CANDIDATES FOR MAYOR OF ANTHONY

PEGGY S. SCOTT

Peggy Scott is well known in Anthony, having worked for incorporation in 2010, and having faced many residents as municipal judge from 2010 until now.  Her husband is retiring as a member of the Anthony City Council.  Her case to be elected mayor lies not so much in wanting to improve the appearance of the city or lay a groundwork of infrastructure for future development.  Her ideas about these are thoughtful and well informed, but not much different from that of the other candidates.  What sets her apart is a passion to improve relations; between the mayor and the council; between city employees and the public.  What offends most her is an underlying attitude of disrespect that she believes, if corrected, would create a positive relationship between city and residents and make Anthony a more welcoming place for people to call home.

Two examples of poor relations or communications:  first, the now-famous incident with the campaign signs.  A few days ago city employees were ordered to remove campaign signs from city property.  Candidates were not notified of this beforehand, nor members of the city council. It just happened, by order of city officials.  To add insult to injury, only Peggy Scott signs, according to her, were removed, until her husband brought it to the attention of city managers and then all signs were removed. This type of arbitrary action, she says, typifies an underlying attitude of disrespect, and a poor flow of communications that she would like to change.

Second, the case of the police citations.  According to Peggy, during the tenure of Police Chief Diana Mejia, some police officers felt free to make inappropriate, informal, comments to her, the sitting municipal judge, about the merits of citations.  Peggy stopped this practice.  In retaliation, she says, officers began mailing their citations to magistrate court rather than hers (officers are given a choice as to where to mail a citation).  These dropped from about 140 citations per month to about 18, depriving the city of the benefit of the money from fines paid.  In December of 2014 police wrote 293 citations, and scheduled 190 court appearances for January 5 at 1 pm, creating a traffic jam in the parking lot, chaos inside, and anger all around.  This, and other incidences of intimidation, she says, have not been addressed adequately by the mayor.  Mayor Castaneda corroborated most of the factual points given by Scott, but denied there was much he could do about it.  Mejia was fired by the council in July 2015 apparently over the objections of the mayor, by a vote of 4-0.