Finally. The city has a permanent director of the Land Use Department, someone who might actually stick around.
Jason Kluck was appointed to the position last week after serving as the acting director since June.
When running for his first term in 2018, Mayor Alan Webber correctly noted the future of the city ran through the Land Use Department. He didn’t know at the time its directors would also be running through the department. One after another.
He inherited Mayor Javier Gonzales’ appointee, Lisa Martinez. Eminently qualified, Martinez was educated as an architect, held a general contractors license and ran the state Construction Industries Division under Gov. Bill Richardson.
But the mayor wanted his own people, and Martinez was shown the door. The department twisted in the wind with no permanent leadership until Carol Johnson came to town with husband Kevin Kellogg, who was hired to run the Housing Trust.
Also eminently qualified, Johnson ran the land-use office in Phoenix before moving to Santa Fe. The mayor was thrilled a person with such stellar credentials dropped in his lap. But then she and Kellogg got “red-tagged” for remodeling their home without a permit. The couple left town shortly thereafter.
Johnson did make two significant hires before she left. One was to poach Elias Isaacson from his land-use job in Española, and the other was to bring Kluck up from the city’s Public Works Department, where he had been working since 2009.
Isaacson became acting director when Johnson left and later was given the job on a permanent basis. Then he moved on to a position in California, which elevated Kluck to acting director until this past week.
Meanwhile, construction is booming, staffing shortages plague the department, there’s clamoring to update an out-of-date general plan, multifamily apartments need water conservation codes, Tierra Contenta is being resurrected, and the mayor believes a “growth management” plan will sort it all out.
Good luck, Kluck. (Actually, it’s pronounced Klook.)
But there’s reason for optimism.
The main reason: Kluck gets it. He’s also pretty unflappable but has opinions, strong ones, on all issues. He’s also been around the block enough times to know how to maneuver within the city.
With a master’s degree in architecture from the University of Texas-Arlington, he moved to Santa Fe right after graduation and joined his father, who had moved to Santa Fe in the ’70s. His first gig was with architect Beverly Spears for three years. He then joined the great Santa Fe construction outfit Tierra Concepts as a designer and project manager for 10 years.
With the collapse of our local homebuilding industry at the end of 2008, he landed the city job in 2009, working under veteran Public Works Director Isaac Pino. Unlike senior managers who come and go with changes in administrations, Kluck found his personal niche within city government and isn’t going anywhere.
With the heart and soul of a public servant, and one who truly understands the nuances of city government and local building and development issues, new City Manager John Blair made the right decision.
Unfortunately, and inevitably, criticism of his elevation center on that it was an “inside job” and Kluck was the “low-hanging fruit,” as if those are inherently negatives. Some even suggest Kluck is simply a yes man to an autocratic mayor.
Kluck is nobody’s yes man. His calm demeanor may have contributed to his slow rise up the city’s hierarchy, but he is the right person at the right time to finally establish continuity in the department. The mayor’s right: The city’s future runs through it.
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March 13, 2022 at 01:43AM
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In Kluck, the city finally has someone running the land-use show - Santa Fe New Mexican
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