Taos barrels toward home rule

Councilor shuts down mayor’s attempt to force appointments

A dog and pony show wouldn’t have raised eyebrows among attendees during the final 90 minutes of the Taos Council’s regular meeting Tuesday evening (Jan. 24). It was already a circus.

After yet another contentious discussion regarding Taos Mayor Pascual Maestas’s months-old proposition to establish a home rule charter commission, the Taos Council voted 3-2 to establish the body, which will be tasked with writing a municipal charter. The town is currently accepting letters of interest for five vacant positions on the home rule commission.

Councilors Darien Fernandez and Corilia Ortega voted yes on the motion to form the commission, while councilors Marietta Fambro and Nathaniel Evans voted no, citing concerns about cost and a potential lack of actual town residents on the commission. Maestas voted yes to break the tie, although he has stated that one benefit he sees in home rule is that it would enable the town to add an additional council member to remove the mayor’s ability to decide split votes.

“This, in my opinion, is Phase 1,” Maestas told councilors who voted against the commission. “There’ll be multiple opportunities for the council to hear drafts of the charter, at which point we’ll have more information about what is needed to get to Phase 2. I think this step of asking the charter commission to start working on the charter answers a lot of questions for us, and for a small expenditure on clerical items to explore the possibility — we’re not saying we’re going full blown to the end.”

The town council will have to sign off on the charter produced by the commission, which has six months to do so, and must hold a special election in order for voters to approve it.

The next item on the agenda called for the council to sign off on the mayor’s appointments to the commission.

This drew councilors into a bitter debate over the fact that Maestas had not shared his list of candidates, their qualifications, political status or Taos residency status with councilors or the public.

“Mayor, the names are not

on the agenda, so it’s not transparent even to the public,” Fambro said, to which Maestas responded, “We put the list forward six weeks ago,” referring to a Nov. 19 special council workshop meeting where Maestas reluctantly stated the names of several people he intended to appoint to the sevenmember commission: Jacob Caldwell, Judy Torres, Mary Ann Leslie, Vince Bowers, Victoria Santistevan and Shenoah Velarde.

Taos News submitted an Inspection of Public Records Act request on Jan. 11 asking for the list of candidates, letters of interest and applications for the commission posts, as well as email correspondence related to the prospective nominees. The town’s records custodian replied that, “In response to your request forpublic records, I was informed by Mayor Pascualito Maestas no such records exist.”

On Tuesday, there were no names listed in the agenda item asking for council approval of the commission member appointments, although Maestas indicated that he had received two letters of interest.

Because the current Taos Council does not always follow standard rules of order during its meetings, members of the council routinely raise points of discussion at any given moment and decorum falls to the wayside. During the lengthy home rule portion of Tuesday’s meeting, councilors held discussions before a motion was seconded, during votes and after a vote was taken. It recessed for a five-minute break while a motion to table the commission appointments until the council’s Feb. 14 meeting was mid-vote on the floor.

Maestas made the motion to table the appointments. He appeared to agree with a majority of councilors’ sentiment that it behooved the governing body to at least follow through on its promise to welcome letters of interest from people who would like a shot at serving on the home rule commission and accede in part to Evans’ wish that a simple majority of the commission members be town residents, if not with Fambro’s insistence that the town establish a budget for the commission.

“Hearing all the concern, I will ask that we table this agenda item to the next meeting,” Maestas said. “And hearing council’s concerns, bring back the appointments and work with council member Fernandez on identifying town residents and non-town residents.”

Maestas confirmed during this portion of the meeting that the Taos News would mention in this story that the town is accepting letters of interest for the positions until Feb. 9. Fambro asked that the final list of candidates and their letters of interest be placed on the Feb. 14 meeting agenda, which Ortega noted should “be just like any other commission” appointments, which appear on the agenda with the prospects’ letters of interest contained in the meeting packet.

But then the mayor asked Town Clerk Francella Garcia, “If I vote ‘no’ on this [which would defeat the motion], can I bring this back up for reconsideration and just appoint the [home rule] commission tonight?”

Francella passed the question to Town Attorney Christopher Stachura, who, after the council returned from recess, advised Maestas that he could vote no on his motion to table and then call for a motion to reconsider the appointments. Maestas did just that, noting that he would call for a separate vote for each of his appointments. Ortega seconded the motion.

Evans and Fambro voted no on Maestas’ motion to appoint Jacob Caldwell, while Fernandez and Ortega voted yes and Maestas cast a tie-breaking vote in the affirmative.

Evans and Fambro voted no — with Evans pleading “Mr. Mayor, c’mon man” — on Maestas’ motion to appoint Judy Torres, while Fernandez and Ortega voted yes. Maestas cast the tie-breaking vote to appoint Torres.

“This is not transparent,” Evans protested.

“Not at all,” Ortega suddenly agreed, asking “can we pause? Because I don’t understand how we jumped to this voting when just a minute ago we were open to the Feb. 9 deadline. I would just like us to take a breath and pause because we’re demonstrating to our constituents what is ineffective leadership on all our parts. This is not OK. And I believe we can make it OK.”

Fernandez ultimately sided with Ortega to help calm the stormy waters threatening to swamp the council chambers.

“Thank you very much for your comments, Councilor Ortega, and a reminder that we may disagree, but at the end of the day, we want to make a good decision,” Fernandez said. “And sometimes it does take a little bit of extra process and jurisprudence to do so. I do think the mayor originally made an adequate compromise to push this back, given the amount of time that has passed since we first started discussing this [and] the amount of time that we’ve had to reach out to our own constituencies and encourage them to be involved in the process.

“I do recognize that people are now just starting to get around to it and submit their letters, including some very qualified people that we do know,” Fernandez added. “I, too, want this process to have as much buy-in as possible from the community [and] from this council; because it very well may affects how we approach the relationship we as elected officials have with our constituents going forward and for future administrations going forward.”

Fernandez made a motion to table “these further nominations” as well as identify “in a setting that doesn’t have to publicly call out someone for being a Democrat or Republican or Green Party or anything like that,” the political affiliation of the proposed candidates, which by state statute must be include no more than four members of a single political party.

In order to avoid a rolling quorum, the only venue for such edification among councilors is a public meeting. Clerk Garcia suggested another way of avoiding exposing the political affiliations of commission nominees.

“Mr. Mayor, can I make a recommendation?” Garcia asked. “This could even be a public records request. I believe this information is a public record. If somebody should ask, if they want to see an email, I would have to provide it. So I do recommend that if you don’t want this to be public record it would have to be a verbal conversation.”

Councilors voted to table the commission appointments until Feb. 14.