The Rio Rancho Governing Body met on June 25, 2026, at 6:00 PM in Council Chambers. The meeting covered a range of items including proclamations, a council appointment announcement, consent calendar approvals, water rights acquisition, a road reconstruction contract, rezoning and master plan approvals, and a public hearing on a proposed Maverik gas station site plan. Key discussions included water rights purchase progress, traffic and neighborhood compatibility concerns for the gas station, and park design standards.
Good evening. I'd like to call this meeting of the June 25th governing body meeting to order. Councilor Dobson, will you lead us in the pledge? Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please remain standing for a moment of silence for our to reflect on our first responders as well as all of our men and women overseas and locally that are protecting us from harm's way. Thank you. You may be seated. Okay, first order of business. Please take a moment to sign silence all of your electronic devices when attending the governing body meeting. For the record, I will announce the names of the governing body members when I say your name. Please acknowledge your presence by saying present. Councilor Dabson. Present. Councilor Lynentine. Present. Counselor Tyler. Present. Councilor Culbreth. Present. Councillor List. Present. And of course, Councillor District 4 remains vacant at this time. I'll have an announcement here shortly on the status of that. Moving on to proclamations and awards of merit. There are none. If there's no objection by the council, I'd like to move items 14 and 15 from discussion and deliberation to be heard before the public hearings. Moving on to public forum. Each comment will be limited to two minutes and no more than two hours in total be allotted to public forum comments at any meeting. First up for public forum, Mr. Stephen Van Horn. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Counselors, I would ask that you not set the bookmark to uh skip past me and the video when it's recorded. Um I came tonight uh planning to talk about things that are going on with Representative Stansbury bringing five hundred thousand dollars for that's a water storage project in in Albuquerque. They use terms like this is a key project, and I agree with it. Uh we in Rio Rancho have supposedly the first sort of pilot project of water injection that we still don't know. I still don't know what the status of it is. I would still would like to know. Look forward to information in the water quality report, maybe that tells us a little bit about what's going on. But looking at the agenda tonight, I thought what I would say is something totally different because the people behind me, the developers here really do not want discussion about water. And this is I think the reason why the public infrastructure advisory board doesn't really function, doesn't meet. But public discussion about water, especially now, is very important, very important. And so I want to really encourage the mayor to make appointments to the structure, and I would like the council to consider revising the charter of the this board, making it more than just advisory, but actually proactive, looking at what's happening with our water, water in New Mexico, and be able to give you all advice on governing our water system. We need to protect it. And the only thing that I've seen protected is information about it and public disclosure. And I would ask that that change that there be more openness. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Van Horn.