New council reflects a community split over growth

Las Cruces Mayor Bill Mattiace and District 1 Councilor José Frietze and their supporters should have seen the writing on the wall in April, when Doña Ana County voters shocked many by only narrowly approving a gross-receipts tax increase to help fund Spaceport America.

If they didn’t understand the situation then, it should have become increasingly clear in May, when a galvanized group of Las Cruces residents cried foul over the city council’s approval of a 6,000-acre development on the East Mesa without as much public involvement as they wanted.

There were strong signs that a growing number of Las Cruces residents weren’t on board with the vision shared by Mattiace, Frietze and others. They believe the city’s growth is either too fast or happening without rules to ensure adequate infrastructure and services are being provided. They don’t like the idea of paying a tax for a spaceport in Sierra County when infrastructure in their neighborhood is lacking.

Most important, they feel left out of the process. One of the main issues in the Las Cruces municipal election was the difference between public input and public involvement.

The slate of candidates who argued that the city hasn’t done enough to involve the public in decisions related to growth – Ken Miyagishima for mayor, Miguel Silva for council District 1, Vince Boudreau for council District 2 and Nathan Small for council District 4 – made an impressive showing. Boudreau was the only loser among the group, and even he gave incumbent Dolores Connor quite a scare.

The debate over the public’s role in government explains the election. Voters gave Miyagishima a razor-thin victory over Mattiace. They handed 12-year District 1 Councilor Frietze a resounding defeat. They gave Small a solid victory in a field with three strong candidates.

Miyagishima and those who ran on similar issues said throughout the campaign that the city wasn’t doing enough to involve the public in its decisions. Mattiace and Frietze frequently countered by listing all they had done to inform the public of their decisions.

There’s a huge difference between informing and involving the public in decisions – one involves talking at people and the other involves talking with people – and it carried over to the campaigns. Mattiace and Frietze informed people of their campaigns. Miyagishima, Silva and Small involved people in their campaigns.

Miyagishima went a step further than Mattiace

It’s one thing to tell people how much you’ve helped them, and that’s what Mattiace did: He frequently cited all the high rankings the city has received in recent years and statistics including the low unemployment rate. Miyagishima went a step beyond that, acknowledging those numbers but also asking what he could do to make the lives of the city’s residents even better.

And when he and that slate of candidates heard concerns – that the city is growing too quickly, that infrastructure and services aren’t keeping up, that public input isn’t being considered – they latched on to those issues, making them the focus of their campaigns.

That helped people relate to them. Meanwhile, Mattiace and Frietze spent much of their time defending big-name developers and themselves.

It’s true that Miyagishima and other like-minded candidates succeeded with the help of out-of-town conservation groups. But they also did it with support from Las Crucens who walked neighborhoods, hosted events, organized on the Internet and raised money. The result was a sophisticated, well-financed effort that had a great deal of grassroots support.

Now, those who helped elect Miyagishima, Silva and Small can carry that momentum into a coming special election to replace Miyagishima with a new District 6 councilor, and beyond that into the 2008 election.

The anomaly in Tuesday’s election was Connor, but I’m not surprised she won. While Mattiace and Frietze represented one extreme in the growth debate, Connor is a true moderate, someone who has advocated for growth and wilderness protection at the same time. She’s also worked visibly on a number of other issues, including recycling. Being in elected office hasn’t caused Connor to lose touch with the people around her.

Expect that councilors will try to work together

What happens next? Expect the council to come up with new policies that expand public involvement in decisions, especially those related to growth. Expect developers to face greater scrutiny.

But also expect the developers to adapt. Some of the rules may change, but they’ll still have rules to follow that will help them prepare development proposals.

And expect those who backed Mattiace and Frietze to learn from this experience and be better prepared for future elections. There has been a shift in Las Cruces, but it wasn’t a mandate. Miyagishima’s margin of victory was razor thin, and Silva and Small won with less than 50 percent of the vote.

Their victories are a sign that Las Crucens want some changes, but the reality is that the spaceport tax still passed and Mattiace almost won re-election. The city’s growth has resulted in a lot of good, but there are also some serious issues that haven’t been adequately addressed. As a result, the community is fairly evenly split on the growth issue.

Like it or not, the new council more accurately reflects that split.

Expect reasonable, moderate councilors from all sides of the debate to spend some time figuring out the dynamic of the new council and learning how to work together. They all want Las Cruces to progress; they just disagree about how it should happen. The diversity of opinion on the new city council will force an open and, hopefully, rational debate. There’s reason to hope that will lead Las Cruces to an even better future.