MARFA — The air in the Casner Room at City Hall was tense Tuesday night as the public first heard the mayor and City Council’s reactions to the Planning and Zoning (P&Z) Commission’s recommendation to deny a rezone request from American Electric Power (AEP.)
AEP is requesting to rezone a residential lot on the east side of town to industrial in order to build a new substation. The four-acre lot is located at the corner of E. Oak and N. Aparejo streets just before the Alamito Creek bridge — roughly a block away from the preexisting substation that supplies the City of Marfa with power.
P&Z Chairman Chick Rabourn — the only member of that commission present — took to the podium to formally present P&Z’s recommendation to deny the rezone, citing concerns that it could constitute an illegal spot zone, is not aligned with the city’s 2017 comprehensive plan to create more housing, and would degrade the residential neighborhood. The new $7 to $10 million substation is proposed to be triple the size and capacity of the existing substation, a decision AEP representatives have argued accommodates future growth.
While P&Z recommended that council deny AEP’s rezone request, council members’ initial reactions on Tuesday indicated that they didn’t necessarily agree with the decision to deny, and detailed discussions are likely to continue in a forthcoming public hearing. Council Member Eddie Pallarez — who worked for AEP for 46 years before retiring — expressed support for the rezone, stating it needed to be done to keep up with the local demand for power.
“I know that there are 10 to 15, opposition people, folks who live in the neighborhood, but stop and think about [how] that’s a small portion of the Marfa residents,” Pallarez said. “Nobody wants that substation across the street. There’s no doubt about that. I don’t want it, but it’s what AEP needs to do either sooner or later.”
Council Member Mark Morrison pointed out a number of things missing from the P&Z report, among other things, a detailed analysis with appraisal district data about how the substation would decrease property values. “How much did y’all estimate it would decrease property values and drive disinvestment?” Morrison asked. “Are there any figures that y’all came up with, 10% to 30% decrease in value?”
Mayor Pro Tem Raul Lara and Council Member Travis Acreman remained mostly neutral. Council Member Mark Cash was absent.
While initially voiced by Acreman, all council members agreed that requesting a formal legal opinion on whether or not the zoning change would constitute a spot zone — which may occur when “a city changes zoning to allow a use that is incompatible to surrounding uses and does not respect the city’s comprehensive plan,” according to the city attorney — was the next course of action.
“Pretty much, we’re going to have to go with what the attorney tells us,” Pallarez said. “The attorney tells us we can’t rezone that, then we won’t rezone it.”
The validity of the 2017 Comprehensive Plan also came under scrutiny. Morrison said some of the land use numbers in the report seemed off, and Rabourn commented that there was both good and “boilerplate” stuff in the document. Acreman noted that the city is required to update that plan every 10 years, and 2027 would be here soon.
“We should start thinking about budgeting for that and the process,” Acreman said. “I’d like to see us [doing] that as much in-house and community-based as we can, rather than outside consultants.”
Given that Marfa is a small town and AEP employs many locals, there are several parties involved that have potential conflicts of interest, a subject that came up at the Tuesday meeting. Rabourn lives in the affected area, defined as 200 feet around the proposed substation site, and disclosed that at both public hearings P&Z held on the matter, per a recommendation from the city’s attorney. Mayor Manny Baeza currently works for AEP and Council Member Pallarez, who is now retired, previously worked for AEP.
The Tuesday meeting was the first time the issue has come in front of the City Council. Before Rabourn started his presentation, Mayor Baeza — who is legally required to recuse himself — got up from his seat at the council members’ table and went to sit in the audience. “I’ll be leaving here, and I’ll be a member of the audience,” he said. From there, he participated in the discussion about the project. In the past when any AEP-related matter is on the agenda, he has left the room entirely. Baeza sat next to George Salgado, the supervisor of AEP’s Marfa distribution system.
At some point during the discussion Morrison said he would have liked to see the disclosure that Rabourn lives in the affected area in the P&Z report. Baeza asked Rabourn, “I’m recusing myself from this. So why didn’t you?”
Rabourn stated that he followed the city attorney’s advice to disclose, and he is just a volunteer. “I’m not on anyone’s payroll,” Rabourn said. “As a member of the community, if something affects me and I happen to be on P&Z, why does that disqualify me? That’s the whole reason I’m on P&Z.”
Then Marfa resident and former City Council member Buck Johnston, from the audience, asked why Pallarez hasn’t recused himself because he gets a pension from the company. “I was on City Council, and there is no way I would ever sit in your position and not recuse myself,” Johnston said. “I think it is absolutely ridiculous.”
Pallarez denied that he is still receiving income from the company. “I have no ties to AEP,” Pallarez said. “That pension has been severed from AEP.”
In a follow up with The Big Bend Sentinel, Pallarez elaborated further. “I did pull out all of the pension,” he said. “I pulled out all my 401K from AEP, and I invested it with an independent.”
Another point of contention came during Rabourn’s presentation when he explained that while it is not P&Z’s role to assess the viability of alternative sites for the new substation, and to only consider the rezone at hand, the fact that County Commissioner Deirdre Hisler and AEP External Affairs Manager Fred Guerrero were brainstorming sites outside of city limits was mentioned in the report. Baeza interrupted to ask, “So why add that into the report?”
Rabourn said it was included because the question of potential alternative sites will be brought up by the public in City Council’s planned public hearing about the rezone, as it was in P&Z’s hearings, and it seemed unfair for council to have to make such a high stakes decision without considering other options. “When you make a decision that’s going to negatively impact people’s houses and lives and properties, you want to know what some of those trade offs are and whether there’s any other possibilities because overall you have to take the whole town’s interest into account,” Rabourn said.
Two alternative sites outside of city limits have been located on the east side that meet AEP’s minimum acreage requirements and front Highway 90.
Pallarez and AEP’s George Salgado warned that any alternative sites will likely also have significant drawbacks. Essentially, they argued that the potential new site is conveniently located close to the existing substation, and placing a new substation further outside of town will only lead AEP to erect more equipment, infrastructure and poles. The new substation will tie into the Alamito Creek substation in Sal Si Puedes.
“You’re going to have a lot of other construction issues with 60-70 foot holes going from one side to the other,” Pallarez said. “If you go towards the east, yeah, you can, but that’s also going to lengthen the distribution line coming back towards this local station.”
“If we start looking outside of town, that’s going to drop the voltage in town, because we got to supply that voltage” Salgado said.
Although no data has ever been presented, AEP representatives have said that the existing substation is running over capacity and that is why it needs to be upgraded. Salgado warned that more growth is coming and AEP needs to be ready to meet the demand.
Pallarez added that if Marfa doesn’t accept this proposal AEP will likely opt to go elsewhere and spend their money on new substations in either Fort Davis or Alpine. “They can pick up this $7 million, $10 million expenditure and go spend it in Fort Davis,” Pallarez said.
But the reason for Marfa’s growth, Rabourn argued, is the preservation of its small town charm. He said it would be more beneficial for the entire community to focus on infill development that keeps town life centralized, rather than jeopardizing residential neighborhoods with industrial development and pushing people further out.
“It’s so elegant engineering wise, that I think sometimes it’s easy to sort of forget about the rest of the story, which is what’s generating the demand in the first place?” Rabourn asked.
“From the P&Z perspective, we want to encourage people to move, settle down, live, have friendly little neighborhoods and encourage growth within the city, and not have it all spill out into Antelope Hills,” Rabourn said. “That, to me, starts to suck away the lifeblood of a town.”