboards, and had owners remove or repair more than 50 disheveled business signs.

The next step, he said, was to train City Hall's eye on Gallup's front lawns.

"We don't have to look very far to find violations," Honeyfield said.

It's more a matter of how far the city wants to look, and each administration has its own preference. The last opted for a rather laid back approach, more or less staying out of the way unless someone complained about his or her neighbor. Honeyfield thought it time to be a little more pro-active.

"Most people," he said, "need a little nudge."

That "nudge" will come in the form of a letter — or two, if the property owner doesn't heed the first — asking that the code violation be taken care of.

Ninety percent of the time, Honeyfield said, that should do the trick. It's the other 10 percent that will take a little work.

"You will have some holdouts," Honeyfield warned the council. "Invariably there will be the more stubborn property owners."

The third letter, should the violation persist, will include a citation and a date for a court hearing. Otherwise, the city could fix the violation itself and put a lien on the property, recouping the cost of the work whenever the property gets sold.

In other business, the council went against the recommendation of the city's purchasing department in rejecting a $448,000 bid from Murphy Builders to renovate the aging Harold Runnels Swimming Complex.

The combination of pre-fabricated walls and plenty of moisture, said Purchasing Director Marco Abeita, has been causing the wall joints to separate. In addition to repairing the concrete, the bid included an indoor and outdoor paint job and retiling of the facility's steam room.

City councilors agreed that the repairs were needed. What bothered them was that only one company had offered to do them. Honeyfield agreed that the city was experiencing a "hard bidding environment."

The problem, he said, was the difficulty companies face getting bonded. Before a company submits a bid, it must convince an insurance company to give it a performance bond, a kind of guarantee to the city that if the company wins the bid but can't follow through, another company will be found who can; however, the company usually has to demonstrate a long record of profits to qualify for the performance bond. According to Honeyfield, most companies in the area can't.

"That cuts out 99 percent of your competition," he said.

Instead of going with Murphy Builders, then, the council decided to table the project and see if it couldn't do some of the work in-house and partner with the Gallup McKinley County School District, which uses the pool, for the rest.

Honeyfield also suggested rebidding the project in hopes of attracting more companies — and lowering the cost.

Before that, the council breezed through a waiver for Municipal Judge Linda Padilla, who helped hire her husband to work on the court's computer system.

State law generally prohibits city employees from helping procure services for the city when the employee or an immediate family member stands to profit, but allows the administrative services director to waive the rule on certain conditions. The financial interest must be disclosed, the director must determine that the employee can help without bias, and that the employee's help is in the city's best interest.

In this case, Judge Padilla helped procure the labor of Padilla Computer Services, owned by her husband Don, to maintain the court's computer system and take it wireless. Administrative Services Director Larry Binkley decided the waiver was justified.

The problem in this case was that City Hall didn't know about the $21,000 contract, which went into effect Jan. 1, until later in the month. On top of that, the council — though it need not approve the waiver — should have been notified beforehand.

Tuesday evening, more than four months late, the council accepted the report without comment.