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Negotiations between the city and Forest City Covington, the company behind the 13,000-acre Mesa del Sol development, have slowed to a crawl over the issue of how much affordable housing will go into the project.

The city has held at least 10 meetings over the last four and a half months, by the reckoning of City Councilor Isaac Benton, on issues surrounding Mesa del Sol's development agreement, a formal set of conditions that gives the developer the right to start building.

Transportation and schools have been discussed, but housing dominates the talks, Benton said.

The agreement is part of forming a tax increment development district. Thanks to that district, which the council signed off on in December, Mesa del Sol will get to tap 67 percent of future gross receipts tax revenue in the development to build roads, curbs and other infrastructure.

In exchange for that, Benton and fellow Councilor Debbie O'Malley are keen to see as much affordable housing in the development as possible - housing aimed at the development's future work force.

"Just because you are a grocery store worker, you should not have to commute to your job at Mesa del Sol. You should have the opportunity of living there," Benton said.

Despite all those meetings, the two sides have yet to reach an agreement.

"They've been really tough," O'Malley said. "They can do the right thing. They're a multibillion dollar corporation. What we're asking for is really modest."

As for the actual negotiations, "It's been very frustrating," she said. "I just feel like I'm going to blow a gasket."

The fight over affordable housing comes as Mesa del Sol enters negotiations with the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority over who will pay for acquiring water rights to serve the project, a bill estimated at $48 million.

Both the authority and the developer assert that the other is responsible, citing the same 1993 agreement. The two sides will soon meet to exchange legal interpretations, Mesa del Sol Chief Operating Officer Mike Daly said.

What the city is asking for is complicated, but in general, Benton said, he would like to see something like 20 percent to 25 percent of the houses in the development be within reach of people who make up to 120 percent of median income.

Median household income was $43,000 in 2004 in Bernalillo County, according to the U.S. Census, and 120 percent of that would be $51,600.

Reached Friday afternoon, Daly refused to talk about percentages, saying only that he wanted to work with the city to create "a program that's meaningful and economically sustainable."

He wouldn't tackle Benton's proposal, either, but he did say that "certain requests are not economically sustainable."

Daly, Benton and O'Malley confirmed that, at one point in the negotiations, Mesa del Sol even proposed raising the percentage of tax revenue collected in the special district as a way of paying for more affordable housing.

"We did not require it," Daly said. "We suggested it as part of our discussion."

For every affordable house it develops, Mesa del Sol's bottom line shrinks. But to Louis Kolker, who develops affordable homes as executive director of the Greater Albuquerque Housing Partnership, the city has a right to expect it anyway.

"As part of giving away all this money and all these subsidies, you need to get back affordable housing," he said. "I think 20 (percent) is a very reasonable number."

Four hundred fifty communities around the country have passed strict rules that force developers to build a certain percentage of affordable houses, he said. Called "inclusionary zoning," the percentages vary, but 20 percent is not unheard of - and those developments are done without the public money that flows in from tax increment districts.

"People meet the requirement," Kolker said. "They don't discuss it. They don't argue about it. They meet it."