New Española code enforcement officer Michael Marquez does a great deal of leg work.
He drove by a dilapidated residence Sept. 19 at 601 Old Hospital Road. Overgrown weeds choke a yard that sits in front of a house with peeling paint and broken windows. Graffiti is sprayed across the side of the house and a rusted car is the center piece of a back yard of trash.
Marquez has been by this undesirable piece of real estate multiple times. He said this abandoned house attracts criminal activity and vermin, in addition to being a safety and fire hazard.
“We get a lot of drug activity here,” Marquez said. “It’s been a nuisance to the neighborhood.”
He’s tried to contact the property owner many times, but the owner’s phone number is disconnected. If the owner continues to ignore Marquez’s calls and citations, the city may be forced to take action.
Marquez said he hasn’t been forced to take action too often. Since starting the job in late June, Marquez has worked approximately 200 cases. Of those cases, he’s only taken one person to court, and he later dropped the charges.
Marquez prefers to work with residents rather than working against them. He said that he’s always open to extensions and recently gave all of the cases he’s currently working automatic extensions because of the recent rain.
He spends up to 80 percent of his time in the field, and the donated Española Police Department vehicle he drives has become a common sight around town. During his time on Old Hospital Road, two men approached Marquez asking about city codes. The second man pointed Marquez toward a house at 1304 Fry Street.
Marquez had been keeping track of that residence.
“I’ve passed by that house a couple of times,” Marquez said. “He recently brought some debris in a pick-up truck and dumped it in the front yard.”
Marquez knocked on the owner’s door and brought him outside to show him the pile of debris. The owner said he had been intending to clean it up and would do so soon. Because he didn’t have his citation book, Marquez let the owner off with a verbal warning before moving on.
Marquez was born and raised in Española and even worked for the city as detention officer at the city jail in the late 1990s. He said he then worked for the next six years at Cities of Gold casino as a security guard, obtaining the rank of sergeant by the time he left. Marquez started out as a shift manager at his next stop at the Santa Claran casino before switching fields into marketing operations.
Marquez enjoyed marketing, but a change in administration caused him to get laid-off. After a couple of failed try-outs for some local police departments and a short stint as a security guard with Northern New Mexico College, Marquez returned to Española to become the code enforcement officer.
While Marquez doesn’t want to disparage any of his predecessors, he said he came in wanting to improve results. Marquez said he always follows up after issuing citations, something previous code enforcement officers didn’t always do. One of Marquez’s biggest motivators is to bring positive attention to code enforcement.
“I’m kind of a glory hound,” Marquez said. “I like my name in lights.”
Marquez might not be a household name to Españolans, but he’s starting to get the attention of other public figureheads, allowing Marquez to expand his focus to include businesses. Through a joint effort between Marquez and North Central Solid Waste Authority Manager Gino Romero, the Authority will soon be issuing punch cards to rundown businesses across the city.
Marquez said targeted businesses will receive a card through the mail that gives owners an allotment of free trash disposals at the Authority dump. Marquez hopes to expand the punch cards to all businesses, which will encourage them to keep their storefronts presentable, without having to expend too much money.
Marquez is trying to affect code enforcement policy in other ways as well. He said a chunk of his field work time is now being dedicated to putting together a city ordinance that allows Española to not only come in and forcibly clean a property but also board it up and charge a $35 fee until the owner makes the property more presentable.
A candidate for the ordinance is a lime green house on 702 Greenfield Road, he said. Trash surrounds the house, the result of a mortgage company throwing out the former residents belongings when they moved out. Marquez called the mortgage company’s actions “disgusting,” and is continually transferred from one representative to another when he tries to call them.
Even though Marquez is mostly positive about the results he’s produced three months into his tenure, he said he knows his work is only the tip of the iceberg, especially given that certain Española residences and business have been abandoned or unmaintained for years. But whenever he hears KOB meteorologist Steve Stucker refer to his area as “the beautiful Española Valley,” Marquez reaffirms his sense of purpose.
“We all have one common goal: to make Española beautiful,” Marquez said.