Letter America: Dear Author

Some of Alan Ball's friends tell him he's the most negative person they know. So he laughed when SFR told him he was the most optimistic person we'd spoken to all day. Ball, who manages Southwest Title & Escrow, keeps a close eye on Santa Fe housing sales and writes a monthly newsletter on the topic. It's been gloomy reading for some time. But July's home sales figures had him sounding almost cheery. Last month, he writes, brought "the first increase, same period year to year, since June 2006! We were due for some positive news..." No kidding. But it was a slight—again, slight—improvement. The specific number: July 2008 total homes sold in Santa Fe City/County was 113. The same period for 2009 shows 121 sales. While that is a nice 7% improvement, we need a few more of those to get back some of the nearly 50% we have given up in sales results over the last 3 years. Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce President Simon Brackley tells SFR that Ball's news is somewhat encouraging, but "it's going to take a while until the construction industry recovers. Until we get some building going on, the carpenters and roofers and plasterers are going to be hurting." Ball writes: The rumors of the national housing market turning the corner are in the statistics, and we see improvement locally too. We are far from recovery, but at least we have taken the first step... I believe we'll have a respectable August and September and then we will need to regroup. Sellers who have not identified a buyer by this fall will want to rethink their strategy. If you are unwilling or unable to reduce the price of your home enough to attract a serious buyer, you should probably take it off the market.

If there's any truth to this anonymous tip posted on Frank Young's feisty LANL blog, northern New Mexico stands to lose hundreds more well-paying jobs. I've got an email out to a media rep at the Lab and will update this post when I get a response. Updated July 7: LANL spokesman Jeff Berger told SFR yesterday afternoon that the rumor is false. "We do not have plans for layoffs," Berger says. Period? "Period." What about going forward? "If the budget necessitates layoffs, we would go there," Berger says. "But we've anticipated and experienced in recent years relatively flat budgets. That's what we continue to anticipate."

This is pretty cool, even if the airport is on the wrong side of town*, and my stimulus request isn't on it. From Luján's flack Mark Nicastre: Washington, DC – Today, Rep. Ben Ray Luján launched his “Recovery at Work” interactive map, which shows where funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is going in New Mexico's 3rd Congressional District. View American Recovery and Reinve­stment Project Map in a larger map * Update: Either my screen was wonky or the airport's been moved to the right spot. Meh. Nevermind.

This morning a notice for a job fair for the new Flying Star Café showed up in my inbox. Wow, someone's hiring. And the Flying Star is actually going to open

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Governor Bill Richardson held a press conference at the College of Santa Fe this morning to announce the formation of a task force whose job it will be to find a financially viable way to keep the College of Santa Fe from closing its doors after the spring semester. Before signing the executive order to create the task force Richardson's Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Perlman, Cabinet Secretary of Higher Education Reed Dasenbrock, House Speaker Ben Lujan, Representative Lucky Varela and Santa Fe Mayor David Coss, all members of the newly formed task force, spoke to approximately 200 students, staff and faculty in the O'Shaughnessey Performance Space. The task force comes after House Bill 577 was, according to Richardson, "drowned out in the last few days of a very difficult session." Richardson also acknowledged how hard the CSF community rallied throughout the session, especially in the final days and said he is "extremely disappointed that we did not get a hearing" on the bill but that the steps forward will allow the college to "keep going in, perhaps, a stronger way." House Speaker Lujan spoke out in support of the Governor's move and echoed the Governor's dissappointment that HB 577 was held up in the Senate Finance Committe, pointing the finger at SFC chairman John Arthur Smith saying it is "undemocratic and unamerican for one person to deny the community to be heard." The task force, which includes politicians, educators, local business leaders and students includes Highlands University President Jim Fries, Santa Fe Community College President Sheila Ortego, University of New Mexico Executive Vice President and Provost Suzanne Ortega, New Mexico Cultural Affairs Secretary Stuart Ashman, Lensic General Manager Bob Martin, students Irina Zerkin, Keith Murfee and Adam New. Surprisingly the task force does not include any current CSF faculty though CSF President Stuart Kirk and Vice Dean Susan Marcus were named as members. Immediately following the press conference the task force went to work. Its preliminary report is due on April 30 to Richardson, who acknowledged that many of the students and faculty have been actively looking for other institutions.

A question posed by stencil graffiti vandal somewhere downtown. You got an answer?

Now that the auto industry and the banks have gotten a big old slice of the bailout pie it's time for starving artists to get a few veggies in their bowls of rice. That's right. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson announced today that nearly $300,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts has been awarded to New Mexico Arts, a division of the state's Department of Cultural Affairs. The money has some pretty stringent rules attached to it

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On Friday morning the Senate Education Committee allowed HB577 to stay alive. The unanimous vote followed more than an hour of lively discussion that bounced from strictly education issues to financial ones. The bill, which would allow for existing state universities to submit proposals to acquire the College of Santa Fe, has already passed through Education and Finance committees in the House as well as a vote on the house floor. The bill next goes to the Senate Finance Committee early next week. A secretary in Rep. Lucky Varela's office tells SFR the bill will come before the committee within the next two days (the Senate Finance Committee meets at 1:30 Monday-Saturday) and could be scheduled as early as tomorrow if things continue to move quickly. In addition to supporters such as Santa Fe Mayor David Coss, Santa Fe Community College President Sheila Ortego and a lobbyist working on behalf of the New Mexico School for the Arts, students and faculty were on hand to offer the committee members first hand accounts of why the school is so important to them. Many focused beyond their own educational needs to look toward the larger community. Many of the senators on the committee expressed concern about the economic impact of leaving the state capital without a four year university. (Santa Fe is home to St. John's College, which has a strict focus on the liberal arts and offers only one program of study.) According to Highlands University President Jim Fries, approximately 20 percent of Santa Fe's economy is directly tied to the art and film industries. "It is very difficult to build the arts economy without a higher educational arts school," Fries told the committee. In addition to the focus on bringing and retaining young artists in Santa Fe, the committee and the bill's advocates focused on the non-traditional students who attend CSF. Current student Adam New (disclaimer: New is a former student of mine at CSF where I am employed as an adjunct professor) discussed the problems working adults would face if they had to attend a university outside of the city; Santa Fe Community College does not offer four year degrees. SFCC President Sheila Ortego expressed her students' desire to continue their educations within Santa Fe. "We have so many students who are getting a strong foundation at Santa Fe Community College and who want to finish their degrees in town" Ortego said. Though Highlands University has played a pivotal role in advocating the acquisition and is currently the only university to publicly state an interest in taking over CSF, the bill allows any university within the state system to offer a proposal. As a result, many of the specific financial questions brought up in today's committee, could be be hurdles in the Finance committee as so many of the numbers are speculative. Both Senator John M Sapien (D-Sandoval) and Timothy M Keller (D-Bernalillo) expressed concern about the retention of both the reputation and teaching staff at CSF. Though Highlands University professors are paid, on average, less than CSF pays its faculty, the financial problems at CSF have forced the faculty to take a 25 percent pay cut, making their current salaries less than Highlands' current pay rates. According to Marci Sullivan, vice president of administration & communication at CSF, who attended the meeting as a representative for CSF President Stuart Kirk (who was absent to attend a quarterly board meeting), CSF faculty have been at the school for an average of 10 years. Because of the forced pay cuts many faculty have expressed to SFR their concerns that they will be unable to remain in Santa Fe and, though the faculty is dedicated to their students, have felt an immediate financial hit that makes getting through the semester a challenge. If CSF is taken over by the state, it is unclear how faculty salaries would be affected. If CSF folds without a state acquisition, 110 employees and 58 full time faculty will join the ranks of Santa Fe's growing unemployed population.

Spring break is usually a time for college students to hit the beaches, drink to excess and embarrass their parents by appearing in Girls Gone Wild videos. For teachers it's a week without classes to kick back, grade midterms, plan for the end of the school year and relax. Usually. But at the College of Santa Fe this year's spring break brings nothing but more stress to students and faculty. Last Friday, March 13, CSF faculty received the first of six paychecks that include the 12 percent pay cut they were forced to take in order for the school to remain functional through the end of the semester. And, while 12 percent doesn't sound too devastating it's 12 percent of their total salaries compounded into a few short months. Faculty contracts pay some teachers on a 9 month basis and some on a 12 month basis. "The pay cuts are not actually retroactive, though the math employed in determining the amount of the cut took into account our entire salary as opposed to our salary going forward. The was done in order to deal in an "equitable" fashion with those who are on a 12 month pay out and those who are on a 9 month pay out" CSF professor Deborah Fort tells SFR in an email. Also, all professors, regardless of whether they are on a 9 or 12 month contract have had their remaining payments split in half to include six regular payments (which includes the payment made last Friday) and one lump sum payment at the end of the semester. According to professor and faculty council representative Peter Blackman the average salary for a CSF professor is roughly $64,000 per year (though the range is about $55,000-$75,00). At this rate a professor on a 9 month contract would normally be paid approximately $3,555 before taxes and health insurance deductions. Under his original salary that professor would have approximately $16,000 remaining to be paid. Under the 12 percent cut he can expect approximately $8,320--$4,160 over six pay periods and $4,160 as a lump sum. That's a pretax and insurance take home pay every two weeks of $693. That's $8.66 an hour at 40 hours a week, approximately $1 less than Santa Fe's living wage. The lump sum payment at the end of the semester is also, according to Fort "'if' they have the money. No one on the faculty side is too confident that the "if" will turn affirmative." According to Blackman the Faculty Council urged the board to put the money for the lump sum payments into an escrow account in order to ensure faculty they would be paid but that those efforts proved futile. After the first paychecks under the new cuts were received by faculty on Friday the Faculty Council passed out a survey to faculty members to "figure out how people are going to survive." Both Fort and Blackman stressed that, according to Fort, "faculty are completely committed to finishing the semester and supporting our students." But, according to Fort, "it becomes a bit difficult, however, when you are also trying to figure out how to feed your family." In addition to the stress of watching their teachers struggle to survive the CSF community still has no definitive answers as to whether the school will exist in any form after May. The House passed HB 577, which would allow for the state to acquire CSF and make it part of an existing state school, and the bill is currently waiting for Senate approval. But, the Senate Finance Committee, which is HB 577's next stop, slashed HB 2, the General Appropriations Act, effectively cutting the funding upon which HB 577 relies. This, however, doesn't mean that HB 577 is dead in the water. According to the Finance Committee office the bill will go before the committee sometime this week (the session ends March 21). The Finance Committee can still approve the bill and send it to the Senate floor for a full vote without the budget approval and at that time, if it passes both votes the House and Senate's joint conference committee will meet to discuss the differing budgets involved with the changes to HB 2.

Santa Fe's share of state gross receipts tax revenues, a measure of local spending, fell 5.71 percent in January, according to city finance director David Millican. That monthly drop would make the year-to-date decline 2.17 percent—lower still than the 1.8 percent decline reported in this week's Indicators column, which used last month's numbers. (Sorry, folks: The newest GRT figures came out too late on Monday to make the paper.) Asked if there was any good news, Millican said he'd heard anecdotal evidence that February was kinder to Santa Fe's hoteliers than January, which was "awful."