Governing Body Wed, May 13, 2026 · Governing Body https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/1466 == Executive Summary == The Governing Body meeting covered a wide range of topics, including remembrances, budget presentations, and extensive public comment. A significant portion of the meeting was dedicated to the proposed Fiscal Year 2027 budget, with detailed overviews of departmental allocations, revenue sources, and strategic priorities such as employee investment, infrastructure, and public safety. The Alternative Response Unit (ARU) program sparked considerable debate among councilors and union representatives regarding its optimal placement and resource allocation within the city's public safety framework. Public comment was robust, with numerous speakers advocating for the Midtown Arts and Design Alliance (MADA) project, emphasizing its potential for economic development, youth engagement, and cultural preservation. Other public comments addressed concerns about rapid city development, nuclear weapons production, the lack of homeless shelter beds, and the need for greater transparency in city operations. The Governing Body also approved the sale of city-owned parcels for affordable housing and the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Annual Action Plan, and recognized many city employees for their years of service. == Key Decisions == - Approved the agenda with amendments, removing item 9I (duplicate of 9E) and item 8B (Santa Fe Police Officers Association presentation). - Approved the consent agenda. - Approved the sale of seven city-owned parcels in Las Estrellas to the Santa Fe Housing Trust for $4,490,000 for affordable housing development. - Approved the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Draft 2026 Annual Action Plan. - Approved the appointment of Sergeant Nasmo Montihjo to the Children and Youth Commission. == Motions & Votes == - Motion to approve the agenda as amended — Passed. - Motion to approve the consent agenda — Passed. - Motion to reorder the agenda to first hear petitions from the floor, then public comment on bills (items 17 and 18), and then return to the regular order of business — Passed. - Motion to move directly to Items 19 and 20 — Passed unanimously (8-0). - Motion to approve the sale of city-owned parcels to Santa Fe Housing Trust (Item 19A) — Passed unanimously (7-0). - Motion to approve an unspecified item (likely before CDBG discussion) — Passed unanimously (8-0). - Motion to approve the CDBG Draft 2026 Annual Action Plan — Passed unanimously (8-0). - Motion to enter Executive Session — Passed by roll call vote. - Motion to return from Executive Session — Passed by roll call vote. - Motion to waive procedural rules for the Midtown MRA Plan resolution — Passed by roll call vote. - Motion to approve the appointment to Children and Youth Commission (Sergeant Nasmo Montihjo) — Approved by roll call vote. == Public Comment == Public comments covered a wide range of issues. Many speakers expressed strong support for the Midtown Arts and Design Alliance (MADA) project, highlighting its potential for economic development, youth engagement, and cultural preservation. Concerns were raised about the city's rapid development, the expansion of plutonium pit production at Los Alamos, and the severe lack of homeless shelter beds. Citizens also advocated for dedicated affordable housing for city workers, increased transparency through streamed committee meetings, and questioned the city's budget process and specific allocations, such as park contracts and pool closures. One speaker shared a personal experience of being hit by a distracted driver, advocating for stricter aggressive driving penalties. A local government reporter emphasized the importance of public records for transparency. == Topics == - Employee Compensation & Benefits - City Employee Staffing & Vacancies - AFSCME Union Concerns - Fire Department Staffing & Resources - Employee Recognition - Midtown Redevelopment Area Plan - Career Development & Equity - Narcan Availability & Training - Special Events Planning - FY26-27 Operating Budget == Full Transcript == I'd like to call tonight's regular governing body meeting to order for May 13, 2026. We will be led in the Pledge of Allegiance by Councilor Garcia, the salute to the New Mexico flag by Councilor Chavez, and the invocation and remembrances by Councilor Castro. Please stand as you're able. Thank you all. Good evening. Thank you for being here and joining us. I will try to be brief, but I do want to thank everyone in the room, not only for being with us here today, but being a part of this giant project which we're going to be introducing tonight. You guys have done a phenomenal job, and everyone at this dais has had an opportunity not only to see our progress, but also to work together to figure out how to solve the problems of this city. I am incredibly honored and grateful to be working with everybody in this room. We have done amazing things in the last few months, and we will continue to do amazing things together. Unity is the way that we're going to move forward, and thank you all so much for being a part of the solution. Are there any remembrances by opening body members? Councilor Garcia. Councilor Garcia: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I have a couple of very dear individuals who have recently passed away, and I just want to remember their life and legacy. The first one I want to mention is a dear friend of mine from college who was a teammate for five years on the cross-country team at New Mexico Highlands. We actually were roommates and bunk buddies for the better part of three or four years. His name was Salomon Gonzalez, Sal Gonzalez, and he was very instrumental in the running community and influential in the lives of many, many people. He was an educator. He was the AD at Rio Rancho High School, and he won multiple state championships with Pecos High School and with Rio Rancho. When you talk about a person who has leadership qualities and that person that can be strict but also very fair, I think that describes Sal. He used to say, "A good friend will just drop everything to come to help," and you are that friend, and we had really, really good times together. There's a celebration of life for him on August 30th in Rio Rancho, and the running community has come together to have a run in the morning, and then in the afternoon or in the midday, we'll have his celebration of life. I also want to mention a dear auntie of mine who passed away last week, who was from the Española Valley, Medanales area, and resided in Pecos. She was a dear, dear aunt. She passed away early in life, and she'll be dearly missed. She'll be laid to rest tomorrow. So, apologies for missing part of our finance hearings tomorrow for that. Thank you, Mayor. Mayor: Any other governing body? Seeing that, let's also take a moment to think of those in our community that may need help or support. Thank you, everybody. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call, please? City Clerk: Yes, Mr. Mayor. Councilor Barrett? Councilor Barrett: Here. City Clerk: Councilor Bamonte? Councilor Bamonte: Here. City Clerk: Councilor Cassett? Councilor Cassett: Here. City Clerk: Councilor Castro? Councilor Castro: Here. City Clerk: Councilor Chavez? Councilor Chavez: Here. City Clerk: Councilor Faulkner? Councilor Faulkner: Here. City Clerk: Councilor Fagali? Councilor Fagali: Here. City Clerk: Councilor Garcia? Councilor Garcia: Here. City Clerk: Mayor Garcia? Mayor: Present. City Clerk: Mayor, you have a quorum. Mayor: Thank you. Next up is approval of the agenda. Are there any changes from staff? City Clerk: Yes, Mayor. We are removing item 9I because it's a duplicate of item 9E, and I believe that we're removing item 8B. The Santa Fe Police Officers Association will not be presenting tonight. Mayor: Okay. Any changes from governing body members? Go ahead. Councilor: Move to approve as amended. Councilor: Second. Mayor: We've got a motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor say "Aye." Opposed. Motion passes. Next up is approval of consent. There are items that were requested to be pulled. City Clerk: No, Mayor. No items have been removed for discussion by councilors. Mayor: Okay, last call if anyone. Councilor: Motion to approve. Mayor: Okay, we've got a motion and a second. Any discussion? Madam City Clerk, can I get a roll call vote, please? City Clerk: Certainly, Mayor. Councilor Barrett? Councilor Barrett: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Bamonte? Councilor Bamonte: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Cassett? Councilor Cassett: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Castro? Councilor Castro: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Chavez? Councilor Chavez: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Faulkner? Councilor Faulkner: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Fagali? Councilor Fagali: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Garcia? Councilor Garcia: Yes. City Clerk: Motion passed. Mayor: Thank you. Next item is presentations. Will you please read into the record the first presentation? City Clerk: Yes, Mayor. AFSCME is the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. And here to present is Theresa Martinez. She's an executive board member. Theresa Martinez: Good evening, Mr. Mayor, city councilors, Mr. City Manager, city staff, city employees, and guests. My name is Theresa Martinez. I am an AFSCME executive board member. Before speaking tonight, I'd like to introduce you to the current newly elected AFSCME Local 3999 union board, some of which are present. Mark Montoya, union board president. Maxine Sandoval is our union board vice president. She's absent tonight. Clinton Peterson, union board secretary-treasurer. Grace Lee, I believe, has not made it to the meeting yet. Ah, there she is. Excuse me. Union secretary and union trustees, board members, and stewards. Thank you for the invitation to speak on behalf of AFSCME Local 3999. We at AFSCME welcome the new administration and new governing body. AFSCME workers have seen tangible and noticeable improvements in city government governance from completed audits, direct hiring, and investment in our park staff and affordable housing staff, and fixing long-neglected projects like the Airport Road paving. Mayor Garcia and the governing body have made pledges to clean up and address basic city functions, and your collective commitment to delivering on those pledges shows. According to the FY29 proposed budget book, quote, "The operating budget will provide for funding for across-the-board salary adjustment equivalent to 2.5%, and the city will also absorb the projected increase in health insurance premiums without passing on any increase to employees." End of quote. The union would like to express their gratitude on both of these inclusions in this next fiscal year proposed budget. We're happy that this administration is actively working with us, and we look forward to the next four years together. We're eager to work with this new administration to advance the interests of city workers and to be a voice for the labor behind the city's different functions by helping to tackle some of the most pressing issues to the people working, living, and visiting our city. As the climate continues to warm and New Mexico enters yet another year of historic drought, remember that an AFSCME maintenance worker is making sure the city building you walk into has working AC and that there are a lot of hardworking water operators making sure we have clean, clear water coming out of the tap and irrigating your garden. Please enjoy our lovely city parks while you're out in the warm weather, made possible by our parks workers. Just this past April, inflation surged in the US to about 3.8%, the highest since 2023. Gasoline prices are higher than they have been in a while, and there are no signs of them coming down. This is putting extreme pressure on our city workers and memberships as we try to make ends meet. Those that live in the city are putting up with a high cost of living, and those that live outside the city are paying more to commute in these days. All that said, we as AFSCME would like to make clear the budget expectations our workers have for this administration in the coming years. The five key components of our budget requests are: One, that all frozen salaried positions be unfrozen and filled. The union findings on the HR-supplied AFSCME vacancies list obtained from March of this year showed that out of 892 AFSCME fully funded full and part-time positions, 81 fully funded positions were left vacant while employees were tasked with more work and responsibility due to staff shortages. It is unclear what the purpose of the hiring freeze served. In addition, we ask that departments and divisions are not allowed to use AFSCME salary savings to bolster their budgets, and that the mid-year budget review incorporate recent GRTs, lodging tax, etc., to be used to meet the most pressing division and department needs versus on the backs of the overly worked employees working in understaffed working conditions. Two, that equity be established across all job classifications. That no new hire receives a higher or inflated salary than a veteran, long-standing, experienced, seasoned employee. That no job classifications are created unilaterally without union approval. That contracting out of the city is restricted to an agreed percentage or amount. That management is not top-heavy. The new organizational chart shows a reduction in departments. However, at the present, management outnumbers the police and the fire departments combined. Three, that career ladders of two or three levels are established for all departments. This provides future opportunities for promotion, upward movement, increased education, knowledge, training, longevity, and retention of employees versus high turnover rates. Four, that AFSCME be included in the selection of the vendor and the priorities of the next classification and compensation study in 2027. This will help eliminate any holdups in its adoption. Five. Lastly, this governing body ensures funding for AFSCME contract negotiations in the next fiscal year with a focus on a longevity pay scale, bereavement leave, and overtime language that will best meet the needs of our workforce in the coming years. In essence, our budget requests are asking for accountability, investment, and consistency from the City of Santa Fe leadership. Accountability for their actions, for their decisions. We are confident in this governing body, in their ability and drive to deliver on this. Thank you for your time. We are AFSCME Local 3999. Mayor: Thank you, Ms. Martinez. Is there any other folks from the union that would like to speak? If not, this is a presentation, so I do have the opportunity if any governing body members would like to ask any questions to the presenter. I'm not seeing anybody on this side. I apologize for making you walk back up. It doesn't look like there's any questions for you, but thank you for that overview. Truly appreciate it. Next item on the agenda, please, Madam City Clerk. City Clerk: That would be item 8C, the Santa Fe Firefighters Association, International Association of Firefighters, Local 2059. And here to present, I believe, is Charles Gonzalez and Josh Gonzalez. Charles Gonzalez: President of the Union, Mr. Mayor, members of council, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. We appreciate you taking the time to hear us. My name is Charles Gonzalez. I'm the president of the Santa Fe Firefighters Association, Local 2059. I represent 160 sworn firefighters, men and women who are deeply committed to serving and protecting the City of Santa Fe. The City of Santa Fe Fire Department is busier today than it ever has been. Our crews respond to 22,000 calls each year. That equates to approximately one call every 25 minutes. Each of those calls requires a minimum response of five personnel across two units, responding anywhere in this city with the goal of arriving on scene within six minutes, a national standard that we consistently strive to meet and exceed. These calls vary in complexity and responsibility. We respond to emergency medical incidents, structure fires, wildland fires, hazardous material incidents, heavy rescue operations, aircraft rescue, firefighting, and we conduct life safety inspections to ensure every building in this city is safe for its citizens. Our members are committed to providing the highest level of service. That means maintaining certifications, staying current with training, and continuously improving to meet the growing demands placed upon us. As a union, Local 2059 has worked collaboratively with the city to secure over $7 million in state funding. We do this to ensure we are all working together to keep the citizens of Santa Fe safe. Time and again, we have recognized the needs of our community and stepped up to meet them. When it comes to the city stepping up, we are always appreciative of increases. The offered cost of living increase is much needed, and I know our members are in dire need of it. Our concern is that the way this was presented to the city and our members, this feels similar to the previous administration. We understand decisions are made with good intentions. We just seek to have an open dialogue to provide our members with the best, since our members have to give their best even on our worst days. We expect nothing but the best from our department, and we want to reiterate that while some projects may be beneficial, they are not all core obligations to the city. It is critical that our required duties—fire suppression, emergency medical services, fire prevention, and life safety—are not hindered, but instead are strengthened and expanded to their full potential. Programs such as ARU may provide value. However, they have consistently drawn resources away from our primary mission, which is to provide the highest level of service to the citizens of Santa Fe. We must ensure that our focus and funding remain aligned with our core responsibilities. We have consistently demonstrated our willingness to work with the city to find solutions and to bring resources into this community. We are asking for that same level of commitment in return. We stand here today not just to present numbers, but to advocate for the continued safety of our community and the sustainability of the service we provide. The demand is increasing, and it is critical that our staffing, compensation, and resources reflect that reality. We are proud to serve the city of Santa Fe. We are committed to this community, and we ask for your support to ensure that we can continue to meet the expectations placed upon us today and into the future. And I want to reiterate, the Local 2059 membership are in full support of our chiefs in making the decision to remove EMS captains off of the ARUs. And I would encourage everybody who has questions about it to reach out to these firefighters, reach out to these paramedics that are here today, and ask them where the resources are needed. We have a young department. We have a busy department, and we need resources right now promoting the work we're doing in the city. And that is EMS, that is first responding, and that is taking care of the citizens of Santa Fe. Thank you. Mayor: Thank you. But don't go away, just in case there's questions or any questions from governing the body of members. Speaker: Sure. Sure. Yeah. Councilor Faulkner. Councilor Faulkner: So, I take the position that the ARU could actually expand if it was moved out from under the fire department. Is there, from the union's position, is that a sound understanding? Speaker: For the most part, we can understand that. I think there is a place for ARU outside of the fire department. I think it could fall under community service. Case management is not EMS, right? It's not first responding. Case management and social work are a completely different thing from what we do. With that being said, our support of the system would remain the same, right? We still have these resources that ARU is able to utilize. When it's an emergency call and deemed necessary, of course, we're responding to that. Of course, we're showing up like we do for every other call. But dedicating a resource when we need that resource on our more serious calls, where these resources can actually right then and there impact a life and death situation, that cardiac arrest where an extra hand is needed, where extra knowledge is needed on a very serious call. That's where we feel it's more important. When it comes to the ARU and staying in the fire department, it's tough for us because right now it was never a program that was meant to be sustained with EMS captains. I've always thought that this program was, we're utilizing our EMS division to get this program started, get it off the ground, get it rolling, and then this program to sustain itself with case management, with solid leadership of that division, whether it be part of the fire department or on its own. It was never a program that was meant to be continuously supplemented by fire department resources. I think at one point it was the hope that this would thrive and it would get bigger and eventually would stand on its own. So, one of my concerns is that if you put impeding interest inside of one trunk of a department, there is going to be a space where the leadership of that department has to decide, do we fund this or this? And so for me, I feel like ARU would be better suited in community services because it is more social work and behavioral health. And that would allow the fire department to build the way it needs to build. And it would also allow the ARU some space where they could become a robust division of the city that could do more things with the support they need from a department that they're more appropriately placed in. That's not a question. That's just my position. Thank you. Mayor: Thank you, Councilor Castro. Then Councilor Chavis. Councilor Castro: Thank you so much for the presentation, gentlemen. Do you currently represent ARU employees? Speaker: We do have bargaining members that are EMS captains that were formerly on the ARU, but we do not represent ARU employees, which are you referring to case managers? Councilor Castro: Correct. The current ARU employees that are under the ARU program currently, do you represent them? Speaker: No, we do not. Councilor Castro: Okay. So, I find it difficult to create a false dichotomy as Councilor Faulkner mentioned with two different groups of folks under the same department. Those folks don't have representation at this governing body to speak for themselves or express the work that's being done around them. I think that this governing body as a whole supports the additional work that ARU does, which is not the same as fire. You're correct. Those are two distinct entities and yet it is us who have put those programs under the same banner. And so it isn't the chiefs, it isn't the EMS captains who have made that decision. It is the governing body that has placed those and those resources, what it seems to me now, at odds. I don't feel that way from the governing body perspective. But we will continue to have discussions with leadership to see if those two programs that are at odds, because they should not be. If we need more resources, we should be fully funding all of the programs. I don't think we should be advocating against each other's programs and we are a united front, so we should be working together. No further comments. Mayor, Councilor Chavis. Councilor Chavis: Thank you, Mayor. We brought up ARU, so now we're having the discussion. I'm not sure this is the time or place, but we all have a lot to say around it. And I beg to differ. I feel like behavioral health is all of our responsibility, including fire and police. It is a public safety urgency right now, and I would say it's a majority then a minority. What needs to happen structurally, we don't have a say in how staffing occurs. That's not our place. And that's another thing to emphasize. I've gotten a lot of community members that have been calling me and saying, "Why staffing change? Why is our organization doing something?" I can't do something that is not within our control as governing body members. And I want to emphasize that fact. We are not management. We also are not the experts on how departments function. However, it is our responsibility as we serve a community to make sure that we are resourcing a need, and behavioral health is a need. I will say ARU is not going to change the world around behavioral health, but it can impact it if we start doing something more intentional, making sure that we are also creating relationships and repairing the systems that surround ARU and behavioral health and what would make effective warm handoffs. I also say that yes, if EMS is required, they can call. However, when you have not been exposed and engaged with people suffering from behavioral health, you will not approach them in a way that is helpful, even though you have the best intention. So removing people that have experience within that does have impact, and I don't like us to believe that it doesn't. I'm not saying, like I said, we have no place to talk about staffing. It's not our place. But I will talk about effective service to our community members. People with experience in behavioral health have effective supports, knowledge for supports, and communication skills and ways to mend things when it comes to behavioral health. Now, if it is going to be a call to whoever's available to respond, then we need to invest some money in making sure every single paramedic that could respond to a call has very, very intense training in behavioral health, and has experience with case managers and people that could help guide them in actual experience because we just took that away, right? We just restructured it. So, I just want to make sure that it's very different. It's not, it is a, it is a change that will impact. Can we resolve it? Absolutely. But it's going to take intention. And I will also emphasize that ARU is not a fix-all. There are systems around ARU that are broken that have made it less effective. All right? So it doesn't just fall on the city. It doesn't just fall on fire or police. We have to build some bridges to really make this something that is strong. So there's a lot of talk about expansion with ARU. We are absolutely not ready for that. We don't have the relationship with providers to be ready for that. We don't have the training internally to be ready for that. This is full transparency. We're not at expansion. It's a system that I would say is not as effective as it could be and is not servicing our community like it should, and it's nobody's fault. But I do want to give kudos to our leaders who are bringing the discussion to the surface and bringing people to the table to say, "How do we fix this? How do we mend this? How do we make it something that truly could have the impact that our community needs?" Behavioral health is something I am very loud about because you don't see it. You don't see wounds on the surface. You don't respond, you don't, it's not about, you know, trying to stop the bleeding because you can see and you can control it that way. We have people with behavioral health issues that are suffering and are bleeding out in their own ways, and we're losing lives. And it's not just random people showing up to respond to that. That is very intentional training and experience that needs to be involved in that process, and that's shifted. So I think that's why the community, that's why certain leaders have concern. It is fixable, and I will tell the community we are addressing it in discussion. But I don't want us to pretend that the system as it is is the same because it's not. However, I think we can make the system as it's been revised to meet the needs as it was before. But I will say it will take intentional training around behavioral health, intentional experience around behavioral health. So those people are greeted with the sensitivity and urgency that someone who is bleeding is met with because that's not occurring with every single person that responds to those calls. So I just want to stress that fact. And like I said, community, we are having ongoing conversations about this because we are building what it could be in my opinion. And we have to make it better. Leadership has taken a stance to start doing the work to do so. Thank you. Mayor: Thank you, Counselor. Any other? Counselor Casset and then Counselor Faulkner? Councilor Casset: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you both for being here. And as Counselor Chavez mentioned, you brought it up, so I guess we're going to talk about it now. Although I would say that for members of the community, I know that budget is often where we talk about a lot of policy. I do think ARU is going to take, and the Mobile Integrated Health Office in general, to Counselor Chavez's point, but this is going to take some real thought and conversation. I think that getting some education for us on the various models and how they have been utilized in different communities, speaking with experts across the nation. We're not unique here. We weren't all of a sudden coming up with something else. I mean, this has been experimented with across the country. And there are models that are housed within fire and EMS. There are models that are housed more in community services and that are much more focused on mental health. We are going to have to take our time to understand what that really means for operations. What can happen if an EMS captain is on the unit and what can't? How does that impact the calls? How does that impact the ability for ARU to serve some of those most vulnerable in the community? I would echo Counselor Travis's comment around the idea that this is separate. It's not. Especially when I put on my public health hat, we're talking about upstream. So when you're looking at 22,000 calls, when you're looking at calls for structure fires, so much of this has to do with people not being in a place where they can take care of themselves. And I've said this a few times recently in various meetings. Unfortunately, a lot of the things that are now falling on the city's plate are not things that municipalities typically did. These are not our, I mean, because you're right, normally municipalities, we're streets, we're parks, we're well, we're utilities, not everyone else's. We are fire, we're PD, and that's our basic legal services. We've taken on things like housing and community services and youth and family services because other levels of government that traditionally would have taken care of these things aren't there. So we are having to think about how we're going to be doing this in a new way. And it is going to be a really important conversation. The other thing that's happened here that's frustrating for me, and while Counselor Chavez is correct that we don't get to assign personnel, we are the policymaking body here. And when we established the ARU, we established a model that had emergency medical services, case management, and actually police. We had the conversation about taking police off, and I remember that being a decision that was made around, "Okay, this isn't actually, we're not finding the need for PD as much." However, that policy direction never changed at the governing body level, and that's where my frustration is, because that is the conversation that we get to have. When we set up ARU, that was the intention. I think myself and Mayor were the only ones that were, it's 2021 on, but that was it. And so again, the conversation around what works best for the community, what works best for the department, what do we have the resources to do, that is a very valid fodder for what we can figure out what we need to do and the differing of opinions, that's fine. And whether or not this can be effective with the fire department, with the city, with the resources that we have, yes, let's have that conversation. That's an important conversation. But decisions were made without the governing body who gave a clear policy direction, and that policy direction, as far as I know, I never voted on it, that didn't change from a governing body perspective, and that's where my frustration is. I understand that, you know, what I am gathering is it was a little mushy, and good for us to know, that's a good lesson for us that we now get to have this conversation, really deep dive into it, and we will put forward a policy that we can then point to and say, "This is what we would like to see delivered," and that that is how this works. Now, of course, we take into consideration and very much value the opinions and the experiences of everybody who is working in this field, who is impacted by this unit. And that again, conversations that we now very obviously need to have. But a decision wasn't made at this level regarding a policy and a program that has received a lot of attention because it is dealing with a very challenging and visible problem in our community. So we will be having those conversations. I know we are all eager to have those conversations. This will not get solved during budget hearings. This is not going to be the moment that we get to do this. It is where ARU got set up. It's not where we are going to be able to fix this. But I think that that's where a lot of my frustration is coming from with this is that we didn't give direction. We didn't give direction to change course. And unfortunately, that seems to have occurred in a way of how these units operate. So I think that's if... Speaker: If I could just have a sec just to address Counselor Chavis's prior. Sorry, I was trying to get... Councilor Casset: Oh, sorry. I apologize. Go ahead. Speaker: No, no, you're fine. So just so on record for you guys and anybody else that's here, removing the EMS captains from the ARU didn't change any mental health resources they have available. Every paramedic in the city prior to applying to be an EMS captain, it's the same prerequisites. So they have up to that point the same amount of training. Our guys are no strangers to mental health calls. I would say over 50 to 60% of the stuff they go on that's EMS related stems from drug abuse, alcohol abuse, homelessness. I mean, we run in this constantly. So it's not a different face per se. It's also the same uniform, same apparatus responding. So it's not an intimidating approach when you have an ambulance responding versus the ARU. They still approach that with the same sensitivity knowing it's a mental health issue. And all of our members understand that and they're very used to it. It's nothing new to them, but just so you're aware, the mental health resources are still there. That EMS captain is just now on their SUV responding from a different place in the city is what it is. Councilor: Thank you. Oh, it's not my turn. Is it my turn? It's not. Mayor: Mayor, you're in charge. Councilor: I want to say I love public safety. I love police. I love fire. I have had amazing experiences in working with youth and that's where my heart is. I know you have training. I really do. But it's a completely different model and that's what I'm referring to. And I will not say that a person who's having a behavioral health crisis will receive help from an ambulance the same way they receive help from a set of behavioral health experts, case managers, and a more private type of transport. I think it's two different models. So to, so when I'm talking about experience, I'm talking about experiencing within a model that mimics wraparound services and a level of safety and privacy that some of people suffering from behavioral health may need. So by no means, I have very close friends and people I respect within FIRE who I know do the work and I advocate a lot because you guys do the work. You guys are very influential within community. You do all of that. But there are two different models that come with two different experiences. And what I'm saying is in knowing someone within crisis who may be right at the edge of taking their own life, they may be willing to go to the hospital for help in a more private way than being transported in ambulance. And community members have spoken about that. And so that's just, that's what I mean. So I want to say I know you guys are, I know how you respond. You guys can't, none of us, I think, can go a long period of time without encountering someone that could use the help within behavioral health. It's just everywhere. It's significant and the system in the nation is broken and has been. And so, yeah, thank you for that work. But I do think the experience within the model and all of those people who had experience within that model and that offering was there for those individuals that needed a specific type of help. It's valuable and it may not be a sign like a huge amount of people but it's a life saved so it matter, like it's significant enough. Does that make sense? Speaker: Yeah. And just to be clear, I wasn't trying to argue removal of case managers, right? So that experience still stays. We keep those case managers. What I'm saying is just removing the EMS captain off of that unit doesn't take away from the resource that's available in the event of that special transport. Councilor: Great. Thank you. Oops. Walker or... Speaker: I can suggest something. I think Counselor Castro is going to have something along the same lines as Counselor Chavis. So maybe let her finish and we can stay on a common thread and then maybe Counselor Garcia and I could jump in. Mayor: Go right ahead. Counselor Garcia, I'll seat. Councilor Garcia: Thank you, Mr. Mayor and thank you, colleagues. You know, obviously this is a very topic that's very passionate for many in our community. I think that the challenge here, taking aside our whether it's biased or unbiased towards the ARU, is to identify how it's working. And if we focus on, I think just about everyone up here would be an advocate for the ARU and its concept. How do we make it work and how do we make it work effectively? Because we could sit up here all day long and argue about behavioral health and whether we have it or we don't have it, how it's being addressed. However, when you take a look at fiscally, the cost of what one unit, what ARU unit costs you and how to operate that and how do we build that into this budget, how do we actually make it work effectively? How do we make it work effectively 24 hours a day, seven days a week? Because that's the reality of what you need. But how do we do it? And so how do we get there? And again, how do we truly focus on which department it belongs in? And how do we get, you know, in the beginning, and I'll just give you my first observation. The beginning, this seemed to be working great compared from a lot of people's perspective, but now it's not working so great. It seems like just from public looking out from the outside in and being on the governing body and looking and seeing how this thing's working. And so we don't want to pit one department against another or create a whole another department. But there are, there should be conversations into how this is managed and how do we, how do we support the resources for this, this department if it truly is something that has the backing of this, this governing body. Okay. Yeah, sure. Speaker: Sure. And just to be clear, I think that for me, one of the things that was concerning was the discussion of diverting resources, right? It's about getting more resources to where they need. And we clearly have not allocated the proper resources to ARU, but that doesn't mean that we should be dividing resources from what we're considering fire because right now fire is both ARU and the rest of the team. Thank you. Yeah. And to add to that, just like you said, when it comes to resources we're trying to manage, keep in mind that that EMS captain is also supporting 10 frontline ambulance units with paramedics staffed. So they're running calls all day, these 10 units, and they require the support of that EMS captain 24 hours a day as well. And to your point, Mr. Gonzalez, you're doing a lot of the same work and we're getting similar training, but to Councilor Travis's point, we need specialized teams. This is a specialized team. We talk about our Swiss Army knives in PD. This is your Swiss Army knife in fire. Don't work. Thank you. Councilor Faulkner: So I wanted to hear my fellow, my colleagues, and what I can say from having several meetings about this and a lot of discussion around this, everyone on this council is very passionate about this issue. What I will say is that the union represents the majority of the fire department, and the ARU is a very significant thing that I do think we need to support, but I do think we need to also listen to what the union is telling us: this is not a good fit, right? And they're the boots on the ground, and we say we listen to staff, and we say we listen, they're the boots on the ground. So if they are saying that, and then everything that was said just now goes more to the point that this is not a good fit, that the better fit would be in community services because we have the union saying this isn't a good fit. We have Councilor Chavis saying that we have issues with these two things being together. There's the division will not go away if we move it into a space where it gets the resources it needs. And we have the union telling us, and I think if we're honest, we have leadership from the fire department also telling us this is not a good fit. They're the boots on the ground, and we need to listen to them. Councilor Cassett: Sorry. I know we've all, as you all well know, and it's been in the paper, we've all had a lot of communication about the future of ARU, what it's going to look like. I think to Councilor Cassett's point and Councilor Chavez's, people were pretty upset and felt like there was a structural dismantling of ARU with no discussion, and that's what made everybody really upset. And I know a lot of it probably comes down to financial resources and where they come from, and everybody worried about their budgets being cut, and you guys worried about your materials and all the things you guys need in your trucks and it being cut from your budget. I think we probably need to have as a council a whole holistic discussion about what it looks like, the future, where it's going, how we fund it. Right. So, probably this back and forth is like the beginning of it, but it's going to take time to decide what happens. I wonder, I am a social worker, and coming from the mental health perspective, I wonder how many referrals are mental health addiction-based. You don't have to have that answer. In my mind, I just wonder out of 22,000 calls, like you said, probably at least 60% or more are probably mental health, like addiction-based calls. That would be my question. I think that would be probably... Yeah, I'm sure we have the numbers. I don't have them on my... Not to you. I'm just... I'm just thinking out loud. And to add to your point, I mean, most anything could be solved with a bigger budget, right? So, as you could imagine, it's difficult for our 160 plus members to see the shortfalls of our budget, right? To see the needs for trucks and staffing and then see new ARU units put on or new case managers hired while we're kind of squeezing our guys out of their resources is what it feels like to them. We're not negating the fact that the mental health issue is there or that needs respect or that it needs tons of resources, but it's difficult for the other members that we also represent to see that happen in real time in front of them. Obviously, with a bigger budget, we could probably manage all of that, right? Right. So, I think it's going to be more of a long-term discussion. I know we've got committees and people coming together and the public community members who are super concerned. And when I think about public safety, I remember we were all running and people were talking about it, public safety, and what is it, and are you for ARU? And we all were fully supported and know the impactful work that that can do in the community when it's well supported. And when I think of public safety, probably similar to Councilor Chavez, coming from an education perspective, working in schools, working in community mental health, I always think like prevention over response. If we're doing a lot of these, a lot of this work in the community preventatively, you guys, it might cut down on the amount of your calls, who might be able to buy better equipment, better protective gear, better trucks. If we can do some, like, frontload some of that and deal with it through a lot of these case management services, wraparound services, then we can save money. We can save the city money. You guys can have more money. Like, again, I think if we have this holistic discussion on what this looks like in the community and how impactful it can be, it could save all of us money, including the city. So, just thinking about that, like public safety, prevention as public safety, just kind of thinking about that. So thanks. Councilor Cassett: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, everybody. I think that I don't believe that this conversation has led to an inevitable conclusion that separating it out. I think that that depends on what we wanted to do. From what I am seeing in my limited research that I've been trying to read while also trying to read an entire budget book and parent at the end of the school year, which is fun, there's very distinct roles that something like an ARU will play if it is housed in community services versus if it is housed and integrated in fire and EMS. And that's again a policy decision that we have to make. So I mean, I don't think that there is a, we don't have an answer right now because that's a very distinct decision we have to make. The decision seems to have, I mean, again, where my frustration is, is that the decision seems to have been made because it is not integrated right now, and that was not the policy decision that I know I had voted on. And so that is where a lot of my frustration is. Again, I think the conversation obviously, very obviously needs to happen. The other thing that I'll say, from the public health standpoint, the best way to make a public health program fail is to underfund it. And so that's hard because to Councilor Travis's point, work funding is hard. It is a really, this is a complex issue. And so, one of our issues always has been with the ARU is that we, you know, stood it up as a single unit and it was operating, you know, five days a week from 7 to 11. And I remember that moment of being like, this really probably doesn't feel like it's going to make much of an impact. But also most of these programs to see short-term effects, you're looking at a few years, and we have not had this running at its full capacity for a few years for long-term impacts like we're talking about cutting down on the 22,000 calls a decade. I mean, this, this really is long-term investment that we have to decide whether or not we want to make it in this way. The other thing that Councilor Castro has brought up a few times is, you know, do we need to be looking at more of a regional approach, and how do we work with the county? How do we leverage those resources? This is a much bigger conversation. But right now, I would argue that to say that the ARU has not changed is not fully accurate. We still do have mental health calls going out. There is still EMS available. Those two things are true, but the integration does matter and does have an impact on the experience of somebody who is, you know, having the ARU respond to a call because we actually don't call the ARU. My understanding is the ARU sits there and they basically watch, watch the little screen go and then decide what calls they can, they can take. My understanding is without an EMS captain on there, there's can be some differentiation on can you take them to the hospital if you need to or do you need to call in a unit and also the, the chain of command, which I don't understand very well. You guys have a very structured chain of command. It is not something that is within my world. But again, I really think that as we're having these conversations, I do want to listen to, you know, the experience of individuals who have been there. I also know that there's individuals, many, not just one that you all think of, that have, were part of mobile integrated health that are really unhappy with what's happened. Somebody who's just left, and individuals who have left a long time ago who were, I think, assistant chiefs, battalion chiefs, I mean, we're, we're getting up in the, in the structure, and I want to be speaking with those individuals as well. I think understanding where the initial resources came from. I think that when we put up Miho, we brought in money from lead. I understand it is that from the, from the police department. So I mean, if we're taking ARU out, we're taking that funding too. I mean, it's not just that it gets, you know, to be integrated in. All of these pieces are things that we really, really need to understand. But I really want to hear from some state and national experts as well on both models, on both pieces of this model, and what are the pros and cons and how do we figure this out because that's at the end of the day. I think that we're going to have to make that tough decision, and people are going to be unhappy. That's pretty normal for most decisions that we make. So anyway, thank you. Councilor Faulkner: Just to be clear, there's a lot of rumors going around that we are cutting the ARU and we've gotten rid of positions and a whole lot of, I want, I would call them scare tactics, and I'm no judgment about the people who are fearful of this program being impacted. I will, is it not true we have not cut it in the budget? It is the same as it has always been. So anyone who's afraid that we are cutting this program back, we literally have not done that, we're just trying to figure out what is the best way to proceed. Councilor Busante: Thank you, Mayor. I would just like to say that having worked in large organizations, having worked and being very familiar with chain of command and how it's structured, I think institutional knowledge is important, especially in carrying something forward. But we need to be careful that we don't get bogged down in what didn't work or what is, we need to look at the programs. We need to look at this program and how it's functioning today. We need to look at what works today, and we need to talk to the people who are doing the work or have been recently doing the work, and we need to find out what worked and what didn't. Because things that may have worked five or 10 years ago don't, don't necessarily apply today. And so I, I think I would just caution all of us that, you know, that institutional knowledge is important, but we really need to talk to the people who are doing the work today to find out what they need to best support them. Thank you. Councilor Pagali: Thank you, Mayor. I would just like to reiterate what my colleagues have said and ask that we can have a study session on this. We can bring in some experts. We can bring in folks from other organizations, other places this has worked, and talk it through as a, as a whole governing body. So, I would just like to put that on the potential list of study sessions. Mayor: Thank you. Anybody else? Well, I'm going to jump into the fun as well. From my recollection, ARU started off as an administration policy decision. It was not the governing body. Got involved by allocating funding to continue the project, as well as allocating funding for the growth of it for a second unit. And so for the decisions that are being made currently, it continues with that tradition. There was not any type of resolution that was brought forward to say we are creating an ARU and this is the way it's going to go. So this is where it was again deemed that this is an administrative decision, and so these are the decisions we've moved forward with, and it's also reflective in the upcoming budget. I do want to reiterate and restate because this is a, it seems like Groundhog Day where I keep having to say this over and over and over and over again, where ARU is a priority of my administration. And so with any program, there are ups and there are downs, and you have to modify to make sure that it is successful. I appreciate the feedback from our union reps, but it's not leaving fire in the immediate future. This is where we've got to figure out how we evolve with this process. This is a conversation we will have with the county when we start meeting with them because this is an issue that just does not involve the city. It does not involve just the county. It involves service providers and most importantly, it involves the public. And so happy to have a governing body session if folks want, but right now there are already plans to have it next Tuesday. Correct me if I'm wrong, Councilor Chavez, at the public safety meeting. We've been in conversation with Councilor Castro to have a conversation around ARU at an upcoming quality of life meeting. If folks want to continue the conversation, happy to do so. But I think what we're trying to do on the administration side is provide a structure where we can get folks help. That's the overall intention. And so, given that we do have somebody who has been part of the process with Chief Moya, interim City Manager Moya, from your perspective, and you've been involved in this process since it was conceived, you were a battalion chief when it was created, right? Or can you just give us your insight? Yes, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. I would, I've been waiting for this moment. I just want to say I'm the one person that's been here the longest in the fire department, and nobody's asked me my opinion, and it kind of irritates me because I was there during all these things. I was the assistant chief that ran it, and I was the chief for the last four years. Technically, still am, and nobody's asked me my opinion, and it kind of hurts me that they're taking other opinions and not mine. And that really bothers me. I have been completely honest. This is publicly. I've wanted to leave because I've been part of this program. I have managed the program for the last four years, and nobody's asked me my opinion. They ask everybody else's opinion, and it really bugs me because what I had to manage for the last four years is not easy. I'm the last one left of the two assistant chiefs that was here. Chief Johnson left in November, and nobody asked me what happened in those timelines. They're asking about it now, and that's great, but nobody asked me when it was happening and why these things are coming up now and why we're trying to readjust. So, it really just bothers me that nobody's asked me my opinion, and I'm still here, and it just, it's sad that I'm sitting here trying to defend what I've done for the last four years, and I'm continuing to do, and what Chief Odenkirk and Chief Rizzo have done is we're just trying to make it better, and we have been through the ups and downs, and I've been through all those things. I've been there as the assistant chief. I was directly in charge of that program, and then when I became the chief, I've been in charge for the last four years, and nobody's asked me what my thoughts were or what we do moving forward. So, I would just like to have people ask me my opinion and stop worrying about everybody else's opinion and people that don't work here anymore and ask me mine because that really irritates me that nobody's asked me my opinion or why we're doing what we're doing, and I'm still here wanting to work here. Well, you guys are making it really hard, especially with these conversations because nobody's ever asked me my opinion. And that just, thank you, Mayor. But I won't go down my soapbox, and I won't go down there anymore. But that is why it's been frustrating for all of us in this room is I was here when it started, and how, I mean, I don't, we're not going down that road, but it was, it was a very long road, and I just wish people would understand where I'm coming from, and but not some of you have not asked me my opinion, and that just really, I wish they would. So you've got the floor. I mean, this now is the... I think it needs to be looked at, and I think it needs to be what we are doing. I think it's, it's, it's, we have lost people. We have lost a lot of people, and I can't figure it out. I was there when we lost a battalion chief. I was there when we lost some people. We've reallocated resources. I will be very honest. When I became, when I was here, when I brought Nicole Alton, she was a contracted employee, and we were really worried about losing her contract. So me and Director OOA brought her on permanently, and that's why we did what we did. And then I lost my battalion chief. He works here. So I made him in charge. What I did with that money when I got rid of it, and I'll be public, is I took that and made a fiscal administrator. The fire department has never had anybody to run our budget. I thought that was the best resource we could ever have. And I made Nicole Ala director of this division. Yes, we did get rid of one position, and that's what I did with it. The rest of the positions are still there. The EMS captains, what I get frustrated is you guys can make policies. I've never heard of that policy, or I would have never changed it by the book, but I'm the director. If I need to make a change that I see need to be fit, that's what Chief Odenkirk did there in the back. That's what he did. I could have been the city manager and stopped it, but he gave me a good reason. I'm still sitting here. I'm not trying to say it's right or wrong, but we're just trying different models. And I think what we need to look forward is the current administration that's sitting in the room. Listen to them. They have been here. They're going to continue to be here. They're going to continue to support all of you. It might not have worked in the past a certain way, but that doesn't mean it can't work in the future. I, I, I hope she's watching. My wife, we got into it last night because my wife runs the county program. I'm the one guy sitting in this room that should have some say, and I'll get slapped in the head if she tells me you better get out, get rid of it because my wife runs the Miho program for the county. So, I think it's just look at the models. I think we have a lot of heated arguments. I think over the last four weeks, we've all got our opinions. I think we need to come up with a common opinion. I think we need to come up with a common goal. I think we need to stop being divided and remember why we're all here. I remember when I started 21, 5 years ago, what we came here for. And a lot of these firefighters are the same thing. We came here to help people. I think we need to stop worrying and come to a solution to start helping people. That is why this unit is here. It's not to what's best and what's not best and and fight over how many units were on the, how many people were assigned to it. I think what we need to do is come with it. I will tell you for the last four years I've been stood in front of most of you as the chief, and I've told you I'm the crutch of the Miho program because I have to look at nine divisions when I was sitting here as the fire chief. Now I'm looking at the whole city, and I think that's what people don't understand is you have to pick and choose. And when I would have to choose between the Miho area division or whatever this is, I had to look at the whole thing equally. I couldn't pick one or the other because that's unfair. But I think that I have told everybody that again this year. We looked at it the same way. We looked at what we thought was better. I looked at it a whole different perspective because I'm now the city manager. And I, I had to do the same thing. Everybody had brought me, you know, a lot of requests to me and the Mayor, and we had to make decisions. I think that's what we have done over the last four years. But I think we can make good decisions. But I think the key to this whole thing is stop dividing. Start working towards a plan forward. Stop letting outside influence influence our decisions. Work with what we have and do what's best for the city moving forward. And I think that's the best option, and we need to stop. I've been here a long time, and this has never gone away, and we keep dividing it instead of being part of it. And one thing I have always remembered is they're going to wear uniforms as long as I'm the chief and as long as I'm city manager. And we need to make them feel valued. The case managers is what I'm talking about now. We are divided. We are treating them differently. We need to make them the same, and we need to make them feel valued. One conversation I've had with a few of them about four years ago was like we keep thinking you're going to, we're going to lose our jobs. You, I'm, I'm not a head hunter. I want everybody to work here. I want people to have jobs. I want them to feel secure that they want to be here. I think that's what, what it's all about. I think all of you up here on the dais, the same way. We want people to want to be at work. We want them to feel comfortable working, and all we're doing is dividing it even more. And I think so we need to come up with a solution. I think we have a starting plan, and I think we need to, we need to get to a solution and move forward. But I would like to be at least invited to the conversation, and I think we need to know that the current administration, this Chief Odenkirk, the interim chief, is doing a good job. He has different perspectives. He has a different mindset. He hasn't had to look at it like I've had to. He's walking into it fresh. He didn't have to deal with the past. I'm the last of the past. So, I want to just hear him out, hear out what we have for the future, and then you guys make a good determination, and we move forward. I think this last five weeks has been a lot, and I think we need to move forward. I hear that word a lot. I also hear another word, but I won't bring it up for Councilor Faulkner. But I think that's what we need to do moving forward is just work together and stop dividing and make sure we're on the same team, and then this conversation will not be so heated and so, I can't say the word, but I'm not the word there, but I'll, I'll end with that. Mayor, thank you for your time. Mayor: Thank you. Thank you. And just to reiterate and reinforce, your restructuring was an administrative decision, just like the creation of ARU and just like interim Chief Odenkirk's decisions or administrative roles. Now again, if the governing body wants to get, governing body has full authority to say this is the way we want it to be restructured, then bring legislation forward. But we as the administration have the ability to say, given the tools we have in the tool belt right now and given the job we have to protect, serve, and support the residents of Santa Fe, we're going to rely on the experts to get the job done. So that's how we are moving forward at the moment, and that is why we are more than happy to have the conversation as a whole entire governing body to develop a system, a model, that not only we all support, but most importantly, we know that it's going to integrate with our community, not only the city. Again, I keep going back to this whole regional perspective because mental health does not stop at the city of Santa Fe limits. And so much, much, much more work to come on this topic. With that, I do have to move us forward just because we've got budget, and we've spent about an hour solely on this. I thank you for your work. Thank you all. We really appreciate all the newly elected officials. Welcome. We look forward to working with you guys. Thank you for being here. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Next presentation, please, Madam City Clerk. Next presentation is the Fiscal Year 2027 Proposed Budget Presentation. Interim City Manager Brian Moya, Deputy City Manager Andrea Phillips, and Budget Officer Andy Hopkins are here to present. All right. Well, as Andy comes up, you're going to start, Mayor, and then I'll go next. Okay. So, I'll let Andy tee up. I don't have lengthy remarks just because I know Andy's got a very thorough presentation for us. I just want to say I'm thankful that we've begun a process where we're approaching the budget differently. And in particular, my role, I was on the other side of the fence as a councilor, and now as the Mayor, I get to work with an amazing team to develop a proposed budget. And so the immediate priority, as with any budget, is to make sure it's balanced and then utilize any additional resources for allocation. And so once we got through the work of balancing the budget, which took some time, my first priority was to support our city employees. And so I wish I could have offered a higher equivalent raise of 2.5% because, by golly, our team members deserve it. I wanted to ensure that we allowed for any additional supports that were needed. And we approached this budget differently because there were things where we began to add funding for things such as deferred maintenance that was never included in the budget in the past. We are now doing that in this budget. We are doing things that had not been in the budget, at least for the last two years, which is allocating money to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. In years past, it would say it was there, but then we'd have to come back with a one-time funding appropriation. We're not doing that. We're allocating it with this proposed budget. We're adding new positions to get the city off the reliance of expensive contractors, whether that is through parks or even through finance. We are now going to begin the long process of building back the capacity that city government and the residents of Santa Fe deserve. There are other critical positions that we're bringing back on board that are going to help with some of the challenges we're seeing with IRA. We're creating a new position in the Police Department that will help review solely police materials. That has been a backlog for our team. As mentioned, ARU, we're not cutting ARU. So hopefully that will stop that conversation. And the goal is to begin a process of having a much more efficient response unit. There are things where I wish I can allocate much more money, but those of us that were on the governing body at the time probably remember the extensive conversations we had around the bicycle pedestrian infrastructure resolution. We are now dedicating resources in this budget, which had never been done in the past. So, we're slowly getting to a process, and I apologize to the residents because it's not as easy as flipping a switch to build a better government. It does take time, and we're starting that process of building a more efficient, more responsive government for the residents of Santa Fe that truly maximizes their taxpayer investment. And so over the next, at minimum, three days, I think we might add much more time because I want to ensure that we as a body have sufficient time to discuss this budget proposal. But hopefully, as we begin to unpack this proposal, we see the shifting, the investment in the workforce, the investment in residents, the investment in the infrastructure and systems in our city. And ultimately, we see that we began to solely prioritize residents and their input into how their money is spent. So, with that, I'll hand it off to the City Manager. I know he has much more to say. I'm just thankful to all of the city workforce that was part of this process. Andy, Andrea, Brian, everybody, the governing body. We had our session in early January. I think Brian will talk about that. But I'm thankful we've had a much more robust and holistic process. And it's going to change. It's going to morph. This is, as with anything you do the first time, you learn where the hiccups are. We'll adjust. I'm confident on that. So, with that, I'll hand it off to the Interim City Manager. Mr. Mayor, thank you, Mayor, City Councilors, and staff. I just want to start by thanking you all for taking this in. I want to also thank Andy, Chris Parker, Christina Martinez, and Anita Mandita for all their hard work. Andy, I know this is your last one, so I want to thank you, especially from us, for everything you've done helping me learn a different side of the house. So I appreciate it, learning how to deal with the whole city and not just my department. So I appreciate everything you've done, especially the last 25 years. So thank you, Andy. To Councilor Pi Faulkner, Chair of the Finance Committee, thank you. Thank you for taking this on. I want to also thank my staff. They're all in the back. They don't have to stand up. They're all scared back there. They're worried about the next five days. But I want to thank you all. We took a different approach. Thank you, Ben. Thank you. I really want to thank you for letting me do it a little differently. Me sitting back there last year, I wanted to do it differently. I wanted to give you more insight. I wanted to make sure you guys were heard. So I think as we went through this, I hope you guys know I heard you. I wish I could have given you everything you asked for, just like the Mayor said, but I appreciate all of you, especially putting up with me and all my one rule. So thank you very much, staff, for being here tonight. A lot of energy has gone into this production of this document. The governing body approved a resolution last September to set this new budget process. Departments have developed goals, objectives, and key performance indicators this year, presented on November 19th. I want to thank Rod Gold. He led this governing body strategic plan session in January and public input sessions and budget priorities. This turned into adoption of the governing body's four-year strategic goals and FY27 budget priorities in February, to the extent that we could not only try to carry forward our regular city operations but expanding to meet those community and elected official priorities. We have been working with departments for the last three months to evaluate the needs and their requests. We have held two rounds of budget meetings with the departments, and always they are more than, and all their requests that they needed across the city. I want to thank them. We brought back a little different process this year, councilors, just so you're aware. We let them have an exit. So normally in the past, they would just, we would all get the budgets, but we did an exit meeting before they got their budget. So we did an initial round of budget hearings, and then at the end, they got to come back, see what they got, get to ask questions, and that's not happened in the past. So we changed that priority a little bit to let them have some input and ask questions to us of why we did what we did, and they could, we actually did some adjustments at the end as well that we were able to do a little bit different. So that really was a better process. The Mayor's 20 FY27 proposed budget maintains necessary public service for the compensation for city employees to ensure they are recruiting, retaining our excellent public servants. A lot of this budget has to do with day-to-day work of the city in maintaining a lot of stuff, addressing basic municipal functions, allowing for expansion of evaluations of programs and services, and plan for the future. We have a lot of available resources for the future of this budget. This response is a balanced operating budget that provides an annual spending plan, city operations cost of 16 departments and multiple funds. The total proposed budget for this all FY27 is $521 million, and that includes salaries and benefits for over 1,600 employees. This budget also reflects the city's reorganization recently approved by the governing body. Revenues are expected to increase slightly to the projected modest growth of the GRT, lodgers tax, and fees. Expenses are also proposed to be higher than this fiscal year. Almost all departments were increased in funds, and no positions were eliminated in this process, in this budgetary process. In fact, in addition, 14 positions are budgeted in key areas throughout this budget. This keeps us moving forward in areas that we think are needed throughout the city. We've also included a 2.5% increase across the board, equivalent to that, as long as the unions agree or they would like to change them. And with that, I will let Andy Hopkins take the mic and walk us through this new exciting budget. Thank you, Brian. Mr. Mayor and members of the governing body. Just to start out with, I'll note for everyone, maybe who may be new, this is an annual operating budget. It does not include the capital budget or CIP budget, as we often know, which is a multi-year budget. We are looking at presenting that to you sometime this summer as we develop that process. But just keep in mind, this isn't necessarily going to reflect every single dollar the city plans to spend, the multi-year capital budget process, because of the workload. It's something that we generally do after the new year begins, just because we have carry forward. We have other issues that really we need to look at before we can get a firm grasp on what the CIP budget will look like. So that's a preview, if you will, of things to come. Just a couple of minor items on the primer. Some of you in the Finance Committee may remember some of this discussed. The annual budget serves as a program and policy roadmap for a given fiscal year. The city's fiscal year runs from July 1st to June 30th. A budget is not merely a financial document. It is better defined as a policy document with numbers. It outlines the city's goals for the years in question and summarizes the resources that the city is dedicating to attain those goals. A budget is forward-looking. It reflects projected costs and revenue sources and synthesizes these with the goals of the Mayor, governing body, and the community at large in order to form a plan for how city services will be delivered and how they will be paid for. As part of the budget and other financial reporting, you may hear us often discuss actuals, which detail revenues received and expenses spent. In other words, not a projection or an appropriation for something. It's actual money coming in and coming out of the city's bank accounts. Actuals are actually summarized in the city's Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, or ACFR, and the annual audit. Unlike the budget, the ACFR is backward-looking, meaning it summarizes the previous fiscal year's activities rather than the current upcoming years as the budget does, and it focuses on those actuals once again. Also, it reflects adjustments and findings of the city's annual financial audit. Quite often, we also discuss encumbrances, which are monies committed to future purchases and payments for services, meaning these are commitments of money. They are not money out the door yet. They are money that we promise to pay vendor A for service or good X. Encumbrances are approved by the governing body in the form of contracts and purchase orders through which the city will receive and/or spend its financial resources. The budget is divided into approximately 80 funds. Funds serve as the city's most basic financial unit. They separate resources and expenditures into distinct categories, each dedicated to specific purposes. This ensures that money is used only as intended and prevents inappropriate commingling of funds. Some funds, such as the General Fund and the Half Percent Capital Gross Receipts Tax Fund (you may hear us refer to as Fund 365), may support funds that are not fully self-sustaining. These subsidies are recorded as transfers between funds. So when you see that "transfers to other funds" line in the department section, nine times out of ten those are subsidies to other funds. The vast majority of the rest of it are transfers to the debt service payments or the debt service funds to pay for the city's service on its bonded debt. During the annual budget process, the budget office works with departments and senior staff to ensure that each fund is balanced with revenues and other sources, including both transfers and available balances covering all planned expenditures. Then, at the end of each fiscal year, a fund's revenues minus expenditures determine its ending balance. A surplus increases this balance. A deficit reduces it. Through the course of a fiscal year, available balances may be appropriated for one-time needs or other purposes through a Budget Adjustment Request, or BAR. Per state law, the city must maintain a General Fund reserve equal to one-twelfth of current budgeted expenditures, not including transfers, which limits the amounts available for such appropriations in the General Fund. It's important to note, though, because BARs for prior year carryforwards and other purposes are approved throughout the fiscal year, this one-twelfth state-mandated minimum reserve varies as the budget changes. As the General Fund expenditure budget increases, the required reserve increases as well. So it is not a fixed target. Every time we change the General Fund budget, the minimum reserve changes. And the General Fund, by the way, is the only fund that has this minimum reserve requirement. We do have other funds, such as risk health funds, where there may be an actuarial balance that we need to maintain, but that is not a state requirement. That is just a good governance best practices deal. It's not necessarily mandated by any law. Generally, you'll hear us talk about several different kinds of funds. There are seven main fund types in the city's budget and in pretty much all governmental accounting. The General Fund, of course, we're most all familiar with. It is generally the city's largest fund and is pretty much always discretionary in nature, meaning it can be used for almost any purpose as long as that purpose doesn't conflict with applicable federal, state, and local laws. Special Revenue Funds, and I'll note that the bullet points here, the numbers in there actually correspond to the first digit of the fund, except for number seven, which actually those funds start with eight. But I didn't want to go from six to eight. Special Revenue Funds again start with two. They are dedicated to specific purposes, such as revenues that are dedicated to certain uses and state federal grants. Most of the city's state and federal grants are located in Special Revenue Funds. They also include dedicated resources such as the GRT that is dedicated to the police is in a Special Revenue Fund. The Opioid Settlement Fund, which we are just kind of gearing up with, is set up as a Special Revenue Fund because that is a dedicated revenue source. It can only be used for certain limited purposes. Therefore, it's considered a Special Revenue Fund. Three series Capital Improvement Funds, or CIP Funds, are used for multi-year capital projects, usually funded by bond issues or grants. The CIP budget is reviewed and approved, as I mentioned before, via a separate process. Thus, it is generally not included in this operating budget. The one exception is the aforementioned Fund 365. It is not technically a CIP Fund because it does not directly fund project expenditures out of it. Rather, it has transfers out of it to fund projects as well as generally other acceptable uses such as funding debt service payments. That's those are those debt service transfers I talked about earlier, as well as one-time emergency purchases and capital maintenance. So staff and costs that are associated with maintenance of things like facilities, streets may often be funded out of that Fund 365. It also provides, along with the General Fund, it is the most, it is the biggest subsidizer of other funds in the city. What we do generally in the budget process is we will look at first, where do we have enterprise funds or other funds that may not be fully self-supporting? In those funds, we look at, okay, are they paying any debt? Are they paying for any capital outlay, in other words, capital purchases, vehicle equipment, things like that? Also, do they have significant capital maintenance burdens? These are the things that can be funded from that half percent GRT Fund 365. Other operational needs, if needed, are then subsidized from the General Fund. Type four funds, Debt Service, are used to pay back the city's issuance of debt for CIP projects and are supported by the city's tax and/or fee revenues. Generally, almost all of our debt is backed by GRT. But we do have some enterprise debt, for example, that is backed by water fees or wastewater fees. Then we have five series funds, Enterprise Funds. We are generally defined as self-supporting or proprietary funds, such as the Water Fund or Environmental Services Fund. Some city funds, however, like the Municipal Recreation Complex Fund, are not fully self-supporting and thus must be subsidized by other funds, again, the 365 Fund or the General Fund. Six, Internal Service Funds. This is where the often discussed services of other departments live. It also is where the city's health and dental programs live that are paid back through the payroll deductions. These do not generally provide services directly to the public. Rather, they support departments like police, fire, parks in their roles. So, they pay for things like IT services, computer network, Verizon accounts, they pay for fleet vehicles. Again, they pay for employee health costs or the city's share of employee health costs. Actually, both city and employee shares come into these funds for that purpose and other such internal services. In other words, budget actually is an example of an internal service, although it's located in the General Fund. You wouldn't need to pay me the big money if you didn't have all police, fire, parks, planning, and land use out there needing the services of a budget division, a payroll division, an HR, an IT, all those. So that's why we call them internal service. They go to support the departments that actually directly serve the public. Finally, we have Trust and Agency Funds. Again, these actually start with eight in our current system. They're generally considered as separate entities. They're kind of an off-the-books type of thing. Examples of these are the Buckman Direct Diversion and the Solid Waste Management Agency, which are joint or compact-funded entities. The city does provide fiscal agent services for both of these. We do include them in, for example, our reporting to the DFA and other entities, but the council generally does not oversee or manage their budgets. Their own boards manage those budgets. The council, of course, has authority, I believe, to approve their members, but the council does not directly approve their budget, for example. Next, just briefly, we want to talk about how is the city organized? City services are provided by various organizations and offices, some of which report directly to the City Manager, others which are led by elected officials such as the Municipal Court Judge. All of these, to some extent, as prescribed by law and ordinance, are subject to the oversight of the governing body. In other words, you find folks on the City Council, the Mayor, and/or the City Manager. A department is the highest level within the city's organizational structure. It is led by a department director who is usually supervised by the City Manager. Some areas have directors that report directly to the Mayor and/or Council, such as the City Attorney. Within a department, there may be one or more divisions. Pretty much every organizational unit within the city has at minimum a department and a division. Within a department, there may be one or more divisions. These divisions are led by directors that report directly to their assigned department's director. All city functions exist within the framework of departments and divisions. These are the most basic organizational entities within government. And some areas, some of your larger areas, divisions such as streets, transit, parking, are further divided into what's called sections. And some of those sections even are further divided into what are called units. Again, not every area, such as budget, for example, we have four people. We have a relatively small operating budget. The organizational tree stops at the budget division, of which I am the director. There are no sections within budget, and of course, without sections, you can't have units. So, just briefly, this is the organizational chart that was approved and adopted on April 29th of 2026. You will also find this in the budget book in the beginning. Not going to belabor this or anything, just we put that in there just to remind us all of what the new structure is, and the budget book will reflect, does reflect this updated structure. Briefly talking about the budget calendar, back in September 10th of 2025, the City Council adopted Resolution 2025-58, which specified various improvements to the budget process. In January 2026, the budget memo was released. We had budget training sessions with all the departments, and departments began working on their budget requests. In February, the budget office reviewed all those requests. We held budget review meetings with the departments, the Mayor, and the City Manager. March through April, the proposed budget was finalized. May 13th, that's today, we introduce the budget resolution at the governing body meeting. May 14th and 15th, tomorrow and Friday, the governing body budget review hearings are held. I have heard tell that we are going to have a session next week, although I have not been informed exactly when yet. So I'm looking forward to that with great anticipation. On May 26th, the Finance Committee budget review will review the budget and hopefully recommend approval by the governing body. May 27th, the governing body will adopt the FY27 annual operating budget, which we really hope you do because June 1st is our deadline for submittal of the FY27 annual operating budget to the New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration. So that is a hard and fast deadline. We must submit our budget to the state by June 1st. In this budget process, throughout, we are listening to our community. On September 10th, 2025, again, the governing body adopted a resolution outlining a new and improved budget process. Then on January 8th of 2026, we held a civic engagement meeting in the Convention Center with various members of the public where they gave us a lot of good input, told us what their goals were, what their pain points are, and all that good stuff. Then of course, we held a study session with the members of the City Council on January 23rd. In all these outlets or all these sessions, we identify key services, pain points, and critical service delivery goals. All input from all these meetings were taken into account when the proposed FY27 budget was submitted and reviewed. The proposed FY budget directs resources to areas raised highest in importance by the community. So we are taking all of these things into account. They're not just held for fun. We actually are listening to it. I know the Mayor and the City Manager have taken all these things to heart. They are also, of course, listening to you all and what you want to see out of this budget. So it is definitely taking all these things into account. Back on February 11th, the Council adopted three key four-year strategic goals and budget priorities. The first of which, the City of Santa Fe will serve the whole community by supporting development of more housing across the continuum of needs with a focus on affordable and attainable housing. Second, the City of Santa Fe will invest in improving city systems and infrastructure to ensure efficient and effective use of city resources, which will enhance service delivery and customer service. This may include streamlining internal processes and procedures, leveraging technology for better asset management, prioritizing data-driven decision making, and recruiting and retraining highly qualified city staff. And then finally, number three, the City of Santa Fe will work to reduce crime and increase public safety. This may include ensuring safer streets, crosswalks, and corridors, noise and speed enforcement to reduce traffic and pedestrian accidents, and to enhance the quality of life, and strategic policing efforts to reduce crime and ensure public safety. Of course, as with any strategic goals, we're not going to get all the way there this year. This is a long-term goal. Like many things that we're implementing this year, it's not all going to be done this year. We're just kicking off the process and really thinking about how we attain these goals over the long term. One of the key factors in this budget, we are investing in our greatest resource, our employees. We are now in this year, FY27. We will be completing the final phase four of the classification and compensation study recommendations, which include salary increases in various areas. We also made room in the budget to provide a 2.5% cost of living increase for all city employees. In some cases, those are set aside for the bargaining unit to determine how they will proceed with distributing it. So they are generally budgeted in the salaries for non-union, but for the unions, they are kind of set aside so they can determine, "We want it all even," or, "We want this guy to make a little bit more than this guy," which is, of course, their right to do. One of the key things in this budget, and again, this is just a very, we're taking our baby steps toward it, but one of the things that the Mayor outlined was he wanted to initiate a multi-year transition from contracted services to more in-house work. In other words, rather than pay a contractor and the profit level that goes with it to perform city services, we need to look at where city staff could do this more efficiently. Now, of course, this doesn't mean that the end goal is that we're going to have no contracts and everything's done by city personnel. There are a lot of cases where it makes sense to use contracted labor. Maybe you need to, for something like a streets project, you need to ramp up the labor that you have really quickly and then just as quickly when the project's done, have them go do other things for other people. It may not be cost-efficient to have a huge labor staff for streets improvements, say on the books all the time, because what are they going to do in winter? They're not really going to be doing much. There are also other areas where there may be specialized equipment, such as the example I always use is if you've all ever seen those giant trucks that have a giant claw in the back that holds a big tree in it. That's something that because we don't regularly plant trees all the time, that's a very expensive piece of equipment that the city does not necessarily invest in. It makes sense to have a contractor do it when we need that service provided. So that's a much more efficient way to do things. But in this budget, we will also, of course, as outlined in the budget book, we're adding 14 new positions and also funding other personnel changes to enhance staffing in critical areas. And I'll get to the details of that on the next slide here. First off, we have two new positions and associated equipment in the Constituent Services Division, including a broadcast and streaming production specialist to schedule, facilitate, and produce the public-facing online components of all meetings held at Council Chambers. Also, a language translator that was converted from a part-time to a full-time position for FY27, which will support effective written and oral communication with our Spanish-speaking constituents, vendors, and community members. This has been a long-standing need, and we are definitely trying to get better resources allocated to that purpose in this budget. Next, we have two new project manager positions and associated equipment in the Economic Development Division, funded primarily by freezing the Community Development Director position. The Community Development, as part of the reorganization that was just approved, the Community Development super department, cabinet, whatever you call it, you know, they always called it a department, but it's a department with departments underneath it. So logically, my brain did not like that one little bit. So the super department or cabinet of Community Development now no longer exists. The components of that have been put into other departments. Next, we have reclassification of one Emergency Management Coordinator position to an Assistant Director position in the Emergency Management Department, which was funded in part by a reduction to this department's contractual services budget. We have an allocation of $250,000 set aside for legislative support staff in the City Council's contractual services budget, pending a final determination of the position's job duties, salary levels, and budgetary impact. Once we get a final study done on that and get some good recommendations and have a plan moving forward, we will be using that money hopefully to hire those positions that are recommended and agreed to to give you all some staff support. Next, we have one new Information Systems Manager position and associated equipment in the Human Resources Department to enable the city to maximize the Tyler Human Capital Management System's capabilities, enhance efficiency, and reduce the department's reliance on outside contractors. Next, we have two new positions in the Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency or MRA, including an Administrative Manager and a Project Manager and associated equipment to assist with the MRA's growing responsibilities. We have next two new project manager positions and associated equipment in the Affordable Housing Division and one refunded or unfrozen engineer position in the Technical Review Division of the Planning and Land Use Department to assist with the department's service delivery efforts and ongoing initiatives. Next, we have one new Public Information Officer and associated equipment, plus one Public Records Specialist that was transferred from the City Attorney's Office to enhance the Police Department's ability to comply with Inspection of Public Records Act requirements, meet statutory deadlines, reduce backlog, and uphold the highest standards of transparency and accountability. This is one of the pain points that Police has been talking about for quite a while, that because requests come in so fast and furious for Police Department activities, they've just been overwhelmed. So this will be a critical resource for that. Next, we have a new Parks Crew comprising seven positions: one Parks Superintendent, two Parks Maintenance Worker Senior positions, and four Parks Maintenance Workers, plus associated equipment and supplies, which are intended to address the need for vegetation management, particularly in the city's medians, and also for homeless encampment cleanups. Because most of this function is currently performed by contracted labor, the cost of the crew was partially offset by a reduction of $200,000 in the Parks contractual services budget, which will allow the division to transition from the current contracted service to in-house service delivery without significant disruption. This is an example of what I was talking about before, where we're trying to transition from contracted labor to in-house labor where it makes sense to do so. Next, reclassification of two positions to better address changing personnel needs at the Santa Fe Regional Airport. This includes the reclassification of an Airport Shuttle Driver position to an Airport Security Officer position and the reclassification of a Custodian position to a Mechanic Supervisor One position. And finally, last but not least, we have a new Assistant Operations Manager and associated equipment in the Tourism Department to address critical operational needs at the Convention Center. One other significant addition to this budget. One of the things I know as many of you on the Council have been talking about, we certainly have been talking about in the budget office, is the need to set aside strategic reserves and keep those not so much for, "What do I need today?" but we need to keep them for emergency needs that may come up in the future. We had the sinkhole on Guadalupe Street. Nobody could have anticipated that. Maybe somebody could have, but we didn't. We had a bridge collapse, a pedestrian bridge collapse. We don't know what's happening next. That's the point. The point is we need to set aside some reserves to be able to deal with those things when they come up. The worst situation we could be in is we had good revenues for a while, so we spent it on what we in budget like to call candy and records. And then we end up with no reserves to deal with critical emergency needs that come up. So in this budget, and one more thing, these rainy day funds, it's critical to provide them when the economy can support them, because you will need them when the economic downturn comes. We don't know when it will come exactly, but we know the economy is cyclical. We do know that it will come. So the budget includes funding for a strategic reserve of $1.5 million for critical repairs and maintenance as needed for the city's vast, widely dispersed, and rapidly aging facilities, including the very one that we are sitting in now. Our facilities are very old. Sam Bernett can tell you, I'm sure, could regale you for hours of stories about the city's facilities and how much they need some addressing, some consolidation, all kinds of improvements. Then we also have a strategic reserve of $1.5 million for future high-priority vehicle and equipment replacement needs. These will be for vehicles that we can't necessarily fit into the balanced budget, but we want to set aside some money to be able to deal with. Okay, we have to have this vehicle on the road to do inspections or whatever it may be. It just broke or it got squashed by a dinosaur, whatever it may be. We need to be able to replace it and replace it quickly. So that's what that's for. Again, David Hanio, our fleet manager, can speak pretty well on this as well. Finally, we have a capital reserve of $8.9 million for new and ongoing capital improvement projects, including emergency projects like the aforementioned sinkhole. This can be used for capital improvement needs that come up, as well as, of course, we will be dealing with that more when we talk about the CIP budget. But again, the critical thing is the operating budget needs to set aside those reserves so we have them for those rainy days that we don't know when they're coming, but we know they're coming. This is a new addition to the budget this year, a graph of what my taxes pay for. These are defined as property tax and GRT. So you can see, and this includes not just the general fund, not even just the general fund and the half-percent capital GRT fund. This includes dedicated GRT allocations such as in police, wastewater, and environmental services. It includes areas where we may be transferring GRT from General Fund 365 or other funds to other funds to subsidize the acceptable needs funded by that. This includes things like subsidies, debt service payments, the whole nine yards. You can see it's a pretty wide variety of things. Just about every city entity you will see in here except for tourism. Tourism is 100% funded by the lodgers tax. That's why it does not appear here. Of course, tourism is an important and large department. It's just not included there because it doesn't receive any property tax or GRT. Okay, I'm not going to belabor this too much. Just a general quick snapshot of all funds revenues. Of course, the largest two categories of this, as always, are taxes, including GRT, property tax, also lodgers tax, gasoline tax, and a few other things. Those make up the largest share of the budget, followed by fees and service charges. Here also in the budget, you can just kind of see this in a graphic format. You can see taxes provide almost half, or 43%, of all the city's budget, with fees and services coming in at a pretty close second at 33%. Between those two, you can see that's pretty much the majority of the pie right there. The GRT does include a factor in a projected 6.7% and a projected property tax increase of 10.9%. Both of these projected increases were developed in conjunction with Riley White, our contracted economist over at the UNM Anderson School. The short answer there is we've been saying the last few years GRT growth is still positive, but it is markedly leveling off. I know we've been saying that for a while, but this year we are actually seeing it just about get leveled. The last couple of years we found that we were a little bit too conservative. GRT grew a little bit faster than we thought it would. So we had a little bit of money left for one-time expenses. This year so far, it's really looking like we're going to be right on the money in our projections and not really have any extra, which yes, is good for our projection abilities and stuff, but maybe not so good for having extra walking around money, if you will. But again, GRT growth is definitely slowing down, and it is always volatile. One of the nice things about property tax, I always say the property tax graph looks like this. The GRT graph looks like this over time. It can have wide swings up and down. So it is a much more difficult revenue source to predict and rely on. Okay, again, just a quick snapshot of all funds expenditures. As you can see, personnel is a very, very large proportion of our budget. Operating expenses, which includes everything from contractuals, utilities, repairs and maintenance, things of that nature, and other costs, definitely provide a large share of the cost as well. Transfers also are large just because we have a lot of need to subsidize other funds, plus pay our debt service. And again, you can see graphically it kind of helps express it better. You can see in the all funds salaries and benefits, while not making up the majority of the costs, they take a pretty big bite of that pie. Moving on, here we just added another graph in there that we will put in the final budget book. This is exactly the same numbers, but instead of dividing it up between personnel, services, operating, capital outlay, we divide it up by department. So you can see there, out of the city's whole budget, how much goes to each department. As you can see, in the all funds, public works and public utilities make up the largest share of that budget, a significant slice of that pie. Moving on to the general fund, again, just a quick snapshot. Taxes, even more than in the all funds, taxes are the dominant revenue source by far in the general fund. And of course, GRT is the dominant share of that tax. Fees and service charges do come in a distant second, along with some other areas. You can really, actually, it brings it home a lot better in this pie chart. You can see taxes are the Pac-Man in this graph, eating everything else. It is by far, not even close, nothing else comes even close to the share of taxes in the general fund as far as share of expenditures, or I'm sorry, share of revenues, I should say. And expenditures, personnel services play an even larger role here in the general fund than they do in all funds. They're the largest single share in all funds, but in general fund, it's just even more dominant, if you will. By far, the largest expense is our people. And again, the revenue pie or expenditure pie here tells the story. Those blue and red pieces on the top are all personnel services. You can see they make up more than well over half of the city's budget for the general fund. Once again, this is another one, again, taking the same pie and just dividing it rather than by cost type, dividing it into departments. In the general fund, unlike the all funds, you can see police and fire, appropriately enough in blue and red there on either side, take up the largest majority of general fund, as well as police. Public works comes in third after police and fire. Between those three, you've got pretty much almost the whole general fund budget right there. So, just to give you a quick graphical representation of how that looks as far as where the budget goes by department. Okay, I'll just go over these last slides pretty quickly. We just wanted to give you some quick highlights for each department. In community engagement, the proposed budget of $3.6 million decreased by $181,000, or 4.7%, from last year's original budget. The general fund budget for community engagement increased by the same amount, or is the same amount. Although, because there was an elections budget last year, the increase amount and the percentage is slightly different. In this case, it increased by $418,236, or 13%, from the FY26 budget. In community engagement, we fund 23 positions, reflecting 23 full-time equivalents, or FTEs. Basically, what is the difference between a position and an FTE? A position is just a body. I am a position. But there may be cases where you have Joe over here who is a 50% part-time position. Or you may have Mary over here that is funded half by one department, half the other. So that might be a case where in a department you'll see one position but 0.5 FTE or 0.3 FTE because that's the equivalent of a full-time position that's funded in that department. In community services, that's $42.9 million, which was an increase of $2.6 million, or 6.4%, from the original FY26 budget. On the general fund side, it's $19.4 million, a slight decrease of $476,451, or 2.4%, from the original FY26 budget. Just a quick note, this did not result from any reduction in services or anything like that. This is a result of the vagaries of subsidies, transfers. Subsidies go up and down according to need. In this case, the subsidy for the Community Development Fund, which funds the human services, children and youth, veteran services, and homelessness programs. Again, the services are not going down in those areas. It's just the subsidy needed was not quite as big this year. And in community services, we fund 227 positions, or 202.5 FTE. Again, this is an area where you can see there's a big disparity between those numbers because we have some part-time folks, we have some split-funded positions, or actually not in this one, but we do have a significant number of part-time folks there, which is why those numbers are so different from each other. Okay, the newly formed Department of Economic Development and Creative Industries, which, just as a reminder for you, includes the former economic development, but also adds the Arts and Culture Department and the Santa Fe Film Office. All three of those were formerly departments. Now, they are each divisions within the Economic Development and Creative Industries Department. Its budget of just about $8.95 million was increased by $968,394, or 12.1%, from the original budget of last year, well, the current year, I should say. The department's general fund budget of $3.1 million increased by $274,877, or 9.6%, from the original FY26 budget. Again, the former Arts and Culture Department and Santa Fe Film Office were reorganized as divisions within this department, and its proposed budget includes 22 positions, equating to 22 FTE emergency management. The proposed budget of $1.1 million increased by $155,000, or 16.4%, from the original FY26 budget. The general fund budget of $717,812 increased by $381,888, or 113.7%, from the original FY26 budget. There was a variety of factors at play here, and I'm sure we'll get into that over the next couple of days. The budget does include funding for two positions, according to FTE Finance Department. The proposed budget of $22.7 million decreased by $3.7 million, or 13.9%, from the original FY26 budget. The general fund budget of $8.8 million increased by a very small $73,814, or 0.8%, from the FY26 budget. The budget does include funding for 58.4 positions, or 58.4 FTE. Again, whenever you see this position count that is not a whole number or natural number, whatever you call it, that is because of a split-funded position. Fire Department: $40.9 million, almost $41 million, and increased by $5.1 million, or 14.1%, from the original FY26 budget. The general fund budget of $39 million increased by $4.3 million, or 12.4%, from the original budget of the current year. The budget provides funding for 210 positions, or 210 FTE. General Government, which, by the way, just as a reminder, includes the Mayor's Office, the City Council's budget, the City Manager's Office, the City Attorney's Office, Municipal Court, and the Risk Management and Safety functions. Its budget of $24.5 million increased by $3.3 million, or 15.3%, from the original FY26 budget. The FY25 proposed, oops, that shouldn't say 25, sorry about that. General fund budget of $9.6 million increased by $1.5 million, or 17.9%, from the original FY26 budget. The proposed budget includes funding for 62.27 positions, or 62.27 FTE, again, incorporating a split-funded position there. Human Resources: The budget of $33.8 million increased by $1.4 million, or 4.4%, from the original FY26 budget. The general fund budget of $3 million increased by $428,891, or 16.5%, from the current year's original budget and includes funding for 18 positions, or 18 FTE. ITT: The proposed budget of $23.8 million increased by $8.8 million, or 58.7%, from the original FY26 budget. Again, we'll get into those increases. I know some of you have asked about them. We do have answers in the pipeline for that. The budget includes funding for 44.9 positions, or 44.9 FTE. The MRA: The proposed budget is $674,847, increased by $80,262, or 13.5%, from the original FY26 budget and includes funding for three positions, or three FTE. The Planning and Land Use Department: The proposed budget of $18.6 million increased by $1.6 million, or 9.6%, from the original FY26 budget. The general fund budget of $13.8 million increased by $1.7 million, or 13.9%, from the original FY26 budget. Just a reminder, the former Affordable Housing Department was reorganized as a division within the Planning and Land Use Department. So you will see the Affordable Housing Department included as a division of the Planning and Land Use Department in the budget book. The overall budget includes funding for 69 positions, or 69 FTE. Police Department: The proposed budget of $47.8 million increased by $5.7 million, or 13.6%. The proposed general fund budget of $40 million increased by $3.2 million, or 8.7%, from the original FY26 budget and includes funding for 242 positions, or 242 FTE. Public Utilities budget of $100.4 million decreased by $277,000, or 0.3%, a very slight overall decrease percentage-wise. One item of note here: during FY26, the department created the new Conservation and Sustainability Division in the department. It's focused on water conservation and reuse, environmental sustainability, and the work of Keep Santa Fe Beautiful. The FY27 Public Utilities Department includes funding for 259.7 positions and equivalent FTE. Public Works: Almost at the end here. Proposed budget of $80.5 million increased by $8.8 million, or 12.3%, from the original current year budget. The proposed general fund budget of $34 million increased by $3.8 million, or 12.5%, from the current year budget. The proposed budget includes funding for 341 positions, or 341.7 positions, I should say, or 340.7 FTE. The Regional Airport Department: $7.7 million for FY27, increased by $2.4 million, or 43.8%, from the original FY26 budget. It includes funding for 37 positions, or 37 FTE. Finally, Tourism: The proposed FY27 budget of $18.3 million increased by $2 million, or 12.4%, from the original FY26 budget. This is entirely funded by lodgers tax. The Tourism budget includes funding for 49 positions, or 49 FTE. Having gotten through that, we will now get to the part where you get to pick my brain here. So I will stand for any questions. Thank you very much. I will do that. Any questions from the governing body members? Councilor Faulkner. I would just like to thank staff. As Finance Chair, I think we've spent the last three weeks really digging into the budget. I know that a lot of the councilors have done some heavy, heavy lifts, and I will note that the administration, every ask that I have had, the administration has, maybe couldn't get it in that moment, but they did get answers to us, and they are providing us with the information that we need to make sound decisions as a council. I want to thank City Manager, Acting City Manager Moya, and Andrea Phillips, and Andy, and Anita, and I could not possibly remember all the names of all the people who have really tried hard to give the council information that we needed as we needed it. I want to thank my colleagues on the dais because I think I can say that this council is a very active and interested council and is very devoted to doing the job that we are supposed to do as a council when it comes to the budget. I would like to thank the Mayor also because he has worked with me on a lot of things that we had to figure out. I just want to appreciate everyone involved. The citizens of Santa Fe have to know that this budget has actually been a collaboration of councilors, staff, and the Mayor. So, I just want to note all the people who are doing the heavy lift to get this done. Questions? Councilor Casset. Thank you so much, Mayor. I'm just curious about process at this juncture because we have a room chuck full of people. I know that we have two days of budget hearings coming up. So, I'm curious about whether or not we wanted to do deep dives at this moment, if there will be some opportunity for deep dives over the next couple of days or moving into next week. I just, I'm... Mr. Mayor, Councilor Casset, I would highly recommend that we wait until tomorrow, okay, Friday, to get into the deep dive. Not all of my staff are here. This is kind of just meant to be a PowerPoint introduction to the budget and the budget process. We, of course, as you know, as Councilor Faulkner mentioned, we are in the process of answering many of your questions. We will probably still be doing that tomorrow while the hearings are going on. Not only questions that you asked during the hearings, but still catching up to some of the questions you have asked in the past. You've asked a lot of great questions. I'm not complaining here, don't get me wrong, but some of these questions are going to take a little bit of time to fully flesh out. So, we are working full-time on those and just need a little bit of maybe breathing room, at least until tomorrow morning, to catch up to those a little bit. Yeah, understandable. I know at least I've only seen my own tranche of questions, and that's quite a lift for you all. So, thank you. I just wanted to make sure that this wasn't our only opportunity for kind of these generalized questions. I know we'll deep dive into the departments. I really do want to thank, as Councilor Faulkner mentioned, everybody who's been involved. I really want to thank staff and City Manager and Deputy City Manager. I know we've spent a lot of time on the phone together recently. I know this is a heavy lift. I've expressed my concerns around how late in the game we are. Well, not late in the game, but you know, it's much later than we usually do budget hearings and compressing them into these two days. So I think what I've seen from staff and from my colleagues has been this just incredible, you know, like get to it, get it done, understanding that, you know, we're trying something new this year. So I really appreciate it because getting those questions out and getting those answered and all the information that you all have been able to bring back to us to try to see how much we can fit in. I know that we're already looking at extension for another day next week. So thank you to everybody who's getting that onto their calendar because I know it's a little bit more challenging last minute. So, looking forward to seeing a lot of you and happy to spend this very last budget with you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilor. I just, so the public is aware, Mayor Pro Tem and I met with the Mayor and the City Manager and the Deputy City Manager, who's also the Acting Finance Director, today, and we have put time aside next week because we're getting a lot of information, and the council needs time to read it and digest it and then have another opportunity to have a hearing if we need it next week. Then we also have the Finance Committee hearing on the 26th. So I think we've negotiated a space where we can have more hearings if we need to have them. Councilor Castro. In the interest also of informing folks, thank you so much, City Clerk, for getting us all of the spreadsheets from all of the departments. I just want to make one more request since we were talking about it. Andy, I am so sorry. Could we get a list of all our investments and where we are investing our public dollars, please? Thank you. Any other questions, comments? Being none, I think you're off the hook, Andy. We will see you bright and early tomorrow. Okay. Thank you. We are nearing the 7:00 hour, and we usually, for rules, go directly to petitions from the floor. So is there a motion somebody would like to make? I would like to move that we move directly to petitions from the floor and then resume the regular order of business. Mr. Mayor, can I actually, can I make an amendment to that? Can we actually go, I know some people are here for petitions, but some people are also here for public comment. So can I, I would recommend that we do petitions from the floor, then public comment on bills, so item 17 and item 18, and then back to the regular order of business if that's amenable. Second. Okay. I will withdraw my motion. I make that motion and I second that motion. Okay. We've got a motion and a second. Any discussion there? None. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Certainly, Mr. Mayor. But I do want to just confirm. So, we're going to do petitions from the floor, then to item 17, then to item 18, and back to regular business. Yes. So, petitions from the floor, public comment, and then back to regular business was the motion. Awesome. Thank you. Councilor Bamante? Yes. Councilor Cass? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Travis? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Fagali? Yes. Councilor Garcia? Yes. Councilor Barrett? Yes. Motion passed. Okay. We will now proceed to item 17, which is petitions from the floor. I do know we have a lot of members of the public that are here to speak to public hearings for bills. This is not the time to do so. That will be preceding this item. So, anybody that wants to come and address the governing body on a matter that is not public comment on the bills that will be heard tonight, now is the time to do so. Please step up to the podium. Mayor: Can I just say real quick, I can let my staff go. I have a bunch of staff back there. If staff, if you're back there, you can be released. You guys are okay to leave. And just for a heads up for folks, sometimes it might be new to folks, we will be speaking and this is not the time to speak to these items. We've got an introduction of, no, no, let me, sorry, I apologize, the bill approving the ground lease of development agreement city-owned building the Midtown Visual Arts Center. So now is not the time to speak to that. We also have the bill around traffic ordinance that will be later. So those two items, if you're going to speak to those, it's after public comment. So it's coming, but now is just public comment on anything. So with that being said, please step up. You have two minutes. Please just identify yourself by name and district number, please. Hold on one second and we need to have the attendee in the back, our IT team, start the two-minute clock. That way folks know. Your, your, I don't know my district number. My apologies. Okay. My name is Brooklyn Friedman and I just wanted to ask the counselors and the mayor to reconsider instead of doing astroturf for the various fields throughout the city, to abolish that and go back to natural surfaces for several reasons. It's very toxic for the environment. It's really bad for the athletes that are playing on it. And additionally, it retains a lot of heat. So instead of doing astroturf, I would like to ask the city to reconsider and going back to natural surfaces instead of doing astroturf fields throughout the city. That's it. Thank you. All right. So I'm up here to comment. We're not, please identify yourself. I'm not identifying. We've already established this. Sorry, sir. I'm just asking you to please follow the rules. I'm not. We've established this. Do not ask me it again next time I am here. It's my job to ensure that members of the public follow. Whatever. Whatever rules. Okay. So, you guys want to say that you're all about public health? One, these police officers, these fire department people, they are not mental health specialists. They are great people at doing their jobs. They don't need to go home and be psychiatrists and play psychiatrists because they're not and they shouldn't have to be. Mental health doesn't start at 7:00 and end at 5:00. So, the team that you guys need to do is fund that team separately. Give them the money they need, not have it come up with anything else, and leave the fire department and the police do their jobs. Their job is there to protect and serve the community and the people. Sometimes they do better times than others. But two, you guys are wasting our money. Again, you guys complain about water. Well, you just built all these homes. That's bringing in more people. That's more water waste. That's more usage. You talk about traffic. You talk about a 10-year plan. No. When you bring in those people, everything changes. Do you not understand? By bringing in all that, it is changing our city. We are going from the city different to the city of the same. We are becoming LA. We are becoming Albuquerque. I don't want that for my city. I love being the city different, but you guys are changing that. We need to go back. Stop messing with our history. Stop playing with people's jobs and livelihoods because you don't understand. When you do not work with the people, the people are going to stop working with you. I told you I'd give you an opportunity. I have not seen anything good come from you yet. Prove me wrong. Prove me wrong. I'll apologize to you personally, but the second you prove me wrong. Thank you, sir. Your time is up. Accept it, but prove me wrong. Next speaker, please. Good evening. Let me put this down a little bit. My name is Natasha Derell and I'm here with Los Alamos Study Group and we oppose all nuclear weapons manufacturing and the expansion of the plutonium pit productions. As you know, it is 90% increase. We are increasing this faster than we can ever imagine. It is going under the noses of the community. It is going just completely out of what we can control and what we can predict. If we look at what's happened and what has been the history just even in New Mexico, we have done irreversible damage to our agriculture, to our soil, to our people, to the health, to the air. And what are we even doing across seas in the Middle East? This is just atrocious. We have a responsibility right here to stop it. This is a critical and pivotal time in history. And the fact that this is not being spoken about more often in conversation when we are in the heart of it is crazy. Straight up. It's crazy. It is, it's beyond just the point of anything that is formalized or nice to put. It's just, it's so absurd. We have also a responsibility to move to renewable energy. We have such a beautiful opportunity and responsibility to start renewing and moving what we have right now in our just our fiscal, our moral responsibility, our hearts as human beings. It's all of it. And none of it makes sense. You can't fiscally make sense of this. You can't. Morally, it's absurd. It's heartbreaking. It's traumatizing. Nobody wants it. Not artists, not activists, not community members. It's just this isn't something that people sign up for. This isn't something people say, "Hey, I want to pay for this." I've never had somebody have a conversation and say, "Yep, this is, this is where I want my hard-earned money to go." So, Thank you so much. My name is Shane Brown. I live in Taos, New Mexico, and I volunteer with the Los Alamos Study Group. I want to list off a few past resolutions that the governing body has used to oppose plutonium pit production and a present one in Michigan. Actually from the city of Santa Fe 2003, number 64, a resolution objecting to the location of a modern pit facility in northern New Mexico and directing the city clerk to inform federal authorities to the objection. City of Santa Fe 200817, objecting to the proposed nuclear weapons complex transformation activities at Los Alamos, including expanded pit production and directing the city clerk to inform federal authorities to the objection. Now, most recently in Michigan, April 1st, 2026, the Ypsilanti Township Board of Trustees passed a resolution declaring strong opposition to Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Michigan developing a nuclear research facility. The 10-page resolution from the township cites many concerns and the council said to local press that the university had not been forthcoming with all the information about the facility, does not consider environmental concerns or the increased threat of targeting by foreign adversaries. Debbie Swanson, township clerk said, "We are up against a very powerful organization, but we can read, we can talk, we can represent our people. You can never shut us up or stop us from doing that." I actually view this as a bit of, um, kind of forcing your hand or checkmating you to actually believe in your own agency, believe in your ability to voice against this monster or believe in silence and complicity and the economic Ponzi scheme that is the nuclear weapons industry. So, please be brave and work with us. I apologize. We're not, we don't, to not allow public commentary. So, if you do support what somebody's saying, feel free to just like do so by waving your hands. We don't want to get into a situation where people are clapping or booing each other. So, best way is just to wave your hands. All right. Ready for me? Okay. My name is Lewis DLA. I'm out of District 2. Greetings, mayor and counselors. I want to talk with you a little bit about workforce housing. We like the Midtown development that's been going on so far and what we wanted to make sure there would be slots in there for ASFE workers and workers for the city of Santa Fe beyond the police. I don't have to tell you all the importance of having as many people who work for the city live in the city. Right now, we have over a thousand employees here who do not live within the city limits. Primary reason being cost and access to housing in the city. The city of Chicago has offered a permanent affordable housing system. They're fighting their tax just like we're being fought here at the city. I know our tax is eventually going to make its way through the courts and we will win it. When that time happens, I'm hoping that the city puts a permanent affordable housing for our workforces with an emphasis on skilled workers, people like our CDL holders, our public service workers like our front-facing librarians, our land use divisions, and our transit drivers. One of the examples I like to use is out of Vienna, Austria. That is in the European, in the EU, and over 40% of their city's housing units are social housing. It provides housing for the majority of their city renters and despite how their city's population has grown over the past several decades, Vienna has continued to build affordable, beautiful social housing for not only their entire population, but for people who want to move into that area. And I know that's possible here in Santa Fe. But that's Europe. This is America. We have an American version that we can use, and that's the Taos Pueblo. That's a thousand years ago it was built and it's the oldest continuously inhabited community in the United States. That's a model that we could easily develop here in Santa Fe. To put that in modern layman's terms, that's medium density housing that's concentrated and provides simple services for everyone. A Santa Fe flair version of the same Taos Pueblo model would be something that would not only make Santa Fe a place on the national map. It would also be something for us to make it clear that Santa Fe is a place where people can live, work, and thrive and would benefit every single person in this room and every single person in our community. Thanks folks. Good evening, city council. My name is Dylan Schwiggle. I work here in the city, mostly around social services, homeless services. I'm here tonight to just raise concern about what I believe is a serious crisis the city's facing in terms of our shelter capacity and our shelter beds. As it is right now, all of the shelters in town are already at capacity and many of them have wait lists. We are very well below the number of shelter beds, shelter spaces that we need given the population of unhoused that are here in this city. I know that from, I believe, December to March there was a near 10% increase in the census of people living out on the street. That's a pretty rapid increase over a short amount of time and I think that given the state of the economy, particularly the housing market, the cost of living, that number is only going to continue to go up. So we're already working at a deficit as things are and there's a lot of questions in the air about what is going to happen in terms of services. I know there's a lengthy discussion about the ARU and what needs to be figured out there. There's a lot of questions about what is going to happen at 2801 Cerrillos Road, especially with the Urban Alchemy's service contract there coming to an end pretty soon. That's 100 beds right there that there's uncertainty about. In addition to that, there are efforts to expand upon whether it be shelters or shelter options like pallet shelters, safe parking spaces, and all of these are taking a frustrating amount of time. The article that came out recently about the length of time that is taking for the pallet shelter, the first pallet shelter site to be established, taking almost two years, pallet shelters are meant for crisis management. They're meant for emergencies, and this is an emergency. But at the rate at which we're establishing these sites, it shows a lack of urgency. And so I strongly encourage you to place this issue at high priority when it comes to the city's goals. Thank you. Yep. Feel free to step on it. Hello, my name is Winston Deloreier. I'm a homeowner in the neighborhood right around what was Pete's Place, what's now Agape House. And I know there is a lot of concern in the community. There are issues in the community. I worked at the CVS right by there, and I got a sense of these tensions. But I think there's a real misapprehension. People see the social problems that result from our housing crisis, that result from, people see the homelessness, the suffering, the degradation. And they think, "Oh, if we just get rid of the shelter, that'll push the problem away or that'll get rid of the problem." And in fact, it won't. Having people without shelter, having people, that'll mean more people on the streets, that'll mean more suffering, and that'll mean more degradation, more inhuman conditions. And I really want to second that call. At the moment, it seems, there is no guarantee that that shelter space will continue. And from everything I've heard, there is no certainty that there will be any additional shelter space, especially emergency shelter space, which come winter will be the most urgent, and the lack of that shelter space will cost lives. I also want to second that call to look at housing, how we can further housing for Santa Feans as a right, not as a money-making commodity. Thank you. Everyone, sorry, I'm not used to being on this side of the microphone. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Karina Julig. I'm the local government reporter for the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper. I just wanted to briefly talk about a few things in the budget. And I wanted to, first of all, thank you for your attention to public records and looking into how to better equip the police department in fulfilling that. I know that it's easy to see this as sort of a niche issue. I know that probably the majority of people who talk about EPRA are journalists, attorneys, and people who think that the city is hiding information about UFOs and are unhappy about that. But when we talk about transparency, when we talk about public trust, when we talk about basic city services, I think that public records are a really core part of that, and I thank you for looking into that in the budget. I also know that one of the additional positions that you're bringing in in constituent services is related to, I don't know what the specific intention is, but streaming of meetings in the council chambers. I would respectfully ask you to consider the potential of streaming or recording more of the committee meetings. I think those have really crucial information about topics that we here at the paper, and I'm sure you also hear every day, that people care deeply about when it comes to affordable housing, water, public safety, all of that that would, I think, be a real benefit to the public and obviously to me in doing my job when we try to get that crucial information out there. I know you have to make hard choices every single day about how to allocate resources. Thank you for considering that. Mayor: Are there any other members of the public in the room that would like to speak to anything? And if not, Madam City Clerk, is there anybody online? City Clerk: Yes, Mr. Mayor. There are two hands raised. We'll start with Mary Hall. Mary Hall: Hi. Can you hear me? Mayor: Yes, we can. Mary Hall: Okay, wonderful. As Madame Clerk said, my name is Mary Hall. I live in the county and work and spend money in the city. So good evening, Mayor and Counselors. I have two related issues I'd like to briefly address. First, as you are looking at the budget and also considering the upcoming contract with Urban Alchemy, I'd like to point out that Urban Alchemy, according to their own website and their public statements to the Santa Fe Housing for All Collaborative and the newspaper a few months ago, is first and foremost a job creation program for formerly incarcerated individuals. That's a great mission, but it is not the same as running an emergency homeless shelter and providing services for all unhoused individuals that visit that shelter. Sadly, that dichotomy between their mission and the need in Santa Fe is starkly evident. The former Pete's Place facility that used to house the city's only no-barrier emergency shelter is now, by Urban Alchemy's admission, not an emergency homeless shelter. It's a transitional facility that serves UA's job creation mission. They do not accept overnight guests on an emergency basis. Rather, they assign beds to guests, even holding those beds empty for up to three nights if those assigned guests don't show up, while others on the street are looking for shelter. As a result, Santa Fe, a city with an estimated more than 400 unhoused individuals on the streets every night, Santa Fe does not have a no-barrier emergency shelter. That strikes me as shameful. Secondly, and related to services for the unhoused, Urban Alchemy Street Outreach, the contract that they're wanting to shift money away from to cover overspending on their job creation program. The street outreach program does not replace or replicate in any way a fully staffed, highly trained, functional ARU unit. Please support our unhoused and other neighbors in crisis. Provide a true no-barrier emergency shelter and fully fund and staff the ARU unit. Thank you. Mayor: Next speaker, please. Stephanie Benonato. Stephanie Benonato: Yes, Stephanie Benonato, District 2. Can you hear me? Mayor: Yes, we can hear you. Stephanie Benonato: Okay, great. I'm sorry that you're doing the budget so late and that there doesn't seem to be much opportunity for input from the public. And one thing I wanted to bring up is the supposed savings of $200,000 to switch away from contracts for the parks because that doesn't even come close to paying for the seven new employees. I also want to bring up PZ pool, the closure of that pool. It is indeterminate as to when it's going to open. I now find out that you have emergency funds that are $8 million. You have a GRT half-point or whatever it is, half-percent fund that could be used, and I really wonder when that's going to happen. I'm also wondering why it is that in the past two years at least, even longer really, we've had three pools open for the summer, and now we're only going to have two. And again, I didn't see any training for lifeguards this past spring, and only now is there a named recreation director. And I'm wondering if you can have unsafe conditions at the Paradise weight room where you have somebody who has no training but is offering aerobics classes and hikes and biking and things like that. Why can't you allow people to sign a waiver so that we can swim at Fort Marcy without a lifeguard? And I think that's quite reasonable and something that you can do. And I really hope also that Pettis doesn't have the fate of the Yana Street pool where it becomes a movie set. And then the other thing that I wanted to talk about was EPRA. And again, I'm still waiting for requests that are now about six months old. And I agree with Karina about the need for, I think it's important in terms of transparency. And I hope that, I mean, I would like my requests honored and responded to, and I don't know why there's a holdup, and I have not gotten any sort of projection of date as to when these responses will be made. Mayor: Thank you. Your time is expired. Stephanie Benonato: Yes. Thank you. Mayor: With that being said, can we move to the next agenda item? City Clerk: Oh, another hand raised. Sorry, Mayor. Mayor: Sure. Sure. Rachel Thompson. Rachel Thompson: Yeah. Good evening, Mayor and Counselors. I just want to add my support to the comments just made by Mary Hall. I second everything she says, and I'm concerned based on some of the recent reporting that Urban Alchemy may simply run out of money. They just don't look to be, they don't look like they've managed to figure out a business model that does all of the things that they want to do and that we need them to do. Excuse me. And I also want to second all of Karina's comments about the need for access to information and also the streaming of meetings. So, thank you. Mayor: Are there any other virtual hands raised? City Clerk: No, Mayor. There are no other hands raised. Mayor: Okay. And we move on to the next agenda item, please. City Clerk: Certainly, Mayor. We're moving on to 18. This is public comment on bills. This is first public comment, no action. 18A is consideration of Bill Number 2026-6 and adoption of an ordinance sponsored by Mayor Michael Garcia, Councilor Pilad Faulner, and Councilor Jamie Cassid. It's a bill approving the ground lease and development agreement of a city-owned building, the Midtown Visual Arts Center with Midtown Arts and Design Alliance LLC. And I'm sorry, we have Carly Vindi, Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency Deputy Director here to present. Mayor: Right. So, we'll go and have you give a brief presentation and then we'll go to public comment. Carly Vindi: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the governing body. I promise to keep it brief. I will try and uphold the 10-minute rule once we get our presentation started. So, Mr. Mayor, members of the governing body, I've been looking forward to giving this presentation for quite some time. Actually, last week I was able to give it to the Metropolitan Redevelopment Commission as well as EDAC, our Economic Development Advisory Committee. As a reminder, there's no action tonight. So to give you some context on MADA as their proposal, an ENA has been enacted for quite some time now. We began an ENA with them as of August 31st, 2023. This governing body approved it. Deliverables on their end were approved and submitted as of November. There were multiple extensions given to this ENA, and it later expired as of June 30th, 2025. As of August 29th, 2025, after working with outside counsel, we were able to deliver V1, version one, of the GLDA to MADA and their team. So beyond that context, we share a vision, the city and MADA. We share the vision to build an inclusive new city center to foster creativity, culture, and economic opportunity. As an organization, MADA is about capacity building through co-location. If approved, it will be the future home of nonprofits at different points in their organizational lives. Their definition of the arts is as broad and diverse as the city of Santa Fe and inclusive of all artists, their forms, and backgrounds. MADA has a variety of stakeholders and organizations, as you can tell by the packed house here tonight. They're excited to move on to Midtown, many of which were involved since the beginning of community engagement in 2018. These are just a few of the statements supporting MA from Santa Fe organizations that we all know and love, including organizations like Youthworks, the Santa Fe Indigenous Center, Little Globe, and Creative Startups. They all believe in this project and have been standing strong with the city since the beginning. I won't read any of these quotes because I'm sure they're here to speak for themselves tonight. There are a variety of community benefits, and I'll lay out a few here. I'm sure you saw them all in the GLDA. We'll start with some of the economic benefits. We're able to meet community organizations where they are with sliding scale rents. It is a more green option to renovate the existing visual arts center than build from new. They're also taking advantage of the historic Bruns Army Hospital. There are social equity benefits. This alliance is a product of community engagement and was identified in the community development plan to begin at phase 1A. The community wanted to see MA, or just in general, the reactivation of the visual arts center, come first in our process. And then finally, I apologize that the bottom of my slide is cut off there. And finally, the cultural benefits. The synergies that we expect will strengthen the organizations that we already know are doing fantastic work here in the community. So, moving into the pre-design report, looking at how this vision and capacity building fits into the built environment, the Visual Arts Center will be a mix of office spaces, gallery, and community gathering spaces. The barracks will be a future maker space and training center for Youthworks. The first step is, of course, returning this building, excuse me, to an operable status under the International Building Code. This collection of buildings was designed to fit into a college campus. Our RFP represented how difficult this could be for a future entity to inhabit. In that way, SFAI stepped up to the challenge and created the subsidiary that is MA today. They were also our only respondents to step up to the plate to take this challenge. Moving into the development phasing. I'm trying to move as quickly as possible. Mayor, please move me along if I need to. But the phasing is split up into three phases. The first including Marian and Tipton renovations that includes a bit of HVAC work. Phase two encompassing Tishman. That Tishman renovation does include a bit more in the way of mold remediation, updates to the roof, stucco repairs. And then phase three is a bit more site work with the remediation and renovation of the barracks. MA is well aware of the existing conditions of the building. So they're aware that they have been decommissioned for going on seven years, and repairs have been made by the city as necessary. The existing conditions completed by MA in 2023 was confirmed by the MRA. The VAC, as I said, will need a re-roofing, stucco repair, extensive work to mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, and some mold remediation. The barracks will require even more work in the way of remediation to the existing structure through lead asbestos abatement, MEPs, fire suppression, and ADA improvements. This space was designed, as I said, for an institutional use with the College of Santa Fe. The remodel of the VAC would not be conducive to other commercial entities. Looking now at project costs, and I'm going to see if I can actually make this the right size for our screen. This is broken down into three phases: phase one, two, and three. Phase one comes in just above $7 million, phase two above $11 million, and phase three just under $10 million. These projections in today's dollars include a variety of hard and soft costs. I have those laid out here, but they range from construction renovations to tenant improvements and include multiple contingencies that are mutually beneficial to MA and the city. Soft costs include due diligence costs, project management, legal fees, FFN, financing, etc. So we worked on this development timeline with MA in order to present this to you as proposed and public hearing today. Final action being at the beginning of June. If they are to receive the go-ahead from governing body, they'll begin with schematic design, development site plans, MRA, and land use approvals. We'll make that introduction and work on a seamless account to see through that they can pursue that administrative development plan approval. One clause that we did work out with them is that they cannot reach or start construction until they reach 100% financing. So that's also another clause making sure that we are mutually benefiting each other. There will be no surprises down the line. Their philanthropy is underway, as you'll see a little bit later in the presentation. So, as I said here, phase one is $7 million and some change. They have begun their philanthropy prior to this approval by governing body, if you so choose to, and they have sources committed to date. So looking at this initial phase, they have about $4.5 million committed. $200,000 of that is with capital outlay, the City of Santa Fe being a fiscal sponsor, and that remaining to fundraise is about $2.6 million for phase one. MA will not pursue any additional city funding. So, moving through with their operating pro forma, I mentioned under community benefits that MA will offer sliding scale leases to their tenants. This leasing rate and Tipton Hall facility rentals will cover operating costs and debt service. In addition to this triple net lease, they have three-year startup reserves, capital replacement reserves, operating cost contingencies, as I mentioned, and annual operational philanthropy. So, moving into the key terms of the GLDA, I hope you had the chance to read it, and I want to publicly thank the attorney Marcos Martinez, city attorney, for helping me negotiate these terms and carrying us over the finish line to this introduction and now public hearing. So, general terms include the preliminary 10-year term with the right to increase or, excuse me, renew for up to 50 years. 100% financing is required prior to construction commencement at each phase, and then compliance will be measured throughout this process, throughout the 50 years. And they must meet notification requirements, including quarterly instruction reporting and annual lease roles reporting. So, in addition to these key terms, we also have our mutual protections identified through indemnity clauses and insurance requirements. We have identified all of the insurance that they are required to hold during the term of this agreement. We have quite a few listed above here. Not only will they hold those insurance requirements, but they will be in compliance with the New Mexico Tort Claims Act throughout the life of this agreement, if that is to be adjusted at any point. So that is a very high-level presentation. Mr. Mayor, members of the governing body, I'd be happy to answer any questions now or wait until final action. Unfortunately, this is just the first public hearing. So, I can't ask you any questions as of yet. So, thank you. Mayor: Thank you. We'll go ahead and move on to comment from the public. Same process as our petitions from the floor. You've got two minutes. Please just state your name and district number, and you'll see the timer on the screen and you'll hear a chime once your two minutes has expired. So, please step up to the podium. Mr. Mayor and Council, my name is Jill Cooper Udall. I have been supporting the arts in Santa Fe for over 50 years. And what I found is one thing missing, and that gap is being filled by MA. So, I hope you will listen carefully to all the speakers this evening because what MA will provide for Santa Fe is something it really needs. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, City Council. My name is Michael Tasty. I'm a resident of Rio Arriba County. I'm here in support of the Midtown Arts and Design Alliance. I am a member of the Board of Directors for the SFAI, which the MA is a special project of. I'm not here to speak to you tonight as a board member. My daytime job is as a graphic designer. I work for the Marketing and Communications Department at UNM Taos. I'm not going to speak to you with that hat either. I want to speak to you as an educator. So I've started teaching a graphic design course this summer at UNM. The course is an online asynchronous class. It's open and available to students across the state. We launched the class from UNM Taos. It sold out in 10 minutes. The waitlist filled up in 10 more minutes. And so I come to you today to talk about the workforce development capabilities that MA provides and to show you that there is a real need and a real hunger for workforce development for the creative industries. Thank you very much. Hi, my name is Kim Griffith. My pronouns are they/them, and I'm here with my fellow Jaguar. I live in District 2, and we're both board members at Wise Fool New Mexico. Wise Fool partners with MA, and we're in full support of the project. And we're also on Midtown campus right now, and we're so excited to see what community arts can come to life over the next couple years on that campus. And I have a personal interest in it as an alum from College of Santa Fe. So seeing that campus come to life again means the world to me. So let's support MA. I should have brought a stool, I think. Okay. Good evening, City Council. My name is Vanessa Garcia of District 3, and I've been an active member at Make Santa Fe for the last few years. Make is a community maker space and is truly a community. Hobbyists, artists, fabricators, all different disciplines come together and find a place where they can think outside their specialties and create projects on a larger scale. We have small businesses that run out of the maker space, and we have a kids program, kids programming that shows Santa Fe youth they have career options right here in our city. What I've learned there is simple: when you give people a place to foster creativity, ingenuity, and community, people show up. Midtown Arts and Design Alliance is doing the same thing on a larger scale. Instead of one-on-one relationships, we're building organizational relationships. We're fostering partnerships and collaboration across whole communities. For Make specifically, MA means a dedicated maker space, bringing more opportunities to our youth, more space for local small businesses for economic growth, and the chance to be neighbors to organizations that are doing complimentary work. What Make does in one building, MA does across a whole campus, multiple organizations, real pathways for our youth, space for the next generation of Santa Fe artists, room for small businesses to grow and expand. The plan is here, the community is ready, and those buildings are sitting there empty while we wait. So, please vote yes on the lease. Let's give Midtown back to Santa Fe. Thank you. Hello, my name is Graham Marta. I'm an artist, and I am also a College of Santa Fe graduate. I don't really like public speaking, so excuse me. I can remember what Santa Fe was like when Midtown campus, as it's called now, was really vibrant. The amount of artists that came through, from theater to music to film, the Elder Hostel, and we all dined together. I was there at the time, and I think of how many lives were touched and built by the information we exchanged then, and I can see the difference of Santa Fe without that. I think MA, the plan, is the best I've heard of anything people have discussed. I'm also an active maker at MakeSpace. So, I know how much it will mean to the artist community to have a larger space with a long-term lease and to be able to share information with all the other nonprofits and other artists in one space. The main thing I want to remind everyone is that art is not just commerce. Santa Fe is known as an art city of commerce. But without spaces where artists can come together and learn from our elders and pass on knowledge to people who are younger than us, we don't really have an art community without that. And I think this campus has the potential to really give that to Santa Fe. Thank you. Councilors, Mr. Mayor, thank you for the opportunity to comment on Bill 2026. My name is James Johnson. I'm the executive director of Make Santa Fe. Make is in District 1 and I live in District 3. Make Santa Fe is Santa Fe's maker space, and we're one of the potential partner tenants working with the Midtown Arts and Design Alliance. Make currently supports about 240 members and just over 20 small businesses through our equipment and space access programming. We also offer close to 1,200 seats every year where we teach disciplines like laser cutting, 3D printing, wood shop, sewing, welding, and CNC programming to adults. The Midtown Arts and Design Alliance project at Midtown will afford us the opportunity to extend this educational programming into a kids-focused maker space. In this space, we will have 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC machines, electronics, robotics, and computer programming stations where kids, teens, and their families can learn, build, and thrive together. In later phases of the Midtown project, we'll be able to more than double our existing physical space, which will allow us to serve more members, provide more educational opportunities, and support more small businesses in small-scale crafts and manufacturing. What we're building is bigger than a maker space or any one of the partner organizations. It's workforce development, it's youth engagement, it's entrepreneurship, it's arts access, it's community resilience, and so much more. I hope the council chooses to invest in this project so we can keep the arts, creativity, economic mobility, and workforce development accessible to the people of Santa Fe. Thank you. Hello, Mr. Mayor and Council. My name is Michael Shepard. I've been an educator in Santa Fe for the past 35 years, and I'm the director of Big Sky Learning. I run the youth programming at Make Santa Fe. Our organization has, over the past 35 years, served over 25,000 students in Northern New Mexico. We currently provide STEM programming for other state organizations, working with the New Mexico Rural Library Initiative. For the past eight years, Make Santa Fe has been the hub for the work that we do, creating STEM kits, training teen mentors, and running programming directly there. So I just wanted to let you know that in partnership with Make Santa Fe, Big Sky Learning, and MATA, we have tremendous capacity to reach students statewide through STEM programming and team mentorship programs. So thank you for your time. Can you hear me? Now, can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. Hi, my name is Karen Buller. I live in District 1. I serve on the board of the Santa Fe Indigenous Center. We are here tonight to support our partnership with Midtown Arts and Design Alliance, hence my sign over here. The Native community we serve is deeply involved in arts and making of arts. This partnership will be a positive connection for both of our organizations, and we hope that you will vote to support the joint activities of MATA and the only Indian center in town. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Councilors. My name is Joseph Conungl. I'm a resident of Santa Fe, District 1, a citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation, and a future tenant of MATA, where our architecture and planning practice serves indigenous and underserved communities across the country. I'm here tonight in support of MATA, the Midtown Arts and Design Alliance. Santa Fe has long defined itself as a city of art, culture, and creativity. It is internationally recognized for that identity. But for too long, many emerging artists, young people, indigenous creatives, and working families have struggled to find affordable spaces, opportunities, and pathways to remain here and contribute to the future of the city. MATA represents something different. It is not just simply a development project. It is investment in people, culture, education, and long-term economic development. It creates spaces for local artists, makers, entrepreneurs, educators, and community organizations to grow together in Midtown, a site that has sat under-realized for years. As someone who works nationally in community-centered design and development, I can say clearly projects like this are rare. MATA is leveraging partnerships, private investment, cultural infrastructure, and community leadership in ways that many cities aspire to but struggle to achieve. And importantly, this is about the future of Santa Fe. If we want our young people to stay here, if we want creativity to remain part of the city's identity, and if we want Midtown to become a place of belonging rather than displacement, then we need projects like these that are bold, collaborative, and community-driven. I urge the council to move forward with the project and help make Midtown a place that reflects creativity, diversity, and the potential for Santa Fe itself. Thank you. Mayor and Councilors, city officials, and general public. I'm here to represent Youthworks as former director of operations and current GED instructor/youth mentor. In this proposal, Youthworks is scheduled to inherit and rehabilitate one of the 5,000 square foot barracks to convert into a training workshop with hands-on training centers and space for the outdoor equipment used by our YouthBuild USA and Youth Conservation Corps programs. We will also open a small cafe to serve the partners and visitors in the area, run by youth workers and trainees. Youthworks and our youth will also benefit from the numerous partnerships within this proposal by having immediate access to additional apprenticeships, workshops, and other activities hosted by the alliance of partners and within the larger Midtown development, bringing greater opportunity for youth within the community. I'm also here as a resident of Santa Fe, an advocate for social benefit. As such, I believe that approving this proposal for the Midtown property is the right move for the city. Our youth need more activities, more access, and more hope. This proposal addresses all three by providing places where youth can learn, train, and grow as people, where they can feel comfortable expressing themselves as they develop the skills, experiences, and relationships that will lead them toward maturity and economic viability. I support this proposal and thank you all for this opportunity to express that publicly. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Katie Gross. I'm in District 2 and I wear many hats. One of the hats I'm wearing tonight is as a board member of Little Globe, who is a future tenant of MATA and has been involved in the process since 2018 when it began, helping to collect the stories from community members about what they envision, what they see, and what they would like to have happen with Midtown. And overwhelmingly, people want this to be a place for locals, for creatives, as an opportunity for youth to receive mentorship. I can speak that Little Globe just had to move out of its space because the rent was increased, and luckily they have a new space, but the potential of having a more permanent space with a sliding scale lease would be huge. Nonprofits are faced with so much uncertainty all the time. So having that taken care of is huge. Being able to walk across the hall and connect with other like-minded nonprofits is also huge. Synergy among other creative and like-minded people. I'm also wearing the hat as a community member of Santa Fe who grew up in Santa Fe. I took my first photography class at Warehouse 21 and I can tell you how important it is to have a center that is catered to creativity and arts for youth and to receive mentorship. I took photography classes and documentary studies programs at College of Santa Fe, and I see the potential for a lot of workforce development and mentorship for youth with MATA. So please support this project and all of the hard work that's gone into it. Hello, council members. My name is Ryan Wctor. I've lived in Santa Fe for almost 5 years now in District 2. The reason that I've chosen to call Santa Fe my home is the culture, spirit, people of Santa Fe. Ours is a city of artists, makers, thinkers, dreamers. I am a maker, builder, artist, engineer, educator, and a graduate of St. John's College. I found my artistry and creative expression because of the courses, schools, and education that Make Santa Fe provides to our community. Of late, the institutions of the United States fall into an all-time low. And it is in times like these that we must double down and invest in the institutions that support our community. The institutions of Santa Fe at St. John's College, Santa Fe Institute, and the IAIA are a huge part of what makes Santa Fe the incredible, beautiful community that it is. MATA campus, which Make Santa Fe is an important part of, will be an institute of great and similar caliber. It will drive the culture of Santa Fe and support our community. I cannot encourage you strongly enough to support the efforts of the people working tirelessly to bring MATA to life. Thank you for your consideration. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and City Council. My name is Martha Davis. I'm in District 1. I'm a designer and an artist and a member of the board of SFAI. I believe Santa Fe needs a new heart. Canyon Road and the downtown district reflect our cherished history. The Midtown campus and MATA represent our expansive future. Santa Fe needs a new heart where the next generation of artists and makers and dreamers can gather and create and belong. MATA gives life to forgotten treasures. The Legorreta buildings are astonishingly beautiful, both inside and out. They are absolute treasures for Santa Fe and they have been forgotten. We must choose to bring these buildings back to life to become vibrant centers filled with art, learning, and community. MATA is about protecting the soul of Santa Fe. If we want Santa Fe to remain a thriving city, not just a memory of one, we must invest in spaces where creativity, community, and culture can continue to grow. Thank you. Hi, good evening. My name is Takara Thomas, District 1. I come here very biased. I'm the executive director of the Santa Fe Art Institute. So obviously I have very strong opinions about this. And I'm going to say something that may seem to counter that, which is, I've been working in the arts for about 20 years, which is about half my life, and I have been working internationally, nationally, in small communities. At the heart of it, there's nothing particularly innovative about the concept of MATA. It's a proven model to allow entities, organizations, community groups to be able to be sustainable, to stay in their communities, to leverage their resources, not just to survive, but to be able to thrive. I've been here about 16 months. The amount of artists I've met who are on their way out of Santa Fe because they can't afford to be here. They can't afford to have affordable studio space here. They can't afford to live out the dream of being in what they have heard is the third largest art market in the country that's failing them. And so I'm really hoping that we can come together. We don't have to dream big. We don't have to be imaginative. We just have to go with a proven model that works, and that will keep all of us here and all of us thriving, and continue to invite other people, other creatives, other creative organizations, other entities nationally, internationally that also want to connect with Santa Fe. We can provide a home where all of that can happen. And so as a newbie who's very passionate about this, and again, seen these types of models over and over again, it works. It works. I'm really hoping that we can invest in it as a community so that we can all continue to invest in our community. Thank you. My name is Dylan Tenorio. Mayor, council members, it's good to see you. I'm a co-executive director of Little Globe, which is one of the first phase organizations that are slated to move in, and I'm here to voice support of this immense proposal because it's an important aspect of Santa Fe that which has completely disappeared since I graduated from that campus. I started off in 2012 and 2018, and for the longest time tried to figure out a way to be able to afford to even live here. And through Little Globe, it was a way for me to be able to express what my story is here in this city. And I can do that with Little Globe's ability to share the skills, assets, and tools, and abilities with other members of this community to help them tell their own stories. So if we were able to be in this place, we would be able to share all of our resources with all the other community organizations that are there, and we could create a strong hub of people so that way we can be able to create more economic ability as well as places where culture can actually take a stronghold. I really hope that you can support this. Little Globe has been in the forefront of showing people at least what this campus can look like. So you can see more videos online about what the history is of what the brothers had done, and also what had been occurring after the fact that it had closed down. So thank you so much for hearing our voices. I hope that you can vote for this particular project. It's very important to me as a youth of Santa Fe who is able to stay here because of these organizations and the collaborations that we have now can create awesome things in the future for all of us. Thank you. Hi, my name is Bob Kger. I'm an architect. I'm in her district. I'm a one-man band, semi-retired architect, based here since 1997, and I have no stake in MA. I happen to know Jamie. That's how I ended up here. Simply put, I totally support this development agreement and ground lease to this brilliant coalition of nonprofits. I've never seen anything like it. And the letter in MAK, D, letter D, is what I want to praise. Mass Design Group I have been following as a, when I was a member of the architects AIA architects subdivision here. I really praise them, and simply put, they are so way high on my architecture hero list. If you haven't, it's amazing. They're so qualified for this as, as Uncle called, rare opportunity. It's a perfect fit for executing the built environment. In the Mass Design, Mass Design Group, their own words is, "Our design process prioritizes the needs of the communities, ensuring that buildings are not only functional but culturally resonant and deeply rooted in place." They also say, "We go beyond traditional practice, integrating research, immersive community engagement, and a commitment to transparency or to transparent and ethical supply chains." The result, in their words, is, "Architecture that transcends aesthetics and becomes a catalyst for a more just, resilient, and beautiful world." I have never seen an architecture firm with that kind of vernacular. Finally, MA, Mada, whatever. Okay. Checks. Am I over? Oh, checks so many boxes in the 115-page Sustainable Santa Fe 25-year plan. It's just growing dust now on the website. I'm sure. If you could please. Approved by this governing board. Thank you, Bob. Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council and staff and publico, and congratulations if anybody's been appointed this week. I understand that every time the mayor appoints a local, an angel gets its way. So, keep going. Then it's the, I don't have any prepared words, but I'm always prepared to support Miguel Costa. I work in the Airport Road corridor with the annex neighborhoods, and I live in District 3. Always prepared to support allies, and we stand in full. I'm director of the local director for Earthcare and our newest project called Vasindades, community health and neighborhood development project. And we're always and ready to stand in support of our allies, and we fully support this project because of some of the things that haven't been mentioned. So, you know, they talk a lot, and the proposal talks a lot about the interaction among the different organizations, all the great things that that combining that creative energy, et cetera, can, can produce. But one of the things, especially with the Indigenous Center, with Little Globe, and with SFAI, and by the way, we were part of the developing the plan, the community development plan for the site, and this was one of the handful of priorities that we had. Affordable housing was another one. So I hope you remember that one. But one of the things that we've been actively engaged with, and it's not just coming from us, it's organizations reaching out. Little Globe just did a beautiful project with us at Capitol High School, and we increased our graduation rates through that partnership. But the actively discussing how we decolonize the resources, in other words, not, you know, making sure that the resources are not site-specific and site-limited, or limited to people that can easily access the site, but how do we bring some of those benefits to the neighborhoods along Airport, to, you know, lower-income communities, and we've been in active conversations around that, and I think it's a wonderful potential partnership in terms of bringing those resources there. The other suggestion, I know the, I won best actor or something like that, I heard the music, right? But the other thing is that this becomes also, I mean, I do a lot of work in education, and there's always conversations about how do we get people or entities to partner with schools, partner with districts, and I know this administration is doing a much better job at reaching out, but this becomes one of those engagement packages, right, that you can use to partner at multiple levels with a school district and create benefits across the district and for all the community. Thank you. Mayor, counselors, thank you very much for the opportunity. My name is Zachary. You can get a little closer to the mic, please. Yeah. My name is Zachary Leonard, and I've been a 30-year homeowner here in Santa Fe and taxpayer, I might add. And only a three-year resident in District 1. But it's been a wonderful place to settle for the long term. I'm here to advocate for the city approval of the long-term lease for the Midtown Arts Alliance and its development plans and the financial requirements behind that. For me, MA is an essential vision and development for the city, and it's not only for the residents but the creative communities and the sustainability that it will bring. I have five benefits I'd like to emphasize. One, for Santa Fe, MA will deliver an essential four-acre-sized building block of the city's master plan, which has been in position for a very long time, bridging because of its geographic center, location, what we know as our historic downtown with a burgeoning Southside growth. Two, for neighboring Midtown campus developments, MA completes the northwestern corner of the much larger campus, and much kudos to the already successful enterprises of the Aspect Media Village and the New Mexico Innovation Hub, which are well on their way. Not to mention the very tasty pizza, Tender Fire Kitchen, and Sky Cinema Midtown. So we're all joining together, and it really completes the set for our greater Midtown residents. Point number three, MOT will deliver community programming in the arts, culture, career building. This has been estimated to deliver $3.5 million per annum of programming to the community. Number four, the alliance partners, many of whom we've heard of and from tonight, will deliver new quarters for them to expand the vital not-for-profit enterprises, creativity, economics, and the careers that they offer. That's an astounding benefit. And last but not least, for Santa Fe sustainability, MA will restore, revitalize, and redeploy the campus of iconic Legora buildings, which we've heard about from others, with contemporary facilities, utilities, and sustainable use that modest dependent partners in the public for public events and rental purposes for Santa Fe and other communities to access. We greatly appreciate the mayor's and counselor's attention to this. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, counselors, my name is Ray Landy. I'm a resident of District 1, and I'd like to speak to you this evening on behalf of the donors to this project. This is primarily a philanthropic set of donors who are going to make this project a success along with these fantastic organizations. Who would not want to support them? But as a donor to this project, which I'm proud to say that I am, our donors are now looking to you as a public-private partnership to support this project, to approve the project, and that's a critical milestone for so many of the donors. And so I hope that you will support the project. It'll make a big difference as we go forward raising money to finish the $2 million for two, $2.5 million for phase one, and then a future capital campaign for phases two and three. We appreciate your support. Mr. Mayor, counselors, thank you all for hearing us and taking the moment to really notice exactly what we're talking about here. I'm going to briefly, my name is Randy Castillo from District 4. I'm going to briefly tell you my life. I was born to a 14-year-old girl in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My grandfather died when I was three. So, growing up in the South Valley, I didn't have a mentor. I didn't have a teacher. Didn't have somebody to tell me, "Here's what these tools are for. Here's why this pool table doesn't have pockets." Turns out it was for Snooker. I found all these things out as I grew. I got older. But, you know what I did is I became a member and I worked with Youthworks as a staff member there. I'm currently an instructor and on board member with Make Santa Fe because I walked into a place one day and I saw a space that was like my grandfather's garage. Only difference is everything there was accessible and there was somebody to teach me. There was somebody to show me. I learned how to weld. I never learned. 10 years ago you could have told me you, you'll be running a laser cutter. You'll be teaching people to use it. I have gone, "Yeah, right. I don't even know what a laser cutter is." 3D printer. I had a friend who invested in one, so I looked at one online one time, but they had them right there. And now I've watched a 17-year-old playing those 3D printers like a symphony. I've had, I've had people in my own classes, 14-year-old and a 73-year-old in the same class learning to use a laser cutter. I am telling you that this space will innovate your lives, your own lives. This will impact your own families. This will impact your nieces, your nephews, your elders, your children. And this will not only impact yours, the next set of counselors, the next mayor, the next generation of people will be impacted by the decision you make today. So, I'm asking you to put the pedal to the metal. Make the tires hit the road. Make the decision. Let's fund this and let's get it going. Thank you for your time. Cole Washburn: Hello, my name is Cole Washburn. I currently live in District 1 and I am 23 years old. I moved to Santa Fe about a year ago and I hope to live here forever. I am not an artist at all. I don't have any affiliation with any of these groups besides seeing them around town, having a fair amount of appreciation for their work. But I've loved being submerged in the artistic excellence of Santa Fe, and that's the primary reason why I do want to be here. This is one of those magical places where the arts can thrive, and I immensely appreciate this, but it is not true for all groups. Santa Fe is inherently a very hostile place to be young. Even for those pursuing the arts, they would realistically be better off in Albuquerque. But there are a lot of artists who are still here anyway. And I do think that it's very important that they have new places to practice their works, to receive coaching, training, mentorships. And I think that this is a very elegant solution to a serious problem Santa Fe has. There are many artists who I'm close friends with who feel like they have no choice but to flee Santa Fe. And it's rare that youth at all feel any amount of excitement to live in Santa Fe. MAD is one of those few things that I find very exciting and I think a fair amount of my friends have heard about and are very hopeful that it will go through. There's serious potential here for Santa Fe to put its money where its mouth is and genuinely support projects meant to uplift youth and make it so they can stay in Santa Fe. I believe that MAD would not just be an asset to the city that is economically justified, but also an institution that bridges this intensive generational gap that plagues this city. And I strongly urge all of you to support it. Thank you so much. Anne Watkins: Thank you, Mayor, and members of the council. My name is Anne Watkins and I live in District 2. I want to applaud and thank you all, especially Mayor Garcia, for moving this important initiative forward. I think Santa Fe is entering a period of debate and discussion about what historical preservation means and how we're going to ensure that going forward. And I think that's a critical discussion to have to preserve the cultural and aesthetic beauty of our city and community. I hope that we are also going to enter a period of visionary debate about the kind of economy that will move Santa Fe into the 21st century. Now, I'm by no means a futurist, but I spent a lot of time reading and thinking about the changing nature of work and the unsettling disruption of the economy by automation and AI that's going to upend the world of work as we know it. So to me, that means that Santa Fe needs to be focused on creating a very fertile environment for growth of the tech economy and the creative economy, and this plant and Midtown are perfect locations to do that. Making Midtown a center for growing the creative economy. I mean, look at the recent Native Fashion Week, for example. So many more things can come out of that. And growing our existing tech entrepreneurial sector, connecting us with the amazing and growing Space Valley economy, existing engines of New Space Nexus in Albuquerque and Spaceport near Las Cruces, using Midtown to grow that tech economy, I think is a great opportunity for Santa Fe. So to secure that bright future and for all the many excellent reasons that other people have pointed out, I encourage you to move this initiative forward as soon as possible. Thank you and thank you for your work for this great community. Cara Gianfredo: Hi, counselors. Hi, Mayor. Can you hear me? My name is Cara Gianfredo. I live... Mayor: You can pull the mic down. There's a button if you want to pull it a little lower as well. Cara Gianfredo: Maybe I'm the shortest person that's been up here so far. Hi, Mr. Mayor. Hi, counselors. Thanks so much. My name is Cara Gianfredo. I live in District 1. I'm here as a member of the public. I'm a musician, as is my husband. And we run a small arts organization called Palmray. So, we're not officially affiliated with MAD, but we're very excited by the proposal and the potential lease. One of the things that we do is run a small music ensemble. It's all volunteer run. We also teach workshops. We put on public performances, a variety of new music, contemporary experimental music. And I think that I see a potential, and as I'm listening to all of these other people as individuals and organizations, I just see the potential for MAD to be supporting this huge diversity of artists and makers and creators in the city. And I think that that's what makes public art spaces so unique is that they really can cover the breadth differently than private spaces and spaces that don't allow for that. So, I'm here and I'm excited and I just wanted to voice my support. Thanks so much. Paisley Mason Webster: Hello, Mr. Mayor and counselors. My name is Paisley Mason Webster. I am here just as a member of the public, but also a member of the advisory board of MAD. I am the former head of development at Site Santa Fe. I've lived here for almost 20 years. Santa Fe is a city of the arts. Music Midtown should very certainly reflect that. We love our extraordinary museums and our music. MAD will provide a place for the smaller, but no less important organizations in Santa Fe. The arts are so much the essence of Santa Fe and provide so much of our city, so many in our city with livelihoods, education, creative outlets, community satisfaction, and joy, frankly. Additionally, it is this creative and vibrant community that brings necessary and welcome visitors to our city to support our economy and our artists. Having MAD in Midtown just makes sense. Thank you. Christopher Webster: I get to talk after all of the short people. My name is Christopher Webster. I was born and raised in Santa Fe, District 1, by the way. I was born and raised in Santa Fe, business owner, huge supporter of this community, believer in Santa Fe, supporter of the arts in multiple different capacities, in multiple different organizations, including being a board member of Vital Spaces, who is a future collaborator of MAD. So many wonderful things have been said about this project this evening, but one thing I want to focus on is the last word of the acronym, and that is the alliance. For so long, Santa Fe has needed an organization that can bring together different arts and cultural institutions and organizations, foster collaboration, conversation, community, and that's what MAD's mission consists of. And I think that it's a very exciting opportunity and something that's desperately needed in our city. Supporter. Let's go. Karen Sequoa: Mayor and counselors. My name is Karen Sequoa. I am a resident of District 1 and I've also had the distinct pleasure of working with Vital Spaces for the last year. I am the curator of relationships and development for Vital Spaces and I'm also the program director for Unhoused Art. To me, the MAD campus in its current iterations and all of its past iterations has been an apex of connection. I had the privilege of going to the College of Santa Fe on a scholarship, which was an incredible reach for me and my family, and I get to spend nearly every day on the MAD campus now. We offer art classes at Consuelo's Place to community members that are unhoused or homeless or in transition, and then you can walk across the campus and be at SFAI or you can go and get a pizza or you can go to Sky Cinema. And art is a catalyst for human connection and I think that that's really what makes Santa Fe very special. So, I would just ask each of you to reflect on what that space has meant to the city of Santa Fe and what it would mean if we didn't have that space. Thank you. Scott Bigby: Can you hear me? Okay. Hello, Mayor Garcia and our council members. Thank you for letting me speak. My name is Scott Bigby. I live in District 2. I was born here and educated in public school here. My father also was. Both sets of my grandparents came here in the 40s and 50s, but I left here for about 25 years to go to school and have a career in Los Angeles. And I was fortunate enough to be able to come back for a better quality of life. And I've been impressed by all the things that are here now that weren't in the 80s: the bike trails, the skate parks, a lot of things. But this MAD seems like a really good alliance of bringing groups together, a physical place of bringing community members together to interact. I went to the Gustave Baumann show recently at the New Mexico Museum of Art, and in 1920 he was in town doing a show and was going to live in Taos, and he didn't like the feel of it, and the museum director gave him a studio space in the basement, and he ended up staying here for 50 years raising a family, and almost a hundred years later they just put up another show. He's one of our most esteemed former residents and artists. So maybe we can foster the same thing for the people with the most interesting voices who maybe have the hardest time affording a studio, a place. And a few people have talked about hoping the city gives their money. And I think that they clearly said that they aren't asking for money from the city, just the lease. And it's been kind of kicked down the road from the past administration. And I hope you guys will see this opportunity for a big win and all this alliance that they've put together and three years of hard work raising the money, and it's just ready to go. So I hope you... Thank you. Susan Davis: Hello and thank you, Mr. Mayor and counselors. My name is Susan Davis. I'm an architect and public art consultant. And one thing that keeps coming to my mind even before tonight is the amazing opportunity for public art on this campus, and having worked in a lot of different situations, there are lots of different ways that it can be paid for and it can include local artists as well as national artists. And I would like to also add to that that people travel to see art and they come to town and they go to hotels and they go out to eat, and there's a real gain not only in the human way but in the city's budget way. And as one of the previous speakers said, I would just add that it is a very humanizing way of giving art to the city because it's for art. Public art is for all and it's for people who might not ever go to a museum, but they can see public art and participate with it. It's a great opportunity yet to be developed. Thank you. Cat Walsh: Hello, my name is Cat Walsh and I live in Midtown. I walk my dog through the neighborhood almost every day. Every time I pass the Midtown campus, I can already imagine what it could become. I can see the buildings restored, full of life again. I can picture nonprofits gathering together, artists creating, people attending events, families walking through the campus, and neighbors having lunch together at the Social Justice Kitchen. That would be me. Right now, the campus feels empty and neglected, but I see the potential for something vibrant, creative, and community-centered. I see people. I see connection. I see opportunity. It's rare to have a space with so much possibility in the heart of Santa Fe. And I truly believe Midtown can become a place that brings people together in a meaningful way. I can't wait to see these beautiful buildings filled with energy, purpose, creativity, and community again. Thank you. Drew Tolson: Good evening, Mayor. This is for my name is Drew Tolson. I live in District 2 and my offices are in Midtown. One appreciation to all of you for having the energy, all of you for having to do the hard work. I want to just hit a few points that I haven't heard as much in public comments, please, in support of MATA. First of all, for myself, as someone who began my career in VISTA and AmeriCorps, which I think the Mayor can understand very well, we see this as a beautiful economic development opportunity that we've been waiting for, all of us, a very long time. We hope that you can now move with equanimity and some speed so that the lease can be approved and we can see the promise of this project really start to be realized for Midtown and for the city. People haven't talked about the team. This is an expert team which will safeguard the city's interests as well as the economic opportunity. I think we can feel good about who's doing this, and it's very good. Jamie Blosser and her team deserve to be applauded. We should also look at the architectural wonder that are the, especially, the four buildings and the historical nature. It's sad that we aren't using it enough, and we need to bring people into this wonderful building, this treasure that we have, so we can use it and people can appreciate the wonders of our city and the great things we have here. Also, speaking for the business community, I lead New Mexico Angels, which is a Chamber 501(c)(3) that works with more than 150 business interests. I was the first CFO of Meow Wolf, and so we haven't had as many purely business interests, although a lot of people are doing business activities. Please know the business community supports this as well. This isn't an artistic effort; this is an economic driver for our community. Last but not least, this is a true valuable partnership where the city has a small part to play, and your leveraging effort will get your small dollars will get magnified a great deal, and we'll see a lot of great wonderment. So, thank you for your support. First of all, I'd like to ask permission to speak as well for those who are no longer with us, those in the art community, including Traay Lively, who chose to take their life. I would like to speak first as myself, and then if you would be so kind as to allow some time to speak for those who cannot speak, that would be appreciated. Unfortunately, we can only allow two minutes per individual. Okay. In that case, I would like to start off by saying that my name is Eric Vicinus. I came to Santa Fe the first time when I was 14 years old. I was inspired by the sculptors on Canyon Road. I continued to come back to Santa Fe every summer and almost every year for the rest of the time that I've been here, now 34 years old. My time in the Southwest has been studying artists and architecture and community development. I have a long-standing, long-term documentary project which has studied eco-villages and community development all over the world. I've been in Europe and socially democratic countries such as Sweden, studying different community structures. My primary focus has been on housing, sustainability, creating self-sufficient ecosystems. My background is as an artist, and I have surprisingly come back to Santa Fe after COVID, realizing that it was no longer the place that it was that inspired me. Many people here have spoke to that, the fact that the increased rent has made it prohibitive for people like myself and many, many others to continue to do what is an increasingly difficult thing in this time that we live in right now with all of the different pressures that you face. We've already talked about so many different things like the nuclear plutonium plant and the housing crisis and all these different things. However, Santa Fe is still the third largest art district in the country. I come from New York. I've spent a lot of time in California, and I can tell you as someone who has traveled vastly that I came back here to live in Santa Fe. One of the reasons I came back here was because of Make and the Maker Space when I was here when I was 14 years old. I saw it in Meow Wolf the first time. At that time, there wasn't a Meow Wolf in Denver. There wasn't a Meow Wolf in Las Vegas. The only Meow Wolf was here. Now there are Meow Wolfs all over the place, and they're continuing to spread. But you have an extremely rare opportunity here to do something which, coming from myself, is unprecedented globally. You have an opportunity to do something that removes the resistance from people who normally would go into abandoned buildings and squat there to do their art. We're talking about someone who has been a part of community developments and construction projects for years of my life, dedicating my last decade to doing that. And every single project requires three things: you need land, you need funding, and you need permission. They already have their location. They have the funding. So, thank you. Mary Schubin, District 4. I moved here in '81 for the arts that were available in Santa Fe at that time, 1981. In 1990, I had the good luck to find a house on Rancho Siringo Road, which is directly south of the Midtown campus. I moved there mostly because the College of Santa Fe was still running. Since then, we've missed all of those performances and the art that gets manufactured in any kind of college campus. Now we have an opportunity to bring it all back, and this is one of the greatest opportunities the city of Santa Fe has had for a long, long time. So I urge you to support this in any and every way you can. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, Counselors, I speak to you. I think I need to represent as a business owner, a for-profit in the city, and how important MATA and creating a grounded community for these nonprofits are. Edith Dilman and I live on lease land in the Baca Railyard, another good project of infill development. But I do think it is very important to thank these nonprofits. As a parent who's raised our children here in the public schools and gone to Make Santa Fe and gone to Girls, Inc. and participated at SFAI and all of these organizations, this is the community that has raised our children. Because of this community, they are succeeding as independent artists on their own. We need this kind of project to boomerang that talent back. We raised up these beautiful, talented Santa Feans, and we want them to return to us and have a promising, vibrant future in the arts as they choose. As an employer in Midtown who is always struggling to find excellent talent, retain them here, encourage them to be a part of our community, this is a benefit to our employees and to their livelihood here in New Mexico. We want to keep people here biking, walking in community, and enjoying the arts and supporting this organization. MATA has done an incredible job presenting professional information, planning, and a lot of patience. I encourage you to support this ground lease and move the project forward for all of us. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public that would like to provide public comment? If not, we can go ahead and move on to anybody online. We'll start with Sarako Proposeri. Hello friends. I live in District 3 and work in District 2, and I'm also here on behalf of Creative Santa Fe, where I have the honor to be its Executive Director. I am here to fully support the Midtown Arts and Alliance Arts and Design Alliance project. Many of the organizations that I just witnessed tonight just reminds me what an amazing dedicated cohort we have here in Santa Fe. Creative Santa Fe has been firsthand partners with many of them. The depth of care, creativity, and dedication to this community is just awe-inspiring. So, thank you for continuing to do your work. MATA understands something deeply important: that civic infrastructure is not about buildings. It's about what those buildings make possible. It's connection, belonging, collaboration, opportunity. It is space where we can start to foster shared civic imagination for a more vibrant and adaptive future. It is about creating places where communities can gather across difference, where creativity is treated not as luxury, but as part of a healthy and economically vibrant city. As a fellow non-profiteer, I can tell you that our care for this community is often much bigger than our bank accounts. Affordable, stable space matters, and every dollar not spent on overhead is a dollar that can go directly back into improving lives and strengthening the people here. I want to acknowledge the amazing amount of work that MATA and its partner have held steady with its long-term vision of an inclusive, creative, and economically vibrant Midtown that will greatly impact the overall Santa Fe landscape. More importantly, I am with Rey Randy, who is here to speak on behalf of the community investors, that the ability to continue raising the remaining funds needed to fully reactivate these beautiful buildings depends in large part on the city's support tonight. So, thank you for your consideration and support to seeing this come back to life. Matthew Wine. Yes, thank you. I live in the county. My office is in the city, and I support the approval of the ground lease for MATA as a dad, as a business owner, and as a Santa Fean. As a dad, I want my daughters to have access to the powerful programs that the partners of MATA have put together. I know how much that is going to enrich our daughters' lives and their pride in being from Santa Fe. As a business owner, I drive past the Midtown site every day on the way to my office. This project has been on hold for years. Approving this lease sends a powerful message to all of Santa Fe, including the business community, that this administration will get things done. Finally, as a Santa Fean who is proud of our city's creative heritage, I'm overjoyed at the prospect of generations of artists finding their path and their community at the Midtown campus. I think the future of Santa Fe is greatly enriched by the mission that MATA is putting into action. Thank you. Aviva. Oh, can you hear me? Okay. Yes. Great. Sorry. Hi. My name is Aviva Kiton. I live in District 2. A lot of great points have already been made, so I'm going to come at this from just a personal perspective. I moved to Santa Fe in 2010, and in those first several years, I enjoyed so many great events at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, you know, with student art shows and community events. Sixteen years later, I maybe I'm not part of Santa Fe's youth anymore, but I still feel a need for those kind of community-building events. A lot like the points that other folks have made, you know, spaces where we're allowed to participate in mentorships, either for others or learning from others. Collaborating or simply sharing spaces with others is a great way to foster connections, mutual understanding. Obviously, locally, nationally, globally, there's a lot of strife, political and otherwise, and MATA is a great way for us to build community and build connection, you know, join up with our neighbors. Moreover, obviously, Santa Fe has an ongoing housing crisis, there's inflation, and the cost of living is going up and up. It's hard that there aren't a lot of places to gather in public where you're not expected to spend money, right? So, coupled with all of the other things that we're all facing, places like Make Santa Fe, where I'm a volunteer and a member, are priceless just to create and exist and be around other people. And selfishly, I'd love to have more parking. Stephanie Beninato: Thank you, Stephanie Benonato. When I got here in 1975, the art community, or the art scene, I should say, really was vibrant. There was all kinds of art, music, theater, traditional, non-traditional art forms, and a lot of it was because the rents were so very cheap that you could have a very part-time job and still be an artist. So I think that this project is extremely important in terms of providing spaces that are of a reasonable rent. I think my biggest concern, given the past experience with the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, is the lease itself and the funding. And I'm happy to hear that there are people who spoke about that tonight, and that the lease seems a little bit tighter than it was in that 2010 version where the city wound up spending a lot of money on a cafeteria for a population that never increased. And I'm a little concerned when I hear about the city contributing, and I'm assuming it's that you're giving them the ground lease and that it's at an extremely low cost, if anything. And I have to say that there are some nonprofits involved who the city has been supporting really for at least a decade or more. And I'm hoping again that this organization will be self-sufficient. And it sounds like that's their goal. And it sounds like that they have fundraisers who have experience and that they're not going to go forward until they actually have fully funded. And for me, I just think that's really important, as important as the art scene and the collaboration that will occur, and the fact that this is a fulfillment of what the community wanted, which was an art scene. But I don't really want the city to be burdened. We already have a million-dollar infrastructure commitment by the city on that campus. And again, I applaud the organization. I think the city should go forward with Louise, and I hope that the financial concerns will be addressed. Thank you. Dear Dree: Hi. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and counselors. I am Dearra Harris. I live in District 2. I would like to first congratulate the large group of committed local individuals who have been working diligently for years to mastermind an actionable plan for reviving and occupying some truly unique buildings on the Midtown campus. This project is important because it is Santa Fe inspired, Santa Fe driven, and will provide a home under one roof to a number of long-standing Santa Fe creative groups that have already proven their excellence, but are at risk of being priced out of existence. MATO will provide a thriving hub for locals of all ages right in the heart of our city on the Midtown campus and give our youth a place to learn and grow. And I can't wait to see this project come to fruition and begin to provide space for so many current and future Santa Feans to flourish. I hope you will join me in support of this project. Thank you. Johanna Gilligan: Hello there. Can you hear me? Mayor: Yes. Johanna Gilligan: Great. This is Johanna Gilligan. I am in District 1, and I am here this evening because as both a resident and a Santa Fean, and also as a member of the community development broader community, I'm in strong support of the MA project. It's a shining example of the kind of collectivist and early-stage artistic, innovative, entrepreneurial projects that I think is exactly what Midtown campus needs. Often in these large-scale developments, you first see a kind of entrepreneurial artistic approach to activating a space. And I think that that is going to bring tremendous value to both all of the users and the tenants that are a part of MA, but also to the Midtown campus and to the city of Santa Fe. And I'm just really thrilled to be a part of this broader collective. And I urge the City Council to vote in favor on June 13th. Thank you so much. Mayor: There are no other hands raised in the Zoom room. Okay. Thank you, Madam City Clerk. City Clerk: You're welcome. Mayor: Let's go and move on to the next item, please. City Clerk: Next item is 18B. This is consideration of Bill Number 2026-9 and adoption of an ordinance sponsored by Councilor Pilad Falner, Councilor Lee Garcia, and Councilor Amanda Chavez. It is a bill amending Subsection 12-6-12.3 of Article 6 of the Uniform Traffic Ordinance (UTO) to eliminate minimum penalties for reckless driving and raising maximum penalties from $25 to $250 for first convictions and from $300 to $500 for second or subsequent convictions, creating a new Subsection 12-6-12.4A of Article 6 of the UTO, Exhibit A to Chapter 24 SFCC1 1987, to define, criminalize, and penalize aggressive driving, amending the UTO's schedule or a traffic violation penalty assessment schedule to increase certain penalties, to specify that all reckless driving fines, aggressive driving fines, as well as all Schedule A penalties, except for those dedicated to traffic calming, shall be split equally between the law enforcement fund and the fire support services fund, and to require a mandatory court appearance for violations related to aggressive driving, creating a new Subsection 12-6-12.25 of Article 6, engaging in prolonged, deliberate, and/or excessive tailing of another vehicle and establishing a penalty in the Santa Fe's UTO Schedule A traffic violation penalty assessment schedule for the same, creating a new Subsection 12-6-12.26 of Article 6, unsafe sudden stops and establishing a penalty in Santa Fe's UTL Schedule A traffic violation penalty assessment schedule for the same, creating a new Subsection 12-6-12.27 of Article 6, throwing items outside of a vehicle at another vehicle or at a pedestrian and establishing a penalty in Santa Fe's UTO Schedule A traffic violation penalty assessment schedule for the same. Okay, so this is a public hearing. Do we have, let's see, Deputy Chief Baldez here for a presentation? If not, we can move directly to public comment. I don't. Okay. Let's go ahead and move directly to public comment. If any members of the public would like to comment on this item, now is your time to do so. Please just move forward to the podium. Same rules will apply. Two minutes. State your name, and we'll move forward accordingly. Do not see anybody in the chambers. Is there anybody online, Madam City Clerk? City Clerk: Yes, Mayor, Stephanie Benonato. Mayor: Okay. Stephanie Benonato: Stephanie Benonato, District 2. I am in favor of raising these penalties. And I myself was hit from behind when I was on my bike by a truck, a woman driver who didn't see me even though it was 9:00 in the morning. Sun was not in her eyes. I was straight in front of her. She ran over my bike. Fortunately, I came off the bike. She wasn't sure she hit something, and it said in the police report that she was distracted by some other activity. That to me is, she was cited for careless driving. She almost, I think she was intending to leave the scene of the accident, but the newspaper seller yelled at her several times to stop. But again, the police report says she's distracted by some other activity, which I assume was texting or on her cell phone. And I think that that is not just careless driving for which she was cited, but really reckless driving. And there's so many people, it's not just about speeding or weaving through traffic. It's really about not paying attention, not paying attention to pedestrians, not paying attention to bicyclists and hitting them and killing them in some cases or permanently injuring them. And I'm happy to see that the city will have something that's more, has more of an impact, has more of a negative influence, hopefully, on drivers who are again distracted by other activities. Thank you. Mayor: Any other online public comment, Madam City Clerk? City Clerk: Mayor, there are no other hands raised in the Zoom room. Mayor: Okay. Thank you so much. Councilor: Mr. Mayor, can I ask a question? Mayor: Sure, absolutely. Councilor: I believe that we are changing the meeting on the 20th from Quality of Life to Finance. So, do we need to, we're not, okay, never mind. So, just point of clarification, I think we are still planning on having a Quality of Life meeting. It may be short next week, Mayor: But I do believe we're going to have one. Councilor: Because we do have things on the agenda that say that they're going there. So, Mayor: Correct. Councilor: And that's why we don't want to change the order of business. We will have that meeting and I know we want to move an amendment, so we will do that then. Mayor: Okay. Fantastic. Thank you. Never mind. Absolutely. Okay. We will now resume order of business. Councilor Garcia: Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to go directly to Item 19 and 20, in lieu of time for those that are here for these cases, and then resume regular business after that. Councilor: Second. Mayor: So, we've got a motion to move directly to Items 19 and 20. Discussion or none. Madam City Clerk, can I get a roll call vote, please? City Clerk: Certainly, Mr. Mayor. Councilor Cassip? Councilor Cassip: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Castro? Councilor Castro: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Chavez? Councilor Chavez: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Falner? Councilor Falner: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Fagali? Councilor Fagali: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Garcia? Councilor Garcia: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Barrett? Councilor Barrett: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Bamante? Councilor Bamante: Yes. City Clerk: Motion passed. Mayor: Okay, with that being said, Madam City Clerk, please take us to our next item, please. City Clerk: We are moving on to 19. This is final action on legislation. This is a public hearing. 19A is consideration of Bill Number 2026-10 and adoption of an ordinance. This is sponsored by Mayor Michael Garcia. It's a bill approving the sale of seven city-owned parcels located in Lasas in the northwest quadrant within the city and county of Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Santa Fe Housing Trust for a total of $4,490,000. And here is Asset Development Manager Terry Lee to present. Mayor: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Lee. The floor is yours. Terry Lee: Thank you, Mayor, City Councilors. Terry Lee, Asset Development Manager. In 1930, the city transferred, entered into a memorandum of agreement with John Dempsey to develop approximately 2,000 acres of city land. Mr. Dempsey subsequently assigned his rights to the Santa Fe Estates. The agreement provided for the city to transfer title to the 2,000 acres, and the land would be developed and sold by Santa Fe Estates, and there was a revenue sharing component along with that. In December 2019, that agreement was terminated. It was determined that Santa Fe Estates owed the city approximately just over $3 million. In order to settle that debt, Santa Fe Estates, among other things, agreed to transfer ownership of 250.1 acres of land back to the city. Resolution 2023-4 was approved and authorized the disposition of Track 6A, and the seven tracks are subject to this resolution. That resolution provided that Track 6A be developed as an affordable housing, donated as affordably housing development, and that's been done and accomplished. And it also approved the public announcement of sale of the seven tracks. The seven tracks were subsequently appraised at $4,490,000. And in December 2023, an invitation to bid was released. Two bids were received, and the Santa Fe Community Housing Trust was a successful bidder. The city and Housing Trust couldn't agree on terms of a purchase agreement because the Housing Trust required a six-month due diligence period, and that was not included in their bid. So we moved to the second bidder who declined to move forward with the purchase. As a result, the invitation to bid was canceled. And then now working under the New Mexico Administration Code, New Mexico Administrative Code, excuse me, that allows for the sale of public property under public or private sale. This ordinance and purchase agreement with the Santa Fe Community Housing Trust is now brought forward for your consideration for approval tonight. The purchase agreement includes a sale price of $4,490,000. All development is subject to the City of Santa Fe's development guidelines and process, subject to the Las Estrellas Master Plan, and residential and non-residential governance conditions and restrictions. I see Román Betancourt, the CEO of Santa Fe Housing Trust, here, as well as Dina Trillo, the Director of Development, and they'll be happy to stand for questions. Okay, let's go ahead and move forward with the public comment, and then we'll go to the Governing Body. Are there any members of the public that would like to speak to this item? Not seeing anybody in the chamber. Madam City Clerk, is there anybody online? Mayor, there are no hands raised in the Zoom room. Okay, with that, we can go ahead and move towards any questions or comments from the Governing Body. Councilor Castro? I will just make a comment that there has been extensive community input. We have had meetings. I don't know if the Housing Trust would like to speak to some of the community input. Román Betancourt, CEO of the Housing Trust. Mayor, Councilor Castro, yes, the Community Housing Trust has reached out to the different neighborhoods, homeowners associations, and the Camino La Tierra area because, although they're in the county, they will be our neighbors and affected by any development. We have committed to them that as we develop and move forward with each phase, we will engage them early and often and be transparent with our plans. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. No further questions. Any other questions? I have one for you, Mr. Betancourt. What are the plans in regards to affordable housing with the site? The City of Santa Fe requires at least 20% of the development to be affordable. So, we will comply with that. But obviously, the more support we can get, whether that be through state funds, federal funds, to help with infrastructure and building, then we could do more than that. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Seeing none. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? We need a motion. Sorry. Move to approve. Second. So, we've got a motion and a second. Any discussion on the motion? Now we can get a roll call vote. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Folk, I'm sorry. Councilor Falgali? Yes. Councilor Garcia? Yes. Councilor Barret? Yes. Councilor Bamonte? Yes. Councilor Cassutt? Yes. Motion passed. Thank you, Madam City Clerk. Next item on the agenda, please. We're moving on to 19B. This is consideration of Bill Number 2026-4 and adoption of an ordinance. This is sponsored by Councilor Amanda Chavez and Councilor Alma Castro. Be it ordained by the Governing Body of the City of Santa Fe, authorizing the execution and delivery of a loan and subsidy agreement by and between the City of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the New Mexico Finance Authority in the total amount of $17 million, evidencing a special limited obligation of the city to pay a maximum repayable principal amount of $8,500,000, together with interest and administrative fees, for the purpose of financing the cost of constructing a new flocculation and sedimentation process and making improvements to the Canyon Road Water Treatment Plant as a component of the system owned and operated by the city, and solely in the manner described in the loan agreement, providing for the pledge and payment of the loan solely from the net revenues of the system of the city, amending the Master Ordinance, approving the form of and other details concerning the loan agreement, ratifying actions heretofore taken, repealing all actions inconsistent with this ordinance, and authorizing the taking of other actions in connection with the execution and delivery of the loan agreement. And here to present is Public Utilities Engineer Clinton Peterson. Good evening, honorable Mayor, members of the Governing Body. I presented on this a couple of weeks ago. I can go over it again. I'm happy to do that. Okay. I appreciate it. There was an amendment, and so there was a change to the caption, and so it needed to be reposted. I appreciate it. That being said, now is the time for public comment. If there are any members of the public that would like to speak to this item, please approach the podium to do so. I do not see anybody in the chambers that wishes to provide comment. How about online, Madam? Mayor, there are no hands raised in the Zoom room. Okay, with that being said, let's move to the Governing Body. Any questions or what's the will of the body? Motion to second. So, we've got a motion and a second. Any discussion on the motion? None. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Certainly, Mr. Mayor. Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Falgali? Yes. Councilor Garcia? Yes. Councilor Barret? Yes. Councilor Bamonte? Yes. Councilor Cassutt? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Motion passed. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Next item on the agenda, please, Madam City Clerk. We are moving to item 20. This is a public hearing. This is for land use cases, appeals, and other items required to have a public hearing. 20A is a request for approval of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Draft 2026 Annual Action Plan in compliance with HUD public hearing and public comment. And I believe, I'm sorry, I'm not sure. Can you please give us your name? Thank you. Christina Browning. Christina Browning. Thank you. Christina Browning is here to present. I do have a slideshow here. Just give me a moment. And I do apologize, Mr. Mayor and members of City Council. Good evening. I do apologize. There may be some errors in this slideshow. I was having some technical difficulties, but I could get through it. So, I just want to present the 2026 Annual Action Plan. And so, getting started, I'm going into the Consolidated Plan and the Annual Action Plan. And so, for anyone who doesn't know, I'll read what CDBG is. It's the Community Development Block Grant, and it's a federal program funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is HUD, and it provides resources to local governments to develop viable communities. CDBG funding supports activities primarily that primarily benefit low and moderate-income residents, eliminate blight, and address urgent community needs. Eligible projects may include affordable housing, public facilities and infrastructure improvements, public services, economic development, and neighborhood revitalization efforts. So, as you can see on the first slide, we are basing this Annual Action Plan off of the priorities of the five-year Consolidated Plan. And the 2026 Annual Action Plan fund allocation is $624,832 from CDBG. And our priorities, needs, and goals, which is based on the five-year strategic plan, is the first priority is to end chronic homelessness. To support this priority, Goal 1A focuses on increasing the availability of supportive services, while Goal 1B expands options for overnight shelter beds. Together, these goals are intended to provide both immediate assistance and longer-term support for individuals experiencing homelessness. The second priority need is direct financial assistance to homebuyers. Goal 2B expands affordable homeownership opportunities by helping low and moderate-income households access financial assistance and resources needed to purchase a home, and this supports housing stability and increases access to affordable housing options within the community. Our third priority need is ensuring homeownership is sustainable for all. Goal 3A supports owner-occupied housing rehabilitation, helping homeowners maintain safe and livable housing conditions. Goal 3B focuses on energy efficiency upgrades, which can reduce utility costs and improve long-term affordability for residents. And together, these goals help preserve existing housing stock while supporting sustainable homeownership. And finally, the priority need of improving social determinants of health and addressing emerging needs is addressed through Goal 4A, which seeks to increase economic opportunities for low and moderate-income populations. And this includes programs and services that strengthen financial stability, improve quality of life, and respond to evolving community needs. So overall, each goal directly supports a corresponding priority need identified through community engagement and planning efforts, ensuring that CDBG funding is strategically aligned to the city's long-term housing and community development objectives. All right. And so this is the 2026 Action Plan project for the CDBG funding. And we have four projects, basically, and I'll tell you about the funding. So, the CDBG administration that covers the costs associated with managing and administering the CDBG program, such as environmental reviews, financial reporting, compliance monitoring, citizen participation, and staff oversight to ensure HUD requirements are met. Then we, and that is $124,966 allocated for that. The next we have CDBG public services, and that funds programs that provide direct services to low and moderate-income residents, such as homelessness assistance programs, youth services, food distribution, case management, job training, and emergency programs. $93,724 is allocated there. The next is CDBG housing programs. This supports affordable housing activities such as down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers, owner-occupied housing rehabilitation, accessibility improvements, or energy efficiency upgrades for qualifying households. That amount is $350,000. And last, CDBG public facilities. This funds improvements to community facilities and infrastructure that benefit low and moderate-income areas, such as park improvements, ADA accessibility upgrades, community center renovations, or improvements to shelter facilities. And that amount is $256,142. Now, the total for 2026 program year funds is $824,832. So that includes $200,000 of program income that is, Homewise has that they keep and they use as like a revolving fund. So, I'll go to the next slide. So, with citizen participation, there is a public comment review period, and a draft of the project year 2026 for the Annual Action Plan will be made available to the public for a period of 30 days starting tomorrow, May 14, 2026, through June 13, 2026. And this allows the community the opportunity to review and make any comments on the draft plan. The plan can also be reviewed at the Office of Affordable Housing, 123 Marcy Street, Suite 205, Santa Fe, New Mexico. And there's also a link here included where it's uploaded already. So, this serves as a public hearing today, and anyone is welcome to comment. So, the next steps will be, again, like I said, the comment period starting tomorrow lasts for 30 days. We will submit any comments in our draft, which will incorporate any comments to HUD on June 2nd, and the program year starts on July 1st of 2026. And that is all I have for you, Ms. Browning. Yes. Any, well, it's sorry, it's a public hearing, so any members of the public like to speak to the presentation? Not seeing anybody in the chamber. How about online, Madam? Mayor, one hand is raised in the Zoom room. Stephanie Beninato. Okay. Good evening, Stephanie Beninato. I have just a couple of questions about the categories and the one about affordable housing, but it says for low and middle income, and I wonder how many middle-income people are really helped by this program, because it seems to me that there's a big gap for workforce housing. And I wonder how much of this HUD funding could go to workforce housing. And then I also hear that there's funding for public facilities. And I would hope, because I've heard so much about PEZ and how there isn't money, this was a deferred maintenance, which I'm happy the budget now has something in it for deferred maintenance, but this was deferred maintenance to the max. And I'm wondering when you, Mayor, are going to put a light under whoever needs to have their energy raised to get to a program or a plan for replacing the filter at the pool and reopening that pool. And again, I have— This is not, your comments aren't germane to the— Oh, well, I thought it was because I think that it is about using the funding for public facilities, and so it seems to me that it could be used for PEZ that has been said that there's no funding. So that is the relevance of my comments and to have it, so people could know what is the timetable for that. Thank you. Are there any other online comments? Fabiola is online. She has her hand raised. Okay. Well, we can go to staff, but let's close the public hearing portion first. Mayor, there are no other hands raised. Okay, I can go ahead and we'll go back and defer to you, Fabiola. Hi, Mr. Mayor. Members of the governing body, thank you so much for allowing Christina to be there on my behalf. I just wanted to respond to a few of the comments. We do have the public draft annual action plan, and that is actually posted at City Hall, and the cashier's office has the copies. So we're no longer at the Marcy Street location. So, we did publish in the paper the correct location, and so I just wanted to make that clear that the draft annual action plan can be viewed at the cashier's desk. Thank you. Going to turn to the governing body for comments or questions, or what's the will of the body? Yep. Councilor Fagali. A question on the comment period. So, do the comments go to HUD because it looks like you're submitting in the middle of the comment period? So, I mentioned before I got started, this was some errors on here. Okay. So, I had some connectivity issues, so I couldn't get the updated. We're actually going to be submitting June 19th. Thank you for bringing that up. Great. Thank you. Okay. Any other comments or questions? Councilor Castro. Just really quickly to offer the public some more opportunities. On the 19th of May, we will have a public meeting. The 18th of May, we will have a public meeting as well as the 20th of May, where we can receive public comment on this as well. Please, all of us who are sitting up here on the dais, reach out to folks. We need more comments on this because we have heard from community members, they want to see changes, but we haven't seen that in writing. So, we need to hear that from them directly. Please. Move to approve. Second. Second. Okay. So, we've got a motion and a second. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Yes, Mr. Mayor. Councilor Falner. Yes. Councilor Faggali. Yes. Councilor Garcia. Yes. Councilor Barrett. Yes. Councilor Bamante. Yes. Councilor Casset. Yes. Councilor Castro. Yes. Councilor Travis. Motion passed. Okay. So, I believe this moves us back to regular order of business. Yes, Mayor. The next item is item 11. This is matters from the City Manager. Mr. Mayor, I won't take long, but you and I have tried to start some stuff about recognizing employees and their time in service. I finally got a list. So, I'm going to go back from January to now. I'll do it real quick. We're also going to give them a, I'm working on a better way of recognizing people. So, they'll be getting a five-year something. Erica Montano and I haven't figured it out, but I'm working on gifts. I'm working on things to help recognize our employees. I want something they want to have. I don't want it to be something they don't. So, I'm trying to put better time and energy into making them feel special and understand that I want them to want to have these kind of gifts. So, with that, in Land Use, I have Nicole Ruiz. She has five years. I have Justin Cox, he's also in Land Use. He has 10 years. Ronald Finer, he has 10 years. This is it. Mario Martinez, he has 10 years. Jesus Lopez Ramirez, he has five years. This is, I should slow down a little bit, but Monoso Court. This position is in Airport. This is Rosa Viegas Maldonado, and she has five years. Victoria Cross, she's in Community Services, she has 15 years. This is Public Utilities. Marcos Denko, he has 25 years. I have Justin Gonzalez, he has 15 years. I have Christina Chavez, she has 10 years. I have Danny Carter. He has 15 years. Bradley Prada, 15 years. Lucas Herrera, five years. Amanda Britt, 25 years. Laura Pena, 20 years. Rachel Celazar, five years. Maria Martinez, five years. Gilbert Rodriguez, 25 years. Chris Chavis, 20 years. And Alonzo Arita, 25 years. This is Police. Javier Vhill, 10 years. John Paul Sieros, five years. Vento Alva has five years. Germaine Mina has five years. Julio Norice has five years. And Andrea Gonzalez has five years. This is Fire. Nathan Miller has five years. William Brunson has 25 years. And Jeremy Ramunz has 20 years. I'm saving one for last. So we'll go down this. This one is Public Works. And Jason Martinez has 20 years. Kevin Roy Ball has 10. Jesse Benvdas has 20. Paul Ro has 25. Vincent Lopez has 25. And Barbara Lopez has 29 years. So we're going to give a special something for her. All these people are going to get recognized by our directors, and they'll be able to pick up their whatever I'm getting them from HR. So we would like them to make sure they get them and not get lost. So, they're going to be able to get to HR. And one last thing I would like to share is I'm working on a committee. I'll be reaching out to some of you councilors if you want to join. It's in the middle of June. And this thing I'm trying to get done is work on special events. I'm trying to put something together about special events long term. It's going to probably take me the rest of the year, but I'm going to get it done. And what I'm focusing on is coming up with a better understanding of how many events we do. I think we're at 400. Barbara Lopez and I are working on that, on how we shape it all and how we evaluate things. I'm looking at Man Chavez, and we've had some issues. So I'm trying to come up with a better plan and work on a long-term plan and a very clean process that we can give constituents on how we do events and stuff like that. So I'm doing it monthly until we get it under control. I think our first meeting might have 80 people in it, but all the city employees want to be involved. They want to do this right. And so I just want you to know that we're kicking that off in June, and we'll be doing it until we get a solution. So, I know we tried it about five years ago, but this year I'm not going to let it die, and we're going to get to the finish line. Mayor, that's all I got. Okay. Thank you. Next item on the agenda, please. Yes, Mayor. We are moving on to matters from the City Attorney. Thank you, Mayor, members of the governing body. Yes, we're going back into the order. So, I would recommend that we go into executive session to address the matters as advertised in the agenda. I move we enter into executive session in accordance to the Open Meetings Act, Section 105 desk one sub-H, seven, meeting subject to attorney-client privilege pertaining to threatening or pending litigation in which the public body or is or may be a participant, including but not limited to EMCO and the City of Santa Fe notice of public works mediation. Okay, so we got a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Hearing none. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Yes. Mayor, Councilor Figali. Yes. Councilor Garcia. Yes. Councilor Barrett. Yes. Councilor Bamante. Yes. Councilor Casset. Yes. Councilor Castro. Yes. Councilor Chavez. Yes. Councilor Falner. Yes. Motion passed. Okay, we stand in recess for executive session. Be back. Open here. It is freezing in here. Got cold in. Okay. There's, all right. I move that we return from executive session. Oh, good. You're here. Do I have to read the whole thing again? No, you only need to say that the governing body only discussed the matters as it as noticed in the caption. That motion. I move that second. So, we've got a motion and a second and discussion there. None. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Certainly. Mayor, Councilor Garcia. Yes. Councilor Barrett. Yes. Councilor Bamonte. Yes. Councilor Casset. Yes. Councilor Castro. Yes. Councilor Chavez. Councilor Falner. Councilor Fagali. Yes. Motion passed. Okay, next item, please. Next item is 14, matters from the City Clerk. Just want to give my husband a birthday shout-out. He turned 50 today. And also to my youngest, Brooklyn. She graduates on May 22nd at Capitol High School. That's it for me. Thank you. We'll move on to 15. Communications from the governing body. Start with the left. Councilor Gamonte. I have nothing, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Nothing tonight. I'm going to brag about my kids. I, so my, I want to, it's end of year, so the end of year is always fun for kids, but it's especially special when you have kids transitioning, I feel like, from one level to another. And both of my boys are heading to high school. So this is their last year in middle school. They have their promotion next Tuesday. They're going to eighth or ninth grade high school. And my son Gray got outstanding athlete for Magro for his performance and leadership as a basketball player for Magro Thunder. So that was very exciting. And they'll both be Demons next year, hopefully playing on the freshman basketball team. I just want to send a congrats to them for all their work. Even though I have to drag them to middle school every morning, I guess I congrats to myself as well. We got through middle school, guys. Four more years. I was going to say that last week was Teacher Appreciation Week. So, shout out to all the teachers there. We only have like 12 days left. Who's counting? Not me, maybe. But, yep. Shout out to everybody. We can make it. We can do this. There's just a couple fun events coming up. There's a literary festival this weekend and also the Santa Fe Century this weekend. So ride your bikes, read books. Mr. Chip. I'm sorry, I got distracted with my kids. I do that a lot. ARU, we have a presentation next Tuesday. I just want to say that again. Public Safety, we meet at 4:00. There will be a presentation. I think it could clear up some misunderstandings that have been around the dialogue that's been going around. So, I invite the community to come join in. I will try to talk to it to see if we could get that meeting on YouTube. It's kind of a short turnaround, but I will reach out and see what we can do. But yes, the 19th at 4 PM, we will have a Public Safety meeting and a presentation and discussion around ARU. Mayor, I did forget one thing. Yes, Councilor Castro. Happy birthday, Councilor Fgali. May 10th. Welcome. Happy birthday, Councilor. Nothing for me. So, next item, please, Madam City Clerk. Yes, Mayor. We will move on to item 16. This is introduction of legislation. 16A is consideration of a resolution sponsored by Councilor Paul Bamante, Councilor Pilar Faulkner, and Councilor Alma Castro. It is a resolution ensuring the availability of Narcan for City of Santa Fe transit, library, and recreation staff, requiring training for appropriate employees to recognize opioid overdoses and administer Narcan, and directing the City Manager to identify and allocate funding to maintain the supply of Narcan nasal spray and training of Narcan. Okay, Councilor Bamante, you're the first one listed, so we'll go to you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This just ensures that we continue to offer, have Narcan available in our most public-facing, some of our most public-facing offices. Should, I mean, currently we get a lot of it, where we get it from the state, and so I just wanted to make sure that we have something that ensures that we can still make that available should that source run dry. Thank you. Councilor Faulkner, anything? Most of it. Same thing, Councilor. Okay. Next item, please. Madam City Clerk. Next item is 16B. This is consideration of a resolution sponsored by Councilor Jamie Cass, Councilor Amanda Chavez, and Mayor Michael Garcia. It's a resolution approving the adoption of the Santa Fe Midtown Metropolitan Redevelopment Area Plan. Okay. Councilor Casset. Thank you, Mayor. This is pretty self-explanatory in terms of Midtown and everything we've been trying to do with the MRA and how we move forward there. So, yeah, it says it pretty distinctly in the caption. Thank you. Councilor Chavez. I don't have anything. I would just like to make a motion to waive the procedural rules. Yes, we're on the same line of thought. This procedural rule, which is for subsection C3A, this is the rule that requires that advisory committees hear the item before regular standing committees, and we're going to kind of flip it up just for efficiency. So we will, we're proposing to start off this with Public Works, then go to Quality of Life, then Finance, then go to the MRC and EDAC after. So, I'll make that motion to waive the procedural rules. Second. Okay, we've got a motion and a second. Any discussion there? None. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Certainly, Mr. Mayor. Councilor Barrett? Yes. Councilor Bamante? Yes. Councilor Casset? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Faggali. Councilor Garcia? Yes. Motion passed. Okay, next item, please. Next item is consideration of a resolution. This is sponsored by Mayor Michael Garcia. It's a resolution adopting the Santa Fe's Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Operating Budget for the City of Santa Fe. It's self-explanatory. Next item, please. Next item and the final item is 21. This is appointments for the Children and Youth Commission. Sergeant Nasmo Montihjo. Appointment to Juvenile Justice Representative with a term ending January 1st, 2029. We got a motion and a second. Any discussion? None. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Yes, Mayor. Councilor Bamante. Yes. Councilor Casset. Yes. Councilor Castro. Yes. Councilor Chavez. Councilor Faulkner. Yes. Councilor Faggali. Yes. Councilor Garcia. Yes. Councilor Barrett. Yes. Motion passed. With that, we complete tonight's agenda. So we stand adjourned.