Santa Fe Finance Committee Passes CWA Proposal, Kills Higher Jaywalking Fines

Here’s some of the action that occurred at tonight’s Finance Committee meeting:

An ordinance designed to deter jaywalking with new, higher fines was killed off Tuesday after being resoundingly shot down by the Santa Fe City Council’s Finance Committee.

The measure previously failed to gain approval from the council’s Public Works Committee. That means it won’t get a hearing before the entire City Council.

The ordinance would have increased the fine for the petty misdemeanor of jaywalking from $25 to up to $150.

Several Finance Committee members said the city has more pressing public safety issues to focus on.

The city has issued just 37 jaywalking citations over the last three years. However, public safety officials say there’s been several jaywalking deaths and injuries in Santa Fe.

Also Tuesday night, the Finance Committee approved a measure that would slightly amend the city’s controversial, union-friendly “community workforce agreement” ordinance.

The measure, introduced by Bushee, would raise from $500,000 to $1 million the eligibility threshold for city projects built under CWA rules, which require that all workers be union members.

Bushee’s proposal also outlines a local preference incentive, focused on subcontractors, that aims to get as many Santa Fe County residents as possible working on city projects, and requires that contractors offer the same benefits to workers’ domestic partners as they would to a married spouse.

Bushee said she wants to ensure the city is doing everything in its power to create “good, high paying, local jobs” for Santa Fe County residents.

Bushee said she increased the threshold for CWA projects upward because there could be several CWA projects coming down the pipeline and not enough trained local workers.

The CWA ordinance, approved by the council nearly a year ago, now applies to all building projects of $500,000 or more, but nothing has been built under its rules yet. It stipulates that all workers on a project must belong to a union, although they can join for just the duration of the project.