Over the last few days and weeks, I have had dozens of conversations with people regarding the upcoming municipal elections. The majority of the conversations come down to one basic point: The current administration (mayor/council) simply doesn’t care about either the average city employee or the south side of Santa Fe. The defeated look in people’s eyes suggests that they see no reason to vote. Their eyes and gestures when speaking of their experiences suggest hopelessness and worse, apathy towards voting.

Now, I give everyone who’s running for office credit for the having the guts to run for office. There are a lot of people who suck on candidate and elected officials shirt tails and think of themselves as kingmakers, when they’re really just ants depending upon their queen ant for their sustenance. However, I also see that people want solutions and they want a voice and I hope that candidates understand that, if elected, they work for the community, whether the community voted or not. City employees are notorious for being noisy, but not being able to vote because they don’t live in the city limits. Those that live within Santa Fe city limits often don’t vote out of fear of retaliation. Furthermore, Districts 3 and 4 are historically known for low turnout on election day. It doesn’t take a lot of votes to win a seat in those districts and savvy candidates know that. Money and voter micro-targeting work well in those districts. The strategy is simple: throw a lot of campaign materials towards a reliable voter and he or she will more than likely vote for the loudest candidate. This strategy will win elections, but leave a huge majority of people out of the process. While people may not be versed in campaign strategies, they know that the candidates never even approached them. Many people on the south side can’t even name their councilor. The apathy derives from this selective process.

From my perspective, there are three (3) major issues that will need attention, regardless who wins:

Internal Operations: The severely late audit is an obvious symptom of broken internal operations. Furthermore, the city’s response to this late audit provides ample evidence that the current administration simply doesn’t care. It’s an extension of the lack of response to the $100M projected shortfall that provided the basis of the unlawful furloughs. No one questions the data or processes that create the data and allow it all to just go away if ignored long enough. But bad financial data management prevents ANY initiative from being successful. City Council’s core job is to care for the city’s policies and finances and can’t continue to allow unqualified staff to lead them down a primrose path. This practice has been ongoing for, at least, the last two administrations.

Public Safety: right now, bad technology management is jeopardizing police and fire communications. Favoritism within vendor selection compromises the “prime site” and threatens the ability of communication technology to provide reliable and effective tools for our first responders.

Meth/Fentanyl use within the city’s unhoused population: we can’t look at “homeless” as an homogeneous situation. There are different layers to “homelessness” that require a whole lot of resource. However, the segment of unhoused people who use meth and “blues” (fentanyl pills shipped in from Mexico) is violent and are camping, using those drugs, and then dying in Franklin Miles Park. I used to play baseball there, but now I worry about finding a dead person if I take a “walk in the park.”

Now, there are other issues such as housing and weeds in the medians that also need some focus. But the three I listed create super unsafe conditions within our communities and need immediate attention. It will take the entire community to fix santa fe, but if candidates don’t engage potential voters, the city’s house will continue to crumble and people’s hopelessness and apathy will grow and become edified. Candidates need to wake the eff up.