The supposedly urban Rail Runner will benefit from connections with the supposedly rural Regional Transit District after all.
If it ain't Baroque…
I wonder how many other people found trace amounts of irony in the Aug. 12 edition of the Santa Fe New Mexican? There was a top-of-the-fold story on the City of Santa Fe’s impending crackdown on “scofflaws” operating illegal short-term rentals…while the lead story in the Local News section was the City Council’s approval of a giant time-share eyesore—allegedly Spanish Baroque in style—in the heart of downtown.
It’s an interesting message to send to the people of Santa Fe: If you rent your guest house to a tourist—or even a visiting artist—on a short-term basis, you’re breaking the law, but if you have enough money to build an abominable, four-story heap of short-term dwellings that will be populated by a rotating cadre of second-homers and short-timers, well, hell, you can put it right downtown.
Preservation of neighborhood values, indeed.
I’m not one to get cranky about height restrictions, but I am a sucker for practicality. Why the city would approve four stories directly across the street from the most monstrous height mistake ever made, aka, the Eldorado Hotel, is beyond me. The impending valley will be glacial in scale, only shadier. But I suppose casting a monumental shadow on the tight corner of Sandoval Street as it bends into Palace Avenue will only cause a few head-on collisions during icy winter mornings.
There may not even be any deaths.
On the other hand, if one were to be in a debilitating car accident outside “The Villas at The Lensic,” perhaps the shock could make the disastrously ugly façade appear to be truly Spanish Baroque: “Yes, laying here on the ground with a concussion and blood in my eye, I can see that it really does resemble El Hospicio de San Fernando in Madrid, Spain. Beautiful.”
Ida y vuelta, por favor
It’s a good thing that after buying a ticket straight out of the North Central Regional Transit District, Santa Fe County decided to pick up the return fare and come on back.
There’s no doubt that County Commissioner Jack Sullivan, who led the exodus—and poutily abstained from the vote on re-entry—has long been a champion of expanded transit in the region. So when the NCRTD’s ability was put into question, it was worth hearing him out and taking a close look at the situation.
However, all assertions that the NCRTD will be biased toward rural transit and that the city and county could form a more effective district on their own, have proven unfounded. Integration with Santa Fe Trails and the Rail Runner are both documented priorities of the NCRTD. It may have taken prodding from both Santa Fe County and the City of Santa Fe to get the NCRTD to tailor its vision toward our needs, but there’s little point in exerting that kind of leadership and then abandoning it.
Wild claims such as the assertion that it costs the NCRTD
$47
dollars per ride for each passenger also have proven untrue: The actual figure is around
$10
. Accusations that the NCRTD has ignored service to Rancho Viejo conveniently forget the City of Santa Fe’s accumulation of GRT-taxes paid in Los Alamos (regional cooperation in action), which could have been used to finance Rancho Viejo routes since October of 2007.
And Commissioner Sullivan’s claim that Los Alamos money doesn’t pay for the Eldorado bus service ignores the reality that the route (not including the Edgewood extension) costs nearly
$200,000
and Santa Fe County only pays
$100,000
. Guess where the rest comes from?
Taos County Commissioner Charlie Gonzales tells me that Santa Fe’s neighboring counties will be relieved to see regional cooperation reasserted by transit. “A lot of us spend quite a bit of time and money in Santa Fe,” Gonzales says, “and it was pretty confusing to see all of our hard work on the board of the NCRTD treated like it wasn’t good enough for Santa Fe.”
Santa Fe Mayor David Coss already has moved on a resolution to have the city rejoin the NCRTD as well. The City Council will consider the matter on Aug. 27. Can’t see that one being much of an argument.
Indian giving
Last week, this column claimed that if Native American sovereignty is going to be respected, it has to be respected without conditions imposed when the rest of us get uncomfortable [Aug. 13: “
”]. Some, like George Johnson (
), seem to think I’m having trouble grasping the law and failing to understand that sovereignty is often subordinate to US federal law.
But law is always the issue preservationists get stuck on. It isn’t about the letter of the law, it is about the spirit of the law. Getting stuck on the radius of a plaster curve or the strict percentage of glazing in an entry consistently prevents Santa Fe preservationists from approving soulful, value-adding projects while allowing rule-following, but ultimately cheap and generic, structures to be built.
Sovereignty isn’t about technicalities. It’s about respect. Sure, you could find someone to mount a legal argument saying the Pueblo Council had no right to tear down potentially historic buildings. You also could spend a lot of time and energy in court while the Pueblo Council builds whatever it wants on top of the rubble.
If Santa Fe, as a community, respects the sovereignty of the pueblos, maybe our opinion can count when the issue of new construction rolls around. Maybe the Pueblo Council will return the respect next time it’s about to make a decision that will affect the community in which it holds such significant land.
