At last week’s City Council meeting, the mayor and councilors failed the people of Española.
On the agenda was the decision to let Pathways, the local homeless shelter, continue to operate or shut it down. A heady decision I’m sure no one took lightly.
Those advocating to keep it open rightly argue for the need to provide a safe space and shelter for the most underprivileged and in need of help. Those advocating to close the shelter’s doors also rightly say it potentially houses criminal activity and does not serve the better part of the Española community. We are between a rock and a hard place but the mayor and councilors have heard the pros and cons, and must be willing to make the difficult decisions that we demand of them. Yet they passed the buck.
After four hours of deliberation in executive session, they chose to kick the can down the road.
Española refuses to grow up and remains a city in its infancy. Which is ironic given our history dates back to 1598. Every step that ought to provide a chance to walk upright ends in one missed opportunity after another. We’re like the teenager still living in the safety of his parent’s basement who chooses a life of ease and comfort.
We need to make the big boy and big girl decisions that come with growth, maturity and adulthood. If we don’t, we’ll remain stuck in a constant state of arrested development.
I certainly have experienced the “politics” of decision-making and understand the difficulty. Weighing the positives and negatives is one of the perils of running for office. And so is one the council forgot last week: You didn’t take this job to make friends (unless you did), so decide!
After discussion, the council decided it couldn’t make this decision on its own, for what reason we will never know. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say the council didn’t want to make a decision. Instead, it chose to hire an “independent third party” to study the situation and make a recommendation. This third party will come back to the council in three months to reveal what decision the council should make. Sounds like the council found a patsy. Gotta blame someone, right? It’s all rather perfect. Problem solved. Rock dutifully kicked down the road. We don’t look like the bad guy and we don’t have to make any unfavorable decisions. Very clean. Very neat. No mess.
The only problem is that the city suffers in the meantime. We are littered with shopping carts, their exigent problems and causes, and a homelessness issue that we no longer can afford. As a further indication that the city wants nothing to do with the mess of decision-making, it reportedly paid $20,000 to a consultant to create a 100-day plan for the incoming city manager to follow. Mind you, there are only four more months left in the current administration — and a manager is capable of creating her own 100-day plan, thank you very much.
An additional $20,000 was reportedly paid to another consultant to determine how the city should spend its $1 million in opioid settlement money. These funds were received three years ago, and apparently only now are in need of direction. Yet the city created a social services department that, in conjunction with the council, already decided how to spend the money.
How much will this new third party cost the city? Though consultants have their place, they should not take the fall for lazy and scared councilors and a mayor who are unwilling to make the tough decisions that our city deserves. City officials had all of the data and time to prepare. They had constituents who spoke for and against. It is with this backdrop that city officials had everything with which to make a decision. And they failed.
Whether that failure is the result of laziness, ineptitude, or the desire for glory without the messiness of breaking a nail, the people of Española suffer. We are biding time and kicking the can down the road at a moment when time is the last thing this city can afford to waste.
Javier Sanchez is an El Rito Media columnist, former Espanola Mayor, and resturant owner