Remolding role of Santa Fe’s mayor
Officials set to evaluate government structure, power of city’s chief executive
When Alan Webber was elected mayor nearly four years ago, he took the reins not only of City Hall but a new form of governance — one that featured a full-time, “strong” mayor model and included expanded powers his predecessors never enjoyed.
But nearly a decade after the last city charter review commission pushed forward those changes, and with another panel likely to be appointed later in 2022, officials are taking stock of local government’s structure — assessing what has worked, what hasn’t and what’s still needed.
“We are at the beginning of this,” said City Councilor Carol Romero-Wirth, who also served on the charter review commission. “This is the start of that conversation, but there will be more conversations about whether it is working and what structure would make it better.”
The city’s charter review commission is supposed to meet every 10 years to discuss potential changes to the document. A decade ago, it forwarded Charter Amendment 9, which shifted Santa Fe from a city manager/city council system to a blueprint that placed far more power in the hands of the city’s elected chief executive. The charter change also made the mayor a voting member of what is now called the Governing Body.
Before that, the mayor voted only in the case of a tie.
The changes gave Santa Fe’s mayor the ability to set a legislative and policy agenda but also provided the office a makeover — from a largely ceremonial, part-time role to one that offered hiring and firing power over three critical city employees: the city manager, city attorney and city clerk.
The tentative feeling-out process
for the mayor, council and agencies within city government have lingered long after the shift took effect in 2018. Growing pains were evident during Webber’s first term.
Though Webber acknowledges some uncertainties remain, he said it’s clear a full-time mayor was something Santa Fe sorely needed.
“It’s hard for me, after sitting four years in the mayor’s office, that Santa Fe, as a capital city, has not had a full-time mayor’s office until now,” he said.
While Romero-Wirth said she felt the changes were “critical” in moving the city forward, she said the debate on whether the most recent charter amendments went far enough or need to be scaled back likely will be crucial when a new commission is formed. A key issue, she added, is the presence of a mayor as a voting member of the Governing Body.
“Right now we don’t have an executive that is completely an executive or a council that is completely a council,” Romero-Wirth said. “We have this hybrid. I think that is the conversation a new charter commission is going to have to have. Do we like this hybrid? Is it working for us?”
Councilor Michael Garcia agreed a separation of powers was worth exploring.
“If you look at a lot of other governments, the only legislative power [the executive] has, is having that tiebreaker of a vote,” Garcia said. “I think that is something we need to look into as we explore revising the authorities delegated to the mayor’s office.”
Patricio Serna, who chaired the review commission that approved the changes to the charter, said a system similar to Albuquerque’s — in which the mayor does not sit on the council but possesses veto power — was discussed but ultimately tabled. He noted the Santa Fe City Council remains vital to policy discussions and said the primary reason for making the changes was the need to instill “continuity” and “leadership” through a stronger chief executive.
“The City Council still has a lot of power,” Serna said. “I think it is working out fine. We will still have to give it more time, of course.”
Webber calls the current structure a blended governmental blueprint rather than a strong mayor system.
“There is a full-time mayor, but it is still a mayor/city manager form of government,” he said. “While the public thinks the mayor is where the bucks stops in charter terms, it often stops with the city manager. That is an interesting subtlety.”
The question of potential changes a charter review commission may propose comes against the backdrop of moves made during Webber’s first term. Since taking office, Webber has made a variety of structural alterations to how government works on a day-to-day basis, rearranging the city’s various agencies under three new super departments. The City Council approved the changes in September 2020.
Under the reorganization, police, fire, emergency management and community services were placed under the Community Health and Safety Department. Planning and land use, arts and culture, affordable housing, economic development, tourism and recreation were moved under a new umbrella titled the Community Development Department. And constituent and council services were moved into the City Clerk’s Office to create a Community Engagement Department.
“It was a gradually developing conversation about the right way to bring more effective groupings together for better delivery of services to the city,” Webber said, describing the thinking behind the changes.
Councilor Chris Rivera, elected to the council in 2012, said he hasn’t really noticed a difference between the way government ran prior to Webber’s reorganization effort and its current operation, though he said, “I think it is still kind of early” to make a final determination.
“For me, not a whole lot of real changes,” he said.
Former Councilor JoAnne Vigil Coppler was one of the loudest opponents of the move to reorganize the departments, citing timing issues around the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic.
Defeated by Webber last November in the mayor race, Vigil Coppler said it was hard to gauge the effects of Webber’s reorganization effort because there was “nothing to measure it against.”
“When you do a reorganization, you study it, you set up, I guess focus groups, you see what is working, what is not working,” she said. “If you combine various departments, you have to ask, does this make sense?”
Webber said the city has already started seeing “significant benefits” from the reorganization plan, noting how different city offices came together to help provide services at the height of the pandemic.
“I think change is always hard,” Webber said. “I think reorganizing any organization, any institution, is going to be difficult.”