Letter to the Editor
What was there is no more
Editor:
Maybe the Civil War wasn’t fought along the Rio Grande.
That is what I learned from the county manager’s (Delilah Walsh) response to the letter from Mr. Tom Kimball in the Letters to the Editor (El Defensor Chieftain, July 14). In her letter she said that she had asked the county commissioners to consider vacating the roads in Rio Grande Estates, and said that they may never have existed.
In my search I have spoken to sales people who worked for Horizon Corporation and I have spoken to several people who have lived in the area while sales were going on in the 1960s. I have been told by each that the roads were graded in and that they used to bring people to RGE to see their land and to consider buying more.
During my search, I was told by the county road superintendent that I needed to go to the county commissioners who signed the plats when they were filed to determine if it was they who signed the plats, which are filed at the County Clerk’s Office. He told me that the roads in RGE are not county roads. I searched the documents in the County Clerk’s Office and saw an agreement that the county would accept the roads and easements and agreed to maintain them. I went back to retrieve these documents and they were missing from the document books.
The county manager said in an interview on KRQE TV that RGE was an illegal subdivision, because it was developed before the subdivision ordinance. I won’t even respond to that. I will respond to her statement that the roads were never there. The roads were here and Socorro County agreed to maintain them upon acceptance of the roads and easements.
I realize that there were no people living here in RGE in those days, but now there are a few people living here. When the agreement was made the county ignored maintenance and thus the roads became overgrown so now some roads seem non-existent. However, most of us can see where the roads were, at that time, seeing evidence that they are in place even now.
Under the previous administration we had a community meeting here in RGE and a decision was made that the county would maintain roads where people are moving. Take note: where people are moving TAXES are going up. I suspect, but admit I don’t know for sure, that these roads are considered when funding for roads is given to the county from the state.
We never asked that ALL the roads in RGE be graded. What we asked is wherever people are moving and taxes are going up to please grade the roads to their homes.
I don’t like the thought that we who are attempting to help develop the area should be considered speculators any more than the people who have been developing the west side of Los Lunas or Rio Rancho or Rio Communities.
The county manager talks about dialogue, but when I called and spoke to her about grading a road because the school bus wouldn’t go down the road to pick up little kids, she told me NO WAY and to have the person who contacted me regarding it to call her.
Dialogue. None of the people living here were considered in her desire to vacate roads here. If you look around, there isn’t much evidence that the Civil War was fought where Socorro County is now, but it doesn’t mean it never happened.
Samuel James
Veguita
Freedoms come with a price
Editor:
This is in response to Richard Epstein’s letter to the editor (El Defensor Chieftain, Aug. 4).
Do you really believe what you are saying, or did you just take definitions from the liberal dictionary?
Your letter is one-sided, or are you just plain blind.
What do you think Pearl Harbor was, just a strategic military target? Twice as many civilians died that day. Japan forced our hand into World War II. You’re just like the typical Monday morning quarterback, quick to condemn, when in fact you weren’t running the show.
How many more of our fathers and grandfathers had to die before we had to end this? Maybe you would rather be speaking Japanese or German right now, and possibly be living in a society where in NO way you would have been able to write the letter you wrote.
Remember this: Freedom of the Press was NOT given to you by the New York Times or El Defensor Chieftain. Freedom of Speech was not given to you by the commies at the ACLU.
Reflect, go back in history and live the lessons learned, because if our young men and women in uniform don’t take care of business now, you may be the next person on Aljazeera TV getting beheaded. Think.
Andy Garcia
Rio Rancho
Difference between saying, doing
Editor:
At the Reform Group meeting, which Ms. (Maria G.) Rivera apparently surreptitiously recorded, I was seated in close proximity to James Padilla, whom Ms. Rivera claims stated that he (Padilla) “wanted to take a 2-by-4 to the side of their (SEC Trustee) heads.”
Thereafter, she runs to her boss making a big to-do about nothing. Fortunately, in law there is a big difference between making such an offhand utterance in disgust of a bad situation and actually doing it.
No matter what Ms. Rivera claims, there will be those, including myself, who believe that she was sent by SEC management with her recorder to spy on perceived enemies.
For the Reform Group a good thing, for now we can all guess as to just how far SEC insiders will go to protect their house of cards, which may soon collapse.
Alvin B. Hickox
San Antonio, N.M.