By Eric Maddy
The SCORE

Pledging to “take Rio Rancho back from special interests,” Chamisa Hills resident and small business owner John McKinney said Wednesday he will run for mayor in the March 4 municipal election.

McKinney, 44, proposes adding a $10,000 “consortium fee” when a residential property is first deeded as a homestead to raise money to fund city needs.

“This is critically important because it covers homes finished but unsold as well as homes in all stages of development,” McKinney said. “I will introduce this new consortium fee as a method of raising needed funds for the city and slowing the new home building to some degree.

“If elected I will be a slow growth mayor, a green mayor, and a mayor willing to reach out and encompass everyone when attempting to find acceptable solutions to our common problems.”

Among the “common problems” that McKinney sees are transportation, schools and 
“rough shod zoning changes from R1 residential to C1, C2 or M1 commercial” that “should slow down to an extremely rare occurrence.”

McKinney proposes to split money raised from his consortium fee three equal ways: for a water fund, schools and roads.

“Diversion water we will have to have in 12 years needs to be secured right now,” he said. “One-third will go to adding permanently constructed classrooms instead of temporary ones. And one-third goes to road widening.”

McKinney said the proposed consortium fee would help the city fund worthwhile projects.

“For the last three mayors, as long as I have been around our beautiful city of vision, fine people have come before city council with many fine community based initiatives, many of which would increase not only our property values but also the actual experience of day-to-day existence that is quality of life,” McKinney said.  I’d like the answer of the mayor and the council – to Little League fields and expansions -- to be ‘yes’ for a change.”

McKinney also vowed to “work to stop the special assessment district, a $13,500 to $15,000 imposed tax on all property homes and lots.”

“The special assessment squarely places the expense for this piece of infrastructure on existing property owners,” he said. “Right now in this real estate market, in which all models predict about a three-year downturn, this huge imposed tax is utterly unreasonable.”

McKinney said if elected mayor “the city will begin taking bids from contractors to remediate ponds on Chamisa Hills, the old Rio Rancho Country Club. We don’t need large fines and an expensive court case the city will invariably lose. We will simply find no fault and begin working with NMED in closer cooperation, not only with regard to the ponds but with all future plans for development.”

McKinney, who sold real estate and owned a roofing company before moving to Rio Rancho in 1999, operates a mobile disc jockey business. He and his wife Jennifer have been married for 14 years and they have one son who attends Martin Luther King Elementary School.