Mayoral candidate defends the indefensible
Nobody can write revisionist history like a politician pursuing high office. Kate Noble, a candidate for mayor of Santa Fe, has one of the more simplistic accounts of the way city executives handled a bond issue to improve parks and trails.
At a recent debate that I helped moderate, I asked Noble and the other four candidates for mayor what they would do to restore trust in a city government that misspent $2 million of the bond issue.
Noble, formerly a city employee, downplayed the audit findings. She said the public works director once showed her a spreadsheet that said more than 300 projects were completed through the bond issue when only about 270 were planned.
Hearing her claim, those following the debate might have been led to believe taxpayers got more than their money’s worth. The opposite happened. Noble’s anecdotal account ignores the massive public record on how the bond issue was administered or, more precisely, how it was botched.
To begin with, the state auditor said this: “… Approximately $2 million in bond expenditures authorized by city officials were improperly used for maintenance or other operating expenses.”
The auditor went on to say that “the city should engage its own legal counsel to determine whether the bond’s tax-exempt status may have been put at risk and how best to mitigate the concerns that its errors in spending may raise.”
Approved by voters in 2008, the $30.3 million bond issue was twisted into something never authorized. It became a means for City Hall to keep paying city employees during a recession.
The auditor also said: “The city did not maintain accurate and sufficiently detailed records of timekeeping for wages paid from the bonds.”
I asked Noble if she knew how many promised bond projects were not completed. She did not.
As a candidate for the city’s highest office, she should have checked the public record. It is disturbing but required reading for anyone who wants a leadership position in Santa Fe.
The Parks and Open Spaces Advisory Commission did a most comprehensive overview of the bond issue.
It found that upgrades in at least 12 parks or recreation areas were not completed in accordance with the city’s plan. Neglected places included the Fort Marcy complex and Patrick Smith and Atalaya parks.
In six other parks, improvements were made in addition to or outside the scope of the authorized work.
In still another seven parks, the scope of projects was changed and the budget increased significantly. This occurred without the City Council’s knowledge.
City Hall staff canceled projects in five more parks without approval of the City Council.
Noble has criticized those who shed light on the bond issue. In a Facebook posting last spring, she discussed this in the context of a League of Women Voters report that was critical of the city economic development department that Noble once ran.
“… I was told,” Noble wrote, “that this was akin to the unsubstantiated witch hunt that occurred around the parks bond. I believe people need to be held responsible, especially by public officials, for inaccurate negativity and unnecessary tearing down of the public sector.”
Countless sincere residents and reporters delved into the bond issue. None was on a witch hunt.
Moreover, many people who criticized Santa Fe’s handling of the bond issue were public officials. The state auditor was Democrat Tim Keller, now mayor of Albuquerque.
Noble’s defense of the indefensible bond issue becomes understandable if you consider who is managing her campaign for mayor.
That would be David Coss. He was mayor when the bond issue occurred, but he was out of office by the time it became a public embarrassment. His administration falsely claimed in 2012 that “everything in every park was done exactly to the master plan and all improvements to be done were complete and within budget.” Now his protégé wants to be mayor. Good candidates study history and learn from it. The rest will spin what happened for political gain.