14 Days and Counting…

  …Because we still have at least five days until the ordinance ratifying the Fire/EMS JPA which was passed last night becomes effective. I say at least five days, because last night’s vote becomes valid only after the ordinance has been signed. Commissioner Rariden did state last night that it was his intention to do so immediately following the meeting. 

Last night’s meeting yielded some interesting comments both from the public and Commissioners: 

• Despite several requests from Commissioner Rariden to use the second round of comments during the public hearing only for remarks about the ordinance under consideration, most of those commenting merely used the opportunity to peddle their own agendas. 
• This included three former town officials who ought to have known better, but their behavior serves as a partial explanation of why things went so wrong with the Commission/Manager government from its beginning in 2022.  
• It is a good sign that the calls for a forensic audit of the town’s finances will continue.
• Commissioner Taylor’s remarks near the end of the meeting indicate to me that he understands the need for more of the public to be involved in local government, but it is also clear that he does not understand the inherent difficulties in governing commuter towns in general and Edgewood in particular.  
• He has a lot to learn, and his self-proclaimed disdain for government won’t be helpful.  

A Look Back at the Campbell Ranch Annexation: Part 2

[A news report from 2002 saying that Campbell Ranch offered to de-annex.] 

The only definite source I can find for the claim that Campbell Farming had ever offered to go away in exchange for money following the vote to annex the land in December of 2001 comes from a story in The Independent dated  May 8, 2002. It is possible that town correspondence still exists somewhere in the Planning Office’s permanent files or perhaps the personal files of former members of the governing body which might provide more information. [See also the separate pages for the Campbell Ranch Master Plan and the Hillcrest Master Plan with timelines of significant events.] 

March 2002:  A coalition of town council candidates made up of incumbent Robert (Bob) Stearley, former P&Z Commissioner Donzil Worthington, and Paul Hoffman campaigned as a group proclaiming “No Campbell Ranch” during the municipal election season. They soundly defeated the pro-annexation coalition made up of incumbents Gary Chemistruck and Frank Lasky who were joined by Bradley (Brad) Hill.  The town council had voted 3-0 to annex Campbell Ranch in December of 2001 during a special Saturday meeting held at a time when Stearley was unable to attend. At that time, Stearley had not yet retired, and his work entailed significant travel time.  

May 2002: Council member Bob Stearley, newly re-elected and serving as Mayor Pro Tem, is quoted in The Independent story as saying that the $1.1 Million as reported in the headline might eventually be twice or three times that amount. Regardless of which, if any amount were to be considered, the town could not have afforded to buy its way out of the situation. In an unexpected pivot from having campaigned against the annexation only three months earlier, Stearley appears to contradict opinion of the then town legal counsel, David Henderson, who believed that there might be a way to undo the annexation. 

Henderson’s theory about how that might happen depended upon the fate of the lawsuit filed against the annexation by Santa Fe County.  It appears that at the time this story was written, the Town of Edgewood had already filed a motion to dismiss the County’s lawsuit; the filing may have taken place before the 2002 municipal election which altered the balance of power of the Governing Body.  The story also notes that Campbell Farming Corporation had filed an intervention in the case which further complicated the legal situation. 

Stearley’s change in tactics was based on his estimation (which eventually turned out to be correct) that Santa Fe County’s appeal would not succeed, thus leaving the annexation intact. Therefore, he saw no reason to delay changing tactics. His preference, given the realities of state laws and the legal situation, was to find a way for the young town to manage the unpopular master plan. His principal focus at that time was on challenging the validity of Section 4 of the development agreement between the Town of Edgewood and Campbell Farming Corporation. He also proposed changing town ordinances to place a moratorium on building golf courses and codifying a one acre minimum for residential lot sizes. 

Given the information available to him at the time, Stearley’s change of course appeared reasonable. However, it was not politically expedient. His actions angered three important groups, and the consequences of their disillusionment are still relevant: 

(1)  Those who had supported his re-election to the Town Council specifically because of his opposition to the the town’s expansionist annexation policy in general (and it’s annexation of Campbell Ranch in particular) were inclined to be sympathetic, but they felt that he gave up too much, too soon.  

(2)  The group which had begun printing petitions calling for an election to disincorporate the newly formed town government before the Stearley, Worthington, and Hoffman coalition members announced their candidacy were less inclined to give Stearley the benefit of the doubt. Their take was that he was too closely allied to the local real estate faction, and they believed that Stearley had not campaigned in good faith.  

(3) Of greater long-term political consequence, he alienated several members of the Hill Family, who at that time were in the beginning stages of creating what eventually became the Hillcrest Master Plan. Their ambitious plan, which has been modified several times since it was approved, allowed for a wide mix of residential lot sizes as well as commercial development areas with at least one golf course. Stearley’s plans for changing town ordinances were viewed as a threat to their efforts.

2004-2007: Despite the validity of his arguments, Stearley’s pivot created the impression within his coalition and among the wider public that he was not dependable. [ETA: Santa Fe County’s challenge to the annexation was dismissed first by a district court and later by the state’s court of appeals for lack of standing in July of 2004; the dismissal was not appealed to the state’s highest court.] Stearley’s controversial decision in 2006 to appoint Brad Hill to fill a vacancy on the Town Council did not have the calming results he expected. 

The overall result of Stearley’s decision to drop his opposition to the annexation was to give Howard Calkins the means to make a credible challenge in the 2004 mayoral election despite his having been a vocal advocate for the still unpopular annexation. While Stearley was originally declared the winner and sworn into office, Calkins challenged the results. A state district court eventually declared the close race a tie. Stearley decided against appealing the decision, and after he lost the highly publicized card draw held in late 2007, Calkins returned briefly as mayor.  

Summary: There have been many questions asked in the years since 2002 about the fate of Stearley’s plan to change the Campbell Ranch development agreement. It would appear that while Stearley hoped to modify the development agreement where his primary focus was on modifying Section 4, it never happened. He also proposed significant changes to town ordinances and land use policies designed to rein in some of the most problematic features of the proposed development.  

Stearley was successful in making some good changes in several of the town’s ordinances and land use policies during his time in town government; some of them remain in place to this day. However, I can find no mention in the public record that there was ever any real attempt to modify the original development agreement. There is some indication in meeting minutes from January 2005 for both P&Z and the Town Council that several conceptual changes were made to the Campbell Ranch Master Plan. 

Because the changes were deemed “minor,” the Zoning Ordinance in place at that time did not require a public hearing which means that discovering exactly what changes were made would depend on consulting the development review documents which should still be available in the permanent files of the town’s Planning Office. However, it is not required that the town preserve every scrap of paper generated for land use matters; meeting minutes provide some hints at what changes were presumably made. 

Partly because of the turmoil surrounding the controversy over who should be mayor, heated debates over the Hillcrest Master Plan application, and the dismissal of Santa Fe County’s challenge of the annexation, Campbell Ranch brought no significant development proposals forward until late 2007.

Future actions? The Town already has sufficient legal authority over zoning matters to clean up the mess. Whether or not the current governing body possesses the level of expertise and political will to do so remains to be seen.

Because the original development agreement does make provision for future changes, perhaps the time has come for the parties to re-examine both the Campbell Ranch Master Plan and the general provisions of the town’s Master Plan section of its Zoning Ordinance.  None of the three major Master Plans, all of which were approved in Edgewood’s early years, have performed as advertised. 

Perhaps Master Plans, like preliminary subdivision plats, should carry an automatic expiration date with provisions made for possible extension if conditions warrant doing so. Of course, the interval should be significantly longer for master plans. Edgewood’s Cargo Cult faction has had great success in seeding the town map with lands bearing Master Plan Zoning for which no plans have ever been presented. The town needs to take another look at the zoning on those parcels as well.  

Coming soon: A look back at the Campbell Ranch Annexation Part 2

[Part 1 (below) sets the stage: The May 8, 2002 edition of The Independent serves as a time capsule for looking at the municipal government’s early years.]

A few things have changed, mostly the dramatis personae, but the fundamentals have not. Meanwhile, I suggest a visit to EMPAC’s homepage featuring a slide show where one image shows Edgewood’s Great March North along with the Bride and Groom at the top of the wedding cake: Campbell Ranch.  

While looking for something else, I found an old paper copy of The Independent (May 8, 2002 Volume 4, No. 19). The front page (above the fold) features the headline Campbell price to leave Edgewood: $1.1 million followed by a detailed story on the offer written by Theresa M. Oderman. Bracketing the Campbell headline is a larger one Drought, export imperil water under which Kevin Bean outlines Export on the left with Drought on the right. One of the best things about reading The Independent in those days was venturing into lower Edgewood, picking up a paper copy, and analyzing how the staff employed all of the classical rhetorical canons week after week. (The advent of the e-mail pdf version was still several years in the future.)  

Will the real Edgewood please stand up?

On my current reading list is Timelines of the East Mountains published by the East Mountain Historical Society. It can be ordered from them or purchased through several local businesses. The book chronicles the histories of many small communities which no longer exist in a legal sense, but whose residents laid the foundations for the East Mountain communities of today. Wind, weather and the departures of former residents have erased most of them, but faint impressions remain. 

When my family first moved to the area, there were still many residents willing to share their memories. Small towns such as Frost, Venus, and Hyer are mostly forgotten, but the names survive in street names or the occasional sign post. For many long-time residents of rural Santa Fe County who have been swallowed up by the legal entity d.b.a. Town of Edgewood, those memories persist.   

To my amusement, I discovered last week that there are still Edgewood residents other than my family who continue to speak of “going into” or “going down to” Edgewood. Prior to the formation of the town government, most residents of what is now Commission District-1 did not consider themselves to be part of Edgewood. Edgewood was the location of the Post Office, the elementary school, and a few small businesses clustered around the I-40 and NMSR 333 intersections. Smith’s, Walgreens, and the John Brooks supermarket had not yet appeared. It was a place we got our mail and drove through on our way to Moriarty, Cedar Crest, or Albuquerque. We lived in rural Santa Fe County. The aptly named Mike’s Friendly Store in Moriarty was a frequent destination. 

In the first few years after the town government’s incorporation, there were a few people who tried to make much of the old community of Venus. Some even enlisted volunteers to promote swapping the name Venus for Edgewood. However, it was a hard sell. When the people suggesting it were greeted with a local version of “Yankee go Home” they finally stood down.* After all, unlike the vanished towns in the region, Edgewood still had a post office and a small but recognizable cluster of businesses.   

Then, as now, the majority of Edgewood residents lived in the actual, historical Edgewood; they were not impressed by the suggestion. When the proponents finally realized that they needed votes from what has now become “lower Edgewood” in order to get elected, the attempts at re-branding Edgewood to Venus finally ceased. The physical remnants of Venus had been destroyed in a storm years before 1999 rendering the proposal incomprehensible to newer residents. Wally Gordon memorialized the name, if not its actual history, in his serial novel Venus Vector published in The Independent newspaper. 

Is any of this relevant to town government today? In one sense it is not. Edgewood is now defined by legal boundaries which are unlikely to change. However, for purposes of governance the historical fault lines still exist, and woe to government officials who fail to account for them. I have made several attempts to describe the situation by looking at the context of the 1999 Incorporation.  The higher than expected turnover rates in Edgewood’s town government persist, and are largely due to the local government’s failures to understand the ramifications of annexing so far beyond Edgewood’s informal, traditional boundaries. 

* After having attended some of the early “branding” meetings, I now avoid them. Most are the product of Edgewood’s recurring manic bouts of promotional activities coupled to a long series of groups all of which (for a fee) have promised a sure-fire method for giving Edgewood a cohesive brand or image. Because Edgewood has multiple narratives whose strands cannot easily be co-mingled, the projects seldom produce anything of lasting value. The meetings often feature hotly debated proposals many of which are not founded on anything resembling the truth. Unless you enjoy watching an unintentional community playhouse adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing, there are probably better ways to spend an evening.