Town of Taos: Planning, Transparency, Elections and Candidates

Tempest in a Teapot? Incompetence? Conspiracy?

According to email correspondence, released online thanks to an inquiry from Taos News reporter, J.R. Logan, the Town has been in preliminary negotiations with Smith’s, concerning potential redevelopment of the commercial corridor, adjacent to the historical district for some time. Yet the Manager of the Town misrepresented expansion plans to the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission, saying the town wanted to rezone the area for general purposes.

Further, when asked, the Mayor admitted the Smith’s project was driving the proposed request for rezoning the area, according to The Taos News. Shortly after his election, the Mayor, on deep background, informed some of his supporters that the Smith’s project was a possibility. So the Barrone-Bellis administration has known about the project since March of 2014.

The area needs to be master-planned so the community, the Planning and Zoning Commission, and the Historic Preservation Commission can participate in the process. That’s called Planning 101.

Why Bellis misrepresents the thrust and specific point of “rezoning” the targeted area around Smiths and the Indian Hills Inn raises questions, less about the project than the manager’s lack of fair dealing with the community. Given the nature of “redevelopment” and the manager’s reluctance to hire a planning director and staff the planning department for more than a year, he seems negligent.

While the Town claims it can’t afford a “building inspector” or pay for a “detox facility furnace” or refuses to fund its share of costs at the Taos Senior Center, it then  pays $50,000 for Christmas Tree Lights and brags about feeding the community from the Mayor’s Porky Plenty fund.

Whether they are local “ancianos” or visiting “blue hairs,” the Manager just doesn’t like old people

Public Relations

The Barrone-Bellis administration has a nasty public relations problem.

By focusing on “special events,” unnecessarily closing and reducing commercial traffic on the Plaza, the Town has negatively affected merchants and created an atmosphere of distrust. By merely presenting events in the Central Park of the Plaza but keeping the streets clear, the administration could have generated good will and maintained relations with the Plaza Merchants. But the Barrone-Bellis fiat, “It’s my way or the highway,” doesn’t play well.

Now some of the Farmers and other potential Vendors may move to the County Complex for a Saturday and Sunday extravaganza in the extensive parking lot: a terrific use of space. The proposals being prepared by County Staff appear to offer multiple commercial opportunities to farmers, artists, and other vendors at a prime highway location with easy on and easy off access. Since the County religiously follows the Procurement Code, the process may take some time to implement.

Procurement Code Violations

Taos Friction has two more documents, meticulously presenting more alleged violations of the code, violations by the usual suspects in Public Works, Finance, Procurement, and Purchasing. According to the documents in hand and conversations with former officials, violations have cost taxpayers millions of dollars in cost over-runs. In documents recently obtained by Taos Friction, the practice of seeking non-compliant or “fake” bids continued during the first months of the Barrone administration. To “fulfill” procurement, in one case, Public Works sent out a bid for  a “surveyor” to “Horizons of New Mexico,” an organization set up to help the disabled, which “declined the bid” (for a surveyor) without comment. I don’t know if they routinely send bids to ARC.

Pick your bidder, especially one incapable of meeting the qualifications or possessing the skills, get turned down, then award the bid to your buddy, and merely up date or “cut” the date from one of his prior (out-of-date) bid letters and paste it into a current bid. Or, in another case, leave instructions for the Procurement Code officer not to advertise the bid on the web or else the professionals in the community will find out there’s work at Town Hall. The Finance Department, which is in on the game, approves the deal while Public Works routinely pulls the wool over the eyes of the council and Mayor.

See below the previous post of May 5, 2015, wherein engineering fees exceeded 30% of the cost of doing a short road in the Town of Taos and the Mayor signed off.

Town Elections

Taos Frictions has more questions than comments on the relatively “unknown” candidates running for Town Council. The Chicano Chamber itself has little hope and less credibility, given the performance of the previous candidates they supported.

For the handicappers, Meliton Struck, the quiet man, looks like a sure thing if his family and friends turn out. Pascualito Maestas struck a cord by publishing a piece about “corruption” in The Taos News but how will he or the other school teacher, Nathaniel Evans, find time to perform their duties if elected. Fritz and Judi talked about corruption before they were elected. Judi is still trying to figure it out and Fritz drank the cool-aid.

Most of the candidates seem hostile to the Plaza Merchants and unfamiliar with the Historic Culture. Since they know little about policy or governing, they should feel right at home with the Mayor, Manager, and the current council.

Perhaps the sleuth candidate, David Cortez or the perennial political player, Pavel Lukes, will surprise us. Robert Molina is mean enough to make an intimidating bailiff in Judge Dickie Chavez’s court but his curb side manner seems more appropriate to 1847 than 2016.

I’ve never met the rest.

Development of Camino de la Merced

(First Posted May 5, 2015)

The Engineer estimated costs for 375 linear feet of road improvements at $207, 354.50. But the bid exceeded the estimate by $103, 636.00 or 49.8%. Mobilization, moving equipment from the Taos Public Works yard to Camino del Medio cost $35,000 and traffic control cost $11,000.00.

Furthermore there are two service contracts associated with Souder Miller, the town’s favorite engineer and giveaway target, an engineering firm that makes perennial favorite, Alex Abeyta, look like a piker.

For this project, one engineering contract, dated, April 2013, was for $149,346.35. A second contract, dated July 1, 2014, signed by Mayor Dan Barrone, was for $40,646.04. Therefore the total engineering fee was $189,992.39 for 375 feet of roadway, civil design, from Highway 68 to Salazar Road as well as for waterline design.

According to construction bids, the engineering fees exceeded 30% of the construction contracts, totaling $630,911.3. Engineering fees should be in the 9 to 12 % range.