Rio Rancho Mayoral Candidates Weigh In on Growth and Infrastructure

Six certified mayoral candidates in Rio Rancho answered whether the city is growing too fast and proposed competing fixes for infrastructure as the open-seat contest heads toward the March 3, 2026 election. The field includes Sandoval County Commissioner Michael Meek, City Councilor Paul Wymer, and residents Corrine Rios, Zach Darden, Alexandria Piland, and Aleitress Owens-Smith. Rio Rancho has more than 112,000 residents and early voting begins Feb. 3.

Alexandria Piland argued the city lacks a cohesive development plan and said growth must fund infrastructure replacement. “I want to take a deeper dive into the city’s plan for development and growth, and I don’t think that it’s a cohesive plan, so I want to figure out what’s going on there, but I want the growth to pay for itself, and that means that we can take the revenues that we’re currently getting and putting them toward repairing our infrastructure, but really it doesn’t need to be repaired. A lot of it needs to be replaced,” Piland said. Piland also told voters that “growth must pay for growth,” and that developers should meet clear upfront standards on roads, water capacity, drainage, and utilities before new housing is approved; she pledged water-rate transparency, expanded workforce and middle-income housing, and prioritizing staffing and equipment for first responders.

Corrine Rios tied faster approvals and lack of council action to rushed growth and raised billing and transparency complaints. “The reason why it’s growing so fast is because councilors are not taking ownership and not sponsoring ordinances or resolutions. And if that, if that happened, we could slow down the process a little bit so that we can allow for water and traffic studies to be done,” Rios said. Rios, a former state House candidate who filed a federal lawsuit in July 2025 challenging city practices, has called for refunds or credits after the city allegedly overcharged residents through improper prorating of water bills and wants regular citizen inquiry sessions and implementation of a 2022 voter-approved charter amendment to modernize ordinance tracking.

Michael Meek, the Sandoval County Commissioner in the race, pointed to a legacy plumbing issue when discussing infrastructure. “Rio Rancho had a problem with polybutylene being used for plumbing in the city, and those were recalled, and there was a chance for people to replace it, but that is still in existence. So I’m not sure that that has to do with this number of people in the community, as it does with the quality of what was installed initially,” Meek said, framing at least part of Rio Rancho’s infrastructure problems as tied to prior construction quality rather than solely to growth rates.

Zach Darden framed the tradeoff between economic growth and modern infrastructure techniques. “When you have a city that’s developing that fast, using old infrastructure techniques, you’re going to have issues. So, I think that that’s one thing that needs to be addressed, is that, look, we want the city to grow. We want economics to grow. We want to keep this revenue in a city, but it needs to be growth that’s not going to hurt us in the long run,” Darden said.

Paul Wymer and Aleitress Owens-Smith appear on the certified candidate roster but did not have direct statements in the candidate reply excerpts available during this reporting. With Mayor Gregg Hull running for governor and the mayor’s seat open, voters will choose who handles decisions on water capacity, drainage, developer obligations, and replacing aging infrastructure for a city of more than 112,000 residents when ballots are cast on March 3, 2026.