Aguilar board tackles water projects, budget pressures, new trustees sworn in

Aguilar’s newest trustees took their seats while the town’s most urgent problems stayed fixed on water, money and unfinished work. The April 28 meeting was less about ceremony than about whether a small board can keep basic services moving in a town of about 457 people under stage 3 water restrictions.

The town’s official government page lists Mayor Erlinda Encinias, Mayor Pro Tem Gerald Baudino, trustees Bruce Trujillo, Frank Barajas, Monica Gauna, Daner McCullough and Sherri Wilson, along with Town Clerk Stephanie Coca. That lineup now carries the responsibility for decisions that will shape how Aguilar handles water projects, repairs and day-to-day spending in a budget where every dollar matters.

Water remains the sharpest pressure point. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation said in October 2025 that former Town Administrator, Clerk and Treasurer Tyra Marie Avila faced felony charges after an investigation into alleged misuse of public funds meant for the town’s water project. Investigators said more than $26,000 was diverted to personal bank accounts and that federal loans and grants for the Augmentation Reservoir project were commingled with the town general fund, leaving contractors unpaid. Aguilar later tightened controls by creating a separate water-project account accessible only by the mayor and a USDA official.

That financial history helps explain why trustees have treated water funding and oversight as sensitive business. It also lands against a deeper infrastructure problem. A September 2025 inspection found serious deterioration in the North Tank, a 180,000-gallon steel structure that stores finished drinking water, including coating failure, corrosion, pitting, roof cracks, vegetation intrusion and a damaged access gasket.

State scrutiny has only intensified. A December 9, 2025 sanitary survey, issued January 6, 2026, found three significant deficiencies and five violations of Colorado drinking-water rules, including concerns about how disinfecting chemicals were being added. The same reporting said Aguilar’s backflow compliance ratio for 2024 was 0.43, below the required 0.90, and that written backflow reports were missing for 2022 and 2023. Public-notice deadlines tied to those violations run through January 2027.

For Aguilar, that means the board’s work is not abstract. Trustees are trying to restore confidence in a system under restriction and repair while also keeping municipal spending under control. The next few weeks will show whether the town can move projects forward, finish long-delayed work and keep residents supplied with water they can trust.