County Confronts Public Safety, Land and Water Conundrums

Currently, there is a community consensus that supports elected officials at the county level. For a tumultuous couple of years when commissioners opposed La Martina’s request for a beer and wine license and arbitrarily fired county employees, the commission was seen as regressing. The new 2013 commission is seen as having righted the ship.

County Manager Steve Archuleta has a patient but steady hand on the tiller and is fortunate in his selection of first and second mates, Deputy Richard Bellis and Attorney Bob Malone. One can have confidence in Chairman Dan Barrone, Vice-Chair Gabe Romero, Commissioners Blankenhorn, Larry Sanchez, and Joe Mike Duran in terms of elected representatives, who listen and vote to represent their constituents.

But the storms are brewing and the weather is changing, not in terms of the commissioners’ attitudes, but in terms of historic legacies. The Commissioners will need more than Solomon’s wisdom during the next few months, they will need luck and help from the Sacred Mountain.

The Command Center E911—Dispatch controversy has been foisted on commissioners by unscrupulous local leaders, aka The Legend and The King of the KCEC Coop. KCEC ratepayers and local taxpayers are the losers in the controversy that puts the commission in a Catch-22 situation. If the Commissioners join in supporting the Command Center, they are subjecting themselves and their constituents to an expensive lease and poorly managed public safety operation with cheap equipment, employees, who lack regularly scheduled training, due to the imperatives of constantly updated technology, and an all electric-utility design that benefits the KCEC Coop.

If commissioners engage in building their own facility, they will duplicate services and spend taxpayer money on public safety that might be better used on other current needs. In essence, it seems as if the commission is confronted with balancing the short-term needs v. long term gains, amortizing the investment over ten years and operating an effective public safety facility that will save more lives.

Another issue, an issue of historic checks and balances also confronts the commissioners in terms of checking corrupt local government practices at the Town and the Coop. In general the members of the governing bodies, council and mayor at the Town and Board of Trustees and CEO at the Coop, are seen by residents as excessively enriching themselves at the expense of the public trust and public purse—federal, state, and local funding. Whenever the Coop steps outside its historic rural electric mission, it loses vast sums on “diversity”–Propane, Internet, alleged Broadband projections, and the Command Center. Then it borrows more money and raises rates in what appears to be a never ending cycle.

While all governing bodies reward supporters, whether with jobs or the occasional insiders’ deal or contract, the Town and Coop have gone to extraordinary and excessive lengths, exploiting residents and members, while creating divisiveness in the community. As Commissioner Gabe Romero put it at a commission meeting, “Aren’t we [residents and members of the Coop] already paying for the Command Center?” Residents uttered a collective, “Amen” in response to Commissioner Romero’s succinct remark.

Commissioner Blankenhorn Replies:

Hey Bill:

I don’t mean to be argumentative or didactic, but your synopsis of what would happen if the County moved into the Kit Carson Building contains some arguable conclusions.  Here is what you said:

“if the Commissioners join in supporting the Command Center, they are subjecting themselves and their constituents to an expensive lease and poorly managed public safety operation with cheap equipment, employees, who lack regularly scheduled training, due to the imperatives of constantly updated technology, and an all electric-utility design that benefits the KCEC Coop.”

Here is my answer:

The lease is less than 5% of operating expenses, and if we have 2 centers, operating expenses will be much higher.   The County will be able to manage the operation and we can do it effectively. The equipment is all top of the line except for the receivers and software which can be purchased for $300k or gotten with a DFA grant.  It is easy and inexpensive to provide proper training to employees and we will make sure that it occurs.

Yes the building is all electric, but it does have the latest and greatest equipment (same system as in the County Judicial complex) that is reasonably efficient.  The electric costs that they have been generated over the last 2 years of operation have not been out of line expensive.

My conclusion is that the County should move in to the Command Center free of charge with a quick out in the lease that would allow us to leave if we don’t like it after a year or two.  Of course, the danger is that by then the money that is currently in the budget for building another command center would be spent elsewhere like on roads or the old courthouse………hmmmm.

Tom

Sanchez Weighs in:

It is very important to know and understand your opponents.  I spent 4 years on the town council and the reason I elected not to run again, was because I didn’t want to be associated with their circuitous methods.  I’m being tactful.  For too many reasons to mention here, I would not engage with many things involved with town government.

The County made good faith and common sense proposals to the town regarding the command center and the airport.  Why did the Town reject them?  Because they didn’t trust the County.
To move in the Kit Carson Command Center is a perfect example of penny wise and pound foolish.  Without the County involvment the Town will fold in a couple of years.

Anybody who wants to discuss this command center with me, knows how to get in touch with me.

Gene Sanchez

More troubling than the Command Center, during the next month and for years to come, the commission must confront issues raised by the Abeyta—Taos Pueblo Water Settlement.

A few years ago the county passed an ordinance to raise issues of land and water with regard to the regional water plan and appointed the Taos County Public Welfare Committee. The committee is an advisory group, asked to make recommendations regarding water transfers—whether to protest a transfer or not in terms of what affects the county’s communities, watersheds, culture, agriculture, ecology, economic development and so forth. With the exception of El Valle resident Kay Matthews, publisher and editor of La Jicarita (online news magazine today) and chair of the current Public Welfare Committee, most folks were asleep when a wealthy second homer in Taos bought and sold 1700 acre feet of water rights from Top of the World Farms north of Questa to Santa Fe, a purchase aimed at helping to settle the Aamodt case in Pojoaque but at the expense of water rights forever lost to Taos County.

Philosophically, commissioners and the public were thinking of creating a public information system that would alert them to raids on the county water supply, like the Santa Fe purchase. Tellingly, Abeyta signatories, like John Painter of El Prado Water and Sanitation as well as Palemon Martinez of Taos Valley Acequia Association (TVAA) vehemently opposed the county ordinance and quibbled with the language and spirit of the intent behind the Taos County Public Welfare Committee.

Now we know why: both El Prado and TVAA, like Santa Fe, have purchased water rights in the Questa, northern Taos County area—further depleting the water sheds, traditional cultural life and agricultural lands, and generally creating a fight for water rights in the county. While the Abeyta—Taos Pueblo Settlement affects Taos Valley and provides some relief specifically in the valley, the federal and state funding of the agreement creates discord and divisiveness as the signatories raid their neighbors.

Politically speaking, the Abeyta—Taos Pueblo Water Settlement has been seen in the short term as a kind of holy document, given its mystical arguments about hydrology and the chthonic water spirits below ground, but as the document unfolds and Taosenos begin to read it they might discover that the scripture contains numerous empirical contractions and onerous demands on both its signatories and its neighbors in the community, who were not part of the process.

A headline in Ms. Matthews’ La Jicarita, says, the Water settlements, both Aamodt and Abeyta, are effectively Keeping Water Lawyers Afloat During the Drought. Hence, every time you see TVAA’s Palemon Martinez in public he’s got attorney Rebecca Dempsey at his side.

The federal court and Office of the State Engineer are expected to rule in favor of the historic Abeyta—Taos Pueblo Water Agreement—despite the historic Spanish and American laws that reflect “priority of water use” as the law of the land, which the agreement seeks, partially, to overturn.

Drought and historic water shortages, affecting the Rio Grande—everybody’s over-allocated offset–are obvious weaknesses on which the Abeyta Agreement is based. Paper water rights do not make water. But watersheds, properly managed, conserve and protect long-term water use. Yet, the key to providing water for the aquifers under siege by the “well-drilling” supplements to the settlement, watershed management, is neglected if mentioned at all in the settlement, according to experts.

Although a few parciantes in Questa are waking up to the raid on water rights and though the Spring Ditch parciantes in Taos are filing protests against the Town and the Abeyta, the Taos County Commissioners are in the frontline of the battle, due to conflicts among their constituents. Pray for them and for rain. Pray for good neighbors.