Once again, SFR is renewing its rite of passage for city candidates: Pop Quiz. The idea is to get beyond campaign rhetoric and get a sense of how knowledgeable the people who want to represent you at City Hall are about city facts. We've provided the questions and answers below, as well as explained any gray areas that came up during questioning of the candidates.
The ground rules are that candidates have to rely on their own knowledge during the brief quiz; no internet searches, no whispers to a friend, no flipping through the massive city code book we know everyone carries. All the candidates agreed. By way of trivia, all three candidates for District 4 are related in some way to City Clerk Yolanda Vigil. So they couldn't call her, either.
QUESTIONS
- How much money does the city pay each year on debt service for its purchase of the former College of Santa Fe? ANSWER: The city pays $2.2 million each year and owes $27.2 million in total.
- What is on the city-owned land off Siler Road today and what are the plans for its holdings there in the future? ANSWER: Right now the Environmental Services Department is housed there. The land behind it is slated for Arts + Creativity housing project.
- True or False: You can swim, ice skate and run laps seven days a week at the Genoveva Chavez Center. ANSWER: True. Mostly. The center is closed on holidays and once a year (usually August) for a week of maintenance.
- How tall can the tallest new buildings be under the city’s zoning overlay on St. Michael’s Drive? ANSWER: Buildings in almost all areas of the Midtown LINC overlay can be four stories or 52 feet tall. On the campus of SFUAD, they can be five stories or 62 feet tall.
- How many new jobs must Meow Wolf provide by the end of 2021 in order to make good on its agreement to use $250,000 of city economic development funds? ANSWER: The city’s agreement with the arts collective requires it to demonstrate 250 new, full-time jobs.
Greg Scargall
A US Navy veteran who deployed to the Middle East, Scargall now works at the Veterans Resource Center at Santa Fe Community College.
- $2.2 million
- So, that’s the, um, like where the Toss No Mas is, the waste transfer, it’s kind of where all the garbage trucks go. I forget the exact name of it. One of the parcels has a proposal for a low-income, artist studio, kind of live-work project. And there’s also been, with the Siler corridor, also some proposals of potentially consolidating city buildings and creating a more of a unified complex for city government.
- [False. I know that they’re closed, I think, once a week for maintenance on the swimming pool.] (Editor’s Note: We had to double check, and the city says it’s the Salvador Perez and Fort Marcy pools that each have a weekly closure day.)
- 52 feet
- [It’s 200.]
JoAnne Vigil Coppler
A former court administrator and city of Santa Fe Human Resources Director, Vigil Coppler now runs her own real estate office.
- [Each year? You know, I don’t know that.]
- The Siler Road arts project is being built there. And it’s going to have affordable housing for…I think all but nine of those units are for affordable housing. If I recall there are like 60 units. [SFR asks what’s there now] Probably construction.
- Yes. True.
- [Let’s see, three stories?]
- [I’m going to guess … hmm. I don’t know why 200 sticks in my head, but that’s probably too high. Final answer.]
Eric Holmes
Holmes is a longtime local businessman who owns a collection of promotional, printing and media companies.
- [You’re killing me on that one. I don’t know what it is per year. … If I’m not mistaken, I think it was a $21 million buy.]
- The city owns a few parcels there, right? So we have a couple of city buildings and there’s also in the works right now, I can’t think of the name … but a new housing project is going to be going into that land.
- Seven days a week? Yes.
- [Let’s see. You’ve got the hospital out there, so I’m saying three stories right now.]
- [I think it was 241 jobs is what they said would be hired.]
