Campbell Ranch, the area within the Town of Edgewood located in Bernalillo and Sandoval counties, has cost the Town vast amounts of money in legal bills, while the proposed development has never located a source of water in 26 years so they can begin building.
As the people of Edgewood contemplate disincorporation, they need to understand how Campbell Ranch distorts and skewers everything that is undertaken by the Town of Edgewood and the citizens it’s supposed to serve. This has never been more evident than it is now as the Governing Body struggles to undo the mess they made when they failed to pay the money owed to Santa Fe County for Fire and EMS services, something the Town had been doing successfully for over twenty years.
In the context of the current Fire Department/EMS crisis, Campbell Ranch figures very prominently because in the recently approved Joint Powers Agreement (JPA), both sides agreed that some future arrangement must be worked out between the Town and Santa Fe County to provide fire and ambulance services to that far off portion of Edgewood.
That future agreement will take the form of either the Town providing these essential services in that area, or the Town paying 100% of the cost for Santa Fe County going outside their county lines to provide the services, or for the Town to arrange to have the services provided by another entity such as Bernalillo County. None of these three options are realistic at this time due to the enormous costs involved and the inability of the Town’s budget to absorb those costs.
In its current form of Commission/Manager government, the Town of Edgewood is proving itself inadequate to the challenge of providing some form of additional fire and ambulance service to Campbell Ranch, an area of town that lies 20 miles northwest of the Edgewood I-40 interchange area. This was made very obvious in a rambling ten minute comment by Commissioner Stephen Murillo at the Commission meeting held on April 28, 2026.
Murillo’s comments can be seen and heard beginning at the 36:10 mark of the meeting video at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTpVRnkuuJs&t=2161s . He was trying to explain his reluctance to accepting the proposed JPA agreement with Santa Fe County that was on the table for discussion. At around the 40:53 mark of the video Murillo makes the following comments; “Probably about Campbell Ranch and things like that. Um, I don’t know how Campbell Ranch really honestly got into the whole conversation. Uh, I know back in July I actually motioned to reject the Planning and Zoning approval of the Campbell Ranch application. And now we’re in the middle of a lawsuit with Campbell Ranch over that”.
At the time that Commissioner Murillo made those remarks he had completed about 21 months as a member of the Governing Body and to see him being so utterly naïve, even cavalier about the effect Campbell Ranch has on all Edgewood matters was frankly terrifying. Later on in his remarks, near the 41:42 mark on the video Murillo tries to adjust his ignorance of Campbell Ranch by saying the following; “I’m not sure. Um the Campbell Ranch, um I’ve been aware of it since I was a youth, still in high school, I remember learning about the Campbell Ranch. Um so I’ve been very familiar with it for the past 15, 18 years of my life. So, um, uh ever since I was a high schooler”.
Murillo wasn’t the only Commissioner sharing his ignorance of the situation that night, but his comments were the most jarring. Ever since the change in form of government back in January of 2022 the Town’s government has seen a tremendous turnover in Commission members, Town Managers and other appointed staff members that guarantees ongoing instability and an inability to grasp long festering problems like Campbell Ranch.
The only practical alternative is for the citizens of Edgewood to exercise their legal duty and vote to disincorporate the Town. Campbell Ranch never did fit into Edgewood, going all the way back to the start in 2001. Back then Campbell hadn’t figured out where they were going to find enough water to serve 6000 homes and two large golf courses. At that time Edgewood did not possess the means to provide any kind of services to their development. Jump ahead 26 years to the present and neither Campbell nor Edgewood have improved their positions one iota.
Under New Mexico law, there is ONLY one way to get rid of an unwanted annexation like Campbell Ranch and that is for the entire Town of Edgewood to vote to disincorporate and send the Campbell Ranch annexation back to Bernalillo and Sandoval Counties where it will then be governed by the residents of those counties who will be most directly affected by the traffic, the congestion, and most importantly, the impacts on water resources up in that North 14 area.