On September 2, Jaemes Shanley filed his Declaration of Intent to be a write-in candidate for City Council District 7 along with 500 nominating petition signatures of registered voters. The Bernalillo County Clerk verified the signatures as registered voters and certified Jaemes Shanley’s write in candidacy.
City Council District 7 is the mid heights city council district currently represented by first term City Councilor Tammy Fiebelkorn. The district includes the uptown retail business district including the Commons, Winrock and Coronado Shopping Center. The District boundaries are generally Montgomery Boulevard on the North, I-25 on the West, Lomas on the South and Eubank on the East.
Jaemes Shanley is the President of the Mark Twain Neighborhood Association located in the mid heights and is the Vice President of the District 7 Coalition of Neighborhoods which boasts membership of 14 neighborhood associations. His complete biography is in the postscript.
Jaemes Shanley submitted the following announcement of his candidacy to be published as a public service announcement with no charge by www.PeteDinelli.com:
“I AM RUNNING A WRITE-IN CAMPAIGN FOR DISTRICT 7 CITY COUNCIL – THIS IS WHY
The choice to mount a write-in campaign for public office is not a trivial pursuit, regardless of age or political experience.
Neither is it easy to watch and experience the city you have known for 56 years fall into decay, neglect, and functional stasis in the face of what is, figuratively speaking, a three-alarm fire.
I believe Albuquerque’s elected governance is well intentioned. Yet it has failed to deliver needed remedies for a city-wide crisis that is unraveling the fabric of an orderly and thriving urban life.
Big problems are typically complicated and often interconnected. That does not make them insoluble. It simply demands more outreach and collaboration within the community to apply talent, experience, resources and commitment with laser focus to define and implement the solution.
In 1983, as a resident of Australia, I witnessed and experienced a nation tackle and resolve an existential crisis by doing that. A newly elected Prime Minister gathered all parties with capacities and interests bearing on intractable stagflation and produced an “Accord” which unshackled the economy and remained in effect for 13 years.
The salient problem facing Albuquerque today is that public safety, commercial vitality, and growth are all being checked by the failure to resolve the emergency level crisis of thousands of people living unsheltered and unprotected on our streets, subject to a host of depredations that include weather and temperature extremes, squalor, addiction, behavioral health impairment, petty to major criminality and worse.
Over the past 8 years, our city government has built a massive Gateway System at great cost to address this problem yet, as can be seen on our streets and, too frequently in our neighborhoods, street homelessness remains essentially unchanged, if not worse.
Failed strategies should have a short lifespan, not be permitted to grow into an “unhoused building/industrial complex”.
Perceived anxiety among Albuquerque’s residents drives local government to endorse approaches to these unhoused populations that can be as cruel as they are ineffective. Pushing people from one unhoused location to another is relocation not resolution. Too often the methods used add more layers of trauma to afflicted individuals as they watch their already meagre belongings crushed in the back of a Solid Waste truck.
There are those who believe this issue can be resolved by a shift in priority from “unhoused industrial complex” to “carceral industrial complex”. That might clear the streets in the short term but what are the costs and long-term implications for Albuquerque of maintaining a “factory” that is virtually guaranteed to transition thousands from petty to hardened criminality?
We can do better. The resources, experience and skills exist in Albuquerque to formulate and implement a practical plan of action to end street homeless at its present scale so we can recover the vast areas of our city that have been surrendered to this crisis. If that requires innovative outside-the-box approaches and an unprecedented degree of engagement, coordination and collaboration between city, county, and state government and the non-government individuals and organizations able to contribute value, effectiveness, and alacrity, why not?
Albuquerque City Council should be working in tandem with a Mayoral administration dedicated to the proposition that Albuquerque is a city that deserves and must have the unimpaired and unimpeded potential to build flourishing, safe, and vibrant community throughout.
That requires Ordinances and Resolutions that are carefully and honestly crafted to address real problems, not to push hidden agendas or “fix” what is not broken, like single family neighborhoods.
It requires monitoring and holding accountable the Administration to deliver efficiently on its core mission to service the community, be that public safety or Planning Department execution of Permitting, Inspections, and Code Enforcement.
It requires the entire city government to recognize, support, and celebrate locally owned business enterprises.
Making Albuquerque whole and healthy again is neither mission impossible nor is it a rewind back to the better days I have witnessed. It is the essential first step required to realize a future Albuquerque that combines its incomparable and unique magic with rational adaptation to future needs so that it becomes the best it has ever been.
I do not accept that Albuquerque should remain so far short of its potential. It must once again become a compelling home and destination for business entrepreneurs, skilled professionals, young families, providing well—paying jobs with future-defining sustainable industries and innovative businesses.
There is urgent work to be done to make that happen…….and that is why I am running a Write-in campaign for District 7 City Council.”
I respectfully ask for the vote of all District 7 residents on November 4.
SINCERELY
Jaemes Shanley
DINELLI COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS
It would be a major mistake to discount the write in candidacy of Jaemes Shanley against Tammy Feibelkorn given her unpopularity within District 7. Jaemes Shanley’s emerging support from voters who want change and are tired of Feibelkorn’s failure to represent their best interests are the reasons for his write in candidacy. This is why Shanley was able to secure over 500 qualifying petition signatures by going door to door with supporters in just a few weeks.
First term City Councilor Tammy Feibelkorn is considered highly unpopular within City Council District 7 because of her sponsorship or support of controversial major legislation that has failed to be enacted by the city council during her four year tenure. The legislation has included her unwavering support of city sanctioned “safe out door spaces” for the homeless and her sponsorship of legislation to increase density in establish neighborhoods.
City Councilor Tammy Feibelkorn sponsored R 25-167 which was the “opt in” zoning law ordinance to create a voluntary rezoning process that would let property owners switch to higher-density zoning if they want to build more housing on their residential properties. The Planning Department would have very broad authority to increase density with adjoining property owners having no rights to object. It would allow duplexes, townhomes and small apartment buildings in single-family neighborhoods to increase density. Feibelkorn proclaimed it will increase affordable housing. It will not. Feibelkorn has a “Field of Dreams” zoning philosophy of “if we rezone it, they will build it,” ignoring adjacent property owner rights, favoring developers and investors. Feibelkorn “opt-in” zoning ordinance is clearly “overkill” that will affect all quadrants of the city favoring developers and investors. It will destroy the character of established neighborhoods and lead to gentrification. It will be developers and investors on the prowl who will purchase existing homes for the development of duplexes, townhomes and small apartment buildings in single-family neighborhoods.
Feibelkorn stubbornly supported and voted for changes to the city’s zoning laws that eliminated adjoining property owner’s rights to appeal zoning changes and requiring appealing neighborhood associations to pay the attorney fees of developers who prevailed in seeking zoning changes.
City Councilor Tammy Fiebelkorn is the major proponent of the Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) “pilot project” in District 7 that proposes to “retrofit” older neighborhoods with a destructive burden strenuously opposed to by area residents. GSI involves extensive excavations of streets the city claims are needed to capture stormwater and infiltrate it to groundwater. Opponents say it won’t and that studies show the bio swales need to be located above the water table within 5 to 18 feet. The water table is too far down for this to work yet millions will be spent.
When asked by her constituents to reconsider her positions, she simply says NO and says she has made up her mind even before the legislation is debated by the full city council. It is her votes, actions and her overt hostility to constituents who disagree with her that has resulted in voters believing she is not acting in their best interests.
New Mexico law requires elections to allow for write-in candidates, but only if they have been properly qualified for the election to allow their votes to be counted. A write-in candidate must be considered a candidate for all purposes and provisions relating to candidates in the Local Election Act, except that the write-in candidate’s name shall not be printed on the ballot nor posted in any polling place. On election day November 4 registered voters must physically write Jaemes Shanley name on the ballot in the blank space provided and not vote for Tammy Fiebelkorn.
On November 4, voters of District 7, which includes the author of this blog, are encourage to write in the name of Jaemes Shanley on the ballot in the blank space provided.
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POSTSCRIPT
BIOGRAPHY OF JAEMES SHANLEY
Jaemes Shanley first arrived in Albuquerque in August 1969, after graduating High School in England, to attend UNM from which he graduated in 1973. His parents followed a year later, and his father retired in Albuquerque after a 30-year career as a US Naval aviator. In 1971 they purchased a home in the Mark Twain neighborhood where they resided for the remainder of their lives. Jaemes worked in the private sector in sales, marketing, and business strategy for U.S. corporations in Australia, Japan, and the United States. His work required extensive travel throughout Asia Pacific and Latin America, routinely on the ground in more than 30 countries. Jaemes and his wife returned to Albuquerque in September 2006 to renovate and take up residence in his parent’s Mark Twain neighborhood home where they reside today on their family “compound” along with 5 rescued cats. Jaemes drives the corridors of Albuquerque on an almost daily basis to deliver carrots to his horse, Rembrandt, who resides in Corrales.
Links to guest columns written by Jaemes Shanley:
Jaemes Shanley Guest Opinion Column: A Mark Twain Neighborhood Perspective Of Albuquerque
Jaemes Shanley Guest Opinion Column: The Audacity of Contempt