Proposals to build several new community and teen centers in northern Santa Fe County were questioned by residents at a July 29 public meeting in La Puebla.
“We have a surplus of community centers already and they’re going unused,” Chimayó resident Shelly Winship said. “There seem to be a lot of them built close together. I just wonder how necessary these are and I’m not entirely sure enough work is being done to assess feasibility.”
Santa Fe County staffers met with area residents at the County-run La Puebla Teen Center to discuss the County’s Infrastructure and Capital Improvements Plan. Only three residents showed up for the meeting, but they all questioned the County’s plans to build or expand several County community centers.
The Plan is a list of projects that will be submitted next year to the state legislature for funding. The list includes new buildings that are planned for La Puebla, Pojoaque, Cundiyo and Arroyo Seco, and a $790,000 addition for the Nambé Community Center and additions to the La Puebla Teen Center, a County document shows.
Not enough attention is being paid to community needs before new community centers are constructed, Winship said, pointing to Rio Arriba County’s La Arbolera Community Center on State Road 76 in Chimayó. The $2 million Center is still largely empty three months after its May 1 grand opening and is located just a couple of miles west of the Santa Fe County-run Benny Chavez Community Center.
Santa Fe County staffers said they could relate to Winship’s frustration with the Rio Arriba facility.
“That community center was just opened, and we already have to renovate it,” Projects Supervisor Agnez Lopez said. “It needs an industrial kitchen to accommodate a senior center.”
Rio Arriba and Santa Fe counties are negotiating a move of Chimayo’s senior center from the Benny Chavez Community Center to the Rio Arriba Center.
But populations in northern Santa Fe County are expected to grow in coming years, and community centers will be needed, County Project Manager Ron Sandoval said.
“There seems to be a need foreseen in the future,” Sandoval said. “You say they’re not needed but maybe in four or five years, they will be.”
One project in the Plan involves expanding the La Puebla Teen Center by building a ballpark, Life Skills Center and art studio for teens, next to the Arroyo Seco Fire Station.
Santa Fe County Commissioner Harry Montoya could benefit from the funding request.
Montoya is president of Hands Across Cultures, a drug abuse prevention non-profit that operates out of the Teen Center. The new Teen Center facilities would also be used by Hands Across Culture, according to a County document.
Montoya did not return calls for comment and did not attend the meeting despite being the commissioner who represents northern Santa Fe County. Hands Across Cultures Prevention Specialist Chris Lucero reached at the Teen Center refused to answer questions regarding the non-profit’s contract with Santa Fe County to operate out of the taxpayer-funded Teen Center.
According to County documents, Hands Across Cultures pays $6,000 per year to use the facility.
Chimayó resident Manny Chavez questioned whether a new building in Arroyo Seco is necessary to promote art and life skills training for teens.
“The (new) teen center duplicates effort,” Chavez said. “We’re in a teen center here (in La Puebla) but we’re only a half mile from the proposed new teen center (in Arroyo Seco), and the La Puebla Community Center will be three miles from here.”
The proposed new teen facilities would help drug-addicted teens develop self-motivation, according to a County document. It would be built in three phases, starting with the ballpark (See box).
The public meeting in La Puebla was the sixth such meeting held around the County, Lopez said. The meetings are part of a state-mandated process of identifying capital improvement priorities, Lopez said. The state Finance Department requires that counties produce lists of priority capital projects.
But decisions about which projects the County asks state legislators to fund, really falls to County commissioners, Lopez said.
Montoya will select which north-County project is proposed for funding prior to the legislative session that will start in January 2010, Lopez said.
None of Santa Fe County’s five proposed projects last year received legislative funding, Sandoval said. Usually the legislature only provides enough funding for a project to be planned and not enough for the actual construction.