By Eric  Maddy
The SCORE

Citing a record of nearly 21 years of leadership while working in Rio Rancho police department, Steven L. Shaw will challenge incumbent Howard Balmer for the District 4 city council seat.

Shaw announced his candidacy earlier this summer.

“With my knowledge of the community and working within the city, I’ve got a good insight into the community’s needs and processes,” Shaw said Wednesday. “I’ve got proven leadership and have a lot to offer. I want to keep providing service to the community.”

Shaw filled a six-month gap as acting chief of the Department of Public Safety, filling the position after Mike Baker retired and before current chief Robert Boone was hired. He currently works for TACT and Associates, an Albuquerque-based firm which works with law enforcement in traffic analysis, consulting and training.

“One of the courses I teach is leadership. Being a big follower of situational leadership, I think participative management is very important,” Shaw said. “The whole basis of that is involvement as stakeholders, and getting input from those who will be affected by decisions that are being made. That’s one thing that we really need.”

Shaw didn’t wish to say much about the current controversy involving the state’s Open Meetings Act, other than to say. “I will conduct city business in public.

“I’m not going to run my campaign on what my opponent has or hasn’t done in the past. I wish to be elected based on what I can do, what I have demonstrated in the past. It’s not about my opponent. It is about me.”

Shaw said he has three main points of emphasis: balanced growth/economic development; infrastructure improvements and public safety “besides getting input from the constituency as to what they see their needs are, if there is anything in addition to those things.”

By balanced growth, Shaw said he means “getting more toward balance of commercial in addition to residential. Historically Rio Rancho has been predominately a residential construction community, more of a bedroom community to the Albuquerque area. Therefore we don’t have the services and retail that is necessary to support the community, to provide infrastructure, parks, law enforcement, EMS.

“Everything that the city does requires revenue from some source, whether it is gross receipts taxes, property taxes, general obligation bonds, revenue bonds or whatever,” Shaw said. “Gross receipts is where the city seriously lacking. The only way to improve that if to provide the services that residents need closer to home. Not only does that help the city, it in turn helps the residents by allowing them more time to be at home rather than be driving into Albuquerque.”

Shaw expressed concern with the way infrastructure repairs have been handled in Vista Hills, one of the city’s older neighborhoods.

“Vista Hills has been experiencing a lot of problems with water main breaks,” he said. “Once a main breaks, besides having that mess to deal with, you’ve also got the paving repairs to do. It seemed like every time a repair was being done on a water main, 200 feet up the road you’d have another one. It was kind of like a dog chasing its tail.

“We need to look at that and come up with a plan on what we need to do remedy that problem.”

When Shaw was in the police department, the city had a problem keeping officers after they were trained because of better pay elsewhere. “Retention hasn’t been a problem so much in recent years,” he said. “It’s just a matter of keeping up with growth, and this again gets back for that whole balanced growth discussion and the need for economic development. We’ve got to build up our tax base to provide those services, and public safety is an essential service.

“We’ve got an excellent school system. We are lacking in parks and recreational facilities; however, what we do have are very high quality. You’ve good to have a good quality of life, including the feeling of living in a safe community, in order to draw business.”

But he said he also can appreciate voter concerns about higher taxes, as evidenced by the rejection of a $12 million bond issue for a sports complex in northern Rio Rancho earlier this month.

“As a (former) city employee, I’m a working stiff,” he said.

Shaw said he has lived in the district for seven years and before that “it seemed like I kept going back and forth between districts three and four every time they redistricted.”