Public Safety Committee
Tue, Jul 21, 2026 · Public Safety Committee 
https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/1153-public-safety-committee-jul-21-2026

== Executive Summary ==
The Public Safety Committee meeting on 07/21/2026 covered a wide range of topics, with a significant portion dedicated to a proposed resolution to restrict vehicular traffic around the Santa Fe Plaza. Councilors Alma Castro and Pat Pagaly presented the legislation, which aims to enhance safety and economic development, but it sparked considerable debate regarding its impact on emergency access, local businesses, equitable access for residents, and staffing for enforcement. Concerns were raised by Committee Member Bolter (a former fire official) about fire safety and emergency response times, and by Committee Member Martinez about the proposal's potential to alienate locals and its lack of vendor support.

Beyond the Plaza discussion, the committee received updates from the Police and Fire Departments. The Police Department reported a 33% increase in homicides but significant decreases in other crime categories, and expects to reach zero officer vacancies by mid-August. The Fire Department highlighted its academy progress, high call volumes, and the development of a tactical paramedic team. The meeting also included a detailed account of the challenging St. Catherine's fire, which was determined to be arson, and updates on the Alternative Response Unit (ARU) program and Emergency Management staffing. The Regional Emergency Communications Center (RACC) reported improved 911 answer times after correcting a data reporting issue and discussed the city's strict privacy policies for Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) cameras.

== Key Decisions ==
- The agenda for the 07/21/2026 Public Safety Committee meeting was approved unanimously.
- The minutes from the previous Public Safety Committee meeting were approved unanimously.

== Motions & Votes ==
- Approval of Agenda — Passed unanimously
- Approval of Minutes — Passed unanimously

== Public Comment ==
Public comments were not formally taken during the initial presentation phase of the Plaza legislation, but committee members voiced significant concerns. Committee Member Bolter, a former fire official, strongly opposed the Plaza closure proposal due to fire safety, emergency access, and maintenance concerns, arguing it could delay emergency response. Committee Member Martinez expressed strong opposition, citing inequity for residents, lack of vendor support, and a feeling that the proposal is rushed and lacks sufficient study. Other committee members raised concerns about the proposal's impact on locals, particularly those with mobility issues, and questioned the equity of designated cruising times. A committee member also expressed skepticism about the necessity of Plaza closures, arguing it would divide the city and push away locals, and questioned the validity of safety data presented.

== Topics ==
- Plaza Vehicular Traffic
- 911 Dispatch Performance
- Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR)
- Plaza Historical Context
- Emergency Management Grants
- Plaza Safety and Events
- St. Catherine's Fire Response
- Emergency Operations Center (EOC)
- Public Safety Staffing
- Emergency Dispatch System

== Full Transcript ==
Hey, Michael, are you here? Councilor Chavez, it's Ben from IT. Oh, okay. Can you come up to the dais real fast? Yes. Alright. I think we'll get ready to go. I call to order the Public Safety Committee meeting. Today is Tuesday, July 21. It is 4:07, 4:03. Sorry, it's 4:03. Could I get a roll call, please? Here. Excused. Here. Here. Excused. Excused. Here. Excused. Do we have any of those members online by chance, Matt? None waiting in the waiting room there, Councilor Travis. Alright, thank you. We have a quorum.

Okay, next is approval of the agenda. Are there any changes from staff? I'd like to recommend a change. Right now, under presentation, that's a presentation, it's not an action item. Can it be changed to an action item? Because I'd really like my boldness documented. It can't be an action item because of our procedural rules. And so we went through this. It actually almost didn't make it on our agenda at all. But thanks to Councilor Alma Castro and Councilor, they were able to at least bring it forward as a presentation. However, I will say this, it is being recorded. So, I think, what's the procedure? Because I'm wondering, we've been talking about us having some teeth and stuff. It would have. So if this is a matter of public safety, why wouldn't we be having action? It's because it would have had to be scheduled to go to our meeting before standing committee. And so that's what the procedural rule is. So that rule would have had to been waived at a standing committee in order for it to have skipped those steps. So it's a procedural thing. But I would say, like I said, this is being recorded. I think the community and the governing council will be wanting to hear the voice of the committee, and so, I do want to emphasize that point. Yeah. Alright. So do we have a motion? Move for approval. Second. I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, motion passes.

Approval of the minutes. Any changes from staff or committee members? Move for approval. I have a motion. I have a second. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Seeing none, motion passes.

Next is our presentation. So we've kind of explained what's going on. I think originally as this was moving through and the agenda was being created, it wasn't emphasized as a safety issue. As it's kind of moved through standing committees and the process, the community has really brought this forward as a safety concern. There's multiple opinions around safety that have kind of surfaced. And so some of our committee members requested that this be here. Like I said, thanks to our councilors, it actually made it to our agenda at least in a presentation. So I do want to, we have a few councilors in the room. So this legislation is being brought forward by Councilor Alma Castro and Councilor Pat Pagaly. We also have Councilor Faulkner here and Councilor Lee Garcia here. And I will turn it over to you, Councilor Castro.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you to the committee. And, yes, I do want to apologize for this not being on the schedule for a vote. I think that even though we were looking at this as a quality of life issue, there has been a lot of public safety concerns that have arisen. We spoke to our team to see if we could potentially get it on as a vote, and we just didn't have the opportunity for a quorum to vote to change the schedule. But I want folks to know there are still two opportunities, both at finance and the final vote at the governing body that will have public comment. And so any emails and any suggestions that come to us can still be incorporated into this piece of legislation. That being said, I'm going to do a short presentation and allow for as many questions as possible. Councilor Figalli and I are sponsors on this. It was sort of a staff-driven initiative. I do want to stress that this was brought to us by staff because of some concerns that we were having around code enforcement in particular. And so, though we do have some staff in the room to give context, I would love for you to reach out also to our public safety team and our special events team, which is one person right now, and find out why some of these concerns were brought up.

Historical review of the Plaza. I'm going to actually hand this over for a second to Maciek, who is working with our downtown vendors, because he already gave this presentation to our downtown vendors and did a much better job than I. Thank you, Councilor Castro. Good afternoon, Committee. So, my name is Maciek Jacek. I am the Downtown Business Coordinator for the Economic Development Department for the City of Santa Fe. I meet with downtown business owners within the Paseo De Peralta business capital district, and I listen to the concerns constantly. That is my position. And we had a meeting recently where we discussed the ramifications of the downtown street closures, what it could mean. And one of the contexts that I wanted to provide to bring everybody on the same page was a historical review of the Plaza, considering the very long history of this area and the contributions of the many racial and ethnic groups that have come to this area. So, I know everyone here is probably very well versed in the history of Santa Fe. I'm an immigrant. So for me, I'm likely much less versed, but that's why I feel a greater responsibility to understand and respect this place that I call home.

So, before it became the Santa Fe Plaza, of course, it was the indigenous civilization of Oga Poge, the White Shell Water place. And because it was close to the Santa Fe River, it became a dense architectural community. This included multi-story, multi-room adobe and masonry house blocks built around communal plazas. And it's using the same defensive interconnected design principles seen in historic Pueblos today. And by the time the Spanish did arrive, they had been abandoned for roughly 150 to 200 years, but the site was chosen because all the trees had been cleared. It was close to water, and so they built the structures on that same land. But, of course, when Spanish built, it was largely military garrisons and public administration. So this was not a place for commerce. So, and, of course, there was the Pueblo Revolt. And during the time that the Pueblos were reinstated, 1,200 people were living once again at the Plaza. When the Spanish came back, it became back to its administrative role. But in 1821, interestingly, when the Mexican, it became a Mexican territory, then it became a center for commerce. So it was no longer bare ground. It was no longer military. It became a place for selling animals and other goods, and there was a lot of outsiders that came the first time, including Anglo American, French Canadian, and German Jewish merchants. So the place became completely changed, and became a center of commerce.

In 1846, it became under the purview of the Anglos, the Americans, and that's when it became covered in trees again. It's actually the first time trees were planted was under the Americans. And, of course, what happened was the Americans viewed the Pueblo style of housing as very primitive, a very racist perspective at the time, and so they decided to put Victorian facades in front of all the buildings. And at the time, Santa Fe was still growing. By the time the railroad was no longer coming to Santa Fe, Santa Fe underwent a long period of decline, sorry, a shorter period of decline. So the population actually dropped to 5,000 by 1912, and that's when Santa Fe realized what they had done was they had stripped away the historical nature of Santa Fe. So they removed all of the Victorian facades of the Plaza, and that's how Santa Fe became known as we know it today as a historical place with very strict historical guidelines for structures. Of course, 1926 was another major change was when Route 66 came to Santa Fe, and the Plaza basically became a roundabout. It was only 11 years because by 1937, Route 66 was rerouted through Albuquerque, but the effect remained that it became an autocentric area. By the 1950s and 60s, there was diagonal parking all over the Plaza to the point where it became, once again, changed from its original intention of being a communal Plaza. By the 1980s, there was a shift back to pedestrian ways and certain streets being closed for certain amounts of time. The reason I found this historical review so important was that every ethnic group that came and had control of the Plaza made it into something else and something different. And over time, all of the contributions on the different groups were assimilated into what we have with the Plaza today. Thank you.

Thank you so much. So we'll continue with the actual legislation that we're talking about today. I do want to note that these are amendments to resolutions that were already part of our current code. You can click onto these in your packets so you can look at the actual legislation. This in particular was introduced in 2014 by Mayor Javier Gonzalez, Councilor Peter Ives, and Councilor Bill Dimas. Oh, I am so sorry. I apologize. I want to make sure that we understand that this is an, I think that folks might not want to see. Do you want to see actual legislation? Yeah. They can click into that. We can click it on our side, and this is available as a public document so anyone could dig into it. But it has the resolution numbers. I think that's sufficient enough to look into. Perfect. And so declaring the governing body's intent to bring people to the Santa Fe Plaza by providing a safer environment and increasing the economic development opportunities. So I just want to underline that really part of our intent in this resolution is to create a safe third space for our community. I've heard a lot of discussion about if we're doing this for tourism. As you've heard from our resident economic development staff, we do want to encourage because that is something that is historical to the Plaza. But what my intent in this resolution is to actually create a safe space for all community members and create more event opportunities for us in this space that I have heard from some of my constituents we are losing to the railyard. The railyard has a lot of events, a lot of things that are happening, and they would like to see more happening on the Plaza in a historical space where we traditionally had more access.

I'm going to go on to the next resolution, which is 16-80, to establish the restriction of vehicular traffic around the Plaza, including San Francisco Street, shall occur annually from Memorial Day to October 31 or such later date determined by City Manager. So I do also want to address some of the concerns about this being closed all year. This resolution is only specifically talking about from Memorial Day to Halloween, and I think the reason that we're looking at a time after that was that we added Dia de los Muertos as an event for the Plaza. So that's where some of that wiggle room has been added. I know that there are councilors who are potentially looking at making that a little more specific in an amendment, and I do want to give the floor to a couple of my colleagues that are working on an amendment with me. So this will actually be a delayed start for the summer of 2027 if that amendment passes to give us time to be able to work through any of the details that we want to work through with public safety. The other piece I want to sort of look at in the legislation is the designated loading zone. So we had some concern from vendors, and I think we got an email and a letter from the Five and Dime concerned about loading zone.

And in your packet, along with this presentation, I'm going to come back to it. We have some of the information from public safety and the crash status. So this was given to you as a handout as well, and I can turn it over to Chief Valdez if he wants to talk about any details. But generally, what we are seeing in some parked vehicles and some concerns is that there is a lot of loading happening. I'm hearing that some of the folks that are parking there are getting ticketed because our code, going back to the code enforcement piece, is not being followed necessarily the same way by security, parking enforcement, PD. There needs to be a little bit more communication in the code enforcement downtown so that we are saying the same thing to everyone.

As you can see on our screen here, we did pull some data from 2010 to 2013. We have seven injuries, six pedestrian or non-vehicular involvement, and 44 total crashes. So none of these were fatal, thankfully. We are looking at vehicles that are going at a slower rate of speed, and so some of these might be less serious. But we have several injuries that have ended up in hospitalizations, and that's just from this time period.

As you should give me. Yeah, I have been quoted in the paper saying that when I was a young person, my sister was hit by a car during Fiestas. And the reason I brought up the anecdote is that even though some of these are not fatal, it is really important that we try to keep everyone safe because it could ruin a beautiful public event just because we have to deal with some public safety issues. And I will, I was talking more a little bit about the resolutions here, but I will jump to questions if you're ready for me. Do you have anyone that wants to speak to anything else? Any other councilors? Did you want to make comments or anything?

Councilor Garcia, we do also have an ADA drop-off point, and we are talking about a specific day for talking to community members about the cruise line. I don't know if you want to elaborate a little bit on that. Is this different?

Good afternoon, Chairwoman and Board, Councilor Castro. Thank you for the presentation. I think some of the things that have been brought forward to us from the community members are items that deal with cultural aspects such as cruising, people that have access to the Plaza, things of that nature. Things that we've had for quite a long time. Obviously, I can't go back far enough as our previous speaker to give that historical data, but things that I in my lifetime and others before me have spoken to. The car clubs, I know quite a few of them, and they're skeptical and opposed to this from a level that their Plaza is being taken away. And so, in working with them and speaking to actually Councilor Figalli, I have yet to speak to Councilor Castro about this specific issue. But Councilor Alker and I plan to bring forth or are working on an amendment that would address identifying the specific cruise nights that the individuals would like to utilize the Plaza in such an aspect. So it's not anything that we have that's written up as of yet. So that's the intent. So after final passage of this legislation, if it does truly pass the governing body level and does become part of our directive, it would state that within 90 days, the city and staff would identify through collaboration with the local car clubs and community partners to identify the nights that would be available to them for cruising. So that's where that lies. I can't speak to the full amendment because it's not ready yet, but that is why I'm here tonight, this afternoon. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor. I appreciate you, and I appreciate your support in being here tonight. And I will pass along the working amendment. It is not finalized yet, so I hesitate to put it into the public record. But feel free, like I said, to email us with any concerns. The other piece of information that you have on your dais is what the actual technology would be to close and open the streets. And I'm looking at public safety because right now, we do have some barricades, but they're a little bit cumbersome. Is there anything that you can tell me about the barricades that we currently have to block off streets?

Chair Chavez, Councilor. Yeah. So we have, the city made an investment in what are called Meridian Barricades. That's the brand. These are deployable barricades that were purchased to support various special events, but especially Zozobra, when we're needing to close public roads. We have 16 of them and various connectors that allow us to allow for emergency vehicle ingress and egress as well as ADA accessibility. But you're right. These are things that it's a big lift to get these deployed. They're much, much better than what we used to have. But, yeah, I mean, they're available. We use them for, like I said, Zozobra and some other special events on and around the Plaza. I know other communities have these pre-positioned around their streets in places that they're routinely closing. Central Avenue in Albuquerque is one place. They close it, I believe, every night, if not, at least on the nights on the weekend. And they have a barricade division of their streets department. That's their whole job. They put these things out, and they bring them back in the morning. New Orleans has something similar that they operate on Bourbon Street, and I'm sure there are many other examples throughout the country.

Thank you so much, Director. And so for that reason, we are suggesting something that stays in place but can be used either popped up as a barricade or brought down as a speed bump. And I will just defer to Councilor Faulkner. I'm so sorry. Councilor Figalli. I'm a little bit nervous, clearly. Figalli, to close it up for the pedestrian and bicycle safety aspect. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Chair Chavez, mission. Yeah. So one of the things that happens in Santa Fe, particularly in the summer, is that there's a lot of people in the Plaza. We have a lot of events. We have a lot of people. When people are watching the stage or watching, if there's, kids are having their dance recitals or if there's a band playing, people are not looking at the traffic, and also the traffic is behind them. And there are usually children there, and I have heard from our staff that they are constantly worried about kids going into the street for their cars, particularly because everyone is looking the other way because the stage is away from the street with the moving traffic. That was a big concern that we are trying to address with this. It's also, we close the street a lot. We don't always, it's not always for big events. Like, everyone knows, I think, pretty much, this weekend is Spanish Market. The street will be closed, but the street's also closed at other times for events that not everyone knows about, for car shows or some of the concerts. And so it's not predictable for the drivers. And then you get to the intersection, and you can't keep going, and you have to do a detour, and everyone gets mad. Also trying to avoid that by making it more predictable for everyone so that everyone would know, between these months, don't go that way. You can go around. Or if you want to look at the Plaza, certainly, you can, you know, go to the drop-off area that Councilor Castro was talking about. You can come to a corner and get the view, but you know if the road is going to be closed or not. So those were the two major things that you're trying to address with this. So as of today, this year, 75 additional days have been closed on that street. So for the time period that we are looking at, there has been 75 closures for events. The reason I say additional is, as an example, the Los Lobos event for 360 was not scheduled to be a closure. It was our staff who had safety concerns that pushed for that to be a street closure.

Are you going to take questions now? Okay, great. No need to be nervous, I promise. Alright. Questions from the committee. Okay. We'll start with committee member. Okay. Well, let's just get started. But Councilor, I mean, Committee Member Bolter, go on and go. Okay. Well, I have several, I have questions for you, I have questions for you, and maybe. So I love the presentation. Being a Northern New Mexico history major and education major, that was going to be my profession. So I loved your presentation on the Plaza. Start with that. But I'll say, yeah, I've been here my whole life, and I do remember back in the 70s when we used to go back to school shopping on the Plaza. And Penny's was there, and Conn's was there, and Sears was there. And we parked there, and we shopped all day, and we ate at the Woolworth counter. There used to be a counter in Woolworths. And so I remember, and I've seen it change. And through my career in the fire department, I've seen it change. When I was just promoted to Assistant Chief and Barbara Salas was promoted to Fire Marshal, this was tried at that time. And at that time, it was done temporarily, and it was only done, you know, certain hours. Because when you look at it from a time aspect, you don't even need to close that street for more than 10 hours a day, 12 hours at the most, half the day during the summer.

What I'm going to get into is something I've heard all, I'm not going to bring up the cultural or any of the stuff that's, you know, I'm going to go purely by data and something that I think has been ignored, which is the fire department, you know, constraints and what this does to fire protection on the Plaza and the ramifications of that. Because this is one of, this is the most historical piece of property in the city. Right? This is Santa Fe's first park. It's number one. If you look on the spreadsheet for the parks, number one, unless something's changed, it's still the Plaza. And this, I've watched the downtown merchants slowly eat away at the access and closing down streets. When I was originally a fire inspector is when they first proposed to close down Palace in front of the, you know, in front of the Palace of the Governors. And we fought that as a fire department until they'd put a fully sprinkled Palace of the Governors, which is the most historical building in New Mexico, not only Santa Fe. And then they started whittling away at, you know, Lincoln and Plaza. And my biggest concern is fire access and what you're doing to that because I can tell you, you can put the best design barrier in the street like this, but it'll get gunked up with grease, dirt, and different things, and they won't work. And I'm sorry to say this if there's anyone from public works out there, but our public works department does not have the best reputation for maintaining things within the city. Okay? So I can see these things getting to where they won't even go down. So I'm just going to start with some questions real quick because I think this is, you're kind of just rushing. And the last time they did it, they rushed it, and within a year, it got dropped because there were issues with deliveries. I know you mentioned one point, one vendor on the Plaza, but every one of those businesses gets FedEx and UPS. And I can tell you, you put these barriers up, you know what's going to happen? FedEx and UPS are going to park right in front of those things, and they're going to run halfway down the street to make their delivery.

And then if someone's having a heart attack, which you don't have any data in there about any other kind of necessity for an ambulance going to the plaza, then you've just delayed response time for an ambulance. Or even worse, if one of the buildings, which there's only one sprinkled building other than the Palace of the Governors, and that's the newest and ugliest one, and that's the Plaza Galleria. And I know it because I was the fire marshal when they built it. Every other building around there has no sprinkler system except for in the basements. The building where the corner used to be the Ore House, that building has burned twice in its history. This is the third rendition of that building.

So I'm going to start. So real quick for the counselors, which staff? I know you brought up code enforcement as they were the major ones, but are they the only staff that was asking you to do this, or who else? So in particular, our events program is under parks. So it would be the Parks Department. Okay. Particular events. So this is Barbara's idea? I will be very clear that the position that is supposed to be Barbara's assistant has been vacant for a long time. We've had a very difficult time hiring for it. And when we have hired for it, that person has gone to another part of the city. I think that's wonderful that they've moved up. But one human being cannot do all of this work. She's not taking vacation. She is out there every weekend having to do code enforcement, which we actually don't have a full office of code enforcement. As council, we are pushing for that conversation for these reasons because she's saying things like, "I have to enforce the busking licenses. I have to enforce parking. I have to enforce things that PD usually would." But now we have security down there. And so we're pushing for tourism to help us get an additional bike team so that we can have more police presence on the plaza like we used to with Cecil. Right? There is a big need, and the downtown vendors have been asking for more PD resources on the plaza, which is why we're asking for the money from tourism. But in the event that we are continuing to use one human being to do all of the events, 200 events on the plaza, it's untenable.

Well, and I agree with you. And when it comes to, just because code enforcement doesn't have the staffing or can't do the job, that shouldn't be an excuse to shut. Okay, we're, how many people have been hit on Suresh Road? Are we just going to shut Suresh Road down? Because, I mean, no. And Commissioner Bol, just to be clear, we actually don't have an office of code enforcement in that way. We would like to see it. No, you used to, though. That's what, and I've brought up code enforcement since I've been on this committee. You know, there's lots of stuff, and it used to be under planning and land use. And I'm going to ask real fast that we make directions or sorry, questions so they can answer because they're not the entire city staff. And that I just, but yeah. But I do think, like, if we have questions around fire, like, fire code or if we have fire access, I think we do have staff. You might not have the information now, Chief, but we could ask that. But I just know I would hate to put counselors on the spot of answering for staff because I know I don't speak for staff members when I'm up there. It's just unfair to do. So I wouldn't ask any of you to speak to. No, I'm asking if they, yeah. My next question is, did you contact the fire department before you did this? And I'd love to see the staff report.

Sure. So I'm going to turn it over to Councilor Faulkner. I didn't directly get a staff report. I did have conversations, but I did not get a staff report. Okay. Just to be clear, what me and Councilor Garcia are doing here is we worked with these two sponsors in an amendment, in part to protect the traditional uses of the plaza. And in that effort, I spoke to police and fire. There are not a lot of safety issues currently. You're kidding me, right? The fire department had, okay, so I'll direct this to the fire chief then. Well, I already answered the question. How many sprinkled, how many of the buildings are sprinkled? Yeah. Yeah. Member of Boulder. Yeah. There's only a couple sprinkled buildings on the plaza. Well, everything is already vulnerable. Correct. Kind of like the building that burned down, what, three weeks ago. Same, same type of building. Right? Yeah. Very similar. I mean, Saint Catherine's is multiple types of construction which we see on the plaza. Okay. And all of the planters, the current planters that are there, do they already pose operational difficulties if you were to have a structure fire on the plaza?

Yeah. The structure fires we've had recently on the plaza that have come in as structure fires usually smoke in the building, similar like Plaza Cafe where they have a kitchen fire or they have smoke that arises from something burning and it comes in as a structure fire. What we end up doing is, we get out and we move the planters and we pull in. And it can delay a little bit of our response, but as you know, we are open to change and or we are used to change, and so we work around that and we do our job with whatever's coming down the pipe. Okay. Well, just so you know, so the sponsors know, they shouldn't have to move planters. And the fire code says it has to be immediate. And that's actually response. And you're cutting off two more fire hydrants. All the fire hype right now, see what bugs me about some of these things is you're thinking at it from one, one perspective. But all the fire trucks that come, you're going to have seven or eight fire trucks for a structure fire. They're coming from all parts of the city. Now you're going to force them to, they're already forcing them to come in through San Francisco by nature of the closures that are already there, which is a one way. So what you're doing now is making all of them funnel in through one thing, which just provides, this is an acting chief who I feel sorry for. He's having to answer questions that I wouldn't want to answer my own questions. But I know it's just, just there for clarifying comment.

So Member Bolter, these streets are not closed to emergency vehicles. That's part of the reason that we prefer these speed bumps to a planter. Yes. But the difference is when you had that fire at the plaza, what time was it? Middle of the night? The last one I recall on the plaza was last Wednesday that we sent a full structure response, and that was roughly around 3:00 PM or AM? In the afternoon. In the afternoon. See. And when you mentioned the 77 events, the one difference is there's someone at those barricades always. Every single event they ever, there have someone from law enforcement, but usually it's a security person that they have to hire. And their job is to stand there and open it up for emergency vehicles. And this is actually part of the push is that we feel, or I feel, I won't speak for Councilor for Galley, I feel that there does need to be some sort of presence downtown at all times. Well, if we're going to be serious about public safety and the plaza and all of that, you do need a team. You know, all the rhetoric I've heard about these other cities like New Orleans and all that, you know what they have down there all the time when these are closures are? Staff. Someone there all the time, 24 hours. And right. Unless you don't, you don't have that, you really have, you asked, I know you've been in contact with the downtown vendors, but have you been in contact with any of the downtown owners, the building owners, not because they're the ones paying the insurance that may go up because of these types of things. Because we've already seen across the country because of fires in California and everywhere else. Insurance companies are no longer carrying people for fire. As soon as you give them an excuse not to cover you, they're going to do that. I can tell you one cons, well, not a constituent of mine, but a friend of mine. He owns three buildings on the plaza, and he is not too happy about this. You know? So I think it shouldn't always be focused at one group. Couple more questions, and then I'll be done. I'm sorry.

Or, and can I just address that comment quickly? Is that, and I will defer to Fire Chief, but in my experience, because we have been dealing with a lot of fire and insurance issues on the North Side, if you do mitigating things like creating infrastructures to know what that emergency plan is going to be and making sure that you have someone on the plaza, you could actually support them getting some insurance. No, I agree. We should have some, but we shouldn't do any of this stuff until we have staffing in place. I think you're putting the cart before the horse. And that's why we do want to make sure that we have that delayed start in this amendment to make sure we have all of our ducks in a row. But one thing that the council, and I won't, I will speak for myself, but I feel that there's a sentiment on the governing body. We have asked for a study session around events because we think that this department and this issue needs more attention. Yeah. Okay. Question about the data real quick. I guess all the data comes from PD. Right? Not all of it. Only one page. The Santa Fe MPO, which is a joint, the bigger packet is coming from the MPO, which is State DOT, yes, County and City. Yes. Well, looking at the PD data from 2020 to 2026, I don't see under the notes. Not one of these is a pedestrian. They're all vehicle. Correct? Everett Bolter, that's correct. And we did look at the data source to include any vehicle versus pedestrian incidents, vehicle versus vehicle, and then vehicle versus property strikes such as, like, a building or a light post or anything like that. So in the last four years, we haven't had any pedestrian versus, right. Okay. So that's one thing I wanted to ask about. And I'll just have one more question for the fire chief, and I just want to have it on the record. And I hate to put you in this position, Scott. But will this delay response times?

This could delay response times if we can't get through a barrier or if there's too many people in our way to get through a street to get the truck in the proper location and to access our hydrants. And a follow-up. So if you did have a delayed response, let's say for a heart attack, someone, person down. How many minutes is it before someone goes brain dead? Just there's not very minutes before, before. No. But, I mean, what's the, what's the golden, we need to be there within how many minutes? Six minutes. Six minutes. Right? Six minutes. Okay. So I just want that on the record because this could cause issues. And with that, I'll, I'll let everyone else talk. I think everyone knows how I feel. Thank you. Committee Member Bolter, did you want to say something else, sir? I was just going to note that all of our emergency procedures are still in place. So for large events where we would have large crowds like Spanish Market, we do have emergency services on site. The fire chief can tell you most of the time when fires and stuff happen, everyone's asleep and no one knows it. Agreed. Sorry. I was just referring to the heart attack comment. All right. Committee Member Martinez? Yeah. I have a few here. I, I'm not sure if you are aware that the city, county, MPO have already adopted a complete streets resolution that defines streets as streets for everyone, including motorists, seniors, disabled residents, and commercial access. I don't know if you're aware of that resolution. Yeah? Yes. Okay. So since you are aware of that, how does removing an entire mode of access align with your adopted equity and accessibility commitments? So with regards to this and your new resolution?

Correct. So we aren't limiting access all of the time. I am working actually with transit to make sure that seniors in particular have a van access for sightseeing, which would count as a cultural purpose under this resolution. We are working to make sure that we have designated times as is noted in the amendment. Within 90 days, we will be speaking to our car club. Can you hear me okay? About how we will make sure that the cruise line is available, what days cars will be able to, and the loading zone is always permissible. So even though it reads as a permanent closure to vehicles, that actually is a little bit of a misnomer because there's a lot of vehicle access that is permitted.

So would you say that that equity, it's more of an event? When you're taking away the motorist access, you're creating more an event status. So I don't see that as being equitable. And again, in the event that a senior van had a regular route, there are different ways that we can create different uses. It just needs to be regulated in a way that we can plan for it because of staff and also that it's safe for the rest of the community.

The other question that I had was, with your resolution, why wasn't a staff report done with PD, with fire, with EMS AMC over here with the emergency? That would have been something that we would have liked to see, especially having public works here as well, traffic engineering. This is being presented as a safety issue, a public safety issue, but I really don't see that in the resolution. I see that you're doing it now and after the fact, but it was before. So thank you so much, Chair and Member Martinez.

I initially didn't think of this as a public safety issue as we noted. That's why we're here sort of in a delayed fashion, and actually, some of the concerns around these staff reports and working with different departments is what has helped in creating the amendment for the delay. So we are loud and clear hearing that we want the public safety aspect to be at the forefront of this. But initially, I will say that this was more of a staff-driven events issue, not so much public safety issue, but we are coming back and doing that delay to create the public safety piece.

Yeah. So like I said before, events, but also predictability because as Councilor Castro said, it's already been closed 75 times in the past two months. So knowing whether or not it's closed is important to motorists and also pedestrians and emergency vehicles and loading zones and all of that. So it was all part of this. Also, safety is part of it, but that was not the impetus. The impetus was making a space that is friendly and enjoyable and predictable and also that our staff can maintain.

And thank you for that. I'm going to go back to the equitable piece. It is not equitable, and I'm wondering how you consider it being equitable in the sense that you're creating events for motorists, but it's not equitable, especially under, and I read this through and through. It's not equitable. This is meant for everyone, and that means keeping the motorists running through. That to me is where I'm more concerned how these two resolutions work together because they don't. And I hear you, Chair. Thank you.

And Member Martinez, I respectfully disagree. I think that there are modes that vehicles can use it, and we're just creating more space for other uses. I definitely don't want car clubs or cruise lines or any cultural use to feel excluded, but there are certain constituents of ours. And I can't speak for all of our council members, but I can say that constituents that we have heard from don't necessarily feel that the plaza is safe currently. And I do want to go back to the Los Lobos concert because I'm so excited about it. If we do the right programming on the plaza, we can bring everybody to this space. This is not a space that is necessarily for tourists. We can make this space for everyone, but we do need to really understand that my 16-year-old sister at the time or my three-year-old niece or myself when I want to bike down there have access to that space as well.

What other alternatives did you think of, like traffic calming besides closing the streets? Or were there any other alternatives that were considered? So we did actually get a request from the groups of vendors to close a much larger portion of the plaza. This was a sort of a compromise in saying we're going to try this street and see what happens because we don't know what's happening. We are actually getting some pushback to create a much more pedestrian-friendly area that is larger than this. I don't know that Santa Fe is ready for that. Sorry. Councilor Vergalli has another option.

One other thing that we considered was making that part of West San Francisco or San Francisco Street one lane, which it kind of is, except that there's a lot of space on either side that's not supposed to be parking. But what we heard from our staff was that if you allow people to drive through, they're going to keep parking in the loading zones in the non-parking areas, and they're going to have to keep telling people to not park there, which is part of the confrontations that is causing issues for our staff. And so that was looked at as an option, but we were told, I was told that that would actually probably make it not help to keep folks from using that space improperly and just parking there and leaving their cars there all day.

So do you consider the current situation as not being safe right now? Is that what you're really truly trying to say? That because right now, it doesn't seem like it's broken. So I will say that we're having a lot of issue with the loading zone in particular. There is a lot of people that are either being ticketed, supposedly loading into their businesses, but they're not in a marked vehicle, so they think that it's a private vehicle. Or there are FedEx and UPS trucks that are parking on the actual lane where they're supposed to be driving as opposed to on the loading zone because I guess they're confused. And so we're having a lot of backup.

And I also want to bring forward just one event in particular that sort of was how I got brought into this event when we had an event on the plaza, and there were some motorcyclists that drove up onto the plaza and got in a verbal altercation with one of our staff who asked them not to be there. And this person was on their own. They didn't feel that they had support from other team members. We could have called PD. We and created a situation that maybe would have escalated. We chose not to do that, and we just allowed them to keep their motorcycles on the plaza. So we want to prevent a situation where anything is too aggressive or too conflict-driven.

Okay. And I think I have one more question. Policy consistency. The city already adopted the Complete Streets resolution, which establishes that streets must support safe access for all users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, transit riders, motorists, seniors, disabled residents, and commercial access. How does the new plaza closure resolution align? You say that it does, so how does it align? So as you can see, we already do have a loading zone for commercial use. We are designated. We have an ADA drop-off point. We're designating a new ADA drop-off point. We are then creating a space for bicyclists and pedestrians in that space, and the cultural use will allow for more vehicle traffic.

So how is it for motorists and ADA compliance? Because those two pieces, and let me go back here. ADA and paratransit research shows that removing curb access creates barriers equivalent to denying access. How will paratransit ADA parking and senior drop-off be accommodated? One drop-off doesn't accommodate the entire plaza and surrounding areas. Can I speak to this? Yes, please. Thank you.

So I have a really hard time. We have a, we do have a Complete Streets resolution. And I'm just speaking to this because I've been advocating for age-friendly because to argue that this is not ADA when the entire downtown is not ADA is just not accurate. My parents are elderly. They can't barely walk on our sidewalks and actually enjoy using the roads downtown to walk instead because they're smoother. I know many people in wheelchairs and walkers who say our plaza is completely inaccessible to them because of just how far we are from Complete Streets. Complete Streets resolution is a concept. It's saying moving forward, we want to build a Santa Fe where street there's equity amongst our streets. There is no equity amongst our streets, specifically downtown.

And I've brought, I've been a voice in this. This is part of our age-friendly work. We want to bring a voice so that it truly is downtown. So I think highlighting Complete Streets is huge, but trying to discuss equity with that resolution in downtown in particular, I can tell you we are not ADA compliant. I think we're working on it. I can tell you that our seniors are not, they do not have easy access. I know my parents were like, so we, you could just pull up to the plaza and we could walk in, like, with this? And I was like, yes. That's what it's posing. Like, there's issues, I think. I think there is a lot that needs to be ironed out. I like the things that have been mentioned about, like, really, like, strategic planning all aspects of this to promote safety, I think, is the great point that Committee Member Bolter brought up.

But I will say, like, downtown is so far from Complete Streets. It is so far from it. And, like, the historic board and some of the things that we have in place that really slow down us making Downtown Santa Fe accessible is probably going to make it as it continues to be inequitable for years and years to come. It's not something for, it's not something that we can move very quickly with. So, like, if I would say there is equity downtown, it has a lot to do with motorists more than those that actually have challenges around accessibility. So and I just mentioned that because that was why we brought Age-Friendly. Age-Friendly was brought because we had so many community members said that they can't even walk there. Like, there's so many events that can bring me to my culture. But now that I'm this age, now that I have this disability, now that I have kids that I have to push or pull, it's a pain. Like, I just won't do it. It's unsafe. It's not safe for my kids. It's not safe for my health. Injury is not worth it. And so we brought the age-friendly resolution to say, like, how can we truly look at accessibility? So, yes, that is a resolution, but, like, in regards to equity, like, we're just so far. So I would say, like, look at Age-Friendly because that's just being initiated because downtown in particular, we're so far from a Complete Streets concept or equitable access to downtown.

Thank you, Chair. One other thing I'd like to add is that if we do close the street, we have more space in not the travel lane that would be used for emergency vehicles, but the rest of the street where we can add more seating so that people who do have disabilities or who are elderly, have small children, need to sit down, would have more place to sit. Because right now, the plaza has some benches, but it is, it could use a lot more seating for the number of people who are trying to hang out and sit down.

I just want to add a little bit in terms of the equitable component. One thing that is not equitable right now for businesses downtown is seating. We've had a lot of pushback for who is allowed to have a patio or a parklet and who is not, and that is another reason that we want to add more seating and space that is public for the downtown area so that vendors that are potentially vending on the actual plaza push carts or near have spaces that folks can sit at.

I actually have to leave in two minutes. I'm going to turn it over to you in case you have a question for me around what I said or just as a follow-up to it.

We're talking about the handicap accessibility, and I know, I believe, where are you going to do this? Because I'm trying to see where are you going to choke traffic? Because if someone stops, you're not doing it on San Francisco and on Gaspar.

No, we are looking at Lincoln and Palace as the ADA drop-off point.

Okay. Oh, and there would be a lane?

There would be a specifically marked location and pull out. And I'm going to go back to Committee Member Martinez before I excuse myself because I tried to respond to your comment, but I want to make sure you don't have any other questions.

Oh, thank you. I just, I have a comment, but I just don't see it being equitable for every Santa Fe resident, period. And this has been proposed several times, and it's been pushed out because of that. I do feel that we need to be equitable on every level and not just for events. I'm downtown too much, maybe, but I also have a mom who can't walk, and she has tried. So I get that, and that part I do understand. However, I do like to drive. What's going on? We all do. There are very many people that really like to drive around and see what's going on downtown. And as far as seating, some of the vendors that I've talked to down there, they're against this road closure. So I'm not quite sure where we're getting a lot of this information. And I would like to hear more from Public Works. I would like to hear more from the vendors. I would like to have a lot more studies going on. I feel that this is rushed. I don't feel that it actually works very well with this other resolution. And I understand Chair's point of view, and I respect it, but I don't feel that this is still a resolution. It's still policy. We still have to follow it. And that's where I think we're getting out of some of our issues. A lot of times it's a common practice. I hear that often, but it's not okay. When we have something that's already in place that says we need to be equitable, I think we should be working towards that and hold off on some of these other resolutions. That's my comment.

Thank you, Committee Member. Some questions? I have a few. So one, and maybe this is Kyle, I'm not sure. Barriers. How easy are those to collapse? Because you said they could turn into speed bumps. So how easy is that? Is it a two-person job, a one-person job?

Member Robertson, I'm not familiar with what is being proposed specifically for this at this time. The barriers that we have currently cannot be collapsed. They will stop a semi-truck in its tracks.

Okay. So, yes, just to be clear, remember, the ones that we have currently are the ones that are a little more cumbersome that we bring in in a trailer. The ones that are being proposed were proposed by event staff as a way to keep something more permanent that could be potentially used and even driven over so we wouldn't have to be moving anything, and it would be an electronic key that pops it up and pops it down. And that's why we want to make sure that we meet with Public Safety on what the best strategy is to deploy that. My suggestion would be to have somebody on the plaza at all times that has access to that, but we would need the staffing for that.

Okay. Yeah, because I was wondering, in the railyard, as former director of the railyard, we had talked to Jerome previously about pop-up, the ones that pop up and go down. So that's, I was curious if that might be a better option or, okay, gotcha. To this point, during the 75 events, have there been issues, incidents that have happened when you closed the plaza? Are you aware?

Not that I'm aware of. Generally, when we have big events and we have closed it, as Councilor Fagali mentioned, people might be annoyed, but they don't try to ram through the barriers. There hasn't been any major issues, and there hasn't particularly been any issues with drop-offs or deliveries during those times either.

Okay. And I was assuming Barbara was in favor because I know how hard that woman works. And, but I will say because of this, though she brought this to us initially, because of some of the pressure that she's gotten from community, she has been willing to go above and beyond and do more work to keep folks happy, and I think that's amazing, and I thank her for that. I don't think that we should put that burden on her.

Oh, it leads to burnout for sure if she's not already there. So you mentioned the car shows, or Councilor Garcia did. So is it just cruising that's a lot, or will the car shows still be allowed to?

So the car shows generally have to, we close the street for those so that they get parked. So that is, yes, permissible use, definitely. What we would need to schedule is the actual moving vehicle cruise line, the times when it would be open to private citizens to drive.

Oh, go ahead. But I also had some concerns voiced to me from folks who at the Pride Parade being like, can we still have the parade?

Yes, all of the events would still be exactly the same, the car shows, the parade, all of that.

Okay. And I don't know if you mentioned, but I'm, there's going to be a fire lane that, and will it be marked if that's, if it comes to be?

Fire lane's been established for, it's preexisting. It's already there.

Okay. Department. Okay. I've never noticed it. Yeah. Okay. Chief, if there's anything we can do.

It's not marked. You don't paint city streets red, but it's the way it's configured. The curve.

With yellow painting, curb painting. Gotcha. Problem is enforcement. I keep hearing over and over is, you know, people are breaking the rules and doing what they're, you know, parking where they're not supposed to. So I think that's the problem. Need more enforcement. And just, I guess I can compare it to closing Alcadessa during the concerts because I know sometimes I would walk over there, and if that wasn't closed, I would be like, holy, you know, it's, it is scary when sometimes when that happens.

And to your point, Member, I will keep bringing up the Lens Lake 360 event where they don't always choose to take on the expense of closing the street. And we, as a city, have said this is an unsafe situation. We recommend, and we'll take on the expense of closing that street ourselves.

Yeah. Okay. Those were my questions. Thank you.

So a lot of the points that I have seen have already been discussed, and I won't go over them again. My one question that I want to start off with is you stated that the vendors downtown had reached out to you originally and asked for a larger space to be shut down. Is that correct?

Yes. So we recently had a meeting last week, and I don't know if Maciek's still in the room, but we proposed this, and they did sort of ask why we hadn't evaluated their request of a larger area. We did tell them that it wasn't appropriate for the use of the plaza, and their concern was, again, pedestrian friendliness, making sure that tourists feel safe. I don't personally feel that that's the best reason that we should close off the plaza. So there has been a couple times suggested that we close off more streets.

Yes. So that becomes one of my first concerns is, you know, we talk about this being or the community of Santa Fe. And the first thing that's being brought forward is that there are individuals that are having concerns because they're the vendors. And, you know, I'm born and raised in Santa Fe, and I spend a lot of time on the plaza. And so that, that is where it should be back to that community base that we're opening it for that reality of our people, our locals. I mean, of course, tourism. That, that's part of what we thrive upon. I understand that aspect of it. One of the main things that I'm hearing in all the dialogue that's going back and forth is talking about lack of enforcement, lack of staff, and that becomes the major issue that seems to be the driving force behind this, honestly. And believe me, I love Barbara. Barbara is an amazing employee, and she goes above and beyond every single day. And I worked hand in hand with Barbara for a number of years. So I think that that's where the root of this needs to be reflected. I understand certain reasons to actually shut, shut the entire thing down for that time period, but we're taking away from our community's day-to-day aspect of having that accessibility. In my, I think it becomes a concern. We talk about, well, you're going to have a group of cruisers that are going to be designated on this day that can, they can go and they can see it. You're going to have a senior bus that's going to actually cruise at this day, this time, and it's going to go by. What about that one person that has moved away from Santa Fe, wants to come back, and they can't walk, and they are sitting next to me, and I want to take them, you know, up and down the plaza?

Thank you, Chair Wohler and Member Wheeler. I would suggest a wonderful way to interact with that person is to use the ADA drop-off point and enjoy the plaza together. Another point that I sort of want to bring to light is downtown vendors are not just for tourists. And that is one thing I really want to underline is that we as Santa Feans, as folks who grew up in this neighborhood and grew up in the downtown area, don't necessarily feel access to that, much less folks who live farther away. So part of my job is to make sure that we have access to downtown with good transit. I think both Councilor Frigali and I have been strong advocates for making sure that transit is accessible to everyone, including the senior van, which right now has a waiting list of two weeks. We don't have enough services anywhere. So we are working with Santa Fe Trails as well as our senior services to make sure that that's accessible. I do think that it's important that folks who have moved away and want to visit spaces have access, and so we need to do a better job of publicizing all the events and what is happening downtown. We don't do a good job at the city of saying, Lindsay 360 is doing these events. There's going to be this large fiesta and having it all in one location. So making sure that we have a stable understanding of what's happening downtown is important, but also the fact that people want to drive and see the lights. We know that the timing is important. So we want to open that up for when it's getting cold and people want to drive. Councilor Casa, I think, in particular, was concerned about being able to drive in December, and that's why we know that maybe is after October 31, and we could designate that day, but we want it to be open for the Christmas season. So we are trying our best to make sure that we make these decisions with everyone in mind. And because I say downtown vendors, I don't want people to think it's just the galleries. It's everything from the Boxcar to, yes, the fajita car. Like, I am in conversation with them all of the time, and, unfortunately, there are folks that like the Plaza Cafe who are really strong advocates for this. And there are other folks like the landlord that Chair Boulder was talking about that I haven't talked to yet that might be opposed to it, and I would love to be able to work with them to find a middle ground because we definitely don't want any buildings to burn down. We want to make sure that we have everyone safe and that this is an accessible space. And if we need to adjust the times that those cruisings are maybe all evening, right, leaving it open at night, we can explore that.

We have a year to really implement good, strong plans for this. As you can notice in the amendment, this will not come into effect, if that passes, until summer of 2027. So this is the proposed barrier. Is this correct? That's what staff has sent us in that they're requesting. It does have quite a large price tag. Oh, yeah, I can only imagine.

So my, my other follow-up would be as far as bicycle traffic. So when we have events on the plaza, bicycle traffic is shut down from the plaza because bicyclists very often run into pedestrians. So is that going to be part of it too? Is the plaza going to be closed off to bicycle traffic as well?

Non-motorized vehicles are specified that they are permissible, but you are supposed to walk your bicycle on the actual plaza where there are pedestrians. For the actual events, like for this weekend for Spanish Market, I would think that we would keep the same rules that are currently up, that bicycles are not allowed to be ridden. You can walk your bicycle. But for this, one of the things that we did want to make sure that we allow is for people who are in cars and other modes of transportation to be able to access this. That includes kids on bikes, not just adults, but certainly only on the road part, which would be closed to cars, but it's still a road. And not in the loading zone, which is behind the stage on Palace Avenue. So that would not be allowed for any type of non-motorized or motorized vehicle unless they were loading for an event or for the stage.

So they would not be allowed to ride bicycles. That is correct. It'd be allowed on the street while there were not events, but not on the actual plaza and not on Palace Avenue. So on San Francisco, essentially. In any direction in regards to rollerblades? I know there's one guy that loves to go 100 miles an hour down. Rollerblades, scooters, skateboards, if they're non-motorized. So not the one-wheel kind of hoverboard type things, but or e-bikes. So just non-motorized, which would not include motorized wheelchairs. Those are still allowed. But just to be very clear, during events, no bicycles. The rest of the time, only non-motorized vehicles.

So in closing, I'll say I think there needs to be a lot more discussion from staff and enforcement. I think that's the key pieces that we're seeing. That's what's coming forward. I think before it goes beyond this, it needs to be discussed further in regards to how do we address some of those staffing issues. Because even when we're talking about these and you have to have a special key to raise them and lower them, we're going to run into staffing issues. Who's going to be responsible for those keys? I know the police chief doesn't want to be responsible for those keys, and I know the fire chief doesn't want to be responsible for those keys. So I'm just thoughts that need to be considered in regards to how we're going to address those staffing because it sounds like that's where the crux of this all came from. There were discussions about staffing, how do we address those things, and if we can get the staff in place, is there an easier solution for everybody?

Noted. Thank you so much, Chair.

Thank you, Member Wheeler. And we would love to take another opportunity to present to this committee once we have our amendment a little bit more baked. So this is not the last time you'll hear from us. Thank you.

Okay, just to inform the audience, once Councilor Chavez left, we no longer have a quorum. So now we're just going to, it'll be discussion and everything else. I mean, there's no action items on us anyway, so we can still render opinions and do stuff like that. But before we close out on this thing, I just wanted to make a couple of comments. The seating, talking about what's preventing you from doing the seating now? Because you already have three streets closed. So for me, that's kind of, yeah, I don't buy that one. Special tools for the gate. If you would have checked with the fire marshal and the fire department ahead of this, you would have found out that the fire code prevents any kind of obstruction to any kind of access to buildings where special tools are required. So you have to come up with something unless you put someone standing there with a special tool. You can't, you just, that's a violation of the fire code, and I don't think the fire department or the city would want to change that part of the code.

Now, El Dia de los Muertos is one of them, and I want to disclose as I'm a member of the Santa Fe Kiwanis Club. I have been for over 30 years. And regardless of what people may think, El Dia de los Muertos is my favorite event that the Kiwanis puts on. And it's not the Zebra, it's not the July 4th, it's not any of the other things. But there are no events between Fiesta and El Dia de los Muertos. So we're just closing it for an entire month of October. To me, it seems it would be easier to just close it on that one, you know, two days if you're going to do this. I mean, if and move it back to after Fiestas. Because when this has been tried before, it was tried, and it was done only from certain hours to certain hours. And there were, so it was on the closure, and that's going to make more people confused. I'm sorry, but that's how they do it in the big cities. I mean, we're rushing this. I hear all these people talking about Boston, New York, and all, I know a lot of fire officials in those places, and they'll close them for certain hours. You know, the one, those things that go up and down, they have a staff member come put it up at this time of the day and put it down at this time of the day. And that's how, that's how they do it to make it more pedestrian friendly. So we're kind of nickel and, I mean, this is kind of, in my opinion, nickel and diming the whole thing even though they're not cheap, but what we really need is staff.

The man you need to talk to is Peter Comas. I don't know if you know Peter. He owns three buildings, which includes the Overland Sheet Building. And I know you say the downtown vendors are in favor of this, but I'm going to close out with just a short little story if you'll allow me. In 2006, right after I got, right around the same time, the downtown vendors were trying to close it last time. The fire department had an event on the plaza, and PD was heavily involved, and it was organized by future Fire Chief Barbara Salas, and it was called Family Fun Day. I don't know if you remember, but what it was was it was an event that we tried to promote to get the locals back down to the plaza. I don't know if this thing's working or not. But we had bouncy houses, we had fire trucks, we had face painting, we had, you know, free games where they could play things and win prizes. We had all kinds of nonprofits down there, and we made one mistake when we did that. We partnered with Chris of St. Vincent's and got a $30,000 grant to provide free food on the plaza. On the People's Park, we spent $30,000 giving hamburgers and hot dogs away. The downtown vendors lost their mind. How, no, I'm just, I'm, you know, after that, we were moved to Ashbaugh Park because it's more central in the city, which is a bunch of BS. So anytime you tell me the, you know, something that the downtown, the downtown vendors are for the downtown vendors. They can tell you all they want. They're not marketing to the locals. They're not. And I've said something for years and years since before I even retired. Because of issues with the downtown vendors and not just you as District One councilors who are actually my councilors now, and I'm one of your constituents just because the nature of how it moved and pushed me out of District Three. But the councilors historically in District One have pushed the downtown vendor's agenda. And I, I guess rightfully so that, you know, the, you, that the hand that helps you out is the one that you're going to, you know, more. But I think the downtown vendors have not always been conducive for the locals. And I tell people there are two Santa Fe's, and I truly believe this. And there's this side of Saint Francis and the side of Saint Francis I live on. And I can tell you that the downtown vendors fought the Fuego. I had to get up with Councilor, through former Councilor Trujillo was here before. When they proposed the Fuego to play at Fort Marcy, they fought it, and so did the downtown vendors. Everything that we've tried to do for locals downtown, the downtown vendors have because we're not their customers. We're not, we don't buy $20,000 bronze statues and stuff like that. So I'm just going to close with that, but I think this is just a further pushing the locals away regardless of what you guys think.

I have one more comment. I do see this resolution as being a division of our city. I would really, really urge you all to please, let's listen to the police. Let's listen. I, I, I want to hear a little bit more from them, but I also want to hear people that have been here. I haven't seen anything dangerous on the plaza. I'm there every day. I drive. I cruise. I cruise the plaza. I get down. I eat. I enjoy my time there. I have places to eat. Even if I'm not at a bench, I can sit down on the grass. I want to see more locals, and I want to see where are these real safety issues because the data that I've seen isn't quite saying that there's pedestrian safety issues. And I, I, I like my data. I, I, I love data. I like to read it. I like to analyze it. I just don't see where you guys are coming from. I really don't. And I would really like this resolution to stop dividing the city of Santa Fe because that's really what I see this as. I don't see this as a safety issue. I see this masking as a city, safety issue. But you don't have enough here. Thank you. And thank you for coming too. I, I do appreciate both of you presenting this. So thank you very much, Councilor Fagali and Castro. I wanted to say thank you. Yeah, I want to say thank you again for putting up with us. Anyone else have anything else on? Nope. Thank you so much, Sean. Again, I apologize for not getting this on the agenda for a vote, but we are going to take your comments very seriously and work with public safety on this. Thank you.

Alright. Well, it says action items, but they're all discussion. And we don't have a quorum, so we're going to move on to issues from Police Chief Ben Valdez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to run through our data real quick. So year to date for homicides, we are up 33%. We currently have four in 2026. We had three at this time last year. In every other category, we are down. So robbery, we're down 30%. Motor vehicle thefts, down 54%. Arsons down 19%. Sex offenses down 2%. Burglaries, breaking and enterings are down 27%. Larceny theft offenses are down 12%, and assaults are down 40%. And those are all year to date from 2025 to present. All of our start times, we had a slight increase from the time that dispatch gets it to when they dispatched it out. I anticipate that's because we have people in patrol beats. So before they would just go to see what unit was available, send it. Now they're having to go and find a unit or make arrangements to find an available unit to bring it over to make that dispatch happen. We anticipate seeing that taper off a little bit once we get kind of this strategy worked out. As for our dispatch to arrival times, we did have a slight decrease on party one calls, which was pretty good by a few seconds. The biggest traction we made, though, was for party twos. They decreased by 6%, which was good to see. In the month of June, our arrests were the highest they have been all year.

We had 314. The last highest month was May with 276. For citations, which covers traffic, DWI, parking, and misdemeanor citations, we also had the highest month again, 1,995 in June. The last highest month was March with 1,966. Case numbers are also the highest we've had all year. In June, we had 1,038. The last highest month was 968 in May. As for incidents, the different case numbers and incidents, case numbers are report calls that we take. Incidents are the number of calls that come in. Those are self-initiated calls. It covers all of our calls. In June, that was also the highest we've had all year, 7,738. The last highest month was in March, which was 7,641.

I want to highlight a couple of things. In the month of June, we attended and were recognized at the 2026 Mothers Against Drunk Driving annual Honoring Heroes Awards. Santa Fe was well represented. For the heart of MADD, which is community outreach, the Santa Fe County DWI program was recognized. For the Community Champion, which is a member of the community that has put in a lot of effort to support the efforts, our very own Paul Romero, he's the father of one of our police officers and a huge advocate in our community for raising awareness against the dangers of drunk driving, he was recognized as a Community Champion. The Outstanding Prosecutor was a prosecutor from the First Judicial District, it was Samuel Jant. And then the Outstanding Officer was our very own Officer Edward Chavez. He was recognized for having over 100 DWI arrests and over 1,200 citations in 2025. Our DWI unit has their sights set on 2026 to be recognized as the urban DWI team in the state. So that's what they're working on this year for 2026.

Next, moving on to vacancies. As of today, we have three police officer vacancies. However, we swore in one officer today. He's a return. We have two laterals that are starting August 1, and we have the third and final lateral for our positions. She'll be starting the middle of August, and we will be at zero vacancies by the middle of August. We also have six cadets in background, two laterals in background. We have a couple of other positions that we anticipate to be coming down the pike for early retirement. So with those numbers we have in background, we're hoping to fill them quickly. We're working with our finance department and the HR department as well to make sure we stay on top of that. But this will be the first time we've been at zero since about 2015, but we're at zero for about half a week. We went up to 15. But as for the vacancy numbers, we've been holding below six. We're coming up on a year, which has been pretty good for a retention rate, so that's looking good.

For civilian positions, we're working to fill a number of them. We put out job announcements for project specialists, admin assistant, crime analyst, evidence technician, crime scene technician, public safety aids, and animal services officers. All those positions have been posted. We have lists. We're moving on to the interview process. Some have already been interviewed, and we're doing backgrounds. All in all, we're looking pretty good.

Two last things I'm going to note. Last month, our DWI unit and our traffic section did an incredible job. If you guys kind of take a look around the community, you can see that they've been really active. We've seen a change in behavior anecdotally with folks. There again, we've mentioned there's been a lot of citations issued, so that's been a huge thing that helps out with that. But our DWI unit, one thing we haven't seen downtown, and maybe a member of Martinez, if you go out late, you might see it, a lot more Uber drivers downtown. A lot of our bars are letting people know that our DWI officers are out in force. They're making a lot of arrests, so they've been encouraging their patrons to designate a driver or to use a rideshare. So, I was out on Friday. I had to see it myself, and of course, I saw a lot of Uber drivers out there.

Next month is going to be pretty interesting on some things we're going to highlight. We had some pretty amazing arrests over the weekend by our officers who put that stuff up on Facebook. If you want to take a look, we picked up a career criminal that was causing some havoc, not only in Santa Fe, but in Northern New Mexico. I think he was out of jail for somewhere around six, but certainly less than eight hours, and he wound up back in jail. So we're getting that worked out with our DA's office. They're going to help us with some hearings to try to get him held in custody until that's resolved.

And then the last thing was if you guys haven't read the news yet, but early this morning, we arrested a gentleman at the Motel 6 after our officers responded to a shots fired call shortly before midnight last night. And when they knocked the door and went to check on the occupants, they were fired upon. So, fortunately, they were not injured. We did call our SWAT team. The other good thing is that the offender was also not injured, put up quite a fight. He was still armed when he came out. He was able to be taken into custody, so we're going to see how that progresses. All in all, our team across the board, whether it's our folks in the streets that are conducting traffic stops, making arrests, doing casework, or even our support staff, they're hard at work to get the job done. I share with a lot of folks. I'm tremendously proud of the work that they've done in just the last couple of weeks. They're definitely making a lot of headway in making our community safer. Our work is not done. Again, we still have a lot of challenges that lay before us, but we're up for the challenge, and we're ready to help deliver for our community. With that, I'll stand for any questions.

Just a comment, and I mentioned it previously. Chief, I appreciate the work that you and your staff have put into getting those numbers up to where we need to be in regards to staffing because we all know that we're understaffed in this community and that that staffing number should be way higher than what it is right now. So that opens that door for you, I know, so that you can start asking those additional bodies that we can start increasing staffing for you and help alleviate some of those officers. I also want to comment that Edward Chavez is an amazing young man. His dad was a sheriff's deputy with Santa Fe County Sheriff's Department, a good friend of mine, and so proud of that young man and what he's doing in enforcing DUI the way that he's doing it out there. So give a big kudos to him. Thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you. Keep up the great work. I follow you guys on Facebook. And I mean, I feel like I'm constantly seeing these arrests, and I hope the rest of the community is seeing it too, but it's amazing. And if you guys do, like, a year over year on arrests, I'm sure it'll show something great. So thank you.

I have a comment too. I have just been so impressed over the last couple of years. And even in the last six months and three months, it just seems I see everyone out there. I see police officers being amazing, kind, and just helping out wherever they can. I see their presence and, I, especially with the drug trafficking, I was pretty excited about that. I thought that was pretty amazing because I had seen them in my neighborhood, and I was like, hey. They're old. And then the next day, I see that they were arrested. So I'm really impressed and really thank you all for all that you guys do. I mean, it's amazing. And even the fire, like, I am just blown away by how much work has been getting done and so quickly. So thank you.

Yeah. I just wanted to say, you know, you guys are doing, I remember when I first started on the committee, how many vacancies, it was like a constant between 15 and 20, I want to say. And you guys have done really well on that. I wanted to ask you about the call this morning a little bit. Did ShotSpotter have anything to do as far as helping with that, or was it just reported by the hotel staff?

Mr. Chair, we received numerous calls from both residents, or I'm sorry, guests at the hotel and the hotel staff. Uh-huh. Once our officers got on scene, they found the door. They had a bunch of bullet holes in it. They had a key card. Pretty easy then. It was a harrowing experience for our folks, but, yeah. Okay. And, yeah, that those are clues for, yeah. And the other thing I wanted to ask you about was do you guys have AVLs on PD units? Because that when you talked about the little, you know, discrepancy in response time, I was wondering, couldn't the CAD, couldn't there be some kind of script written in the CAD that would find the, you know, like what fire does? And I recognize there's a beat, but wouldn't it still try and find that? I don't know. Maybe I'm just.

Yes, Mr. Chair. Each of our vehicles has an AVL on it. In addition, it has a GPS, so their body cam has a locator on it as well as their vehicle. So there's two forms on the vehicle. I just think it's a change of deployment method that dispatch has adjusted to, and they've done pretty good. And again, no fault of anyone. Just we are so short-staffed for so long that dispatch is looking to say, here's this priority. Let's just send a resource so we can get someone there. So it's taking a bit of adjustment. I'd say more so for our staff. Dispatch, from what I've heard from their director, it's been working out pretty well. But we're all kind of getting used to that new deployment. Again, it's only been in effect for about a little bit over five weeks. So I anticipate it's going to be much improved here in the future as we get to that being the normal method of business moving forward.

Right. Well, thank you, sir. Next, we have matters from Interim Chief Scott Hour Cook. Yes, sir. It's good to be here again. We have just started academy. We had started an 11-person academy at the beginning of the month, and now we're at nine people in that academy. We lost two over the last week and a half or so. And we're kind of sad about that, but we'll keep moving forward, and we'll hire those in. One of the things that we are anticipating coming up this next year is a large number of vacancies that we're trying to plan for. We have a lot of people that are eligible to retire currently, and they're coming up on their highest three years of the implementation of the raises that took effect a few years back. And so there's a lot of these senior, very more senior personnel in our department that are going to be coming up on those highest three years. And without knowledge of what they're really going to do, we're preparing for a little bit of an exodus and preparing for that and getting things in place to where we can be prepared for those people leaving and moving people in those positions, having another academy starting right after that, and moving in that direction. So we can keep people on the streets, and we don't have to have massive holdovers and an outrageous number of overtime by meeting our minimum staffing standards.

With that, this last month in June, we ran 1,753 calls and incidents around the city, which is kind of on par for us right now. It's about our standard. We're kind of right in there each month. But that includes 14 structure fires, 14 brush fires, 23 cardiac arrests, 57 overdoses around the city, and 74 alternative response unit responses. So, everyone's out working, and they're doing a lot of work. With that, we keep moving forward, and we have new trucks on their way and trying to replace some of those things and do the best we can there. We have a program that we're working with PD with, as he talked about the incident with the shots fired this morning, that we're still in development with is our tactical paramedic team that works with their SWAT officers.

They're just finishing up all their initial training with the SWAT team and all their requirements, and we're just finalizing our policies on how that unit will work with the SWAT and how those individuals will deploy with them. As soon as we finish up that policy, we'll have it in place, and we'll be able to have our tactical paramedics with them on those scenes and to be able to provide that medical care immediately with them, and they won't have to wait for an ambulance to come. A lot of times, they'll have an ambulance with them already, so we'll be working on that as well.

With that, you mentioned ABL, and I don't think we ever mentioned this in the past. We do, working with our dispatch center, have an auto en route and auto arrive. With the auto en route and auto arrive, we've seen our call times actually become way more accurate, and they've actually decreased as well, which I was a little surprised of because some guys like to call en route on the radio while they're still trying to get to the truck, and the truck's actually not moving yet. Our auto en route puts them en route as soon as that truck moves, about the distance of the length of the truck. It auto marks them en route. Then, as they get within proximity to the scene, it marks them on scene. We've seen our call times actually become way more accurate and drop because of that. That's a big lift from RECC that they've helped us implement that, and we're moving to do that full time now. Those are most of the matters from a fire, and I'll stand for any questions.

Not a question, but I was fortunate enough to attend one of the discussion meetings in regards to the ARU, and I just want to mention it in front of all the committee members that the amount of work that's going into listening to all of our community partners, and the Fire Chief and your staff are doing an amazing job to try and figure out all the pieces. I know there was another meeting after the one that I attended, and I just know that you guys are working diligently on that. I know that is progress. I'm not going to ask you to give us feedback on it. I know that'll come as it continues to flush out.

I would love to give you a little update, and I actually forgot about it. I told Councilor Chavez we would give a small update today. With our last meeting, we just had multiple meetings. We've progressed a lot in how this program is going to move into its next phase, its next kind of life of where it's at, and try to make it just better than where it's at currently. Our last meeting was resolved around RECC and dispatch protocols and how we want that unit to be dispatched out and where they're going to go, what they're going to do. It will take a little bit of responsibility off them to continue sifting all the CAD calls from everything in there. This will prioritize them, say, "These calls we already know are appropriate for that unit." As that pops up on their CAD, they can just automatically show onto those without having to go through every single CAD call from PD and fire. They have a pretty big list that they have to sift through to find what's appropriate for them. This will help them be able to be dispatched immediately to those people that they can help immediately.

We have another meeting set up later in the week with RECC to start working on exactly what those protocols are going to look like. By the next time our next meeting comes around, hopefully, we'll have all that set in stone, with the expectation of having a full rollout of the program and presentation here in the September Public Safety Committee meeting. That's our goal to hit, to be able to provide a presentation of everything we've covered throughout these working group sessions and to be able to roll it out and kind of let the public know exactly where we are, and they can see the next phase of the life of the ARU and where it's headed.

Alright, very good. I had one thing. All that, you didn't bring up the biggest commercial structure fire in the last 20 years. I'm just curious because I know that was a fun several days. What people don't realize, that fire lasted probably three days of smoldering.

Yes, sir. Fires burn for a long time. We're finished with that scene. We kind of did an update last time, but I guess it's been a month. I guess we didn't even have a... It's been less than a month. It's been less than a month. Yeah. We've done a lot of updates with it. So, around the Saint Catharines Fire, just to let you guys know, when that initially came in around 3:00 in the afternoon, we fought that fire nine hours straight. That's every fire apparatus that we had available in the city, plus spare units that we brought in and utilized as well with the personnel already on the scene, we used at that fire. We had public utilities on scene with water and New Mexico Gas and P&M. We all worked in conjunction. We had our PIO there. We had all our PD there, helping us keep the scene safe for all the people that were around. But nine hours straight on that fire until we started releasing units. We kept units there on a fire watch because that fire smoldered for three days. Eventually, that Saturday, this fire started on Thursday, I want to say. That Saturday is when we, that Saturday afternoon, July 4, we released the last unit from doing that 24/7 fire watch. We worked really closely with the State Fire Marshal's Office, ATF, and the other agencies there to perform this investigation. With their help, they did determine that this is an incendiary fire. They're moving this over with PD, and they'll be working that side of this case and how that goes. I'm not sure if you want to comment on that side of it too much.

I know we had a suspect. We had a good picture of him in the paper.

Yes, we did. He's facing charges of criminal trespass. However, he is a person of interest in the arson investigation. We're waiting for the forensic evidence to come back from the lab. Once we have that, we're going to look at charges to see if they're appropriate and go from there.

Does that go, does that go something like that? I don't know what procedure is now, but does it go to the, because State Farm or does it go to the state lab? Or because it's ATF, does it go to Ponaco?

My understanding is the State Fire Marshal sent it to an out-of-state lab, I believe, in Texas.

Okay. Alright. Well, I just want to say, I know I understand there were access issues, right? Because the whole thing was fenced up around. Right? So that created issues, and I understand we had water. I mean, what people don't realize is some of these little streets around Santa Fe in this part of town have 100-year-old water mains. We were collapsing mains. Right? And you take an eight-inch, no, not even. An eight-inch pipe that's 100 years old will be about a half-inch to one-inch pipe after all the calcification here. So, I mean, we had lots of issues, didn't we?

We had some challenges on this fire. We did cut down a large portion of some fencing to gain access to the area, and there's a hydrant on the property right there. When our personnel grabbed that hydrant and connected to it, it had almost zero water pressure. It wasn't even enough to fill the truck up fast enough before the truck was out of water. We disconnected from that. We ended up with the water company there or the water division with us right there. We connected to two separate hydrants for two of our large ladder trucks. They happened to be on two different mains. These are six-inch mains, but they were roughly 900 feet away. We had dropped hundreds of feet of hose. We put two trucks in the middle of that hose to boost the pressure from that distance to our attack trucks. To give them the proper pressures they need, we still had some challenges with our water pressure. During this time period, there was a main break over by the Drury Hotel, which affected our water pressures. But our personnel were really closely watching their intakes pressure, so we didn't collapse any mains. These were only six-inch mains coming into that area. It was pretty impressive what they were able to accomplish with the limitations that we faced. We had a lot of help, and we brought in extra personnel. We did some tactics that you probably normally wouldn't see on a structure fire like this because of the access. We only could put trucks in two locations that could even get close enough to some areas. Then we used a small brush truck, a wildland fire truck, to go onto the backside because the access was so tight and so narrow. Then we used a water tender shuttle to feed them water throughout the scene so they could make sure that the fire didn't spread from that area of origin to another part of the area, another part of the facility that was there.

See, I don't think people realize how hard the conditions were up there. I mean, that was never designed for any commercial buildings up to those are six-inch lines is what you would, you don't even use those in residential anymore, you know? So, right. Yeah. There were congratulations on...

There was a lot of jobs. We were facing with three different building construction types. We had just normal construction with a wood stick frame. We had adobe, and we had masonry brick that shared an entire same roof structure across the entire different buildings, and they shared hallways as well. The different structures that were there that burned down were all kind of into one system. They were all boarded up too, so there was no access inside. But the fire, since this was an arson fire, it got big very, very quickly, which makes it extremely dangerous to go inside. With no life threats that we had in there, this became what we call a defensive fire right away. We also knew that there were other hazardous materials that possibly could be in that structure like asbestos and things like that, which is exactly even more hazardous for our guys. We've taken some other precautions outside of, after this fire is over with, filling out exposure reports for every single one of our personnel that had exposures on that scene. As we did the demolishing work, there was air quality tests being done during the demolishing, and those came back clean for all the residents around there and the people on-site during that. They did find some of the materials on there did have some hazardous stuff on it, but they were doing everything appropriate with that as that gets disposed of. This was a fairly large incident for Santa Fe, for our small department, and it taxed us greatly.

During that fire scene, we were left with a few ambulances available in town. We relied on the county fire department to help us back cover all the city calls. During that time, we ran multiple cardiac arrests. We had a gunshot wound during that time, and we had a major motor vehicle accident also where we transported emergency traffic to the hospital, some major traumas, and apart from our normal slip and falls and sick people and stuff like that. Just because the guys weren't at the fire, some of our personnel on the ambulances, they were running just as much, and they were just as busy, covering the rest of the city. This is why we're always asking for more support to put one more truck online, one more station online.

We've run the same amount of stations throughout the city for years and years and years. We have five stations in town that serve our needs, and we're asking for one more. We have five fire trucks, and so we're asking for six to put online, which takes personnel, and it's a big list. And so we have a lot of backing from a lot of our counselors and from our mayor to help us accomplish that over the next few years.

I just want to say, job well done. I mean, that's a career fire. That's something you only see once, maybe twice in your career, and you guys did great. I wanted to, you know, put it out there and thank the county for all their help. Yeah. Because people think that while all that's going on, nothing else is happening in the city. And, no, it's regular business around the city. There's still heart attacks and everything else. You know? So, good job.

Kyle: Thank you. I sent you guys a report. I won't go through all of that. If there are questions about anything specific, please let me know. A few things to highlight: On the staffing front, we did have an offer letter go out as of this afternoon for my number two. So, hopefully, they accept, and then we'll be back to status quo, at least here. We also did submit a grant to FEMA via the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management to add another position to the department that would focus on critical infrastructure preparedness. So, really, they'd be kind of like a plant in public works and public utilities, the airport, as well as working with PNM and other infrastructure partners. That's a long ways out if we do get funding from that, but hoping to.

On the GIS and advanced tech front, we're continuing our enhancements for the virtual EOC and just general decision support and coordination products. That was further supported by our recent attendance at the Esri Safety and Security Summit last week, where we heard from a lot of industry leaders and subject matter experts about how this technology is being leveraged in public safety sectors throughout the world.

I want to highlight that July 4th was a super, super successful event. I was there as kind of the planning section chief, situation unit leader. The whole thing was made successful through great coordination with PD, fire, transit, parks, and the Kiwanis Club. And that included a lot of monitoring as we've been talking about what was going on in the rest of the world. So, having the battalion chief that wasn't overseeing the event itself being plugged in with command staff, letting us know how many brush fires did they have going on at any given time, how many people blowing fingers off of fireworks. I don't know what else was going on. But it was really good to have that detailed information from out in the rest of the world.

So now on our end, at least, we'll be transitioning to finalizing the event action plan for Zozobra as the next major city-managed event. There are certainly other events happening in the city now and then. I won't bore you with the details, but we released a pretty extensive RFP to preposition a lot of services and contracts that we may need post-disaster. We want to do that now on blue sky days and not once something bad has happened. And we also built in some preparedness contracts into that. So if we have specialized training and exercise needs, we can just pull those on a case-by-case basis rather than having to procure everything individually.

I do want to echo what both talked about with the Saint Kate's fire. I thought that was great. I didn't have a whole lot to do because they did such a good job. One quick point of clarification because I've heard it come up in the community based on some of the alerts that we sent out. And I'm not a fire official, so I don't know anything about water pipes, really. But just to clarify, there was no issue with water availability upstream for that scene. It was a flow and pressure issue at that site. No. It's an infrastructure, I mean, it's a 100-year-old infrastructure. That's, I mean, no. There's a really big, what we call, a big gun right on Paseo, and I know what the pressures are at the Masonic. I mean, the incoming pressure there, they actually have to put PRVs to reduce the pressure. Right. So we were, you know, they were coordinating on scene with water division supervisory staff, and we were coordinating with director staff. There was 15 million gallons of treated water in that sector of the city. It was just a matter of getting it.

Tell us what's going to do the thing. What about the runoff from the fire? Did it all go down the, or what?

No. So it all stayed in the, it all stayed in the structure. So that's something that we were concerned about. Right? It was the runoff because we know that there are possible hazmat materials in there. And there is kind of a basement area. All the water, we had almost zero runoff. And so.

You have an Olympic-sized pool now.

Yeah. So everything is on-site. Yeah. I've had those fires before too. Wow. And that's all I got to talk about unless you have questions about other things.

Thank you, Kyle. Anyone have questions for Kyle? Just a comment. Are you applying for all these grants yourself, by yourself, on your own?

Sure am.

Good job. Because I know, especially federal ones, are a beast. So, and it's great money if you can get it. So.

It is.

Okay. Good luck.

Pretty good at those grants over the years, but it is quite the workload to get those in at the same time as dealing with fires and special events, but somehow keeping it together.

Alright. Next, we have Roberto.

Afternoon, everyone. Can you hear me? Thanks for having us. Keisha's going to give the public safety report. I just wanted to add to the automatic vehicle location discussion that was happening. It is possible for RACC to build recommendations for police units, but we need policy and to work with Chief Valdez on that and see if it's something that we can pilot. But there are other agencies that do closest unit dispatch. So, basically, what would happen is the CAD would recognize for a specific call which units are closest to it and available and then recommend them to the dispatcher. But that's something that RACC historically has never tried to do, but I'm open to trying that. Yeah. So with that, I'll let Keisha, Deputy Director Chavez, give the public safety report. Thank you.

Test? I'm always in the wrong spot. Good evening. Thank you, members of the committee. Starting off with our June public safety report, we had a total of 25,627 calls received. Of that, 6,189 were 911 calls. And I'll give some additional information on our PSAP answer time in just a moment. Totals for the City of Santa Fe: 9,455 calls, accounting for 62% of our total calls received. And 4,884 for Santa Fe County, 32%. And for Edgewood, 798, 5% total.

In terms of our PSAP answer time, we have a really exciting update. Roberto discovered that we had a setting that was automatically turned on in our reporting system that included calls that we would not answer because they were disconnected prior to anybody being able to reach it, similar to how you unintentionally dial a number and disconnect before you hear it ring. 911 comes through to us anyway because that is the safety feature. In that instance, we're unable to count the PSAP answer time for those because the person is disconnected before the phone even technically rings, even though we still receive that information. As a result of that, we have some pretty significant changes to our answer times overall for the year. Not only are we above the NENA standard of answering all calls with, or I'm sorry, not all calls, answering 90% of calls within 15 seconds or less, but we are actually meeting that standard within 10 seconds or less for 911 calls, which I think is incredibly impressive for our personnel, especially considering that we are not fully staffed.

Using that to segue into, we have 10 vacancies currently. We just brought on an experienced dispatcher, and we have one brand new person who is, I think she started this weekend, learning the ropes. It seems like she's very enthusiastic about joining our emergency services team. We are also in the end of our process for picking up a new quality assurance specialist. And we are still looking for a training coordinator. We just recently lost ours. He is moving on to awesome things. And that position is open and available if anybody knows of anyone they would like to forward that way until, I believe, the end of the week. I've got just a couple more days left to check out training coordinator. I believe that's all the information that I have to share. I'll stand for questions.

Alright. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to say, you know, real quick that you're doing great on vacancies because when I started, I want to say it was in the mid-20s or high, wasn't it? Close to, like, I remember 28 being a number at one time.

It got as high as 33. When I, when I came in in March 2022, there were 31, and then two additional people resigned when I first got hired. It was at 33. And.

Well done.

Yes. Thanks. So we've kept the majority of the floor staff. We had one retirement and then our training coordinator who left recently. So otherwise, we'd be at eight vacancies right now. So exciting.

Alright. Well, anything else? Oh, just one more thing, and I forgot to mention this at the RECC board, but in regards to the PSAP answer time as well, one of the other things the report was doing was it was pulling the time, the seizure time. That means the time it took for someone to actually dial 911 and hit send before it even rang you to the center, it was counting that time. So it's actually the NENA standard is from the time the phone starts ringing in the dispatch center to the time that a dispatcher answers it. So I'm really proud of our staff for meeting that standard and exceeding it. Good job.

Alright. Matters from the committee. Anyone? Oh, I had just one. Maybe I was going to see if Ben could get us some information on or a presentation on. I was recently in Southern California, and there was a big story and to-do about, is it the, is it, it's not a flare camera. What are the cameras that they're using with the vehicle readers?

So they use Flock. They call them K. Flock. Yeah. The Flock cameras. We do have ALPRs. They're inside of our vehicles right now. But one thing that we did with our contracts that has been different from other entities that use them, we don't allow the companies to sell the data to third parties. What that means for us, though, is we pay a higher premium because that's one way that they offset the cost. But for our in-car Axon cameras, we don't do that. For the new contract for our speed and noise, we don't do that. We had a lot of discussions, and we heard a lot of feedback from our counselors that said they want to make sure we have privacy being paramount for us here in Santa Fe. So for our contracts, we don't allow that. Anything that's there, we have to give our express permission to share any of that data.

I know a lot of people brought up concerns as well with the new state law that went into effect a couple of weeks ago where it prohibits ALPR data. And this is, I think it was written by Senator Peter Wirth. But ALPR data cannot be shared with other parties unless it meets certain criteria. But we also have to document and report to the Department of Justice for the State of New Mexico any request that's done and what the premise of that request was. But we're in compliance with all that stuff. Again, our privacy is paramount. We usually utilize it for our purposes only. We can also give more information or a presentation next month on what we're using, where we're looking to go with it.

I am aware there are a lot of private businesses in Santa Fe that are part of the story as well. But also, LAPD and I want to say Orange County Sheriff's were basically shutting down operations because there were issues with officers actually doing some stuff that they probably shouldn't be doing with regards to that technology. I was just curious because I didn't, and then I came back and Googled, and it said that there are private businesses here in Santa Fe that have cameras in their parking lots.

For us, I think that information would be valuable to us, but again, we like guardrails. If we're going to access data like that, and if we ever were to enter into any agreements for that, it would have to be within our policy. For us, we have really strict guardrails on this because we understand again, the concerns from our communities surrounding proper use and privacy concerns.

Our policy, if you need to go and do any type of data inquiries or anything like that, it can be done just by a police officer detective. There's a request that you make through a captain or lieutenant that is outside of operations. They're actually assigned to administration because they administer the program. We have guardrails so they can see if there are overrides and stuff like that. Yes. But it also keeps a log on who made the request, what's the associated case number, and who accessed the data. All those types of things are recorded within the system. I have a stranglehold on it. Okay, cool. All right. I was just curious. That's really all I had. With that, I guess we're going to adjourn the meeting.