Committee shoots down bid to help arts school
Mayor wants city to look at funding New Mexico School for the Arts; councilors say focus should be on streets, infrastructure
Mayor Javier Gonzales, who is championing a proposed tax on sodas and other sugary beverages to send hundreds of children to preschool, now wants to come to the rescue of the New Mexico School for the Arts.
Gonzales is sponsoring a resolution that would require City Manager Brian Snyder “to explore available sources of funding” to provide $5 million to the public charter school, which says it needs the money to renovate the Sanbusco Market Center into a new campus.
“NMSA is an important educational institution that serves hundreds of Santa Fe kids every year, delivering on high quality art and academics,” the mayor said Monday in a statement.
“With a graduation rate over 90 percent and a positive impact on our downtown economy, we have to look seriously at city resources that are appropriate and match the capital needs of the school,” Gonzales said. “Increasing graduation rates is a key goal of our community.”
But the city Public Works Committee
voted 4-1 Monday against the mayor’s resolution. A possible “compromise substitute” could call on the city to consider waiving or reducing development impact fees for the school’s renovation of the Sanbusco center. The city has done that for other projects of public interest.
City councilors said at the committee meeting that the city has public works projects in need of funding, that the city should address its responsibilities like taking care of roads and streets and that the New Mexico School for the Arts is capable of raising the money elsewhere.
“Nobody is against the School for the Arts. Nobody is against kids,” said Councilor Ron Trujillo, who is running for mayor and could face Gonzales in the municipal election next year. “But at the same time, too, we have stuff that we as a city have to be taking care of. Roads, streets, infrastructure, buildings. … We need to start taking care of the stuff here in the city before we start going out and taking care of other people’s business.”
Councilor Peter Ives, who chairs the Public Works Committee, tried unsuccessfully to persuade his colleagues to support the mayor’s proposal, saying it called for examination of possible funding sources for the New Mexico School for the Arts but didn’t commit the city to providing money.
Councilor Mike Harris said the city’s capital improvement project plan shows $353 million in needs over five years but only $285 million in funding.
“Unless you can just slim it to a discussion in the future about impact fees, to me it’s better to say no now,” Harris said of possible funding for the New Mexico School for the Arts.
Harris noted that the Santa Fe school board turned down a request by the arts school to expand a proposed bond issue by $15 million to help pay for the construction project.
Other city councilors said they had many unanswered questions about the mayor’s proposal, including whether a $5 million contribution to the school would violate the state constitution’s provision against donations to private entities and whether the school would pay the city back.
Councilor Joseph Maestas said members of the board of the New Mexico School for the Arts are very capable of raising the money.
“I look at the recent acquisition of Kaune Elementary by the United Way of Santa Fe County, and they really went to work and they raised all the money to purchase that building outright, and then some to renovate the building,” he said.
Maestas also said he assumed the city wasn’t in a position to offer any city money. “We haven’t even had our budget hearings,” he said. The budget, he added, should be the focus.
“We’re zigging and zagging all over the place, and it’s creating more and more fear out there in the community, and I think they’re losing confidence in our decisionmaking,” he said. “There’s a broader narrative, I think, that this creates, and I’m tired of zigging and zagging. I’m an engineer. I like straight lines, and I like straight lines that are going in the right direction. I think this is kind of erratic in my book.”
The resolution is scheduled to be considered by the city Finance Committee April 17 and by the full City Council April 26.
“This really is a resolution that we hope to get passed so that we can all together sit at the table and explore the potential of how this could be done,” said Cece Derringer, director of the Art Institute at the New Mexico School for the Arts.
“This is a relatively soft resolution,” Derringer added. “We are not asking for $5 million. We are asking for the opportunity to explore the potential of this within what is available from the city.”
Derringer said construction costs total $15 million and that the school has raised $10 million.
“What we’re hoping is that we can secure $5 million from public sources so that we can proceed on the timely schedule that we have to get the school built in time for the kids to get in there in August 2018,” she said.
Gonzales’ efforts to help the school complete its move into the Santa Fe Railyard comes as voters consider whether to approve a proposed excise tax on sugary beverages in a May 2 municipal election to fund early childhood education programs.
The mayor’s proposal also comes shortly after the sale of the Santa Fe University of Art and Design to an Asian company fell apart, jeopardizing the university’s future and raising worries about how a closing would affect the city’s economy.
The city still owes about $25 million on a loan to purchase the school, which it leases to the operator of the Santa Fe University of Art and Design.