Rio Arriba County Comprehensive Plan
Attendees:
Louise Pocock, RAC
Lucia Sanchez, RAC
Gabriel Boyle, RAC
Steven Gonzales, La Puebla, New Mexico Economic Development Department, Northern Representative
Rol Murrow, Lindrith, Private Landowner
Don Diego Gonzales, Velarde, Private Landowner and Hydrologist
Henry Ochoa, El Rito, Planning and Zoning Committee, Chairperson
Phil Kilgour, Chimayo, Planning and Zoning Committee, Member
Marie Markesteyn, Abiquiu, Planning and Zoning Committee, Vice-Chairperson
Randy Cordova, Gallina, Land and Small Business Owner, Planning and Zoning Commission Member
Darlene Schmitz, Lindrith, Land and Small Business Owner
Tony Schmitz, Lindrith, Land and Small Business Owner
Tony Schmitz, Jr., Lindrith, Land and Small Business Owner
*LUNCH*
On behalf of the Comprehensive Plan Taskforce Members, the Planning and Zoning Department would like to extend a big thank you to the Nielson’s and their neighbors and friends who hosted a wonderful luncheon for Taskforce Members before the meeting. The Nielson’s hosted the luncheon at the restored, historic Lindrith School House located on their property and we were happy to be using the School House as a place for community gatherings as it was intended.
Sign-in, Welcome, and Introductions: Location – Lindrith Fire House
Rol called attention to the facility in which the meeting was being held, the Lindrith Firehouse. The Firehouse has been recently established as a result of strong community effort and support, including the raising of over $24,000 from the community to support the initial funding efforts. Since the Firehouse’s recent establishment, there have been 11 first responders trained in the community, and the Volunteer fire department, as the areas first response team, was credited for saving the lives of two crash victims over the weekend. The establishment of the Firehouse, has dramatically increased the availability of trained medical and emergency responders in a community that had little access to those resources in the past.
Old Business: Health and Human Safety Ordinance
Louise explained that since we have discovered provision relating to the storage of materials, particularly litter, in the County’s Solid Waste Ordinance, we are going to refocus the departments energy on enforcing the existing storage provisions in the Solid Waste Ordinance and at the same time, still keeping in mind the necessity of creating a health and safety/ environmental hazards Ordinance, to address the issues the Taskforce has discussed in the past. The P and Z department still has legal authority to abate issues that cause an immediate health and safety concern, and the taskforce will reconsider the issue when the department has a more developed draft in the future. The P and Z department is in the process of updating several of its Ordinances, and that needs to take priority over the creation of new ordinances.
Appendix P – Land Subdivision
Staff presentation:
Louise explained that in the eighties, the state began to mandate Counties and municipalities to enact land subdivision regulations to regulate the process of local land subdivisions, which up to that point had received little oversight and was proliferating unplanned land subdivisions which didn’t have to adhere to any sort of standards.
When the County enacted the land subdivision regulations in the late eighties, they were the strictest in the state and are still considered very comprehensive, requiring detailed, and professionally engineered submittals demonstrating the land’s suitability for future use and development. However, the land subdivision regulations, Appendix P, allows for a summary review process for Type III and Type V subdivision types which are subdivisions of less than 5 lots of 10 acres or less in size, or less than 24 lots of 10 acres or more in size, respectively. The submittal requirements for the summary review process are significantly less detailed and there is no public hearing requirement for the application unless the Director deems it necessary. Because the requirements for the full-blown subdivision process are so expensive and cumbersome, most people tailor their subdivisions to fit through the summary process. Because the summary process has fewer requirements, there have been subdivisions created without adequately assessing or disclosing the suitability of the land for development, and without requiring the adequate infrastructure and planning – such as fire protection plans, drainage and erosions control plans, etc. People who buy property in these subdivisions have flooding and erosion problems, have trouble installing septic systems, experience road problems etc. Our subdivision regulations are leading to sprawl development and are straining County infrastructure. There is also a need for an increase of information required in the disclosure statement so that people buying property have a better idea of what they are buying.
Hence, we need to amend the summary process to reflect higher standards of disclosure development. The ordinance also needs mechanisms that the department can use to hold the developers accountable for required improvements and the maintenance of such infrastructure, such as roads etc. The department is considering the use of bonds and development agreements to better and legally ensure that improvements that the developer has committed to make are actually being made.
We would like the revisions to the summary process to still allow locals and others with smaller budgets to subdivide and earn money off of their land, but we need to make sure that land is suitable for development. We would also like to incentivize density in subdivision design, creating smaller denser lots and leaving open space, which is also makes infrastructure more cost effective.
We would like to increase the submittal requirements for summary subdivisions so that we can be assured in the application that the land is suitable for the proposed development and process them administratively which is less cumbersome.
Group Discussion
Henry stated that the disclosure statement should include information about road grade and quality.
Louise explained that the disclosure statement is a legal description of the land and any restrictions on development on the land. It is required by law and it is the document that informs the buyer of what they are buying.
Gabe suggested we need a soils report as a required submittal to show what the soils will support and that should also be disclosed. Flood plain is also something that should be required to be disclosed and has not been in the past.
Gabe said other things that need to be included are information about waste disposal and fire protection.
Phil suggested there should be information about who is responsible for maintaining the road.
Gabe said they should also distinguish between public and private roads.
Rol stated that there is quite a bit of controversy right now in Lindrith over which roads are public and private and who should now be responsible for maintaining them.
Henry suggested that in addition to information about how the lot buyer will be protected if the developer should go bankrupt, there should also be information about what would happen to any open or common space that might be in the development.
Louise said that we want to include a lot of language like common space in the Ordinance revisions to try and put ideas in potential developer’s head about the kind of development the County is trying to encourage.
Gabe said we also need to require more submittals such as a fire protection plan and drainage plan no matter what size the development is. Gabe said that some submittals can be obtained easily, such as the fire plan, and some will require more investment, such as an engineered drainage plan, but we have to require some of them even if they are expensive because you are putting other or future property owners at risk if you don’t put in the right kind of infrastructure and planning.
Someone asked if there was a requirement for a title search. Louise and Gabe explained that there is a requirement for the last three years of property information, but generally the title and ownership review would happen at the plat review level. Gabe argues that this ordinances functions mainly as a plat review right now and needs to be expanded to include some development standards.
Phil mentioned that some subdivisions are taking place on lots that were previously subdivided or have false ownership.
Gabe said that sometimes it is challenging to do title searches and obtain information because there is not always good or easily accessible information available about the property. There is a similar situation with the roads as is being seen in Lindrith.
Rol stated that there will be another community meeting, in November perhaps, about the roads to allow people express their concerns and once and for all sort out the naming of the roads and get all of the addresses correct. Lindrith will invite the County to the meeting.
Gabe said there is a need to complete a road atlas for the County. Public works is in the process of GIS mapping all of its infrastructure. We need to make sure the address are correct for emergency response. Sometimes historic names cannot be kept because they do not correspond to the emergency information.
Gabe moved the discussion on to design submittals and what requirements for design and development should be included in the Ordinance?
Gabe would like to encourage shared wells, metering of wells, and developing a standard for what an acceptable water footprint should be.
The lights went out in the fire house and Rol commended the County for its night sky protection Ordinances which is helping to keep the skies dark. The lights came back on shortly thereafter.
Louise asked Tony and Tony Jr. Schmitz if he had any suggestions for developing road construction and grading standards for the Ordinance. Tony Jr. stated that they generally follow the BLM Gold Book’s standards for construction.
Rol mentioned that there was another local man, Mr. Connolly, that had developed a book discussing the best design and construction techniques for roads.
Gabe mentioned that while this ordinance has no roads standards, the full blown subdivision standards require too much. Curb and gutter is not really an appropriate development style for most of the County.
Phil mentioned that you need to look at the percent of grade, the degree of the turns, whether or not it is surfaced, and the length of the road, because all those affect the function and safety of the road.
Gabe also wants to discourage long roads that dead end – better to save money for the developer, build denser, and spend less on the road. Leaving open space is also important for maintaining the integrity of the local ecosystems and continuing to support native ecosystems.
Rol mentioned that people can have financial incentives and tax breaks to create conservation easements.
Gabe would like to do a County study of where our wildlife corridors are or should be.
Don Diego suggested that the Ordinance does not do enough to require the applicant to justify water availability and quality for the future of the development. He stated that there needs to be better hydro analysis of the area and require as much detail as possible, shared wells. Water quality and quantity analysis needs to be done thoroughly and by someone that is qualified – not be the well driller necessarily. He did not agree that 40 year water prediction could possible be really accurate. He suggested that it be lowered to 20 year prediction with a requirement to reevaluate the prediction at that point.
Gabe mentioned that that was interesting because the Comprehensive Plan was now advocating a 100 year prediction.
Don Diego stated that the prediction will be affected by new development that comes into the area after the fact.
Phil said it was very important to concentrate on water quality.
Gabe asked if there was an acceptable standard level of water consumption per household or per person that could be agreed upon as the water footprint standards to be included in the ordinance.
Don Diego said that one set standard would be very difficult to achieve because it will be very site specific. Both quality and quantity will vary. Water analysis should be site specific. He suggests that it wouldn’t be too hard to develop some general hydrological data to get a general picture across the County and then put the onus on the developer to demonstrate water availability. Adjustments can be made to the water usage limitations on a development after twenty years another evaluation of water availability is made and it is determined that current usage is unsustainable.
Rol asked if we should include some guidelines or standards for developing liquid waste systems that protect groundwater from nitrates and other pollutants. What about guidelines for composting toilets?
Don Diego stated that nitrates are a serious problem and the County and taskforce need to push alternative liquid waste systems and community waste water systems.
Gabe and Don Diego stated that contamination, pollution, and erosion are negative impacts of roads.
Louise asked how we can incentivize and encourage the development features that the County wants.
Gabe said one of the biggest incentives we have is predictability, uniformity of process, and speed of process. If we make our ordinance clear as to what we are looking for in development, applicants that submit, will already have a better developed application which will be easier and faster to process.
Marie reiterated that site specific evaluations of applications is very important to keep in mind.
Henry said that it needs to be emphasized that the submittals need to be more site specific because right now some of the submittals do not relate to the specific site, but give an overview of a much larger area.
Phil stated that it may cost more, but the water availability and quality can vary immensely from one lot to another and it is pertinent to have that information.
Gabe asked Don Diego to think about coming up with water data from both hard and soft aquifers and a range of what he thinks reasonable per household water consumption would be. Gabe stated that we would like to have extensive data on aquifers and hydrology. We can try and get these developers to subsidize some of this data collection. Gabe said there should be two processes – one for conventional development, and one for model development implementing best management practices.
There was a discussion as to why most people choose a mobile home in Lindrith compared to building a house – speed, money, and availability of labor and supplies.
Phil had a last comment on the subdivision revisions and asked whether it would be possible to create a special tax district out of developments that go bankrupt and keep up their infrastructure, the tax would cover the cost of the County to do it.
Louise asked if there were any Lindrith specific land use issues that needed to be addressed.
Darlene said they are having a problem with the changes in NCSWA services. They now only pick up on the highway when before they were picking up at people’s houses. There are concerns that people will now just start dumping because it is easier, or that trash will get spread along the roadsides before it is picked up.
Tony Jr. said it wouldn’t be too big of an issue to bring the trash the highway, but they need to provide a receptacle for people and they haven’t done that.
Louise responded that unfortunately we do not have much sway over the NCSWA operations, in the meantime, people can build their own receptacles and that the County needs to coordinate better with NCSWA to make sure that service is adequate.
Discussion about Taskforce Form and Function
Staff suggested to the taskforce, that unless there was any major objection, we would prefer to convene taskforce meetings on an as needed basis as opposed to having regularly scheduled meetings. The reasoning behind this shift is that there are not always work items at hand on a monthly basis and we risk losing interest from participants if we hold meetings without work items. It would be more efficient and effective to convene the group when the Department has a tangible product or topic that they need the taskforce to review and comment on. The Department will notify the Taskforce of any upcoming needed meetings on an as needed basis.
This shift in taskforce form was agreed upon by the group. It was also clarified that if taskforce members felt there was an issue of concern, they could also contact the department to convene a meeting to discuss the issue.
Rol mentioned that Lindrith was in the process of reorganizing the Lindrith Llaves Area Community Association. He is hoping that this reorganization will help share some of the burden of work and will also enable the LLACA to rally more quickly and reach a greater number of people when certain issues need addressing.
The Next Meeting will be regarding the proposed animal control ordinance that the Planning and Zoning Department is helping the Animal Control Division to complete. We will email the taskforce with the time and date but we are expecting the meeting to be late November sometime.
If there are any issues in the County that taskforce members feel need to be addressed at the Taskforce level, please contact our office and we can convene a meeting!
Thank you all for your hard work so far!
