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LOS LUNAS — Erin Callahan was brought in during a busy time for the village of Los Lunas. The work isn’t slowing down anytime soon, but Callahan will not be a part of it anymore.
Callahan, who has been the deputy village administrator since October 2023 and with the village since 2015, has filed her letter of resignation.
She is moving into the private sector, joining Consensus Planning, an Albuquerque-based firm specializing in city planning and landscape architecture, as an associate. Her last official day with the village is Aug. 1 with her last day in the office on July 30.
“I’m sorry to see her go from the village. She’s made a great impact during her time here,” said Greg D. Martin, Los Lunas village administrator. “We’re grateful for her contribution and happy for her and her new opportunity. It’s been a pleasure to have her work for the village and we wish her the best in her next position.”
Martin said the village’s job posting closed on Wednesday and will move forward with “a standard selection process with interviews” before a recommendation goes to the mayor and the village council for approval.
“So, I am a city planner — that’s what my degree is in,” Callahan said during a phone interview last Thursday afternoon. “It’s a really exciting opportunity to go into a leadership position in the planning field. That doesn’t come along very often”
Callahan came to Los Lunas after earning her master’s degree in community and regional planning from the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of New Mexico, where she also earned her bachelor’s degree in environmental planning and design before that.
Starting as special projects planner, she was promoted to community development director in 2019 before serving as deputy administrator for the past two years.
Asked about her work at the village, Callahan was very demure with her answers.
“I think that I’ve had the opportunity to grow with and shape some really great teams over here of village employees,” she said. “When I started here, this was my first professional job after I got my master’s degree. I expected to be here for a few years. They had a planning position open. I was excited to get it. We’re a fairly small employer for a local government.”
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At the time the village only had one planner, Callahan remembers, and she “wasn’t expecting there to be growth opportunities” due to the small size of the administration team. She was surprised when more opportunities presented themselves.
“I applied (for community development director) and was promoted, which was very exciting. Then the deputy administrator position was created. I feel like from the time that I started, I knew almost nothing about how a city works. Now I feel like I really learned a lot. It’s definitely shaped my understanding of planning and development.”
Callahan said she was “kind of just thrown into a very dynamic situation,” coming right out of her master’s program and was given the opportunity to get her hands dirty and learn a lot in her early years at the village.
“I’ve definitely been here while there have been big changes, she said. “I did come to the village at a really interesting time.
“In 2015, when I started, development was still really slow after the recession, and it was early in 2016 when we got our first subdivision application in a long time. That was Las Terrazas in Fiesta.
“There had not been a lot of applications before that. So, even when I started, I was processing one of the first subdivision applications to come in a few years.”
Callahan remembers it was when Facebook was looking at Los Lunas, she said.
“All of the work with the second interchange has been really active for the whole time that I’ve been here. I just, I think that I was just fortunate to come in at a time when things were starting to pick up because of changes with the economy.
“It’s been exciting to see it happen and to get to be a part of that,” she said.
