Success in Santa Fe

...An even bigger problem was that the prospects for the children and grandchildren of working-class people like him buying their own homes were rapidly disappearing...

...The city is also purchasing plots of land where affordable housing can be built...

...Though she lost on a lot of issues by a 7-1 margin, the councilor succeeded in putting development issues on the public agenda, and in making a name for herself...

...This isn't something I'm making up...

...There is more of an open discussion of class in Santa Fe than you'll find elsewhere...

...The fight back that Valdez describes has evolved into a remarkable story of municipal transformation that, in less than two years, has seen Santa Fe's City Hall wrenched from the hands of a conservative, pro-development establishment and handed over to one of the most progressive local governments in America...

...The whole city has experienced the most incredible process of gentrification in the last twenty years," says City Councilor Cris Moore, a Green Party activist who was elected along with Jaramillo in March 1994...

...Following the vote, Valdez approached Moore, the Green councilor who had taken the lead on the growth-control initiative, and as the two men hugged, Valdez whispered, "You've done well, my friend...

...The problem as the 1990s dawned was that Valdez did not want to sell out and move—as many of his neighbors have—to affordable areas thirty and forty miles from town...

...In the 1994 campaign, however, Jaramillo would not be deterred...

...How can we avoid the subject...

...They figured they had an easy one—call her a racist and pretty soon people will be talking about racism, not economics...

...He writes about electoral politics for The Progressive...

...Jaramillo was so vocal, and so effective, that in 1988 she was elected to the city council as a lonely—but seldom silent—foe of the direction in which Santa Fe was then headed...

...So far, Jaramillo has shown little willingness to trim her sails...

...I felt so sad...

...A lot of wealthy people came as tourists and then decided to retire here...

...I saw some people get real defensive and try to turn on me— call me 'racist' and all that—but I knew that was because I talked about the real issues...

...It's not hidden—it's obvious...

...The reactions were varied...

...In fact, the debate now is not about whether this is a good idea, but on where to set the standard of affordability—Santa Fe planners identify a $120,000 home as affordable, but Moore thinks the figure should be closer to $80,000...

...On the other side you have your local families, families that have been here for generations, having to sell out because they can't afford property taxes that were driven up by the arrival of the out-of-staters...

...You can make a difference here," observes David Arbin, a local architect and neighborhood activist who has been involved in several land-use fights...

...Shortly after the beginning of the Twentieth, it was named as New Mexico's capital...

...Then again, everything about Santa Fe is unique...

...But to hear it in a political context is rare in itself...

...Speaking to The New York Times about wealthy newcomers, she said, "These are conquerors who did not need arms to take over our town...

...The last polls before the election showed Jaramillo trailing by twelve points, but when the votes were counted she had won easily with 39 percent of the vote in a twelve-candidate field...

...And Santa Fe shows how that can happen," says Steve Cobble, a former official in the Presidential campaigns of the Reverend Jesse Jackson...

...Still, a genuine confidence radiates among many activists after passage of the growth-control legislation...

...We had to respond or this wasn't going to be our town anymore...

...Santa Feans had always been taught to appreciate tourism, and the live-and-let-live atmosphere of the community—reflected in shop signs that read, "Shoplifting is Bad Karma"—was traditionally quite welcoming to newcomers...

...We've lost a lot of the Santa Fe I'd like to have seen retained...

...The median price for a home rose 28 percent between 1990 and 1993...

...There's still too much development, still too much pressure for development...

...Indeed, housing values skyrocketed in Santa Fe during the 1980s...

...Valdez is a retired janitor who, since childhood, has climbed in the mountains that surround New Mexico's historic, picturesque, and increasingly trendy capital city...

...There is a genuine understanding of what's really going on in this country— who's better off, who's not, who's getting the short end of the stick...

...The city has launched a number of projects aimed at providing affordable housing...

...In order to more effectively direct growth—which often follows patterns of available water—the city also is purchasing the private Sangre de Cristo Water Co...

...The real-estate market provided the carrot—people knew they could sell for a lot of money—and the taxes became the stick...

...So the natives—the people who have always lived here—are under intense pressure to sell their homes to millionaires from California...

...I think her victory was not so much due to practical organization as to the impression that she was the anti-establishment candidate, and people knew that the establishment had let them down," says Moore, who supported Jaramillo...

...But her opponents ignored this work...

...We must address crime by addressing the root causes...

...Some local activists say Jaramillo and the new council have not been as hard as they should be on land speculators...

...People know class differences exist, but politicians in most places never talk about it," Mayor Debbie Jaramillo declares...

...If the left is serious about environmental issues and issues of wealth and poverty, this shows a way to build coalitions and to succeed...

...Several years ago, as he hiked on Ata-laya Mountain, Valdez came across a parcel of land that had traditionally been known as a place of great spiritual significance to members of Santa Fe's large Hispanic community...

...Calling it the most important piece of local legislation in decades, Councilor Frank Montano declared that the growth-control ordinance would "protect the mountains not just for those that live today, but for those that live after us, and after them...

...But it may be the old theory of locking the barn door after the horses got away," says Anaya...

...I realized that if we did not fight back, the rich people would just roll over the poor people—like they have for a thousand years...

...It was a way to get away from the real issue that was at hand...

...It illustrates the possibility of building coalitions involving Greens, unions, the elderly, minorities, and the white working class, and it highlights the issues that can help sustain such coalitions...

...And Arbin thinks it will ultimately matter to progressives in communities across America...

...In the 1920s, author D.H...

...Jaramillo has proposed a plan that would require all developers to set aside a certain proportion of future developments to include affordable-housing units— which by law would have to be mixed in with more expensive units...

...In Santa Fe, where class issues were once ignored, local pols now speak candidly about economic disparity...

...John Nichols is an editorial writer for The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin...

...the native people were being forced out of their own home town...

...I think a lot of times they figured that if they could turn it around, turn the discussion onto another topic, then they wouldn't have to deal with the real issues," says the forty-three-year-old mayor...

...We're getting some balance...

...So when I say it, period, I think people are taken aback by it—they just don't expect politicians to talk seriously about wealth and poverty...

...The new mayor and council have also appointed openly gay and lesbian officials for the first time, placed Greens on planning bodies, and so shaken up the status quo that discussions of local government are now spiced with phrases like "populist coup" and "revolution...

...I think we're moving in the right direction...

...There was a combination of things that I saw happen whenever I spoke to the truth, when I said what needed to be said...

...Remember," he says, "the Populists started in little towns in Oklahoma and Kansas back in the 1890s, and they ended up writing the agendas that Bob LaFollette and Franklin Roosevelt and others eventually instituted...

...Like Lawrence, many were so drawn to the scenery and the relaxed lifestyle that they decided to stay...

...Why shouldn't a little city in New Mexico be the place where the next set of progressive agendas gets written...

...Part of the reason is that everything is so very apparent...

...The problem is that, while they have driven up housing prices and taxes, there has been no parallel increase in wages...

...I think that those who saw the election as a revolution did so because the shift that was made was from a good-old-boys club, real pro-development-type government to one that was led by a woman—and a Hispanic woman at that—who was talking about putting the interests of working people and poor people first...

...While other candidates harped on crime and gang issues, Jaramillo noted that she had been in a gang as a youth, and said, "Social conditions such as poverty, poor housing, and lack of economic opportunity are major contributors to crime...

...She got a good deal of Hispanic support—particularly from senior citizens—and she also attracted a lot of Anglo support from liberals, anti-development folks, union members, Greens, and whatever exists of the left...

...That meant the assessments went up, and you had senior citizens who were being billed $1,000 a year in property taxes...

...Though the pro-development front runner, Councilor Peso Chavez, outspent her three-to-one, and though she was undercut by a third candidate who ran on a somewhat more moderate anti-development platform, Jaramillo forged a coalition that is all too rare these days...

...She led a petition drive to prevent a road project that would have torn up an existing neighborhood in order to promote development of surrounding areas...

...And I'm not sure we can reverse the influx of outsider hordes pushing the brown people out of town...

...Newspaper editorials warned the mayor that she would have to be careful lest her election might "scare" business...

...In the boldest act so far, city and county officials voted in June to impose strict limits on development in the mountains east of Santa Fe, the very area where Valentin Valdez saw treasured open spaces being claimed by developers just a few years ago...

...It's so blatantly obvious what's going on—you have rich people forcing poor people out of their homes, their communities...

...The question of whether the Santa Fe progressives can really alter patterns of development—and of economic disparity—remains unanswered...

...Now, however, what Valdez had always thought of as public space was being divided into lots where developers planned to build $500,000-and-up homes for wealthy emigres from California...

...And in the neighborhoods, over the last few years, you started to see the houses being bought up not by the children of people from Santa Fe but by people from Hollywood with big checkbooks...

...As the assessed values of homes went through the roof, little houses in nice, quaint historic neighborhoods that were built for $10,000 or $20,000 were suddenly going for $300,000," explains Councilor Moore, whose district includes Valdez's neighborhood...

...A town of gentle adobe architecture perched on a 7,000-foot-high plateau, with a pure blue mountain stream running through its center, Santa Fe has long been portrayed as a sort of Eden by artists and writers...

...A forty-six-unit resort-condominium development that failed was acquired from the Resolution Trust Company, with the goal of making units available for low- and moderate-income families...

...We must quit neglecting less affluent neighborhoods and uplift pockets of deterioration...

...In fact, Jaramillo worked hard to combat racism, building broad-based coalitions around shared economic concerns...

...An ardently pro-development official, Pick was backed by a like-minded majority on the city council...

...With roots that stretch back more than seven centuries, to the time when the Pueblo Indians established a village on the site of the current city, Santa Fe is one of the oldest and most distinct communities in North America...

...So marked has the shift been that national observers are beginning to point to Santa Fe as a model for progressives nationally...

...And simple adobe homes in once humble neighborhoods near the city center now sell for $300,000, just as one-room apartments can go for as much as $1,500 a month...

...Former Governor Anaya thinks that Jaramillo's progressive positions on economics were a powerful tool in the underfinanced candidate's political war chest...

...She was even accused of being a racist—since she was so impassioned in her criticism of newcomers, the vast majority of whom happened to be Anglos...

...Well, here in Santa Fe we do talk about it...

...Running on the defiant slogan, "Es Tiempo" ("It's Time"), Jaramillo purchased newspaper ads that declared, "What is popular is not always right, what is right is not always popular," and said, "It's time City Hall turns its attention to the needs of its citizens, instead of focusing attention on the needs of developers, politicians, and special interests...

...But when she ran again in 1994, she was written off by many local pundits who portrayed her as too strident...

...In the 1980s, particularly, Santa Fe became very tourist-oriented, very tourist-hungry—to a fault," says Anaya...

...You have your $800,000 houses on the ridge tops— rich people, many of them newcomers, looking down on the rest of us...

...So appealing was the site that the Spanish conquistadors fought the Indians for the turf—eventually establishing a thriving commercial center that boomed as the terminus of the Santa Fe Trail in the Nineteenth Century...

...Santa Fe's population has boomed from around 40,000 in the 1970s to more than 60,000 today—with another 45,000 living in the surrounding county...

...They have come instead with their big money and their higher education...

...Former New Mexico Governor Toney Anaya, a Santa Fe resident who was one of the most progressive governors in the nation during his tenure in the 1980s, shares Cobble's view...

...The new council has funded an innovative tenant hot line, passed resolutions calling for environmental-impact studies of projects at the nearby Los Alamos nuclear facility, and endorsed union organizing in the local private sector...

...In 1993, she told a reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper—which was doing a feature on wealthy Californi-ans moving to the Santa Fe area—that Hispanics in northern New Mexico were considering burning down million-dollar houses in order to fight what they saw as a white invasion of their region...

...At this level you can make a swing...

...She filled the council seat she had to give up to become mayor with an openly lesbian community activist, and—though Jaramillo is "a Jesse Jackson Democrat"—she showed few qualms about appointing members of Santa Fe's well-organized Green party to local commissions...

...Lawrence wrote, "The moment I saw the brilliant, proud morning shine high up over the deserts of Santa Fe, something stood still in my soul and I started to attend...

...But not in Santa Fe...

...As home values rise, property-tax bills have jumped so quickly that people like Valdez—who lives on Social Security and a small pension—must take out loans simply to afford to stay in their homes...

...Jamarillo's in-your-face approach shocked the traditional power establishment in Santa Fe—a mixture of wealthy Hispanics and Anglos that in the late 1980s and early 1990s was led by Mayor Sam Pick...

...Where Santa Fe's mayor and city council once could be expected to rubber-stamp extravagant development proposals and then march off to drink cocktails with their rich contributors, local officials are now voting for development moratoriums and then heading out for union rallies or Green Party meetings...

...The awareness of class is very real here," said Anaya...

...Maybe it's not everything that everyone would want, but what we're doing here matters...

...The model of building coalitions around issues such as development is something that progressives need to understand if we're going to really start winning at the local level and, eventually, at the national level...

...The model from Santa Fe could go to other places...

...In a matter of a few years, Valdez saw his Apodaca Hill community turn from a homey, low- to middle-income enclave into what the local newspaper, The New Mexican, now refers to as "a million-dollar neighborhood...

...That prospect chilled local developers—who had poured money into her leading opponent's campaign in the final days before the election...

...There is tremendous pressure on natives to sell out to some rich buyer...

...Jaramillo made issues of economic disparity a vital part of her campaign, saying, "It's time to reverse the trend that's adding to the economic and ethnic split of our city...

...And for the first time in three centuries, the 1990 census showed there were more Anglos than Hispanics living in the community...

...Despite the rave reviews of Lawrence and his contemporaries, however, Santa Fe remained a relatively quiet, culturally diverse state-government town until the 1970s, when improved transportation links and a growing reputation as a "new-age" center began to draw increasing numbers of newcomers—particularly wealthy Cali-fornians—to what locals refer to as "the city different...

...The mayor and council are currently considering a bold city charter proposal, which would impose limits on campaign spending and expand direct democracy with initiatives, recalls, and referendums...

...In addition, the election swept in an anti-development, progressive majority on the eight-member council, which meant the new mayor could turn her bold words to action...

...And this is what people elected us to do something about...

...Scare is just a term they like to use—I think the reality is that the election angered a lot of powerful people," she says...

...Longtime residents such as Valdez, who built his adobe home on the city's east side more than forty years ago, now find themselves property rich but cash poor...

...The fight back was slow to develop...

...I saw it as kind of a tactic to skirt what needed to be addressed...

...It also would bar the passage of any city ordinance, resolution, referendum, or policy that "discriminates on the basis of race, age, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, sexual orientation, physical or mental handicap, or medical condition...

...On the key development front, Jaramillo and the council have moved quickly—although not always as quickly as some local activists would like...

...I was afraid that one of these days it would just get to be too much, and I would lose my home, my land—where my roots have been all my life," explains Valdez...

...This is something we see every day...

...But Jaramillo doesn't really think "scare" is the proper word...

...What older residents began to realize, however, was that the tourism boom and the development frenzy were turning their city into a place they could no longer afford...

...Suddenly, you started to see mansions in the hills," explains Valentin Valdez, whose family has Uved in Santa Fe for generations...

...In fact, it should go to other places," says Anaya...

...Compared to the history of politics at this City Hall, our taking over could be viewed as a revolution," admits Jaramillo, who began her political journey as a militant neighborhood activist in 1986 and seven years later was sworn in as mayor...

...Jaramillo challenged Pick for mayor in 1990, winning almost 30 percent of the vote...

...While left coalitions have won control of a number of cities around the country over the years— from Burlington, Vermont, to Berkeley, California—the Santa Fe example is unique, not only in the makeup of the coalition, but in the distinct emphasis on class issues...

...I think the left has to start thinking about putting development and affordable-housing issues to use as tools for coalition-building and for getting important things done...

...I realized that greed was destroying our community," says Valdez, a soft-spoken man of seventy-one...

...To call Jaramillo's council tenure controversial would be an understatement...

...Santa Fe was very pro-development—the city council never met a development it didn't like...

...Debbie simply let people know that she saw what they saw—and they responded...

...It was Debbie Jaramillo who, as a young housewife and mother, took the lead in 1986 in one of the first high-profile anti-development campaigns...

...Others say there is simply no way to do enough...

...Moore, who has emphasized the need to build community coaUtions to support the new council's bold initiatives, replied, "No, we've done well...