San Elizario overwhelmingly votes to incorporate, become city

After a long journey that started in February, San Elizario has decided its fate.

Residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of incorporating – 539 votes in favor to 72 votes against, according to final election results released late Tuesday.

The approval to incorporate will lead to another election next year in which the city would elect a mayor and representatives.

The work to incorporate began in February when the City of Socorro attempted to annex part of San Elizario’s community.

Since that time weekly meetings have been held, and money was raised to hire land surveyors who could help push their project forward.

San Elizario sits within the Extraterritorial Jurisdiction (ETJ) of Socorro. That gives Socorro the opportunity to annex the land. Earlier this year, the bid to annex parts of San Elizario failed because members of the Socorro City Council had no legal standing to make that action.

A judge ruled earlier this year that members of the Socorro city council had illegally extended their terms. It led to elections, which brought in new faces. Recently, that council gave approval to the San Elizario incorporation group to seek incorporation within Socorro’s ETJ.

Members of the San Elizario incorporation efforts group went before El Paso County Commissioners in August to plead their case. They brought maps and documents and successfully made it onto the ballot.

Incorporation would protect San Elizario from future annexation attempts, a chief concern for their initiative’s organizers.

Socorro’s current city government said it would back off annexation plans for now. But with new Socorro city representatives up for election Tuesday as well, that pledge isn’t a sure thing.

Incorporation talks for San Elizario are nothing new. A bid to incorporate failed in 1979. In the mid-1990s, Sanchez said a group pushed to re-incorporate based on an old incorporation of San Elizario. It also failed.