Water & Roads Topics of Vista Redonda Town Hall Meeting with County Officials

County official Guerrerotiz answer a resident's question

A trio of county public works officials brought two messages to a Vista Redonda community meeting. First, the neighborhood ought to consider giving up owning and operating its own water system and instead join the small, but growing, Santa Fe County water utility. Second the neighborhood needs to send a clear signal to the county as to its priorities in regards to the roads so that public works experts can develop a plan to properly address them.
    The twin messages were delivered to about 30 Vista Redonda residents who attended a two-hour long town-hall style meeting in the home of Sue & Charles Mize at 3 PM on Monday July 16. Vista Redonda Water Board and Property Owners Association President Sue Mize chaired the meeting. Attending from the country government were Adam Leigland, Public Works Department Director, Robert Martinez, County Road Manager, and Patricio (Pego) Guerreroritz, Santa Fe Public Utilities Director.

Water
Currently the county utility provides water to 3,200 customers and it hopes to increase that number to 5,000 by 2018, according to Guerreroritz. County residents who are not on county water are served by 45 small public, private, or mutual domestic water systems such as what exists in Vista Redonda.
    Some of the systems are running into management, health, and financial issues and have turned to the county for assistance. The county has helped on an ad-hoc basis but the result has been a less than desirable “checkboard” pattern of solutions, Guerreroritz said.
    As a result, this past April, the Santa Fe County Commission approved a plan that encourages integrating existing water systems into the countywide utility. At considerable length, Guerreroritz outlined options for Vista Redonda and answered questions from the audience.
    The first option would be for Vista Redonda to join as a wholesale customer. It would continue to manage the delivery, metering, and maintenance of the water delivery system but the county would take over supplying water and maintaining the storage facility.
    The second option would call for neighborhood to turn over its water rights and water system to the county and its utility would take over all aspects of the water system from providing water to billing for it. Each resident would become a retail customer. Guerreroritz focused most of his explanation on this second option.
    Under the plan, the county would assume the responsibility for every aspect of Vista Redonda’s water system. There would be a one-time hook-up fee of $2,700 and a tiered rate structure would make it costly to use large amount of water. “The more you use the higher the rate you pay,” he said.
    The rates begin at $6.12 per month per 1,000 gallons and go as high as $17.62 per month per 1,000 gallons. On average, a Vista Redonda resident uses 9,000 gallons a month. Under this plan the resident would pay approximately $63 a month. But as many residents use the bulk of their water in the summer, those months’ bills would be considerably higher. A resident, for instance, who uses 15,000 gallons in a month would be charged $137.85.
    Board director David Rule said that according to his calculations residents who use less than the average amount of water each year would pay less under the county program and those that use more would face higher bills.
     Guerreroritz touted several advantages of switching to its water system. The county would increase the size of the water main so as to supply ample water to the fire hydrants that would be posted every 500 feet.  All the problems currently faced by Vista Redonda, such as being out of compliance on Uranium levels to replacing an aging delivery system, would become the county’s problem. It has, he said, better financial and technical abilities to cope with the problems. For instance, the county utility could make use of bond revenues.
    Guerreroritz also said the county has a considerable wealth of water rights sufficient to supply water to a large number of customers for many years to come. Residents at the meeting asked Guerreroritz a number of challenging questions about the utility’s financial strength, its ability to provide maintenance on a timely basis, how rates are set, and if it would limit water consumption.
    President Mize said that Board would take up its initial discussion of the proposed switch to county water system at its first fall meeting. Nothing has been decided and if the community were to be inclined to pursue this option it would take protracted and careful negotiations.

Roads
An equally animated discussion on the topics of roads ensued after the water presentation. County Road Manager Martinez along with Public Works Department Director Leigland answered questions as various options for the roads had been presented at a prior meeting held at the Tesuque fire station.
    However the questioning revealed some new information. Leigland announced that the county would probably change its approach to deciding which roads are to be paved. Currently the county maintains 650 miles of roads, 250 of which are paved. Under existing rules the county requires that all roads be paved that carry traffic of 600 cars a day, a measure that is referred to as average daily traffic or ADT. The new rules would maintain the 600 ADT threshold for pavement but would add a 200 ADT threshold for chip seal.
    Leigland also urged that Vista Redonda not vote on a specific solution, as the current plan dictates. Rather he asked that the neighborhood indicate or rank its desires for such things as smoother roads, less dust, better drainage, or fewer rocks. “You decide what you want and we will come up with a plan to achieve that,” said Martinez, echoing Leigland’s comments.
    Any plan, however, to pave the entire neighborhood’s road system was unlikely to be approved by the county, the officials said. In fact, Leigland said he would recommend that the commission not approve such a plan. The neighborhood does not generate sufficient traffic to justify the expense. The most likely paving program, they suggested, would only include the stretch of Vista Redonda from the entrance to the stop signs and down the two Paseo Encantado hills.
    A number of residents attending the meeting expressed concern about the safety of pavement on those hills. Unlike at the Tesuque Fire Station meeting, the officials at this meeting disagreed on the safety considerations of bringing asphalt into the neighborhood. One suggested that it was safer in inclement cold weather because better drainage could be engineered while the other said the ice would build up more easily on asphalt. But both road officials agreed that they could not guarantee that snow clearing or cinder trucks would service the roads any sooner if they were paved as they still had to concentrate on the main arteries before coming to Vista Redonda.
    Finally Leigland and Martinez said that if the county and the neighborhood could agree on a plan for the roads and Vista Redonda made a substantial financial contribution, the odds were favorable (8 on a scale of 10) that the work could be done within two or three years.