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.