Work To Do

When Santa Fe voters sent Alan Webber to the mayor's office in the fourth round of ranked-choice balloting last March, they did so with a degree of trust. Trust in the man. Trust in the message.

Webber promised to reform City Hall not by leaning on front-line workers, but by asking division chiefs and department heads to be more accountable and to prove that they shared his vision for a city that could  be a model for customer service, sustainability and other lofty—but achievable, he argued—goals. He promised to work hard to ensure women had a much more active role in city governance.

Three months into his stint as mayor, there's work to do, trust to gain and promises still to fulfill.

Webber hasn't hired any of the three positions for which he has sole authority—the city's clerk, attorney and manager. Shortly after he took office, he asked all exempt staff, which generally means senior positions, to reapply for their jobs.

"We're watching the clock," Webber told SFR after a recent tour of city water facilities. "We want to get decisions made."

Webber says he's conducted interviews for both the city manager's job and that of city attorney. He hasn't sat down with candidates for city clerk.

But many of the department head positions—technically hired by the city manager, whom the mayor can hire and fire—are still occupied by people who are there as placeholders or people who aren't sure if they'll be asked to stick around. Last month, Webber asked Lisa Martinez, head of the city's Land Use Department, and Rob Carter, who led the Parks and Recreation Department, to step down.

The new mayor also walked into a recently kicked hornet's nest when he initially supported pay hikes for a group of workers who'd been leading the effort to roll out important new software for the business side of the city's dealings. While Webber supports the idea of pay increases for extra work, he came to discover that they hadn't been properly vetted by the City Council. The gaffe cost him his city manager and human resources director.

In stepped Fire Chief Erik Litzenberg, who is halfway through an interim appointment as city manager, after which he'll return to the Fire Department. Litzenberg says one of his primary goals has been hiring department and division heads.

"I think getting a good team in place to move the mayor's initiatives forward and to move the city forward in general takes a team," Litzenberg tells SFR. While he's new to the business of hiring department heads and doesn't have much context for whether the city's search is taking a long time, he says he's not willing to hire just to put a warm body in a comfy desk chair.

"I would hope we would be very deliberate, that the process would be taken very seriously and that the broad spectrum of candidates is considered, and the top couple, especially, are very well vetted," he says.

One of the hiring outcomes watched most closely will be the split of men and women among senior staff. An SFR analysis of the city's organizational chart, as included in the budget for next year, shows that of the 44 top positions listed, 34 belong to men and just 10 to women. It's not an exhaustive analysis—Webber calls the chart "a relic"—but it's reflective of the gender imbalance many perceive at City Hall.

In a January opinion piece published in The New Mexican and titled "No more time to waste—women deserve respect," Webber wrote that whether he won or lost the campaign for mayor, he felt Santa Fe needed an advisory council for women. He studied other cities with such panels, he said, and "where they're given real authority, they make a real difference. A Women's Advisory Council will provide an equity advocate to address the underlying issue of power in our society."

Webber argued that he felt women had a place at all levels of city government, and creating an advisory council with "real authority" would assure a strong, consistent advocate for women's issues at City Hall.

The authority of a women's advisory council, though, doesn't extend to direct input on which candidate to hire, Webber says. He sees it as potentially problematic and akin to letting the Bicycle Trails Advisory Committee pick a favored candidate for the engineer's job that interacts with the panel.

The mayor says he hasn't forgotten about the advisory council and that the city attorney's office is drafting an ordinance to enshrine it in city law. If the City Council approves, Webber will have his group.

But the mayor has shown a willingness to act without the city attorney's blessing. In April, after a month on the job, he rolled out eight advisory groups to help with his transition. The committees will help the mayor with such policy issues as sustainability, public safety, jobs and a catch-all-sounding group on unity in Santa Fe.

There's no women's panel.