Preliminary Finding - No Way to Do Business

What we at NewsNM have come to call the “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” situation could be told from a number of different perspectives. We see it as having several core issues that are not best practices. This story did not begin with us looking into squandered public funds or $10 million in lost local economic impact, but rather as simply a curious story about a stranded golf course (above) on the east mesa of Las Cruces.
Background: Members of the Las Cruces Country Club had spoken often in recent months to NewsNM about the various ways in which use of the new golf course that the club had agreed to trade for, was being held up by red tape at City Hall. In the course of our investigation NewsNM learned that the spectacular new golf course already had a suitable paved access road, but the road was being rendered useless because the city council demanded not one, but two access roads to the golf course.

We decided to take pictures of the so-called “Road to Nowhere” (left). During our visit to the site in City Councilor Gil Sorg’s district, we also observed that there were two brand new schools under construction. The first school, Monte Vista Elementary School (below), is scheduled to open August 16th. We also noted that both schools had only one access road (Jornada Road). Logic dictated we ask why a school could open with only one access road while a private golf course with only one access road was being kept closed.

Monte Vista Elementary School

The events that followed are typical of any unfolding situation where best practices are not followed. Namely, once one question was answered definitively, it immediately led to another question. Eventually, the question and answer process unearthed the worst sort of public policy blunders made by elected officials in this area in quite some time. LCPS officials indicated in a subsequent meeting that the district had planned to build the two new schools in the golf course area several years ago. (NOTE) The school site locations were based in part on the eventually unfulfilled commitments from a developer no longer connected to the project to have the road infrastructure in place. Unfortunately, as the completion of Monte Vista Elementary School continued to approach, the timeline for construction of a second access road got tight for the school district. However, good news for Las Cruces Public Schools came late last year. Through the use of Special Assessment District financing (SAD), the extension of North Sonoma Ranch Boulevard would finally be completed after years of delays.

Sharon Thomas

Staff members at both LCPS and the city, along with city bond counsel, the city finance director, and the single property owner/developer in the Special Assessment District worked diligently and reached detailed agreements in January of 2010. Next, the Las Cruces City Council reviewed the proposal and voted 7-0 in favor of a resolution to get the private funding for the Special Assessment District finalized and the road completed. Detailed descriptions and surveys of all the property to be assessed to pay for the project were sent out for an independent appraisal after the council’s unanimous vote.

Olga Pedroza

Inexplicably, and without any notice to LCPS staff or the business people funding the Special Assessment District, in an early April work session it soon became clear that six city councilors (shown in order top to bottom in this story), Sharon Thomas, Olga Pedroza, Nathan Small, Gil Sorg, Dolores Connor, and Miguel Silva, all speaking from what seems the same set of notes and talking points, reversed the positions they each took in January when the resolution to get the road built was passed unanimously. So apparently thousands of hours of planning and untold dollars spent in good faith were squandered. These six councilors left LCPS, local area residents, the business people providing the financing, and all local unemployed road building and construction workers in the lurch. During the April work session, only the mayor tried desperately to avert the disaster.

Nathan Small

What actually happened between January and April has become a $10 million-plus question begging for an answer. Mayor Ken Miyagishima was the first elected official to go public with a few details. When he first appeared on NewsNM on July 7th, the mayor explained why the biggest project Las Cruces has had going in many years had effectively been derailed three months earlier.

Gil Sorg

The mayor attributed the problem to the “inexperience” of the other six councilors as well as a wealth of misinformation that was fed to councilors between January and April 2010 by still unknown parties. The mayor also made it known for the first time that the school district would lose out on the $1 million reimbursement commitment from the Special Assessment District property owner.
Confirming the details of the disaster was LCPS associate superintendant Herb Torres when he appeared on NewsNM on July 28th. Local businessman John Moscato, representing the sole property owner providing the assessed property for the entire road building project also appeared on NewsNM on Monday July 26th. Like Mr. Torres, Mr. Moscato confirmed everything essential in what Mayor Miyagishima said earlier in the month.

Dolores Connor

The political posturing that ensued as the story began to break in early July was fairly predictable. When NewsNM first began to merely repeat what the mayor had said on the show about the lost value of the project to the community, including the terrible waste and squandered opportunity, city councilors Sharon Thomas and Dolores Connor expressed outrage, but only behind the scenes. In emails to NewsNM Posse members both suggested NewsNM (not the mayor) was uninformed. Phone calls and an angry visit to the radio station office quickly followed. It was a classic case of a shoot the messenger strategy despite the fact it was Mayor Miyagishima that blew the whistle on this ridiculous blunder.

Miguel Silva

After all the blustering, in the end, despite open invitations to all elected officials by NewsNM, only one councilor, Dolores Connor, actually went on the record in an attempt to explain why she and the other councilors had reversed their positions on a good faith agreement with no notice whatsoever to the other participating parties in the agreements. Before Councilor Connor appeared on NewsNM, we obtained an unsigned memo that had been distributed to city councilors after each made their commitment to the road building agreement in January. The unsigned memo contained a number of false, out of context, and misleading statements about the road project. During Councilor Connor’s appearance on NewsNM she repeated much of what was asserted in the unsigned memo.

LCPS Herb Torres

With Monte Vista Elementary School due to open in sixteen days here is a summary of this scandal. After a thorough vetting of all the pertinent details of the special assessment district and other integrally related agreements, in January, the City Council by a 7-0 vote agreed by resolution to move forward on a very specific proposal. This was followed by:
1. An order that was placed for an expensive property appraisal which included the agreed upon properties in the SAD. The appraisal was completed and paid for.
2. A tentative funding commitment for the entire project from the New Mexico Finance Authority was obtained.
3. The $1 million reimbursement to LCPS from the Special Assessment District continued to be contingent upon the fulfilling of all agreements reached by all parties in January.

Ken Miyagishima

4. At the April City Council work session, essentially all agreements were summarily voided and the good faith efforts collapsed when it became clear that every councilor except the mayor had developed a new position. These new positions were clearly based on the unsigned and misleading memo distributed to councilors.

Ironically it was Herb Torres of LCPS who pointed to the fact that Las Cruces citizens will now get precisely what these councilors claimed they wanted to avoid…..a temporary low grade, colonias-style, maintenance plagued road, instead of four-lane, well engineered, major arterial roadway at the end of North Sonoma Ranch Boulevard. Worse yet, this low grade road will not be completed in time for the opening of Monte Vista Elementary. Worst of all, LCPS will lose the entire $1 million reimbursement from the business people who were ready to finance the now dead road project.

And thus we have the Boulevard of Broken Dreams: a story of inexperience, an inability to differentiate between facts and misinformation, and the regrettable act of breaking important good faith agreements. These are not what citizens expect from elected officials going about the business of managing resources and relationships for the people they represent. We at NewsNM will continue to work on this topic and will issue a final report in the coming days. What is obvious to us at this point is that this is no way for the city of Las Cruces to do business. Many other companies and people will be watching to see if the city can be trusted to stand by their word. This time they did not.

Preliminary Finding - No Way to Do Business