The Rio Arriba County Commission approved a replacement for former Planning and Zoning committee member Pablo Manzanares, whose term ended in February.
Commissioners unanimously approved Coyote area resident, Chris Lovato, April 30, to replace Manzanares, who left the Committee shortly after racking up several charges resulting from allegations that he battered his live-in girlfriend.
Lovato’s term will start once the minutes are approved. His first meeting will be sometime in June.
Manzanares’s term, which officially started in 2011 ended in 2013, but no one pushed the issue, so he was allowed to keep his seat on the Board for two more years.
Lovato joins recently appointed members Alfonso Duran, of El Llano; Benny Roybal, of San Pedro; J.R. Trujillo, of Española; Nick Trujillo, of Abiquiú; Manuel Trujillo, of Ensenada; and Benny Martinez, of Velarde, to round out the seven-member Board.
Planning and Zoning Director Lucia Sanchez said she is excited about the prospects of having a full committee for the first time in a while.
“I have to thank each one of you commissioners for your
appointments because we have the best Board we have ever had,” Sanchez said. “They are open to training, they understand governmental code of conduct and they understand the Open Meetings Act. They are making really good decisions to help people that want to open a business.”
In a Rio Grande Sun story about the appointments of Benny Roybal and Alfonso Duran, Sanchez insisted that Manzanares’s removal had nothing to do with politics or his January domestic violence arrest.
State Police arrested Manzanares and released him without booking him into jail for the incident. That case is making its way through the magistrate court.
The Planning and Zoning Committee is responsible for hearing cases involving the various types of land uses, in an effort to ensure they comply with both the County’s Comprehensive Plan and the Yellow Book, which regulates future development.