Following is an ES-CA “Watchdog” summary from my attendance of the 6/26/18 P&Z meeting. The following is the report on the first of two items that were on the agenda and of interest to ES-CA and the LPT:
- CU-18-001 Request by Daniel Vigil for a Conditional Use Permit in order to establish appropriate zoning for a Bed and Breakfast use on subject property in the Anasazi Trails development. The entire Anasazi HOA Board attended the subject hearing along with several of our other members, and I wanted to provide the rest of you a brief status update on the P&Z activity regarding the request of one of its members for a “Conditional Use” of his property in order to operate a Bed & Breakfast. Any who are interested in the details, to review the video of the session on the County website:
http://sandovalcountynm.swagit.com/play/06262018-1154
There was a noticeable shift in the positions taken by the new County Attorney (“CA”) from those of the prior interim CA, in that the new CA seemed in agreement with the HOA’s interpretation (of section 5 of the P&Z Ordinance) that “Whenever any provisions of this Ordinance are more or less restrictive than other laws, covenants, or ordinances, then whichever is more restrictive shall govern.” (contrasted with the prior CA who had chosen to ignore that and was advising the Commission that they did not have to consider the HOA CCRs, even though they had been approved by the County as part of the subdivision authorization). County staff was now recommending that the Commission “deny the request” until the requestor’s issue was resolved with the HOA—a position the HOA indicated they were willing to support.
Mr. Vigil, the property owner, presented his case and responded to questions from the Commission members, followed by Stephanie Landry, the HOA’s law firm’s litigator and myself (the HOA’s President) to provide the HOA Board’s position. The Commission seemed to accept the advice from the current CA that they needed to consider our CCRs, but unfortunately (my opinion) that seemed to take them in the direction that instead of leaving the issue to be resolved at the HOA level—that they now needed (along with County staff) to review the CCRs and legal filings of our attorney. The concern is that by setting this precedent, the Commission could be opening itself to having to review and act based on the covenants of every planned subdivision in the County, rather than leaving enforcement of the CCRs to the HOAs (and the courts if the HOA and other involved parties can’t agree which is the remedy identified under our covenants). Nonetheless, all of the requested material we had provided to the County including an update from our lawyer to the new CA the week before this hearing, and we will provide again such that we leave no question but that the use requested by Mr. Vigil is not permitted by our more restrictive covenants.
At the conclusion, the Commission asked me if our HOA Board would reach out again to Mr Vigil and offer him the opportunity to discuss this matter directly with the board, which I agreed that we would do (we had made this offer initially when we sent the notice of violation). Then the Commission voted to table this request for 2 months (August 28 meeting) to give staff and the Commissioners sufficient time to review the specific documentation related to this case.
Dick Ulmer, Chairman, ES-CA Land Use Protection Trust Board