I would like to welcome you to the City of Portales Web Site. I hope your experience of our community via the web is an informative one, and we look forward to having you visit us in person.
Portales is a great community with lots of good qualities. Our citizens are our greatest resource. They’re sincere, friendly, and always willing to lend a helping hand when needed. Portales offers many quality of life facilities and functions for its citizens and visitors. We have a brand new general acute care hospital with top quality emergency room service, a first class state of the art public library, great public parks and recreation, wonderful museums, terrific restaurants, and much more. Our community offers a low cost of living, warm climate, and has among the lowest crime rate in the country.
The City of Portales has one of the most qualified and recognized
fire and medical emergency departments in the state. The city offers
its citizens good quality public
works services such as water, solid waste, and sewer
at very reasonable rates. Portales is the home to Eastern
New Mexico University that offers many quality undergraduate
and graduate programs. Cannon
Air Force Base, home of the 27th Special Operations
Wing is located 11 miles north of our city.
Portales is very business and industry friendly boasting an award winning downtown revitalization program where sizable infrastructure improvements have been made and two industrial parks home to a number of multi-million dollar quality industries including Dairy Concepts milk facility, Southwest Canners, Abengoa, Milk Transport Services and others. Portales is definitely open for business!
My goal as mayor is to pursue and promote economic development, encourage smart growth, and continue to improve the quality of life for our citizens and also those who visit us. I hope that you tell your friends about our community and please visit us often. You are welcome to contact us via e-mail, regular mail, telephone, or at City Hall. Our staff and I are committed to providing you excellent service.
Contact Information
Orlando Ortega Jr.
Mayor of Portales
100 West First Street Portales, NM 88130
(575) 356-6662 Ext. 24
(575) 356-3158 Fax mayor@portalesnm.org
Mission Statement
The mission of the Mayor’s Office is to uphold the standards set for the office as provided for in the Portales City Code and State Statutes. The Mayor shall (1) preside at all meetings of the City Council; (2) lead, guide and develop in conjunction with the City Council and City Manager strategic planning for the community; (3) represent the City and promote its interest at the local, county, state and national levels including economic and industrial development; (4) provide as the ceremonial and spokesperson for the City in events and special purposes. The salary of the mayor, mayor pro tem and council members are set out in Article III of the City Code.
MAYOR
$650.00 per month
MAYOR PRO TEM
$550.00 per month
COUNCILMEMBERS
$400.00 per month
Community Address Portales, New Mexico
Mayor Orlando Ortega Jr.
March 22, 2006
On March 7th, the citizens of Portales went to the polls throughout
the city and voted for and elected a Mayor, four Council Members,
and a Municipal Judge.
It is with great honor and privilege to serve as your Mayor for
a second term. I pledge to serve with great dedication, fairness,
honesty, and with fiscal responsibility.
I am pleased to say that it is also with great privilege to work
with a City Council who is very dedicated to serving the community.
I want to express that it is a great pleasure to work with a dedicated
city administration and staff led by City Manager, Debi Lee.
In the past recent years, your Mayor, City Council, and administration
have made many important decisions for the good of the community
through policy. I believe we have made tremendous efforts that have
allowed our community to progress and grow. By improving the community,
this in turn improves citizens’ quality of life. We are committed
to making Portales the best it can be.
From our streets and alleys to our recreation, our parks, ball fields,
and swimming pool, our cemetery, to policing our community, fire
and ambulance service, emergency dispatch, airport, utility services
of water, sewer, and solid waste, community and senior citizen service,
public library to promoting our community, commerce and economic
development, to protecting our citizens with new city ordinances
and policy, the City of Portales has a tremendous responsibility
in serving its people. Our city government provides these services
through the employment of 140 of our very own citizens. We do this
with a 12 million dollar annual budget.
I believe in responsibility and accountability; it is the responsibility
of the Mayor and Council to protect the financial well being of
the City of Portales. I pledge that to you. Our efforts will continue
in working to improve service and expenditures throughout city government.
Over the past four years, through the work of your elected body,
city manager and her staff, we have been successful in meeting many
needs by becoming more efficient while at the same time directing
internal savings towards more pressing needs. Everyday we are finding
areas of improvement and taking action on them.
We have been very successful with city infrastructure improvements
over the past four years. We have several projects complete and
current improvement programs in place such as street reconstruction
and repair, pipeline and valves upgrades and mapping, wastewater
treatment plant upgrades, and parks and recreation improvements.
We expend city funds along with legislative dollars for much of
this.
In the past four years, we have been very successful in securing
Community Development Block Grant funds in the amount of $1,354,410
that has allowed us to improve areas in the community where infrastructure
did not exist or needed tremendous upgrade. With these dollars we
improved storm drainage through engineered grading, installation
of curb and gutter, and construction of streets. With the many projects
we have in place, we will work at accomplishing every project in
a timely and efficient manner.
With your city dollars we have also invested in community planning.
During the 2004 and 2005 year, we spent a considerable amount of
time developing a community comprehensive plan. It involved several
community meetings designed for citizen input. Collectively, we
were able to develop a solid plan for the community. It is now the
road map to our community’s future. The plan allows for adjustments
and amendments along the way as we move our community forward.
As we move our community into the future, we see many changes along
the way. This “Global Economy” we talk about and live
in affects everyone, from main street business, to milk production,
to university enrollment. To move our community forward with progress
and growth we must continually examine where we are today and know
where we want to go with our future. That is where our planning
plays such an important role. It takes great commitment and energy
from everyone. It starts with the leadership level and goes to those
we pay to assist us in moving our community towards progress. We
also depend on volunteers who give so much to the effort as well.
We must focus on our goals; we must execute our plans, and we must
have results, both short and long term.
I want to mention some very important priorities of mine, and through
discussions with the city council, I see they are very important
to them as well. These priorities are important because they lead
our community to success! We have already demonstrated that to a
large degree.
We must continue to support our existing business and industry.
With the help of the city council, I pledge to continue a business
friendly relationship and environment. We are business friendly
to anyone who wishes to locate start-up, expand or upgrade existing
business or industry in our community. Over the past four years
we have exercised our business friendly practices with major multi-million
dollar expansions with local industries with industrial revenue
bonds and other means of support.
Of course, we will always be very aware and cautious. We will practice
smart growth as we seek opportunities for the community and our
citizens.
We must continue to be aggressive in recruitment of new business
and industry. We will work at being more creative and more aggressive
at pursuing growth. We will not wait for opportunity to come to
us; we will go out and find opportunity for our community! We will
seek out both local and outside developers and investors, and invite
them to do business here. Jobs mean opportunities for our children
and for us. Jobs mean more people moving to our community. All of
this increases supply and demand generating a healthy, productive
economy and more investment into the community.
We must continue to pursue small business development entrepreneurship,
start-up, and expansion. We will continue to encourage small business
growth. There is plenty of room for retail and service growth in
the community. It’s exciting to see expansions of existing
businesses in our community. An example is the recent expansion
of the Ashley Furniture Home Store, with wonderful showrooms second
to none. I applaud the business owners (Max and June Merrick) for
investing and believing that they can be successful in our community.
People from all around are coming to shop at their beautiful store.
And we have many others….in the community who are investing
in their businesses. Thank you!
For those who may need help, we must continue to generate and provide
user-friendly assistance to business start-ups from business planning,
inventory of available properties, to lending assistance. Over the
past three years the Mayor’s office, City of Portales, and
the Portales Mainstreet program have co-sponsored several small
development workshops in our community. Through these efforts we
hope to inspire new entrepreneurs who want to live their dreams
of owning their own business. I applaud small business as it is
the trademark of communities such as Portales.
An important partner of small business and to the City of Portales
is the Portales Mainstreet Program made up of community volunteers.
The program has been very successful over the past ten years. They
are committed not only to small business development, but also to
the revitalization of our downtown. Over the past few years the
Mainstreet program has been transforming the downtown district into
an attractive and inviting environment not only for citizens, but
those visiting and also for businesses looking to locate or upgrade.
Many new businesses that have located in the downtown are the direct
result of the efforts of the Portales Mainstreet program. Over the
past years Portales Mainstreet has obtained well over three million
dollars in grant awards, corporate and private donations that have
been used for downtown infrastructure improvements such as replacing
curb and gutter and sidewalks, installing lampposts…. benches
and trees. Over the next several months, Portales Mainstreet, along
with the City of Portales will be very busy with several major infrastructure
improvement projects in the downtown including the renovation of
the historic Yam Theater which will become a beautiful, multi functional
Performing Arts Center.
We need to continue to examine our existing resources and grow them.
One very important resource is Eastern New Mexico University. We
are seeing tremendous growth; numbers of enrollment continue to
climb. Let’s continue to help promote ENMU. Let’s also
encourage their efforts with infrastructure improvements through
the support of G.O. Bond Issues and legislative funding. We can
all be ambassadors for ENMU. Growth for our University is growth
for the community.
Cannon Air Force Base is another resource that we can build on.
As we patiently wait for an announcement of a mission for Cannon
we continue to support those efforts. I feel very optimistic about
the future of Cannon. Today, we have an estimated 200 military families
living in Portales. Let’s work to increase the numbers by
100, or even more. I believe we can do that!
Let’s continue to support our local health Care industry as
it continues to grow, including Roosevelt General Hospital, La Casa
Family Health and the many fine doctors in the community. There
are many other local resources to numerous to mention.
We must continue to improve the appearance of our community. I am
committed to targeting absent-tee landlords and their eyesores in
our community. We are currently working on ways of ridding vacant
and abandoned commercial buildings located within the city. With
the help of the city council and city management we will increase
efforts with code enforcement throughout the city and encourage
all citizens to make every effort to have our community clean.
We need to improve housing opportunities, “home ownership
initiative” for existing and new citizens. Our work continues
of creating opportunities for available, affordable homeownership.
There is a need for good quality, affordable homes for existing
citizens including first time buyers and those moving here for jobs.
There are real opportunities for growth in the housing market in
our community. Homeownership is an investment for the homeowner
and for the community. Homeownership promotes pride. Pride promotes
good community. It’s the America Dream!
We need to continue our efforts at securing a long-term water supply
for our community. The need for renewable water must always be at
the top of our agenda. The purchase of additional property and water
rights has provided us additional years of supply, but we must aggressively
continue to explore alternatives.
Today, the only long term alternative supply is the Ute Water pipeline
Project. This pipeline can supply a renewable water source to our
growing community for the long term. The cost today is tremendous,
but with the assistance of Congress, the State of New Mexico, and
our local communities receiving the water, we can afford to build
the pipeline. We are making progress. During this past New Mexico
Legislature, lobbying efforts to recognize the importance of regional
water infrastructure in our state were heard. House Bill 2 passed
by both the House and Senate, and signed by Governor Richardson
places 40 million dollars in the New Mexico Water Trust Fund for
statewide water projects. The goal is to continue to place large
dollar amounts into the water trust fund and use the interest and
bonding capacity to fund New Mexico water projects. In working with
U.S. Senators Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman, they have agreed
to co-sponsor a bill to the 109th Congress this spring for 75 percent
funding of the Ute Water Pipeline project. I am proud to serve as
the Vice Chairman of the Eastern New Mexico Rural Water Authority.
I feel very confident that we are moving forward in a positive pace.
With that said, we must continue to grow and expand our existing
well field to meet today’s growing demand. We are currently
adding several new production wells and infrastructure. I am very
confident that we are prepared to meet our growth demand today and
into the future, and I welcome it! We must continue to encourage
water conservation. It is good stewardship to protect and respect
all our natural resources. We must also continue to investigate
affordable ways of recycling of our wastewater and the possibility
of affordable treatment of brackish water for drinking.
And last, we must empower our youth. We must continue to encourage
them to be involved through volunteerism and participate with the
community building process. They are our future leaders. We are
in the planning stages of hosting a “Government Day”
that will allow our young leaders learn and participate with city
government. We look forward to that event.
To wrap up, we have great opportunities. We need to stay focused,
and we need to continue to execute our plans. When we do that, we
have great results!
Once again, it is an honor to serve as your Mayor and I look forward
to working with this dedicated city council, city management, and
the citizens of our wonderful community.
