Breif history of myself and the water issue, Mark Guerin

A Native of New Mexico, born and raised in Albuquerque I have been fortunate to see our city's grow and evolve. As a child we would spend hot summer days having endless water fights with the garden hose, diving in leaky above ground pools, remember Slip and Slides? The city of Albuquerque required all commercial buildings to have the medians planted with turf, My employer in 1987 built a commercial strip center at Osuna and San Mateo, I was involved in the design and building of this strip mall, all medians were required to have turf to make the city greener. Today to be green means to conserve, recycle and not pollute. I moved to Rio Rancho first in 1989, back to Albuquerque in 1992 to be closer to my work, then back to Rio Rancho in 2001. My partner and I purchased Harris Jewelers in 1998, a three hundred square foot store formally located at the Guerrero Village. Approximately two years later we purchased property at 909 36th Place and in spring 2003 broke ground on our small strip center. Our store is now thirty six hundred square feet, we lease to High Dessert Bicycles and Hair Networkx. One of the requirements to build on these lots is a stipulation that we can not let more than .05% of the historical water to run off the property. So my education begun on the importance of retention ponds, water recharging our precious aquifer, and the reason our neighbors in Corrales have flooding issues, as well as all the junk that flowes down concrete lined Arroyos to pollute the Rio Grand. My landscaping is low water use and I think looks very nice. We are next to the Veterans Memorial park and the Xeric garden at Ester Boon library, I enjoy this gem of a park to eat my lunch and relieve my stress by walking among all the beautiful low water use plants. Xeriscape does not mean gray rock and no plant life, it means water for our future. My goal is not to eliminate turf, but to give our residents of Stonehenge and Las Casas DE Suenos a choice. As we are mandated by our association to have 40% of our entire lot grass. To change this requirement we need 75% of the entire association to vote in favor of changing the guidelines. This includes Estates One and Estates Two, Both of these areas have a choice of Xeriscape or whatever they like. I will keep natural grass in my back yard to enjoy with my dogs although they also enjoy the synthetic turf I also have. Hopefully this year I will also have rain gutters installed to better fill my rain barrels.