La Cultura, Command Center Meeting, Arroyo Hondo News, Sign Man Below

When The Legend cancelled the “Living Treasures” program a few years ago at the Town of Taos, few asked why he had dishonored La Cultura by terminating a 23-year old program, a program supported by several mayors. The program honored specific individuals, chosen by an appointed panel of Taosenos. The local weekly covered up the controversy.The Legend ended the tri-cultural honors rather than accede to the committee’s selection of honorees, an honoree the news did not like for the honorees that year included the notorious sign man, one Jeff Northrup.

Those who were chosen notified friends and family members, who scheduled trips to Taos to join in the public celebration of their mothers, grandmothers, and godmothers. Then they were told not to come by the embarrassed honorees. So much for The Legend and claims to honor La Cultura.

Public Meeting: Command Center, Again.

(Press Release)

There is a Workshop scheduled for Taos County (represented by Gabe Romero and Larry Sanchez), the Town of Taos (represented by Peralta and A. Gonzales) and a representative from the Department of Financial Administration (NM DFA) on Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2013 at 9am. To be held at the County Commission Chambers.

There had been a question as to whether the public would be welcomed to
speak at this Workshop. It has now been clarified by Comm. Gabriel Romero . . . “the public will
be welcomed to speak.”

So, everyone concerned about what the implications of the move to the Kit Carson building will mean for the Town and County taxpayers, please come and ask your questions and/or state your concerns.

We need to make our voices heard as to how our money is spent. Please notify anyone you think might be interested.

Here’s my comment and question for community and state decision makers.

(Editor’s Note: Community leaders who advocate a move from the Town’s Civic Plaza Drive Building to the KCEC Command Center rely on little in the way of verifiable evidence to persuade the citizenry to support the move. The pols have not provided citizens with a study or facts, an analysis of the finances, equipment acquisition, JPA guidelines and lease details.

Bold political assertions are no substitute for an objective and fully vetted account. There (was) is no reasonable cause for abandoning the current facility on Civic Plaza Drive other than political profiteering for private purposes at public expense. Sounds like WMD and Mushroom Clouds to me but that’s only me.)

Arroyo Hondo Road Humps, land and water disputes: another county conundrum (again)

Last week I attended a community meeting of Arroyo Hondo folks at the Midtown Lounge. Commissioner Tom Blankenhorn, Manager Steve Archuleta, Public Works Director Rick Chavez, and Public Information Officer Michael Trujillo, all of Taos County attended. Basically, residents sought relief from speedsters in Upper Hondo, on the roadway adjacent to the Church. The county agreed to install two speed humps each before and after the notorious right-angle curve in the middle of Upper Hondo.

Chavez noted that a “speed hump” is 12” wide and 4” high. “Speed bumps, on the other hand, are unregulated and tend to appear as traffic devices in parking lots at the Walmart or in private-public facilities such as housing authorities. But according to Chavez, “speed humps” on public roads are regulated. In Taos County “speed bumps” have a notorious history of being installed due to citizen outcry, and then ultimately shaved down and reduced in size to “speed humps.”

About twenty-five folks attended the meeting and seemed satisfied with the county’s response.

On another note, nobody will ever be satisfied in the matter of a 15-year old feud between the principals, Manuel Ortiz and Alfred Trujillo, who, in turn, are supported in their disagreement by family members and friends. Basically, Alfred claims Manuel moved an acequia illegally, constructed a fence and encroached on a public road (formerly a state highway, now a county road), thereby creating a safety hazard at a crucial corner–just as the Upper Hondo road turns east and goes up the hill. Alfred and his supporters claim that moving the acequia violated state laws just as the Ortiz encroachment creates a violation of the “anti-donation” statutes due to the county’s inaction regarding the alleged unlawful act.

Commissioner Blankenhorn said the County was crowded with “disputes overtime about fences.” He named a couple and then said, “We don’t have the time or resources to fight these battles.”

Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose: The more things change, the more things stay the same!

The Ortiz brothers in Arroyo Hondo have gained much in the way of public notoriety due to their activism on the land grant issues during the last few years. Manuel, a retired Taos County jailer, has not been as active in public as his siblings and seems primarily focused on retaining a few square feet of lawn in his front yard. Alfred Trujillo, who has a long history of activism, has been relatively quiet until recently. See: Taos County Public Welfare Committee REJECTS TVAA TRANSFER PLAN at http://www.taos-friction.com/?p=7070.

Local land and water issues have a way of bringing out the citizens and stimulating public discussion in Taos County. Given the police state tactics and long-term strategy of quashing dissent by the dominant federal-corporate culture, one might call Taos County residents’ focus on these issues a healthy remnant of a forlorn democracy. Regardless, the history of the Trujillo-Ortiz matter struck me and I searched the archives and discovered this historic Horse Fly piece, written for the Oct. 2004 edition by yours truly. As well I include an undated excerpt pertaining to the matter from the online news.

Voices of Dissent
Cries for Justice
(Horse Fly, Oct. 2004)

By Bill Whaley

Land and Water

When Las Brujas were still changing diapers on their babies and long before they achieved fame as activists in Taos County, Alfred Trujillo of Arroyo Hondo was working on land and water issues. Alfred, who is recognized as a self-taught expert on land grants, was one of the founders of the Taos Valley Acequia Association along with the late Eduardo Lavadie. He was a driving force behind the Committee to Save the Rio Hondo in its battle with Taos Ski Valley expansion during the seventies.

Later, he became part of the group who fought the Cottam Condominium project in Valdez. He ignited the fight to stop Las Sierras in Las Colonias and initiated the effort to compel the town to do an Environmental Impact Statement when Taos wanted to expand the airport. Alfred may have been the one who suggested to Taos Pueblo that they join with activists to oppose the Jet Way. Recently, Alfred did the research and found the deeds that stopped Eliu Romero from incorporating somebody else’s property into his proposed subdivision in Arroyo Hondo. Alfred does his homework. He’s like Rocky Balboa or John Henry. He just keeps on coming.

In Arroyo Hondo, Alfred and seven other landowners get water from an acequia, which, he says, services an old placita and has the oldest water rights north of Taos Pueblo. A neighbor whose land the ditch traverses, Manuel Ortiz, a former county employee, moved his fence onto the road shoulder before ejecting the ditch from inside his property line. Since the acequia wasn’t realigned on Ortiz’s property, it was forced further east onto the county right-of-way. A friend of Ortiz dug an open ditch and later some Ortiz family members helped to recklessly install a series of culverts on the edge of the asphalt.

In addition to encroaching on public property and moving the acequia, the action has compromised safety on the Hondo Seco Road. If the county allows a private individual to take public property without being reimbursed, the county may be guilty of violating the state’s anti-donation clause. That portion of the road is extremely narrow in front Our Lady of Sorrows church. So it appears that some laws were violated, which run contrary to health, safety, and welfare, acequia easements and road encroachments.

Alfred has shown Horse Fly copies of county photos taken in 1995 and 2000 by a road department employee, documenting the double encroachments. Alfred has shown Horse Fly photographs, deeds, historic and current surveys that support the county’s findings. [The Pesky Insect eyeballed the property in person.] But the county, especially Manager Sammy Pacheco and Chairman Nick Jaramillo, according to Alfred, will not allow the issue to be put on the agenda so that commissioners can make an “official decision.”

Although District Attorney Donald Gallegos threatened Manuel Ortiz with a lawsuit, according to two 2001 letters, the D.A. never followed up. (I have copies of the letters.) According to [Alfred] Trujillo, Gallegos, due to a personal conflict of interest, promised to kick the case out to another District Attorney’s office to look into the acequia matter. But Gallegos never followed up. The County is responsible for fence and culvert issues while the DA is responsible for acequia easement issues.

Alfred points out that former County Manager Robert Dale Morrison advised Pacheco not to act on the matter back in October of 2001, typically based on a lack of information. In a 2003 press release, Deputy District Attorney Barbara Martinez wrote, “it is apparent that the Board of County Commissioners of Taos County has elected not to pursue the road concerns of Mr. Trujillo.” The Martinez memo is based on an absence of information because, as Alfred has pointed out, the previous commission directed Pacheco to look into and resolve the issue.

But Pacheco, according to Trujillo, has only created more obstacles. Pacheco and Jaramillo are now relying on the nonsensical Morrison memo. In September of 2004, Pacheco wrote to Mr. Trujillo saying “the item will not be placed on the commission’s agenda in the future.” As Alfred points out, the county has never investigated these issues. A second promise to send independent road viewers never materialized.

Why the inaction? Can anyone do the same? Is the county subdividing a parcel illegally? According to Alfred, a private action to take some 250 square feet of public property should be cause for alarm. It’s an issue of land and water, quality of life, negligence and justice, says Alfred. Like Big John, he says he won’t give up. An official decision based on facts would render closure to the dispute.

Editor’s Note: Regardless of current Taos County “hands-off” policy, according to Commissioner Blankenhorn, the Trujillo-Ortiz matter will haunt the commission chambers—again and again—if history is a guide. And it is. Here’s another excerpt, undated, which appears to be written within a few months of the above.

Land Rush: Online News from Time Immemorial!

While you were watching the price of property in Taos County climb toward the stratosphere, some native Taosenos have been steadily securing their property rights through an age-old ground war. One variation of this tradition means that you increase your fence line and/or move the acequia that borders your property. If you have the patience and the pluck, you put the postholes in at night or move the acequia or ditch a few feet every year, perhaps, during midnight Mass on Christmas.

Gradually, say after five years, you acquire a prescriptive right or force your neighbors to come before the County commissioners and ask for relief from what is called “encroachment.” Perhaps you’ve only moved the ditch and the fence a few feet in width for a 150 feet or so and acquired say, 450 square feet of what your neighbors call “ill-gotten gains” and you defend by saying your father always said the County took the road illegally or maybe your Tio gave the easement but never signed off on it and you’ve got the turn of the Century (17th? 18th? 19th? 20th?) papers to prove it.

Why not let the D.A. and the County Attorney and few private legal eagles fight it out now? Meanwhile, the parciantes can use the acequia but the head gate is now on your property and the new apple trees are a few years old. Despite the telephone stanchion or the appearance of a telltale ditch and fence line, you are just correcting an old injustice anyway.

During the last couple of years, County Commissioners have heard these tales or a variation on this theme from folks on Abeyta Road in Cordillera, Gallina Canyon Road the originates in Valdez, and now comes the Trujillo-Ortiz clash in Arroyo Honda.

Epithets have been uttered. According to Manuel Ortiz, Jr. a retired jail administrator, upon whose land, the new ground war focuses, he’s been called a member of the local “Taliban” by “bin laden” Alfred Trujillo.” And “He thinks he’s king of Arroyo Hondo,” says, Ortiz. “We get along with all the neighbors,” says Ortiz. “But Alfred, he’s stubborn. He’s a loner.”

Alfred is also thorough, having presented the Horse Fly with a voluminous correspondence, maps, photos, documentation alleging that the Ortiz encroachment is bringing “ill-gotten” gains of, perhaps, 300 square feet right at the south-west curve on the Hondo Seco road just as it turns north and passes by the Church.

Friction Obtained a Copy of the email posted below.

To:  Acting Taos Police Chief David Weaver:

David;  The photographic evidence is for whoever wishes to use it, including me.  I don’t want to go to court to retrieve this evidence.  You people at the town like the court…. I don’t.  I have every right to this evidence, regardless of your attempts to stop me.  I demand that you provide it to me without further delay.

I don’t believe that I even have a judge assigned to the case, as Jeff Shannon has recused.  Just give me the evidence to defend myself for God’s sake. I would like to pick it up this afternoon. If you don’t think I’m entitled to it, then you go to court to show a judge why I cannot have it.

This town is the most corrupt that I’ve ever seen.   I get beat up by a pal of the mayor and you therefore feel that I’m not entitled to defend myself.  What a joke.

And speaking of pals of the mayor, will you be bringing charges against Amos Cohn for assault with a motor vehicle related to an incident on March 3, 2013…. DA Gallegos directed the town to do so.

You want to be police chief…. so do your job, show you’ve got the guts to protect citizens of Taos rather than protecting the criminals.

Jeff Northrup