On Election Day, Kenneth Snow and Robin Spalding were voted in to fill the two open candidate seats for the Moriarty City Council, beating out incumbent Bobby Ortiz amid an ongoing controversy about the city’s financial recordkeeping.
Snow and Spalding are both new to the council, and the two are acquainted neighbors from childhood, Spalding said.
Spalding has a background in banking, and she is a former municipal court clerk. She decided to run for council because she and her neighbors have been concerned about a park near their house. She has been trying to work with the city on getting it refurbished, she said, but the concern has been ongoing for more than three years, so her neighbors encouraged her to run for local office.
“We were all getting kind of frustrated, and we want to see something done,” Spalding said. “We want to see improvements around the city and just things that a lot of my neighbors and I have talked about.”
Spalding and Snow both told The Independent that their first step upon taking office will be to resolve transparency issues after employees had been improperly recording financial information. The controversy prompted former mayor Brandon Webb to resign in September, after which Steve Anaya took over his spot for the remainder of the term.
Webb expressed optimism about the idea of having two new candidates, instead of rotating the same familiar faces through council and mayoral seats.
“When you’re playing cards and somebody’s always got the winning hand, you’re not shuffling good enough,” Webb said. “Bringing new faces in there is a positive.”
Snow told The Independent that after attending council meetings as a citizen, he grew frustrated about change not being made, and he wanted to help.
“That really kind of got me to the point where I decided that I was going to run to try to help the community,” Snow said. “I felt like we weren’t getting a whole lot done there for a while, and mostly that was because of where they were financially with the budgets and the audits.”
Snow has a background in fire service and dealing with government budgets, the latter of which can help with transparency issues, he said.
Snow said he thinks the issues were rooted in a lack of proper training, so he plans on prioritizing training employees on how to use the audit system.
Snow said he has met with Mayor Anaya already.
“He really has a good mindset of where we need to go and getting our finances cleaned up and squared away, and I’m excited to see what we do in the next four years,” Snow said.
Anaya told The Independent that he also looks forward to working with the two candidates. He said the city is on track to finish its Fiscal Year 2024 audit.
“We’ve got a lot of good stuff ahead of us,” Anaya said. “Once we get our finances in order, we’re in good shape.”
