Taos Turmoil: Changing of the Guard
The mainstream news cycle frequently focuses on short-term reports and events, as do our elected fathers and mothers at the County and Town. Given the demands of governing and in view of this or that crisis, one can’t rightfully blame the blind for their condition. Right now the community is ill-served by past decisions that ignored and have undermined current attempts at managing emergencies i.e. water transfers, failure of Capital Outlay bills, the Broadband fiasco, and the dimming lights at the DA’s office.
We live in a time here in Taos when the local communities and private voices, more and more, are speaking up and picking up the slack, due to the absence of a long-term vision from elected officials. The status quo who talks and offers quips but no analysis is scrambling to avoid drought and failed plans due to the absent of Capital Outlay band-aids. Even The Taos News is awakening from decades old-slumber thanks to Editor Livingston, and reporters J.R. Logan, Cody Hooks, and Andrew Oxford.
The local weekly recently released information to the public about the historical scandals at Taos Municipal Schools associated with the audit, which implies how previous audits were suppressed by a biased political culture. You can’t educate kids by making excuses for your failures, whether in terms of test scores or by lying about financial resources. If your chief administrators spend more time gambling or politicking than educating, you have a problem. When you don’t have a list of assets handy and can’t figure out how to connect the payroll department to human resources, something is way wrong. And things have been way wrong at TMS for decades.
Water Issues
In this week’s news J.R. did a terrific job at summarizing the crisis caused by Santa Fe’s purchase of Top of the World Water Rights, more than a decade and a half after the event occurred. Kay Matthews of the valiant La Jicarita first learned of it and protested lo’ these many years ago and neither the Town Fathers and one Mother then nor the County Fathers and one Mother then could be convinced to protest, nor would the manager (an attorney) and various county attorneys over the years do anything until now.
When the “Citizens” fought for the Taos Regional Water Plan and the Public Welfare Committee provisions to protect Taos County, all the local water mavens, John Painter, Palemon Martinez et al protested. They wanted to be left alone to play the “Abeyta” game. Now the water suckers from the south are coming on strong for Taos County water. Despite the canaries and the water babies like Kay Matthews, Ron Gardiner, and Butchie Denver (RIP), who protested, the County Commissioners bowed before the pragmatic Painter and saintly Palemon.
But the Rio Lucero parciantes know better and have now replaced Palemon as commissioner, due as much to negligence as movida making, on his hometown ditch. Now the Taos Valley Acequia Association will discover that they “lack leadership” at a critical moment with Palemon’s retirement.
Painter is also being roundly criticized for leading El Prado Water and Sanitation District into a morass of legal and financial tangles that nobody on the board or staff understands. The eccentric Painter, onetime aspiring golf course developer, farmer, and Buffalo rancher runs the District the way an old-fashioned farmer runs the farm so nobody else knows as well as he does where the valves and sewer grates, meters and wells are located or how they operate. Even if they know a little bit they don’t know the ins and outs of John’s “plans” for the “District.”
“Let John do it,” and “Let Palemon do it,” means nobody else knows how to do it.
(We won’t even talk about the role of the Town of Taos, who suppressed the Spring Ditch and repressed the rights of parciantes, not to mention allowing the ill-conceived and illegal Valverde Commons project, which only illustrates how the Town interfered with acequias some 380 times in the historic district, according to their own study.)
The voters in Commissioner Blankenhorn’s district, like the parciantes in El Salto and Arroyo Seco, who forced Palemon to resign his commission, are looking for a candidate to run against Blankenhorn not because they think he and Painter have cooked up an exclusive with Lowe’s on the drinking water concession but because they suspect the Commissioner has been part of “movida making” that doesn’t protect Taos County from aberrant water transfers.
And nobody likes “regionalism” whatever that is. Folks like their villages and neighborhoods in Taos County regardless of what “their betters” think. Very often a village or neighborhood finds itself organized around a Mutual Domestic or community center or road or a ditch. Tom’s “not from here” and sometimes forgets that’s where a Taoseno’s DNA is found. Culture is more important than economic feasibility studies or whatever.
Painter refuses to lease water rights or otherwise help out Questa. The commissioners, led by Blankenhorn, allowed the Prado parasite to plunder water rights that rightfully should have gone to the village, according to Esther Garcia, the former mayor. At the same time the commissioners “accidentally on purpose” ignored the self-interested Palemon and Joe Torres (who was on the Public Welfare Committee) to game more water rights from the Llano ditch in Questa. There are hundreds of thousands of dollars in the Rio Lucero bank accounts aimed at drilling wells and acquiring water rights that will benefit parciantes, including Palemon and Joe on whose land the wills are proposed for drilling.
Blankenhorn, whether due to conventional or conspiratorial and misguided thinking, has led the commissioners (except for Gabe and Candyce) down the slippery slope, wherein inter-basin transfers have been condoned despite advisories that say the commission will jeopardize inter-county protests when they stand in front of the bench. Now the County must offset its hypocrisy and confront the Top of the World buyers, those funded by deep-pocketed powers associated with the downstream Aamodt settlement.
Now the county’s well intended protest can be considered quixotic at best. It’s a bad day at Blackrock for Blankenhorn and the Commission and the Town, given the ill-fated ties to the apron strings of Abeyta or even while counting on non-existent Capital Outlay allowances from state government.
Everybody’s in trouble now, not just the Mayor of Potholes at the Town of Taos. What money? What roads? What tacky signs announcing “100 yeas of Art in Taos”? How did the concept of “beauty” become a hallmark card slogan? How did Farolitos turn into silvery rilled Xmas tree lights? What happened to the “Dark Skies?” Some of us just can’t be bought off with beads and toys…but that’s just me.
More News
In a classic quote that nailed the energizer bunny, one Luis Reyes, J.R. Logan caught the rabbit in the act when the KCEC CEO said Broadband rate setting was “really more of an art than a science.” Si. What Broadband business plan? I recently wrote a book about “entrepreneurial adventures,” i.e. Gringo Lessons, available now at Brodsky Books. I was playing hide and seek with my own or private money, not the public purse and 90 millions in Coop members’ debt. I have always liked Luis more for his imagination but less for his fiction presented as fact. Now he’s saying he’s more artist and entrepreneur than fact-driven businessman. It takes one to know one. And I know Luis.
In the news, reported by Andrew Oxford: the DA’s office, thanks to a plea bargain, nailed one Chris Sillas for being the getaway driver in the KCEC robbery. Sillas pleaded guilty, according to the report. Did he turn state’s evidence against the rest of the members of the Ma Barker gang? It was a helluva story, given the DA’s desperate attempts to issue hometown subpoenas, contrary to the code and the law. But, why not congratulate Donald and Emilio? Course I haven’t had time to discuss the matter with defense attorneys, who might have a different view.
Dead and Murdered Women
At Las Pistoleras, the women this March have focused on the culture of killing and disappeared females in Juarez. The numbers continue to grow each year, what with a culture of machismo, maquiladora capitalism, narcopolitics, etc. The films and photographs, witness testimony and statistics break your heart. Metaphysical evil has become embodied evil in the bodies of dead Juarez women.
Taos might consider the drug-related murders of Amber Hava and Lisa Montano down there in the area of the Taos Spa similar to the Juarez murders. Two young women were killed by gunshots. We hear one of the alleged perps has been allowed to retire to Chama while the chief witness and boyfriend (?) of Ms. Hava has been gamboling in Las Vegas, Nevada.
And, sure, street talk knows damn good and well about the culture that killed Amber and Lisa, a culture allowed to poison the local community, especially the El Prado environs for years, despite calls to the cops from the neighbors. Oh, yes, we know the TCSO and DA have been aware of other “suspicious deaths” involving El Prado dope fiends.
What the hell, they are only women (or children). The real question herein posed is this: will the Taos County Sheriff and District Attorney step up and truly investigate the cover up dismissed by cops and prior prosecutors for years? Eh? Should we expect to see a little Juarez up here in Taos? Will we memorialize Amber and Lisa?
Just because a person does drugs, due to whatever weakness, does not mean they deserve to die by the gun and their deaths covered up due to the culture of machismo.
Las Pistoleras are coming.