County planning kicks off

In about six months, Quay County should have a new comprehensive plan that will include results from citizen comments and outline a path to achieve county goals, according to Phyllis Taylor, a principal with Sites Southwest, an Albuquerque architecture, design and planning firm.

Taylor told the Quay County Commission on Monday during a “kickoff meeting” to begin the process that plan development would begin in January with public outreach to seek suggestions on land use, transportation, housing, economic development, infrastructure, hazard mitigation and water systems.

In the meantime, Sites Southwest will research and update information in the county’s current plan, which was last updated in 2010, Taylor said.

Three more tasks should be completed within six months, she said, culminating in adoption of the comprehensive plan document.

As part of the planning process the county is getting help in setting up an “asset-management” system to manage county roads, Russell Doss, an engineer for Souder, Miller and Associates, an Albuquerque engineering firm, told the commission.

In an asset management system, road maintenance and paving can be scheduled systematically based on age, amount of use and the condition of any road in a way that reduces overall road management costs, Doss said.

Together, work on the plan and the asset management system will cost $60,000, with funds coming from federal Community Development Block Grant proceeds, Richard Primrose, county manager said.

District 1 Commissioner Sue Dowell said she would like to see plans to make full use of Tucumcari’s five exits from Interstate 40. Two of the exits should have more business development, she said.

She also expressed concern about the lack of services for working mothers in the county, and asked whether the new comprehensive plan could address such concerns.

Child care can cost up to $700 per month, she said, which is out of range for many families in the county.

“If a family’s income is just a little more than poverty level,” she said, “they cannot receive affordable child care.”

Taylor said the planning process could “look into” problems like that.

Road management plan discussion focused on problems with County Road AI, the road between U.S. 54 and Interstate 40 that passes by the Tucumcari Municipal Airport.

District 3 Commissioner Franklin McCasland said the county paved this road a few years ago for use by local car traffic.

Since then, the road has become a thoroughfare for semi-trailer trucks and other heavy vehicles, because navigation systems are specifying the road as the best route between I-40 and U.S. 54.