Robert Seeds
• 56.
• Married.
• Owns Seeds Towing Company.
• Española Valley High School graduate. He took vocational classes at Northern New Mexico College
• Española City Councilor from 1986 to 1998.
Which persons and what activities are important to you in your personal life? How and why are they important to you?
Well, always, since a child, for some reason I’ve always enjoyed the outdoors, camping and fishing. And the last five years I discovered golf. And I’ve always enjoyed people, you know, just doing things for people.
Why are you running for councilor? Name your top three initiatives, and explain how specifically you will accomplish them.
The reason why I decided to run is I served in the Council in the past for 12 years and I became very frustrated with the pace, the direction the city was going in, and I felt that I could help and contribute in making things better in this town. The three initiatives that I see that we need to get on initially is public safety, of course, which has to do with the welfare of the community. Secondly, I believe, is recreation. And thirdly, there are many thirds, and many seconds, also. You know, our senior citizens, our streets. But public safety in the community is first and foremost.
You haven’t sought public office in 10 years. Why are you seeking election now?
Four years ago, the Council members and the mayor who are in the city today came to me and said, “Robert, you know, we’d like to run for Council and for the mayor’s position. We’re young. We have ideas.” They even said, “We’re not part of any old faction.” And I said, “That’s great.” I said, “Let’s go.” And I campaigned hard for them and I helped them get elected. And it’s been very disappointing to see the result over the last four years of what’s resulted in the city from that election. Nothing’s been done. The city is at a standstill. It’s financially broke. There’s been embezzlements. It seems like there’s no management at the top levels overseeing anything. There’s no checks and balances in the city right now.
Which of the two mayoral candidates do you support?
I can work with either one. I’m not going to sit here today and tell you which one would be worse or not, because I don’t really know. I haven’t had a chance to work with both of them in the past.
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?
I think one of the first challenges that a new mayor has coming into office is hiring qualified people to serve, to follow the same type of thinking and agenda that the mayor wants to move on with. So until we find out who is going to be our mayor, it’s sort of a moot question, because it could be anybody. And these people may not even be considered, or they may be considered. So right now, I’d just be speculating. I have an open mind right now, and let the appropriate people hire the appropriate people. (Asked whether, if the new mayor re-appointed Albin and Gonzales, he would vote to ratify, Seeds said, “I believe so.”).
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?
I believe a lot of our funding in the city has just been mismanaged. I believe we just need to take a long, hard look at the budget and then start promoting new monies in the city, new businesses, and supporting the old ones that are here. There’s a lot of businesses in this city, who, if we do not support them, they’re going to go away. And that’s just going to make things worse in our community. So the citizens of Española, I ask them to support the businesses that we have today, before we lose them all.
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 would hope that nothing can afford to be scaled back, because nothing is being done, in my opinion. I think we need to aggressively move toward public safety, with the Police Department, and then move on to other things, like recreational programs, senior programs, streets. You know our streets need a lot of work. But you know, when I left the City Council in ‘98, we had a full-staffed paving crew and paving equipment that the city owned. And I’d like to know where that equipment is.
Last year, the city lost two of its three auto dealerships and its only department clothing store. What will you do to keep businesses in the city and attract new business?
We need to work with our businesspeople. A lot of our utilities, for example. Some people get behind on utility bills. Well, the penalties and interest, it’s almost like a credit card. You know, they drown you in debt. You get way past what you owe the city, just like a credit card. We need to somehow work with them.
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.
Manpower, of course. It’s sort of easy to fix. The officers have to have incentives to want to work in Española, and unfortunately, a lot of it is money. Money and training. But supervision is also a big part of it. You have to have a person in place who’s running that Department who has that gift to motivate people and keep them wanting to work and give you 110 percent every day of their work schedules. And I haven’t seen that yet. I think that’s what happened years ago, that’s changed in the Police Department and a lot of people left — you know maybe some good, maybe some bad, I don’t know — but they left.