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Oct 14, 2024

In Response To Mayor Vigil – Los Alamos Reporter

BY SAM LEDOUXEspañola City Councilor and an Educator. I heard the Mayor wrote a column in response to my criticisms of his proposed plastic bag ban in the Los Alamos Reporter,

BY SAM LEDOUXEspañola City Councilor and an Educator. I heard the Mayor wrote a column in response to my criticisms of his proposed plastic bag ban in the Los Alamos Reporter, (https://losalamosreporter.com/2024/10/09/no-excuses-for-beautifying-our-valley/) I was hoping to find a well-reasoned and researched disagreement where we could have a substantive conversation about something that would impact our entire community. Unfortunately, as usual, the mayor took criticism of a policy proposal personally and wrote an angry screed filled with personal attacks. anecdotal evidence, and emotional appeals. I usually don’t answer the Mayor’s attacks on myself or my family, but because I think it speaks more broadly to how out of touch he is on this issue I think it warrants a response.

In his article, the Mayor takes a shot at me for not participating in his taxpayer-sponsored trash clean-ups, where he shuts down city services for a day and has city employees pick up trash from the side of the road with volunteers. These clean-up days are hosted during the middle of the working week. Unfortunately, I am not a single 28 year old independently wealthy “real estate agent” from a political dynasty, I work in education. As someone who has had many educators in his family, I would’ve thought the mayor would have sympathy and understanding for those of us who put countless hours into making sure our next generation can succeed. In his rant about my inability to attend these events despite attending the majority of city-sponsored events since running and taking office, he questioned the sincerity of my public service and my understanding of the issue litter poses on our community. I could be like him and list my entire biography and point out how I have basically dedicated my entire adult life to public service, but unlike the mayor, I understand that our personal issues aren’t what is important. It is understanding the struggles of the average Españolan. I understand that public officials are people and have other things going on, this is why I didn’t put him on blast when he couldn’t attend the EVHS clean-up earlier this year, which was on a weekend. I understand we cannot be everywhere.

The Mayor dismisses inconveniences that would be caused by his proposed ban as minor, maybe this is because he doesn’t have to regularly buy groceries for anyone but himself. It seems like the Mayor has difficulty scaling the impact of his policies and understanding that not everyone is as privileged as he was growing up. His bizarre need to attack homeless people for supposedly causing the litter problem and laying the need for a plastic bag ban at their feet speaks even more to this.

Let’s look at the more systemic causes of the rise of litter in our community, how about the fact that our litter laws are not enforced? The Mayor knows that citations for littering are at an all-time low. Why not work with me on my idea of breaking away from the Municipal League’s standards of fees that clearly aren’t enough of a deterrent and propose my idea to raise them? How about backing me up during the budget hearing about not cutting the police budget so that we would have more officers so they aren’t overwhelmed and could enforce these ordinances?

Maybe the Mayor isn’t big on enforcement, I can kind of understand that. Then why not dedicate more resources towards the maintenance of litter clean up? If the Mayor attended Public Works committee meetings he would know just how overworked the City staff is, they desperately need more people. Maybe we wouldn’t need to completely shut down city services for a clean-up if things were regularly maintained and our public works were properly staffed.

However, these ideas require some personal or political sacrifice from the Mayor. Whether it is putting his chance at moving up in the Municipal League in jeopardy because he would be breaking with their guidelines, or being forced to help the council make hard cuts to other programs to support tackling this problem.

The Mayor makes decisions based solely on his own instinct and rarely takes the time to do the research necessary to make good decisions. This is why he went against the conventional wisdom of most experts in the field and built a homeless encampment, and when he finally admitted that was a mistake, he dismantled it without any plan. Many advocates warned him not taking the proper time to dismantle the encampment responsibly and humanely would lead to dramatic increases in crime and litter and here we are. Now he wants to try to act impulsively again wielding the power of government wildly to address an issue he caused.

Abraham Maslow wrote in 1966, “it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” The reality is Government cannot solve these issues and most of the time only makes them worse. It is hard to understand how someone thinks it’s better to inconvenience everyone he knows and loves for a negligible if not non-existent reduction in litter. As I cited in my letter to the Mayor and my colleagues on the council, the Environmental Protection Agency says in their “Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: Facts and Figures,” study that “plastic bags and sacks” account for 0.3% of municipal solid waste. That includes trash bags, sandwich bags, cereal bags, and other plastic bags that aren’t grocery bags. In reality, the trash the Mayor is talking about is probably a fraction of a fraction. This ban will do nothing other than make the Mayor feel like he’s doing something. That isn’t worth the inconvenience.

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