Excerpts from an interview with
City Councilor Wurzburger
On a Sustainable Santa Fe

Affordable Housing: One of the areas of the SSF Plan that I really believe in is affordable housing. One of the most important things we can do for economic sustainability is to have people who work in Santa Fe, live in Santa Fe. A study pointed out that approximately 9,000 workers used to live in the city but now commute to their jobs. That’s an estimated loss to the local economy of over $300 million annually. One of the reasons we’re supporting the workforce-housing initiative is to develop additional money to do homeowner assistance; buy down their loans, help them with down payments so that police, firefighters, parks workers, schoolteachers; the main people that run our city, can come back.

Water: Good land use policy is policy that ties development to water availability. One of the things I did in my first term (Councilor Ortiz was involved) was propose the water budget. While we’ve continued to grow at the same level or a little less, our water use has actually gone down. We instituted, not only the toilet retrofit program, but also, if you you’re going to build another bathroom at your house, you have to make up for that water. And more importantly, developers putting in projects have to buy water rights... The real challenge is to develop new options for retrofit; whether its other kinds of gray water use. We just need to get the right people in a room to discuss how to do more of that. Release water to the SF River.We’re doing that.

I promise to aggressively monitor the construction of the Buckman Diversion Project. That’s something that I think is very important. Conservation’s been very important in this community but it’s not sufficient, nor should it all be placed on people. I feel real strongly that we need to continue to acquire water rights. I don’t think it makes sense to continue to have the City and the County and developers fighting for the same water. I envision going to the State to talk about how could we do what I call “Regional Water Acquisition Authority.”

Transportation: I’ve been working with a subcommittee to develop an integrated traffic plan that encourages reduced reliance on autos. We’re doing that with our bus system and I think the train is going to help, but the key is to develop Park & Ride and ways to move people around very conveniently so you can get off the train and get downtown on a bus or a mini-van, and you don’t have to wait 15 minutes; the service is constant. Develop multiple free peripheral parking lots. I feel really strongly about that.parking lots like at both at 599 and I-25, and the Outlet Center. Subsidizing transportation from Eldorado will reduce traffic in Santa Fe.

Energy: We hired an energy consultant to retrofit City facilities to be more energy efficient. I’ve been very discouraged that we haven’t been able to implement an alternative use of energy with the Buckman Project, but the timeline was such that we couldn’t.