Jose de Wit
SUN Staff Writer
Alcalde Elementary students in kindergarten when the Española School District promised to build the community a new school will be starting high school when that project is completed, according to the latest estimates.
A District memo dated Oct. 22 predicts construction will be finished on a new Alcalde Elementary school by 2010 or 2011 — at least a year behind estimates provided only six months ago — and puts blame for the most recent delays squarely at the feet of Rio Arriba County.
“I’d say even 2012 at this pace,” District Projects Manager Paul Salas, the memo’s author, said in a later conversation.
The Española School Board first decided to replace Alcalde Elementary in April 2002, after engineers found irreparable structural and air quality problems in the school’s old facilities. The school has been housed mostly in portable buildings since 2004.
Plans call for the new school to be built on a 24-acre subdivision of 171 acres of former Bureau of Land Management property in Alcalde that Congress granted the County in 2007. But for the District to move ahead on the project, it needs, first of all, a deed to the property.
“I can’t go for any permits, nothing,” Salas said. “I can’t do anything until we have legal ownership of that property.”
The Bureau transferred the land to the County in February 2007, and after a year of negotiations, the Board voted in April to trade the County one acre of District property on Industrial Park Road for the 24 acres in Alcalde. County Commissioners said at the time they would approve the exchange later that month.
The Commission held off until late August, when the County finished surveying both properties, to approve the land swap, and it has yet to give the District a deed.
Asked about the delay, County Manager Lorenzo Valdez at first said the District had been given a deed. Then he said the deed had been approved and was in the process of being formalized. Finally he said the County is waiting for the District to finish its end of the paperwork.
“We’ve done all the surveys, we’ve paid for them, we’ve done all the work. All they have to do is take a little drive and drop off a little piece of paper,” Valdez said. When asked what that paper is, he cut the conversation short. “I’m not an open record. That’s all the comment I have.”
The “little piece of paper” presumably refers to a deed to an acre on Industrial Park Road the District had agreed to give the County. The District is preparing to seek approval from the state Finance Board to transfer that land to the County, Salas said.
But though the two properties had informally been referred to as a trade, Commissioners and Board members alike had said from the outset they are two separate transactions, and neither depends on the other.
Two former political opponents, Commissioner Alfredo Montoya and Board member Andrew Chavez, have been the point persons in negotiating the transaction for each party. Montoya defeated Chavez in the 2006 Democratic primary, and they both represent Alcalde for their respective governing bodies. Neither returned calls for comment, but Commissioner Elias Coriz said the District should have a deed to the Alcalde property if it doesn’t have one already.
“I know the District really hasn’t moved on that acre, but all that’s missing is a warranty deed,” Coriz said. “I don’t know exactly what happened, but I don’t know how Lorenzo could even come up with a comment like that. That’s something that’s out of bounds. I’ll look into it tomorrow. If I have to walk it to (District) central office, I’ll do it.”
Board Vice President Floyd Archuleta was equally frustrated.
“As far as I’m concerned, the County had the need for the acre and we were amenable to the transfer. But I never considered it to be an exchange,” Archuleta said. “I’ve been a little upset this hasn’t happened any sooner. The directives were already given to both of our staffs. I’m not sure what they’re waiting on.”
But even if the County handed over a deed tomorrow, the District would have to wait until the County develops a master plan — which would indicate where roads and water, gas and power lines would lie — before it could finish designing the school, Salas said.
The District is currently finishing up its schematic design for the new school. With $4.1 million in state funding the District received in 2005 plus $2.1 million left over from a 2002 bond, the District has enough money to finish designing the school, request bids from contractors and possibly start drainage and soil work, Salas said.
After that, the District cannot go any further until voters approve a bond measure. The Board aborted plans to hold a $15 million bond election in September and declined to put the bond on school board election ballots in February. The next possible date the District could hold a bond election is in mid-May 2009, according to state law.
Salas called for a meeting among all the property’s stakeholders — the County, the District, the county Recreation Department and others — to develop such a plan in April. Plans for property include a recreational facility, a Park and Ride lot and a cemetery. Commissioners said at the time the County was ready to start planning “as soon as the District is.” When that meeting finally took place Oct. 16, neither Valdez nor County Grants and Contracts Manager Phillip Morfin attended, according to Salas’ memo.
The meeting was organized by Ewan Young, an engineer with Souder Miller, the engineering firm contracted by the County. According to a summary of the meeting Young wrote, concerns raised at the meeting include that few of the stakeholders have established agreements with the County, no one is sure where facilities would be located, or how the stakeholders would share infrastructure costs.
Each stakeholder brought his own concerns to the meeting. Engineers said it would be necessary to redraw lot lines and move roadways, according to Salas’ memo. A state Highway Department representative requested a traffic impact analysis from the County. Upper Rio Grande Watershed Board representatives pointed out a proposed cemetery lies within a floodplain, and said they “didn’t want to see dead bodies floating around,” said Salas, who in turn pointed out the school’s proximity to other projects on the property could pose safety issues.
County Recreation Director Joseph Martinez, said he thought “things were moving along” at the Oct. 16 meeting.
“But it’s hard to get input when certain people don’t show up,” Martinez said. “I don’t want to point fingers or step on anybody’s toes, so I’m not going to name any names. But things work better when everybody shows up.”
Valdez and Morfin did attend a repeat of the meeting, held Tuesday, in which Souder Miller representatives said they would collect information individually from each stakeholder to draw up a master plan.