Taos County planning director introduces draft comprehensive plan; residents press for acequia protections and broader outreach

Taos County Planning Director Rachel Romero introduced the draft Taos County Comprehensive Plan on March 18, 2025, telling the Board of County Commissioners the document is an advisory long-range plan that "will not change any existing regulations" and that state law "enables and does not mandate the preparation of a comprehensive plan." The board received the draft as an introduction and Romero said staff plans to bring a resolution for adoption in April.

The draft summarizes 15 months of work by consultant Consensus Planning and county staff, including a steering committee, stakeholder interviews, eight public meetings and an English- and Spanish-language community survey with more than 1,100 participants, consultant Jackie Fishman said. Fishman said the plan covers community culture, land use, housing, economic development, transportation, water and infrastructure, community facilities and hazard mitigation and includes an implementation chapter with responsible entities and timelines.

Why it matters: The comprehensive plan is the county's policy guide for future land-use and infrastructure decisions. While it does not by itself change zoning or regulations, commissioners and residents said the draft will shape subsequent updates to county land-use and subdivision codes and, therefore, how development and protections for agriculture, acequias and historic communities are enforced.

Residents and neighborhood associations used the public comment period to press for stronger recognition of acequia irrigation culture, clearer treatment of irrigated agricultural parcels on the future land-use map, additional outreach to communities that lack internet access and explicit protections for designated historic communities. Carlos Arguello, a resident and member of Las Comunidades del Valle de los Ranchos and the Taos Valley Acequia Association, said the plan should better reflect acequia priorities and traditional community designations and urged policies that encourage newcomers to "land softly in our valley." Several speakers from Rancho and Upper Las Colonias neighborhood groups asked that the county include more neighborhood associations in outreach and to treat irrigated lands explicitly as agricultural in the future land-use map.

Commissioners and staff responded by describing next steps and explaining how the plan relates to later regulatory updates. Romero and staff emphasized that the comprehensive plan is intended as a vision and that the substantive rules (zoning, permitted uses and special-use review) will be established in forthcoming land-use and unified development-code updates. Romero said staff and consultants have already met with some stakeholders — including Upper Las Colonias and Taos Valley Acequia Association — and promised additional meetings as the code updates proceed. She offered multiple avenues for comment and provided her county office contact information for residents who need in-person assistance.

Key technical points and clarifications raised in comments and staff responses: - The draft includes a "rural residential" category that the planning team said is intended to allow single-family homes with agricultural uses, including acequia irrigation, and Fishman said the county GIS team overlaid acequia ditches when drawing the map. - The draft will not itself rezone land; rezoning or zoning-code changes will be set in the later unified development code where specific permitted uses and permit processes will be defined. - Fishman and Romero said corrections and fact checks (for example, to historical and cultural descriptions and data tables) are expected and will be incorporated before the plan is posted for formal adoption.

Next steps and schedule: Romero asked the board to consider formal adoption in April (staff suggested the April 14 meeting). She proposed a public comment deadline of March 28 to allow consultant edits and circulated revisions to be available to commissioners by April 7, giving the board time to review the updated draft before a final vote. Romero also said the county will post revised chapters and the updated plan on the project website (TaosCountyComprehensivePlan.com) and on TaosCounty.org under Departments → Planning.

Ending: Commissioners praised the breadth of material in the draft but several asked for more time for fact-checking and for additional outreach to neighborhood associations and communities without reliable internet access. The board did not vote on the plan at the meeting; staff left the public comment period open and set a timetable for incorporating comments and returning the draft to the commission for possible adoption in April.