By Amanda Martinez
Special to the SUN

Within days of becoming mayor of Española, Dennis Tim Salazar confirmed that the city would still be able to access the more than $800,000 in public broadband project funding awarded to the city in 2022.

Members of the former John Ramon Vigil administration attempted the reject the funding last year.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez secured the $879,506 for the city after the Javier Sanchez administration made a Federal Community Project Funding request. The funds are passed through the United States Department of Agriculture.

In a written statement provided to the Rio Grande SUN, Leger Fernandez wrote that it was a very competitive process and she is committed to the project.

“I chose this project back in Fiscal Year 2022 because I believe every family, student and small business in Española deserves access to reliable, high-speed internet,” she wrote.

Salazar, along with City Manager Michael Ortiz, Chief of Staff Sanchez and District 4 Councilor Samuel LeDoux, met with Leger Fernandez on April 9.

The money will be a tremendous help to the city, Salazar said.

“(Rep. Leger Fernandez) did just give me assurance and verification that she will definitely work with us so we could be able to utilize the money for broadband reasons,” he said. “I’m just very thankful and I’m very excited.”

Salazar wanted to verify that the city would be able to access the funds due to actions by former city clerk Carla Ann Martinez.

In an email sent to Leger Fernandez’s office last June, Martinez wrote that the city was rejecting the funding. She later rescinded her decision after learning it was outside her authority. She was acting city manager at the time of the rejection.

The money is available for the city to access whenever it’s ready, Leger Fernandez wrote.

“The funding flows through the USDA Rural Development and is ready for the city to drawn down what they are ready to move forward,” she wrote. “The letter from the interim city manager, which was not accompanied by a council resolution, did not extinguish the funding opportunity.”

According to a 2022 award letter sent to former city planning director Muhammad Hussain, the funding was a part of the USDA’s ReConnect Program.

The USDA website states the money is meant to fund projects that expand access to high-speed broadband internet in eligible rural communities to aid in economic development.

Allowable uses for the money include construction and improvement of facilities to provide broadband service, purchase of an already existing system that can be improved and limited pre-application expenses, the USDA website states. The final broadband system must provide internet of at least 100 Mbps to all users in the service area.

Now, Salazar said, he wants to put the city on a deadline for executing the project.

“This has been going on for so long unnecessarily, and it shouldn’t have,” he said about the project. “We should have been able to spend it. So I want to make sure that we’re able to move on this fairly fast, but at the same time, of course, follow all the guidelines set forth, and how we can most effectively use the money.”