The Co-directors of Santa Fe’s CHART project say not enough has been done by city officials to move forward its recommendations.
Jenice Gharib and Valerie Martinez sent an email out on Thursday to CHART participants asking them to write to Mayor Alan Webber and City Councilors and request they begin to move forward on the 53 recommendations set forth in the report they presented to the Governing Body over a year ago.
The CHART or the Cultural, History, Art, Reconciliation and Truth Project was created as a response to the toppling of the Soldiers Monument by protestors in 2020.
But in the aftermath of the Kit Carson Monument being pulled down and the bitter debate over Fiesta Court in Santa Schools Gharib and Martinez say time is being lost that could be used to engage the community.
Gharib says such issues keep coming up because they aren’t being properly addressed.
“The Governing Body and the Mayor have not followed up on the need for more in-depth conversations in order to come up with some solutions that might not make everybody happy but certainly can work and heal the community so these things don’t come up again,” she said. “I think that the last couple of things that have happened just show that there’s a kind of veneer that everything’s OK when it actually isn’t and these kinds of things will keep coming up over and over again in some different way.”
Santa Fe City Councilor Carol Romero-Wirth says she is working on legislation that would create an office of Equity and Inclusion in Santa Fe.
The office was one of the recommendations by the CHART commission.
Romero-With was at City Hall Thursday afternoon for a meeting regarding the Equity and Inclusion Office resolution.
She says creating such an office is very important for Santa Fe.
“That is the office that I see taking on some of the CHART recommendations and starting to move those forward,” she said. “I think another really important development in the city is our Department of Art. We’ve just hired a new director and some of the CHART recommendations will get carried out from that department.”
Romero-With says they are not moving as fast as she would like too but they are moving and are getting people in place soon to start working on some of the CHART report recommendations.
