Letter to the Editor – Native Son Says “Raton Wake Up”

NOTE: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Enchanted Air, Inc. dba KRTN Radio

Raton, Wake Up — You Can’t Afford to Say No
I grew up in Raton. I know what it felt like when this town was alive.
I remember when the Kaiser coal operation meant steady paychecks and full dinner
tables across Colfax County. The York Canyon mine alone employed 670 people — men
and women with high school diplomas earning a good union wage doing skilled,
dangerous, honorable work. Their spending kept Second Street humming. I remember
La Mesa Park in the summers, when horse racing brought families and horsemen rolling
in from Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Kansas every season, filling the motels, the
restaurants, the bars. Raton had a pulse you could feel on a Friday night. It had purpose.
It had momentum. It felt permanent.
Nothing in Raton is permanent.
La Mesa Park closed in 1992. Just like that — a summer economy that had anchored the
town since 1946, gone. Then the coal operations began their long, grinding exit. Kaiser
had already sold off its New Mexico assets in 1989. The remaining mines closed one by
one through the 1990s. And in 2003, the last one — York Canyon — shut down for good
when Ted Turner bought the Vermejo Park ranch and had no intention of ever reopening
it. A century of coal mining in the Raton Basin, finished. The town’s power plant — owned
by Raton Public Service Company, the one that sits abandoned on South Second Street
right now — stopped generating electricity in February 2006 when the coal supply dried
up and no affordable replacement could be found.
That building has been dark for nearly 20 years.
I left Raton in 1979 — not because I had to, but because I was fortunate enough to receive
an appointment to the United States Air Force Academy. It was the opportunity of a
lifetime, and I took it. But I never stopped thinking about this town. Not for a single decade
of my life since.
When I left, Raton was near its peak. The 1980 census counted more than 8,000
people. The mines were still running. La Mesa Park was still drawing crowds.
Second Street was still a street worth walking. Today, Raton has fewer than 6,000
people — and it is still declining. A town that has lost a third of its people in 45
years cannot afford to be in the business of turning opportunity away.
I longed to come back. And a few years ago, I had a real chance. I interviewed for the
principal position at Raton High School. I was considered a serious candidate. I came
with credentials — I had served as Executive Director of a charter school in Colorado with
over 1,100 students and more than 120 staff members. I knew curriculum, I knew
leadership, I knew how to build something. All that was needed was a licensure waiver
from the New Mexico Department of Education — a routine accommodation for qualified
out-of-state educators. The leadership chose not to request it. The door closed.
I was disappointed. I still am. Not for myself — I moved on. But for Raton. Because what
happened in that hiring process is the same pattern that keeps playing out in that
community: a chance to bring something new and capable through the door, and a quiet
decision to pass. A risk not taken. An opportunity left on the table.
That pattern has a cost. And Raton keeps paying it.
What I see when I look at Raton today breaks my heart — and frankly, it makes me
angry.
Those storefronts on Second Street that I walked past as a kid? Empty. A town of fewer
than 6,000 people — down from over 8,000 when I was a kid — with no clothing store,
and a single grocery store that faces no competition and therefore no pressure to keep
prices reasonable. When you have one grocery store serving an entire struggling
community, that store sets the prices and residents simply pay them. That is not a quirk.
That is a slow emergency that has been unfolding for more than thirty years, and too
many people have gotten comfortable calling it normal.
So, when I hear that a Colorado company wants to come to Raton, invest in multiple
phases of development, convert that dead Kmart on South Second Street into something
productive, and — listen to this — put that long-abandoned power plant back to productive
use after nearly two decades of sitting idle, the community’s response is to form a
resistance group, put up yard signs, and pressure city leaders to slam the door?
Raton, Wake Up.
I understand the concerns about data centers. Noise, water use, electricity draw — these
are real questions that deserve real answers. But here is what I know about towns that
keep saying no to everything: they stay exactly where they are. And where Raton is right
now is not a place anyone should be fighting to preserve.
Let’s talk about who is leading this opposition. It is being organized and fronted by people
whose résumés were built largely outside of Raton’s economic struggle — a retired
journalist and former park ranger, a newcomer who arrived just eighteen months ago from
Austin, Texas. These are sincere people, and their concerns deserve a hearing. But
sincerity is not the same as standing. Being a Raton resident and being a long-rooted
stakeholder in this community’s economic survival are two very different things.
That newcomer from Austin is particularly worth considering. She left Austin, she says,
because the “tech bros” moved in, the cost of living skyrocketed, and she could no longer
afford to eat or live there. That’s a painful story, and no one doubts it. But think carefully
about what it means. Someone displaced by economic prosperity in one of America’s
fastest-growing cities is now one of the loudest voices telling Raton — a town that has
lost a third of its population since 1979 — to turn away the first serious economic proposal
to come through the door in a generation. Raton is not Austin. Raton doesn’t have the
luxury of worrying about too much prosperity. Raton has been worrying about too little of
it for decades.
Meanwhile, whose voices are we not hearing loudly enough? The families whose fathers
and grandfathers worked in the York Canyon mine. The business owners who have
watched Second Street go dark storefront by storefront. The young people who left
because there was nothing to stay for, and who might come back if there were. Those
are the stakeholders whose futures hang in the balance here — and right now, a vocal
minority is speaking over them.
The people pushing back on this project are well-meaning. But good intentions don’t pay
property taxes. Good intentions don’t employ a single person. Good intentions don’t fill a
storefront or give a young person a reason to stay — or come back.
And here is the harder truth: a small, vocal minority has too often been the loudest
voice in Raton’s civic life — and that pattern has cost this community dearly.
That is not democracy working well. That is a town being held back by fear of change by
people who, however sincere, do not speak for everyone — even if they are the ones
showing up to meetings and circulating petitions. City Manager Neil Segotta is right when
he says you cannot push someone away just because of what is happening somewhere
else. Mayor Chatterley is right when she says there is a silent majority open to this
conversation. It is time for that majority to get off the sidelines.
And to every Raton resident reading or listening to this: do your own research. Not just
the alarming stories — the full picture. Look at what communities that negotiated smart
data center agreements actually received in return. Look at what the tax base looks like
on a productive industrial facility versus an abandoned Kmart. Look at what it means that
Phase Two of this project would breathe life into a power plant that has sat dark since
2006. Ask what water protections can be written into a development agreement —
because the city controls that utility and no operator can tap it without permission. Ask
what noise ordinances can be required up front. Ask what Raton gets to keep, and what
it doesn’t have to give away.
The feasibility study with Atterix exists precisely for this purpose — to answer those
questions with data, not rumor. City Manager Segotta has been clear: the city will not
commit resources it doesn’t have. The city controls its water and its electrical connections.
That is real leverage, and city leaders should use it to demand explicit terms as a condition
of any future agreement. Let the study finish. Get the ordinances in place. Demand the
guardrails. Then decide — with facts, not fear.
Raton has watched its anchors disappear one by one. The racetrack in 1992. The mines
through the 1990s. The power plant in 2006. Each time, the town absorbed the blow and
kept hoping something new would come along. Well — something new has come along.
It is sitting in a feasibility study right now, and a vocal minority wants to kill it before the
ink is even dry.
I tried to come home. I wanted to invest my experience and my career in the town that
shaped me. That door didn’t open. I understand now that you can love a place and still
be unable to save it from itself. But I haven’t stopped hoping. And I’m not done speaking
up.
The numbers don’t lie. More than 8,000 people called Raton home in 1980. Fewer than
6,000 do today. The trajectory is clear, and it is pointed in the wrong direction. Every year
that passes without new investment, without new employers, without new reasons for
young people to stay, is another year that gap widens. The question Raton has to answer
— right now, while a feasibility study is still on the table — is whether it wants to be the
town that finally said yes, or the town that kept saying no until there was no one left to
ask.
The Kmart has been dark long enough. The power plant has been dark for nearly 20
years. First Street has been fading for three decades.
It is time to turn some lights back on.

Joey Aldaz
Raton High School Class of 1979 | Retired Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Air Force |
President & CEO, Colorado Springs Hispanic Chamber & Education Foundation
President, Aldaz Ventures
Colorado Springs, Colorado