Veterans cemetery to hold open house in July
Roof replacement adds to old courthouse delays
At its regular meeting Tuesday (May 7), the Taos County Commission heard a plea from the Ranchos de Taos Neighborhood Association that recently fought annexation, received an update on what’s fixing to be the crown jewel of Taos Plaza, and were promised a finished veterans cemetery before July 1. Cemetery
Taos County’s long-awaited veterans cemetery is set for completion by June 30, according to officials, who announced an open house for the public in the first week of July. A date for interments is likely some ways off.
“We’ll probably do a little something on July 4 and make sure the flags are up and anyone who wants to go in and view the cemetery will be allowed to,” said County Manager Brent Jaramillo, speaking to the commission during its regular meeting Tuesday.
“I’d like to get as much of the public out to just walk through and ask questions,” said Richard Sanchez, project manager for the county. “We’ll have a TV with those videos [of the construction process] from beginning to end so people can see the construction and walk around and see the building and see the grounds.”
In response to District 3 Commissioner Darlene Vigil’s comment that her constituents have been asking about signage for the cemetery (which is off County Road 110 south of Taos and west of the Taos Country Club) Sanchez said it’s coming.
“We’re waiting on the light fixture that we ordered for the signage at the cemetery gate,” Sanchez said.
Jaramillo said the county has completed the job description for a groundskeeper and is working on a supervisor’s job description: “We’re taking the approach, you know, that we’re going to run this until the federal government can take it over.”
Over the past 10 years, with the help of local veterans and state legislators, including the late District 6 NM Sen. Carlos Cisneros, the county secured millions in funding for the cemetery, which has been built to the standards of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Division. The plan is to have the federal government adopt the memorial park and administer it as part of the national cemetery system.
Initially, the county also intended to offer it to the state, but Jaramillo told the Taos News last November that “state government has made it clear that they will not accept our cemetery.”
“The only hope we have is to become a federal cemetery,” Jaramillo said, adding that the New Mexico Department of Veterans Services will support the county in that endeavor.
There are currently two national cemeteries in New Mexico: Fort Bayard in Grant County and the Santa Fe National Cemetery, which proponents of the Taos County cemetery have said is “filling up.”
Last year, Ricardo Da Silva, director of communications for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Division, told the Taos News that the federal government purchased land for a national cemetery just south of the Double Eagle II Airport on Albuquerque’s west side, the design for which would be completed early this year, with a construction contract awarded by September.
Old courthouse
The operative word in Sanchez’s historic county courthouse reconstruction updates has been the same for some time now: “slow.”
Progress on long-planned work like an ADA-compliant elevator, new utility infrastructure, the facade, and portals and alleyways on both sides of the building is progressing or complete, but late in the project the roof was identified as needing replacement.
“That’s something we’re going to have to take care of,” Sanchez said, explaining that, “We have the committed-funding” — $1.2 million in federal dollars and $5.4 million from the state legislature — “[but] we just don’t have access to it right now.”
Jaramillo clarified that the $5.4 million in state funding will likely arrive in July or August.
Annexation
Hank Saxe, secretary of the Ranchos de Taos Neighborhood Association, took to the podium during public comments to remind county officials of the “huge effort and large expenditure by our local neighborhood association” when it recently fought an attempt by a county property owner to have his land annexed into the Town of Taos.
The annexation request, which was denied by the town council last month, would have represented the first successful attempt to annex a traditional historic community designated under state law.
“The traditional historic communities are creatures of the county with no legal ability to form administrative bodies on their own, or to tax [and] hold funds,” Saxe said. “The defense of the traditional historic communities fell to the Ranchos de Taos Neighborhood Association, naturally enough, since we had to be sure that the designation that we fought so hard for wasn’t nibbled away by annexations and eventually bled to death.”
“We did it, even though we’re a tiny organization with very low funds, which we depleted in the legal fight,” Saxe said. “They put us in the red.”
He requested the county consider incorporating a formal role for neighborhood associations into its comprehensive plan, an update of which is in the works.
Pay your rates
In other news, commissioners reapproved the ad-valorem tax imposed on landowners within the El Valle de Los Ranchos Water and Sanitation District and El Prado Water and Sanitation District: 6.812 mils and 8.122 mils, respectively. Assessed with property taxes, the rates for both districts remained the same over last year.