Jason Salazar
• 37
• Divorced with three children.
• Partial credit toward two associate’s degrees from Northern New Mexico College.
• Currently the operating manager of 420 Gear.
• Ran unsuccessfully for the council as a write-in candidate in 2008.
1. Which persons and what activities are important to you in your personal life? How and why are they important to you?
The persons important to me in my personal life is just my family: my spouse, Dulcinea; my son, Santana; my two daughters, Solana and Sophia.
Why are you running for councilor? Name your top three initiatives, and explain how specifically you will accomplish them.
The reason I’m running for City Council is because, first of all, I’m not politically motivated. I’m not having any political bigwigs that are backing me for their own, you know, selfish agendas. I’m doing it as an independent voice for the people. I can’t be influenced. What else is so that I can improve what’s going on in this city as far as for the children, for our future. The third answer would be to wipe out the drug dealers in this town. Wipe them all out completely. Get them all locked up. (Salazar asked after the interview to retract the statements about tackling drug dealers because it would hurt his business.)
When you lost your 2008 Council race, you said you were leaving this “one-horse town” to go surfing. You run a store that sells marijuana paraphernalia. You didn’t advertise or actively campaign when you ran in 2008, and you haven’t done so this time, either. Why should voters take your campaign seriously?
Well I don’t think having to run a campaign you need to spend all kinds of money to get people to vote for you, know what I mean? That right there is a farce. I mean, if you’re out there trying to get votes, then you’re obviously trying to get elected for your own selfish purposes. And you can quote me again. This is a one-horse town, or for lack of better words, it’s a two-mule town. And people may find that offensive, but it’s a reality. This is a small town. It’s a one-horse town. As far as the rest of your question, people should take me serious for the fact that I am here, you know, doing it.
What leadership roles have you held? What knowledge and experience do you have that qualifies you to help run a city?
Well, I’ve single-handedly developed a worldwide franchise . . . Like I told you before on the telephone, the only person in this city that can fill my shoes in self-accomplishment, would be (Española businessman) Richard Cook.
Which of the two mayoral candidates do you support?
Neither one. Well, I really don’t like Alice Lucero because I had built an addition to my house that had already been built for two years, and she happened to go to the Sacred Heart Church area, where I live, and she ratted me out to the City Council or to Planning and Zoning, that I had built another structure. So that turned out for a mess for me. I’d be supporting (District 2 Councilor Alfred Herrera).
Do you support retaining Acting City Manager Veronica Albin and Public Safety Chief Julian Gonzales, or replacing them? With whom would you propose replacing them?
Get rid of them. They have no right being there. We’d have to apply and actually find out who is the best person for the job with the experience. Not whose friends got them there.
Plummeting revenues have forced the city to slash its budget several times over the past two years. How do you propose keeping the city solvent in the long run?
By promoting more businesses to bring their business to us — big business, outside corporations — to come. And offer them better benefits to come. And just making it easier for them to open their business, to build their buildings, to get it done right professionally, according to zoning, and start creating more gross receipts tax revenues, which come back to the city. Unlike, we’ve got fools like (Planning Director) Russell Naranjo there, wanting to halt (Garcia Tires owner Lupe Garcia) from building his new building based on, ‘Oh, it’s gonna be a breeding ground for mosquitoes.’ He’s an idiot. I think Russell Naranjo would probably be the first one to go if I’m elected.
Among the services the city provides — utilities, street maintenance, recreation, library — on which would you invest the city’s limited resources, and which would you be willing to cut?
I think none of them can be cut. But we have to restructure how we do the jobs around those areas. And as an independent individual, as an entrepreneur, I would be more on the watchful eye, making sure that when there’s people here cruising around on their city truck, that if those guys are cruising around, well maybe those guys can just take the day off. There’s a lot of — I see it all day — that there’s just people from the city all day slacking off. The library we need. The utilities we need. All of these departments we need. But on days that they’re not being utilized, just send them home. Reduce their pay. There’s not a water leak, there’s not maintenance being done to the water utility systems or the sewer systems? Send those guys home for a day. Cut their pay. The street department doesn’t have holes to fill? Send them home. If it’s a slow day at the library and it can be run on a skeleton crew, send everybody home. By reducing hours on the departments where most of those people are just slacking, cruising town, farting around, three guys in a truck — I mean, I’ve worked for the city so I know what it’s like to be there at three in the afternoon. There’s nothing to do in the Water Department so all we do is cruise around town. It takes 15 minutes to cruise around town and go the big loop, and not do anything, thinking, ‘Man, we still got 15 more minutes to burn ‘til five o’clock.’
The Police Department hasn’t been fully staffed for years, and it is struggling to catch up with several unresolved murders and a rash of burglaries. Describe specific steps you will take to improve public safety.
Well, there could be surveillance cameras on various areas of the town. Just like on the streetlights, there could be surveillance areas put in several different areas to track and see what cars are passing when. And that doesn’t require various man-hours. You know, at three in the morning, four in the morning, when there’s nothing going on in the city, or maybe going on, all the cops are parked over there at Route 66. But I think the city police are doing a very good job. They’re doing a very good job with the resources that they do have. With only two detectives that they have, if I’m correct, Bryan and Christian, that’s two detectives that are researching information for an array of idiots in this town that are just burglarizing.