Stefanie Beninato is running as an outsider for the City Council because, she says, she has been ignored by what she calls Santa Fe's "culture of corruption."

In her first try at elective office, Beninato has accused city building inspectors of taking bribes and has proposed sticking to basic city services rather than developing affordable housing in the Northwest Quadrant or trying to rescue the College of Santa Fe.

"It's no longer the College of Santa Fe as we know it," she said of the school's changes under its new operator, Laureate Education Inc. "What it is, is a four-year vo-tech school. It's not a liberal-arts school. They're not going to teach English and philosophy and mathematics and science necessarily, not unless it plays into filmmaking and some kinds of arts. ... This is not serving our children. Do you want your children to go to a vo-tech school for four years, or do you want them to get a good liberal-arts background so that they're life-long learners and that they're well rounded?"

Beninato's campaign has started slowly. To date, she has reported raising only $875 in campaign donations — a fraction of incumbent Rebecca Wurzburger's $23,074. Beninato only recently had campaign signs professionally made. She complains that signs she has put up in her yard have been torn down by vandals.

Her first appearance at a council candidate forum began awkwardly when she was seated away from her opponent — what an organizer described as a deliberate snub by other candidates who didn't want to be seated with her.

Beninato said the awkward seating arrangement was by accident. "I've already been denigrated all over town, including by Wurzburger at the first forum where she says, 'My opponent has no experience, and we all know she's rude,' " Beninato said. "I have the feeling she would rather not sit next to me. I felt she was so angry at some of the things I was saying, but I might as well have some fun."

Beninato, 59, grew up in New Rochelle, N.Y., earned a degree in urban history from New York University and a law degree from the University of California-Berkeley. After a stint on the Navajo Nation, she came to Santa Fe in 1975 to work for the Public Defender's Office. Today, she belongs to the state bar, but instead of practicing law, she works as a mediator, tour guide and analyst for the House Health and Government Affairs Committee in the state Legislature.

She has two grown daughters who live out of state, owns a house in the 600 block of Galisteo Street, valued for tax purposes at $305,940, and another in the 1000 block of Don Diego Avenue, valued at $419,220. She calls herself "barely middle class," and says she usually walks or bicycles rather than drives. She walked to an interview at the downtown Starbucks, where she ordered a small hot chocolate.

Beninato brought along a tape recorder to make sure her words were not misreported — something she said occurred five years ago when the same reporter wrote about her feud with a neighbor reconstructing an old adobe house and, more recently, in a report about her comments at a forum.

"I guess I'm a little nervous because I feel like you have portrayed me as a contentious person and I don't think of myself that way," she said. "I knew it would sell papers."

According to online court records, Beninato has been involved in 34 legal cases over the last 25 years — 20 representing herself as a plaintiff or appellant.

The most recent was filed on Dec. 31, 2009, against Adrian Montoya, a roofer who Beninato claims should reimburse her about $5,000. There are also complaints against other contractors, an Internet server, a former neighbor whose dogs barked at night, the private school her daughters attended, a local grocery where she was injured by a wind-blown patio umbrella and the city for not accommodating her at a swimming pool for her disability from the umbrella injury.

"I don't make a living at it, that's for sure," she said of her frequent lawsuits, with a laugh. "It's not that I have an ax to grind. It's not that I want to shaft somebody in particular. It's the principle, and in the principle, I will stand up. I have a very highly developed sense of justice."

Her most complex case concerns the property next to her home where the owners, Owen and Marty Nelson, replaced old adobe walls that, Beninato says, should have been preserved. The Nelsons say the adobe was too degraded to be repaired.

So far, that dispute alone has resulted in a snarl of actions, including an appeal of the City Council decision upholding boards that ruled against Beninato, an unfulfilled public-records request for minutes, faxes, letters, e-mails and text messages, a claim that the neighbors are blocking her solar rights and a red-tagging of Beninato's own property for allegedly building a second story too close to the neighbor's property line and without city authority.

Beninato, who maintains the red-tagging is retaliatory and that the mistake began with a surveying error, has responded with various legal maneuvers. She moved to disqualify then-state District Judge Daniel Sanchez because he had "failed to represent children in a custody case" involving herself, and charged the Nelsons' lawyers, Karl Sommer and Joseph Karnes, with fraud, malpractice and violating her constitutional rights. District Judge Barbara Vigil, the most recent jurist to take on the case, recently dismissed her claims against the lawyers.

Beninato, who says she is close to settling all those cases, charged in an interview that a city building inspector was paid off to ignore her neighbor's building-code violations. She said she watched the inspector show up at the neighboring property "to hang out 20 minutes and then he walks into the building and then he walks out a minute later, he shakes everyone's hand with a smile on his face and he leaves and there's no record of an inspection at that time.

"That's when I think an envelope got passed at my neighbor's house," she said. "I've got documentation that they passed the insulation inspection, but there's no proof that they ever insulated the walls of the historic part of those structures."

Regardless of her accusations and lawsuits, Beninato said she believes she is a good neighbor who, for example, is willing to keep her flood light off so it doesn't disturb the people next door. She prefers to settle or mediate cases because in litigation because "the only person who benefits is the lawyer getting paid," she said. "It's much more empowering if people will sit down and create their own solutions and negotiate a settlement."

Beninato pledges to use that same practical persistence on the City Council. "I believe it's time not to sweep things under the rug and be nice," she said. "I'm a problem-solver. I will say, 'Here's a problem, guys. What can we do?' People don't like that because they want to think everything's running well and perfect and so then they go, 'You're the problem.' No, I'm just the one pointing out the problems."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.