Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
CLOVIS —Election reimbursements and workman’s compensation claim investigations probably aren’t that riveting to the people tasked to handle them. They’re even less interesting to John and Jane Q. Public.
They are, however, discussions that need to happen and Clovis welcomed the people who should be having them — New Mexico’s county representatives, whether elected, appointed or hired.
For much of the week, the Clovis Civic Center, Curry County Events Center and Clovis Community College played host to conversations and meetings across the county spectrum as the New Mexico Association of Counties annual conference returned to Clovis for the first time in six years.
Officials said 687 participants from throughout county and state government made their way to Clovis over the week to discuss issues that mattered in their offices and in the lives of the residents they serve in all 33 counties.
Between the civic center, the events center and the college, classrooms were established for various departments — clerks and assessors at the civic center, public works at the events center and pretty much everyone else at CCC. The classrooms never changed, but the training and discussions rotated through Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Clerks spent much of Thursday afternoon, and part of Friday morning, discussing election modernization. Mandy Vigil, director for the state bureau of elections, discussed many topics in the first session, including conversations on other states on what would happen if their election system was hacked. In New Mexico’s case, Vigil said such an incident could have consequences on timely reporting of an election, but that the state’s policy to keep paper ballots created an element of confidence.
Vigil told the clerks it was important to know what issues were important enough for a poll worker to contact a clerk, and what issues were important enough for a clerk to contact the secretary of state’s office.
“If four or five counties have a similar issue,” Vigil said, “we’ll dig deeper and let all of you know what’s going on.”
Much of the earlier discussion during the session found its way to reimbursements for voting machine batteries and implementation of legislation that let municipalities opt in to the Election Day process run by the counties.
Quay County Clerk Ellen White said she was in a fortunate position because every entity in her county opted in so she has no back-and-forth with municipalities and boards running elections in various months. In all, 46 municipalities declined to opt in — including Clovis, which kept its municipal elections in March to protect its voter ID requirement.
“It is nice to have something like this for us,” White said of the conference, “because it is tough dealing with all of the different issues.”
The conference is also helpful because frequently county officials could feel like they’re on an island because they’re the only person in their county who is dealing with a specific issue. But at the conference, there are dozens who can relate.
“The networking piece is extremely valuable. If Curry County has a challenge or issue another county has experienced, that’s a big thing. Other clerks or treasurers or commissioners can brainstorm. Working as a team, you can always accomplish more.”
Of course, there was a little bit of sugar to help the medicine go down. While the policy discussions are the important part of the conference, there were kick-back events like the Wednesday night sock hop, the Thursday night barbecue and the Wednesday morning heavy equipment road-eo — which featured county employees using loaders and graders for comically precise tasks like knocking a tennis ball off a cone or writing initials on a sheet of paper with a marker attached to the loader.
Curry County Manager Lance Pyle said the community contributed greatly to the conference.
“We heard a lot of positive feedback from our participants who shopped in local stores and ate in restaurants on how friendly and inviting our community was,” Pyle said. “We had plenty of businesses with signs welcoming New Mexico counties and people would even comment when they saw people with their badges on and welcomed them to the community.”