Full-time city leader better have thick skin
No matter what you think of the five candidates for mayor of Santa Fe, there is reason for optimism. Whoever wins the election Tuesday will not be able to continue the inane system by which elected officials escape accountability.
Santa Fe has been operating with a full-time city manager, a part-time mayor and eight parttime city councilors. Textbooks refer to this as the council-manager form of government.
It should be called Government by Excuse and Alibi. Or the Pass-the-Buck Method of Municipal Manipulation.
Those serving in the current system can deflect any question or complaint.
Why was part of a $30.3 million bond issue for parks improvements misspent on salaries for city workers?
Sorry, a duly elected official might say, “I’m just a part-time mayor. Let me put you in touch with the City Manager’s Office. You see, the city manager runs our day-to-day operations.”
Pose that same question to the city manager, and you are likely to get a different version of the same runaround.
“With all due respect,” the manager might say, “I wasn’t in office when promised parks projects were scrapped in order to keep people on the public payroll. Plus, I work at the direction of the mayor and the City Council. I’m just the piano player for nine different conductors.”
This mayoral election should end the politics of evasion.
The next mayor will be a full-time city employee with direct supervisory authority over the city manager, city attorney and city clerk.
So when City Manager Brian Snyder places two senior employees on paid leave because of the stench of fraud allegations that Snyder will not address in any meaningful way, the mayor no longer will be able to fade into the background. Neither will Snyder.
Santa Fe’s change to a full-time mayor should make its government less Byzantine. The old routine about a furtive city manager calling the shots no longer will be a way to shirk responsibility.
Of course, there is no guarantee that Santa Fe will be any better under a full-time mayor than it is today.
City Hall’s effectiveness will depend on the quality of the winning candidate.
If the person elected as mayor lacks talent, commitment or vision, there will be more fiascoes like the parks bond in which City Hall functioned as an employment center for the connected instead of a professional government serving taxpayers.
The winning candidate can set the right tone by starting with an act of humility.
Whoever is elected mayor should return $36,000 in salary to the city’s general fund. This would not exactly be largess by a politician.
Voters in 2014 approved a charter amendment for the full-time mayor that listed the position at an annual salary of $74,000. But then the sitting mayor, Javier Gonzales, appointed a special committee to revise the salary.
That group raised the next mayor’s pay to $110,000. Giving the mayor a 48 percent raise before full-time status had even begun was typical of City Hall and its apologists.
Those on the inside always take care of themselves first.
The public would be better served by letting the new system take hold with the original salary that was advertised with the ballot proposal for a full-time mayor.
Whoever wins the election can obtain a lot of goodwill by returning that $36,000 raise.
City residents ought to first have a chance to see how the mayor performs. How much the full-time mayor should be paid can always be revisited.
Regardless of the salary, a sea change is underway at almost 7,200 feet.
City Hall, a place accustomed to operating with excuses, will not be the same after Tuesday.
The next mayor will need a sense of humor. And a thick skin.