{"id":738,"date":"2006-10-18T12:55:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-18T18:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/10\/county-commission-candidates-discuss-growth\/"},"modified":"2006-10-18T12:55:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-18T18:55:00","slug":"county-commission-candidates-discuss-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/10\/county-commission-candidates-discuss-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"County commission candidates discuss growth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Candidates for two seats on the Do\u00f1a Ana County Board of Commissioners shared their views during Tuesday\u2019s League of Women Voters forum. <\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

District 1 Commissioner Oscar Vasquez Butler, a Democrat, said one of his main concerns is getting out of the state-mandated extraterritorial zoning authority, which creates a joint board of the county and City of Las Cruces<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> that oversees development in a five-mile area around the city.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cI have a deep concern with being in the ETZ,\u201d Butler<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> said. \u201cI think it\u2019s time we reconsider and the county takes control of its own destiny.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Growth and related issues were the main topics discussed during the forum. Butler<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>, who wants a moratorium on development in and around arroyos, blamed developers for what he called \u201cuncontrolled growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Butler<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>\u2019s opponent, Republican John Zimmerman, said there is \u201csome uncontrolled growth,\u201d but said there are other, more pressing issues, and other problems that contributed to this summer\u2019s flooding.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The main problem, Zimmerman said, is that codes aren\u2019t being enforced. For example, people aren\u2019t being forced to take care of ponding areas on their property, he said, so many of those areas aren\u2019t being maintained and are ineffective.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cThat\u2019s the problem we have in the county, is we\u2019re not enforcing our ordinances,\u201d Zimmerman said.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

District 3 candidate Mack Haley, a Republican, agreed, saying the county needs to \u201cclarify our codes and enforce those codes.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

In addition, Haley called for lots of input from the public, developers and others in the county\u2019s comprehensive plan, which is currently under review, to help with growth issues.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Democrat Karen Perez, Haley\u2019s opponent, said she doesn\u2019t see the area\u2019s growth as \u201cuncontrolled,\u201d but did say she sees \u201croom for improvement on some of our plans for growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The problem, according to Perez, is that the county, city and ETZ each have their own plans.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I have not seen is an effort to bring all three of those plans together,\u201d Perez said.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The candidates were also asked for their positions on whether federal land and wilderness study areas should be preserved or opened for development.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Zimmerman said 93 percent of land in the county is owned by governments. He said he favors the federal government selling land for development, saying pushing development to the mesas, where the federal government owns much of the land, would help preserve farm land in the valley.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cHow can we increase the tax base when we\u2019ve got such a small amount of land?\u201d Zimmerman asked.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Butler<\/st1:city> said he opposes development on federal land, in particular property in the Robledo<\/st1:placename> Mountains<\/st1:placetype><\/st1:place> that is the site of Paleozoic trackways many want preserved as a national monument.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

He called for slower and smart growth in the valley, and said developers should leave the mountains alone.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cI think we have enough valley to live, but we have to live within the sustainability of water,\u201d Butler<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> said.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Perez said this issue \u201ctends to be emotional\u201d and asked that people consider it from \u201cthe practical standpoint.\u201d She said it\u2019s not practical to build in arroyos or on \u201cunbuildable terrain\u201d such as \u201careas that erode,\u201d including many mountainous areas.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cTaking the land out of its natural intent and its natural habitat and trying to convert it to something it was never intended to be won\u2019t work,\u201d Perez said.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Haley said he supports the creation of a wilderness area in the Organ<\/st1:placename> Mountains<\/st1:placetype><\/st1:place>, but also said growth has to go somewhere and should go to the mesas.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t want the farmland to go away, we\u2019ve got to have somewhere to go,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Candidates for two seats on the Do\u00f1a Ana County Board of Commissioners shared their views during Tuesday\u2019s League of Women Voters forum. District 1 Commissioner Oscar Vasquez Butler, a Democrat, said one of his main concerns is getting out of the state-mandated extraterritorial zoning authority, which creates a joint board of the county and City […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}