"Lots to do — but that's what I like": an interview with Anne Laurent
"Lots to do — but that's what I like": an interview with Anne Laurent
A Boomtown Q+A with incoming Los Alamos County Manager Anne Laurent
Published 2/20/2024
Interview by Stephanie Nakhleh, Sam McRae, and Minesh Bacrania
Photographs by Minesh Bacrania
Note: this interview has been edited for length and clarity.
On January 30, 2024, Boomtown invited Anne Laurent, who on March 1, 2024 will move from Deputy County Manager to County Manager, for a wide-ranging discussion about some key issues facing Los Alamos, particularly housing and development.
Anne Laurent: Well, first of all, your first few articles were wonderful.
Boomtown: Thank you very much, and thanks for being here, we really appreciate your time. Our first question is: how do you say your name?
Anne [laughs]: It’s Anne la-RENT. I welcome the French pronunciation but that's not how the family pronounces it.
What are you excited about with this new position?
I have a lot of mixed feelings going on about this new position, but what I’m most excited about is that I very much care about Los Alamos County — the town and the community, but also the organization. I started working here in 2008. I’ve worked in other organizations, and I just really feel at home here. I feel like I’ve been able to be impactful in a positive way for the community and for the organization. I’m excited to continue to do that, and there's a lot on our list to do around projects and initiatives that the Council has set forth and the community supports. With my project management and architecture background, I’m looking to get a little bit more involved in some of the topics that I haven't been able to in my current role as well. So: lots to do, but that's what I like. I like a long list and I like to work through it. I like forward progress; making and moving in the right direction.
Of those projects on the list, what do you consider top priorities?
What I’ll start with may not be the most interesting, but we have a big backlog of infrastructure. Anything related to our roads or incorporating some of the alternative modes of transportation: bike lanes and more pedestrian-friendly type amenities, ADA accessibility — those are all really interesting to me as an architect and from a design perspective. Of course, we still have aging utility infrastructure, parks and recreation, and we know how critical that is. It’s important to keep that infrastructure funded, and now we're able to fund it in a way we haven't been able to fund it before.
And that funding is GRT related?
Some of it’s GRT related, some of it is that we've made good use of a lot of grant funds and state funds that are available as well to fund those projects. We're always looking to supplement, to cover some of the inflation and increased cost that we've experienced, but GRT certainly for the matches: many grants require matching funds and we need to allocate those funds in order to accept the state or federal funding.
Another priority is anything housing related: certainly moving forward to the next phase on the North Mesa housing, as well as some of these other development projects that might incorporate housing. There are a lot of opportunities and initiatives around environmental sustainability that the County could take a lead on implementing, which might demonstrate and inspire others to incorporate some of those ideas into how we move our projects forward. So those are the top-of-the-list priorities.
The next question we have is about offices taking up downtown retail space: at a recent Women in Business forum, this was a topic that came up, and many there wondered how we can take advantage of the updated development code to build up so that LANL and their contractors are the second floor and we have the first floor for retail? Is there any way forward on that?
It's something we shouldn't stop talking about, even if we don't think we are clear on what the best path forward is. This is where the MRA — the Metropolitan Redevelopment Area — comes into place. That tool gives the county the ability to incentivize ground floor storefronts and retail space on private property. It is a complex topic because what we're talking about is land-use rights versus the collective good, and quality of life, and what might be best for the community. How do we balance that? When we have those conversations, as a government we have to be careful. We don't want to be perceived as heavy-handed. We want to be respectful of private land-use rights. At the same time, clearly we've got some long-standing issues. This is not a new issue for Los Alamos, although it is more acute now. I’m very optimistic that there are some good redevelopment projects in the pipeline that might help address some of that. But this is where we are: it's going to have to be redevelopment tools like LEDA, or MRA, or it's going to be working with developers and with landowners. As they see the opportunity and the benefit for redeveloping, we need to work with them, and have a conversation about benefits that might not have been obvious at the beginning.
Is it about convincing the business owners or educating them?
Education is always a part of it, right? It also takes a willingness of the property owners to have an interest. It’s important to bring in those property owners who have a little bit more ambition than just purely “my business, my property,” but are looking more to the collective mindset. What's great about the MRA is that we can have more flexibility in how the public entity participates fiscally, and I do think that aspect incentivizes an open-mindedness from the property owners to have that more collective view. Sometimes they're just busy, right? I don't want to come across as negative toward property owners. They've got a whole lot going on: maybe they're having a roof leak and they can't find a plumber to take care of it. All those day-to-day stresses. It's really capacity sometimes, and seeing it as a priority to say, “I can now see how this could benefit me and the community long term.” I don't think it's about willingness. It’s about making the connections and building trust. Because we've all experienced lack of trust in government, right? It's not as easy as just approaching people and saying, “We're here to help: trust us!” It sounds good to say “trust us” and “we care” but public/private partnerships require positive relationships between the participating parties; it comes down to building trusting relationships.
How do you plan to improve that trust?
I’ve built a lot of relationships along the way: I think I have a lot of trust. It’s trust in the person, not the organization. Sometimes it’s just taking the time to state your intentions. A lot of times we fail, when we engage the public, to say, “This is why we're here and this is why we're having this conversation.” We sort of say, “This is what we're going to do,” or “Put your sticker by the one you like best.”
We heard this at the business forum about minimum wage the other week: the County government doesn't talk enough about why are we here, why is this important, why are we even doing this, what phase of the project are we in? We need to give a little bit of the history. We always struggle with public input, too, because we don't control when people get engaged: there may have been lots of opportunities to engage, but who knows when somebody actually sees it or becomes aware of it? New people come at every phase and every decision. We are doing better in our websites and in our communications at making sure we have a little bit of the history and connecting back to when this started, and why.
Remembering that not everybody knows those things, as we move through the process, is important.
How can the County get relevant, representative democratic feedback from the people who live here? Traditional public-input processes tend to privilege people with time and energy for a particular topic, which isn’t always representative.
Again, a wonderful question. We talk about this a lot; it’s a national issue for local governments. How do we get representation from underrepresented groups? How do you know when you've reached that threshold where you have good representation of all your constituencies? I'll even take it a step further: at our county employee orientation, we talk about who our customer is. It’s each other. It's, yes, the person who comes up to our counter and who lives here, but it's also the people who commute and work here. It's also the people who want to live here, but can't.
It's very difficult to reach people who are not receiving information about county government ongoings and public meetings, yet may be affected by these issues. We can utilize all of our tools and not necessarily look at any one particular input as the only input. Fingers crossed, we should have an additional person in our public information office soon to focus on social media. We're looking at increasing our presence everywhere. Largely through social media, but you've seen us put out newsletters, press releases. We're willing to be out there in any way that makes sense and expand the modes and volume of information and outreach we do. Sometimes it is education; sometimes it is involvement; and sometimes it is input. That is how people receive information.
Also, we’re looking at different types of input: in the past we never would have done an open-ended survey like a Doodle poll, because 10 years ago we dismissed those as not statistically valid. But now we see those polls as a quick way to get some feedback. Is it scientifically accurate? No. But is it a way of getting some quick feedback that's helpful to us? Absolutely.
In addition, we do our statistically-valid citizen input surveys. It hasn’t always been PolCo, but that's who we contract with now. That one certainly will tell us what the margin of error is on the responses, and gives us an idea of demographic differences in the responses, which is helpful.
We did learn in the 2022 National Community Survey, in a statistically valid way, that there wasn't a great difference between the responses given by residents and non-residents who took the poll. We'll continue to study that, to try to figure out how to capture a different group and then compare it to what our residents are saying. But I don't know if I answered your question. Go back to your question?
How do we ensure we get wider representation in responses? Because we've heard a little bit about the County’s newest public-outreach tool, “Have Your Say,” and it seems like people have survey fatigue, or just general fatigue, or struggle to bring the emotion that comes with some of these issues to the table. Not everyone has the energy to go into battle with people who insist on battling in a public forum.
Certainly some forums that are intimidating to people. One of the reasons we started “Have Your Say” is because we heard it was difficult to get to Council meetings, and it was intimidating to stand at a podium in front of a microphone. There are people who prefer to email or write in, so we are looking at expanding our system for public input for Council meetings so people can submit written comments ahead of time and have them be part of the record. So that's one new thing we're implementing.
With the “Have Your Say” forum: We've heard that same feedback you’ve heard, so we’re looking at some options with the functionality of it. For example, we could hide all the comments. Or, we could just receive comments for a certain period of time, but you don't necessarily see the others, and when the period is closed, we publish them all. That would eliminate the problem of feeding off of each other's comments that makes it a little bit more like a Facebook forum.
When we've done town halls, we've had a lot of feedback that we asked questions in a way that was leading. So we've tried to include an open-ended place where people can express themselves if they didn’t see an opportunity elsewhere in the questions. We don't want anyone to be intimidated, so we're taking the approach of using different methods and people can use whatever they're comfortable with — and they all count.
Now, how we collect and present that information is a little more challenging. We tried presenting some raw input to Council and Council said, “okay, well, we need it categorized or analyzed a little bit.”
So if we're going to use all these different methods, how do we then bring it all together to present to the public and Council to say, “This is what we've heard?” I don't think we're there yet. But we're willing to try anything and see if it's helpful. So I appreciate the feedback.
At the PEEC forum where you spoke as a candidate for the position as County Manager, we heard you say that you were proud of the public buildings that went up in town under your tenure, but that the town had since changed. And we thought you were indicating that the town doesn't want money spent on public projects like that anymore: is that accurate?
I’m trying to remember, it’s a little bit of a blur. The first part is absolutely accurate: I am proud of that. The town has changed in the sense that the Laboratory pressures have changed. I think what I was referring to was that when I first started here, the community was largely Lab employees and Lab retirees. And the demographic now includes a big influx of people who aren't long-time Los Alamos residents that have been here 10, 20, 30, 40 years. There's a lot of people coming to work at the Laboratory —
And they’re living here?
They're trying to. They're coming here and asking why don't we have a Trader Joe's? Why don't we have a CVS? They're asking these questions that when I first started here in 2008, the community was like, okay, I understand why these things are difficult here. Economic development projects are hard to incentivize here in Los Alamos because the cost of land is high, the amount of land is scarce, workforce is scarce, and retail and restaurants need higher sales volumes. Which all means a growing resident population and tourism is very important. But now it’s a whole new set of eyes coming from all kinds of different places saying, “Why do we not have these quality-of-life things here in this community? I look around and I see no reason why we don't have them.”
I was referring to a time when we were focused on the public amenities, but now the focus is more on helping the private amenities. That’s where the focus has changed. And I’ll add a third one: what's the County's role to work on some of these issues regionally that are beyond us? We don't have the resources either in land, workforce, or customer volume to develop an effective or efficient solution locally.
Along those lines, what's your vision for 20th Street, considering the public does own it and has a say over its development?
We've solicited proposals for its redevelopment: those are being evaluated now. If you look at our strategic goals and all our needs, there's a lot to pick from. I’ll speak to the last initiative that fell through, the Marriott: we are in a huge deficit for hotel rooms, and the benefit those bring to small businesses and everything else is a direct connection to me, so that project made a lot of sense. But the developer backed out due to pandemic and inflation impacts to financing and construction costs.
Right now, I think the focus is on how to help small businesses and how to create housing. It’s about what a developer is interested in proposing. We have an asset. We have a piece of land. It's been rezoned to have higher densities and a broad array of potential uses: let’s look at what could be there now. At the end of the day, that agreement is still going to end up at Council with public comment, but at the public forums we’ve already had, what I heard was, “Focus on housing, focus on small business. Focus on something that really benefits the community’s needs now.”
Can we make everyone happy?
Absolutely not. What we strive for in public administration is that even if people are against something, they have a general understanding of it and can accept it. It's like, “Okay, I don't love it. It's not what I would choose for myself. But I understand why the government and the community generally is wanting to see change.” And that's what I’m looking for. That’s the ideal.
Are we anywhere close to that?
What I like about Los Alamos is that most people are happy to get into the details, and when people are willing to go into the details we can explain that it's just not an arbitrary decision. We actually did think it through. When someone who is strongly against a plan is willing to listen to that, nine and a half times out of 10 the person says, “You know what, I thank you for taking the time. I can see you care. I can see you’re thoughtful. There's no negative or bad motives behind this. You're not trying to hurt anybody.” That does work, especially one-on-one. Whether we can actually engage that way — one-on-one with each person who feels strongly — is another question.
Outgoing County Manager Steve Lynne said, in his End of Year County Review at SALA, that housing was the priority. But then we hear about “a regional approach,” which seems to mean, “We're going to look to Santa Fe to take care of it for us.” What are your ideas for how we can deal with housing in Los Alamos itself, particularly regarding affordability?
When we talk about regional, we're really talking about adding that on. Regional solutions could include transit — park and rides — connected to new housing developments, which could mean Rio Arriba, Sandoval, and Santa Fe Counties. However, we are also pursuing housing opportunities here in the County as well. We see it as an “and,” not an “or.” Because when you look at the housing needs, we just don't have land capacity. It’s just a simple math analysis that is driving us to say we should put more resources into regional conversations.
Is that true, though? If we can’t spread out, can we build up?
I don't think it's either/or, I think it's both. I’ll tell you why “regional” is so important. Even if we could house everyone here, there's always going to be people who don't want to live here, or in the type of housing that's available here. If you want to live on a ranch, you’re not going to get it here. And we still have a traffic issue: housing, traffic, and transportation solutions go hand-in-hand. We already have a regional transit authority, so we’re looking at that, as well as economic development, because housing developments are good for the economy. Our neighboring communities feel like they're a strong part of Los Alamos because a good chunk of their residents come up to work here every day. They want to be part of those solutions.
Switching gears: How effective is the interaction between County boards, commissions, and Council? We have heard from former councilors that back in the day, the boards and commissions were quite empowered and had a lot of influence, but have become more ceremonial over time.
That is a timely topic. Formally, the role of boards and commissions hasn’t changed much over time. Where I think we really have struggled over the last few years is finding people who have the time to volunteer. Part of that is having a better understanding of how citizens can engage and how they can influence. Even with our councilors: they're learning as they get assigned as liaison to each of the boards and commissions. I see them bringing a lot more reports up to Council and creating Council items based on feedback and issues they're hearing at the boards and commissions.
But where we've identified that we need a re-look is our boards and commission handbook and in our training. I think we've been doing the minimum through Covid and through staff turnover. We have some staff liaisons who may not understand their role in how they support the boards and commissions. That is an area where we need to improve for sure. And I have some ideas I'll be talking to Council about in the budget hearing1.
The Environmental Sustainability Board is probably one of the better examples of where they've actually taken initiatives and turned them into an action at Council. The most recent example was Bee City. That all started at ESB. Yes it took time, yes it took persistence. It took us a while to get the format in a way that would get through our legal department. But I think ESB members feel like they do have influence and Council does turn initiatives into action. Whereas other boards and commissions — what I’m reading into the comments is that they don't feel empowered, or they don't feel like “I’m making a difference the way I would hope to.” So I don't know if I’m assessing that correctly.
Changing topics again: There's this idea, whether it's myth or fact, that the county has a big pot of money sitting around. For example, when we were speaking with the police chief for our last story, he said we have plenty of money for something like a homeless shelter, we just don't have the population to fill it. Is that true?
When we talk about budget guidance, I think what people see is that we have a very high reserve. We have, yes, many millions of dollars sitting there as a reserve because we keep 20 percent of our operating there. There's a reason for that. Our income and revenues are largely tied to LANL operations, and when they have things like a shutdown, or a budget cut, those of us who have been around a while know that all of a sudden we don't have the revenues to do what’s in our budget. And so having that 20 percent allows us several months to basically adjust. That's by policy.
What we see in the 10-year projection is that unless we do something, we're not going to have those revenues once the Laboratory goes into manufacturing mode for pit production.
If you go to our Capital Improvement Projects fund, our revenues have been up, so yes we've been transferring a lot of money from the General Fund, which are our GRT revenues, into what's called our Capital Improvement Project Program. We do that because there's a lot of needs on the project side. Last year, for instance, we had a town hall where they said we need a chiller at the ice rink. They said, “We have to spend this money. We're not able to keep ice. We can't keep our hockey programs going. It's a big deal.”
So yes, we have monies there, and placeholders for things that Council has identified as a priority, like a tween center or social-services hub.
We only really approve a one-year budget at a time, but we do have a 10-year outlook on those funds as well. And what we see in the 10-year projection is that unless we do something, we're not going to have those revenues once the Laboratory goes into manufacturing mode for pit production. We're anticipating that by 2027/2028, we’ll see a $15 million reduction in revenues. For context, our adopted FY24 GRT revenues were estimated at $103 million.
Why does LANL ramping up pit production mean less money in Los Alamos County’s coffers?
Because manufacturing in the state of New Mexico is tax-exempt. Right now, LANL is renovating things and there’s construction, and all those things are taxable. But once they go into pit manufacturing, it’s no longer taxable. There is a bill right now at the legislature2 that would remove that exemption for national laboratories. We don't know if it'll make it through, but if that goes through, it certainly changes that outlook. And that would be good for our capital 10-year program, because that means everything on that list can continue.
We’ve been hearing a lot about problems with our fields. We’ve got a lot of money programs to rehab all of our recreational fields. So, if you want to know where the money is, yes, there is money there.
When it comes down to social services and things like doctors and mental health practitioners, we have issues across the state with providers. So let’s say it was prioritized by Council to build a homeless shelter, for instance. There are ongoing operational dollars associated with that. It’s not just building: you’ve got to maintain it, staff it, unless there are state and federal funds that would pay for it. Right now, we don't have the revenues to sustain something like that long term.
Could reallocating funds from areas like the jail budget support social services? We’ve learned that the county’s jail budget is the highest in the state.
I'm not certain which budget you were examining, but much of it relates to our relatively low population size. If you look at some other costs, like some of the costs from New Mexico counties around claims or medical care offered and all those, there's a lot of operational costs that are extremely high. Much higher in other counties than ours. Jails are required to provide medical, transport services, and capital improvement costs that can vary and be much higher than just staffing and day to day operational costs. Also, a big issue for Counties in New Mexico is insurance claim caps and awards far exceeding coverage. So keeping the inmate population down helps manage the risks.
A lot of these mental-health needs in the community, or homelessness issues, or social-service related issues — our community is small, so we do have to look at the larger regional component. I know at Social Services they are working hard on our Comprehensive Health Study and updating it to give us some data, but we don't have enough people to really warrant a full-time homelessness facility. I’m not saying that we don't need to address the issue. But when you build a facility, you have to staff it. From an operational perspective you want it to be occupied and utilized in an effective way.
Last question: What do you do for fun? How do you make sure to take care of yourself?
I like hiking anywhere around town I can go with my dog, Moose. It’s just time to have by myself to think things through and enjoy our community and nature.
Moose is a Corrales native, and he was the first puppy that didn’t make my daughter sneeze. She had asked us for years and wrote letters to Santa wanting a dog; we had to go on a hunt to find one that didn’t drive her crazy. He is going to be 9 years old on St. Patrick’s Day.
This has been great. Thank you so much for taking the time out to speak to us today.
Thank you.
Dates set aside for the Los Alamos County budget hearings: April 22, 23, 29 and 30. The actual budget sessions may not require hearings on all four dates.
The bill did not make it out of committee hearings for either the New Mexico House or Senate.