Rumors that District 2 Councilor Alfred Herrera would run for Española mayor in March 2010 were fulfilled Monday when he announced he will seek election to the city’s top position.
Herrera said he hopes to deliver on promises the current administration never fulfilled.
“We have a lot of unfinished business in the city from my point of view,” he said. “I want to continue with that.”
As late as last week, Herrera had said he was not sure whether he would run for re-election, mayor or Rio Arriba County commission. His announcement is also an about-face from comments he made this summer when he denied rumors he was interested in running for mayor but did not totally discount the possibility.
“That is totally false,” Herrera said in July of the rumors. “(Being mayor) is one thing I’m not really interested in. Not right now. But I guess things could always change before it’s time to file. There are a lot of people who continue to push me in that direction.”
Only last week, Herrera was still undecided. He said the reason for the sudden change was the community response he received after Mayor Joseph Maestas’ announcement he would not seek re-election.
“With the news about the mayor, the calls I had been getting just intensified,” he said.
Herrera’s announcement also comes a week after Mayor Pro Tem Alice Lucero announced plans to run for mayor.
Herrera, 54, was elected to his first term as city councilor in 2006 as part of a slate led by Maestas. Herrera defeated incumbent Pedro Valdez by 43 votes in that election.
Since the 2006 election, a general consensus of support for Maestas’ administration has slowly crumbled with some councilors aligning themselves with Lucero, others with Maestas and the rest somewhere in between.
Herrera can be counted in that last group: He has had his differences with both Maestas and Lucero. In August, Maestas suddenly removed Herrera as his alternate voting member on the North Central Solid Waste Authority’s Board of Directors without explanation. Herrera, who called the decision “stupid,” was almost immediately appointed to a citizen voter’s spot by the rest of the Board.
Earlier this year, Herrera opposed Maestas’ push for a bond election to finance a new city library and disagreed with comments Maestas made criticizing how Gov. Bill Richardson’s administration has been distributing federal stimulus funds.
Herrera and Lucero have been on the opposite side of multiple issues, most prominently whether to keep Veronica Albin as city manager.
Lucero makes no secret of the fact that she has wanted to remove Albin for various reasons, including her failure to meet education and experience requirements for the city manager position that are laid out in a city ordinance.
Herrera indicated he plans to keep Albin in her current position, which she has held since June 2008, if he is elected mayor.
“One place I think Alice and I differ is that I’m not looking at this as ‘I’m going to axe people from City Hall’ or ‘clean up City Hall,’” he said. “Acting in such a unilateral way is not the way I feel the mayor should run things. If you have a competent staff member you need to trust them.”
Albin is already actively supporting Herrera. She sent out a mass message to friends, some of which are city employees, Monday from her phone, urging them to stand behind his campaign and calling him a “great candidate,” according to the message.
The only other announced candidate for mayor is Jason Salazar, a former city council candidate who manages 420, a local store that sells marijuana paraphernalia, among other items.
As a member of the City Council, Herrera sits on the city’s Finance and Public Works Committees and has been a vocal supporter of the city’s plans to expand sewer and water services to all city residents. However those plans have yet to result in any expansion of the system.
Herrera has 26 years of experience in state government as a budget and audit director for the Education Department. In addition to his seat on the Authority Board he currently holds seats on Northern New Mexico College’s Board of Regents and the North Central Regional Transit District’s Board of Directors. He ran unsuccessfully for the Española School Board in 2003 and was a member of the state school board from 2000 to 2004. He retired after his term ended.
Current councilors and the mayor have yet to voice public support for any of the mayoral candidates, and Herrera said he no longer believes slates are a good way to elect a governing body.
“I don’t want to tell the public that ‘this team will come in and change things’ and then business as usual happens,” he said. “It worked that way for us to the point that we became rubber-stampers, quite frankly.”
Note: A correction has been issued for this article. The story originally stated states Acting City Manager Veronica Albin sent a mass e-mail to city staff supporting Herrera. Albin said she actually sent the message to her friends, some of whom happened to be city employees. Albin said she sent the message during off-work hours and from her personal phone.