With 18 months left in his administration, Mayor Alan Webber needs continuity in the city’s Planning and Land Use Department. It sounds counterintuitive with the announced retirement of Director Jason Kluck, but it’s not. His deputy, Heather Lamboy, is poised and ready to lead.
The smartest thing Rich Brown did as the relatively new head of the Community Development Department, which absorbed the formerly independent Planning and Land Use Department at the end of 2020, was to know what he didn’t know.
He wisely assembled an ad hoc group of Santa Fe construction and development professionals to help vet final candidates for the vacant position after then-land use Director Elias Isaacson bolted for Santa Barbara, Calif., in June 2021.
I was flattered to be asked.
The choice came down to two excellent candidates: Heather Lamboy and Jason Kluck.
Kluck was ultimately hired by City Manager John Blair with recommendations by Brown and consensus of the vetting group, mainly from many years working for the city and his deep experience as a builder and architect in Santa Fe. He also was interim director after Isaacson left.
But Lamboy was a close second, very close. Lamboy was hired three months later as Kluck’s deputy director.
She was returning to Santa Fe after a nine-year absence while working for cities in Colorado. Lamboy was a key deputy to then-Director Matthew O’Reilly from 2010 through 2013, considered by many the golden years of land use direction. It was an era bracketed by the integrity of Jack Hiatt’s prior three-year run and the experienced Lisa Martinez’s four-year run.
Then Webber was elected in March of 2018. Since then, there have been four directors, a couple of interim directors and a diminishment of the department’s independence, which is now being overseen by an interim director of the Community Services Department with Brown’s departure.
The three previous long-term directors, representing 12 continuous years of professional and local competence, largely have been ignored by Webber and the people surrounding him, which may partially explain his foundering department and the lack of budgetary support it deserves.
The department is enmeshed in long-term projects certain to be unfinished by the end of Webber’s term. The rewrite of Chapter 14, the city’s land use code, won’t be finished until 2026. The planned rewrite of the 1999 general plan has no projected completion date. Tierra Contenta may finally get underway with Webber’s departure if he decides not to run for reelection. Santa Fe Estates and the Northwest Quadrant are looming but dawdling. A bridge crossing the Arroyo Chamisos, so the city can develop acres bought from the state Game and Fish Department, may happen.
Planning, developing and being the landlord of a new village center called El Lucero near South Meadows Drive and N.M. 599 has gone beyond the dream stage.
And then there’s midtown, which at current rates of city-driven development will occupy the next two or three mayors.
Lamboy is ready. She has applied for the permanent position but needs to wait for the job posting to close later this month. She’s a known commodity who knows the issues. She works well with inspectors housed in City Hall’s basement, especially long-serving chief building official Bobby Padilla. She works well with the attorneys on the second floor, especially City Attorney Erin McSherry.
A public job posting for a well-paid position in Santa Fe will draw impressive applicants. It’s a dream job for professionals looking to downsize from illustrious careers in America’s biggest markets.
Webber made the mistake of hiring with stars in his eyes early on. It ended in humiliation. It is hoped the same mistake won’t happen near the end of his administration.
