11.15.07.CNM.Election

The SCORE
The Sandoval County Online Reporting Enterprise
Rio Rancho, N.M.
New Mexico's first totally online commuity newspaper was last updatedTuesday, March 20, 2012 at 8 p.m.

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CNM
VOTE
TOTALS

(99 percnt of votes tabulated)

In-district

Yes:        67,728
No:         15,322
Total:     83,050*

Out-of-district

Yes:         2,909
No:          1,549
Total:      4,458*

Ballots distributed:
384,065

Ballots returned*
87,508

Turnout percentage:*
22.8

* Total does not include ballots counted by hand.

Voters Back
CNM Plans

Voters in northern Rio Rancho confounded the so-called experts once again, this time by agreeing to join the Central New Mexico Community College tax district.

Homeowners outside of the current tax district who live just north of Northern Boulevard approved CNM’s consolidation effort, giving what city leaders believe will be a shot in the arm for the development of the new downtown area built around the Santa Ana Star Center and city hall. CNM and the University of New Mexico, as part of the campaign to woo voters, promised to build a $20 million joint facility nearby with success in Thursday’s vote.

With 99 percent of the votes counted, the vote was 65.2 percent in favor in northern Rio Rancho: 2,909 in favor, 1,549 against.

Voters in southern Rio Rancho and Albuquerque, who already pay property taxes to support CNM, accepted the inclusion of the rest of the City of Vision by an even wider margin – 81.6 percent. The raw total was 67,728 in favor, 15,322 against.

The 87,508 votes returned in the mail-in election, out of 384,065 sent out, means the total turnout was more than 22.8 percent. Hand tallied votes still need to be counted to reach a final figure.

Mayor Mike Williams, a one-time opponent of the community college, was elated at the vote.

“Cool! It’s the best thing that could happen to Rio Rancho, and I am looking forward to it,” he said. “I can’t think of a better way to celebrate (Sandoval County) Commissioner (Dave) Bency’s birthday, he being an instructor at CNM. This makes me the happiest man this side of the river.”

Harry Gordon, a resident of northern Rio Rancho and leading critic of the proposal, offered words of caution and disappointment.

“If I had $300,000, I could have publicized to more, too,” Gordon said, noting the amount CNM spent to publicize the issue. “It will be interesting to see the voters’ faces when they open their tax bills next year.”

With the vote, northern Rio Rancho residents will pay an additional $119 for each $100,000 of assessed value on their properties.

“I hope everything works out for the best,” Gordon said. “If not, it’s just another arena-type project that has been foisted upon taxpayers.”

For CNM President Katharine Winograd, who invested a lot of personal time and effort in wooing Rio Rancho after bad blood between city leaders and former CNM president Michael Glennon, it was a major triumph less than six months after being promoted to the top job. Winograd took over in July.

“It’s been a challenging opportunity for me in many ways, but this was something that I put my heart and soul into. And I am incredibly excited,” she said. “I’ve made lots of good friends in Rio Rancho and I’m very pleased to be able to call them and let them know that we can start working on that campus tomorrow.”

But she declined to take any personal credit for the success.

“The community won this for us. We didn’t win it,” Winograd said. “That community pulled together to support what we were trying to do. The business leaders – Don Chalmers chaired the committee for us. This was an election won by the individuals in Rio Rancho. We just get to be the fortunate recipients of the vote.”

“It’s an opportunity for CNM and UNM to serve the community that has been working very hard to get this election passed,” she said. “We’re just glad to be out there and we just can’t wait to start the process of building that campus. It really does reflect very favorably on the community.”

Winograd admitted she was “absolutely panicked” when voters overwhelmingly rejected a $12 million bond issue for the Sports Complex North last month, an issue that would not raise taxes but simply replace existing bonds.

“It was a very worrisome time for me and for a number of other folks,” she said. “But I really believe the concept of providing education, workforce development – and the fact that UNM and CNM are coming in together – really did help with this election.”

The election settles a lengthy and often bitter boundary dispute that predates the Rio Rancho School System, which was carved out of three districts – Albuquerque, Bernalillo and Jemez Valley. The tax boundary for CNM, then known as the Albuquerque Technical-Vocational Institute, was originally tied to the borders for the Albuquerque Public Schools.

But by the time APS left Rio Rancho, TVI had separated from the public school system and had its own independent taxing authority, albeit using the same borders as APS. So even though Rio Rancho residents south of Northern Boulevard were no longer paying APS taxes, they continued to pay taxes to TVI.

Bad blood between the city and the school has grown over the years with several events contributing to the animosity:

•Rio Rancho leaders thought they had a deal to bring a campus to the city in the 1990s, but the school opted to build a west-side campus just outside of the city limits.

•Rio Rancho taxpayers south of Northern Boulevard continued to object to being forced to pay for the school when those living north of Northern did not, especially when for several years the city had no elected official on the TVI board. Some took to wearing teabags to meetings in protest, signifying the Boston Tea Party and “taxation without representation” arguments that led to the Revolutionary War.

•When the Rio Rancho Governing Body authorized a legal fund to challenge the status quo in court in 2004, the school responded by raising tuition for those students who lived outside of the tax boundary.

•And later that year, when state and Sandoval County officials discovered the actual boundary was a few blocks north of Northern along long-ago outdated one-mile section lines, the school briefly considered suing for back taxes, then promised to forget the issue if voters outside of the tax base would consent to joining the district.