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TONA Community Meeting and Meet and Greet on May 2nd
There is going to be a community meeting and meet and greet on May 2nd at the former residence of Jean Louis Bourgeois. It will start at 2pm. There will be a vote on the TONA bylaws. There is one open question about the association bylaws, whether TONA will have a $10 per year annual dues or finance itself through donations and other forms of fundraising. There will be food and drink and music. It is intended to be a neighborhood party along with the community meeting. The Bourgeois house is located on the hill up from where flag road…
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Remembering Mike Mabry
Tres Orejas lost one of its more notable long time residents this week, Mike Mabry. He passed away last Wednesday after a long and interesting life. He left behind his wife Peg, his daughter Elizabeth, four sons, Michael Lee, Steven, David and Mat, and many grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his eldest daughter Pearl. He and his family first moved to Tres Orejas in 1981 where they built a house in the then sparsely inhabited and remote community. He was known for his friendliness and defiant attitude towards authority in all of its forms, great and small. He…
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Solare Wins Quiet Title Suit
A judgment was filed today in favor of Arianna Solare’s adverse possession claim on part of the large parcel of abandoned Great Southwestern land in unit 3 of Carson Estates. The claims of fraud in the color of title were disregarded in the judgment among other details of the ruling. The part of the original 65 acre claim that was claimed in the trial was granted in its entirety which is several blocks of Tres Orejas. No attorney’s fees were granted to the plaintiff. I just received the judgment and am not going to go into great detail but, basically,…
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Bourgeois Estate Donates all of Jean Louis Bourgeois’s Property in Tres Orejas to Veterans Off Grid
At Wednesday’s TONA meeting, Ryan Timmerman from Veteran’s Off Grid showed up and we were informed that all of Jean Louis Bourgeois’s property in Tres Orejas had been donated to their organization. We had a friendly talk with them. This property includes two houses and two large parcels of undeveloped land that Jean Louis purchased to keep as open space for our community. I don’t know all the details of the transaction but Ryan did say that they were contacted by representatives of Jean Louis’ estate and didn’t seek this out, it was offered to them. I don’t know their…
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TONA is not a Homeowners Association
It’s been over 2 months since the Solare quiet title suit trial and as of yet no verdict has been delivered. I’ll report it as soon as it happens. In the meantime, I’m going to respond to a something posted on the Tres Orejas Bulletin board, a cardboard sign saying: NO HOA. I know how rumors spread in our community and things get distorted but one thing I can state with no hesitation is that TONA is not a homeowners association. It is a neighborhood and community association. It has a clause in its charter that specifically forbids it from…
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Solare on Trial
The Arianna Solare/Golden River quiet trial suit finally went to trial yesterday. I was physically present for the first part of the trial in the morning and viewed the rest of it on the Google Meets Taos district court feed. The trial is to establish if she’s has acquired title through adverse possession and, if so, how many of the 60 lots she’s claiming she’s actually used and has a valid claim to. The trial started with a description of the property in question and used both a Google earth image and subdivision plot map to describe and map out…
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Land Grab Attempt Goes to Trial Next Week
The Golden River/Arianna Solare case goes to trial next week on November 5th and 6th at 9am in Taos District Court presided over by judge Jeffry Shannon. It will be a bench trial decided by the judge, not a jury trial. At the most recent hearing this past Monday October 27th, motions a motion for a summery judgment in favor of Solare was denied. A motion to strike some tax records presented as evidence presented by Solare was also denied. From what was said by the judge at that hearing, it looks like what Solare actually occupied and possessed among…
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Update on the Quiet Title Suit and Neighborhood Association
This is an overdue update on both the upcoming bench trial in the Solare/Golden River quiet title suit in unit 3 and the Tres Orejas Neighborhood Association meetings we’ve held recently. Last week, the Tres Orejas Neighborhood filed a friends of the court brief in the suit. I authored the text and used information about Solare’s real estate transactions that I obtained from the Taos County Clerk’s office in 2004 in part of it. There was a pretrial conference yesterday and the friends of the court brief was brought up. I knew it was, legally, a shot in the dark…
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History of the First Land Grab Attempt in 2004
This is the history of the first attempt of Arianna Solare to claim a 50 acre parcel of Great Southwestern Land in 2004. It is referenced from the actual court documents along with coverage by the Taos News and a few other documents. I am going to follow the suit brief by brief and hearing by hearing. As I was there at the time and an active participant in the opposition, I am going to mix in what I experienced on the ground in the community as the court case progressed. Background Information. In the late 1990s, the Taos…
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Monday Update: Solare’s Motion Denied and 3rd TONA Meeting
There was a hearing this morning on the “Motion to Reconsider the Court’s Order Denying Motion to Reopen Case and Set Aside Default Judgment”. This is the second attempt by Ariana Solare’s two attorneys to reopen the 2004 case. They attempted once again to argue that the intervenors in 2004 had no legal standing to intervene because they had no competing claim to the property. It was asserted by attorney Carol Neelley that there was in fact a hearing to determine standing in 2004. I was present at that hearing and, as I remember, the quote from the judge was…