No vows yet on Blueberry Hill Road project
A long-anticipated Blueberry Hill Road reconstruction project will take longer to accomplish than Taos County officials had hoped, however Deputy County Manager Jason Silva said Tuesday (Feb. 6) a simpler resurfacing project could potentially resolve some issues in the short term.
Funding has not materialized in the amounts needed to accomplish the major reconstruction project, but Silva is advocating for directing road infrastructure monies and potentially even COVIDrelief funds the county already has to the project.
During the ongoing NM 68-US 64 Project, the two-lane county road between NM 240 in Cordillera and US 64 west of NM 522 has become an arterial connecting route for commercial traffic coming from points west and north, inflicting additional wear on the road. Although the county has plans for the $12 million reconstruction project to improve the deteriorating roadway, it has so far been unable to cobble together adequate funding.
“That road is in desperate need of repair,” Silva told the Taos County Commission at its regular meeting on Tuesday, noting that traffic increased in the area during the COVID-19 pandemic as new residents moved to the area.
“And what I’ve seen happen over on Blueberry Hill is that all our freight [traffic] that used to come through the middle of town and go north to Denver has been diverted to Blueberry Hill,” Silva said, adding that the number of six-axle vehicles that travel the road “shows me that has become a freight route.”
“I’m wanting to shift gears and maximize the funding we have now,” Silva said, suggesting the county could resurface the entire length of Blueberry Hill for around $6 million as an immediate solution. The county has $3 million it was going to put toward the reconstruction project, but two funding requests it made on behalf of the project haven’t come through. It’s possible New Mexico lawmakers or Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham could allocate capital outlay funding to the project this year, however the state typically would rather see Taos County access funds New Mexico has already budgeted specifically for transportation infrastructure projects.
Funding aside, the project
is complex due to its proximity to the Acequia Juan de Manuel, which crosses through a conveyance high above US 64 just west of the old blinking light to Old Blueberry Hill Road, from where it runs along much of the eastern shoulder of Blueberry Hill Road. Additionally, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs holds a sizable tract on the acequia side of the road as off-reservation trust land for Taos Pueblo, while numerous homes — and the mesa’s edge — lie along the other side.
Joe Fernandez, interim public works director, was optimistic that some work would begin in the coming warmer months, but District 3 Commissioner Darlene Vigil said she would like to see the county come up with a more encompassing solution to better address the county’s road improvement backlog.
“We have to do something different,” she said. “We’re not going to resolve things if we keep piecemealing things. I’ve been thinking myself: What do we do?”
County Manager Brent Jaramillo said if even a sliver of leftover gross receipts tax shares or mill levy money could be set aside, it could be used to leverage bond revenue, “and then put [that] back into our road infrastructure.”
District 4 Commissioner AnJanette Brush pointed to legislation currently making its way through the state Legislature that would create the “New Mexico Match Fund” to help political subdivisions like Taos County with the cost of matching funds required by most federal grants, as well as mitigate skyrocketing project costs.
Chairman and District 1 Commissioner Bob Romero suggested a work study session so the commission and officials can discuss the “many questions around roads.”
“Not just the maintenance schedule, but who owns the roads?” Romero said. “How many roads do we have that are owned by the county? How many are county-maintained? Even easements around the roads — do we have good easements on all of them?”
Fernandez noted Taos County is populated with very old roads in need of work.
“Drainage is an issue,” he said. “A lot of the roads we have were never engineered at all, and primarily, they were never meant to have the amount of traffic that we have, the weight of some of the traffic we have.”