I hate it when my fantasies become untenable. And yet, I've got to face facts. I'm never going to be a professional motorcycle racer, I can't fly under my own power and, it appears, I'm not going to be entirely happy with our next mayor. A lot of personality traits and behaviors were on display at the Jan. 19 Arts and Culture Mayoral Forum sponsored by CultureNet, Creative Santa Fe and Blu 102, but none of it-from any of the candidates-added up to that winning combination of backbone and vision combined with knowledge of our local cultural landscape.
Having the forum at all was an ace attempt at doing something useful, so the above sponsors and the Center for Contemporary Arts, which hosted, have got to be thanked for their time. CultureNet deserves a special round of applause for working with KSFR to ensure that an audio recording of the entire forum was promptly posted on Santa Fe's recently launched arts and culture Web portal (
santafearts-andculture.org/magazine/audio/
). Posting it online is important because the audience was overflowing and people had to be turned away at the door-finally it was obvious that we do, as a community, care about a vision for arts and culture-so it's critical those who weren't able to attend have a chance to assess the candidates in this regard. Be warned, however, that there are dangers to listening to the forum. Depending on your personality type, you're likely to 1) fall asleep; 2) injure your eyeballs due to copious rolling; or 3) rip out your hair and use it to ignite a fire in order to burn your computer speakers to the ground-anything to stop the farce.
The low points: Asked to tell the audience about their personal experience with the arts, real estate broker Karen Walker pointed out that she advertises on the arts and culture Internet portal; developer David Schutz said he really didn't have much to do with art but had gotten a degree in architecture once upon a time; roofer Tony Lopez identified himself as something of a collector and went on to describe his concern for "cultural Internet and the, uh, state of the art"; Donado Coviello rewrote his name tag to say only "Cove" and declared artists an oppressed minority; and City Councilor David Coss, sounding a bit too much like John Kerry, said "I'm David Coss and I'm running for mayor," and then introduced us to his wife. Mostly it was downhill from there.
While it was mentioned that a UNM Bureau of Business and Economic Research Center arts impact study on Santa Fe had shown the city is losing market share in the cultural tourism game, not one candidate illustrated knowledge as to why. Schutz read directly from the city's economic development plan all night as though the ideas were his own, saying that all that was required was implementation (at one point he even vowed to create an arts and culture Internet portal). Walker said the town just needed to be cleaner. Tony Lopez borrowed a page from the sitting mayor by loudly declaring that he was born here. The entire assembled group consistently name-dropped Warehouse 21 as though it were proof they cared about something.
Some special moments: Schutz said arts education was important, but we'd have to focus on some other things before we had time to teach our kids to be "non-conventional." For emphasis he added his belief that not all our kids had to go to college. Coviello mentioned governing in accordance with feminist ideals, causing Tony Lopez to immediately develop a weird facial itch and paw at his cheek with an enormous bejeweled hand. Walker pledged to turn City Hall into an art gallery so that people would come in for something other than just "toilet permits."
The only audience questions allowed were in the form of cards filled out before the forum, five of which were initially selected, leading to the revelations that Schutz felt art could "enhance the driving experience," so long as we were talking "pie in the sky"; Lopez was in favor of absolutely everything except for raising taxes; Walker did not want real estate brokers mentioned in the same breath as developers; and Coviello referred to the governor as "Fat Bill." Finally, a sixth question had to be added, because not one of the candidates had mentioned House Bill 336, passed in the last legislative session, which would allow an individual city like Santa Fe to vote on a one-quarter of 1 percent gross receipts tax increase to support "quality of life" issues-essentially up to $8 million annually that the city could invest largely in cultural initiatives. It was clear that not one of the candidates proposing to boldly lead us into the future really knew anything about HB 336, except for Coss, who suggested that he could support if "we" told him what "we" planned to do with it. And therein lies the problem-"we" could tell you exactly what to do with $8 million, Councilor Coss, but then, what would we need you for?
The only good things were that Coss found the backbone to stick to his guns regarding the living wage and affordable housing (even if both pieces of legislation are, um, somewhat messy) and Walker proposed aggressively increasing the arts and crafts overlay in city zoning. Arts and crafts zones are areas like Canyon Road, where people are allowed to live, work and sell their wares. Even small book stores are allowed in A&C overlays. Unfortunately Walker's prime example of where to do such a thing was not, say, in the soon-to-be-developed Northwest Quadrant but on Baca Street. One would want their mayor to know that much of Baca Street's zoning already allows all of those activities.
But then the list of what one would want their mayor to know is long. After this arts and culture forum? Much, much longer.
