City adjusts vehicle-forfeiture rules

The Santa Fe City Council on Wednesday tweaked the city's vehicle-forfeiture ordinance. Among other changes, the amendment:

• Allows forfeiture after the owner's second drunken-driving case, rather than the third.

• Increases the period for a vehicle owner to contest an impoundment, and for the city to respond, to 15 days, rather than 10 days.

• Gives a vehicle owner whose vehicle was wrongly seized 72 hours, rather than 24, to pick the vehicle up.

• Allows police to keep five forfeited vehicles a year for short-term uses in undercover operations, and one vehicle for long-term uses.

• Prohibits owners from repurchasing their forfeited vehicles at auction.

• Gives owners up to 72 hours to retrieve personal property from impounded vehicles.

• Clarifies that upon the third seizure of the same vehicle, the vehicle can be forfeited when the driver is arrested, rather than convicted, for DWI or driving with a revoked license.

• Allows vehicles to be returned to owners who had no knowledge that the person using their car was drunk, if the drunken driver's name is not on the vehicle title or registration.

Council denies CCA request on alcohol

The Center for Contemporary Arts will have to go without alcohol at its next event.

The Santa Fe City Council on Wednesday turned down the request by a vote of 5-3 because it had already approved three alcohol waivers so far this year for the nonprofit center off Old Pecos Trail.

Councilor Patti Bushee, who moved to deny the center's request, was joined by Carmichael Dominguez, Chris Calvert, Miguel Chavez and Rebecca Wurzburger. Voting against the motion were Ron Trujillo, Matthew Ortiz and Rosemary Romero.

The councilors on Wednesday did approve waivers to serve alcohol within 300 feet of a church or school for a special event at Goler Fine Imported Shoes, 125 W. Palace Ave., and at the Santa Fe Children's Museum, 1050 Old Pecos Trail.

Ex-state worker sues over building lockout

A former state Taxation and Revenue Department employee says that, because of errors of a former security firm, she was locked outside her office building, where she collapsed in the snow.

Rebecca Salazar of Santa Fe is suing Legit Security Inc. of Albuquerque, claiming that at 5:30 p.m. Feb. 11, 2009, she went out a back door at the Joseph M. Montoya Building to take a cold medication.

The door, which was supposed to remain open, locked behind her, and she "fell off the dock and fell about 5 feet to the concrete surface below," says the complaint filed Wednesday in state District Court. "It was later learned that Rebecca Salazar suffered a brain hemorrhage after stepping outside onto the loading dock."

Salazar's suit says she dragged herself around the building, leaving a blood trail behind her. She wasn't found until about 12:30 a.m. Feb. 12, by an attorney leaving the building, the suit says. She couldn't speak, the complaint says, and was partly paralyzed with severe swelling, blood on her face, frostbite and abrasions.

Legit Security, which didn't return a message seeking comment, lost its contract with the state later that same month, according to the complaint.