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5/21_rrVoters

Mariano Aguirre, a veteran volunteering for Rio Rancho’s special elections, sits in a room in Rio Rancho’s city hall Tuesday afternoon to monitor voters. Voters decided not to reduce the city’s Municipal Higher Education Gross Receipt Tax that night, which means UNM West will continue to receive $2 million from the city’s sales tax revenues over the next year.

Rio Rancho upholds UNM tax

news@dailylobo.com

For another year, UNM’s newest campus will continue to receive more taxpayer money.

UNM West will continue to receive money from Rio Rancho, as city residents voted against a cut to the city’s higher education tax Tuesday in a special election.

Of the total 6,091 voters, 3,611 people voted to keep Rio Rancho’s Municipal Higher Education Gross Receipt Tax at one-eighth of one percent, and 2,480 people voted to reduce the tax by half. The voter turnout total represented 10.7 percent of all registered voters in Rio Rancho.

UNM West CEO Wynn Goering said he supports continued funding through the higher education tax. He said the result of the vote will not only benefit UNM West students but also the city itself.

“This is not a UNM tax,” Goering said. “This is a tax support for your education, and we are the vendor. We are the institution that the city has contracts with to make use of the tax.”

Voters approved the higher education tax after it was put on the ballot for Rio Rancho’s municipal and runoff elections in 2008.

This allowed the city to use sales tax to fund the buildings and infrastructure projects of higher education institutions in the city.

Goering said UNM West receives $2 million per year through the higher education tax. But he said that Rio Rancho decides which specific projects revenue from the tax would go to.

The funding cut would have slowed UNM West’s progress, Goering said.

“If that (had) passed, that would have had two impacts: We would have lost money, and the degree to which we could go ahead and do what we could in Rio Rancho would depend on other resources we have,” he said. “We can’t move as far and as fast with less funding available.”

Although he said funding for current UNM West projects is secure, Goering said the funding cut would have affected planning processes for the campus. He said it would also have proven the instability of Rio Rancho’s decision making process.

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Goering said UNM West is focusing on expansion at the moment. He said there is only one building on its campus, and that only humanities and social sciences courses are offered there. He said the building can accommodate about 600 students.

UNM plans to use continued funding from the higher education tax for its plan to erect another building in cooperation with the Central New Mexico Community College, Goering said. He said the two institutions will have initial meetings “in the next few weeks.”

Goering added that health care education will be the next focus of UNM West. He said the institution will use money from the higher education tax to establish “active learning classrooms” in its building, which would include a new classroom layout and more computers..

“That would take a fair amount of money to remodel a classroom,” he said. “But our institution is showing much better at student engagement. We’re very interested in moving it toward that type of instruction.”

But Goering said these plans need to be approved by the city before they can be finalized.

Rio Rancho resident Kelsey Hart, who went to vote with her child Markel, said she voted to keep the higher education tax at its current rate. She said she believes the city should invest on education to benefit future generations.

“I think the city is growing larger, and I think this is just going to continue to grow,” she said. “More people will start to come here. Education is always good. Anytime you invest toward education, it’s an investment toward your children.”

Hart said she believes voters made the right decision about the higher education tax.

“I always think taking any sort of fund from higher education is a bad idea,” she said. “That should be the last place to reduce funds from.”

Hart said she expects UNM West’s continued funding to be allotted for more on-campus building projects. She said the city should make cuts somewhere else.

“I’ve seen the same roads that we pave over and over,” she said. “Maybe we could take some funds away from that. And my water rates are steadily increasing. I don’t know where that money is going.”
But Marcel Lucero, a Rio Rancho resident, said he voted to slash the higher education tax because other city sectors do not receive the money they deserve.

“We want our tax dollars to be spent the right way,” he said. “The police and fire departments are underfunded, especially the fire department. They need more money, especially with the way that fires have been so prevalent this year, and probably in the future.”

Lucero said that although he believes UNM West is not wasting money, the campus already has adequate funding from other sources.
“I think UNM has enough money,” he said. “You can look at how much they build. They build, build, build, build, build. They have an unlimited amount of money, and the police and the fire departments are just underfunded.”

But Goering said he believes the higher education tax will improve Rio Rancho’s economy and can establish it as a prosperous city in the state.

“We don’t want Rio Rancho to be a bedroom city to Albuquerque,” he said. “If we want to beat that, we must have the higher education infrastructure to make that happen.”

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