City tackles conflicting language in charter

Document gives ‘sole’ power to mayor when supermajority of council has same authority

The City Attorney’s Office is trying to sort out conflicting language in the city charter that says Santa Fe’s full-time mayor beginning next March will have “sole authority” to fire the city manager when, in fact, another section of the charter says a City Council supermajority also will have the power to remove the city manager.

discovered the conflicting language while researching a story about the coming shift of the mayor’s position from part-time policymaker and ceremonial figurehead to full-time chief executive officer after next year’s municipal election.

The Independent Salary Commission is preparing to decide Wednesday how much the fulltime mayor should be paid.

When asked about the discrepancy in the city charter, Assistant City Attorney Zachary Shandler said Monday the word “sole” may be a typographical error.

“I am researching whether there is an administrative fix to typographical errors in the charter,” he said in an email.

Santa Fe voters in the 2014 municipal election approved the coming switch to a full-time mayor.

The ballot question, one of nine charter amendments approved that year, asked voters whether the mayor should be given “the authority to suspend and fire” the city manager, as well as the city attorney and city clerk. Another ballot question asked voters whether the city manager could be removed “by a vote of six councilors at a regularly scheduled meeting.”

However, a delineation of the full-time mayor’s powers in the official version of the charter, a copy of which is posted on the city’s website, states that the mayor will have “sole authority” to remove not only the city manager but the city attorney and city clerk.

“The voters voted to allow both methods of removal,” Shandler said regarding the city manager. He added that he was still researching how the word “sole” got inserted into the document defining the structure of Santa Fe’s city government, and that could take a few more days.

“It appears the Charter [Review] Commission wanted the mayor to have the ‘sole’ authority to remove the city manager, but the City Council (and there were a series of council meetings and votes in October and November 2013 on the charter amendments) may have wanted to retain its authority to remove the city manager,” he wrote. “There may have been some City Council amendments to the Charter Commission’s recommended language on this topic.”