The Big One Passes

Plans for Valverde & Valdez

October 18, 2007

Taos County
In 2006, commissioners raised the gross receipts tax (GRT) by imposing a countywide 1/8th-cent increase for jail operations. In May of 2007, Commissioners passed a 1/16th-cent GRT increase to pay for property acquisition for the government complex and for road repairs. El Prado Water and Sanitation district voters passed a 1/4th-cent GRT increase in August to pay for infrastructure operations. Then on Sept. 25, voters passed two—yes two—GRT increases, one of 1/4th-cent and one of 1/8th-cent, to build a $30 million Taos County Government Complex (TCGC). And on Sept. 27, residents of the El Valle de Los Ranchos Sanitation District passed a 1/4th-cent increase in GRT to pay for sewer lines.

(Call the embrace of GRT a way of “taking care of our own� or “sustaining community.� Let’s tax ourselves and our visitors, keep the dough, and invest in ourselves. It’s a way to defy corporate privatization and free market “piracy.� See review of Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine� in this issue.)

County Project Manager Victor Robles and Citizen Support Leader Rich Sanders turned Cesar Chavez’s famous phrase, “Si se puede�—Yes, we can—into reality by persuading voters to pass taxes to build the TCGC. The citizens recognized both the need and the new possibilities, due to the leadership of Commissioners Gabe Romero, Charlie Gonzales, Nick Jaramillo, Dan Barrone, and Joe Mike Duran. The voters also rewarded the increasingly high standards of professionalism demonstrated by County Treasurer Evangeline Romero, County Clerk Elaine Montaño, and the incredible shrinking woman, Assessor Darlene Vigil. The successful referendum on the GRT is a rare boost for morale and the triumph of common sense and cents over adversity in Taos.

In the spring, Commissioners stabilized the county by hiring Julia Valerio as County Manager and Susan Trujillo as Finance Director. Now County Attorney Smilin’ Sam Pacheco is putting on the work gloves: “My workload will triple.� He said he’s looking forward to the challenge. County Public Information Officer Beverly Armijo is glowing like she ate the Radon.

Rep. Roberto “Bobby� Gonzales reminds voters that the “half-cent education GRT for funding Taos, Peñasco, Questa, and UNM-Taos would expire June 30, 2012�—only 4.5 years hence.

Town of Taos
The Town and County met on Sept. 26 in the old courthouse and proposed a downtown cultural center on Taos Plaza. The Council and Commission sat on chairs beneath the restored WPA murals in the historic courtroom. The city mice congratulated the country mice. Councilor Cordova thanked the County, calling its “diligence� and success “exceptional.� Mr. DMC noted the “magnitude of the $36 million project on economic development.� Councilor Rudy Abeyta called the location a “premier place� for “premier facilities.� Manager Tomás Benavidez called the County’s approach a “model for the rest of us to look at in terms of education. You educated the citizens and did a superb job. We can take that example and learn from it [in terms of] smart growth and the master plan.� Commissioner Charlie Gonzales concurred, “The volunteers did an excellent job.�

The Town and County discussed collaborating on contiguous roads, improving the Stray Hearts animal shelter, and putting public bathrooms in the old courthouse. Currently, the Town has plans for installing public bathrooms in the Plaza Theatre, on the McCarthy property next to The Alley Cantina, and in the historic courthouse and old jail—made famous in stories by vato loco Tio Zuco and movies like “Easy Rider.�

Local wags are taking bets on whether the Town can complete the thirty-year-old public potty project before the County either breaks ground or completes the new government complex. The Town closed the public bathrooms below the Gazebo thirty years ago, más ó menos. Due to the high number of cantinas serving cerveza, the public began to use the alcoves at the Plaza Theatre and the high weeds in Saki’s vacant lot behind the movie palace as pissoirs. Today’s porta-potties for tourists are considered anathema by community contributor Shelly Bahr. She called the “aroma� stirred up one morning by “the honey dippers during the 13th annual Taos Auto Run counterproductive.� Hey, Shelly, William Butler Yeats wrote rhapsodically that “love has pitched his mansion/in the place of excrement.� Let’s not forget where it all begins and ends.

P&Z Developments
On Oct. 3, 2007, Bob Draper, “Big� Steve Rose, and a generation of emigrant utopians presented a plan to the Town’s P&Zers. They want to build the “Valverde Commons,� a 28-lot, single-family residential subdivision with a ten acre park, common gardens, open space and self-sustaining amenities like catchment systems and recycled grey water to revivify the vega in the valley below Valverde Street. Bob, 63, the Singing Plumber, referred in sentimental terms to mortality, saying how he and his friends would like to spend their declining years taking care of each other, while living within walking distance of the town’s cultural attractions. You could hear the 37-year Taos resident murmuring lines like Frank Sinatra: “But now the days grow short/I’m in the autumn of the year.� Horse Fly contributor Linda Kemper Fair supported the project, saying she hoped it would become the norm for the state due to its elements of sustainability.

Call it an eco-park for the aged or heaven on earth or just plain “Autumn Acres;� privately, I was told that no gurus were involved. Given who the developers and their supporters are, I was relieved. As folks age, they tend to see their youth through the double rainbow of sentimentality. The subdivision has everything but a cemetery or a crematorium. Still, when a plumber and an attorney make common cause, your hackles naturally rise—even if they’re old friends and acquaintances.

A town neighbor, Kika Vargas, 60, sang another tune, referring to the proposal as a “fantastic idea, utopian, and calling for exclusivity.� She said the development sounded like “a gated community. You’ve already picked the residents.� Kika questioned whether the proposed 800-1800-square foot houses were affordable and raised the issue of why the “quiet community� apparently eliminated kids. She reminded listeners that her mother was 103. La Vargas chopped her own wood up to her 100th birthday. The fiery daughter said, “I’m not retiring until I die.� In an allusion to a Dylan Thomas’s poem, Kika said, “I’m railing against the night.� She advised the developers to preserve the valley’s “beauty to feed your souls.�

Commissioner Josepha Cruz noted that the Singing Plumber’s site plan didn’t include parking space for party goers and suggested he research his claims regarding the acequias and whether or not a drainage ditch was a lateral ditch from an acequia. (Read the Taos Pueblo Water Settlement, aka Abeyta Agreement, for information.) Trujillo Lane’s Eugene A. Sanchez noted the issue of traffic, the steep hill, and alluded to the negative effects on the neighborhood. He called the developer’s plans “simplistic.�

Commissioner Fred Robbins raised the issue of sidewalks. He seemed unconvinced by the Singing Plumber’s philosophy of using gravel walkways for “drainage�—in lieu of concrete sidewalks. Fred’s comments conjured up visions of my Little Old Lady friends from Plaza de Retiro who walk to and from the post office and the Plaza. The bumps and cracks and other obstacles seem to grow bigger as the LOLs grow older and they step ever so gingerly from street to sidewalk. Apparently, the developers haven’t taken walkers, wheel chairs, and the ubiquitous use of the cane into consideration.

Regardless, the planners approved “Valverde Commons� (Autumn Acres?) for another public hearing. Architect Doug Patterson’s presentation included everything that was missing from the King John-Prince William plan presented by Dave DiCicco, which controversy resulted in the massacre of the former P&Zers. In an effort to please the P&Zers the developers volunteered to conduct a traffic study.

A more compex issue for the town’s P&Zers concerned the definition and example of what constitutes “Taos Blue.� Planner Rudy Perea seemed flummoxed by the question. If the P&Zers had an artist on the commission, like Amy Cordova of the Red Door, they might learn a thing or two about color.

Valdez is Coming…Back!
“Nuestro Pueblo—No Se Vende�
Caveat Emptor: Cottam Redux
About sixty Valdez partisans filled the county chambers on Tuesday evening, Sept. 11, when the Taos County Planning and Zoning Commission met to consider the Rio Hondo Park application for twelve 2000-square-foot-plus condos, including garages, meeting room, etc. Commissioner Rudy Pacheco moved almost immediately to table the application due to deficiencies or incomplete items in the application. Attorney Julia Armstrong asked the commission to consider the application and grant conditional approval based on the developer’s agreement to complete the application. But Pacheco said the commission had been waiting years for other applications to meet their conditions. “Conditional approvals are not valid anymore,� said Pacheco.

Deficiencies concerned the lack of a solid waste plan, DOT exit permits, traffic engineering, documents from the state engineer regarding the use of surface and ground water, converting irrigation rights to domestic water rights, a liquid waste permit, and a fire prevention permit. The liquid waste permit is considered fairly complicated and may take some negotiations with the New Mexico Environmental Department, according to Armstrong. With the exception of the liquid waste permit, Attorney Armstrong said the other permits were “easy to get hold of.� Since the P&Zers voted to table, the project will be re-noticed.

Retired haberdasher and longtime sheepman Nick Martinez represented the tenor of the crowd when he stood up and said, “We’re opposed to it.� The crowd was filled with vets from the battle in the early ’80s that staved off the Cottam Condo project on the same parcel of land. Wealthy-looking newcomer residents sprinkled throughout the audience suggest the Valdez coalition has more access to money today for stockpiling ammunition and hiring legal muscle.

CAVE-man Maury Calvert (dubbed a Citizen Against Virtually Everything by a former county commissioner), a member of the Valdez-Seco neighborhood, immediately raised a legal issue, saying the project should be vetted as a “Major Development, not a condominium development� under the County’s current Land Use Development Code. Whether or not Calvert’s claims can be validated, a P&Z approval of the project would be appealed ad infinitum. One can hear the ghostly sound of gunshots.

According to a county staff report, the Rio Hondo Park development of 12 condos, a multiple-use proposal on less than five acres in Valdez, “is not compatible to and not sensitive to the existing traditional and historic uses in the environment of the site and the neighborhood.� Staff says, “The existing traditional and growth and historic uses in the neighborhood are those of single-family structures with possibly a guest house or out building.�

Flavio, a long-time observer of local mores, was cleaning up the debris in a Valdez ditch when I asked him about the Rio Hondo Park proposal. “People down here,� he grunted, “they fight with each other just to stay in shape in case a developer shows up. We’ll show them some Si Se Puede.� Then he crossed himself, saying, “Nuestro Pueblo—No Se Vende.� Our Town—Not For Sale.