Today May 27, 2003 representatives of the City and County of Santa Fe and Las Campanas Limited Partnership (LCLP), a Delaware Limited Partnership, are scheduled to meet in Albuquerque at the office of Browning & Peifer, P.A. to mediate the issue of whether the LCLP two private golf courses are fully subject to the City’s Water Shortage Emergency Restrictions.
In order to protect the public welfare of Santa Fe the Mayor and City Council should submit any proposed settlement with LCLP to a referendum.
Although City Council member Karen Heldmeyer exclaimed that mediation is “wonderful”, according to the local newspaper, that contention is extremely doubtful. While mediation now may result in an earlier resolution of the issue than an October trial it is likely that a mediated resolution would be favorable to LCLP at the expense of the residents and businesses of Santa Fe.
Since the City purchased Sangre de Cristo Water Company (SDCW) from Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM) in 1995 the Mayor and City Council have continually favored the LCLP two private golf courses at the expense of the residents and businesses of Santa Fe. During negotiations to purchase SDCW the citizenry was not informed of the existence of the Lease Of Water Facilities (Lease) that allocated the LCLP private golf courses a disproportionate amount of City water from the Buckman wells. Furthermore the City did not object to accepting this Lease that gave LCLP two private golf courses a privileged water status.
This Lease was concluded between SDCW, a division of PNM, and Santa Fe County Ranch Resort (SFCRR), a partnership composed of Meadows Resources Inc, a wholly owned subsidiary of PNM, and Lyle Anderson who is chairman of the company that controls LCLP, the successor to SFCRR. PNM and its then CEO Jerry Geist and his cronies planned to develop SFCRR with Anderson. Thus in effect PNM concluded a lease with itself that gave preferential water use to its own development and that of its officers and Anderson!
Emergency Shortage Water Restrictions were first imposed upon Santa Fe in 1996 but while the LCLP private golf courses continually used more than 10% of the City’s Buckman well water the City did not attempt to impose restrictions upon them for seven years until 2002 when this writer wrote an article for the local newspaper outlining this inequity.
All deliberations since then concerning imposing water restrictions upon LCLP two private golf courses have been conducted in secret executive sessions by Mayor Delgado and the City Council and the citizenry has been kept completely in the dark. Mayor Delgado and Bill Deihl, past president of Las Campanas (LC), met privately several times but the Mayor has continually refused to return telephone calls from constituents or the newspapers. When the City finally decided to seek a declaratory judgment from the First Judicial Court on the issue of restricting LCLP golf courses water use Mayor Delgado said that it would be a “friendly” suit.
This characterization by Mayor Delgado reflects the City’s reluctance to assert the welfare of its residents and businesses over the profits of LCLP that should be of no concern to the City whatsoever. Why are Mayor Delgado and certain City Councilors so concerned about the profits of a non-city business?
LCLP two private golf courses are entirely outside of the City limits and are off limits to all but LC lot owners who still must pay an extra membership fee to use them.
LCLP continually states that it is uniquely entitled because it is an employer and it makes contributions to Santa Fe charities and non-profits, even though numerous other businesses and individuals do the same, or more. Contrary to its assertion that it is the beneficent, LCLP is the principal beneficiary of its relationship with Santa Fe because lacking the proximity to Santa Fe LC would be a just another subdivision of overpriced lots in the middle of a sagebrush desert.
Recently Taber Anderson, president of the Lyle Anderson Company, was quoted by the local newspaper as saying that the City needs to recognize that the LCLP private golf courses are an integral part of a commercial enterprise and “not a discretionary lawn”. In other words the LCLP private golf courses and the profits of LCLP are inherently more worthwhile than the private and public landscaping of the 70,000 residents of Santa Fe (very noticeable are the hundreds of dead trees, shrubs, lawns and playgrounds in Santa Fe that have died for lack of water while the LCLP two private golf courses remain a lush green oasis with its ornamental lakes evaporating huge amounts of fresh water daily).
LCLP has complained that the City has failed to properly maintain the City’s water system yet LCLP has been content to pay a fraction of the price for the water that it gets from the City’s Buckman wells than the price paid by other businesses and residents in Santa Fe.
In 2002 the City delivered to LC from the Buckman wells 250,850.000 gallons of fresh water and an undisclosed amount of treated effluent. For the fresh water the City billed LCLP a total of $483,234 or $1.93 per 1,000 gallons (what does LCLP charges its LC homeowners for City water?). The billing to Santa Fe residents and businesses by the City during the growing season of 2002 was $3.94 and $6.94 respectively per 1,000 gallons. Residents who used more than their measly quota of 12,000 gallons per month were charged $18.94 per 1,000 gallons for the additional quantity and $28.94 per 1,000 gallons for the quantity over 20,000 gallons per month. All charges were subject to gross receipts tax.
Thus the residents and businesses of Santa Fe subsidized the $multi-million profits of LCLP and have done so continually since1995!
LCLP clearly believes that its profits and its two private golf courses are more important than the welfare of the thousands of residents and businesses in Santa Fe and regrettably Mayor Delgado and the City Council have always acted as if they agree with LCLP. Like Marie Antoinette the Andersons are in effect saying about Santa Feans, “Let them eat dirt”.
Just recently Council member Heldmeyer stated that she thought that it was premature to lower the Water Shortage Emergency Restrictions from Stage 3 to Stage 2. There was no mention of the fact that the LCLP two private golf courses were continuing to use over one million gallons of fresh water daily, over 10% of the water available to the entire city of Santa Fe.
And recently Mayor Delgado and the City Council passed a memorial opposing the invasion of Iraq. However they have not found the same voice to oppose the egregious overuse of water and the excessive mining of the aquifer by the LCLP two private golf courses.
The bias of Mayor Delgado and the City Council in favor of LCLP at the expense of Santa Feans is obvious. When a group of residents tried to intervene in the City/County Complaint for a Declaratory Judgment the City went to Court to reject their intervention claiming that the people who are most adversely effected by the failure to restrict water use by LCLP have no standing! The County did not act to exclude the public from the deliberations but unfortunately the City prevailed.
In light of the foregoing Mayor Delgado and the City Council cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of Santa Feans in closed mediation on whether the LCLP two private golf courses should be required to adhere to the same water restrictions as all other Santa Fe residents and businesses.
In order to insure that the welfare of Santa Feans be accorded precedence over LCLP and its two private golf courses with regard to the use of City water, a vital public resource, citizens should insist that any proposed settlement be put to a referendum.
Please click on the City of Santa Fe web site:
http://sfweb.ci.santa-fe.nm.us/
for instructions on how to contact Mayor Delgado and City Council members. Please telephone and email or fax them in order to insure that your voice is heard. Please act immediately and forcefully.
William J. Salman
