Webber reflects on transformative trials of 2020
As critics, residents affected by turmoil this year wait to see if mayor will seek reelection, he lauds city’s response to crisis
Alan Webber still isn’t saying whether he intends to run for a second term as mayor.
But he does have plenty of thoughts on what the past year — one of the nation’s most turbulent — has meant to Santa Fe.
In another year, a remake of city government and some movement on Santa Fe’s chronic affordable housing shortage would provide an automatic impetus for a reelection run. But in a 12-month period beset by pandemic-caused budget issues, tensions with the city’s unions and discord over the city’s monuments, this was a time unlike any other.
Webber said he sees 2020 as an inflection point, akin to what World War II or the Great Depression were to previous generations.
And the pandemic, he added, has transformed everything — including life in Santa Fe and city government along with it.
“I think it’s obvious but it bears saying: 2020 is the year of COVID. It is the thing that has altered everything, changed the lives of everybody in Santa Fe — changed
our small businesses, affected city government,” he said. “And I think it’s been a year where we’ve been tested, and I think as a community we’ve passed the test with flying colors.”
In a recent, wide-ranging interview, Webber lauded the city’s achievements in handling the unprecedented health crisis and its devastating economic fallout; working to expand affordable housing in a city where many struggle to find it; and “modernizing” city government to make it more efficient and offer more services digitally during the pandemic.
“City government addressed it with real strength and sense of purpose, and so did the community,” Webber said of the pandemic. “We really bent the curve during the summer, we extended help to the community, we first took care of city employees by very rapidly deciding with them who was essential … how to make it as safe as possible for our employees to do their jobs, and we also quickly extended support and help to the city residents and to our small businesses.”
But in dealing with the pandemic and a variety of other issues that would’ve seemed inconceivable only a year ago, Webber also has taken withering criticism during his third year in office. He faced bitter pushback from the city’s unions, consistent opposition from at least one member of the City Council who could become a campaign rival, and angry critiques from people in the community who hammered him for too much action — or not enough — as he dealt with controversy over the city’s monuments and the October toppling of the Plaza obelisk.
“While there have been demonstrations in cities across the country around statues and monuments, the toppling of the obelisk was something that I never thought we’d see in Santa Fe,” Webber said.
Webber acknowledged the opposition he now faces, though he said he is meeting regularly with union representatives and sees a way forward for the city to come together in the wake of the obelisk’s destruction.
Webber said he sees a proposal before the City Council — one that would serve as a focal point for community discussion about Santa Fe’s culture and history — as the way forward.
“The purpose of this conversation is to promote greater understanding based on our shared values,” he said. “I’m optimistic that we can accept the past and use this process to create a better future for everyone in our community.”
But it may not be enough to assuage his critics after a difficult summer and fall.
Santa Fe’s largest union — Local 3999 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — in August held a vote of ”no confidence” in Webber. In September, a board found the city violated labor law during negotiations with the union that resulted in hundreds of employee furloughs as Santa Fe eyed a $100 million budget shortfall in the upcoming fiscal year because of the financial havoc of the pandemic.
“Historically, the union has voted similar no confidence motions against other mayors,” Webber said. “Following the union’s vote, we’ve started meeting regularly; the AFSCME state director suggested a ‘reset,’ and we’ve been working toward that.”
Later in the fall, Santa Fe’s oldest Hispanic heritage group, Union Protectíva de Santa Fé, even explored whether there was a way to recall Webber after the mayor’s decision to remove a statue of Spanish conquistador Don Diego de Vargas from Cathedral Park.
Whether those controversies will be enough to convince Webber to bypass a second term — or fuel a challenge if he decides to run — is uncertain. But the next mayoral election, scheduled for November 2021 after a change in state law altered the timing of local elections, is moving ever closer.
The campaign will be of particular interest to the city’s business community, which has struggled in the pandemic, said Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce President Bridget Dixon.
Dixon had favorable words for the mayor, calling him “extremely collaborative” during the pandemic, a time when many small businesses and the tourism and hospitality industries saw the ground fall out beneath their feet. But Dixon also had high praise for City Councilor JoAnne Vigil Coppler, a frequent critic of the mayor who is seen by many as a potential rival.
“I really, really like JoAnne Coppler quite a bit. I would definitely not be disappointed,” Dixon said of a potential Vigil Coppler mayoral bid. “I do feel like the mayor has done a good job, but if you’re talking about a good contender for him, JoAnne would be it.”
Like Webber, Vigil Coppler has not said whether she will run and declined an interview on the subject. In an email, she wrote: “All I can say right now is that I am seriously considering the race.”
For his part, Webber said the bad news of 2020 was leavened by the city’s quick reaction to the COVID-19 crisis. The city quickly adopted a local ordinance to require face coverings, extended free Wi-Fi services to the city’s south side and also took decisive action to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus within the homeless community.
The city also received $17.5 million in federal pandemic response aid that has helped it get through the past few months of the crisis.
“We were fortunate that prior to COVID striking, we had put into place a technology platform so we could very quickly stand up an e [electronic] government,” Webber said.
One of Webber’s biggest victories in office was passing a sweeping reorganization plan in September. The shift, which was opposed by three city councilors, including Vigil Coppler, calls for the creation of three new departments that will oversee existing city government sectors. The city’s largest labor union also opposed the plan.
The mayor also touted the work to create a housing strategy meant to “address that too many people can’t afford to live in Santa Fe,” noting his administration’s efforts to add $1.3 million to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and 3,000 new housing units that are “in the pipeline.”
Webber pointed to the fact that Santa Fe has more than doubled the number of housing units since 2017, including 760 the city defines as “affordable,” according to documents provided by his office.
But more than bureaucratic shu±ing, online services and an affordable housing plan, 2020 in Santa Fe — as in the rest of the country — will be remembered as the year life was perhaps forever altered by the coronavirus pandemic.
For now, Webber said Santa Fe’s 2021 rests on variables that start elsewhere. There are hopes the most recent $900 million pandemic stimulus package recently approved by Congress will ameliorate further economic damage to the city’s residents, hopes the COVID vaccines will be available to the general public sooner than later, hopes the medication will do its job and end the health crisis so lives and businesses can return to normal.
“I hope that as the vaccinations take effect we’ll begin to see a rebound in our tourism industries take place, and that by the summer our traditional festivals, markets, opera — those activities will come back, and we’ll see the economy return, if not completely at least get better,” Webber said. “Economists nationally are [saying] it’ll take four or so years before we get back to where we were in February before COVID manifested itself.
“I don’t think we’ll see a return to the boom period of February, but I think we’ll see what has been described as a Nike swoosh recovery.”