The City of Rio Rancho Governing Body met on July 23, 2026, at 6:00 PM. The consent calendar was approved unanimously. Public hearings included site plan approvals for a church expansion, an indoor soccer facility, and a retail/office/restaurant development. Discussion items covered a land sale for future development, a county annexation, infrastructure contracts, the FY2027 final budget, personnel policy amendments, and the appointment of David Mann as District 4 City Councilor, which passed 4-2 after debate over potential conflicts of interest.
Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Councilor Landon Time, will you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? I will. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please remain standing. Um as have become somewhat of a tradition. I want to take a moment to recognize our first responders and their commitment to our safety. I also want to take a moment to recognize a fellow city planner who recently passed away. Tamara Martinez was very well respected amongst her peers and will be truly missed. So let's take a moment of silence. All right, you may be seated. So um to start the meeting, just make sure that you've got all of your electronic devices silenced during the governing body meeting. I'll do that now for my own device. Um and then for the record, I'll read the name of the governing bodies. When I say your name, please acknowledge your present by saying present. Councilor Dabson. Present. Councilor Lenington. Present. Councilor Tyler, who is remote. Present. Councilor Cobreth, who is also remote. Present. And Councilor List. Present. Thank you. For the record, today at 5 p.m. the governing governing body met in closed session in accordance with section 10-15-1, H2 NMSA 1978. Limited personnel matters provided that for the purposes of the open meeting act, limited personnel matters means the discussion of hiring, promotion, demotion, dismissal, assignment, or resignation, or in the investigation or consideration of complaints or charges against an individual, public employee, provided further that this paragraph is not construed as an exempt final to exempt final actions on personnel from being taken at open public meetings, nor does it preclude any aggrieved public employee from demanding a public hearing. Judicial candidates interviewed by any commission shall have the right to demand an open interview, annual evaluation of city manager per articles 3.01 and 3.07 of the city charter. No action was taken at this meeting. Tonight we have no proclamations or awards of merit. So we will move on to public forum. I will remind everyone that I will allow for a special discussion item for item D31 after public forum. So for public forum, we have one person signed up, Mr. Stephen Van Horn. Good evening, Mayor, Counselors. I want to draw your attention to the first one. It says there's a big circle. It says Rio Rancho Pure for future use. It's under the heading, is our water supply sustainable. This is a very important question. The answers given here it just quote it basically just says that they've the cities injected 350 million gallons of water back into the aquifer since 2017. 350 million gallons of water is what the injection system is supposed to be injecting every year. This this question about sustainability. Um just saying that you're working on sustainability is not really enough information for the public. Uh to have any confidence that the system that we the city is managing is actually sustainable. We need to know things about what's happening with the report. We need to know is the water level water table declining, has it been declining?