Taos United Community Forum
Kit Carson Electric Coop Boardroom
March 6th, 2018 5:30 – 7:30
The opinions and comments below are those of the speaker and not official positions of Taos United, a non-partisan, nonprofit community information and education group.
Mya Coursey, TU member, opened the meeting and introduced guest speaker Susan Herrera, candidate for Democratic nomination for State Representative, District 41. Herrera is a retired CEO of Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation and a former director of the congressional Hispanic Caucus in Washington, D.C.
Herrera believes we need a blue tsunami and a strong State legislature to back national movements. She is running on a platform to improve public education, create good jobs and build a better, sustainable health and behavioral health system. She supports an overhaul of the New Mexico tax system so that working families in New Mexico are the priority.
“We can create a strong revenue stream for state education, health and economic development by revamping the income tax, permanent fund and gross receipts taxes. Depending upon oil and gas fees and playing the ‘revenue guessing game’ annually is not a smart way to sustain services to our citizens.”
During her tenure as CEO of LANL Foundation, Susan raised millions of dollars for local school districts and teacher professional development, early childhood education, First Born home visiting, college scholarships, and community development. She also worked on creating the UNM Taos Campus in its infancy, and has worked for several nonprofits serving northern NM including Child Rite and Siete del Norte. During the 80’s Susan worked in Congress as a legislative assistant to Rep Jim Lloyd (D-CA) and then assumed the position of the Executive Director of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Susan is an expert in creating coalitions of city, state, and national leaders who can work together to solve community problems.
Please visit susanherrera.com.
The Democratic Primary is Tuesday, June 5th
SPEAKER RECAP
PROGRESS MADE: KCEC SOLAR INITIATIVE
Luis Reyes, CEO, KIT CARSON ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE, announced progress made toward their Solar Initiative to have 100% daytime solar energy by 2022.