It’s likely that the current controversy over growth and development in Las Cruces will be the main issue in November’s city election.

The recent and narrow approval of the spaceport tax and the current dispute over a 6,000-acre development on the city’s East Mesa are the latest indicators of the controversy surrounding the city’s rapid growth.

Mayor Bill Mattiace has announced that he will seek re-election. Three council seats – those held by Jose Frietze, Dolores Connor and Steve Trowbridge – are also up for grabs. Trowbridge has announced that he won’t seek re-election.

One of the biggest questions is whether Councilor Ken Miyagishima, who ran unsuccessfully against Mattiace in 2003, will try again this year. On recent issues, including the spaceport tax and East Mesa project, which is called The Vistas at Presidio, Mattiace has been a champion of pressing forward, while Miyagishima has urged caution. Their exchanges, both in public and by e-mail, have been, at times, testy.

“I get the feeling that they’re drawing lines on this,” Councilor Gil Jones said. “You can feel the tension.”

Philip Philippou, the developer of The Vistas at Presidio, has accused Miyagishima and others who are calling for a possible delay of a vote on the project of trying to stall or torpedo it. In a letter sent to the city Thursday, Joel Newton, attorney for Philippou, accused Miyagishima of “political attempts to engineer a delay.”

“We recognize that Councilor Miyagishima has tied his political ambitions to the ‘no growth’ movement, and so he has systematically set out to oppose each and all of Mr. Philippou’s projects,” the letter states.

It was Miyagishima who sought an opinion from the attorney general on whether the council has to vote today on the annexation of 4,200 acres included in The Vistas at Presidio – a legal opinion which says the council can’t legally vote until next month.

In addition to wanting a delay on that project to allow more public input, Miyagishima opposed the spaceport tax, saying he believed the state should pay the entire cost of the facility.

But Miyagishima said he isn’t anti-growth and is undecided on whether he’ll run against Mattiace later this year. He said his recent stances aren’t political. He likes what he has seen of The Vistas at Presidio project, but believes there hasn’t been enough opportunity for public input.

“I just want to shed some light on this annexation,” Miyagishima said. “I’m here for the public.”

There’s no doubt that the stand he’s taking is earning Miyagishima many supporters. Steve Fischmann, leader of the Quality Growth Alliance, which has pushed for a delay on The Vistas at Presidio, wrote in an e-mail to supporters earlier this month that city officials had better “allow extensive public input” on the project or “their political future is in danger.”

Mattiace sets tone in address

New Mexico’s second-largest city had a population of 82,671 in 2005, according to the Census estimate. That was up from 74,267 in 2000 and 62,126 in 1990, and puts the city on track to hit 90,000 by the end of the decade.

The growth of the commercial space industry, if Spaceport America is successful, promises to accelerate that growth. The Vistas at Presidio, the largest of a number of projects in the works, could, by itself, double the city’s population in 20 years.

Mattiace set the tone for a continuation of that growth in his State of the City address at the beginning of the year.

“We can’t build walls high enough to keep people from this beautiful area and, even if we could, our city is young and people like to make more people,” he said. “So we must find a way to both manage and come to terms with our growth.”

There are, of course, those who don’t want any growth, and many of those involved with Fischmann’s group have opposed development and fought for open-space preservation in the past.

But most Las Crucens acknowledge that the city is going to continue to grow, and that the battles to be fought are over ensuring developments are well-planned and that the city has the resources to keep up with growth.

Mattiace acknowledged the difficulty of that in his address.

“There are signs that, in our efforts to attract new citizens, we have not been as diligent as we could be in responding to our existing citizens,” he said. “Whether it is infrastructure, investment or social services, it’s time to take stock of our older neighborhoods, our senior communities, and our impoverished children.”

Keeping up with growth

One of the most obvious signs of the city’s struggle to keep up with growth is Sonoma Ranch Boulevard on the East Mesa. Last year, developers paid for and built a stretch of the road from U.S. Highway 70 that will eventually connect with Lohman Avenue. The road, which should reduce congestion on Roadrunner Parkway, Telshor Boulevard and Interstate 25, hasn’t opened because the city hasn’t completed its portion of the project – construction on bridges that cross arroyos.

Meanwhile, the paved road is already bearing the wear of sun, wind and time.

The city and county have begun a process of developing a regional master plan that should be in place by 2009 that will help them more adequately respond to growth. They plan to pay a contractor to develop it and are relying on New Mexico State University to facilitate the process because city and county staffers are so busy keeping up with daily tasks.

A number of public officials are coming to realize that they can’t wait for the master plan. State Rep. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces and a conservationist who works on a number of open-space initiatives, is proposing a committee made up of city councilors, county commissioners and local lawmakers. He wants it to gather public input and review local-government development policies.

“This is getting out of hand,” he said. “It’s time we hand our growth and development policies back to the citizens and away from the developers.”

Doña Ana County Commissioner Bill McCamley, one of the most pro-growth public officials in the county, is already working on a new policy he will propose to the commission and the Extraterritorial Zoning Authority, the joint city-county board that oversees development in the five miles around Las Cruces.

McCamley’s new policy would require two or three public meetings on any development request over 100 acres to address specific topics including schools, infrastructure, water, drainage and affordable housing.

“There isn’t currently a formalized process for public input on specific questions people may have about a particular development,” McCamley said. “If we formalize the process, no one is surprised and, that way, it’s fair.”

That’s been the biggest complaint of those pushing for a delay on The Vistas at Presidio: Though all legal noticing requirements were followed, there wasn’t an intentional effort by the developers to gather public input and incorporate it into a project that has the potential to change the city.

McCamley and Steinborn both said it’s time that changes.

“Things are happening so quickly,” McCamley said. “The demand for growth in the city and county is so large that we’re all having trouble keeping up.”

That trouble, if it’s not kept in check in the next few months, could become the focus of a potential Miyagishima campaign against Mattiace. Though Miyagishima said he’s currently too busy dealing with the immediate development project to think about running for mayor, he also noted that leading the City of Las Cruces was a goal he first listed when he was 22.

“I can’t deny that I have thought about it,” he said. “That’s always been an ambition of mine.”