Los Alamos County Council candidate Suzie Havemann recently stopped by the Los Alamos Daily Post to discuss her candidacy. Photo by Carol A.Clark/ladailypost.com
Staff Report
Democrat Suzie Havemann is running for Los Alamos County Council. She recently stopped by the Los Alamos Daily Post to answer questions about the local election.
This is part of a series of Q&As with political candidates that the Post is publishing ahead of the Nov. 8 General Election.
POST: How Long Have you lived in Los Alamos?
HAVEMANN: About 38 years total – 30 of them as an adult raising two sons with my husband Scott plus eight years as a teenager/young adult in White Rock.
POST: Where do you work?
HAVEMANN: Currently retired. My most recent profession was as a Realtor with RE/MAX for nearly 18 years.
POST: Why are you running for County Council?
HAVEMANN: I believe in civic engagement and care about the future of Los Alamos. I like being involved and my uniquely diverse background and skill set will help address some of our challenges and opportunities.
POST: County Council requires a significant time commitment, usually 4 council meetings a month, committee meetings and other events as well as reading preparation prior to those meetings. How will this fit in with your other commitments?
HAVEMANN: I gave this a lot of thought before declaring my candidacy. Because I am now retired and other obligations have waned, I have the time and energy to commit to this responsibility. That said, I wish the time commitment was less demanding. Ideally, fewer hours per month would be required; that way, younger people could be more involved. When it’s typically retired empty nesters who have the time to serve on Council we lose out on the valuable perspectives of young adults, parents, and people in that demanding middle who might be navigating parenting of teens along with caring for aging parents.
POST: What do you believe is the role of the Council in our community?
HAVEMANN: Officially, the County Council is charged with setting policy and reviewing then approving annual budgets. This may seem mundane, but one can generally learn an entity’s values and priorities by studying its budget. Additionally, Council members are the conduit between the public and County staff. Councilors need to listen, ask questions, and learn from our citizens – and work hard to garner stakeholder input on key topics – then incorporate that input into decisions about long term planning, capital improvement projects, and resource allocation.
POST: Do you think you have any personal or professional relationships that could become a conflict of interest while serving as a Council member?
HAVEMANN: No.
POST: What is your approach to handling controversial and complicated issues?
HAVEMANN: It seems most decisions of consequence have divergent views for consideration. I worry about the percolating of a ‘my side / your side’ approach in our community. My great hope is we collectively approach a controversial topic with an open mind and willingness to hear others’ perspectives, learn the facts, and consider a compromise solution before staking a firm position. My family will tell you I can be a person of passionate conviction; that said, I strongly believe in dialogue – seeking to understand – before arriving at a conclusion.
I think County staff acknowledge this challenge and want to improve how our community handles complicated issues. We need to figure out ways to reach and get input from key stakeholders on a given project at the start of the process. We should seek objections from the get-go; doing so will then lead to a better (though likely a compromise) solution. Providing information early and often is essential. If we need to invest in more resources to achieve this, then I would support that.
POST: What skills and experience do you have that you believe would be beneficial to the position?
HAVEMANN: My experience is diverse; I’ve worked in the corporate world (IBM in San Francisco), the public institution world (LANL, Los Alamos County), the non-profit world (Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce), and the small business world (Realtor).
I’ve been a parent of two sons who were involved in what seemed like every sport and activity available here and am a daughter of aging parents.
My volunteer experiences are equally diverse. I’ve served on the Quality NM Board of Directors, the Environmental Sustainability Board, Mountain School Site Council and as a Lunch Buddy. I taught classes at UNM-LA on customer service and quality management. I’ve volunteered for LAPS, the YMCA, PEEC, and Family Council. All these experiences have given me a skill set focused on teamwork, collaboration, and continuous improvement. They’ve also given me a broad lens into the different lanes of our community.
POST: What previous community involvement have you had in Los Alamos or another community?
HAVEMANN: One of my most memorable volunteer experiences was as a reading tutor with the Palo Alto Public Library. My “student” was a post office delivery woman and she could not read past 4th grade level. I asked her how in the world she could deliver mail (this was before tech automation) and she replied she worked hard to memorize street names and recipient names associated with a given house. She just figured it out. Coming out of Los Alamos High School, this was a major eye-opener for me.
POST: Based on what you know about County government, what do you see as the top priorities and why?
HAVEMANN: To make progress in my top focus areas of Housing, Small Business Support, Our Environment, and Good Governance (see www.suzie4council for elaboration), we need better public participation to clearly understand obstacles and opportunities and to develop solutions that have buy-in. To achieve this, we need to invest in more effective ways to communicate with citizens, enable them to give input, and ensure they have easy and timely ways to know what’s going on with their local government.
Doing our part with regard to climate change is important to me. I’d like to focus on how we become a net-zero electricity supplier by 2035 and how we can reduce our natural gas usage by targeted metrics each year. We need to build resiliency plans for power consumption, wildfire mitigation and response, and resource consumption.
Other priorities include solving our hiring/staffing issues so the County staff can maintain our facilities and resources while providing excellent customer service, improving our procurement and permitting processes, and supporting our non-profits and service organizations. We need to foster synergy and streamline the bureaucratic processes so these organizations can spend more time providing health, youth, and family services to our community.