Crime, undocumented immigration and the city's minimum wage dominated Monday's Neighborhood Network forum for the three mayoral candidates.

As in last week's public-union forum, the greatest contrast was between Mayor David Coss and former city manager Asenath Kepler. City Councilor Miguel Chavez continued to side with Coss on most matters.

The election is March 2, with early voting starting Jan. 26.

Questioned about her support of the city's minimum wage of $9.85 an hour — the highest in the nation — Kepler said her position on this, like her position on privatization, "has been widely misquoted or taken out of context."

"The living wage is an important part of our city right now," she said. "Many people do rely upon it. However, we have not had an economic development report on the living wage since 2007, when we really hit the skids of the recession."

Kepler said although she doesn't oppose the idea of a local minimum wage, she doesn't think it should have been raised this year because it could create job shortages.

Coss responded that the minimum wage was not raised this year because inflation did not increase. He said the city has conducted two studies — each costing $100,000 — of the minimum wage, and both determined job growth and business startups and closings were not affected by the wage law.

Chavez also supported the minimum wage, calling it "bold and forward thinking. ... I say that we stay the course, keep it where it is, let's ride this out and see how things turn around."

Asked about crime, Kepler said that from going door-to-door to talk to residents, she has become convinced that crime is underreported in Santa Fe.

"We're dealing with high-tech criminals who have scanners, who listen to the police activity, who plan their break-ins based upon where the police are and aren't," she said. "We simply cannot continue to protect this city with the number of police officers that we have. ... One bad tourist incident in this town with a gun ... and we are going to pay dearly for many, many, many years."

Coss responded by accusing Kepler of misrepresenting crime statistics to create a "scary, scary story." He said armed robbery, sexual assault and other violent crimes are down in Santa Fe.

"We have a spike, a serious spike, in home burglaries," he said. "It's not that it happens sometimes in the middle of the day. It happens almost always in the middle of the day, and you know who we're arresting for that is 15-year-olds. If having more police was the only answer, crime would be going down, but I think when you have as bad an economy as we've had and you have a 45 percent dropout rate, you get to have these kinds of problems with home burglaries."

Chavez said he knows of neighborhoods that have cut their burglary rates by working with the police and using neighborhood-watch groups.

Asked by audience member Christine Montoya what each candidate would do about the "illegal immigrant problem," Coss defended the city's policy of not having its police consider a person's immigration status.

He said he would continue to support the policy, work with federal representatives on national immigration reform and work with the day laborers and businesses around DeVargas Park.

Kepler called Santa Fe "a very welcoming, open-hearted community," but added, "I draw the line when people are committing crime. When people are committing crime, we need to take appropriate action and not let our good hearts get in the way of appropriate prosecution and appropriate use of law-enforcement officials to keep all of our residents safe."

Chavez called for working with Santa Fe's nonprofit and interfaith communities to put DeVargas Park's day laborers to work — if not for money, then for bus tickets, passes to recreational centers and to help them obtain citizenship.

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