Personal Politics?
More than personality at stake in Gallup's District 3 election

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — As some talk about town has it, personality is what's going to determine who'll fill the city's District 3 council seat for the next four years come March 1.

However true that may be, there are some hard and fast issues with real consequences for Gallup's future at stake as well.

The three candidates vying for the seat, Mary Ann Armijo, incumbent Pat Butler and Harry Mendoza, sound most at odds on a pair of capital issues with the potential either to sink the city financially or tospark a cultural boom: the management of Red Rock Park and the prospects of a new indoor events center.

Though an experienced politician, having served on the City Council in the 1980s and on the County Commission the past eight years, Herry Mendoza is taking advantage of his position as the "outsider" to challenge his two opponents, both serving City Council members, on their handling of Red Rock Park.

Goodbye Global?
To scale back on the losses the city was experiencing running the park on its own, a hefty $702,000 in 2003, the Council handed over daily operations of the park to a private management firm Global Entertainment last summer. The one-year deal, with the option to renew for a second, cost the city $480,000. Going by those numbers, then, the city has already "stopped the bleeding," as one city staffer put it, by $322,000.

Not so fast, says Mendoza.

For one thing, he says, that's still $480,000 the city is putting in and not getting back. For another, he adds, his opponents aren't mentioning the revenue the park earns from its events, revenue that used to go to the city and now goes all to Global. By his figures, the lost city revenue from camping, concessions, parking and the local trading post rings in at roughly $400,000.

Instead of saving hundreds of thousands of dollars, Mendoza contends, the deal is costing the city at least $880,000, more than the city was spending on the park before Global stepped in.

Assistant City Manager Larry Binkley confirmed that the park brought in a little over $400,000 last year, but insists it was subtracted from the costs before coming up with the $702,000 loss.

In any case, Mendoza says there's a better way.

"The first thing is to cancel the contract with Global, and then we can review our options," he said.

He's not specific about what those options might be, but with better management, whether from another private contractor or with city staff, for example, he believes the park could do much better. He's also critical of Global for not yet booking a single new event at the park five months into its contract.

Mendoza's opponents are easier on Global, and neither wants to cancel the contract outright. They were, after all, the ones who approved that contract.

"There are some things we need to work out with Global to fill out the contract," said Armijo, though she's not ready to cancel it.

She also sympathizes with the challenge Global faces bringing new events to the park, which she says isn't easy. And she's not ready to pass judgment on the efficacy of their efforts after only five months, either.

At the same time, Armijo doesn't believe that the deal with Global solves all the park's problems, which have been piling up for many years.

"This park has been ignored for the past 30 years, so we need to put money into improvements to the infrastructure," she said.

For starters, Global has agreed to put $100,000 into the park's RV camp sites in preparation for the Wrangler Junior High Finals Rodeo coming to Red Rock in July. Armijo is interested in pressing the state for additional capital outlays.

Butler falls somewhere in between, but closer to Armijo's point of view than Mendoza's. He's not ready to cancel the contract just yet, but thinks it deserves a critical review before it's renewed.

The $100,000 Global is putting into the park is a good start, he says, but the company should nevertheless be weaned off of the city subsidies that are really paying for the work. And, like Mendoza, he's less than impressed with Global's efforts to book any new events at the park to date, even if its been only five months.

Whatever the solution, he's not looking to do with Red Rock Park what the County Commission, under Mendoza's leadership, did with the McKinley County Adult Detention Center.

In a reversal of the city's predicament with the park, the county tried to avoid rising costs by ending its contract with the private company running the jail and taking on the job itself. Instead of cutting costs, however, the county got stuck with a bigger bill than before.

As with the jail, said Butler, "(Red Rock Park) is an example where the public can't do it."

As a businessman and staunch free marketeer, he'd want the park to remain in the hands of a private contractor, whether it's Global or someone else.

Mendoza concedes that the jail has been costing the county extra since it took over daily operations, but believes the decision will prove a money-saver in the long run.

Hello events center?
Whatever Global's fate, Mendoza is thinking bigger than Red Rock Park.

Several months ago, the City Council put the breaks on a joint city-county study that would have determined the feasibility of building an indoor events center in Gallup that could host larger events than Red Rock Park, and free from weather restrictions host them year round. Undeterred, Mendoza convinced the County Commission to pay for the $12,000 study on its own.

Although the final results haven't come in yet, Mendoza is already convinced the city needs the center. Convinced that Gallup is losing business to other cities with larger venues, "we can't afford not to do it," he said.

And with the Red Rock Park arena exposed to the elements, he added, "you get two good months out of the year, so you really need a facility for indoor activities."

Both Armijo and Butler thought the talk of an indoor events center for Gallup premature when they both nixed the joint study, and feel the same way still.

With more pressing needs on its plate, said Armijo, the city simply can't afford a $30 million-$50 million center and the upkeep it would come with right now.

Considering the county's high poverty rate, Butler also can't imagine how the public could afford the $50 seats the center would have to fill night after night to make the plan feasible.

And with Red Rock Park having a hard time attracting events as it is, he added, why make the job any harder?

"Let's build another facility to detract from Red Rock Park," he said sarcastically. "Why would we want to find competition for (the park)?"

Mendoza doesn't see any potential conflict, and has faith that the city could find enough corporate sponsorship for the center especially if the city plays up its potential to showcase American Indian culture, the reason most tourists head to the area to make it financially feasible. Raising property or gross receipts taxes, he stresses, are not part of his plan.

The only reason the City Council nixed the study, he said, was because of a clause in its contract with Global forbidding the city from entering into an arrangement with any other entertainment management firm at the same time. Armijo and Butler dismissed the claim.

Mendoza likewise dismissed rumors that he was pushing for the center primarily to find a permanent home for the professional basketball team Gallup Herald publisher Joe Kolb plans to bring to town. While Kolb has spoken about the center's arrival for his team as all but certain, Mendoza says he's been pushing the plan before news of the basketball team came along.

Although Mendoza would wield only one vote on the council if elected, there's speculation he could muster the two extra votes he'd need to commit the city to the project.

Waste, water, booze ...
Mendoza is also taking advantage of his position as the only challenger in the race not currently serving on the council to question what the city's been doing with the water and sewer rate hikes it imposed last year.

"People are saying that they used to pay $100 and are now paying $300 and some people who were paying $400 a month are now paying $600," he said. "They're crying because their rates have doubled and tripled."

Mendoza wants to find out exactly how much money the rate increases are bringing in and exactly where the money is going. When the council approved a new revenue bond last month to spend more than $20 million dollars on improvements to the city's water and sewer infrastructure, it committed a fraction of the rate increases to pay those bonds back.

But Mendoza wants to know if the new revenue is going into an account guaranteeing that the money pledged to the bond won't go elsewhere and that the rest will be spent exclusively on the same services it's coming from.

He's not talking about lowering water rates. What Mendoza says he's looking for is "accountability."

The former city councilman also criticized the current council for not fighting employment discrimination charges that arose from an anonymous group of American Indians a few months ago, convinced that going to court would have been cheaper than the $300,000 the city paid to settle the charges. At the time, city officials said they felt constrained by the meager information the feds were sharing with them, and by the admittedly poor employment practices of past administrations that opened the door for the lawsuit.

Mendoza says the city needs a full-time personnel director to give its hiring and firing duties the attention they deserve, and to conduct performance evaluations of all city staff immediately, top to bottom.

Another major issue on Mendoza's mind is the traffic congestion on Muoz Overpass.

"That's a major, major traffic problem over there, and it's going to get worse," he said, especially when emergency vehicles have to make in across during rush hour, when every minute counts.

He knows the city is pushing the State Highway and Transportation Department to up the project's priority on its capital funding list, but doesn't believe it's trying hard enough, suggesting the city hammer together a broader lobbying coalition including the Navajo Nation and surrounding counties perhaps and invite state officials to Gallup to see the problem first hand.

Armijo, who was thrown into the District 3 race by the necessities of redistricting last summer only two years after being elected to the District 2 seat, has also made an important issue of the overpass' troubles. She notes that the city has managed to push its funding priority up to No. 2 or 3 on the state's list recently. But that still means the city likely won't see any money from the state for another two to three years, she said; so they're considering relieving pressure on the overpass in the meantime by diverting some traffic by way of Jefferson Avenue.

Alcohol, and the need to curb its rampant abuse in the area, also ranks high on Armijo's own list of priorities. Along with the rest of the council, she made it the city's No. 1 non-capital priority to push a bill through the State Legislature that would allow the local detoxification center hold patients involuntarily for up to three days.

Right now, the Na'Nizhoozhi Center can only hold intoxicated patients for as long as it takes them to sober up, which Director Raymond Daw says usually doesn't take more than two days.

It may not sound like much, but Armijo believes it's important.

"Even if it's two or three hours more they can spend with them to provide treatment, it's something that makes a difference," she said.

She's also in favor of another "local empowering" bill moving slowly through the Legislature that would give smaller municipalities the chance to curb the ways and means of area liquor sales, though she doesn't believe it has much chance of passing this year.

Although Butler's also in favor of giving the local detox center the authority to hold patients for three days, he's unequivocally opposed to giving local municipalities the authority to add their own restrictions to liquor sales.

"I'm not for legal mandates," he said. "There are enough regulations on the state books; let's enforce what's there."

With local law enforcement agencies cracking down on unscrupulous dealers, he said, solving the demand side of the problem is better left to business community, suggesting that dealers be equipped with intoxometers to test the alcohol level of potentially intoxicated clients before deciding whether or not to sell them any more alcohol.

With the fines dealers face for not following the law, he believes it's in their interests to regulate who they sell to, and believes that's enough.

Like the other candidates, Butler also sees the need to hurry up with improvements to the Muoz overpass, and wants to build a broader coalition to push for the project.

Another pet interest of Butler's is the construction of an American Indian museum in the heart of Gallup. According to Butler, Sen. John Pinto has introduced such a bill in the Legislature this year. He doesn't believe the state appropriations attached to it would be enough however, and as a potentially powerful tourist draw could warrant the future commitment of city and county funds to make it happen.

In the end, that vague and elusive quality we call "personality" have do a lot to determine the victor come March 1, but voters would be wise not to forget the issues.