DEL NORTE— In a complaint filed on Friday, Sept. 6 a local citizen and business owner of Del Norte, Tom Haefeli, stated his concern with an Upper Rio Grande School District-owned piece of property that was sold without due process. In the complaint, Haefeli states that the board of education did not give notice of the sale, have the land appraised, put out a request for proposal or a bid process.

The school was gifted a piece of property that consisted of about 10 acres of land at the edge of Sixth Street by local resident Anthony Skaff. The property was part of a subdivision plat and was broken down into three sub parcels, one of which was sold to the River Valley Inn Nursing home in 2016. The remaining two parcels were donated to both the Del Norte Headstart and Del Norte Fire Department.

According to a statement from the board of education, the two remaining parcels were then given back to the district due to a gas line that ran through the middle of the western most property, which made it very difficult for anything to be built. “It was at that time that the board started to do research on properties surrounding the area to determine a cost. School district CFO Angela Velasquez was the person to make an offer on the land, and we as a board decided to accept her offer,” said BOE representative and member Ryan Haynie.

Both Del Norte Headstart and the Del Norte Fire Department gave the property back to the school not only because of the gas line that ran through the property, but also because of the cost of infrastructure the town would require if any entity built on the land. “Whoever takes possession of that land will have to have curbs, gutters and sidewalks installed along Sixth Street past the nursing home in order to use the property. The water and gas main sits on the furthermost western edge of the land and that would have to be brought over to the property in order for it to have utilities as well. There would have been high costs for anyone to use the property in question,” said Haynie.

The board of education also took into consideration the fact that if they were to open the property sale to a public bidding process, they would not be able to control who purchased the land. “We had many discussions on this matter in executive session, and we wanted to be able to control who our neighbors were. Anyone, including a halfway house or hemp industry, could have placed a winning bid for that property and we didn’t want that. No one would want a halfway house as a neighbor to a school and we took that under consideration.”

“Velasquez was the only one to put an offer on the table and after much consideration and research we felt that her offer of $15,000 was fair when compared to property values in the immediate area. None of our land has ever been appraised that we are aware of. We didn’t have appraisals done on any of the other property we have sold recently including all of the old buildings from the old school. We were within our legal right to handle the sale the way we did, and we did it with the best interest of the community in mind.”
In an interview with Haefeli prior to a special board of education meeting on Sept. 5, Haefeli stated that he just wanted the board to be transparent in their transactions. “I believe the board was given incorrect information but made their decision with good conscience. I just feel that the way it was handled was done unprofessionally and without a process,” said Haefeli.

School board members opened the special meeting and went immediately into executive session in order to get legal advice from their attorney Kristin Edgar. After opening back up for public session, the school board made the announcement that they planned on staying with their original decision which was to sell the property to district CFO Angela Velasquez.