Council deciding which trail to fund
Options on northwest, southwest sides caught up in issue of political equity
What should Santa Fe do with $279,000 left over from a 2008 city bond issue?
The debate over how to use the funds, an unbudgeted cash balance from a parks and trails bond, has divided interested parties and developed into a conversation about geographic and political equity. The City Council is scheduled to make a final decision next week.
Option A: Connect the 25-mile La Tierra Trails system in the city’s northwest quadrant with the Frank S. Ortiz Dog Park, a popular north-side playspace for residents and their pups. Restrooms, shade structures, picnic tables and drinking fountains would be installed at the trailhead.
Option B: The Tierra Contenta Trail on the far southwest side needs a 0.4-mile connector segment to link the growing mixed-income neighborhood with South Meadows Road, where a pair of public schools sit, and eventually to Camino Entrada, the Santa Fe Place mall and points beyond.
There are those, including some members of the city Bicycle Trails Advisory Committee, who insist the funds stay in the northwest quadrant, where the money was allocated in the bond issue approved by voters but never spent.
A connector from the well-traveled dog park to the 1,500-acre La Tierra Trails area would be a boon for hikers, bikers and equestrians, they say — not to mention how improved trailhead
facilities and access to the La Tierra area would boost marketing efforts that have sought to cast Santa Fe as a destination for outdoor activities.
“It’s a regional project, not just District 1,” said Gretchen Grogan, a former member of the Bicycle Trails Advisory Committee whose term recently expired, referring to the north-side City Council district.
Brent Bonwell, president of the mountain-biking Santa Fe Fat Tire Society, said the La Tierra area is valuable to all city residents “regardless of district.”
“This seems to have got caught up in a political back-and-forth about where city capital improvement funds are spent, in which districts,” Bonwell said. “But [La Tierra Trails] is a regional asset, a recreational asset. It’s an economic driver.”
There are others who say the funds should be shifted to the more “shovelready” south-side trail project, which city staff have said could be completed in a year with the $279,000 allocation. Some argue this is an area where kids from the master-planned Tierra Contenta area might benefit from a nonmotorized route to school rather than a possible trek on the traffic-heavy surrounding roads.
Tomás Rivera, executive director of the economic-justice group Chainbreaker Collective who serves on the trails advisory committee, said that while the Tierra Contenta connection was not a particularly long stretch of trail, the decision to invest in the south side would speak volumes.
“There is going to be something tangible that will come of it,” he said. “Some trail connections will come. But the message has constantly been: ‘We’re going to keep putting money in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods for infrastructure, for trails, for whatever,’ when
we could be spending it here. That is a value judgment.”
He added, “It’s not a vote against the northwest quadrant. Every project in [the city’s list of underfunded trails] has merit. But it’s a matter of looking at this through an equity framework.”
Leroy Pacheco, a city engineer, said, “Really, what you have are two very noble and worthy uses for scarce resources.”
But the Tierra Contenta option, Pacheco said, “also serves a social equity component. Typically, young students would be using and benefiting from the trails system.”
The city still has to acquire two rightof-way easements for the south-side project, Pacheco said.
Although a decade has elapsed since the 2008 bond issue, the discussion about how to budget the cash balance has taken on a sense of urgency this summer.
Unspent bond money can indeed “be reallocated” between projects, city spokesman Matt Ross said. “It does have to be related to the original purpose — parks, trails, open space.”
City councilors who have weighed in largely have favored the south-side reallocation idea, which cleared two city committees unanimously.
The councilors who represent the
southwest-side District 3 that includes Tierra Contenta, Roman “Tiger” Abeyta and Chris Rivera, were firmly on board.
Rivera said he was glad for any move that would help southwest-side residents access other parts of the city. “Right now, they don’t have that,” he said. “Right now, it’s a challenge to take your bike from Tierra Contenta and ride it downtown, and this would make it much easier.”
Councilor Carol Romero-Wirth, meanwhile, said she has heard numerous complaints about the possibility the council would disregard the trails advisory committee’s recommendation to keep the funds where they are.
“I don’t think the people of [the trails advisory committee] are necessarily residents of the northwest quadrant,” said Romero-Wirth, who represents the southeast-side District 2. “It’s not that they can’t understand other trail needs. It’s that this was allocated for the northwest quadrant and should stay with the northwest quadrant.”
Councilor Mike Harris, who represents the south-central District 4, said: “The point about the committee not being listened to — it happens, quite frankly.”
Bonwell, of the mountain-biking group, acknowledged the sense that the “writing’s on the wall” with regard to the council vote. He and others maintain the trails advisory group’s stance in favor of the northwest quadrant project had been misrepresented before the City Council committees as lacking consensus.
Still, fellow District 4 Councilor JoAnne Vigil Coppler, who now chairs the trails advisory committee, said recently the reallocation is an easy call.
“It seemed like it was in the best interest of the city,” she said.