"If you're not seated at the table you're liable to find yourself on the menu!"
Please note that there will be two principal agenda items for this meeting, and that it will begin at
6:00 pm
instead of the usual 6:30 pm. This is being done in order to facilitate
the start-up of building a town hall on Section 16. The two items
which will be dealt with are:
- Exploration of funding alternatives for a town hall and;
- A second attempt an regularizing town boundaries through an infill
annexation. Town residents living in the areas targeted for annexation
should be aware that this is not considered a voluntary annexation;
rather it is a exercise of the town's police powers for ensuring the
health, safety and welfare of citizens.
What area residents might want to consider with regard to the
first item of funding a town hall is that the town council has the power
to impose a small amount of property tax which could be used to help
pay for the proposed facility without seeking voter approval. Also, any
funding alternative will certainly include borrowing against future GRT
revenues for the project. That, in turn, would mean less money spent
elsewhere if the town's GRT income continues to stagnate.
While
the mayor has indicated in the past that he objects to citing
health safety and welfare by the town when placing conditions on such
things as road design standards, it appears that he
and the council have no qualms about exercising that power to annex
land without the consent of property owners. Any property owners who are
annexed in this manner will be assessed property taxes pursuant to the
recently approved General Obligation Bonds for building an animal
shelter and for the paving of Rainbow, Horton, and Walker roads. In
addition, when the land is annexed, the property owners who are affected
need to be aware that their land will have a zone category assigned at
some point. The town has a variety of different residential and
commercial zone categories and the differences among them can be
significant.
The town's first attempt at an
infill annexation was rejected by former Governor Bill Richardson's
Boundary Commission, and that decision was upheld by a panel of New
Mexico's Supreme Court. I expect the proposed infill will be changed
somewhat from the first attempt in order to address issues cited in the
court's decision, and that it will also include more land.
The
last time the possibility of annexing South Mountain Elementary was
raised before the council, the indication at that time was that there
are no plans to do so. However, if the land were to be annexed,
Edgewood would then have an elementary school located inside town
limits. And, doing so makes sense in another way because the school is
very close to the geographic center of the town.