Monuments to government waste

WATROUS, N.M. (KRQE) - They are scattered across New Mexico: brand new public buildings that never opened for business, sitting for years, empty and unfinished.

Millions of tax dollars poured into government construction projects that stand as monuments to waste.

For example, in Watrous, taxpayers footed the $510,000 tab to build a community center in the unincorporated village in Mora County. Now it may look like a community center, but appearances are deceiving.

It's value to the community?

"Not much," said Antonio Ortega, the Santa Fe architect who worked on the Watrous building and two other stalled projects.

In fact, the only thing taxpayers have to show for their investment is a bare-bones steel structure.

It's been sitting on the prairie locked and unfinished for three years. Nobody knows when or if the community center will be completed.

Three Democratic state legislators--Rep. Thomas Garcia of Ócate, then-Rep, Hector Balderas of Wagon Mount and Sen. Pete Campos of Las Vegas--requested the combined total of $510,000 in capital outlay money for the Watrous Community Center.

"At the time it sounded like a worthy project," Campos, a state senator from Las Vegas, said.

But once the Legislature approved the money, no one there tracked the project. Legislators wrote a half-million-dollar check and then walked away from the deal.

Watrous is a tiny village with no government, so a committee of local residents was in charge. They hired an architect to design a 4,200-square-foot community center for 400 people. Never mind that less than 200 people live here.

In fact, the design was so big that there was only enough money to build the building shell. Once the available money ran out, the contractor packed his tools and left. That was three years ago.

"We continually advised them that their undertaking was far bigger than they had available funds for," Ortega said.

It will cost an estimated $200,000 to complete the community center. Nobody is predicting when or if this structure might open for business.

"When taxpayers throughout the state of New Mexico are expecting their investment to be made in a very wise way, and the building is not complete and is not operational, yes, it's very frustrating," Campos said.

And it's not just Watrous. At Luna Community College in Las Vegas there is an auto repair shop. Or, at least there is supposed to be. The 5,000-square-foot steel structure has been sitting on campus unfinished for the last four years.

The idea was to have classrooms and a shop to train vocational students. Instead they have a huge taxpayer-funded warehouse to store a little of this and that.

New Mexico's Higher Education Department handed Luna Community College $300,000 to construct the repair shop. Luna in turn designed a building costing $600,000.

"We're mandated by our contract to raise flags if the undertaking is in excess of the available monies," Ortega said adding that his architectural firm raised those red flags with the auto shop project.

So far Luna has been unsuccessful in its search for money to complete the project. Today students can't use the building to learn; all they can do is look.

Sen. Campos took over as college president after the repair shop was planned.

"Right now it isn't serving the students at the college, unfortunately," he said. "It's something that reminds us every day that we need to find those resources so that we can get that building operational."

And then there's the project in Mora some call New Mexico's Taj Mahal.

"I don't believe this building will be completely done in my lifetime," Jerry Martinez, the head of a local good-government group, said.

It's the Mora County Courthouse project. Come to this northeast New Mexico community and you'll get an earful.

"What a waste," Mary Vermillion of Mora Taxpayers for Honest Government said. "I think we have to figure out how we can finish this because here we sit with this huge building that nobody can use."

"County government run amok," she said. "We might just as well take the money and put it in the street and set it on fire for what we are getting for it."

But don't expect now-former Mora County Commission Chairman Peter Martinez to weigh in on the issue. He didn’t return repeated phone calls and walked away when News 13 caught up with him at the commission's meeting in December.

"I don't know you, and I don't want to talk to you, Mr. Barker," he said.

After the old courthouse in Mora was condemned for fire and safety hazards, commissioners accumulated $5 million to build a 44,000-square-foot, state-of-the art government center. The building they designed cost $12 million.

But if you only got $5 million available, and you design a $12 million building, does that make a lot of sense?

"I think they were encouraged that there were monies that were going to be forthcoming from future state appropriations," architect Ortega said. "And the likelihood of them getting funding to complete that is up in the air. It's really sad."

Construction