Cocoposts

Liminal Forest

The electric utility guy came to visit today. Hard hat man in a bright jacket. He eyed the fat cottonwood that's precariously close to a transformer.

That wasn’t her choice. The tree and forest were there before the land was divided up. And that’s only one in a series of abuses, and relatively minor. The whole Bosque was cut for firewood - multiple times. Now people treasure the cottonwood around here, right? Right?
So many places are named for it including Spanish: El Alamo, Alamogordo, Alameda....

I suppose it once must have seemed there were too many to count. Trees didn’t matter. The street, utility lines and houses were worth more than the forest. Profit-wise.  Sort of a way of honoring the dead.  Naming things for them.

Some big monster trees remain on the ditch banks and edges of fields - places the chainsaws haven't reached for whatever reason. Or they are prized yardfeatures whose soft wood must be monitored and radically trimmed lest heavy branches crash onto cars and rooftops.

The big mother tree survives on the liminal edge between this subdivision and that. She attracts attention only from admirers, with the possible exception of the electric utility guy. She is guarded by neighbors who watch, including noisy crows.

The kind of tree that makes you want to be a better human.

 

Paseo del Volcanonono

Paseo del Volcan is a project on the far west side of anything metropolitan about Rio Rancho and Albuquerque. Promoters have gone largely unchallenged in presenting it as a critical "regional need" and have corralled over $8 million for land.  Well-worn patterns of using public infrastructure funds for land speculation in New Mexico should give us pause. But promoters seem particularly intent on ignoring this history.

They are aided in creating an illusion of selfless vision and foresight by a near absence of transparency. Most significantly, we don't know who the land owners are. New Mexico is one of only two states (Wyoming?) that allows owners of limited liability corporations to remain completely anonymous.  As stated on 60 Minutes last night, in some states its easier to create a business than to get a library card. New Mexico is one of those.

Who is Western Albuquerque Land Holdings anyway?

 The rational argument for spending New Mexico’s scarce dollars on right-of-way is that the State needs to purchase land "before development drives the values up." This hasn't been weighed with a counter-argument based on the very real possibility that land prices will go down. It's not like the economy is going gang-busters.  The State is more likely to pay way too much. And using land values to establish a funding priority is pretty skanky shaky.

 

Santolina - Wayne's World

Bernalillo County Commissioner Wayne Johnson writes of his support for Santolina Master Plan in the Albuquerque Journal  dismissing opposition, throwing around rotten red herrings and concluding:

Passion and an intense desire to stop new development in Bernalillo County simply aren’t enough for the commission to deny a property owner his or her property rights. 

Aside from hyperbole, this indicates he misses the public benefit part of planning. Changing or denying Santolina wouldn't constitute infringement on property rights. But approving a plan without apparent public benefit and protections has big consequences for County residents. It also makes the Commissioners look like tools.

Chewing and Staring - Goats at Weed Ranch

Happy Fall! It was The Summer of Goats.  Sun Star Herb farm’s Horned Locust Division was in residence at the Weed Ranch and I fell in love with an entire species, not just a few cute representatives.  I never knew any goats before and presumed they were like sheep ( not that I've known any sheep - that way.) But no. They’re intelligent and individualistic and perhaps underestimated. Big Dog dog said that sounded like the Libertarians and he wasn't into no Libertarian goats. Even 100 of them. He  focused on the herd dogs who drove him mad with desire from the other side of the fence. Teasing him about being a city dog.

At some point during their two-week residency he learned a fun trick of rushing the fence to spook the goats. (This is apparently Lesson One of Herding for Dummies.) He did this one day as they were headed into the corral and little goats scattered everywhere out of what had been a leisurely and orderly procession toward the gate. This procession was led by a large old male goat.

When I had asked Amanita (Division Head) about the alpha goats I assumed the leaders would be the males - that patriarchy's ugly grasp extended as far into goat kingdom as elsewhere. She said the males will lead in unfamiliar situations where more bravado is required. Female leaders know where the good grass is.  Sounds about right.

This male leader was multi colored; brown, black and tan with some white bits - a calico goat. He had pendulous testicles that looked disproportionately huge and burdensome. He looked like he carried the weight of all the combined planetary maleness - like responsibility the next presidency, global warming and how many coyotes might be out there all rested on, and might almost fit in those nuts. And it looked damned uncomfortable.

Giving Sprawl a Pass

The El Paso Times story won't surpise some people but others will be moved just by the title (East El Paso Sprawl:  Boom Strains Services, City Coffers) as it represents admission of a problem that the building industry still flatly denies - the high cost of suburban growth to tax-funded systems like water, schools and police.

First, we don't have sprawl, Doug Schwartz, Southwest Land Development CEO

El Paso developer and chamber representatives repeat familiar homebuilder memes about growth paying for itself in sales tax and choice bits of flimsy about how the market is always right and the big picture is all net gain. But the story contains pesky specifics.

John Balliew, El Paso Water Utilities vice president of operations and technical services said "The company recovers less than a third of the full cost from developers" (...)  Now if the development is outside the service area, the recovery cost can be as low as 10 percent, said Felipe Lopez, a utility engineer who administers development agreements for new subdivisions. The rest is "passed along to all the other customers," Balliew said.

Largest Landowners

The names apparently include a New Mexican. Here's the Land Report 100 - Largest Landlowners list.* This is not by weight.

A person with same name as one of them, Number 72, is presently requesting public funds through a LEDA grant from the Bernalillo County Commission to build another set of big boxes in an alfalfa field he owns at Coors and Rio Bravo Boulevards.

The zoning for the site was approved years ago when Teresa Cordova, stalwart protectress of valley values, was in office. As I recall, one of the arguments at the time was how the County needed its own retail development.  That huge Walmart right next door was in the evil City. (Say it with a hissss.)  So Wal-Mart didn't count except as a "changed community condition" that bolstered the argument for the conversion of more prime farmland into yet another speculative real estate venture. Sad but true.

 

 

* In spite of my much coveted position as primary steward of Whitelodge and Weed Ranch, I'm not on the list.

 

The Fantastic Fraudulent Floating Land Grant

The Peralta Grant scheme to defraud the government and the people of Arizona was cooked up by a clever opportunist named “Doc” Willing. Willing died long before realizing his dream and shortly after involving a St Louis real estate developer named James Addison Reavis. Reavis saw it through to the bitter end when he was found guilty by the U.S. Court of Private Land Claims in Santa Fe and sentenced to a fine and two years in prison. He died penniless in Denver in 1914.

The huge claim stretched from Silver City to Phoenix and encompassed the territory’s richest
 land. At the time Reavis got involved, the substance of the audacious movida consisted of old 
papers in a burlap sack and some carvings on a rock near Casa Grande. Like some other slick promoters and profiteers of the era, Reavis was from Missouri.  He had
 enlisted in the Confederacy but surrendered to Union forces after forging furlough papers.
Thomas Catron later recalled that Reavis had served in his artillery regiment but left to get
 married and never returned.

While the outcome of the scheme was ultimately unsuccessful, Reavis profited for years from
quitclaim deeds sold to settlers and miners.

To be continued...

Source: The Peralta Grant: James Addison Reavis and the Barony of Arizona. Donald M. Powell, University of Oklahoma Press, 1960.

Second Home Summer People

In our little corner of Colorado, the summer home phenomenon is not all about the wealthy. This subdivision is over fifty years old and those cabins that haven't been sold and converted to year-round use for town commuters, are in varying stages of decay. They are very rarely inhabited by the very aged original summer residents.  Usually it's some combination of their children and grandchildren or new owners who listen wide-eyed to stories about the antics of our fathers and grandfathers. Arizonans, New Mexicans, Texans, Canadians, Oklahomans, and the rare native Coloradan all mix it up* for a couple weekends in the summer.

These acquaintances and "howdy neighbor" relations involve those of varying political persuasions - more tolerable because exposure is limited to a week or weekend. That's how I'm now friends with a bible-thumping Baptist missionary Texan.  And she now associates with a uppity lefty Liberal.  We, after all, have more in common than we do with the bears and enjoy the opportunity to study each other like science specimens.

She asked about what I retired from - government work.  What did you do? Is that about entitlements for poor people?  I said it involved things like figuring out where to put the water lines and who gets garbage contracts.  Then I started getting a little bothered and said it involved asking rich white people where they want their parks.  I was talking a little too loud and began morphing into my Mother, who sat on this same patio arguing politics with summer people. Only the quality of the beer has improved.

 To be continued...

* I'd say "hook-up" but that would imply interstate orgies, or something.

Twenty-Five Years in One Survey Comment

My former profession, city planning, has a professional organization that purports to represent the field.  When I retired I let my membership lapse and have since been subject to a barrage of renewal notices. Finally I got an email survey that asked why I hadn't renewed. 

Most of it was innocuous - ratings of programs and publications and typical tedium. Multiple choices among  dull dumb answers.  Then, at the end at last, space to write comments.  Speaking for all of us, I figured, I'd let the silly suits behind the survey know what I really thought. 

After completing the survey I read other respondents' comments.  I grew flushed and pink - like I'd just tweeted on the size of a legislator's ass or hat.

The vast majority of fallen former members wrote of onerous dues and continuing education requirements.  They complained about the stupidity of the survey questions, invoicing errors, lousy coffee at the national conference and how that membership pin put a big hole in my blouse.

I wrote this:

I've retired and don't intend to work in the planning profession again until hell freezes over or this corporate hegemony abates.  Whichever comes first.  It was a great ride.  Loved the politics - a real scream, especially the last few years.  Our profession has been, and will continue to be, dominated by the building industry.  And by the private property obsessed, greed fueled, endless growth paradigm that has screwed this country.

This sentiment was expressed by another.

You have ignored the recession and what it means to our profession. 

Wal-Mart Decade

 A post by Paul Krugman attributes a data bump to Wal-Mart and muses about why Europe didn't have a similar bump.  Thereafter ensued rather off-topic Wal-Mart bump envy, fear and loathing in comments.  Like this:

walmart has been unsuccessful in europe--it's not about land use. it's about culture. europeans want higher quality goods and a pleasant store in which to shop. europeans also like to patronize local shops where the service is personal.

No it isn't, you snob.  Our poor taste is not why we have Wal-Mart.  It's about cheap energy, US transportation networks, car dependency, and hugely scaled transfer facilities, stores and parking lots on cheap land. 

In part Krugman says:
 

Van Ark’s data point to a huge surge between 1995 and 2004 in US productivity, not so much in producing goods as in distributing them. And we know what that’s about: Wal-Mart and other big box stores.

I’m not denigrating these productivity gains. What’s interesting, though, is that if you’re looking for a story about the relative American revival from 1995 until recently, it’s not so much a broad, generic economy thing as it is a story of one particular innovation that for whatever reason — land use regulations? — Europe was slow to imitate.

The major question is how an economist can call distribution "production."  But since he mentioned  land use regulation I got all hot under the collar and had to be the first to comment.  It didn't go well.

cocolaboca
Santa Fe NM
January 29th, 2011
10:16 am
The reason is less about land use regulations than land use. The sprawl paradigm enables Wal-Mart scale. Such land use's relationship with regulation is far more complicated, (ie attempts to curtail sprawl or argument that regulations encourage it in the first place.)

Whaa?  I promise I wasn't drunk but it makes no sense to me now either.   And that near nonsense was read by Paul Krugman.  I could have said it much much more clearly, like Bart did at the very same time.

Bart

NY

January 29th, 2011

10:16 am

Suburbia + housing bubble = Wal-Mart