When the state Highway Department is trying to buy your land for a construction project, it may help to have one of the most powerful state legislators on your side.
The Department modified its construction plans last summer for the intersection of Highway 84/285 and La Puebla Road, where El Paragua owner Luis Atencio owns a 3.4-acre property. Atencio and Speaker of the House Ben Lujan (D-Nambé) met with then-Department Secretary Rhonda Faught during the same period of time when the plans were being changed, according to state Highway Department documents.
“(Lujan) saw the damage where the road would come near the chapel,” Atencio said Monday, referring to a stone chapel he built shortly after buying the property in 2000. “I was talking to him when he came to dinner and he said, ‘Let’s go take a look at it.’ So he asked (Faught) if she would change the plans.”
Faught has since retired, and Gov. Bill Richardson appointed Gary Giron as state Highway secretary in November, according to a press release. Faught did not answer calls to her home in Santa Fe.
The Department is currently acquiring property for reconstruction of the highway between Pojoaque and Española. The next two phases of $65 million project include building frontage roads on both sides of the highway, modifying the La Puebla Road and State Roads 106 and 399 intersections and adding a new interchange on mile marker 183 just north of the Pojoaque Pueblo boundary, Department spokesman S.U. Mahesh said. The Department has started work on the State Roads 106/399 intersection project.
Atencio said the changes made to the plans at the La Puebla Road intersection were minor, and not enough to avoid marring his property.
“I was getting a hell of a bad deal,” Atencio said. “We built a nice chapel out here, away from everything, where it would have been serene. (The meeting) didn’t do much. They didn’t give me much of a break.”
Initial plans for the intersection called for purchasing a 0.6-acre slice, or 27,164 square feet, of Atencio’s property, according to correspondence. Current plans call for buying roughly half as much as before and renting a 918-square-foot easement from him.
District 5 General Manager Steve Rodriguez, who attended the meeting, said plans were in place to change the intersection before Atencio and Lujan met with Faught.
“(The redesign) was not based on that meeting,” Rodriguez said. ”We had already decided on a redesign of the intersection to make it more efficient, which in turn reduced the costs associated with the original design.”
However, the Department’s negotiator, right-of-way agent Angela Sandoval, wrote in a report that her department was not aware of the changes when she made an initial offer to Atencio last August, roughly a month after the meeting took place. And two months after the meeting, Department engineers were still making changes to maps of the intersection, the report states.
In an initial offer letter last August, the Department had asked to buy the land from Atencio at $3 a square foot.
Atencio declined that offer, saying he had met “about a month before” with Lujan and Faught, and that “if (Faught) and (Lujan) want to change the design, they can,” Sandoval wrote in the negotiator’s report.
“According to Mr. Atencio, he met with (Faught), (Lujan), (District General Manager) Steve Rodriguez, and (Property Assets Management Bureau Chief) Lawrence Barreras who informed him that they would have the design changed in order to minimize the impact to his property,” Sandoval wrote.
Rodriguez said Lujan had requested the meeting with Faught to discuss several issues, not just Atencio’s land.
“It was not specifically set up to address (Atencio’s land),” Rodriguez said. “We talked about stuff with the Santa Fe Indian School, and just general issues from the state representative with (Faught).”
The Department prepared a revised offer letter to Atencio in January. That offer, which according to Sandoval’s report has not yet been sent, asks to buy 15,146 square feet of his property and rent the aforementioned easement from him. Atencio has since declined to sign an authorization form allowing the Department to enter his property,.
Atencio said he wants to negotiate with the Department to build a sound wall between the construction and the rest of his property. He argued Lujan did no special favors for him.
“There were no politics there,” Atencio said. “(Lujan) likes to go pray at the chapel with his wife, so that was his own interest. I know him only as a customer. Besides, that’s why we have (elected officials) — to look into things for us. I was going to ask Sen. Richard Martinez (D-Española), but he wasn’t around.”
Lujan agreed, adding that he would do the same for any other constituent.
“I think it’s part of my duty,” Lujan said.
Lujan said he only helped set up a meeting between Faught and Atencio, but did not have a hand in the meeting’s outcome.
The SUN reviewed documents for several dozen right-of-way transactions, and Atencio’s was the only one in which a legislator intervened. But at least one constituent sounds willing to take Lujan up on his offer.
Wilma Gene Watson is one of three property owners near the La Puebla Road intersection whose property the Department has filed to condemn.
The Department asked last July to buy 2,722 square feet of the property Watson’s deceased husband left her. Watson, of Santa Fe, said if she sold that land, she would be left with less than 0.75 acres — the minimum lot size Santa Fe County requires for new construction.
“I’d like some compensation, or at least some assurance I can still build there,” Watson said. “It’s not very much land, but that was supposed to be my retirement.”
Watson said she felt helpless dealing with the Department and has recently hired a lawyer to help her negotiate.
“I had no one to help me out,” Watson said. “I’m an old woman. I have no idea who to go to and I’m easy to blow off. Should I also call Ben Lujan?”
Charles Romero, of Española, has also refused to sell the Department a 1.15-acre piece of his property, just south of the La Puebla Road intersection.
The Department filed to condemn Romero’s property Aug. 8 in state District Court. He said the condemnation proceedings have harmed the mobile home-storage business he ran until recently on that property.
“I had road-front property; I had business and special zoning,” Romero said. “Now I have nothing.”
Lujan himself will have to deal with Department negotiators. The Department sent him a letter March 11 asking to buy for just less than $60,000 a patchwork of lots totalling 0.4 acres carved from three properties he owns just north of the planned interchange on milepost 183.
Lujan said he has not yet reviewed the offer, but does not want to sell his land to the state.
“I want that for my children,” he said. “One of the properties, that would take some frontage off it. I’m concerned about that. (The highway) is close enough now.”
The Department has already negotiated to purchase 1,746 square feet of frontage and rent an additional 2,063-square-foot easement from the property adjacent to Lujan’s. The property is owned by Pedro Trujillo, of Chamita, and is the site of Santa Fe Vineyards.
Vineyards co-owner Richard Reinders said the purchase is small, but still enough to shut down the business. He said the company has negotiated a month-to-month lease with Trujillo until construction begins, and will then move to another property off State Road 503 in Nambé. Trujillo did not return calls for comment.
One of Lujan’s three properties is the site of a billboard erected in violation of Santa Fe County code. The code prohibits billboards, and the County’s Land Use Department confirmed it has not issued any sign permits to Lujan. The Department wrote Lujan weeks ago ordering him to take down the billboard due to upcoming construction.
Lujan said he has taken the matter up with his lawyer.