ESPAÑOLA, N.M. (KRQE) – Surveillance video from Española city hall captured two men dumping shopping carts in an administrator’s parking spot—and the mayor admitted to being one of them. While he says he was doing the community a service, one city councilor called for an investigation. KRQE News 13 spoke with both of them.
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The video has been circulating: captured on January 26 from an Española city hall surveillance camera, it shows two men in a white truck stop, pull several shopping carts from the bed and throw them into a parking spot reserved for the city manager. The man in the gray jacket in the video is the mayor.
Española City Councilor Samuel LeDoux said the video is embarrassing: “It also makes it hard, more difficult for us to police things like littering when people are seeing videos of the mayor, the highest person in this city, throwing trash into the city hall parking lot.”
Española Mayor John Ramon Vigil admitted it’s him in the video, and said he was actually doing the community a service by going around and picking up empty shopping carts: “We only have a streets crew of three people, including the director here in Española. And on top of road maintenance, weed maintenance, they do everything else for our community; and so if I can help out in any aspect I’m more than happy to do that.”
Vigil said on the day of the video, he had collected roughly ten carts. He said the carts were to be stored in a city yard, and that he had dropped them in the city hall parking lot to be picked up and taken there since the yard was closed on the weekend.
However, LeDoux didn’t buy the story. “I think that it’s just unfortunate to see this type of behavior by someone who’s supposed to be an example to an entire city and our children,” LeDoux said.
He’s called on city council for a censure against Vigil, saying he violated city code by bullying and intimidating the city manager, whose parking spot was used for the carts, and by illegally dumping the shopping carts. It’s also calling for the city attorney to investigate the mayor’s actions.
However, City Manager Eric Luján said he doesn’t see the dumping as hostile: “I don’t see it as intimidating or any aggressive action coming from the mayor; only about the mayor being frustrated about what’s going on in the community and these baskets being throughout the community.”
LeDoux has asked for that censure to be taken up on the next possible agenda.