City to seek grant for road project

The Tucumcari City Commission authorized city employees on Thursday to seek $340,000 in state grant money to help resurface Second Street in Tucumcari’s downtown area.

Ralph Lopez, a project manager in the city’s community development department, said in a special meeting Thursday that the grant is a re-application of a grant request that was turned down last year.

If successful, any money received from the grant would be added to other funding the Second Street project has already received, Lopez said, including $180,000 in legislative grant funds to replace sewer and water lines under Second Street and $38,000 used for surveying.

The grant currently being sought would come from the Municipal Arterial Program of the New Mexico Department of Transportation.

While the city hopes to pave Second Street from Main Street to Tucumcari Boulevard, about eight blocks, efforts are focused on a few blocks near Second and Main Street.

Those few blocks, he said, will be costly to resurface, because there is concrete under the asphalt, and the concrete will have to be replaced with other filling material.

The commission also tabled an appointment to the board of the McMullen Foundation, a local charitable organization.

District 1 Commissioner Ralph Moya said he did not know enough about the person who was to be appointed to cast a vote and asked that the appointment be delayed until he could learn more.