By Lauren Lifke
Edgewood town commissioners deliberated until after midnight on Tuesday, Oct. 16, with staff and citizens bringing to light financial recordkeeping discrepancies and rumors of the town manager’s termination, in the longest regular meeting the Town Commission has held in more than a year.
The bulk of the nearly seven-hour meeting was spent in closed session, which focused on the employment of Town Manager Nina McCracken. The session was closed because of “Limited Personnel Matters- the discussion of hiring, promotion, demotion, dismissal, assignment or resignation of or the investigation of complaints or charges against any individual public employee,” according to the agenda.
Rumors of McCracken’s termination had circulated before the meeting, and one public commenter advocated for McCracken’s continued employment before closed session began.
Reentering the open session after five hours, commissioners finalized McCracken’s midyear review to include goals and expectations for her for the next six months. Commissioners will review McCracken’s goals and expectations in a closed session during the next regular meeting on Oct. 28.
The new clerk-treasurer Shaline Lopez, who was appointed two weeks ago, presented updates on the town’s finances to the commissioners, bringing up several issues that she has been working to resolve since starting the job.
“There’s an awful lot of information to observe and lots to learn,” Lopez said.
She said she was informed of “HR matters that require attention” and has been investigating those accordingly.
“Outsourcing payroll to a third party may be the ideal solution while we work to clean up mistakes that were made in the past,” Lopez said.
She said she is also catching the city up on its state audits, which previously had not been submitted since 2022. According to the Office of the State Auditor, local governments are required to submit audits on Dec. 15 of each fiscal year, which ends June 30. The Town of Edgewood was required to submit the fiscal year 2023 audit on Dec. 15, 2023, and the fiscal year 2024 audit on Dec. 15, 2024.
Lopez said the final FY23 audit was completed recently. Work has begun for the FY24 audit, she said.
She said HR also discovered that new employees had not been registered to the New Mexico new hire website since 2023.
“Registering new employees to this website is a requirement for all employers,” Lopez said. “This has been corrected and will be corrected for all new employees going forward.”
She said an audit for the Public Employees Retirement Association is in progress. The process, which aims to determine discrepancies with PERA withholdings and payment over the past few years, began a few months ago — before Lopez’s tenure. She said it may take a while, but measures are now in place to ensure correct PERA reporting going forward.
“Glad to see you’re settling in,” Mayor Ken Brennan told Lopez at the end of her presentation. “I know it’s like trying to jump on a train that’s already traveling at 80 miles an hour.”
