NM Gov., Cabinet members interact with Farmington residents at resource fair, town hall

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and nearly 30 of her Cabinet secretaries and other agency heads, along with dozens of their staff members, descended on Farmington en masse Thursday afternoon for a resource fair and town hall meeting with local residents.

At least one of those secretaries — Mark Roper, the acting secretary of the New Mexico Economic Development Department — came bearing good news for Farmington, as he announced that the city had been awarded $1 million in revenue from the 2019 Energy Transition Act for renewable energy projects designed to reduce energy costs for local ratepayers.

The two events took place at Farmington’s Animas Elementary School and were part of the governor’s long-running Cabinet in Your Community program through which Lujan Grisham takes the members of her Cabinet to some of the state’s more remote communities to meet with citizens and help them access state government programs. Altogether, well in excess of 100 state officials were in Farmington on April 11 for the program, and they were scheduled to head to Shiprock on Friday, April 12 to hold another resource fair and town hall there.

The resource fair — which featured representatives of state agencies ranging from the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Workforce Solutions to the Public Education Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs — appeared to be a big hit, with hundreds of local residents crowding into the school gym to sign up for programs or receive free food bags and other goodies.

The town hall meeting followed in the school cafeteria. Lujan Grisham presided over the meeting, surrounded by her secretaries and other agency directors, delivering the message that the meeting was about reducing red tape and finding out how those departments could better serve citizens.

Lujan Grisham acknowledged that New Mexico’s far-flung communities, like Farmington, often get the short end of the stick simply by being so far away from Santa Fe, the state capital, and Albuquerque, the state’s largest city. The Cabinet in Your Community program, she said, is designed to address that.

“The money tends to go where the bigger populations are,” she said before adding that she hoped to hear the citizens who attended Thursday’s town hall make the case for why San Juan County deserves more consideration for state funding.

The governor noted that San Juan County has faced numerous challenges in recent years — everything from a mass shooting last year to the 2015 Gold King Mine spill and the 2022 closure of the San Juan Generating Station and the coal mine that supplied it with fuel — but it has displayed resilience and dedication to improving the lives of its residents.

“We should be more helpful,” she said of state government’s role in helping address those problems. She asked those present for constructive criticism about state government programs that don’t seem to work.

Lujan Grisham noted that approximately $156 million for road projects has been funneled to San Juan County under her administration, including approximately $40 million for the Piñon Hills Boulevard Extension project that got underway earlier this month after being in the planning stages since the 1990s. She also said the state has billions of dollars — “That’s billions with a b,” she said — available for the construction of new schools, and she encouraged the parents of schoolchildren and school administrators to aim big when it comes to making the case for new school facilities.

The governor spoke many times of the important role energy has played in San Juan County’s economic development efforts, and she said the area is poised once again to be a leader in a new area — hydrogen development.

“The hydrogen economy is a game changer, in my opinion, for the northwest corner of the state,” she said, adding that hydrogen fuels development could mean $100 billion to the state over the next 15 to 20 years alone.

She said hydrogen eventually could be as big an economic player in New Mexico as the oil and gas industry at some point, if not bigger.

Hearing directly from citizens

Altogether, those who attended the town hall meeting heard from 29 secretaries or agency heads or department leaders who introduced themselves and described what it is their entity does and how it interacts with the public. That process alone took more than an hour.

Afterward, the governor opened the floor to questions or comments, with a half dozen local residents taking the opportunity to provide feedback or quiz Grisham about some of her policy decisions.

Marie Johnson, the nutrition program coordinator for the Farmington Municipal School District, went first, offering her thanks for the governor’s role in securing the passage of a state law that authorizes public school districts to provide a free breakfast and lunch each school day to every child.

“I promise you, you will see a difference (in student achievement),” Johnson said. “We will no longer be dead last in education."

Lujan Grisham thanked Johnson for bringing up the program, but she said that feeding kids breakfast and lunch each day is only part of the issue. It’s just as important, she said, for those meals to be nutritious and healthy.

“We’re the only state that mandated healthy meals,” she said, referring to Johnson’s statement that New Mexico is one of only seven states in the country to serve free breakfast and lunch to all students.

Some states and school districts continue to fail to meet those standards, the governor said.

“The processed food we provide in schools is some of the worst in the world,” she said.

Shawna Becenti, the head of school at Farmington’s Navajo Prep, thanked the governor and the Public Education Department for grant money her institution received for a Native language revitalization program. Another local resident, David Flores, thanked the governor and members of her Cabinet for making the trek to San Juan County, noting that this kind of communication between citizens and state government officials is something that the state needs more of and “should be ongoing — regardless of administration.”

Grisham took that opportunity to launch into a spiel about the importance of public education and how it remains a priority for her administration. She began by acknowledging that New Mexico continues to trail many other states in the quality of its public schools.

“I need it to be better,” she said.

She said changes that will produce significant positive results are already in the works, and she vowed that New Mexico won’t be near the bottom of the national rankings for much longer.

“It will change generational poverty in the state,” the governor said of those improvements to public education.

Lujan Grisham ended the meeting by noting many of the positive metrics the state is experiencing these days, including a population increase spurred largely by in-migration.

“People are moving here in droves, and that’s critical,” she said.

Mike Easterling can be reached at 505-564-4610 or measterling@daily-times.com.Support local journalism with a digital subscription: http://bit.ly/2I6TU0e.

This article originally appeared on Farmington Daily Times: Hundreds of state officials descend on Farmington for town hall, fair