Santa Fe isn't just home to a miraculous stairway-the whole city is a miracle. How else to explain all of its assets in the face of all its contradictions, hypocrisies, idiocies and a particularly long spate of abysmal leadership? This is a city that succeeds in spite of itself.
The city's marketing plan and overtures to tourism have been a complete jumble for decades. Housing prices and the cost of living aren't, you know, insane, compared with other small, cleanish, beautiful towns with easy access to mountains and forests and the attendant outdoor activities-but those costs are pretty frickin' out of control in relation to average annual income, living wage or no. Bickering, bullshit and petty power plays have kept our community-owned Railyard development project years behind schedule and constantly teetering on the brink of implosion, while the south side is pillaged for sprawling annexations, big box blunders and a black hole of emergency services that the city can't provide, partly because police and firefighters struggle to afford to live here. Meanwhile the ugliest thing since fauxdobe was first invented, the downtown El Corazon apartments-or condominiums or rehab rooms or whatever they are-sold out, all credit for infill lost to negative points for sheer, hideous, overpriced godawfulness.
Water conservation has consistently been a last minute emergency rather than a long-term sustainable strategy-hell, the city and county just had to launch a marketing plan to convince people of the merits of skimming surface water off the Rio Grande via the Buckman Direct Diversion (and through Las Campanas) in a reported $161 million project, yet there's still no basic, consistent monthly rationing, no construction requirement for catching rainwater and only the first baby steps have been taken in terms of legislating the use of gray water. City departments like Parks and Recreation, Economic Development and the Arts Commission have to fight tooth and nail for funding and leeway and then pretend that all positive accomplishments are due to the vision of a mayor and City Council who tried to block them every step of the way.
Both of our major current civic construction projects, the convention center and the state history museum, have been kvetched and whittled from potentially engaging designs down into bland ho-humitry-entirely inoffensive (and utterly uninspiring) to anyone. Recent sketches of the history museum released to the press reveal not only that the interior is planned to be about on a par with the way Universal Studios would portray New Mexico in a children's choo-choo theme ride, but also display an exterior that makes it obvious who the museum is built for and, at least behind the scenes, by: Catching the eye far more than the boxy museum building are not one, but two Mercedes Benz convertible coupes, tops down, not a rain cloud in sight. The only other things of interest in the sketch are that someone's actually wearing a fiesta skirt (did Universal Studios actually do this drawing?) and the third vehicle is a big ol' SUV-maybe it's the governor's hybrid.
But we do have a new state history museum in the works. We do have a revamped (and largely green) convention center brewing. The Railyard project is going to happen. In spite of the fact that Santa Fe's most visible strategy as a community has been to wander around in the dark, we've bumped into the lump of world-class city. It really is a bit of a miracle. Imagine, though, if we took all of our arts and culture assets, all of the natural beauty, all of the extraordinary history that is packed into Santa Fe's high desert pores and combined it, finally, with the vision and leadership that a city like Santa Fe deserves. I'm not just begging all of us to get out and vote for mayor next month, I'm begging us to demand from the candidates that they do more than shuffle their feet, hem and haw about water and affordable housing. I'm begging all of us to require the candidates to sketch us a vision of Santa Fe that's more exciting than two German cars and a fiesta skirt. Either way, we'll get the mayor we deserve; let's just try to deserve a good one, eh?
Meanwhile, stalwart city agencies are plodding along. The Economic Development Division has just teamed with the Arts Commission to issue a call for entries seeking an artist or artist team to design the award the ED division will give to the 2006 Small Business of the Year winner. The contract to design and create the award is a modest $2,500, but the works will be small and the offer is only open to artists in Santa Fe County. All you lazy artists out there ought to get off your asses and enter-maybe next time, it'll be $25,000. The deadline is March 3. Call 955-6568 or check out the link on the home page of the Santa Fe Arts and Culture Web portal,
, for details.
