Like me, many residents of Santa Fe consider the city a good place to live. Reasons include the weather, culture, and outdoor activities. Sadly, Santa Fe’s quality of life is not enhanced by its city government. In fact, average citizens have likely observed the decline in basic city services while the city has engrossed itself in “social justice” issues that are better tackled, if at all, by the state or federal government. The city government doesn’t lack resources − it lacks leadership.
While Santa Fe hasn’t yet gone as far as San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Chicago and other large cities, it has drifted in that direction. In my opinion, the city government, has become borderline dysfunctional. Voters should no longer tolerate the status quo.
While many readers will characterize the current city government as progressive, I will depart from political rhetoric by referring to it as irresponsible to its citizens and sometimes wacky. It seems almost cartoonish what the city government occasionally does if it wasn’t so tragic that its actions have hurt the average citizen.
While I don’t have enough space to list all the city’s irresponsible and wacky behavior, here are several:
- fining retail owners for allowing the homeless to steal their shopping carts (a proposal by one City Council member that mercifully didn’t go anywhere);
- resolutions on the Israel-Hamas War and against-bullying;
- a flawed policy on the homeless;
- refusal to act on the Obelisk, even after considerable money was spent on myriad meetings and a consultant report, other than to leave an ugly box on the Plaza indefinitely;
- refusal to consider a tax cut despite a $56 million budget surplus;
- delayed audits;
- resolution on climate change (whatever the city does on reducing carbon emissions has absolutely no effect on climate change);
- creation of the Office of Equity and Inclusion (Isn’t Santa Fe politically correct enough?);
- negligence in taking care of basic services like outdoor swimming pools, parks, and streets as well as inoperable public drinking fountains (my pet peeve);
- insufficient number of toilets in public areas (another pet peeve);
- failure to act on the loud vehicle muffler and other noise problems in spite of widespread complaints (Two council members didn’t want to impose large fines on young offenders − how considerate!);
- rising property crime;
- caving in to the city union (Two city councilors a while back remarked that their major job is to look after the city workers; isn’t their job, instead, to assure taxpayers that they receive the most benefits from city services given their tax obligations to the city? It is next to impossible to get elected to a city position without the support of the city union.).
What the city government needs most is diversity of ideas. We hear the same group think on issues instead of serious debate that expresses different perspectives. It is no surprise that we see the shortage of political pressure to provide adequate basic city services and overemphasis of “social justice” issues that predictably call for superfluous governmental intervention.
The combination of deteriorating city services and one-sided, social-justice moralizing by public officials breeds suspicion by the average citizen. The average citizen, it must be reminded, works in the city, pays taxes, raises its family and participates in community activities. But it seems that those in political control rather cater to what they consider “victims” arriving from the outside.
The city government needs to do the job that taxpayers expect it to do: keep the streets safe, maintain the streets and parks, open the swimming pools, and provide reliable emergency services. A functional municipal government might seem boring, but it is essential to the well-being of the general citizenry.
The main message here is that the city needs to revert back to its core function of delivering good government and better services. Will the city government do that? Realistically, what city officials aspire most is political power, which too often translates into actions that are beneficial to special interests (e.g., “social justice” activists) but injurious to the average citizen.
In the end, voters have no one else to blame for bad government but themselves.
Kenneth W. Costello is a regulatory economist/independent consultant residing in Santa Fe.