ACLU NM to Santa Fe Mayor: Median Bill Faces “Uphill Battle” Legally

ACLU: City proposal faces “uphill battle”

A proposed ordinance from Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber seeking to ban people from sitting or standing on medians less than 36 inches wide will face an uphill legal battle, according to a letter the ACLU of New Mexico sent to the mayor yesterday. The mayor and City Council will hear the first public comments on the bill at tonight’s City Council meeting. Webber previously told SFR the bill is intended to address pedestrian safety and is not aimed at unhoused people. Nonetheless, the ACLU says in its letter: “The proposed ordinance does not address the root causes of homelessness and panhandling. Instead, it is a sweeping abridgement of the free speech rights of the people of Santa Fe who wish or need to engage in constitutionally protected speech in the municipality’s medians—locations that have historically been used for free speech activities. If passed, the law will be vulnerable to a legal challenge. We encourage the City of Santa Fe…to decline to pass this legislation into law to avoid harm to community members and the significant financial burden of litigation.” The ACLU’s letter also outlines the legal precedents for ordinances such as the one proposed by Webber, noting the City of Santa Fe has clearly modeled its bill on an upheld ruling from the Tenth Circuit related to a Sandy City, Utah bill (City Attorney Erin K. McSherry previously confirmed to SFR this is the bill referenced in a city memo on the ordinance). “Such an attempt is misguided,” the ACLU writes, noting, “Since Evans, two anti-panhandling ordinances (also characterized as pedestrian safety measures despite clearly being targeted at panhandlers) have been struck down by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals—one in Albuquerque and another in Oklahoma City…It is not a foregone conclusion that a median restriction modeled after a law that was upheld in Sandy City will be similarly upheld in Santa Fe.”

Spring blitz continues

Santa Fe Police say during the second week of its so-called “spring blitz” crackdown on driving scofflaws, officers issued 159 citations, including 43 to people driving without registration; 26 to those driving without proof of insurance ;13 each for speeding and cell phone use; 19 for not obeying stop signs; eight for driving without driver’s licenses; and two each for reckless driving and speeding. The “blitz” continues through May 3. SFPD also teamed up with the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office for a DWI checkpoint on Rodeo Road on April 20 that stopped 1,211 vehicles, and resulted in traffic congestion for a period of time (we saw it). In addition to issuing a handful of citations and administering a few field sobriety tests, SFPD says one driver received seven citations. He was driving on a revoked license and had “an arrest warrant for aggravated DWI, no insurance, no driver’s license, careless driving, open container, concealing identity, and driving while license revoked (Not DWI related). From what officers described, the driver was not impaired. However, multiple sealed alcoholic beverages were located in a cooler in the vehicle.”

Senate Republicans release special session proposals

Increased penalties for selling or distributing fentanyl; a ban on sanctuary cities; more funds for border security and surveillance. These are a few of the proposals New Mexico state senate Republicans released yesterday in advance of a recently announced July special legislative session. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham says the session will be focused on public safety, and told SFR in a recent interview she intends to back bills addressing behavioral health, pedestrian safety and criminal sentencing, among other issues. Senate Republican Leader state Sen. Greg Baca of Belen and Sen. Crystal Brantley of Elephant Butte say in a news release their bills take aim at fentanyl and border security. “The governor and Democratic leaders have yet to reach any consensus on a public safety package for the Special Session,” Baca says in a statement. “In the meantime, we have an unprecedented public safety crisis unfolding at the southern border—one that demands our immediate attention and action. If the governor is serious about fighting crime, let’s start by securing our state from the criminals ravaging our border communities with fatal drugs and deadly violence.” Another proposal would add a first degree murder charge for distribution of fentanyl resulting in death, while one would prohibit the state and local governments from adopting policies that prohibit or reduce cooperation with federal immigration, thus eliminating so-called sanctuary cities, the release says. “I have personally witnessed the impacts of the Biden border crisis on my local communities,” Brantley says in a statement. “The unchecked flow of illegal immigration has left my constituents exposed to violent crime, human trafficking, drug smuggling and damage to their properties.” The session will begin July 18.

State settles wage case

The state Department of Workforce Solutions yesterday announced a $100,000 settlement with 505 Burgers Farmington LLC for violations of the state’s wage laws. According to a DWS news release, former 505 Burgers employees Francisco and Sandra Olivas filed claims in 2017 alleging they had worked a combined 1,680 straight-time, with close to 1,762 overtime hours, but had only been paid “a small portion of hourly wages received.” The state says it investigated and validated the Olivas’ claims; a bench trial in March 2022 in McKinley County resulted in $116,534 awarded in unpaid wages, interest and other damages. The final settlement announced yesterday follows an appeal and an upheld judgement in January by the state Court of Appeals. “We strive to provide education and training to businesses to ensure that employees are paid fairly and to prevent situations like the one Mr. and Mrs. Olivas endured,” Cabinet Secretary Sarita Nair says in a statement. “But when prevention does not work, our capable team will pursue these cases for workers, no matter how long it takes.” DWS says it collected more than $689,000 in Fiscal Year 2023 for New Mexicans who claimed underpayment or nonpayment of wages.

Listen up

Best-selling author and Santa Fe resident Douglas Preston’s latest book Extinction published yesterday and is described as “a page-turning thriller in the Michael Crichton mode that explores the possible and unintended dangers of the very real efforts to resurrect the woolly mammoth and other long-extinct animals.” He’ll be reading and signing at 6 pm tonight at Collected Works Bookstore (202 Galisteo St.). But that’s not all: Preston also co-edited—with Margaret Atwood no less—the pandemic-inspired collaborative novel Fourteen Days and, rumor has it, may read from that as well (Preston spoke to SFR last year about the novel’s genesis). The event will be both live and available via Zoom; register here for the link.

Rooms with views

Hyperallergic magazine includes Placitas artist Maja Ruznic in a recent installment of its interview series A View from the Easel. Born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ruznic paints “diluted, out-of-focus figures and landscapes that explore nostalgia and childhood trauma and are influenced in part by war and the refugee experience,” according to her website. On an average day, she is in her studio by about 11 am, she tells Hyperallergic, and stays there until sunset: “I try to exercise before I get to the studio to get my body alert and mind clear. I usually listen to podcasts on Jungian psychology and begin the day with some smaller works before moving on to painting. I clean my studio before every session and maintain an obsessive approach to my process—certain colors can’t touch one another and the consistency of paint has to be just right.” She has three stations in her studio, which she describes as a larger space than she had when she and her husband lived in California. “Moving to New Mexico allowed me to have more time to make bigger, more ambitious works, and progress as a painter and a full-time artist. I also found that my color palette became more toned-down once I moved from a crowded city to the desert.”

Speaking of New Mexico artists, Rose B. Simpson (Santa Clara Pueblo) receives mention in the New York Times’ guide to museums to visit this year, for her show Rose B. Simpson: Journeys of Clay at Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida (through Sept. 1). Somewhat less compelling, the Upgraded Points website ranks Santa Fe’s top 10 best museums with a slightly loose definition of museum, starting with the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Foundation’s Art Vault and also including the Prescott Gallery & Sculpture Garden on Siler Park Lane (along with the usual museum suspects).

Golden years

While Santa Fe does not appear on The Travel’s list of New Mexico’s best affordable small towns in which to retire (being neither small nor affordable), the seven locales that do punch above their weight…mostly. Ruidoso, #7, for instance, is green and located in close proximity to the Lincoln National Forest and Grindstone Lake. Better yet, its median house value comes in at $323,500 (the median sale price for homes across Santa Fe county and city, meanwhile, was approximately $630,000 for the first quarter of this year). The average home in Truth or Consequences (#3), meanwhile, goes for $144,500 and hot springs abound throughout the town. Hagerman, on the Texas border, is #1 on the list, thanks to the $94,000 average home price and “the presence of medical centers.” If that’s not enough of a draw, the story notes, the town is close enough to “big, beautiful towns in New Mexico” that Hagerman residents can “can easily head out and get the services that are missing in this town.”

Santa Fe may not make the “most affordable place to retire” list, but it does fall, somehow or another, on TimeOut’s “12 best underrated summer travel destinations in the US” roundup.Tourism Santa Fe reports we have literally millions of tourists each year and summer is our peak tourist season, but perhaps one can be both flooded with tourists and underrated simultaneously. TimeOut contributor Eric Barton writes: “Downtown Santa Fe has enough antique shops and charming cafes to keep a gaggle of slow-moving couples busy. But after climbing the steep streets to the Cross of the Martyrs to watch the sun crawl its way over the adobe houses, my wife and I found the natural landscape to be the real draw.” From there, Barton and his wife decided “the shoppers can have downtown” and spend the rest of their trip exploring the New Mexico wilderness.

The heat is on

The National Weather Service forecasts a sunny day, with a high temperature near 78 degrees and southeast wind 5 to 15 mph becoming southwest later this morning. A red flag warning goes into effect tomorrow, when NWS forecasts winds as high as 45 mph and “patchy blowing dust” throughout the day.

Thanks for reading! The Word is a terrible shopper and dislikes the activity, but is strangely mesmerized reading about Graydon Carter’s new store (while suspecting she would feel as this critic does were she to visit).