Commissioners oppose annexation and development proposal that sidesteps their voices

Doña Ana County commissioners voted Tuesday to oppose a proposed city annexation and development that would skirt the normal approval procedures.

Developer Ken Thurston wants to build 1,707 homes on 210 acres in the Taylor Road area north of Las Cruces. The city council is set to vote later this month on a proposal to annex the land into the city and approve the development.

There are two problems with this proposal: Residents of the area in question live in the county and have no voice in city government. In addition, the proposal bypasses the normal approval procedures.

The city and county have created an extraterritorial zone around the Las Cruces city limits. A board made up of two city councilors and three county commissioners hears development requests in this area and approves or denies them.

Thurston’s proposal would bypass that process by asking the city to first annex the land so it’s the council, not the zoning authority, that decides its future.

Why? Well, for starters, Thurston builds homes on small lots. He can build on smaller lots in the city than in the county. Also, the council is more developer-friendly than the zoning authority, largely because of the presence on the authority of Commissioner Oscar Vasquez-Butler, a hero to those who oppose the way the city is developing.

The council should not approve this proposal. As long as councilors have an agreement with the county to be part of the zoning authority, they need to honor it. Commissioners, with Kent Evans absent, voted unanimously Tuesday to tell that to the city.

The vote has no legal authority.

Opponents of the development have collected almost 1,000 signatures in opposition, and continued to circulate the petition at Tuesday’s commission meeting.

They’ve organized quickly and are fighting hard.

I don’t mean to sound like I oppose development. I live in a home on the edge of the city limits, and my backyard is bordered by desert that I know will someday be developed.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying it.

If you live close to the city, like residents of this area, you become accustomed to the convenience of being near everything without the crowding of living among it. It’s nice.

But it won’t last, and you can’t expect that it will.

The city is growing. Period. If you don’t want to be in its way, you have to move further away. It’s just reality.

Should Thurston submit a development proposal instead to the zoning authority, it might be appropriate to allow him to proceed.

But the current proposal is not the way to go.