Taos: News from the Underbelly
A number of issues are boiling around the Town of Taos, creating divisiveness, during a time when Taosenos should be pulling together. Due to a lack of leadership and consensus building by the Mayor and the Council, the usual hostility has cropped up. Instead of realists, engaged in the nuts and bolts of governing, we have apparently elected a few “top-down idealists” (elitists?) at Town Hall, who wish to impose an incomplete or unannounced vision on the community. Go figure.
1. We’re all praying that the “Potholes” and road improvements, including improvements to the Plaza, will be completed by the end of June? Will road improvements impinge on summer tourism? Probably. Will local contractors profit off the purses of local taxpayers? Probably. Will the pothole problem be resolved? Probably not because you’ve got the same Public Works Department in charge, which managed to manufacture the “Pothole Problem” due to lack of maintenance in the first place. Go figure.
2. The most obvious conundrum concerns the controversial relocation of The Farmer’s Market on the Plaza v. the Plaza Merchants and the practical folks, who oppose it and/or want easy access to booths, whether as farmers or buyers. The Town is currently using the rubric of “public safety” as an excuse to close the Plaza though, historically, there is no record of accidents, except for the injury to the meter minder, Robert Molina, who was directing traffic during a Thursday night live event. Apparently, the “visionaries” want to close and gentrify the Plaza as an historic “old town” for pedestrians, despite the Plaza’s significance as a cultural icon for “cruisers.” In rural northern New Mexico everybody drives. I am my car or truck or roller bicycle.
Except for Councilor Cantu there are no members of the governing body whom I consider veterans of the Plaza culture. I, for one, love the ambience of the Farmer’s Market and cultural events but I bow before the brick and mortar merchants who must pay rent and landlords, whose tenants are falling two and three months behind, due to a decline in retail trade. Historically, since 1969, the Plaza Merchants have been a recalcitrant lot and don’t like change that upsets their investments in current retail patterns. The merchants (almost) unanimously support “cultural events”: they just don’t want daytime commercial changes that threaten their livelihoods. Walmart and the T-Shirt vendors changed the Plaza once. Now the neocons are gathering strength at Town Hall. Go figure.
3. The muddled response to tourism by the Town goes to the heart of this administration’s incompetence: the inability to implement a “marketing” and “advertising” plan. Fifteen months after the election of Barrone, Hahn, and Cantu, and despite the presence of a former NM tourism director on the council and a current Kit Carson Electric Coop public relations employee on the council, and the almost unanimous conclusion by tourism professionals that the $400,000 Griffin and Associates marketing contract does not serve current goals, there is no vision of how to market the natural beauty, recreation, cultural, and myriad attractions of the community at large.
If it weren’t for volunteers and entrepreneurs in various sectors of the art, recreation, and cultural communities, there would be nothing of significance happening. We have a burgeoning private sector in terms of entertainment venues, featuring nationally recognized musicians at clubs. We have a history of events like Mother’s Day, Fiestas de Taos, Fall Arts, all of which are growing in attendance and popularity. We have attractions like the Rio Grande del Norte Monument, excitement about TSV expansion, recreational opportunities galore and a Sports Authority chomping at the bit to create more events. What we don’t need are crackpot promoters out to make a buck or assuage an ego or town bureaucrats who see themselves as “concert promoters.”
The Town has at least $400,000 available and even more dollars available now that they have eliminated the transportation burden of the Chile Line from the marketing budget. When the Barrone team took office in 2014, the attendance at Tuesday marketing meetings was full of enthusiastic volunteers, who, for the most part have been turned away now, due to a lack of response from the Town. Marketing Taos, a historically famous community, does not require recognition of climate change but the challenge of marketing appears way too difficult for this administration of climate deniers.
Despite the exemplary ideas and implementation once coordinated by the likes of the now legendary Cathy Connelly, who pioneered modern marketing in Taos, the Town can’t figure out what to do today. Ironically, the Lodgers Tax Advisory Board and other professionals, who are grounded in the practice of tourism and, incidentally, members of the community, must wait for the relatively inexperienced neophytes at Town Hall to find more newcomers to guide decisions. First we imported a marketer from Las Vegas, then a planner (?) from Trinidad, Colo. Maybe experts from Raton or Espanola can consult with Taos. Go Figure.