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City council’s development approval was expected
There was no surprise when the Las Cruces City Council voted early this morning to approve the 6,000-acre Vistas at Presidio.
There was a sense of inevitability during the eight-hour meeting that began Monday evening and concluded just after 1 a.m. today as city staffers and a number of councilors spoke at length about the benefits of the project.
Ultimately, all but Councilor Ken Miyagishima voted to approve the development, which has the potential to double
“Whether we approve this annexation or not, the people will move here anyway,” Councilor Dolores Archuleta said before the vote.
Though there was some division revealed during the marathon meeting, presenters and members of the public were generally in favor of the development or at least resigned to its approval.
Even members of the citizen-run Quality Growth Alliance, which has expressed grave concern about the way this development came about, appeared to accept the fact that the development was going to be approved. Instead of spending their time opposing it, they urged the council to do a better job of involving the public in consideration of future development proposals.
“The general perception around the community and I think around the state is that this has been an inside deal,” said Don Kurtz, a leader of the ad-hoc group. “Something must be done so that this doesn’t happen again.”
Proponents showed up in force
But it was proponents of the development who had the loudest voice at the meeting. After speaking in favor of The Vistas at Presidio,
“This is a very exciting time to be in
State Rep. Joni Gutierrez agreed.
“I am urging you to support this annexation. I think it’s a good thing for us,” she said. “… This is about having a great city.”
A couple hundred people attended the meeting, and it appeared that more of them favored approval of the development than opposed it. Opponents did, however, have a couple of victories to celebrate.
Following the criticism from Kurtz and others, several councilors admitted that the processes for involving the public needs to be examined and improved. And Miyagishima got a majority of councilors to agree to one of his three amendments and place a 40-foot height restriction on buildings in the areas of the development zoned for dense commercial.
Though most at least suspected the development would be approved at the conclusion of the meeting, councilors, city staffers, the developer and the public engaged in a lengthy discussion about the proposal. They also spoke honestly about some of the hurt feelings that have resulted from the fight over the development that has colored the last few weeks.
Mayor Pro-Tem Dolores Connor spoke emotionally about being threatened in the past few weeks by opponents of the development, but said she wasn’t worried about the fact that she’s up for re-election later this year.
“Today’s not about whether I’m here in November or not,” she said. “Today’s about what happens in the next 20 years to
Will the system be changed?
There was also talk about the need for better communication.
Though city staffers and most councilors knew for months it was coming up for approval, the city only notified the public of the massive, city-changing project through the usual classified advertisements in the newspaper. Many of those notices didn’t even state what would be discussed at the meetings.
Councilor Steve Trowbridge said that needs to change.
“We need to make a more concerted effort to improve the process of making the citizens more involved,” he said. “We’ve created a lot of anxiety and worry, much more than was necessary, and in some ways we’ve created some divisiveness in the community that’s going to take awhile to patch up.”
But Councilor Gil Jones said there was plenty of notification, and said people should be more involved in meetings if they want to know what’s going on. He said if citizens attended more meetings, “there wouldn’t have been near the degree of fear spread throughout this community.”
That sort of disagreement about whether the system even needs to be changed ensures that the controversy and division will return.
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Given the water, global warming, transportation, traffic and economic situations, the best thing to do would have been to limit the square footage, number of bathrooms and cost of the homes to be built. And demand a transportation plan and street grids that will mitigate the added traffic. Until that happens, disaster looms for Las Cruces and many other cities in “growth” areas.
After the City Council’s sell-out to the developer, it is obvious that city government needs a major overhaul and civic reform. These Councilors and the Mayor are up for re-election this year:
Mayor Bill Mattiace
Dolores Connor
José V. Frietze
Trowbridge Councilor Position
Civic-minded residents should step up and run for office against these friends of developers. I am sure the developers will be providing big money to them as political pay back. It is important that we have strong independent leadership to match Las Cruces’ growth. This is the only way we will have sustainable and rational growth with necessary and proper public input. Let us reform Las Cruces in the city’s centennial year.
1. given that Theus will probably leave for greener pastures in 2-4 years max.,
why is he so interested in this project? It couldn’t be that Phillipou is the “secret” angel who is sweetening his contract, could it?
2. Some inquiry into the organizational/financial connections of the other supporters would be interesting. Phillipou couldn’t be astroturfing this, could he?
Mr. Theus,a PUBLIC employee, using his celebrity to endorse a developer is cause for concern.In that Reggie is now paid a substantial portion of his compensation from anonymous private donors,can the public be assured that this public employee’s support of a private developer was not motivated by his own personal benefit?After all,how many other governmental (city or county)meetings has Mr. Theus been present at?Secrecy in divulging sources of compensation for public employees is a practice which demands correction,don’t you agree NMSU president Martin?
For me the REAL underlying issue is the smelly land giveaway by Patrick Lyons, State Land Commissioner, and the prospect of additional acreage being similarly given away and then annexed.
In my letter printed in yesterday’s Sun-News I suggested we will be looking at adding 5,000 residences annually within the city limits. Yet last night the mayor and staff kept reiterating that they thought the present number of about 1,000 annually would continue. Does this make any sense?! Philippou’s CPA gave a presentation on “cost benefit analysis” — what the city would take in in fees and taxes + what the development would cost the city — without naming the population number this was based on! It was a blatantly obvious omission that people in the audience started grumbling about. Only after pointed questioning from Ken did he admit that the $ amounts were based on an additional population of 82,000.
there is no doubt that process is an issue. But they should have discussed how to change the process with the councilors and the legislators instead of using Philippou as a platform. if I had seen this group at other annexation hearings I would be a little more sympathetic to their cause but it just looked like they were against Philippou an expected the process to be changed mid- stream. Most of us in Philppou’s situation would have caved under the pressure and scrutiny, but he didn’t. I wish the developer luck and I hope the alliance sits with the council and the legislators to devise a plan of action for large annexation process. But remember open threats never work!