The evening of May 21, 2025 will surely count as one of the liveliest meetings of the Sunland Park City Council. Carrying a 50-person capacity, the council chamber was not only initially overflowing with people but scores more sat or stood outside where speakers were placed so the meeting could be heard by all.
“We don’t usually have this many people at a (council) meeting,” said Mayor Javier Perea. Intervening, the local fire marshal declared the room was overcapacity, and officials made sure at least 15 people left the room before the meeting could proceed.
Numerous items were on the Council’s May 21 agenda, but the meeting was crackling with drama over one polemical issue: the application by the Independent Nation company for yet another cannabis dispensary in a New Mexico border city that presently ranks Numero Dos in cannabis sales statewide, trailing only behind big city Albuquerque, which has a population more than 30 times of Sunland Park and adjacent Santa Teresa.
Bordering sprawling El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, Sunland Park even beats out much bigger Las Cruces, Rio Rancho and Santa Fe, according to statistics from New Mexico’s Cannabis Reporting Online Portal.
As of April 2025, the portal reports that 37 dispensaries operated in Sunland Park. Recreational and medicinal cannabis sales in the city raked in $129, 496, 405.92 between April 2022 and April 2025. During the same time period, cannabis sales in Santa Teresa brought in $2,204,358.97. In April 2025, four dispensaries were reported doing business in Santa Teresa. But if anyone thinks that Sunland Park and Santa Teresa are populated by super ravenous pot heads, just drive around the dispensaries and see if any New Mexico license plates are spotted. The neighbors next door, it seems, are very fond of Mary Jane.
Judging from the May 21 City Council meeting turnout, a growing community sentiment exists about dispensaries that enough is enough.
Many wore t-shirts and hoisted signs against Independent Nation’s bid. Especially from outdoors, cheers, jeers, hoots and claps punctuated the meeting.
Besides Mayor Perea, City Councilors Mili Sandoval, Daisy Lira, Alberto Jaramillo, Maria Burciaga and Susan Gomez were present for the debates and deliberations. Councilor Jesus Soto missed out on the action.
The Meeting Unfolds
Prior to considering Independent Nation’s application, the meeting was peppered with comments on water, sidewalks, speeders, and the regional landfill that stands like a bald mesa peering over the southern New Mexico city. One woman publicly scolded a stunned City Council member for missing council meetings, and for allegedly trying to extort her.
Introducing herself as a resident who has lived in Sunland Park even before it was a city (Sunland Park officially became a city in 1984), Maria Leyva urged authorities “to be careful who you’re letting into our city.” Leyva argued for code enforcement, animal control and more police officers.
“We want a better city..,” she said, garnering applause.
A frequent participant in public meetings, property owner and longtime resident Jose Saldana opposed the continuation of the controversial decades-old landfill, adding that water services, absent sidewalks, and a needed hospital were among priority issues. “We’re losing our focus on water. We need water,” Saldana pleaded.
Inevitably, new public comment was directed at the Camino Real Regional Utility Authority (CRRUA), which is jointly overseen by the City of Sunland Park and Doña Ana County and services both Sunland Park and Santa Teresa.
Currently, CRRUA is embroiled in legal sparring with the New Mexico Environment Department as well as private attorneys representing residents subjected to poor quality or toxic water, and confronting ongoing protests by citizens who demand management accountability and drinkable water.
Calling for broader oversight of CRRUA, Daisy Maldonado, director of the Empowerment Congress of Doña Ana County, a citizens’ organization which is very active on the CRRUA issue, criticized an ad hoc CRRUA citizens’ advisory committee which was recently assembled by officials as lacking sufficient citizen representation. Maldonado said it was “inappropriate” for such a committee to be formed minus “citizen input.”
Vicki Johnston, who identified herself as an 8-year resident of Santa Teresa, told the City Council that she and her husband had gotten the run-around from CRRUA staff for a surprise water bill dated two years back which was based on estimates rather than accurate measurements, because of broken equipment.
“Now they want to charge us $1,300 for back water. Now regardless if we used it or not, the thing is that’s bad business,” Johnston later told this reporter. “They just need to make this right. Now start fresh, read our meter very month, and that’s the water we pay for. We don’t pay for estimations…Who does that?”
Specters of Swiggers, Strippers, Stoners and Speeders
A large portion of the May 21 meeting was devoted to Independent Nation’s application for a cannabis dispensary as part of the company’s ambitious plan for a new entertainment and community complex right across the Texas state line off Sunland Park Drive and Emory Drive. Going into the council session, Sunland Park’s planning and zoning folks had given go-ahead to the dispensary but final approval was awaiting the elected City Council.
Before voting on the dispensary application, councilors got an earful of pros and cons.
Earlier reports that a strip club would accompany the project reverberated at the meeting. Addressing the City Council, Damian Estrada called combining a dispensary, strip club and liquor sales in one neat package a “recipe for disaster.” Estrada said there are already so many dispensaries that some now call McNutt Road “the green mile.”
Representing the Sunland Park Cannabis Coalition, attorney Mitch Moss said the planned location was too close to prohibitionist Texas and could result in a “war with the City of El Paso.”
Moss and others also cited potential, added traffic congestion to the cross-border Sunland Park Drive-Doniphan Road corridor where traffic piles up at peak hours. Independent Nation’s planned site shares the same zone as the Sunland Park Racetrack and Casino in New Mexico, while a Walmart, hotels, assorted businesses and a freight rail line contribute to the density in Texas. And nearby, off Sunland Park Drive in New Mexico, stands a cluster of cannabis dispensaries, many of them members of the Coalition.
Listing 15 member businesses, the Sunland Park Cannabis Coalition’s website proclaims the organization is “committed to fighting for the rights of local cannabis business owners against large, out-of-state, for-profit corporations that seek to monopolize the market and push out small business.
The Sunland Park cannabis industry should benefit our community-not corporate interests that take profits out of our city while giving nothing back…”
In her comments, a woman who identified herself as a member of the cannabis industry echoed the local-is-better camp. “I’m all for cannabis expanding but it should be mom and pops and not people from out of state,” she said.
Speaking in support of the applicants, David Bingham described the company as having local ownership. Bingham said he didn’t think the City Council would go against the (state) law by denying the proposed dispensary.
Mayor Perea asked him if a strip club was in the works.
“No, it’s not, Bingham said.
For his part, Sunland Park city official Hector Rangel emphasized that staff recommended approval of the dispensary application- with conditions.
The bottom line? The dispensary complies with state law, Rangel said. Amplifying his point was an image projected on a large screen that displayed New Mexico Statute 26-2-c-12, the law which gives municipalities little wiggle room in denying a dispensary application if all the legal ducks are in order.
Still, after Mayor Perea called the City Council vote, the elected representatives roundly rejected Independent Nation’s bid.
Jubilant cheers rose from the crowd outside the chamber. Councilor Sandoval justified her vote as rooted in “conversations of people I represent.” Similarly, Councilor Burciaga, deferred to the popular will. “I’ve had a lot of letters about it,” she said. “I represent the community.” Mayor Perea added that Independent Nation will receive a determination letter from staff explaining the Council decision.
Speaking to reporters outside following the meeting, Independent Nation principal Amit Biljani slammed “13 cannabis companies” for mounting a “smear campaign,” one he said was rife with disinformation and inaccuracies.
“I’m not like a billionaire. I’m not like Daddy Warbucks. I’m just a guy who’s literally invested his life savings into building something he’s passionate about,” Biljani said.
“Truthfully, we are in complete legal compliance, which I believe, makes us the first dispensary in a city’s history to be denied. I don’t know what the basis is.”
As for an appeal or legal action, Biljani assumed a wait-and-see posture. Contending that the City Council was misinformed, Biljani vowed to forge ahead with the larger Independent Nation project.
“…(Independent Nation) is gonna be one of the largest economic drivers to come to Sunland Park and the region in a very long time,” he said, providing “hundreds of jobs” as well as new opportunities for entertainment, dining and community events.
Asked by this reporter if a new cannabis dispensary was even a viable enterprise during a time when pot prices in New Mexico are plummeting to 1970s’ levels, with inflation factored in, the tall entrepreneur waxed philosophical about the ups and downs of capitalist economic cycles and trends.
“How can you tell (a restaurateur) not to open another restaurant. Would you tell Starbucks, ‘I can see four Starbucks from the same corner, don’t open a Starbucks. Would you tell Chevron please don’t open a gas station across a street from a Chevron…”
Consumers, he insisted, would benefit from a new dispensary. “In a state where inflation is driving costs of everything up on the average person, I would think more people would welcome prices moving down and competition,” Biljani said.
CRRUA and Water Take Center Stage at the Santa Teresa Jetport
Despite positive statements of improvements emanating from CRRUA offices, frustrations over the water utility’s problems prompted the Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners, in a surprise May 13 vote, to terminate its joint agreement with the City of Sunland Park for managing CRRUA. At stake is the present and future of the water utility-and its estimated 20,000 customers.
Now, CRRUA is slated for a historic restructuring in which assets could be divvyed up and even reconfigured as a public-private partnership, according to Assistant Doña Ana County Manager Stephen Lopez. “It’s already under discussion right now with the City of Sunland Park, and we’ll be getting details put together over the next few weeks,” Lopez said immediately after a May 23 press conference held at the Santa Teresa jetport and attended by journalists from New Mexico and the El Paso-Juárez borderland.
On hand were Doña Ana County Manager Scott Andrews, Assistant Doña Ana County Manager Stephen Lopez, Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners Chair Christopher Schaljo-Hernandez and County Commissioner Gloria Gameros, who represents the district that includes the CRRUA service area.
In explaining the termination of the CRRUA Joint Powers Agreement, Schaljo-Hernandez said there wasn’t one thing that constituted “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” but discussions among County officials and elected representatives led to the conclusion that termination was “the only path forward” to improve water services.
In answer to this reporter’s question about a recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency inspection report that flagged serious infrastructure conditions and budget shortfalls at CRRUA, Schalgo-Hernandez said he was aware of the report but that it didn’t influence the termination decision.
In the transition from the old CRRUA to whatever succeeds it, officials sketched out several initiatives the County is pursuing, including the possibility of establishing bottled filling stations so CRRUA customers can receive water they are confident is safe to consume; the opening of a bilingual English-Spanish call center where customers can get efficient service; better information about the water utility on the County website and in social media; and new financial support from New Mexico state funds.
Lopez said he expects the County to seek state funding after an engineering assessment of CRRUA’s infrastructure is completed. For this task, Doña Ana County has contracted a private firm, HDR Engineering, to perform a detailed study. Based in Omaha, Nebraska, HDR has a significant global presence with more than 13,000 employees in 15 nations. The privately owned company works in the architectural, environmental, construction and engineering fields, boasting experience with wastewater systems, dams and data centers, among other projects.
Although the County is terminating its role in CRRUA, the management transformation process will take time, perhaps up to four years per the existing legal agreement with Sunland Park, though County officials are eager to have a new utility system in place much sooner. Meantime, water users will remain connected to CRRUA and its staff. County officials also said they will keep the public in the loop through upcoming community meetings to be announced.
Interviewed at the conclusion of the press conference, Commissioner Gloria Gameros, who also sits on CRRUA’s board of directors, was asked about recent demands by the activist Empowerment Congress, including its call for a majority citizen member advisory council and a switchback to evening board meetings more conducive to public participation in lieu of the current board schedule of weekday mornings.
“We’d actually be having their voice in our ear there,” Gameros said, expressing support for a majority citizen member advisory committee. “I think it would be a great asset, and I think it would open the communication and transparency between CRRUA and the residents.”
Regarding board meeting times, Gameros added that she’d detected a consensus among other CRRUA board members at the last meeting to return to evenings, and that she hopes to have the evening change back finalized at the next meeting.
Originally anticipated as a joint briefing offered by officials from both Doña Ana County government and the City of Sunland Park, the Santa Teresa press conference was not attended by Sunland Park officials. Nor did representatives from CRRUA participate.
Instead, City officials released a written statement the same day, pledging to work “transparently and collaboratively with all partners involved to ensure that the interests of our residents are protected throughout this transition. CRRUA will continue to operate and provide services as the transition process unfolds.”
Moreover, “The City of Sunland Park is actively evaluating all options to support a long-term solution that ensures reliable infrastructure, public accountability, and safe water for every household and business in our community. We will share additional updates as they become available.”
Stay tuned.
I will never understand the passionate commitment to pot that some people have. It’s literally the hill they would choose to die on.
I think the guy was looking for an anchor tenant for his new strip mall. He said he had invested his life savings. He doesn’t sound like much of a stoner to me.
I’m surprised no one brought up the new national research that shows that marijuana just isn’t a good drug on almost any level. I grew up in an era when I watched it destroy peoples’ lives and potential. In addition, it served as a gateway drug to countless people I knew back in California. The reasoning was that if marijuana is good, then let’s move on to better things, like cocaine, acid, meth, heroin, and pills. I wish this wasn’t the case, but it was. I’ve always loved Sunland Park, and I’ve hiked its desert for the past 30 years. It’s now a place I’m not thrilled with anymore.