City to operate Red Rock Park for 6 months

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — City officials still sound hopeful about negotiating a fair trade with the state for Red Rock Park, which the city wants to hand over. But with the private management firm the city hired to run the park set to bow out by the end of the year and the state not interested in stepping in any sooner than mid-2007, they're also busy making preparations to run the park on their own for at least six months.

Assistant City Manager Larry Binkley has begun coordinating with Global Entertainment the private management firm on park bookings after Jan. 1 to avoid conflicts and duplications. City Manager Eric Honeyfield, meanwhile, is already drafting the fees and policies the city will be using at the park when it takes over.

"I need this new policy fixed so we can start taking deposits and doing more than putting your name in a book," he said.

Because of the amount of preparation that goes into pulling off some large events, the city has already set aside dates in 2007 for the bigger draws like the Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial, the Wrangler Junior High Finals Rodeo and Wild Thing. Honeyfield hopes to have the City Council finalize the fees within a month.

When the city takes over from Global on Jan. 1, it won't be the first time it's had to set the park's fees or policies. It did that and more after taking over from the state in 1989 up until handing daily operations over to Global in mid-2004.

And according to Honeyfield, the city has learned a few important lessons from the experience that should come in handy the second time around, namely that it overstaffed the park before and did not charge nearly enough for its use. The city brought Global in to save money.

"We got into this mess by giving the park away to a lot of people," the city manager said, for much less than they could or should have.

So come Jan. 1, the city will run the park with only a facility director which it's still searching for and two assistants. And although the city has yet to take a good look at the fees Global is charging, Honeyfield expects the city's fees to be comparable. He'll be shopping the draft around to local promoters for input before asking the council to take action.

"I am not so foolish to think the park is ever going to be a money maker," he said, "but there is no reason for it to lose the kind of money it was."

Ironically, he actually expects the city to spend less running the park the first six months of 2007 than it's paying Global for the last six months of 2006: $120,000 versus $186,000. Honeyfield says it's because the first half of the year is never as busy for the park as the second, which makes it cheaper to run.

So the city has little interest in running the park on its own for very long. It was spending upwards of a quarter-million dollars a year on the job before hiring Global, and that's not including the hundreds of thousands it's spent just to keep the aging facility from falling apart. By the state's own estimates, Red Rock Park needs close to another $10 million worth of renovations over the next few years; it's not the kind of money city officials are prepared to spend.

"The park is suffered from 30 years of insufficient investment and I don't see the city ever making the kind of investment that park needs on its own," said Honeyfield.

By deeding Red Rock back to the state, city officials hope the governor and New Mexico Legislature will prove more willing to lavish the park with the appropriations it needs.

"The fact is that the state has historically funded facilities it owns and operates at a much higher level than facilities it does not," Honeyfield said.

To that end, the City Council voted unanimously late last year to hand the park over. But when less than a quarter of the $2 million it was expecting in return made it out of this year's legislative session, officials felt let down. It was Gov. Bill Richardson, after all, who made any significant state funding conditional upon state ownership.

Fortunately, the city still has the deed. Now in the midst of negotiating a joint powers agreement with the state for the park, Honeyfield said it will be holding out for a little more this time.

He and City Attorney George Kozeliski hope to meet with New Mexico Parks Director David Simon in the next few weeks to discuss the joint powers agreement. When they do, Honeyfield said, the city will make a couple of demands: that the state not shut the park down and that it invest some significant cash for capital improvements, upwards of $2 million. He called the two conditions potential deal breakers.

The last time Gov. Richardson visited Gallup, in May, he promised a "good state budget" for Red Rock in exchange for the deed, of course but mentioned no specific figures. During the same visit, Mayor Bob Rosebrough offered to keep splitting the park's operating budget about $400,000 a year now with the state 50/50, although Honeyfield said the city is now willing to go as high as $250,000.

So while city officials prepare to run Red Rock Park for the first six months of 2007, their negotiations with the state could shape the prized facility's future for years to come.