Cocoposts

Mister Lizard

 

Domenici's Birthplace

1800 Candelaria Rd. NW?

So I heard.  Coco

San Felipe Horses

The Albuquerque Journal story about the feral horses on the frontage road north of Placitas includes this photo by Marla Brose.  The story says the horses have problems.  I'll say.  But from the looks of these two, It's not with their condition.  The buckskin looks positively fine - floating on air, collected, aware and shiny.  He clearly sees his potential.  Even if the Pueblo Governor doesn't.

On Tuesday afternoon, three horses escaped from Santa Ana Pueblo land and trotted onto the frontage road just east of Interstate 25. Before officers from Sandoval County and Santa Ana arrived, the horses were just a few feet from the busy interstate.      Those sorts of incidents have led Santa Ana Gov. Leonard Armijo to say the horses must go.  "They're doing more harm than they're doing good," he said. "They're breaking down fences, tearing up land, up to the point of causing traffic accidents on I-25."  The debate has been raging between wild-horse advocacy groups and government officials for 15 to 20 years, according to Daniel Manzanares, executive director for the livestock board.

These horses are a huge potential asset to the tribes and New Mexico.  People love wild horses and from there it's a short step to paying to see them.  Wild Horses in a highly visible location?  Sounds like Wild Horse Tourism. 

And herd management is not rocket science - or a spaceport.  Not that there's anything wrong with those. 

Cheney Graffiti in Missoula

   

It's Official

We've screwed up the earth so bad now we have to leave.   

San Francisco Chronicle says physicist Stephen Hawking told a sold-out Hong Kong lecture audience that we really should get busy building space colonies. 

Why?  Is the sun exploding?  Polar shift?  Asteroid belt?  The limit to infinity at the small end of the fractal formula?  Nope.  It's us mostly.

  "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of."

Other dangers we have not yet thought of to further screw our home planet.  Get busy on that space colony before we can think up anything else. 

I'd rather attempt a renovation, thanks.  This casual talk of space colonization makes leaving earth sound like condemning a house that has cat piss in the carpet and a meth lab in the garage.  You just can't get that smell out.  Beyond repair.  We're outta here.

Go on ahead.  I'm gonna pack some wine for us and need to taste a few bottles first.  Oh, and there's still mulberrys on that tree over there.  I'll make us some jam.  Go on ahead.  Make us a list of all we'll need.

I'll wait here with Mom.  Coco 

Manny, Manny, Manny

Albuquerque Journal writer Kavanaugh waits until paragraph eight to backhandedly mention Highlands President and former State Senator Manny Aragon in the news about censure of Highlands University by the American Association of University Professors.   

Here's paragraph seven. 

The (AAUP) committee found that administrators erred in firing Turner "without having demonstrated adequacy of cause in a hearing of record before a faculty committee, failed to provide any notice or severance salary, and, to the extent that the administration acted to dismiss him because of displeasure with his public criticism of its policies and actions, violated his academic freedom."

Turner filed a federal lawsuit against Highlands, President Manny Aragon and then-Provost Janice Chavez.

That's paragraph eight.  Typepad automatically made the font bigger - like it automatically knew the key to the whole thing. 

Red Kitchen Photos

  

Planning on Water

Wishing for more rain.  That was a tease, not a rainshower, last week.  Santa Fe New Mexican has a story about New Mexico water.  Writer Staci Matlock sure oversimplified a few things. 

Long before New Mexico had a clear idea of how much water was available or how pumping from wells in the Rio Grande basin affects flows in the river, the state allowed water rights to be divvied up as if the resource would never run out.  Former State Engineer Tom Turney said a couple of years ago that the state had promised four times more water rights on paper for housing, businesses and agriculture than there was real water to meet the needs. 

Use of the past tense kinda reads like we've learned from this and Turney's got it fixed now. 

Now New Mexico is paying the price.  No new uses are allowed. The only way to acquire water rights is to purchase them in the market and apply to the state engineer for a transfer.

Yeah, a transfer of those four times overcommitted water rights to all those "no new uses." 

History proves poor planning and lack of resources has caused the demise of more than one civilization in the arid Southwest. It can happen again.

A failure to plan is the poor planning.  Show me comprehensive water use planning in the last century that failed.  You can't.  We didn't do it.  We did a lot of engineering but the only planning done was about planning how to make more money by cornering the resource through government investments in a Cadillac Desert. 

Arguably that's still the only planning those in power will accept.  It will be the "Daddy may I have a desalinization plant?" water plan.   

Because planning is hard.  And nearly always constrains somebody's version of that magic diety - the market.  The "market impact of regulation" rhetoric we've heard loud and clear during this country's 30 year swing rightward effectively limits land use planning.  And that's significant because without land use planning, water planning becomes very, very, much more very, hard.

For instance.  Take Albuquerque and Bernalillo County governments.  Please.

The adopted  Comprehensive Plan had a water component.  Development areas corresponded to water service areas.  Carrots and sticks aligned.  Consistency in what gets zoned and subdivided and what gets water service.  If development sprawling across the mesa in one direction consumes more water than it would in another, serving one and not the other reduces consumption.  A public entity owning a water system can control the service by controlling the land use.  And visa versa.

But Noooooo.  Our big developers said, like the big developers in Nevada, California, Arizona and Florida said before them, it isn't appropriate to use the utility systems to control land use.  You can't use water service to constrain where you grow.  Funny, that.  Not wanting your government to control your most precious resource.  Too important to leave to government, they said.    The magic market diety best determines what happens.  Praise dollar.  Pass the water rights. 

So. The water system was truncated from the City, and from the City's land use planning, with creation of the "Water Authority."  Now the Authority has no authority over land use.  By design.  Whether you get water doesn't depend on where or how you build.  Only on whether you can afford to pay for it. 

And that's poor planning too.  Coco

Beleaguered Builders

The National Association of Homebuilders has issued this press release about a property owner whose rights were abused by evil government planners.  It's purely coincidental that builders can make more money if land use regulations aren't there at all. 

Kottschade is president of North American Realty, Inc., a small, Rochester-based development and real estate brokerage company.  ... when he applied to the city for approval to construct 104 townhomes, as allowed under the city’s zoning code, the city planning department made a number of unreasonable demands. One demand – that Kottschade create a man-made lake on the property – was even in direct conflict with rules set forth by the Minnesota State Department of Natural Resources. Although too extensive to list here, other demands were equally egregious.  After years of enduring the city’s stalling tactics and unreasonable demands, Kottschade sued the City of Rochester in a federal court, the U.S. District Court.

This is rich.  I'd love to here the city planning department's side of this.  The courts apparently told him to take a hike.  Then the State Highway Department condemned his land - and didn't give him the value the land would have had with the development approval - that he didn't get. 

Homebuilders are lobbying Congress for passage of the Private Property Rights Implementation Act of 2006 [H.R. 4772] and other reforms. 

And Kottschade is auditioning for poster child. Coco

Making a Messland of Westland

The Journal's Rory McClannahan covered the Westland shareholder meeting.  He says nearly 1000 people showed up to fill 600 chairs and former Governor Toney Annoya  Anaya couldn't control the proceedings. 

Honestly, what the hell did they expect?  The tactic of the Westland board has been to completely ignore everyone displeased about the sale - many of whom are displeased about the sale because the board is completely ignoring everyone.

This quote says it all:

Westland officials would not talk to the Journal about the meeting, the proposed sale or any other subject. Page ignored requests from the Journal for a comment.

If this tactic of silent arrogance is intended to generate hostility, good job.  I smell a mediation contract.  Coco