Town Undertakes Experiment in Democracy

The squat little building just off I-40 was brimming with humanity and atrociously hot. Foreheads shone with sweat. Emotions ran high. On this summer night, high in the Sandia Mountains, democracy was breaking out.

Facing the public were five men who had thrust themselves willingly into the vortex. Larry Keaty, Bob Stearley, Howard Calkins, Chuck Ring and Gary Chemistruck, regular guys on their final evening as private citizens, were getting an eyeful of the road ahead. It was bumpy.

The good people of this patch of the Estancia Valley, in ways as varied as their faces, were demonstrating that they cared. They talked issues. They demanded results. They threatened lawsuits. They shouted and barked, berated and chided, cajoled and denounced. Occasionally, they even praised.

For years, people in this unincorporated area of central New Mexico that rose from homesteaders’ pinto-bean fields had groused about how they were being governed. They were tired of orders being handed down from the county seat in Santa Fe, so many miles away and so alien in its priorities.

Like many in the West, folks around here wanted to decide things for themselves. So some figured that, instead of answering to a far-off government, they’d assemble their own from scratch.

Now the five men at the pushed-together wooden tables, identified by paper name tags in Lucite holders, were embarking on the latest embodiment of America’s most basic endeavor--self-government. They’d come forward from the populace, endured elections, rented out an office in back of the Homestead Restaurant to be the Town Hall.

In a few hours they would become fathers. The new arrival would be rambunctious, assertive and self-determined, ready to make the kind of glorious mess that only democracy can.

At 12:01 a.m. on July 1, 1999, with $1.85 in its coffers and the office furniture on the way, the Town of Edgewood was born.

*

We are a people capable of self-government, and worthy of it.

--Thomas Jefferson, 1807

Little is more fundamentally American than the right to chart one’s own destiny.

It was the foundation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It was a defining element of the frontier movement that settled the West. And now, at the beginning of the 21st century, it connects Edgewood with that heritage.

Originally called Venus and then Mountain View, Edgewood sits over the Sandias from the valley that contains Albuquerque, New Mexico’s largest city, 35 miles west. The mountains form a natural barrier that, in recent years, has helped prevent urban sprawl from oozing eastward.

Edgewood also is in the largely empty southwestern corner of Santa Fe County, 50 miles from the courthouse that governed it until last year.

For much of the 20th century, it was an unincorporated settlement populated largely by bean farmers, descendants of settlers who’d come from the likes of Kansas and Nebraska in the early 1900s. But years of drought eventually parched the farms, and Albuquerque drew Easterners seeking moderate climes. Edgewood became an alternative for Albuquerque natives--a place where land was cheap and plentiful, houses were scattered and restrictions were few.

Though the storied Route 66 ran through Edgewood, it wasn’t until I-40 came through in 1965 that a cluster of road-oriented businesses took hold near Exit 187.

Talk of incorporation surfaced in the early 1980s. Edgewood needed tax revenue, which in New Mexico’s unincorporated communities reverts to the state. People wanted their government around the corner, and they wanted to encourage development but also keep a small-town flavor.

Growing frustration with decaying roads finally led some residents to form an incorporation committee in 1997, and a special election was held early last year. Incorporation won, 136-29, and 600 residents began preparing for the day they would officially become the state’s 102nd municipality.

Elections for public officials were held in May, and 110 of 250 eligible voters cast ballots. Keaty, who helped lead the incorporation drive, ran for mayor unopposed. Chemistruck tied with two other candidates at 55 votes and secured his council seat the next day at the Homestead Restaurant in a western-style runoff--a card game. He drew the seven of spades.

That meeting last summer, the night before incorporation kicked in, was quite a spectacle. The crowd, spilling out the doors, recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Sixty-nine people stood and spoke, some angrier than others. Most were arguing about the issue that had stolen center stage--annexation, a plan to fold more land and more people into the newly incorporated area.

Some didn’t want in. Why, they asked, should the town be expanded before it’s even on its feet? How did annexation benefit them? Others shot back with an exhortation: Give new government and new ideas a chance.

Marcia DeLeon thought that a smaller area would be better for Edgewood. Angus Campbell worried about his rising property assessment. Ray Seagers lamented years of “taxation without representation” and lauded the town’s coming together. And though some folks were suspicious of the new government, Tim Oden said the alternative was worse.

“I would rather leave my faith in these gentlemen than the county,” he said.

“Relax a little bit. Take it a little slower,” advised William Bassett, who belongs to an old Edgewood family that vocally opposed majority-rule annexation.

Keaty sipped from a water bottle, taped the proceedings on his microcassette recorder and generally kept his cool.

The new councilmen watched and spoke up occasionally. At times, they seemed quite statesmanlike. Occasionally, though, a look crossed their faces: What, it seemed to say, have we gotten into?

From much of the crowd, though, emanated an excitement that the future was, finally, in local hands.

“Now,” said Keaty, “we have a voice.”

*

The qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. They are the result of habit and long training.

--Thomas Jefferson, 1824

*

“If someone had told me 10 years ago that I’d be running a town, I would have said, ‘You’re out of your gourd, mister,’ ” Keaty says.

It is now mid-September, and the 70-year-old mayor sits in the honeycomb office that is Town Hall, clutching his ever-present water bottle. The phone rings. “Town of Edgewood, this is Larry,” he answers. In red T-shirt and slipper-like loafers, he nonetheless manages to look reasonably mayoral.

Edgewood’s first three months have hardly been uneventful. Visible outside the window behind Keaty are dump trucks and backhoes being used to clear land for Smith’s, a large supermarket complete with bank and pharmacy. It will augment the smaller John Brooks store down the road and allow more people to buy groceries here instead of in Albuquerque.

Gross-receipts taxes from town businesses, which went to the state before for general distribution, are now flowing into Edgewood and giving it money to operate.

Nearly 3,900 more acres have been annexed to the original 589, most of it open land, all of it belonging to people who didn’t object. The town, facing virulent resistance and threats of lawsuits, dropped plans to assimilate reluctant landowners.

The five who govern seem an unlikely bunch, perhaps. But are they? Keaty, a St. Louis native, is a retired systems analyst. Stearley and Chemistruck, born in Nebraska and Albuquerque respectively, work at Sandia National Laboratories. The Texas-born Ring, a retired state police captain, is a woodworker. Calkins, the only one born here, is retired from running a local water company.

Each is affable, well-spoken and solicitous. They’re citizens. They care. In a democracy, that means they’re qualified.

Now their days are filled with the kinds of questions that high school civics students tackle. What brand of democracy is best--direct or representative? How much say do the people have? How much discussion and debate should there be before a decision is made? How fast should Edgewood grow? What services should it offer residents?

In the West, where the idea of rugged and even extreme individualism is prized and mythologized, community has been more important than myth might suggest. Movies and novels tell of people who came West to be themselves and make their own laws. The town is usually mere backdrop to individual drama.

But in a vast, sparsely populated landscape like New Mexico’s, settlements and the human interaction they offer are crucial--as much in the 21st century as in the 19th.

“You could drive for 100 miles and never see anything but an antelope,” says Roger Makin, spokesman for the New Mexico Municipal League, which represents the state’s cities and towns. “So when you do find a community, it becomes very important.”

*

No man has greater confidence than I have in the spirit of the people. . . . Whatever they can, they will.

--Thomas Jefferson, 1814

*

Keaty answers the phone. He sounds weary and professional--less like a neophyte, more like a mayor. “Town of Edgewood,” he says. No more “This is Larry.”

It is a quiet afternoon in late January, six months into Edgewood’s life, and governing has kept Keaty up nights. The Edgewood slogan, “Town Under Construction,” seems quite apt at this moment.

Governing’s burden has set in. Rifts have opened. Council members talk of late-evening calls from complaining residents. Stearley has found himself at odds with Keaty and is running against him for mayor in March, when Keaty, Ring and Calkins are up for reelection. Calkins calls Stearley unprepared and says he doesn’t take his office seriously enough.

Keaty bristles at what he calls “vociferous naysayers”--folks outside the incorporated area who refused to be annexed but are now “trying to control what the town does.” Ring says Stearley overemphasizes public consensus and is reluctant to make tough decisions. And Stearley, who says he enjoys the community’s “renegades,” accuses Keaty of ignoring the people’s will.

“It is a railroad job--on all issues,” Stearley says. “He’s trying to steamroll us.”

And so it goes.

It’s politics, born from people’s differing opinions about the way the world should work. Governing is rarely easy, whether it’s in Washington, Santa Fe or right here behind the Homestead Restaurant. It can wear on a man.

“I said I wasn’t going to make this a profession, and I don’t intend to. Four years from now, if I do my job, I will be so drained that I won’t have the energy to do it anymore,” says Ring, who has been forced to turn down woodworking jobs because of the time commitment that being a councilman requires.

Then there are the issues, especially the vigorous debate about whether to install sewers. Supporters say businesses won’t come to Edgewood without them. Opponents favor sticking with septic tanks; they say sewers make construction too easy and could eventually beget Albuquerquian sprawl.

Nobody doubts the area will grow, and most want it to. But the mantra of controlled growth means different things to different people, and evidence of activity is everywhere.

A new middle school opens this year, and plans are underway for a “town center” of sorts, including a real town hall of brick and mortar and a neighborhood of houses on smaller lots. The town has bought a road grader. Additional annexations from the community’s 6,000-strong populace--voluntary annexations--are imminent. Keaty, trying to attract business, boasts that the town offers building-permit approval in less than two weeks.

The town’s tax base is up to $50 million, Keaty says, and by year’s end 15 new businesses will be open or nearly open. Smith’s, the supermarket, opened late last month with 40 local jobs, and its parking lot is packed--which Stearley predicts will lead to Edgewood’s first traffic light. McDonald’s breaks ground this month near the I-40 ramp. Sonic, another burger chain, is coming, and 7-Eleven is building a store that will sell alcohol under new town ordinances.

Edgewood has adopted the state’s less-stringent sewage treatment laws instead of Santa Fe County’s. That, Stearley says, has paved the way for a new bed-and-breakfast, a Montessori school, a Tastee-Freez and a pediatric clinic.

The lesson: The arcana of municipal government can really shape a place. What’s happened here since July means people not only can find work closer to home but can get at services without driving to the city. It also means a choice is hurtling toward Edgewood: suburban or rural? Or both?

Edgewood turned seven months old last week, held together by chewing gum and verve. If it lasts--and why not?--those five guys will be remembered as founding fathers. Maybe one day they’ll get a statue or a building bearing their names.

“It’s hard for me to think what this place will look like in 50 years,” says Calkins, who’s been around since the bean-farming days. “But I hope it’ll be something where folks can say, ‘These people did pretty well with their town.’ ”

For now, they’re simply crafting their own community--negotiating workaday squabbles, liking and disliking one another, dealing with constituents, hopscotching forward. And doing it themselves: Everything is theirs, even the mistakes.

Big ideas on a small canvas. Laws in action. People deciding, together, how they want life to be. The glorious mess that is American democracy, alive and kicking just off Interstate 40, on a plateau under the vast New Mexico sky.