S.F. voters to decide on moving election

New Mexico law lets city consolidate municipal contests in November, but council wanted public input

March or November, that is the question.

Santa Fe city residents will decide Nov. 6 whether to move regular municipal elections — the contests for mayor, City Council seats and the municipal judgeship — from springtime in evennumbered years to fall in odd-numbered years.

The ballot question asks voters whether they would like to amend the city charter, the equivalent of Santa Fe’s constitution.

A vote for the amendments would remove statutory language that schedules elections in March, allowing the city to opt in to the Local Election Act, a new state law that will facilitate consolidation of varying election schedules in jurisdictions across New Mexico.

A vote against would keep city elections where they are.

Cities are empowered under the new law to unilaterally make the shift in election dates, according to state Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto, who sponsored the state legislation. But councilors opted to put the question before city voters.

Proponents argue the shift in election dates will enhance participation. Under the Local Election Act, other local elections such as those for the school board and community college board would occur on the same November date as municipal elections.

“If you really believe you want a democratic process, to give the voters their say, then doing [elections] all at one time and having it on a cycle where

everyone has the same electoral season is much more likely to produce engagement, voter turnout, campaigns that speak to the real issues,” Mayor Alan Webber said this summer when the shift was proposed.

The shift also would shorten the terms of current officeholders. The next city election would take place in November 2019 as opposed to March 2020.

The city councilors whose terms will come up in that cycle — Councilors Renee Villarreal, Peter Ives, Chris Rivera and Mike Harris — would serve through early March 2020 under the current format. If voters approve the charter amendment, those terms will instead expire Jan. 1, 2020, a shortening of roughly two months.

The same would happen in 2022 when Mayor Alan Webber and Councilors Signe Lindell, Carol Romero-Wirth, Roman “Tiger” Abeyta and JoAnne Vigil Coppler will see their terms expire. Elections currently scheduled for March 2022 would instead be held November 2021.

The shift in election dates would shift management of city elections to the purview of the Santa Fe County clerk, an elected position, rather than the city clerk, who is appointed by the mayor.

Funding for regional bus service could be secured

Voters in four Northern New Mexico counties will decide Nov. 6 whether to sustain the North Central Regional Transit District, which operates the largely free blue bus service across a 10,000-squaremile service area including Santa Fe, Los Alamos, Española and even farther afield.

The majority of the transit district’s revenue is derived from a one-eighth-cent gross receipts tax increment in the four counties — Los Alamos, Rio Arriba, Santa Fe and Taos.

Voters will be asked whether to repeal a 2024 “sunset” provision of the tax and reauthorize the tax. It is not a tax increase; the tax already exists within the rate structure of the four counties.

If the tax were to expire, transit district officials have said, the bus service would end, and the district would fold.

Approval of the reauthorization will require cumulative majority support from voters across the four-county area.

In a May poll authorized by the transit district, 81 percent of respondents said they either strongly or somewhat supported the extension of the tax beyond its sunset date. Only 9 percent said they opposed it.