Tarin's Plan

Politicians' have platforms, Tarin has a plan.

Over the last year, Tarin has met with hundreds of residents, service providers and experts plus surveyed over 900 Santa Feans to figure out barriers to accessing housing and vital services. You can still take Fix Our City Different the survey.

Your feedback coupled with extensive research on actions taken by city hall since 2007 helped identify critical issues throughout every facet of city hall. But there's hope. Seriously - a majority of our issues could have been solved with common sense and real leadership.

Phase One: The First 30 Days

The state legislature has legally mandated 46 critical responsibilities to cities: Animal Control, Annexation, Audits, Bonds, Bridges, Cemeteries, Census, City Charter, City Commissions, Codes: Building, Administrative, Air Pollution, Elevator, Fire Prevention, Health, Housing, Traffic and water conservation and drought management planning, Community Centers, Electric Facilities, Event Centers, Fire, Garbage, Gas Facilities, Generating Facilities, Historic District, Hospitals, Markets, Municipal Court, Municipal Housing, Municipal Landmarks, Municipal Libraries, Municipal Records, Museums & Art, Nuisance Properties, Parks & Recreation, Permits & Licensing, Police, Public Buildings, Regulation of food, merchandise, weights and measures, adult businesses, second hand stores and the sale of gasoline, Sewer Facilities, Storm Drains, Streets, Roads & Alleys, Trees, Water Facilities & Zoning

But if you read the paper or watched any of Tarin's videos, you know our city leaders are failing to provide good government.

Here are Tarin's Rules for Good Government

1. Build a dream team/Listen to the experts

2. Find consensus

3. Vote your district

4. Don’t pick winners and losers

5. Cut the red tape

6. Guarantee transparency

7. Follow your own laws

We can ensure every facet of City Hall makes your day-to-day life easier but first, we need to fix City Hall & take emergency action to address auditing, wastewater and the unhoused/mental health epidemic.

Fix City Hall

CODE ENFORCEMENT: City Hall can’t enforce its own codes and laws if they don’t follow them first. Whether it is establishing standard operating procedures, inspecting city owned infrastructure and buildings or putting the resources aside for improvements - City Hall must set the example for residents.

Then it is time to talk about:

the thousands of encroachments
fire hazards and safety concerns plaguing our neighborhoods and
the need for additional positions for code enforcement and a court advocate for residents needing to take their neighbor to small claims court.

STAFF MORALE: But none of this is possible without addressing staff morale and the toxic work environment that is City Hall. Tarin is the only candidate with a proven track record of overhauling a government agency into a positive working environment built on transparency and support. Tarin helped make the New Mexico State Land Office the top rated government workplace in the nation since 2023.

Tarin will:

end the intentional siloing of departments within City Hall
foster an environment of teamwork, training and public service and
ensure additional support for our unions and for staff without advocates through real investments in an ombudsman program and third-party counseling services.

Forensic Audit

Santa Fe has never had a real audit and even still - there are findings after findings, discovery of unknown bank accounts and loss of our insurance and bond rating. The misuse of taxpayer dollars, lack of transparency and accountability and waste of time and resources has to end. That's why over the last year, Tarin has built a dream team of experts and project managers ready to turn things around on day one. We understand that there are major issues around auditing, payroll and payments meaning there is probably a cash flow issue and mismanagement of funds. So, it's time for a targeted forensic audit of our city funds, departments and boards to root out waste, restore trust and reallocate funding to our roads and other critical infrastructure projects.

Homelessness

ONE STOP LOCATION: We can pass every law we want criminalizing the unhoused but it won’t stop homelessness. Cost of living, loss of mental and behavioral services & limited single-family homes have had a direct impact on our unhoused situation in Santa Fe. That’s why it’s time to listen to every study since 2011 and build a one-stop location for all service providers.

Tarin is the only candidate with a masters in social work and a team of service providers ready to start on day one to figure out needs and a location to ensure we have:

a mental health facility because Santa Fe is out of beds
a drug rehab facility because too many have closed over the last few years
a shelter/resource center to meet the needs of Pete's Place & Consuelo's Place &
an outdoor space in one area that can be monitored and policed 24/7.

Once this location is secured, our shelters can relocate and a regional partnership can be established with neighboring counties to help offset the costs.

TRANSITIONAL HOUSING: Santa Fe has well over a thousand youth, veterans and domestic violence victims in need of transitional housing. While some steps have been taken to convert space for this purpose, permitting issues have plagued build out and millions have been wasted on temporary pallet-shelter homes that cost the city over $1 million in wrap-around services per ten units, every year. This model isn’t sustainable and better public-private partnerships will be needed to build real brick and mortar housing opportunities for Santa Fe’s most vulnerable.

INVESTING IN AT-RISK YOUTH: But it isn't just the 700+ Santa Feans currently homeless, it is the thousands that are one paycheck away from being unhoused. It is time for our city, schools, youth organizations and specialists to work together to identify those families at risk and intervene with support. Tarin supports continuing the Santa Fe Learn, Earn, and Achieve Program (Santa Fe LEAP) program for adults and expanding it to our at-risk youth to encourage them to stay in school and extracurricular activities.

Wastewater

Our wastewater treatment plant isn't just impacting the health of our rivers and neighboring communities, it's impacting our local businesses, airport operations, housing costs and wasting millions of gallons of drinking water.

Our city leaders have known since 2017 that a new plant was needed but instead of acting and taking advantage of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to build a new facility, they continue to waste millions on studies, minor upgrades and a pipe to dump the toxic waste into the Rio Grande River.

City Hall has a legal responsibility to protect public health and water for future generations, so it's time for emergency action to combine federal funding, state grants and a municipal bond to build a state-of-the-art new facility off airport property and restore the wetland area along the Santa Fe Living River.

Santa Fe has a crime problem and all you have to do is compare us to the capital city closest to us in population and economics, Albany, NY. Santa Fe had 5,904 violent crimes last year compared to Albany’s 927. What are they doing that’s so different?

Albany makes a yearly budget commitment ($750,000) for a community police review board and public safety communications ($4 million). Albany has a public safety operation that equates to 414 city employees compared to Santa Fe’s 169 positions. Lastly - the city, county and federal government work together to address issues like fentanyl and have invested heavily in Section 8 housing.

Yet year after year, our city leaders have voted to spend millions of dollars on private security contracts, refused to make the investments needed in Pete’s Place and Consuelo’s only to turn around and spend millions on temporary solutions like pallet shelter homes and Urban Alchemy.

It is time to double our public safety budget and:

Establish a ‘one-stop’ campus to provide mental health services, substance abuse treatment, housing and resources to our most vulnerable
Reestablish working relationships with the County & state agencies and partner on operations in hot zones, parks, known street racing and noise violations and schools.
Partnering with the schools on programs for at-risk youth.
Get cops back on our streets and in our neighborhoods and expand our Alternative Responsive Units/Street Teams and provide ongoing training to first responders and the community
Reestablish the neighborhood watch program and bring neighborhood associations and HOAs back into the conversation
Commit to ongoing community discussions, a community police review board and enforcement internally of standard operating procedures that guarantee laws are followed and cases aren’t dismissed by the District Attorney.
Crime Victims Compensation Fund through the municipal court to offset costs/damages to residents and businesses that experience crime
Expand youth mentorship and job training programs
Stronger enforcement on nuisance properties and code violations
Build the South Meadows Fire Station promised a decade ago and ensure every station has working AC/Heat
Housing assistance for first responders to get them back in our neighborhoods

Public Health &
Safety

Almost every year our city council asks voters to approve multimillion dollar bonds for roads but as we have seen with Guadalupe Street, it can take over a decade for City Hall to act. In 2024, voters overwhelmingly approved a bond to fix Airport Road but ask anyone at City Hall and they will tell you it’s still 3-5 years away. That is unacceptable but it also probably means at this rate, it will be more likely in a decade.

Fix The Procurement Code: There is no excuse for our city leaders ignoring the longstanding issues with our procurement code to ensure projects, approved and funded by voters, are completed within the required 3 year window to use bonds we pass.

Establishing Real Project Management: City Hall used to believe in project management and invested heavily in technology to monitor and help divisions plan and coordinate projects. Somewhere along the way, we lost that focus and stopped having preliminary meetings with contractors to ensure on-time deliverables. This has led to mismanagement of taxpayer dollars and project after project having to be redone or altered after completion.

Prioritizing Capital Outlay Correctly: Unless it’s a brand new road, you'd have a hard time finding a side street that has been repaved in decades. Maybe you have been lucky to have a pothole refilled, only to have it wash out within the year. Every action at City Hall is reactionary instead of proactive but we can change that with the help of our locally elected New Mexico House and Senate members. Year after year, we ask our members to use their capital outlay funding to pay for projects that could be supplemented with federal dollars and/or private investment instead of asking them to fund road and infrastructure projects needed within their own district.

Roads

Even if you don’t love living in Santa Fe because of open space, big sky or recreation opportunities - there’s no doubt how important the role of parks and recreation is for our city. Santa Fe is home to 170 miles of trails and 77 parks and they are the legal responsibility of City Hall to maintain. Whether it's the GCCC, community parks, Marty Sanchez, Two Mile Pond or the MRC field expansion, City Hall seems to come up short every time.

Along with fully funding the division, we should also be:

Valuing Recreation Sports: Every year interest in recreation grows but not the amount of space available to accommodate all user groups. It is time to utilize the 10+ years of data submitted by recreation sports groups and commit to a real plan to expand access for all sports. This can be done by expanding the MRC fields, allowing for multi-use at GCCC, working with the School Board to use school gyms and fields and allowing for city-owned vacant land to be used as practice locations.
Re-establishing Youth Internships: For many years, our youth were able to gain work experience through internships and have the opportunity to secure a full time job with the City after graduation. This program not only provided the labor necessary to maintain our parks and trails, it created a pathway to employment for some teens who wouldn’t have other options.
Supporting Park Conversions: One way to address parks and open space being underutilized or unkept is to consider supporting neighborhood requests to utilize the space for things like a community garden, pollinator garden or recreation practice field. Upside to multiuse - there is an opportunity to offset the costs of maintaining the park by charging nominal plot fees, recreation sport fees or seeking community/business sponsorships.
Prioritizing Partnerships: There is no doubt that managing the vast array of recreation opportunities is a big job, especially for an underfunded and understaffed division. Strengthening partnerships with organizations already doing the park/trail maintenance and outdoor education work, encouraging partnerships with NMSU and the botanical gardens and streamlining permitting and installation are critical if we want organizations to keep supplementing the work and cost of the Parks & Open Space Division.

Parks &
Recreation

As the commuting increases and tourism expands, traffic and mobility issues have continued to rise here in Santa Fe. Uber and Lyft pushed out local taxi companies but after the pandemic, failed to find enough drivers leaving Santa Feans stranded all over town and tourists left at the airport. In an attempt to solve the latter issue, our city leaders voted to fund a private taxi contract to service the airport and added a downtown only tourist bus route. But there are thousands of Santa Feans who use the bus to get to work or young adults trying to avoid drinking and driving at night that need real solutions.

A Union Solution: We need more bus routes and drivers but to do that - we need to think big. Separating these city employees into their own union agreement under a SMART Union contract to guarantee service. This will allow the city to fully staff the division and allow the addition of another bus route that goes from the airport, down Airport Rd over to Cerrillos Rd. and up to down downtown allowing for additional pickups for downtown city workers, tourists and Santa Feans enjoying the night life. We also owe it to all union employees to sign the agreement. It is unacceptable that our city leaders have gone years without renewing the union contract with AFSCME. There is no excuse for not giving any city staff their cost of living increases and salary adjustments. It is time to sign the agreement and extend City Hall's downpayment housing assistance to all city workers.

Public
Transportation

Housing

Serving on Habitat’s board is a daily reminder of missing housing for individuals earning 30-80% of the area median income. We know there are only two ways to keep affordable rates indefinitely and costs guaranteed and that is through organizations like Habitat for Humanity or it has to be city/trust owned and operated. I am proposing we adopt the Housing Endowment Fund Model proven successful in other communities and make the commitment to invest $100 million in a trust fund to build out and operate affordable housing and units that will remain affordable for generations. I am fighting for this development in Midtown to ensure workforce, affordable and Section 8 development. With this trust and other funding sources; we can build out Midtown, continue with conversion projects for transitional and senior housing and assist low-income homeowners in modernization and repairs.

Overhauling the land use department and establishing standard operating procedures and public guidelines for applicants needs to happen immediately. Permits for home repairs should be available online and over the counter to purchase. Lastly, just like the program I helped initiate at the State Land Office to cut red tape and be friendly to businesses, we need an expedited line to generate additional revenue from private developers in a hurry and give affordable housing applications a quicker process to build.