Legal status of the Campbell Ranch Master Plan?

A rumor which has circulated in Edgewood for many years without being publicly challenged until recently says that, an unnamed state district court judge on an unspecified date, ruled that the Development Agreement between Campbell Farming and the Town of Edgewood must be followed without modification. I am not the only person who has investigated this assertion, but failed to find any evidence that such a thing ever happened. The question, then, needs to be re-framed: What did happen?  

• In late 2001 and early 2002 following the annexation and subsequent approval of the development agreement, then town council member Robert Stearley, candidate Paul Hoffman, and Linda Sparling considered filing a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the annexation and, by extension, the development agreement. However, the contemplated lawsuit was probably never filed, or may have been withdrawn before being placed on a court schedule. There have been no court records found to date indicating that such a case was ever heard.  
• Following the March 2002 municipal election, Stearley was re-elected, and Hoffman joined him on the town council. 
• Had the proposed lawsuit gone forward, neither Stearley nor Hoffman would have been able to vote on any Campbell Ranch matters such as creation of the Public Improvement District (PID) or subdivision applications. This situation would most likely have resulted in former town council member Donzil Worthington, who had opposed the annexation, voting one way, and Chuck Ring another, thereby allowing then Mayor Howard Calkins to break a tie vote. It was assumed that since both Calkins and Ring were openly supportive of the town assuming responsibility for Campbell Ranch, that their combined two votes would have resulted in approval of any Campbell Ranch matters that might have come before the town. 
• Furthermore, Santa Fe County did file suit challenging the annexation. It was believed at that time that the county had a strong case, making Stearley’s plan redundant. 
• However, Santa Fe County’s challenge to the annexation was eventually denied in state district court on the grounds that the County lacked standing. An appeal was later dismissed for the same reason in July of 2004. Santa Fe County decided against any further appeals.
• The ramifications of the county’s failure to prevail have been misrepresented since that time either through a misunderstanding of the law, or a desire to shape the narrative by making it seem that the denials were affirmations of the annexation and the development agreement.
• When a lawsuit is denied because of a “lack of standing” that is the end of the matter. The Campbell Ranch annexation in 2001 and subsequent approval of the development agreement in 2002 were allowed to remain in place, but without comment as to the merits of either the annexation or the development agreement. 
• If a state district court judge or appeals court had ever issued any additional stipulations beyond dismissals for lack of standing, then there would be some record of the action. However, no record of such an action has been found to date.
• It is possible that the people spreading the misinformation have confused the challenge to the Campbell Ranch Master Plan with the challenge to the approval of the Hillcrest Master Plan which was settled after an out- of-court agreement was reached. The agreement on Hillcrest was later confirmed by a detailed “stipulated settlement order” issued by the judge in that case which took place in late 2003 through early 2004.

What, then is the legal status of the Campbell Ranch Annexation and Development Agreement? 

• Neither has ever been successfully challenged, making Campbell Ranch part of Edgewood, and administration of any future development will be the responsibility of the town. 
• As such, Campbell Ranch has achieved vested right to the master plan zoning category for the property. The assigned zoning cannot be modified without the consent of the owners unless the town were to show cause that a compelling reason exists to revisit the matter. In order to revisit the zoning as Master Plan, the town would have to convene a public hearing under that portion of the Zoning Ordinance governing zone changes. 
• What having Master Plan Zoning does not establish, is vested right to actual development; that comes later in the process and is established through compliance with the Subdivision Ordinance.

Is it possible to change Master Plans once they have been approved?

• The Town of Edgewood’s Zoning Ordinance contains provisions for amending master plans by the Planning & Zoning Commission during a public hearing. An interesting addition to the current Zoning Ordinance’s table assigning responsibilities with regard to land use ordinances would appear to give the Town’s P&Z director power to approve Master Plan amendments administratively. However, the ordinance itself does not describe such an action.  
• Approved Master Plans are modified from time to time, as has been the case for both the Hillcrest and Section 16 Master Plans. 

Subdivisions and P&Z in 2009:

Town of Edgewood Subdivision Matters heard by P&Z in 2009 
(Sources: Commission Minutes and Commission Agenda Summaries.)

(1)  Requests for subdivisions: 7 (4 approved; one application was initially denied but was re-submitted and later approved. Two were tabled indefinitely at the request of the applicants.)

(2)  Requests for preliminary plat extensions: 2 (Both were denied; the denials were appealed but upheld by the Council.)

(3)  Sketch Plat Reviews conducted: 5   

Before the continuation of the public hearing to amend the subdivision ordinance, it might be helpful to set aside anecdotes and look at the official record of how Edgewood's subdivision ordinance is applied in real situations.  It is important to keep in mind that planning commissions operate between two boundaries which are sometimes unpopular; they cannot impose conditions not called out in the ordinance, but where the ordinance does lay out requirements which apply to a particular application the commission has a duty to follow the ordinance.

I chose to post information for 2009 mostly out of laziness; I had previously finished a summary for that year, and in the years subsequent to 2009 for which I have also compiled data, the economic downturn resulted in relatively few applications being brought to the town.  The links provided should take you to individual files in the Commission Minutes folder on Google Drive.  At some point in the future, I may back up and do summaries for earlier years; in the meantime, a partial Commission Minutes archive is available to those who'd like to review a history of what P&Z has done from 1999-May 2012.  I hope to have the minutes from June 2012-May 2013 available soon. 

From the archives of Commission minutes; a discussion of minor subdivisions and administrative approvals:

One item of discussion during public testimony portion of the May 15 public hearing concerned a pre-application sketch plat review (agenda item 6)  conducted on February 7, 2011.  Among the things discussed during that review was the role which might be played by the addition of a minor subdivision process to the ordinance in a way that subdivision requests might combine the preliminary and final plats into a single hearing.  The Commission agreed that it could be a good thing so long as the two steps would remain separate in those instances when the ordinance calls for the installation of infrastructure.

Item 7 in this same agenda contains an interesting discussion about the possibility of changing the ordinance to allow administrative approval of lot line vacations.  This agenda shows that the concept of creating a minor subdivision process is nothing new, and neither is the concept of increasing the use of administrative approvals.  Of course, as is often the case, the difficulty lies in getting the details right.