Sunland Park, New Mexico

6 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 10 don’t exist right now, with an additional influx of traffic and connection to people. This would help us create a downtown within the City of Sunland Park, with entertainment venues like the Sunland Park Racetrack and Casino, and help us create an identity for the city which doesn’t exist today. You can drive to our municipality and just hit a lot of housing and a few commercial areas, but there’s no true identity. Our hope is that with this Port of Entry, we can create a center location where people can say: This is Sunland Park, this is home.” With a growing fire department and police department, Sunland Park has also acquired an ambulance, a necessary purchase in the expanding community. “Sometimes waiting for an ambulance from across Dona Ana County would take anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes. Now that we have this ambulance service here within the City of Sunland Park, exclusively, we’ve improved our response times to critical emergencies in our community,” says Perea. The city is also putting out a question to the citizenry for bonds for equipment such as firetrucks, street sweepers, and street improvements. He adds, “There’s a lot of different funding opportunities, and this was one that the city hadn’t tapped into in the past. So, we continue to be the first in doing a lot of things that hadn’t been done here before.” A $950,000 grant for a public safety building was also awarded, which will bring the police and fire services to a more central location in the community. On the housing side, the city continues to see growth, although Perea admits the demand remains high. He shares, “With this ongoing housing development, we hope that we’ll continue to be enticing for new commercial businesses to come into the City of Sunland Park.” Santa Teresa Industrial Park, to the west of the community is also experiencing continuous SUNLAND PARK , NEW MEX I CO