A native New Yorker may seem like a unique and unusual choice to serve as the city manager of a small town in the Southwest, but David Miranda considers Lovington his adopted hometown. Miranda had been filling in as interim city manager since the previous Lovington city manager, Vidal Martinez, resigned back in May, and before that he served as Lovington’s chief of police.
Miranda has been a Lovington resident for about twelve years, originally joining its police force in November of 2011. Now, in 2023, the Lovington city commission selected him to serve officially as city manager at their September 11 commission meeting. He commented that Lovington has been very welcoming of him, despite initially moving to it as an outsider.
In his short time serving as interim city manager, Miranda has already identified some areas of focus for him and his administration. “It’s our finances and our water,” he said. The City of Lovington has already made some initial steps toward addressing these areas. Annette Cooper was hired recently to serve as Lovington’s finance director, and Robert Perez, who currently manages the wastewater department, will be elevated to the position of utilities director. These two positions are of particular importance to Miranda’s top priorities for the town.
“The water department issues contain a lot of unknowns and we’re learning them every day. It’s kind of like peeling an onion,” Miranda told the Lea County Tribune. Lovington residents often complain about water issues on local social media groups. In June, local resident Christopher Massey shared a picture of his water bill from the city with an amount due of $11,191.87. At the time, Miranda responded to Massey’s post clarifying that the bill was the result of human error. Water main leaks and outages are also a common occurrence resulting in a lot of frustration from residents.
“Because of mismanagement of our city pumps most of them are either down or need repairs to work properly,” commented one resident after a water line leak in June left many with low or no water pressure.
“Of all the departments, water consumes half my time in this job so far,” said Miranda. He explained that water delivery to a town, even the size of Lovington, is a particularly complex endeavor. One particular area of importance for him is getting accurate usage readings in order to adjust the way the city bills customers to try and make it more fair. “We have been billing incorrectly for at least six or seven years. We want to be sure our usage numbers are correct because how can we create a billing structure if we can’t trust our usage numbers?”
Miranda talked some of possible changes to the billing process for the utility department. “What we all want to do is be fair,” he said, explaining a plan that would possibly increase the amount of water available at the minimum payment threshold (currently $22.89 for up to 3,000 gallons) and charge progressively higher amounts over that. This plan would help curtail excessive water usage, which is of particular importance in dry communities like Lovington, by making the basic amount of water for daily activities remain affordable and charging more for extremely high usage. The result might be that people with large yards or swimming pools will see considerable increases to their water bill. However, Miranda points out that this will also encourage them to be more mindful of usage, while not placing additional financial burdens on people who are using typical amounts of water needed for basic day-to-day life.
The full plan is not ready to present and implement yet, and Miranda plans to launch in winter when water usage is down. “We’re having a special commission meeting at the end of November. We’re going to give the commission three options to look at.”
The city’s financials are the other big concern for Lovington’s new city manager. The addition of Cooper, who has 25 years of accounting experience, has been a big benefit to the team so far, says Miranda. “We’ve been getting caught up, so we feel like we have a good team, and she’s the head of that team.”
Miranda explained that the City of Lovington has been “basically penalized” by the state due to its poor bookkeeping in the past. A lot of basic paperwork and tasks had managed to fall through the cracks, particularly due to high city employee turnover. As an example, Miranda pointed to grants that the City of Lovington had qualified for and even moved forward with projects, anticipating grant money, only to not receive the grant funds due to not properly completing the projects or not turning in the necessary paperwork on time. These simple mistakes have been costly for the city, and it’s something Miranda is keen to prevent moving forward.
COVID was also a big factor in getting Lovington into a tight financial position. Gross Receipts Tax (GRT) went from around $650,000 per month for the city down to $400,000 per month, according to Miranda. “I mean, COVID killed us,” he said. The lower revenue also has affected the City of Lovington’s ability to recruit and retain staff, and Miranda stated that he would like to be able to pay city employees better, noting that it is difficult to compete in the hiring market.
Despite the various challenges he’s facing, Miranda says he’s committed to fighting for the citizens here and being transparent about city business.
The city commission is very supportive of Miranda so far, with Mayor Robbie Roberts commenting, “David Miranda is an extremely organized person who stepped into the interim city manager position and immediately delved into the challenges the city was facing. Although his position was temporary, he engaged all departments and acquainted himself with some of the city’s chronic problems and sought corrective action.”
Though several candidates applied for the position, Miranda’s work as interim city manager showed the commission his leadership style, and he proved himself to be effective in the role in a short amount of time. “This involvement exhibited his leadership to both myself and the commission at an early stage,” said Mayor Roberts, “and was instrumental in the commission selecting him as the new city manager.”
Miranda is also very active in the community outside of his role as a city employee. He had previously served on the board of the Lovington Chamber of Commerce and continues to attend their meetings. He also participates in Rotary Club and serves on his church’s finance board.
For Miranda it comes down to serving the community. “I’m very lucky to serve this community, and you got to have that servant mentality. It’s public service, and if you’re not comfortable with that, you’re in the wrong profession.”
