Proposal to prohibit cars draws backlash
Former city councilor claims in petition that ‘true locals’ are being exiled from Plaza
While more than four-dozen San Francisco Street merchants embrace the idea of a car-free zone, many others in Santa Fe want to continue cruising the street as they have done for decades.
Former City Councilor Ron Trujillo posted a petition Wednesday at change. org opposed to closing San Francisco Street to vehicular traffic, and by midafternoon Thursday more than 1,300 people have signed.
“Certain things in Santa Fe strike a nerve with certain people,” Trujillo told
The New Mexican. “The Plaza means so much to so many people in Santa Fe. This is how the locals care and feel about the Plaza. It is our Plaza.”
Trujillo’s petition is 527 words long.
“It irks me to see more and more changes that IMO [in my opinion] are finding more and more ways for TRUE LOCALS to be exiled and not wanted in our own plaza,” Trujillo wrote in his petition. “Anyone who knows me knows I do not like when people who are not from here come into our city and try to make it look and act like the city they were born and raised in.”
Trujillo also posted his petition language on the Santa Fe Bulletin Board Facebook page a couple of times. A Wednesday story in The New Mexican also was posted on Facebook; each of the postings generating more than 100 comments against the street closure and many favoring it.
The petition was in response to roughly 50 merchants on San Francisco Street submitting petitions to the city earlier in the week to close the street through Labor Day to vehicular traffic from just east of the Sandoval Municipal Garage to Old Santa Fe Trail. That would close off all four sides of the Plaza to cars.
City officials have met twice with the merchants and were willing to consider a street closure if enough merchants were supportive of the move.
The City Council introduced a resolution Wednesday in support of closing
West San Francisco Street and establishing the framework to close other streets “for a certain period during 2020.”
The resolution will go to the Quality of Life Committee on June 17, the Public Works and Utilities Committee on June 22 and to the City Council on June 24 for consideration.
Trujillo, who served on the council for 12 years and unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2018, isn’t stopping with the petition.
“I’m writing a letter to the council to have a public hearing,” he said.
Merchants also want to close Don Gaspar
Avenue and Galisteo Street between Water and San Francisco streets in hopes of allowing people to walk freely and have restaurant dining and music performances.
Their plan would allow deliveries to be made before 9 a.m., said Joe De Bella, who wrote the merchant petition.
Andrea Fisher, owner of Andrea Fisher Fine Pottery on San Francisco Street, is one merchant who opposes the street closure.
“My business is doomed if the street is closed,” Fisher said.
“I purchase directly from 300 New Mexico artists. They bring their merchandise to the loading zone on Don Gaspar. Many of my partners are elderly ladies. They come all day, every day. The usual number is five to 10 potters a day.”