Dispaches from the land and water wars http://santafereview.com It's usually just the Arroyo Mora, a dry, picturesque ditch that drains much of the eastern face of Atalaya Mountain into the Santa Fe River. But by Sunday morning, with all the rain, it had become a little river, and I was determined to find its source . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php The Tom Ford webcam was stolen just as construction activity at his hilltop estate was getting interesting . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php 13 Jul 2008 Detective Matthew Martinez called on Thursday to say that the police had apprehended a suspected thief and recovered what appeared to be stolen photographic equipment, including a Canon camera and three auxiliary lenses . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php 07 Jul 2008 If you click on the link for the Tom Ford webcam, you will see the image frozen at 12:05:32 A.M. That was the time early this morning when burglars stole the camera from my home office along with more than $7,000 worth of electronic and photographic equipment, including a two-week-old Mac Pro computer with two 20" Apple Cinema Displays. They stole my backup hard drive and my backup power supply, two digital cameras, a digital recorder. Every time I look something else is gone: my iPod Touch and cellphone, the two older monitors I was replacing, a copy machine . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php 29 Jun 2008 One morning in 1992, shortly after I moved to Abeyta Street, I was relaxing outside my house when I spotted a large truck creeping down the hill. A couple of burly men were standing in the truck bed, and every few seconds one of them heaved a large cardboard box over the side, one for each household. I thought they were distributing blocks of government surplus cheese . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php 23 Jun 2008 A couple of days before Thornburg Mortgage's annual shareholders meeting, I was searching through stacks of paper for my proxy card. Mailed weeks before, it was my ticket to the much-anticipated event, June 12, at Hotel Eldorado. By the time I accepted that the card was lost, it was too late to get another. I voted my shares by telephone and listened to the live webcast. The audio feed had been turned on early, and for several minutes I heard the murmur of anxious investors, surreally accompanied by the Muzak-like sound of cool jazz. Earlier that morning Thornburg had announced a $3.3 billion loss for the quarter, and the shareholders filling the meeting room were being asked to make a Hobson's choice: sit back and watch Santa Fe's most renowned company go under or approve what seemed like an almost suicidal rescue plan. . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php 12 Jun 2008 Shortly before last night's City Council meeting, a concerned resident sent an email to various councilors and members of the press suggesting a "proactive and truly scientific approach to Santa Fe's Wi-Fi dilemma": with Biogeometry, a body of wisdom drawn from the ancient secrets of the pharaohs, Santa Fe could implement "a design language of forms, colors, and sounds" to "transmute the bad radiation into good or harmonious radiation" . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#50.6 10 Jun 2008 A French-speaking reader has kindly responded to my request to search Le Monde for information about the rumored ban on wifi at the French National Library. Judging from the brief story she found, the issue hinges on a labor dispute in which a French public employees union contends that some librarians' headaches are caused by wifi (and possibly portable telephones, telephone relays, and high-intensity lights.) Though the claims are considered unfounded by a government environmental agency, the unions have succeeded in getting four Parisian libraries to unplug their wifi boxes. Here is the translation . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#50.6 08 Jun 2008 In both Sunday papers, the wifi foes continue their attempt to befuddle the public -- and the City Council -- over the issue of wireless Internet in the libraries. Their primary tactic is what propagandists call "the big lie": The greater the falsehood, the more apt some people are to believe it. Thus we're told in an opinion piece by Diana Thatcher (who says she speaks for "six Santa Fe librarians from academic, public, state and special libraries") that there is substantial scientific and medical literature demonstrating that wifi is dangerous. Surely she couldn't make so bold a claim unless it were true. But it's not. That's how a "big lie" works. . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#50.5 06 Jun 2008 A week ago I was riding the train from Bristol to Hereford, the closest stop to the village of Hay-on-Wye, Wales, and what turned out to be the United Kingdom's biggest book festival. A complex of large white tents had been erected on a muddy field at the edge of town, complete with restaurants, a book store, wireless Internet, and a large sound stage where I spoke to 600 ticket holders who had come to hear about The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments. It was the most enthusiastic audience I've ever spoken to -- the highlight of an exhausting week that also included talks at the Bristol Festival of Ideas and the Royal Society for Arts, and three in-studio radio interviews at the BBC in London. By the time I boarded the plane home from Gatwick I was exhausted -- happy to don a pair of noise-canceling headphones and retreat into a bubble of relative calm . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#50.4 19 May 2008 I'll be doing a reading and booksigning on Wednesday evening at Collected Works with my colleague Sandra Blakeslee. Please drop by between 5:45 and 7 p.m. to say hello. The event is part of our annual Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop. http://santafereview.com/index.php 18 May 2008 In the last month I've been in Baltimore, Washington, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, and New York -- where, in what is surely the weirdest experience of my life, I was a guest on the Colbert Report. (You can watch the video here.) Back in Santa Fe, I've been recuperating from too much talk and travel, and earlier this week I was catching up on errands downtown. Parking on Marcy Street, I walked past City Hall to the post office and the bank and finally to lunch at the Burrito Company. It was good to be home again. With a little more time I could have stopped at my favorite bookstore, Collected Works, or the Public Library. I could have seen an art exhibit at one of several museums or gone to the Lensic to buy tickets for an evening performance. The tourists were out but, as usual, most of the bustle was from office workers and other employees of downtown businesses and institutions . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#50.3 04 May 2008 I'm back from San Francisco (more book publicity) and will soon be heading to Boston and New York. With a few quiet days in between, I'm trying to catch up on the news. The biggest bombshell of the week got surprisingly little attention. Readers of The New Mexican would not have learned of it at all. Thornburg Mortgage, as Kiera Hay reported in the Journal, is being investigated by both the S.E.C. and the New York Stock Exchange. Maybe this attention will finally inspire the kind of incisive journalism that Thornburg has never been subjected to by either the local or the national press. Meanwhile come reports that the Council (as the New Mexican astutely predicted) postponed the wifi vote, taking the victims of M.E.S.S. (multiple everything sensitivity syndrome) seriously enough to ask the city attorney to research whether the Americans With Disabilities Act covers "electro-sensitivity." Of course it does not . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#50.2 25 Apr 2008 While I was in Washington, killing time before catching a taxi to Dulles, I walked to the base of the Washington Monument to enjoy the magnificent vista from Lincoln Memorial to Capitol Hill. Heading toward Lafayette Park, I remembered the shopping cart lady I used to see on Pennsylvania Avenue, her head covered in foil. The White House is now an armed fortress so I couldn't get close to where she once stood, handing out pamphlets explaining how the government was controlling her brain with radio waves. Instead I strolled along the Mall, noticing on my iPod that the parks are now equipped with free municipal wifi . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#50.1 20 Apr 2008 Clicking anywhere on the image above will open a separate window in your browser with a Google map showing who owns the buildings around the Plaza. You can zoom in, pan out, and click on any of the colored arrows (red = the Peters, Green = the Greers, yellow = the Montoyas . . .) for a dossier on each building . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php 06 Apr 2008 While driving to the dump this morning with a load of green waste, I turned on my favorite station, KBAC, (Radio Free Santa Fe), and was startled to hear a segment called Evolution Minute, a "one-minute radio broadcast reporting fair and balanced news from the frontlines of the evolution-creationism controversy." Today's brief episode was plugging a book called "Darwin's Plantation: Evolution's Racist Roots," written by the director of a creationism museum in Cincinnati." Here is the audio clip. I might as well have been listening to Christian radio . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#49.5 03 Apr 2008 Talking on a handheld cellphone while driving is illegal throughout the states of California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, New Jersey, New York, Utah, and Washington. It is illegal in parts of Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. It is illegal throughout Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Chile, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Singapore, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Turkmenistan, the United Kingdom, and Zimbabwe . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#49.4 03 Apr 2008 The only thing clear about the convoluted truce Thornburg Mortgage signed this week with the wolves of Wall Street is how ill-equipped the local press is to make sense of the deal. So far all readers have gotten is lightly massaged wire copy and perfunctory reporting that doesn't come close to capturing the intricacies and drama of the most astonishing business story in years . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#49.4 30 Mar 2008 Like celestial clockwork, Andrew Davis's flashing arpeggio of picture windows is back again. It is now a semi-annual event. Every six months -- just after the equinox, when the sun is midway through its journey between north and south -- the evening glare begins, with nightly encores throughout the week. For citizens farther north, the show comes at sunrise . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php 30 Mar 2008 It was disappointing to see Inez Russell, usually the voice of reason, leveling attacks on courthouse critics in a voice as shrill and misleading as that of County Commissioner Paul Campos. In her column today she belittles "self-appointed guardians of Santa Fe style, of Santa Fe history -- of Santa Fe, period" and wrongly implies that they are trying to push the building out to the suburbs or beyond . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php 29 Mar 2008 Saturday morning while I was downtown picking up mail and checking out a library book (a history of Wall Street before and after the banking collapse that set off the Great Depression), I walked by Thornburg Mortgage's offices at 215 Lincoln Ave., across from City Hall. The company's nameplate was gone . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#49.3 29 Mar 2008 Though the New Mexican considered it worth only a brief item (the Journal had a full report), the fact that only 185 property owners have signed up for short-term rental permits is surprising news. But is it good or bad? City officials had expected some 700 operators of these "noncomplying uses" to seek protection under the grandfathering clause. When, through attrition, the number eventually fell below 350, more operators could apply. Though the ordinance was a betrayal to everyone who, relying on the integrity of zoning laws, purchased a home in a residential district, neighbors at least had one small consolation: the devil you know may be better than the one you don't . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#49.3 After surging briefly to nearly $3.50 a share, Thornburg stock plunged again this morning after the company announced a rescue plan that underscores just how desperate things have become. According to Forbes, Thornburg will surrender more than a fourth of its stock -- 47 million shares -- to its creditors (one of which is Bear Stearns) for a penny a share and borrow $1 billion at a crippling 12 percent interest rate. In addition to diluting the value of what the rest of us are holding, the dividend will be eliminated again . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php I've moved the Tom Ford Webcam to a different window to afford a glimpse of the construction tent Mr. Ford's contractor, Doug McDowell, wrote to us about earlier this year -- or actually what is left of the tent. Today's monstrous winds tore off the white envelope leaving only the metal frame. A trailer that peers out from the saddle behind the hilltop, where the mansion itself will stand, appears to be intact . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php This afternoon, shortly after Thornburg Mortgage became a penny stock, dipping as low as 69 cents a share, I drove out to the site of the future $40 million headquarters. Construction was further along than I'd anticipated, and charging full steam ahead. A giant crane arched its neck over the rising walls as diesel engines rumbled and a legion of orange-helmeted workers scrambled below . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php Speaking of Martin Lujan, no one in city government ever bothered to investigate the compelling evidence, unearthed by Julie Ann Grimm, that he was violating the law requiring a candidate to live in the district he seeks to represent. According to her recent report in the New Mexican, the Ethics and Campaign Review Board tried to look into the matter but were advised by City Attorney Frank Katz that it didn't have the authority. (Whether the complaint was also beyond the purview of Mr. Katz's office was left unsaid.) . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php What a strange morning it's been waking to all this snow. Digging out today's New Mexican from its hole in the driveway, I learn that the short-term rental mess is still not resolved: Two property-management firms and a dozen out-of-towners who lease their Santa Fe homes to vacationers want a judge to nullify the city's new short-term rental rules. Unbelievable. The city bends over backwards and rezones our neighborhoods for the benefit of these arrogant scofflaws, imposing only the mildest regulations, and still they feel aggrieved . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#48.9 From Safford I crossed into New Mexico on Highway 78, then cut across Catron County, listening to a replay of "Prairie Home Companion" on public radio. By the time I got to Reserve the static won out, as though someone were jamming the signal. On toward Datil the only thing my radio could hear was a gospel show broadcasting in Navajo from Window Rock. As I passed a billboard advertising Promised Land Taxidermy, a single sentence in English leapt off the announcer's tongue: "Why should the devil have all the good music?" . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#48.9 When I drive around the West it's with an eye toward finding Shangri-La -- a hidden place with all of Santa Fe's charms but without its frustrations. Bisbee, with its Victorian buildings, glowing copperlike in the morning sun, is almost a contender. The winding streets and tall staircases, leading to cottages wedged against the canyon walls, give the place an Old World air, like Deadwood crossed with a Provencal hill town . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#48.8 On my way to Dragoon, Arizona, where I spent the early part of this week at an Amerind symposium on the disappearance of the Anasazi, I stopped in Los Lunas for lunch and to check my email. Courtesy of the municipal government, wireless Internet pervades the village, and I was easily able to lock onto a signal at the public library. Sixty miles farther south I tried again, just for fun, in Socorro. No problem. The town plaza is also connected. Standing on the gazebo, communicating with the outside world, I thought about how far behind we are in poor, benighted Santa Fe . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#48.8 It was encouraging to read in yesterday's papers that an alert security guard and some good police work led to the capture of a 21-year-old vandal, who was decorating downtown with a can of red spraypaint. For Valentine's Day. It's no wonder that these sociopaths feel so emboldened. They know that in Santa Fe, especially in the winter, the damage will be on display for months. Speaking of which, I finally received an answer, sort of, to the query I sent the city about its graffiti-removal program . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#48.7 After reading the New Mexican story this morning, I'm more confused than ever. The appeals court affirmed the right of the neighborhood group "to enforce the creation and recordation of the restrictive covenants" governing commercial development in Santa Fe Estates. (This is from paragraph 6 of the decision.) But apparently there is a distinction between the right to enforce the creation and recording of a covenant and the right to enforce its enforcement. http://santafereview.com/index.php#48.6 Kiera Hay has a good piece in the Journal this morning putting the Court of Appeals ruling into perspective, but I wonder if she and her editors were overly credulous of the claim (by the developer, Santa Fe Estates) that the decision is irrelevant. After all, it was Santa Fe Estates that filed -- and has now lost -- the appeal. Had the ruling gone the other way, the company would presumably be touting it as a victory . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#48.6 Last week in a 53-page opinion (you can download a copy here), the New Mexico State Court of Appeals upheld what opponents of the Thornburg Companies' new headquarters in northwest Santa Fe have been saying all along: that they have a right to enforce covenants requiring that commercial development in the area be characterized by small shops (restaurants, groceries, and so forth) and that they conform to Santa Fe architectural style. Thornburg, of course, is well on its way toward completing, with a tax break from the city, a modernistic 100,000 square-foot office complex . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#48.6 Walking back from my polling place Wednesday afternoon, I was glad to see that the spraypaint scribbles on Acequia Madre Street had been erased. Accordingly I've removed the owner's name from the list. But when I rounded the corner on Poniente, the vandalism on landscape architect Catherine Clemens's wall was still there. I continued up Abeyta Street . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#48.5 I just heard from Fletcher Catron, a well known local attorney, who says he believes Mr. Farber is correct that Santa Fe v. Armijo does not exempt the county from following the city's zoning laws: "As I recall it, the point of the pumpjack case was that, as a subordinate creation of the State, the City cannot bind it's 'superior.' The County is not the superior of the City, however; rather, they are co-equal entities with full authority over the areas they govern. If one of those entities wants to build within the jurisdiction of the other, it must follow the laws of the other" . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#48.4 Karen Heldmeyer has sent me an email objecting to my characterization of Miguel Chavez's turnabout on short-term rentals: "Whatever it looked like from the audience, Miguel was not doing a quid-pro-quo." (Please see my dispatch of February 1.) Readers of these pages know I have great respect for Councilor Chavez, a sincere and principled man. But had he and the mayor stuck to their guns on a five-year phaseout, Wednesday night's outcome probably would have been avoided . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#48.3 A brief item in Friday's New Mexican hardly did justice to the legal challenge attorney Steven Farber is mounting against the county's belief that anything it chooses to build inside city limits is immune from local zoning codes. The argument has been repeated again and again, most recently in a Journal editorial: the county trumps the city, so its plans for a new three-story courthouse on Sandoval Street do not have to abide by the Historic Design Review Board. If it wanted it could build a 40-story glass skyscraper or a Ferris wheel . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#48.2 For a few tense minutes at Wednesday's Council meeting, it appeared that Matthew Ortiz was about to show something resembling statesmanship. As the councilors spoke, one by one, on Rebecca Wurzburger's latest transmogrification of the bill to legalize short-term rentals, the night was clearly leaning her way. Councilors Calvert and Dominguez were in the bag. And Miguel Chavez had unexpectedly caved, dropping his insistence on a five-year phase-out in return for a toothless amendment involving Neighborhood Conservation Districts, hypothetical entities that may or may not ever come to exist. Then it was Councilor Ortiz's turn . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#48.1 While we're on the subject of bad neighbors and deteriorating neighborhoods: Yesterday I drove along Acequia Madre and up Camino del Monte Sol. All of the spraypaint vandalism -- already weeks old when I reported it on January 13 -- was still there . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php Saturday morning I drove down to Montezuma and Sandoval Streets hoping to catch a glimpse of the Old Santa Fe Association's inspired demonstration of how imposing the proposed new county courthouse will be. Parking a construction crane in a lot across the street, the association hoisted a banner 52 feet above the ground -- the exact height the courthouse would stand. City code allows for only a 21-foot structure, but the county claims an exemption . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php Judging from the letters one saw in the Reporter, the Blue Monkey had a fiercely loyal clientele. The popular hair salon on Montezuma Street was, it seems, the place to go if you needed your ice-blonde dreadlocks rewoven or a yellow stripe paved down the center of your head . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#47.6 I'm sure I'm not the only one who groaned when I saw in this morning's New Mexican that Rebecca Wurzburger had held a news conference to announce yet another iteration of her plan to legalize short-term rentals in residential zones. But by the time I got done with the story, I was thinking that maybe this wasn't such a bad compromise. All of the existing units would be allowed to operate indefinitely -- until the property changed hands. This would be a lot slower than the phase-out proposed by Mayor Coss and Councilor Chavez, but at least someday these zoning violations would be gone. As it turns out the New Mexican left out the most crucial part of the story . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#47.5 Lacking anyone vaguely resembling the late Hunter S. Thompson, the 2008 council campaign is off to a lackluster start with the candidates speaking in platitudes and gray generalities . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#47.4 So maybe Tom Simon is right. There really are no neighborhoods here anymore, at least not in the most exclusive part of the historic East Side. How else to explain how an ugly trail of spray-paint vandalism all along Camino del Monte Sol could be left unattended for weeks? I was driving home on December 17 when I noticed a bright blue tag at 965 Camino Santander . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#47.3 http://santafereview.com/index.php#47.3 Patti Bushee called this morning, sounding like death itself, to insist that she really is down with the flu. I don't doubt her and didn't mean to imply otherwise -- only to convey a sense of frustration at how neatly a bad roll of nature's dice played into the management companies' hands. Patti also expressed her dismay at the cynicism that leads to rumors of back-door deals or implicit quid pro quos. We wish her a speedy recovery . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#47.2 The one bright moment in last night's mostly nauseating council meeting came just before 10 p.m. when Mayor Coss almost blew his top. I wish I'd had my recorder. Mr. Coss, a true gentleman, was able to maintain his cool, barely. With his teeth clenched and his voice aquiver, he expressed his frustration at the spectacle that had unfolded before him . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#47.1 A quote in Dan Boyd's story in Sunday's Journal about the zoning mess along Juanita Street is a perfect example of the Orwellian double-speak by which otherwise good people persuade themselves they are doing the world a favor by helping destroy a neighborhood . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php Just in the last week the New Mexican has published three outstanding examples of what's known in the trade as "enterprise reporting" -- journalism that digs beneath the surface of the news to reveal fascinating (and sometimes appalling) hidden layers. First was Jason Auslander's excellent dissection last Sunday of the paralysis at Santa Fe's police department that ensued after federal indictments of its two top drug detectives . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#46.9 Sometime in the past, a few Himalayan, Persian, and Siamese cats must have wandered off from their Eastside homes -- and for the last 15 years the offspring have regularly appeared here at the backdoor. Our yard is one of the few dog-free zones in the neighborhood, and word soon got out that it's a good place to get a handout . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#46.8 It was puzzling at first to read in Friday's New Mexican that Mayor Coss has postponed this week's hearing on the proposed short-term rental ordinance until January "so more city councilors can participate" . . . The hint that Councilor Trujillo might support Mr. Coss's bill, which would phase out illegal rentals over the next five years, was a welcome surprise. But either way the votes seemed to be there . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#46.7 In retrospect one of the worst things to happen to the dead, dry Santa Fe River was the upgrade of the water treatment plant on upper Canyon Road. With the increased capacity, the city has come to rely more heavily on the reservoirs than ever. Here is a comparison between this year and last of water use (measured in acre-feet) through the end of November . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#46.6 One of the weirder spectacles this year at City Hall was the snow job that Kurt Young (please click here for background on the young entrepreneur) and a company called Safe Property LLC gave at a Council meeting last spring. By cynically playing the affordable housing card, Mr. Young and his associates managed to get a two-acre residential lot rezoned to squeeze in a 19-unit condominium complex . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#46.5 In a well-crafted story in today's New Mexican (with a particularly punchy final paragraph), Jason Auslander describes another case that has been thrown out of court because of the incompetence of the Santa Fe Police Department. Though the suspect was arrested more than a year and a half ago, the police didn't bother sending the evidence -- 11 grams of cocaine -- to the state crime lab until last week. And when they did, some of it was missing . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#46.4 I was disappointed at first that the Neighborhood Law Center's proposal to phase out illegal vacation rentals is weaker than the one Mayor Coss and Councilor Chavez introduced last month. The earlier bill would have allowed violators in business as of 2002 to continue for five more years to "amortize" their investment. Under the Neighborhood Law Center's plan, drafted by Mr. Rowe and Mr. Yohalem, this amnesty would be expanded to include everyone operating up until the moment the new ordinance is passed. This is their reasoning: . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#46.3 Last month in what may lead to a realignment in the Santa Fe power structure, attorneys Fred Rowe and Daniel Yohalem announced the establishment of the Santa Fe Neighborhood Law Center. As Mr. Rowe wrote in a column in this morning's New Mexican: "Our guiding rationale is that Santa Fe's regulatory process inherently tilts toward developers with resources for hiring lawyers and experts, who can roll over resistance by neighbors who lack professional skills or representation. Because of this imbalance, neighborhoods suffer from denser developments, taller buildings, shorter rentals and faster dollars." Their hope is to tip the scales the other way . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#46.2 One morning last week as I was walking out the door, I noticed the chimney of Tom Ford's new mansion peeking through the trees. After all the years of legal wrangling and politicking by the site's various owners, the column of cinderblocks (you can see it when the light is right through the Tom Ford Webcam) is like a flag announcing to the citizens in the lands below that Talaya Hill, if that is what it's called, has been successfully occupied . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php Before I came back to New Mexico 15 years ago, one of my favorite places to stay was an unpretentious lodge on East Palace called La Posada, whose main building was said to be haunted by a ghost. Later on my friend Stuart Kauffman, a scientist at the Santa Fe Institute, would meet me on the hotel patio to work on his book, At Home in the Universe, which is about the sciences of complexity. I've written here before about how the grand old lodge was snapped up by a hospitality corporation and squeezed of its last drops of soul. Now, according to a recent piece in the New Mexican, La Posada has changed hands again . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#45.9 Since my last dispatch a week ago much has transpired on the short-term rental front. In the coming days I hope to write about the most significant development: the emergence of Fred Rowe and Daniel Yohalem's Neighborhood Law Center. But first some finer points. My neighbor Marilyn Bane, the former District 2 council candidate, has taken me to task for describing Karen Walker's survey as an attempt to play down the impact of the transient rental problem . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#45.8 After the New Mexican's irresponsible article last spring taking at face value the unsubstantiated claims of the anti-wireless activists, I would have expected Tom Sharpe's report today on "Electromagnetic Factors in Health," a panel held last weekend in Santa Fe, to serve as a corrective. But it's as bad as the earlier piece . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#45.7 Dan Boyd of the Journal has scooped the New Mexican again with his story this morning about the latest proposal by Mayor Coss and Councilor Chavez to regulate vacation rentals in residential neighborhoods. Only owners who were operating as of 2002 would be grandfathered-in (the suggested cutoff had been 2005), and they would be allowed to stay in business for five (instead of eight) years to "amortize" their investments. Whether the industry likes it or not, this a generous concession. In City of Santa Fe v. PDR Development Corp. (120 N.M. 184, 899 P.2d 1138), the New Mexico Court of Appeals appears to have upheld the city's right to enforce a 1987 ordinance banning short-term residential rentals . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#45.6 Simon Brackley, the president and CEO of the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce, has sent a good-humored email objecting to my comments of September 29 about a Journal article that seemed to imply that his organization might sue the city over its affordable housing requirement. "There may well be other groups with such plans," Mr. Brackley says, "but the Chamber is not one of them." We (and presumably the Journal) stand corrected . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#45.5 The New Mexican's story this morning on Shayna Lewis, by Julie Ann Grimm, was worth the wait. While the Journal broke the news with a light-hearted feature, the New Mexican reports on the controversy. The mayor is right that it's good to have "just regular Santa Feans" on city boards. But there is something to be said for experience. After Mr. Coss's struggles getting rid of the worst commissioners (please see Mayor Coss's Lost Gamble), voters expected something better: heavy hitters with the political and intellectual ammunition to take on the problems caused by overdevelopment. http://santafereview.com/index.php#45.5 I keep waiting for the New Mexican to pick up on the bizarre story reported in Monday's Journal about the mayor's appointment of a 19-year-old, who has yet to complete high school, to the city's powerful Planning Commission. Shayna Lewis, a team leader for the volunteer organization Youthworks, sounds like an admirable young woman. She was an obvious choice last January when Mr. Coss appointed her to his Youth Advisory Board. But the Planning Commission? . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#45.5 I was in Arizona last week for an anthropology seminar, so I missed out on the entertainment provided by two more "home tax" scare ads. In these versions actors were dressed up as a fireman and a nurse -- more public servants who would supposedly be forced out of Santa Fe if a 1 percent transfer fee is levied on high-end real estate. For practical reasons (please see the New Mexican story by Julie Ann Grimm), the City Council decided to further delay consideration of the matter. But it was clear that the advertisements had badly backfired. The president of the Santa Fe Firefighter's Association condemned them as misleading, and Councilor Calvert complained about "dirty tricks and borderline unethical behavior" . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#45.4 With the city council elections still five months away, a reminder of Santa Fe Grassroots-style politicking appeared today in a two-page advertisement in Section C of The New Mexican. "Help" says the headline. "If I can't afford to live in Santa Fe I can't teach in Santa Fe. Please tell your city councilors that the home tax will hurt us all by raising home prices throughout Santa Fe" . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#45.3 I didn't have my camera Saturday evening for that extraordinary sunset -- like nothing I have ever seen. The weird, unseasonal cloudburst came around 6:30 p.m. with the sun way low on the horizon and farther south than in monsoon times. The result was a double rainbow set against a soft orange-gray eastern sky. Earlier the fierce winds had filled the air with dust, which filters out the blue wavelengths. That combined with the near-horizontal angle of the sunlight amplified the reds, giving extra bands of deep purple to the rainbow. And behind it was lightning. Astonishing. http://santafereview.com/index.php#45.2 Back in March I described the jarring experience of admiring the soft evening glow of the northeastern foothills only to be slapped in the face by the flash from Andrew Davis's new picture windows. The sun, moving steadily northward, had aligned just so with his hilltop aerie igniting a glaring orange explosion. As the earth continued in its orbit, the nightly flashes receded. Then six months later, with the solstice past, the conflagration returned with a vengeance. Here is a 14-minute video clip taken earlier this month from the Andrew Davis webcam . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#45.2 On the short list of people whose love for Santa Fe helped make it such a special place is the late archeologist Edgar Lee Hewett. The founding director of the Museum of New Mexico, Mr. Hewett presided over the restoration of the Palace of the Governors and the establishment of treasures like the School of American Research and the Museum of Fine Arts. Fearful that the Southwest's magnificent Anasazi ruins would be destroyed by looters and general neglect, he pushed Theodore Roosevelt into signing the Antiquities Act, establishing a nationwide system of National Monuments that now includes Bandelier and Chaco Canyon. In fact, if Mr. Hewett had gotten his way, Bandelier would be several times larger, encompassing not only Tsankawi (the outlier near the town of White Rock), but the Otowi ruins in Los Alamos Canyon, the Puye Cliff Dwellings at Santa Clara, and everything in between. Cattle and lumber interests made sure that didn't happen. A week ago some aspiring felons, who, it is safe to surmise, wouldn't have qualified to lick clean Edgar Lee Hewett's boots, climbed atop the portal of the historic Hewett House on Lincoln Street and defaced it with black spray-paint. The architectural landmark is on the national registry of historic sites making this literally a federal crime . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php Beavis and Butt-head Visit the Hewett House http://santafereview.com/index.php#44.10 I've received a spirited email from Denise Keron of the Santa Fe Association of Realtors assuring me that although New Mexico is a nondisclosure state, her organization does use actual sales prices (not asking prices) in computing the quarterly statistics. (Please see my posting of September 9. I have reworded the mistaken reference.) But I think my larger point stands: As of 2003 New Mexico has required that sales prices be reported to county tax assessors ("partial disclosure"), but the numbers are still kept from the public. It's basic economics that limiting the free flow of information distorts the market. Ms. Keron also took me to task for improperly using the word "realtors" . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php In the end the short-term rental bill the mayor has decided to sponsor (with the help, surprisingly, of Councilor Chavez) is much like the one drafted earlier this month by City Attorney Frank Katz. (Here is a pdf of what was introduced at this week's council meeting.) In deference to the real-estate lobby, the grandfathering date has been moved up to 2005, allowing many more of the illegal businesses to survive . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#44.9 As shown by the upbeat news stories last weekend about the official Thornburg groundbreaking, the company has been very successful in portraying itself as an innocent victim of a hit-and-run -- sideswiped by subprime lenders whose recklessness caused liquidity to evaporate in the commercial paper market. Lost in the telling is the reason Thornburg fell so hard: because it was leveraged to the teeth with a ratio of debt to equity, according to Business Week, of 12 to 1 . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#44.7 In Sunday's New Mexican Paul Weideman writes about the continuing decline of the local real estate market. Just as revealing as the story itself is the shrunken size of the section in which it appears . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#44.7 A new iteration of a short-term rental ordinance has emerged from the city attorney's office (here is a pdf) -- and it appears to be moving toward something resembling a compromise. In this version illegal rentals would be grandfathered only if they were operating as early as November 2002 when the city "clarified" its zoning codes. Otherwise the provisions look the same as in the earlier draft, except for the addition of two paragraphs making clear that violators -- and their agents -- are subject to prosecution in municipal court. Wondering what it was that had been clarified back in 2002, I recently leafed through a tattered copy of the 1987 City Code at the public library . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#44.7 I guess I was too quick to assume that the proposal on short-term rentals drafted by Mr. Coss's city attorney is necessarily the mayor's own. I was relieved to hear (in an email from Karen Heldmeyer) that he is distancing himself from the plan, which I described here on September 2. Meanwhile the city continues to promote -- and act as an agent for -- illegal rentals on its official Convention and Visitor's Bureau Website . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#44.6 Sunday morning I was walking around the Santa Fe Canyon Nature Preserve thinking about Karen Peterson's editorial in the Journal lamenting the Coss administration's weak-willed efforts to combat graffiti vandalism. As I crossed the bridge at Canyon and Cerro Gordo, I saw that the spray-painted tags I'd reported weeks ago were still there. Now, encouraged by the city's inaction, some cretin had scratched his tag on several Nature Conservancy signs describing the history and ecology of the old Two Mile Reservoir. In Albuquerque, Ms. Peterson noted, citizens can quickly dial a three-digit graffiti hotline and count on the mess to be removed in 48 hours. Here the process is hit or miss . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#44.5 Ever since Karen Heldmeyer announced last month that she would not be running for a third term on the city council, the realtors and developers have been licking their chops. The plan, of course, is to find a candidate who will pose as a reasonable, environmentally friendly guy or gal (remember Rick Berardinelli) then, once elected, join the effort to turn downtown Santa Fe into a high-end resort surrounded on all sides by something resembling Rio Rancho. In September's glossy Real Estate Guide (a monthly insert in the Sunday New Mexican) Denise Keron, executive vice president of the Santa Fe Association of Realtors (a major supporter of the Santa Fe Grassroots cartel in 2004) fires an early salvo . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#44.4 In his email Mr. Katz also explained the reasoning behind his interpretation of the current rental law: "The lease has to be for 30 days. But no law says that the tenant is required to remain in the dwelling for 30 days . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#44.3 Or maybe not. After reading through the short-term rental compromise Mr. Coss has been quietly floating around City Hall (here is a pdf), I am much less sanguine about his campaign promise to "only support changes to our codes if those changes provide for better protection of our neighborhoods." Drafted by City Attorney Frank Katz, the Coss proposal would forgive everyone who was breaking the law as of 2005 (the exact cutoff date is still under discussion) and allow them to continue doing so for another 10 years -- or until their property changed hands . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#44.2 Tue, 28 Aug 2007 In Santa Fe's other big real estate story, Rebecca Wurzburger's attempt to legalize short-term rentals suffered a serious setback last night with both Mayor Coss and Chris Calvert joining Councilors Heldmeyer, Bushee, and Chavez to derail the bill. Making good on a campaign promise to protect residential neighborhoods from what amounts to unlicensed motel rooms, the mayor broke a 4-4 tie, postponing consideration of the issue until late November . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#44.1 Googling for the latest on Mr. Thornburg's listing ship, I keep seeing, at the very top of the page, a sponsored link: "Kaplan Fox Investigates Potential Fraud at Thornburg Mortgage, Inc." A quick look at the website confirms that Kaplan Fox is a New York law firm fishing for clients for another class-action -- I count three so far -- alleging that Thornburg misled investors. There is blood in the water and the sharks are moving in . . . http://santafereview.com Even some of the strongest opponents of Garrett Thornburg's plans to build his corporate headquarters on Ridgetop Road, where they were expecting instead a quaint village square, grudgingly called him a financial genius. A few, like Lew Pollock of Concerned Residents of Santa Fe North, have even owned stock in Thornburg Mortgage. (He sold it before he got invoved in litigation to avoid a conflict of interest.) Last week after the share price plummeted to 7.65 (from a year's high of 28.40) my gut told me the sell-off was probably an overreaction. I rarely invest in anything riskier than 6-month T-bills, but a walk downtown confirmed that no one was jumping out of windows at Marcy Plaza (Thornburg's current headquarters). I went to the Schwab website and placed an order for 1,000 shares . . . http://santafereview.com Several readers who attended the Public Works Committee meeting have written to emphasize a point that didn't appear in either the New Mexican or the Journal. Councilor Calvert, after offering some rather weak amendments (that much was reported), first moved to forward the Wurzburger proposal with no recommendation. When he didn't receive a second, he caved and went along with Councilor Dominguez in endorsing the bill. That leaves open the possibility that Mr. Calvert simply wanted to avoid further delays and in the final council vote will make good on his campaign promise to oppose commercializing residential neighborhoods. The question is how best to do that . . . http://santafereview.com There were plenty of tea leaves to read at last night's Public Works Committee hearing on Rebecca Wurzburger's attempt to legalize vacation rentals. Chairwoman Patti Bushee finally tipped her hand when she criticized the proposal as a political solution to a zoning problem -- the encroachment of commercial activity into residential neighborhoods. If Ms. Bushee sticks to her guns she might be counted on to join Karen Heldmeyer, Miguel Chavez, and Ron Trujillo (who cast a no vote at the meeting) when the issue comes before the full Council. Carmichael Dominguez, to no one's surprise, voted for the Wurzburger bill, but so did Chris Calvert -- reversing his earlier position and leaving some of his supporters wondering if he is "pulling a Pfeffer" . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#43.12 Last night the Finance Commitee voted 3-1 in favor of Councilor Wurzburger's bill to legalize, with only minimal restrictions, vacation rentals in residential neighborhoods, with only Councilor Calvert voting no. The sole surprise at the meeting, as reported in the Journal, was Ms. Wurzburger's assertion that Mayor Coss has agreed to support her bill. If so, he is reneging on his campaign promise "to ensure that the law currently on the books is not weakened and that it is vigorously enforced." http://santafereview.com/index.php#43.11 I didn't vote for Karen Heldmeyer in 2000 when she ran against one-term incumbent Molly Whitted. Though I often felt at odds with Ms. Whitted's conservative politics, I'd worked with her as a board member of Santa Fe Beautiful, waging an uphill (nearly vertical) battle against litter and graffiti. In the darkness of the voting booth, a sense of loyalty or a muscular twitch caused me to pull the lever by Molly's name. I was glad that it was Karen who won. http://santafereview.com/index.php#43.10 For many years Marilyn Proctor, formerly of The Management Group and now with Kokopelli Property Management, has made a living by representing home owners who have surreptitiously turned their houses into high-class motels. "Imagine telling your friends that 'Melanie Griffith, Meg Ryan or Billy Bob Thornton slept in my bed,'" she said in an article . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#43.9 My idea of a fun Saturday morning is to load my Jeep with accumulated recycling or yard clippings and head for the transfer station out on Paseo de La Vista. As I drive I flip the radio back and forth between KUNM's "Folk Roots" and whatever is on KBAC, "Radio Free Santa Fe" -- which is what I was doing a few hours ago when I heard the voice of Julia Goldberg . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#43.8 The day before Thursday's deluge, my rain barrels were down to the dregs. After so promising a beginning, this summer's monsoon season was beginning to look like a bust. Far from it. From that single cloudburst I measured an inch and a half in a pan accidentally left outside. Two inches or more were reported farther up Santa Fe Canyon, flooding some houses on Cerro Gordo Road along with the Upaya Zen Center. My neighbors up there seem to have been impressed by the quick, professional response of the Fire Department. I didn't even know you could call the Fire Department about floods. . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#43.7 In Junkyard Dreams, a new novel by Jeanette Boyer, a character named Rita Vargas presides over an automotive graveyard in south Santa Fe as it is steadily being overtaken by suburban sprawl. Hard pressed for money to pay doctor's bills, she reluctantly agrees to sell a steep hill on the edge of her land to a realtor named Leroy Sena. The site is all but unbuildable, he tells her . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#43.6 When you see a huckster standing on the corner of Cerrillos and Zafarano waving a giant arrow beckoning motorists to the new Centex subdivision, you know that the local housing market is in a slump. For confirmation just look at the anemic real estate section in Sunday's New Mexican. At the height of the season there are only 10 pages with one plugged full of fillers ("Pets of the Week," "Trash to Treasures") . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#43.5 Posted without comment. http://santafereview.com/index.php#43.4 You would think it would be uncomfortable living so exposed on a hillside like this one on the northeast horizon. The ridge, just east of the Davis estate, is where a Tucson couple plans to perch another house. As Tom Sharpe reports in today's New Mexican, the project is in the Canada Ancha subdivision (whose excesses were an impetus 15 years ago for passage of the escarpment ordinance) and is just one of three seeking variances for hilltop construction . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#43.3 A message this morning from Marilyn Bane, who ran unsuccessfully last year against Rebecca Wurzburger for the District 2 council seat, reminded me of something Councilor Chavez had mentioned during our recent encounter on Atalaya Trail. The $250,000 donation to the Southside Library from Dr. William Herrera was not the pure act of eleemosynary kindness that I implied in my dispatch of June 17. Dr. Herrera, of course, was the owner of the land for the new Super Wal-Mart. He and the company agreed in negotiations with Mr. Chavez . . . http://santafereview.com Searching back through the archives of the daily New Mexican, one finds that Santa Fe's first "state of the city" address was delivered in the spring of 1996 by Mayor Debbie Jaramillo. "I know there are people in the community who believe that I've spent the last couple of years parking illegally, hiring everyone in my family, fighting in the streets and arguing with my colleagues," her honor complained, then went on to describe what else she had done. Printed at a cost of more than $5,000 and illustrated with photographs of Ms. Jaramillo, the speech was in retrospect the first salvo in her unsuccessful bid for reelection . . . http://santafereview.com When I finally returned to New Mexico in 1992 after living for 14 years in Washington, Minneapolis, Los Angeles County, and New York City, I would go sometimes to Healy Matthews Stationers on Cerrillos Road -- the stretch downtown that doesn't seem like Cerrillos Road -- to purchase office supplies. I don't recall being inspired by the architecture, but I am no expert. When Don Wiviott, a developer with political ambitions, decided to put condominiums and a business complex on the site . . . http://santafereview.com Thornburg wasn't kidding when it said groundbreaking would begin around the end of June. Here are two photos from a reader, Jim Dulaney, taken from Ridgetop Road -- the first a year ago, the second today . . . http://santafereview.com During the campaign, Councilor Chris Calvert was asked the same question as Mr. Coss -- whether he would (1) ensure that the current ban on short-term rentals be upheld and (2) demand that it be enforced. His answer was an unambiguous "yes" -- hence the concern of some District 1 constituents that he, along with the ever unpredictable Patti Bushee, may be wavering . . . http://santafereview.com Nearly a year has passed since the Coss administration's failed attempt to replace three of the developers' favorite Planning Commissioners: Robert Werner, Eric Lujan, and Michael Trujillo. Last week he finally prevailed, loosening a finger of the grip the real estate industry has long had on City Hall . . . http://santafereview.com The scene yesterday on Tom Ford's hill . . . http://santafereview.com Wed, 20 Jun 2007 Later Sunday on my way to Home Depot, I detoured over the De Fouri Street Bridge and saw that the river was barely a trickle. By the time I reached Camino Alire it was gone. True to its word, the city is shutting off the flow leaving us to wonder how much longer the water would have lasted had it been parceled out more gradually. But that would have required some planning. And suppose that the River Fund was already in place . . . http://santafereview.com Sun, 17 Jun 2007 By 8 a.m. all eight parking spaces at the Atalaya trailhead were taken, an old Saab, a Ford station wagon, and a Toyota pickup providing a welcome contrast to the Mercedes and Lexus SUVs in the driveways of the neighboring estates. Making a U-turn I squeezed into the last available slot downhill by the Dorothy Stewart trail, knowing that if my car protruded an inch beyond the specified boundary a vigilant member of the Upper Cruz Blanca Homeowners Association could be counted on to call the police. I've never understood how the city has jurisdiction . . . http://santafereview.com Sat, 17 Jun 2007 With the luxuriant growth of a neighboring Siberian elm blocking the usual vantage point, I have relocated the Andrew Davis Webcam so we can continue to observe the ultimately futile attempt to make the mansion (pictured above) blend into the hillside. http://santafereview.com Sat, 16 Jun 2007 Spotting the headline through the transparent wrapper of this morning's paper, I was momentarily lifted by what appeared to be one of those rare stories of magnanimity -- "Maloof family withdraws . . ." Surely the descendants of Michael J. Maloof, powerhouse behind the state's destructive liquor lobby . . . http://santafereview.com Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:00:00 MDT Around Buckman Road, near Camino de Los Montoyas, is what is beginning to resemble a Mad Max wasteland. Graffiti has been sprayed across the face of almost every city traffic sign, on Qwest's ubiquitous telephone junction boxes, on posts and fences. Even the rocks have been vandalized. The city might as well post an invitation: "Welcome to the lawless zone." http://santafereview.com Wed, 06 Jun 2007 08:00:00 MDT The Reporter's annual Best of Santa Fe contest includes a category for best blog, and one of the choices is The Santa Fe Review. I am not sure this is really a blog, but your vote would be most appreciated. Here is the link: https://vovici.com/wsb.dll/s/2267g28e68. The deadline is this Wednesday, June 6. http://santafereview.com Mon, 04 Jun 2007 08:00:00 MDT I was driving up East Alameda last week with my friend John Horgan, an author of national repute, conversing about the talks we'd heard that day at the Santa Fe Institute . . . http://santafereview.com I hadn't meant to be away for so long. Last week I was at George Mason University moderating a panel on the Decade of the Mind, and from there it was off to Cambridge (the lesser, in Massachusetts) to interview some scientists at Harvard Observatory and MIT. It was a relief to return to Santa Fe . . . Wed, 30 May 2007 08:00:00 MDT In the files of the civil division of the First Judicial District Court on Catron Street is a document, available to anyone for the asking, that may give pause to the City Council as it contemplates whether to accept from Garrett Thornburg the seven-acre parcel in Northwest Santa Fe on which he plans to build his corporate headquarters. http://santafereview.com 18 May 2007 08:00:00 MDT 17 May 2007 08:00:00 MDT A short piece in this week's Reporter on the wireless Internet "controversy" is a big improvement over the embarrassing take in the New Mexican. But it also serves as a textbook example of the distortions that can arise when a journalist assumes that there are always two sides to a story. http://santafereview.com 14 May 2007 08:00:00 MDT Councilor Ortiz has written to object to my lumping him in as a beneficiary of Santa Fe Grassroots. When I originally wrote about the many irregularities of the 2004 election . . . http://santafereview.com 10 May 2007 08:00:00 MDT Both the New Mexican and the Journal got the facts right, but the constraints of daily newspaper journalism don't allow for the subtext that would have told readers what really happened last night at City Hall.Casting himself as a champion of affordable housing, developer Kurt Young and his agent Jennifer Jenkins (if the names are unfamiliar please plug them into the search box at the bottom of this page), managed to turn what should have been a straight-forward land-use decision by the Council into a racial confrontation . . . http://santafereview.com/#40.2 06 May 2007 08:00:00 MDT With the possible exception of Española businessman Richard Cook, who destroyed the once scenic village of Velarde with his gravel operation, the worst despoilers of the northern New Mexico landscape are cell phone towers -- from the sky blue monstrosity atop La Bajada, brought to us courtesy the Budagher family, to the even more hideous cluster Nambe Pueblo imposed on Cuyamungue. But ugly as they are, there is no scientific evidence that they pose a health threat . . . http://santafereview.com#40.1 03 May 2007 08:00:00 MDT Sunday morning as I hiked to the top of Talaya Peak ("Picacho," it's called for short) I thought about a recent quote in the New Mexican from the city's new $116,000-a-year marketing director, a man named Keith Toler . . . http://santafereview.com