Contractors urge Taos County to fix addressing and permitting delays after hack exposed GIS problems

Contractors facing long waits for address assignment and building permits pressed the Taos County Commission on March 17, saying what used to take days or weeks now often takes months and is hurting local businesses.

"Waiting two to three months to obtain an address is unreasonable," Rafael Chavez of RH Chavis Construction told the commission during public comment, saying the delays are causing layoffs, cancelled projects and hardship for subcontractors. "Permit delays have caused homeowners to cancel projects costing some contractors jobs." Tyler Loveless, whose company has filed more than 150 permits over 43 years, said, "Not one of these permits has ever taken longer than 4 weeks to process. That wait time is now 10 weeks." Thomas Master, another local contractor, warned the backlog threatens the construction workforce and local economy.

Why the delays? Rachel Romero, the county's planning director, told commissioners the problem is technical and structural. After a cyber incident last summer, the department migrated from ArcMap to ArcPro and discovered the county's GIS had been running on a single server when the software requires a multi-server enterprise deployment. "Arc Map and Arc Pro ... do not talk to each other," Romero said, and ESRI's assessment found the county needs five servers and specialist support to rebuild maps and models so addressing verification can be done reliably.

Romero and addressing staff explained that assigning an address is not a simple clerical act: technicians verify ownership, parcel boundaries, easements, road naming, FEMA floodplain status and approvals from state and public-works agencies. Those checks exist, Romero said, to ensure 911 dispatchers and first responders can reliably locate an emergency.

Staff described interim steps: triaging verification-only requests, creating a public web page that lists applications and queue position by category, prioritizing urgent cases (eviction threats, funding deadlines, mobile-home moves), and calling applicants whose submissions are incomplete so fixes can be made quickly. Jasper Mapes, the county's rural addressing technician, said some backlog was driven by staffing shortages before the hack; the county was nearly caught up but then lost weeks of map access after the incident.

Commissioners pressed staff for near-term solutions. Several urged bringing in temporary contract staff, using space in other departments to accommodate extra personnel, and exploring agreements with nearby municipalities that run compatible GIS systems to speed work. Romero said the department is recruiting to fill a vacant addressing position and is drafting an ordinance revision that could simplify some requirements; she and county management also said they expect to present a contract proposal to fix the server/modeling configuration.

Commissioner concerns centered on speed and transparency. "When you come in and put a permit in and you're told you're number 69, what does that mean?" Commissioner Rosco asked. Commissioners asked staff to return with clearer metrics on queue size, processing times and what a short-term staffing or contracting plan would cost.

What happens next: planning staff said they will prioritize acute cases, continue the website queue, and prepare procurement steps to secure the specialist services ESRI and staff say are required. Commissioners asked for an update at a near-term meeting to report progress and any contract or temporary-staff proposals.

The commission took no formal policy action on permitting at the meeting but repeatedly urged staff to present concrete short-term fixes while the county implements a permanent technical solution.