artdirector@sfreporter.com
Morning Word
Median Santa Fe County home price tops $800,000
It remains to be seen whether the Santa Fe City Council or city voters will approve a nascent proposal to tax high-end real estate—i.e. create a “mansion tax”on houses that sell for more than $1 million—to help pay for affordable housing. The High-End Excise Tax for Affordable Housing Ordinance made its debut at yesterday’s Quality of Life Committee meeting (right around the 36-minute mark). Regardless, high-end real estate indisputably remains a dominating force in the local market, according to second-quarter data released yesterday by the Santa Fe Association of Realtors. According to SFAR, median prices rose 3% overall in the city and county: 1.6% from $595,000 in the 2nd quarter of 2022 to $604,500 this quarter for the city; and 5.5% from $765,950 in 2022 to $808,050 this quarter in Santa Fe County. Increases in high-end real estate in some portions of the city, however, rose much higher. During the same period, city home sales decreased by 16.5% and county home sales dropped by 10.6%. Condo and townhome sales, however, rose this quarter by 7.3%. Moreover, the inventory of single family homes for sale in both the city and county dropped by 9.8% to 303 this quarter—a 2.6-month supply, SFAR says. “Inventory levels continue to create a tight housing market for buyers, pushing up prices modestly,” 2023 President of the Santa Fe Association of Realtors Drew Lamprich said in a statement. “Days on market figures show that sales are still taking a bit longer to go under contract and close as buyers adjust to ongoing mortgage fluctuations.”
State Supreme Court greenlights GOP gerrymandering case
The state Supreme Court yesterday ruled a Republican lawsuit alleging partisan gerrymandering by Democrats during the last redistricting can proceed in District Court. Ninth Judicial District Judge Fred Van Soelen in April 2022 denied requests from defendants—Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, and various legislative leaders—to dismiss the case (arguing it lay outside the judiciary’s jurisdiction), but paused it due to the pending primarily election at the time. In their ruling yesterday, state Supreme Court justices—who heard oral arguments in the case in January—said some degree of partisan gerrymandering is permissible under the state Constitution, writing that “at this stage in the proceedings, it is unnecessary to determine the precise degree that is permissible so long as the degree is not egregious in intent and effect.” Yesterday’s ruling also proffers US Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagen’s “three-part test,” articulated in her dissenting opinion in 2019′s Rucho v. Common Cause, as a means of evaluating the map. The Republican Party and other plaintiffs have accused the Democrats of gerrymandering the state’s congressional districts. Sen. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, and one of the new map’s co-sponsors tells the Albuquerque Journal “any partisan considerations were secondary to creating truly competitive and diverse districts.” The state Republican Party described the ruling as “encouraging.”
DOH: New HIV cases from former spa clients
The state health department yesterday recommended former clients of the former VIP Beauty Salon and Spa (VIP Spa) in Albuquerque be re-tested for blood-borne diseases—even if they tested negative previously. The advice follows what DOH says is a newly diagnosed case of HIV whose only self-reported HIV-risk exposure was a so-called “vampire facial” received at VIP Spa in 2018. “It’s very important that we spread the word and remind people who received any kind of injection-related to services provided at the VIP Spa to come in for free and confidential testing,” DOH Deputy Secretary Dr. Laura Parajón, said in a statement. The health department is offering three sessions of walk-in, free HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C testing for former VIP clients at its South Valley Public Health office. The spa itself closed Sept. 7, 2018 following inspections that identified practices that could spread such diseases. More than 100 former clients were tested that year and the following year as part of the investigation, and the spa’s owner Maria de Lordes Ramos de Ruiz pleaded guilty in June 2022 to five felony counts of practicing medicine without a license. DOH says the new HIV case associated with the spa has reopened the investigation and as of yesterday it had identified “additional HIV infections with direct or indirect connection with services provided at the VIP Spa.”
Gov appoints new Interstate Stream Commission head
Hannah Riseley-White will lead the Interstate Stream Commission, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced yesterday, replacing Rolf Schmidt-Petersen, who retired as director in April. “Planning our water future has never been more important than it is today,” the governor said in a statement, noting that Riseley-White “brings experience and perspective to the office that will prove crucial to protecting our waters for future cultural, recreational and economic use.” According to a news release, Riseley-White in 2014 began working at the ISC in the Pecos Bureau and was later selected to lead that bureau from 2017 to 2020. She has served as its deputy director since 2020 and has a master’s degree in water resources management from the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at University of California at Santa Barbara. State Engineer Mike Hamman in a statement said he had “every confidence” that Riseley-White’s “expertise in water management will serve all New Mexicans as our agency continues to tackle water challenges in the face of a changing climate. Her extensive knowledge of the state’s water resources as well as the administrative mechanisms and executive and legislative operations so critical to effective management are key to protecting our water resources for future generations.”
Listen up
“Let’s face it. Driving is dangerous. With new technologies, distractions, faster cars, impaired drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, construction and speeding, it’s a challenge for us to protect ourselves and our fellow drivers every day.” So says the state Department of Transportation, and we couldn’t have said it better ourselves (though we might have added road medians and people who don’t know what the word “yield” means to the list of horrors). To address these and other road challenges, NMDOT last year launched the driving safety podcast Live and Let Drive (presumably a pun based on “live and let die”). Topics thus far include drunk driving, distracted driving, drugged driving, seatbelts and more.
Santa Fe Opera: Angel Blue performances canceled
Soprano Leah Hawkins will sing the role of Tosca in all of this summer’s performances of Puccini’s opera, the Santa Fe Opera announced yesterday, replacing renowned singer Angel Blue, who had been scheduled for four of the shows this month and in August. Blue stepped down due to a family emergency, a news release says, and has canceled all of her engagements this month. “I am heartbroken not to be performing this season, as Santa Fe Opera is truly a highlight for any opera singer,” Blue said in a statement, “but I am confident that the audiences on those nights will be astonished by Leah Hawkins’ phenomenal talent and brilliant interpretation of the title character. I would like to extend my heartfelt apologies for the sudden change, as I know that I would not be the Tosca that Santa Fe Opera deserves while managing this personal matter.” Hawkins made her SFO debut last Friday in Tosca—we thoroughly enjoyed her performance and the entire production.
A Brit judges Santa Fe
Great British Baking Show Judge Prue Leith took a 2,200-mile road trip across the US and, yes, she made a stop in Santa Fe. Leith writes about her impressions of Santa Fe—and America—for the New York Times (which quickly corrected one of her mis-spellings of “Santa”…possibly following our email). Leith encountered an understaffed scene at Vanessie, but had a pleasant time at nearby Vara Vinoteca, where she and her husband ate “tiny padrón peppers stuffed with cream cheese and cumin, tuna ceviche and pineapple salsa, and a small bowl of warm, slightly curried mussels in the shell, all served with a flight of four glasses of different California cabernet sauvignons.” Overall, Santa Fe rates well with Leith, who says the city “brims with good restaurants, quirky architecture, art museums and shops stuffed with desirable things.” As to those shops, her husband bought hats somewhere, and she “lusted” after “an irresistible $150 necklace made from cut-up plastic water bottles and sprayed with red, black and gold paint.” Unfortunately, she couldn’t purchase said necklace as the store’s credit-card system required a US ZIP code and didn’t accept cash. That was the sum of her New Mexico experiences—at least as recorded in this story, before they set off for Texas. As one of the commenters aptly wrote: “Santa Fe and they don’t explore the regional dishes nor have any interaction with those familiar with the food that is integral to this city’s culture? What were they thinking?”
Shall I compare thee to a summer day?
The National Weather Service forecasts a sunny day with a high temperature near 94 degrees, and south wind 5 to 10 mph becoming southwest 15 to 20 mph in the afternoon. Yes, it’s been unusually hot here—and everywhere.
Thanks for reading! For anyone else who would enjoy reading about an academic “tiff” over literary studies, The Word recommends Humanities Professor Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera’s essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
