Seven years ago, the city of Española collected an $18,446 fee to waive its open-space requirements in a new subdivision. Now the city is considering purchasing an open lot in the same subdivision for $60,000, to create park space requested by residents.
Residents of the Los Arboles neighborhood off of North McCurdy Road asked the City Council Sept. 23 to consider purchasing the last lot in the subdivision and converting it into a park for children.
“It’s a good opportunity for the city to invest some funds and help make our small community even better,” Los Arboles resident Eric Martinez said.
Planning Director Cyrus Samii said council meeting minutes from 2000 indicate that the subdivision’s developer, Manuel Roybal, discussed paying the city around $20,000 for the right to develop what would have been open space. The developer has since provided documentation showing that $18,446 was paid to the city in October 2001, Samii said.
Roybal said he negotiated the fee in lieu of open space with former planning director Marvin Vigil. If the area had been left open, it would have been left undeveloped, but there would not have been efforts made to make it a park, he said.
No contract regarding the agreement has been located, Samii said. Vigil did not return a call for comment.
Where the money went remains unknown. Samii said city council minutes indicated that if the money was not used within two years it would revert to the city’s general fund.
Samii said Roybal has expressed a willingness to sell the quarter-acre lot to the city at a price in the range of $60,000. The city is in the process of deciding if it is interested in the purchase and if it is economically feasible, he said.
The city has not discussed publicly how much it would cost to build the park if the property was purchased.
Roybal said since the Los Arboles subdivision is gated it would be a better use of city funds to develop a park that already exists.
“Any funding should benefit the entire community,” he said.
Roybal said the last lot was not sold because it was supposed to be used to access the second phase of the subdivision which has never been built, he said. If a park were to be built there the valuation of houses could go up, he said.
Mayor Pro-tem Alice Lucero, who represents the district that the subdivision is located in, said there is a need for a park in that area because Ranchitos Park is too far for children to walk to.
“McCurdy is a dangerous road to walk on,” she said.
If the property was purchased by the city, Lucero said, community members would have to understand that it would be open to the public. While the area is gated anyone can enter through the gates and there would be access through the sidewalks, she said.
Interim City Manager Veronica Albin said that since the area would be used as public space it would not constitute a violation of the anti-donation law. The city no longer uses the practice of accepting a fee from developers in lieu of open space, Maestas said at the city council meeting.
The council discussed the issue in a closed session Tuesday, but no action was taken, Albin said.
But whether the city purchases the area depends on access to funding, Lucero said.
“It’s all dependant,” she said. “It depends on where we are with the gross tax receipts.”
According to design standards in the city’s development code, subdividers are required to provide areas for “community facilities normally considered desirable for serving residential areas.” This includes parks, playgrounds, and athletic fields, according to the ordinance.
There is no specification as to how much space is required, however the code calls for the areas provided to be adequate to accommodate what they will be used for. Samii said the ordinance was the same at the time that Roybal made the payment to the city.
Mayor Joseph Maestas said he had been on the council around three months when the fee in lieu of open space was negotiated. At the time, he thought it was an accepted practice, and he thought the amount negotiated was much higher.
“It (the open space) should have been protected by the city when it was developed and it wasn’t,” he said.
Community Services Director Leroy Garcia, who heads the city’s Parks Department, said the money the city plans on using to buy the lot in Los Arboles should be spent on the city’s own parks.
“My feeling would be, we have existing public spaces or parks that could use that kind of money,” he said.
Martinez and fellow Los Arboles resident Jenna Casias said they were willing to lease the land from the city and maintain the area as a park.
“We’re willing to do above and beyond what other public parks get from the community,” Casias said.