June 11 — The Santa Fe City Council approved spending nearly half a million dollars on legal representation to fight a lawsuit demanding the restoration of the toppled Plaza obelisk.
Costs could continue to rise beyond the more than $454,000 approved so far for an outside law firm if the civil suit – filed by the Santa Fe Protective Union against the city and mayor Alan Webber — goes to trial as scheduled for September.
“Ideally, we would get summary judgment, which would prevent the case from going to trial,” said City Attorney Erin McSherry.
Union Protectíva President Virgil Vigil, one of Webber’s harshest critics, said in an interview Tuesday: “The city is paying a lot of money for this.”
Known as the Soldiers’ Monument, the obelisk was built in the late 1860s to honor Civil War Union soldiers who died on the battlefields of New Mexico.
An inscription at the base of the monument also dedicated it to the American soldiers who died in battle against “savage Indians” – language that drew criticism for decades, even after the word “savage” was erased in the 1970s. toppled by protesters on Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2020, amid a national movement calling for racial justice.
Union Protectíva, a Hispanic fraternal organization, sued the city and Webber in state District Court in June 2021, accusing Webber of violating state historic preservation rules by calling for the obelisk’s removal a year earlier, several months before it was torn down.
The mayor’s call to remove the obelisk and two other controversial monuments from the city came as indigenous activists planned a protest in the Square. However, only one of them – a statue depicting Spanish conquistador Don Diego de Vargas – was removed from public property in June 2020. An overnight effort to dismantle the Plaza’s obelisk that month was halted when a crew damaged the top of the monument; an obelisk on federal property honoring Kit Carson was left standing.
As the costs of the process continued to increase, the obelisk remained stored in pieces and its base is reaching its fourth year, enclosed in a large wooden box in the middle of the Square.
Meanwhile, the Kit Carson monument, also enclosed in a wooden box to protect it, was damaged in August 2023. No one was charged with the crime.
The case’s trial date is set for September 9, with a pretrial conference on July 22.
Although the city intends to avoid a trial, Kenneth Stalter, an attorney representing Union Protectíva, said he believes it is “very likely” the case will go to trial.
Both sides were initially ordered by a judge to go through mediation, an effort that was unsuccessful.
Along with representation by city attorneys, Webber and the city are represented by outside attorneys from the Modrall Sperling Law Firm. In December, the City Council approved a $40,000 increase in the company’s contract, bringing the total to about $324,000.
McSherry said that would be enough for the city to get through the discovery phase of the civil case, an evidence-sharing process.
At its last meeting, on May 29, the council approved an increase of US$120,000, bringing the contract total to US$454,000.
How far this money will go is unclear. A memo requesting the contract increase said the cost of fully litigating the case “will depend on several factors.”
McSherry said the increase could be enough to get through the testing phase.
The city filed several requests in the case, including one asking for the case to be dismissed in the months after it was filed. A judge denied the motion in January 2022.
A more recent motion seeks summary judgment and another challenges one of Union Protectíva’s experts.
Vigil declined to say how much his organization has spent on the process so far.
“It’s not a stupid change, I’ll say that,” he said.
However, Vigil said the organization is “financially strong” and that its members approved spending “whatever is necessary to protect our history, culture and traditions.”
Former Santa Fe County Treasurer Pat Varela told The New Mexican in 2020 that the organization had about $14 million in real estate assets. Vigil said Tuesday that the organization invests most of its money in property and recently purchased a building for $400,000.
One of Union Protectíva’s main responsibilities is to help pay for the burials of its members when they die. Vigil said the organization had hoped to increase the amount of funeral costs it covers, but has put that goal on hold pending the lawsuit.
“If we win, we win, because the city will pay everything and more,” he said.
During testimony in February, Webber said he asked Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham for advice and that she recommended he do nothing to resolve the growing conflict over the obelisk. Lujan Grisham sharply criticized his description of her involvement after details of the testimony were published in The New Mexican.
“She threw him under a bus and ran him over a few times,” Vigil said.
The city’s legal fees are in addition to the $254,000 paid to construction company Artful Life in 2021 for a yearlong process of gathering information about how to move forward with the obelisk and other public monuments and works of art that have created cultural conflicts. The process led to several recommendations, but little action was taken on them.
Councilman Michael Garcia said he and other councilors have a resolution at the city attorney’s office directing staff to determine the obelisk’s ownership — an issue that arose when Webber called for its removal.
Garcia said he was told by city officials several years ago that the city did not own the monument.
McSherry said, however, that the city came into ownership of the obelisk in the early 1900s and she does not believe there is ambiguity about its ownership.
“The territorial legislature bought it, put it on federal land and the feds gave us the land,” she said.
There were shortages for some other structures, including the federal courthouse, “but there were no shortages for anything at the Plaza,” she said.
No documents indicate that the state believes it owns the property, she added.
A 2023 City Council resolution calling for the restoration of the obelisk in an updated form was withdrawn after widespread criticism.
Garcia said he is not aware of plans for new legislation regarding the obelisk, but said taking action on the monument is “the next step” for the council after making a decision on two controversial statues.
The city announced plans last month to place a municipally owned sculpture depicting the halls of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, never before displayed, outside the Santa Fe Community Convention Center and to temporarily place the Vargas statue in the New York History Museum. Mexico to a more permanent location. location is chosen.
A resolution on the plan was presented to council on May 29, when several people expressed disagreement. The resolution is scheduled for a final vote on Wednesday night.
Vigil said it’s likely some members of his organization will show up at Wednesday’s meeting to speak, but the group believes the measure has enough votes to pass and doesn’t expect that to change.
