Grants MainStreet cleans up its act
Fire and Ice not even breaking even

Three-year-old Claire Norman gets a temporary tattoo from Tim Franco at Fire and Ice motorcycle rally in Grants July, 18. — © 2008 Gallup Independent / Cable Hoover

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Helen Davis
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — The Grants MainStreet Project office is buzzing with activity as board members and volunteers straighten up the office and forge ahead.

The 11-year old project is cleaning their physical, administrative and financial house.

In a bold move during a special board meeting on Aug. 5, the project board of directors took a collective deep breath and voted to take a new direction with the organization, dismissing former Executive Director Kathy Gonzales and looking to internal administration concerns. Gonzales could not be reached for comment.

Monday afternoon, project volunteer Ina Hoffman could be found in the back office sorting old paperwork, moving furniture and bagging Fire and Ice Bike Rally T-shirts for an upcoming road trip. Two tables pushed together for sorting replaced the director’s desk.

Ina’s husband, MainStreet Secretary and board member Randy Hoffman, worked the telephone, setting up business appointments and wheeling and dealing as fast as Ina kept shop.

President Donald Jaramillo said he called the meeting at the urging a “a couple” of board members, but it was not an emergency meeting, as some have stated.

“The roof isn’t falling in,” the president said. Jaramillo joined board members Jamie Holton and T. Walter Jaramillo in saying the project needed to take a different direction.

Donald Jaramillo said MainStreet lost money on the recent Fire and Ice Bike Rally, a MainSteet mainstay, paying out more than the rally took in, and the project cannot afford another director right away. The organization is still paying off debts acquired when the 2007 rally lost $30,000 because of the monsoons, he added. Cleaning up administrative oversights earlier in the year cost the project $1,500, as well, Jaramillo said.

T. Walter Jaramillo, who serves on the promotions committee, said the board will have to hire another director if they are to stay in compliance with the bylaws. He stressed that one of the tasks before the board now is to study the bylaws and bring the organization and the bylaws into accord. He added that other concerns for the board include raising membership, tracking membership numbers and enrollment paperwork, taking more control of the bike rally and working within a budget.

Rally-generated

Events like the rally bring considerable money into town, he said, adding that he is looking for a way to track just how much local restaurants, hotels, gas stations and other businesses bring in during Fire and Ice days. Rally-generated money helps the economy as a whole, with the multiplier factor of money being spent several times once it comes in adding to its impact, he said.

But the rally also costs MainStreet and the city of Grants money, he said. Walter Jaramillo is also a city councilor, serving District 4, and said he has some concerns about the expense of the rally. MainStreet received $20,000 last fall in lodger’s tax money in addition to its annual allotment of $20,000 from the tax fund at the beginning of the last fiscal year to help relieve the rally loss.

The project also receives $34,500 annually from the city, for contract services, City Manager Robert Horacek said.

Donald Jaramillo said splitting the rally off from the MainStreet Project is a possibility and something the board has to consider; no decisions have been made so far. He added that the project may have to go to the lodger’s tax board again this fall.

No one involved with the Project wants to do that.

How to join
Anyone with an interest in revitalizing downtown can join the organization for a fee of $35. Members get a vote in electing the board of directors, a chance to help with volunteer projects like the Christmas Light Parade, beautification projects, the right to look at the organization’s records and make recommendations, and a sense of pride and involvement in their community. One hundred members is $3,500, one full third of the 2007 rally debt.

T-shirts

What about Ina Hoffman and those T-shirts? Hoffman said T-shirts, caps, pins, and tank tops from the 2008 bike rally are on sale to the public right now at half price. The ones she is packing up will go on a road trip with her to a bike rally in Ignacio and a southern New Mexico fair in later summer.

Hoffman said. If the fund-raising project has any shirts left when she gets back, Hoffman will put them on consignment in local shops, she said.

Hustling to get the organization on its feet and working in a new direction seems to have begun as soon as decisions were made.

“Our job is to revitalize downtown,” Walter Jaramillo said, perhaps foreshadowing the new direction MainStreet will take.

Information: Grants MainStreet Project, 523 W. Santa Fe Ave., Grants. Phone: 285-3573. Mail: P.O. Box 337, Grants, NM 87020