Dear HCN,
I was most interested in
Bruce Selcraig’s article on the pending water crisis facing the
city that never listens (HCN, 12/26/94). I was enticed by the city
manager, Richard Wilson, in 1971 to assume the position of planning
director of the combined planning programs of
Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Planning Commissions. One year later
Wilson was fired by the then city commission with the only charge
being that he was not aggressive enough. I made the mistake of
letting that commission talk me into taking over Wilson’s job. I
say mistake because as a professional planner for over 30 years
before Albuquerque, I learned the hard way that effective
long-range planning has been and still is something that the
controlling interests of that city will never allow to threaten to
destroy the greedy rip-off they have successfully gotten away
with.
I was fired by that same city commission
after almost four years as city manager for being “too aggressive.”
During those years I did my dead-level best to try to instill some
concern for the future of that city. I had real concerns about land
use, developer subsidies by the city, the already looming potential
water crisis, and the “handing out of building permits like
balloons’ as Mr. Selcraig put it. It was all to no avail with the
puppets of the power bosses in control.
But my
firing led to a public meeting that had to be moved to the civic
auditorium to hold a crowd of some 1,500 people, 90 percent of whom
were against my leaving. A majority of those present went out the
next day and started a petition for the creation of a charter
commission for the purpose of changing the form of government to a
“strong” mayor/council. This scared the good ole boys enough that
they had the city commission immediately set up a charter
commission that they thought they could control. Surprisingly, they
could not. Eventually the people voted in the mayor-council system
that got rid of the three commission members responsible for my
firing.
There is a hell of a lot more to this
story, but to shorten it I will conclude with the fact that I ran
for mayor in the first election after the new system was installed.
There were 33 candidates for mayor and I won the primary, but not
with enough votes to avoid a runoff with an old-time politico. I
lost by about 1,200 votes out of the over 50,000
cast.
So you see that while Mr. Selcraig did an
excellent job pointing out the water danger Albuquerque may soon be
facing, the causes have roots that run very
deep.
Herb H.
Smith
Denver,
Colorado
The writer is a
retired professor, writer and
consultant.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Albuquerque didn’t want to hear it.
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