City gets down to basics: Clean and safe
Thousands of volunteers took to the streets, sidewalks, arroyos and riverbeds Saturday to clean up Santa Fe. Keep Santa Fe Beautiful, as it has done for decades, piggybacked with The Great American Cleanup to focus attention on the need to keep the city presentable. The annual event had assistance from the city of Santa Fe. And, for the first time in several years, Santa Fe County participated. The collaboration of the city and county on reducing trash is just one of the many ways the two local governments should be cooperating. May this be one of many continuing partnerships.
As a prelude to the cleanup, the city announced its determination to improve the quality of life last week at a news conference. The Clean and Safe Santa Fe initiative is a 10-point plan for spring and beyond, answering the many calls of residents who are unhappy with their city’s appearance, as well as responding to a big shove from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who grew up in Santa Fe. She has been vocal — actually, critical — about the need for the city to spruce itself up.
Keep Santa Fe Beautiful, the nonprofit program that partners with the city’s Environmental Services Division, unveiled a survey detailing litter around the city. Called a Community Appearance index, the annual assessment is designed to bring “citizen science” to the sometimes subjective discussion of how a particular city looks.
In both 2023 and 2024, six individuals — city staff, volunteers and city councilors — went into the four council districts to score 17 identified sites on a 1-4 metric. A 1 meant minimal or no litter; 2, slightly littered; 3, littered; and 4, extremely littered. From 2023 to 2024, the average went from 1.93 to 2.37.
The 2024 survey expanded the study into areas likely to have greater problems — open spaces, arroyos, busy streets, highways and business properties, meaning it’s unclear if litter is worse or the study is better. With the index in hand, though, cleanup organizers targeted the areas with the most litter. (A helpful hint for the future: Concentrate on N.M. 599. It’s horrific.)
However, picking up litter cannot be an occasional event, though communitywide cleanups raise awareness and build relationships. Now, with the worst areas identified, the city, the county and Keep Santa Fe Beautiful must look for improved strategies to prevent litter. Awareness is one area to highlight: There would be no need to pick up trash if people didn’t toss it. Though wanton littering is pervasive, a blight that reflects on all, a key initiative has to be helping people who are unhoused and living outdoors within the city and county to find ways to dump their trash until they find permanent shelter.
Trash isn’t the only challenge facing Santa Fe. The 10-point plan also discussed graffiti-removal initiatives and the continuing efforts to fill potholes. In many ways, the report was written as if to say, “Hey, we’re working on it.” And though numbers show much is happening to eliminate graffiti and deal with potholes, there’s also this reality: For many, it feels as if for every scrap of graffiti painted over and every pothole filled, two more emerge.
The city must catch up on delayed maintenance, whether filling potholes or refreshing crosswalk and traffic signal paint.
Other safety initiatives include an ordinance restricting individuals from standing or sitting on medians that measure less than 36 inches in width. While many panhandling restrictions have been struck down by the courts, the focus on public safety could make this bulletproof and eliminate a distraction from city streets. That’s not all for medians, either; the city has $500,000 appropriated to design and renovate existing medians to be more attractive, safer — and importantly, sustainable. In the meantime, crews will be cleaning up medians, and litter crews will be out picking up trash regularly. Developing sustainable and attractive designs for medians is a proactive approach to battling weeds and beautifying the city.
Also on the list: Paying greater attention to parks, continuing a crackdown on nuisance properties, cleaning parking garages and replacing parking meters. Ten points of emphasis with lots on the to-do list. It would be easy to lose focus, considering the huge job ahead. Let’s not, and restore the shine to Santa Fe — not just this spring, but year-round.