Town weighs municipal court demolition

Taos may relocate its municipal court due to mold and other hazardous conditions, according to a report delivered during Tuesday’s (March 26) regular meeting of the Town of Taos Council, where an annexation challenge to a county historic designation was postponed and a call to oppose “ugly vistas” was heard.

Odor in the court

A mid-meeting tour of the municipal court building across from the council’s chambers was conducted field-trip style. Officials exited the council chambers and walked across a small parking lot to the facility.

Most of the 4,300-square-foot municipal court building, located at 114 Civic Plaza Drive, is a living monument to water damage, thanks to a severely compromised roof that over the past week — and for the better part of a decade — has allowed precipitation to pour through ceilings, below which buckets spilled over, creating puddles.

“This is one of the central buildings that we need to address,” Mark Flores, facilities director for the town, told councilors as he showed them the decrepit state of the building. The tour on Tuesday evening — part of the council’s regular meeting — was just one element of Flores’ ongoing effort to update the town’s

Facilities Master Plan to prioritize repairs and maintenance for the many structures it owns.

“If you smell what you’re smelling, it’s mold,” Town Manager Andrew Gonzales said, adding that the building, part of which dates to the 1940s, used to house the offices of Kit Carson Electric Cooperative for whom he used to work. Into the early-2000s, the same side of the building was home to UNM-Taos administrative offices.

No one dared go in the court building’s basement on Tuesday evening, when twilight and dim interior lights created a supernatural horror film environment.

“What’s going on down there?” Councilor Genevieve Oswald asked Flores. “It’s flooding? More mold?”

“Yes,” Flores said, adding that “to completely renovate this building — and these numbers are plus or minus 10 percent — we’re looking at $1.83 million; if we were to demo[lish] this building and turn it into municipal parking, we’re looking at $789,000.”

Asbestos abatement, the cost to level and pave a new parking lot, and relocating the municipal court to either the Alcalde Room or the Taoseño Room in an adjacent town building were included in Flores’ cost estimate.

“Seems like a dangerous place for you to be, your honor,” Oswald commented, speaking to Municipal Court Judge Richard Chavez as she retreated from under a hallway’s soaked ceiling tiles to the drier lobby of the court.

Chavez, who co-led the tour, showed officials a bulging drop ceiling in a corner office. A similar collection of ceiling tiles “came down on top of my desk about three or four months ago,” Chavez said. “Luckily I wasn’t in the office at the time.”

“Ten years it’s been like this, maybe more,” Chavez told the Taos News after the tour, deriding the town’s prior manager, Rick Bellis, who he said never responded to his pleas for repairs to the court building.

“When UNM was here, it wasn’t that bad, because they took care of it,” Chavez said, pausing outside the courtroom door. “I’m happy these guys came now. Because I have been asking, pero no response.”

Annexation

Also during Tuesday’s meeting, an annexation request landed in front of the council that could test a recent historic community designation awarded to five neighborhoods represented by the Ranchos de Taos Neighborhood Association.

Or it could test the abilities of a small water and sewer association to provide service to all its constituents.

Last December, the KCLC Living Trust, represented by Kenneth Lyle and Christine Kay Dickinson, submitted an annexation request to the town for a property at 1826 Maestas

Road on the southern outskirts of town near Talpa.

Accordingly, the town prepared an ordinance to annex the land, which if approved would resemble a 1-acre peninsula jutting into Taos County. To the south of the town’s boundary, however, sits Las Comunidades del Valle de los Ranchos Traditional Historic Community, which is recognized under state law.

The state’s historic community designation prohibits virtually any annexation by a neighboring municipality, unless a majority of residents within the designated community sign off on it.

Upon hearing about the annexation, Cynthia Patterson and Hank Saxe sprung into action. The pair advocated for the historic designation that was awarded last year to more than 22,000 acres of land abutting the southern boundary of Taos, encompassing La Cordillera, Los Cordovas, Ranchos de Taos, Talpa and Llano Quemado.

“If it is determined that the town can annex in this manner, the town will continue to nibble away at the Traditional Historic Communities of both Las Comunidades and El Prado,” which also boasts a historic community designation, the Ranchos de Taos Neighborhood Association wrote in a March 25 email.

Patterson and Saxe are named as potential litigants in a letter to the town written by attorney Frank Coppler opposing the annexation. The letter was delivered less than an hour before Tuesday’s meeting was set to begin.

Acknowledging the legal challenge, Town Attorney Chris Stachura asked the council to postpone a hearing it was set to conduct with regard to the annexation.

“I have not had time to go through all the references,” Stachura said, at which point the council voted unanimously to take up the matter at a future date.

A staff report to the council indicated that the motivation for the annexation request was due to the property owner having to pay taxes as a resident within El Valle de Los Ranchos Water and Sanitation District while receiving no services.

“Currently, the remaining parcel contains a single-family home with a well and a septic system,” according to the report. “The subject parcel is located along the eastern boundary of the Town, and currently does not have access to public utilities such as water and sewer.”

In a May 2022 letter, Melene Montaño, the association’s business manager, replied to an inquiry by Ken Dickinson — “What am I paying for and why do I have to pay this each year” — by telling him “the building of sewer lines is a process that takes time and costs funds.”

“Currently, the district has built over 29 miles of sewer main and serves over 1,100 residences and commercial buildings by properly disposing of wastewater,” Montaño wrote. “The existing sewer lines do not yet serve every property within the district, although there is a plan for full build-out over the next years.”