Special Governing Body Meeting Thu, Jun 25, 2026 ยท Governing Body https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/1516 == Executive Summary == The Governing Body held a special meeting to consider an appeal filed by the Old Santa Fe Association against the Planning Commission's approval of a development plan for a four-story, 150-room Marriott Hotel by Titan Development. The appeal raised significant concerns about the project's impact on traffic, particularly at the already congested intersection of Cerrillos Road and St. Francis Drive, and questioned the adequacy of the Traffic Impact Analysis (TIA) and compliance with state and city regulations. Appellants also cited issues with water budget discrepancies, public safety, and the project's compatibility with Santa Fe's character. After extensive discussion, including presentations from the appellant, the developer, and city staff, and numerous public comments expressing strong opposition to the hotel, the Governing Body voted on a motion to deny the appeal. An amendment was added to the motion, requiring the developer to obtain a letter from the New Mexico Department of Transportation (NMDOT) validating the TIA. If NMDOT does not validate the TIA or requires a new one, the case will be remanded back to the Planning Commission. The motion to deny the appeal with this condition passed, with an abstention counting as acquiescence with the majority, allowing the project to move forward under the specified condition. == Key Decisions == - The Governing Body approved the agenda for the special meeting. - The Governing Body denied the appeal filed by the Old Santa Fe Association against the Planning Commission's decision to approve the development plan for the AC Marriott Hotel. This denial was conditional upon the applicant obtaining a letter from the New Mexico Department of Transportation (NMDOT) validating the Traffic Impact Analysis (TIA). If NMDOT does not validate the TIA or requires a new one, the case will be remanded back to the Planning Commission for a new TIA and re-hearing. == Motions & Votes == - Approval of the agenda for the special governing body meeting โ€” Passed (all councilors present voted "Yes") - Amendment to the main motion, requiring the applicant to obtain a letter from the New Mexico Department of Transportation (NMDOT) validating the traffic impact analysis (TIA) โ€” Passed (Yes: Councilor Casset, Castro, Fagali, Garcia, Barrett; No: Councilor Wamonte) - Motion to deny the appeal of the Planning Commission's decision to approve the AC Marriott Hotel project, with the condition that the applicant obtain a letter from NMDOT validating the TIA โ€” Passed (Yes: Councilor Casset, Fagali, Garcia, Barrett; No: Councilor Wamonte; Abstain: Councilor Castro. The City Attorney clarified that an abstention in this type of motion counts as acquiescence with the majority, thus the motion passed with the required votes). == Public Comment == Public comments overwhelmingly opposed the proposed hotel development. Key themes included severe concerns about existing traffic congestion at the Cerrillos Road/St. Francis Drive intersection and the hotel's potential to exacerbate it, questions about the adequacy and accuracy of the Traffic Impact Analysis (TIA), and the project's compliance with city and state regulations. Many speakers criticized the hotel's design, height, and scale as incompatible with Santa Fe's character, calling it "ugly" and "generic." Concerns were also raised about public safety, particularly for pedestrians and students at the nearby School for the Deaf, and the impact on water resources. Several residents questioned the necessity of another hotel given existing occupancy rates and called for the Governing Body to prioritize community needs and quality of life over developer interests. Some speakers also highlighted the importance of adhering to legal and procedural standards in the appeal process. == Topics == - Hotel Development Appeal - Traffic Impact Analysis (TIA) - Land Use Code & General Plan - Governing Body Voting Rules - Project Site Specifics - Hotel Design & Features - Community Engagement - Immigration Issues == Full Transcript == I'd like to call tonight's special governing body meeting to order. We will start off with a Pledge of Allegiance led by Councilor Casset, a salute to the New Mexico flag led by Councilor Fagali, and invocation of remembrances led by Councilor Barrett. Please stand as you're able. All right. All right. Thanks, everybody, for being here. If everybody wants to take a moment and close their eyes, what I thought of when I thought of remembrances was people passing away in ICE custody, which we know is still happening, families, children separated. We had a family friend whose son was recently deported. He's lived here since he was six years old, and he's 23. And just thinking about the facilities and how they're run and that people are passing away, and just that our thoughts and prayers are with them and anybody else that's on your mind tonight, could just take a moment and think of them. Are there any other remembrances from governing body members? Seeing none, let's just also take a moment for those who are in need in our community. Thank you, everybody. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call, please? Certainly. Mayor Councilor Barrett. Here. Councilor Bamante. Here. Councilor Casset. Here. Councilor Castro. Present. Councilor Faggali. Here. Councilor Garcia. Here. Mayor Garcia. Present. Mayor, you have a quorum. Thank you. Next up is approval of tonight's agenda. Are there any changes from governing body members? Hearing none. To approve. Second. We've got a motion and a second. Any discussion? Hearing none. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Yes, Mayor. Councilor Barrett. Yes. Councilor Bamante. Yes. Councilor Casset. Yes. Councilor Castro. Yes. Councilor Fagali. Yes. Councilor Garcia. Yes. Motion passed. Thank you. Can you please read into the record the next item on the agenda, please, Madam City Clerk? Yes, Mayor. The next item is a public hearing. This is for land use cases, appeals, and other items required to have a public hearing. 7A is Appeal Number 2026-12028 APL of Case Number 2025-11380. The Old Santa Fe Association appeals the Planning Commission's February 5th, 2026 decision approving a development plan by Titan Development to build a four-story, 150-room Marriott Hotel on a 3.44-acre parcel at 100, 1101, and 1103 Cerillos Road. And here to present is Assistant City Attorney Frank Rubil. Before we move forward, I just want to go through the action items that will be taking place for tonight's appeal hearing. And so, the first item is the disclosure of any pre-hearing communications regarding the merits of the appeal. So, if a governing body member feels that they cannot be fair and impartial, now is the time to recuse yourself from this item. Okay. Hearing none, we will the following will be the proceedings. We will first start with the appellant's presentation. We will go through the appellant's presentation, then the applicant's presentation. If the applicant desires questions of staff, then we will have public sworn comment. Then we will go into any questions from the governing body, questions of staff, parties, witnesses, and the public, anyone that has testified. After that, if any new evidence has arisen during the questioning, the appellant has the opportunity to ask any additional questions of staff or applicant's witnesses. Then we'll proceed with the applicant if any new evidence has arisen during the questioning. The applicant has the opportunity to ask additional questions of staff for the appellant's witnesses. Then the Assistant City Attorney will have the opportunity to provide responses to the appellant and/or applicant. Then we will move with the appellant's closing statement, then the applicant's closing statement. We will then close the public hearing. Then the governing body will move forward with deliberations, and a motion or a second would be made, and then the governing body would continue discussions, deliberations, and then a potential vote would be taken. So, with that, first up is the Assistant City Attorney, a summary of staff report, up to 15 minutes, please, Mr. Rubil. Thank you, Mayor. And I have a PowerPoint project I need to open here. So, let me see. City Attorney Rubil, if you wouldn't mind lifting that one because it's a shorter mic. Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. Mayor, I am having trouble opening File Explorer on my laptop. So, this is confounding me here. And I'll just take a moment since we do have a packed house. Councilor Garcia reminded me with his amazing music as his ringtone. If folks do have their phones, if you could please set them to silent so we can be respectful of the folks presenting. I think I'm ready. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks to David from our tech department. Mayor and Councilors, my name is Frank Rubil. I'm an Assistant City Attorney for the City of Santa Fe. And on February 5th, 2026, the City of Santa Fe Planning Commission heard a project application from Titan Development regarding an AC Marriott Hotel. The AC Marriott Hotels are Antonio Catalon Hotels, apparently high-end, very nicely furnished hotels. And this is, I'm sure you're all very familiar with the location here. I drive by this location every day. There's Cerillos Road. There's St. Francis Drive. There's the Rail Runner tracks. There's the New Mexico School for the Deaf. And this triangular, there are actually three lots here that'll be conjoined that are south and east of Cerillos. That's the project site. Immediately south and adjoining the project site, you may be familiar with the Burrito Spot and the touchless car wash which abut West Cordova Road to the south. This is the current configuration of those lots looking south from the intersection with the Rail Runner. There is part of that lot appears to be without any kind of improvements. It's dirt, as you can see there. That is where the sidewalk ends on the south side of Cerillos Road. There is a sidewalk that runs along the side of the property there next to the New Mexico School for the Deaf across the street, but otherwise there's just a dirt path that runs along those lots and along apparently about a six-foot chain-link fence. We're proceeding south. That structure there, I think, is just a shed where some materials are stored and equipment is stored. And then there is a home furnishing shop there with apparently imports and Santa Fe style accoutrements for houses. And then over there, there's the Burrito Spot, which will be on the south end of this property. As I said, I'm sure you're quite familiar with this. I'm going to turn, I'm going to turn this on the side here so I can use the entire frame. And I am superimposing a lot, a plot map that was submitted by the developers. And as you can see, there is the hotel structure that I'm outlining in blue. And then to show you some of the features here, there are setbacks. This is a C2 zone district, and this hotel will be 79,491 square feet, four stories. It's 150 rooms, and the conjoined properties combined about 3.4 acres, and they are have a C2 zoning, and there are required under C2 zoning 150 parking spaces. This lot plan plot map provides 151 spaces, and there will be a meeting room, a lounge, coffee bar, market, fitness room, rooftop terrace, and the structure will be four stories tall. A, there is no setback required for the side of a building, but this will have a 51.5-foot setback. 15-foot setback is required for C2 zone districts. This one has a 67-foot setback. 10 feet is required for a back setback in the C2 zone. This one will have a 10.6-foot setback. There is a perspective view that has been provided by the developer of the hotel. I'll ask that the members of the audience please, we've got to keep the audience quiet, please. The hotel complies with height restrictions. As you can see, there's a 45-foot height restriction in this district, and this is right at that restriction of 45 feet. My belief is rooftop appurtenances, and I think like elevator shaft equipment are exempt from the 45-foot restriction, but we can, the planner can better answer those questions. And here are some elevation drafts that we're looking, going around clockwise around the structure. There's the north elevation. And that's what one would see from St. Francis Drive. Keeping in mind, of course, that there is a lot of landscaping that will partially obstruct the view of this structure. Going around to the east elevation, if you're riding the Rail Runner past this location, this is what the Rail Runner passengers will see. And that street is called Penn Street there. And then the south elevation. This is a view from Cordova Road, recognizing that this will be partially obstructed by the Burrito Spot restaurant and the touchless car wash that are right along Cordova. And then also here's the west elevation. This is what will be seen from Cerillos Road. In the Planning Commission meeting on February 5th, there was a long discussion about the traffic, the traffic design here, and this is what was presented. This is what was presented in the original staff memo. And I think I need to delve into a little bit of detail here. There are going to be two entrances to the hotel. This is Driveway A, which is the northernmost entrance. And then there's a Driveway B, which is the southernmost entrance, right immediately north of the southernmost lot line. And I'm going to zoom in a little bit. Driveway A will be unsignaled in a full access driveway. Now, the project applicants have agreed to provide a deceleration lane going northbound on Cerillos and turning right. So, that street, I think it'll need to be widened there for that deceleration lane. And then the applicants have agreed to provide a deceleration lane southbound and turning left into the hotel. And I think this is the subject of a lot of dispute here. There will not be a signal there, and there is already an opening in the island there where traffic can turn left. When traffic is northbound on Cerillos Road, it can turn left into the School for the Deaf. And then as traffic is coming out of the School for the Deaf, it can also turn left, except there's a sign there on the School for the Deaf property that reads that school vehicles cannot make a left turn there, but they can only make a right turn as they exit the School for the Deaf property. And that is otherwise there would not be any further traffic. As I understand it, traffic that is exiting the hotel would be permitted to turn left there, going the opposite direction as the left turn traffic coming out of the School for the Deaf. And I hope that's clear. But then here, Driveway B, this was originally submitted as a left-in, right-out only. That is, the plan that was submitted would allow traffic to turn left as they're southbound on Cerillos Road into this driveway. But traffic that's northbound on Cerillos would not be able to turn right. But traffic that is coming out of the hotel at Driveway B would have to turn right. It would not be allowed to turn left. However, based on some recommendations by the Department of Transportation, it was decided that that left turn would not be feasible, and so therefore a left turn from southbound on Cerillos Road would not be permitted. And there was also a determination that it would be permissible for traffic to turn right as it is northbound on Cerillos and turning right into Driveway B at the hotel. Nonetheless, regardless, traffic would not be allowed to turn left coming out onto Cerrillos Road from driveway B from the hotel. So there were modifications to that traffic plan that were described to the Planning Commission. The night of February 5th, the staff of the City Planning Department recommended approval of the development plan subject to conditions of approval and technical corrections. Mayor and members of the council, I try to avoid submitting a big fat packet that's 200 pages that is going to be impossible to wade through. I did not attach the conditions of approval and the technical corrections. I do have a copy of those. They are three pages of technical corrections, and I'll describe a couple of those in a moment. There are development plan approval criteria that we ask you to consider as to whether or not this project should be approved. This is what the Planning Commission considered on the night of February 5th. The first criteria under Santa Fe City Code section 14-3.8D1A, the Planning Commission is empowered to approve the plan under Chapter 14. Under other sections of the Santa Fe City Code, the Planning Commission is authorized to review and approve or disapprove development plans for the gross floor area of 30,000 square feet or more. This development plan has 79,000 square feet, so it is well within the purview of the Planning Commission. The second criteria under 14-3.8D1B, approving the development plan will not adversely affect the public interest. The staff recommended to the Planning Commission to find that redevelopment of the property will greatly enhance the gateway to the downtown. The property is centrally located within walking distance to a variety of services and trails and other features of the downtown area, and that the hotel would provide economic benefits, employment, tourism revenue, that sort of thing. The third criteria is that the use and associated buildings are compatible with and adaptable to structures on the abutting property and other properties in the vicinity. The staff noted that the proposed hotel is compatible with other large governmental and institutional structures such as the Capital Flats, which is a four-story and multi-family housing development, New Mexico School for the Deaf, South Capital Complex, and then also the Department of Transportation facility is farther down Cerrillos. Planning Commission's approval was conditional upon the tables of conditions and technical corrections which I described to you a little bit earlier. As I mentioned, there are three pages of those conditions. I believe the way these conditions are structured, there are a number of factors that the developer really can't completely anticipate until a certain amount of grading and construction is done. For example, an approved agreement to construct and dedicate will be required with the Water Division for new public water infrastructure and fire services, that sort of thing. Also, the applicant will work with the land use staff to architecturally soften the four-story corner deck. The Planning Commission found that deck to be a bit obtrusive and apparently wants that to be redrawn so that it's recessed a little bit. Also, the property owner will assist in the relocation of Gunnison prairie dogs at the site. That is actually a statutory or code requirement for large development. I note that statute that was brought to my attention is that in order for the governing body to overturn a decision by the zoning authority, by a majority vote of its members may overturn that decision. That is New Mexico Statute Annotated 3-21-8 subsection C, meaning we have to have five votes to overturn the Planning Commission's decision here. Also, we have a number of witnesses that will be able to answer most of your questions, some of which are extremely technical in nature. Ms. Lamboy, the Land Use Director, is unable to attend tonight. Is that right? I believe she may, she contemplates becoming a grandma here real soon, so I understand she couldn't make it. Maggie Moore, who is the Planning and Land Use Department Assistant Director, is present. The Planner Manager, Dan Esabel, as well as the planner who presented this to the Planning Commission, Claudia Cath. Mr. Pacheco, Leroy Pacheco, would you raise your hand please? Are you here, Mr. Pacheco? Leroy Pacheco is the traffic engineer. So questions about traffic, which can be highly technical, can be directed to him. Taylor Jurgens of the Santa Fe City Water Division. Taylor Jurgens is present, and also Levi Newell, the Water Resources Analyst. Are you here? I should bring to your attention that Mr. Newell took exception with something in my memo with respect to the way the water budget was developed. My understanding was that a preliminary water budget or an alternative water budget could be submitted to the Planning Commission, and Mr. Newell has told me in an email that that is not the process. I should note that one of the conditions of approval is that the applicant or project, the developer, must confirm an approved water budget prior to requesting an alternative water budget, and that is one of the conditions that was approved. But those are technical questions that I believe Mr. Newell would be in a better position to answer. We also have Phil Gyos, Senior Transportation Engineer, who can also answer questions. I also have to note the presence of my wife, Sarah, and she is here because today is our 32nd wedding anniversary. I didn't mean to embarrass her, I'm just very, very proud of that. Thank you very much for your attention here. We also have one of the engineers, Debind Gestner, who is the Chief Engineer for the city, is also present. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you, Assistant City Attorney Rubilite. So, next up we will have the appellant, Old Santa Fe Association. You're welcome to give an opening statement and sworn witness testimony for up to 20 minutes. If you all are doing a joint presentation, it might be more efficient to do all at once. Just to make sure you got 20 minutes to present on this, not 20 minutes each. No, it's... All right. If you will all please raise your right hand and state your name. Do you solemnly declare and affirm that the testimony you have in reference to this item shall be the truth and nothing but the truth, and do this under the penalties of perjury? Thank you. Okay, let's get the timer up just before we go ahead and get you all started. Confirm. Mayor, you said 20 minutes. Yes. Okay, 20 minutes. Michael, please. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of the governing body. Tonight, we are appealing a development plan at the busiest, most complex intersection in Santa Fe, involving New Mexico Highway 14, Cerrillos Road, and US 28485 St. Francis Drive, both which intersect an active railroad at the third most dangerous intersection in Santa Fe. The only access in and out of this development is through Cerrillos Road, a state-owned highway. Any development at that location should have the highest standard of analysis. Our basis for appeal is that the original application did not have the complete set of data required. Our presentation will show that the true substantial data was what was missing from the original application. Poor data for traffic, access, and water were preliminary, inconsistent, or non-reproducible, and certain key data was understated. Our presentation will also show that city and state processes were not followed. Required standards and data sets were not used. We will reference the city's own Traffic Impact Analysis, the TIA guideline. Because Cerrillos Road is a state-owned road, the governing document for the state is the State Access Management Manual, called SAM, per the New Mexico Administrative Code. The original application, as submitted to the Planning Commission, did not meet the required standards and remains unconvincing as to the feasibility of the proposed development. At this, Santa Fe's most complex intersection, the residents of Santa Fe deserve better. Here to walk us through our presentation is Shawn Nunan and Aurora Martinez. Good afternoon, governing body. Mayor Garcia. My name is Sean Nunan. I hold an MBA from the University of New Mexico. I was formerly the New Mexico Department of Transportation's Traffic Monitoring Program Manager for statewide data collection, analysis, and processing. In that position, I led improvements for compliance processes, traffic data analysis, modernization of collection equipment, and the annualization of statewide traffic data. From that position, I've also completed additional federal program work at the New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration and data analysis, program compliance, and grant management. Good afternoon, governing body. Sorry, I always yell in these. And Mayor Garcia, thank you. My name is Aurora Martinez. I have two decades of public sector experience in program implementation, research, data analysis, and program compliance, federal standards, and NMDOT. I was involved in implementing MO traffic collected by Merkcog compliance. I also have experience in federal program work at NMDFA focused on data analysis and evaluation research and compliance. I was also a leader at the traffic monitoring program. A summary of appeal. The administrative record was incomplete under the Santa Fe City Code and the city's TIA guidelines. There are 12 discrepancies that show missing, partial, or conflicting evidence, especially in traffic data and NMDOT validation. Because this required material was not in record at the time of approval, the decision lacks substantial evidence. Procedural defects. The approval relied on procedures that did not meet required standards. Key inputs were missing, unsupported, or inconsistent with the city's 2024 TIA guidelines and NMDOT monitoring standards. Critical documentation for state access coordination, validated traffic counts, and complete water and drainage data was absent or contradictory. Because the decision depended on an incomplete record, it does not meet Chapter 14 substantial evidence requirement. Chapter 14 evidence requirement. The packet shows missing, incomplete, or preliminary items were allowed to be submitted after the fact under subject to conditions and technical corrections, contrary to Chapter 14. Sorry, where am I? Here we go. Contrary to Chapter 14's record requirement, preliminary documentation does not substitute for substantial evidence. Substantial evidence missing, incomplete, or partial at time of decision. In this slide, the following two slides, you will see the substantial evidence is either missing, incomplete, or partial at the time of decision. Key traffic inputs weren't in the record, only summaries, not the required raw data or validation, analysis, inputs, and assumptions. On this slide, you will see the Synchro model files weren't provided. Because NMDOT sets the requirements for these inputs, no one could reproduce or verify the results. Again, on this slide, you will continue to see the exact substantial evidence that is missing, incomplete, or partial at the time of decision. These are required substantial evidence requirements, and only NMDOT can change those requirements in writing along with FHWA concurrence. So, can you hear me? No. Make sure the light is on on the speaker. There we go. Okay. So, unauthorized override during scoping meeting. The engineer omitted required data documented in the scoping letter. We did pass one out for each one of the governing body members. In that scoping letter, it says there's no need for existing conditional analysis, no 24-hour counts on roadways or multimodal counts, and only narrative for Railrunner trips through intersections, removing the technical analysis needed to assess safety, queuing impacts, and exposure. And none of these scope reductions had written NMDOT approval or FHWA were required. So they weren't authorized for a project on a state route. So the scoping meeting TIA requirements not followed by the City of Santa Fe. The required evidence is missing under both New Mexico Department of Transportation standards, that's the statewide traffic monitoring standards, and the city's own TIA guidelines. On screen are explicit city TIA requirements that were not followed or excluded from the scoping letter. The city cannot reduce or waive these requirements. Any reduction must come from NMDOT in writing with FHWA concurrence when required. According to the city's TIA guidelines, the only thing the city can do is expand the requirement, which is not what happened here. Instead, the city reduced, violating its own city TIA guidelines, NMDOT, state traffic monitoring standards, and FHWA regulations. So, what you see in these boxes are the exact directions that were given to the developer to conduct their traffic analysis. And off to the side, those are the exact requirements that should have been followed. There should have been a 24-hour count that was not done. It was not directed to them. The analysis time period they were told to do from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. for turning movement count and 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. The TIA actually states if the existing conditions show a different peak time, then that time should be analyzed as well. Through the New Mexico Department of Transportation's existing traffic counts, the peak time was not between 7:00 and 9:00 or from 4:00 to 6:00, and that was shown in our Exhibit B1 in the appeal that was submitted. That was actual data export from the New Mexico Department of Transportation, and it shows the exact peak time, which is roughly in the middle of the day. Also, the TIA guidelines say the TIA shall address current existing conditions. And as I said before, in the scoping letter on page two, it says no existing analysis required with the assumption that the implementation year would be the same as current year, and also the queuing analysis. So queuing analysis with the TIA guidelines require that anything that could potentially cause queuing shall be analyzed. And in this case, they were told, which the Railrunner would cause queuing. I think everybody's seen it. We've all lived it, and they were told directly just to address the Railrunner trips through the intersection and the narrative, no analysis necessary. So in that, what I've just said, this is how this TIA does not even meet the city's requirements and further the Department of Transportation's. So the TIA input is 43% lower than the existing traffic conditions collected by the New Mexico Department of Transportation. So on screen, what you see is 1,852 vehicles according to the TIA. The New Mexico Department of Transportation had conducted a traffic count a month prior. It was a 48-hour traffic count because the New Mexico Department of Transportation standards require a 48-hour count, not a 24. And when turning movement counts are to be done, they have a different requirement as well. So the TIA requirements of 7:00 to 9:00 and 4:00 to 6:00 do not meet the department's requirements either. So the discrepancy, the data discrepancy and level of analysis impact the level of service is mentioned as level C in the TIA. However, with that 43% difference, that is 811 vehicles during peak traffic time. That is big enough to change any delay, change the queues, and any mitigations provided in the TIA. So without running the analysis with the full required data, we don't know if the level of service is actually a level C or if it drops to a level E or F, which requires further mitigating factors. And then especially as the growth rate that was used was not actually approved. There was no assumptions and methodology in the packet. So the assumption that they could use a 1% growth rate was not approved by the city. They were prescribed to use the Santa Fe MPO traffic data 10-year analysis. However, the city TIA guidelines require either using the MPO travel demand model from Santa Fe or NMDOT's growth factors when a state highway is to be addressed. And looking at the State of New Mexico's growth factor would actually be at 2%. The reason that is huge is because as you take the current factor traffic data and forecast it two years, when you're starting with a lower traffic number than actually is current existing, your future growth is going to be substantially lower as you project year-over-year and compound year-over-year. So knowing that the wrong data was used and not a complete data set was used, there's no way to validate that the actual traffic analysis done or collected because there is contradicting data that's publicly available online. No username required. You can just go and find it yourselves. Okay. So missing NMDOT coordination items. Every required NMDOT coordination item was missing from the approval record. There is no dated NMDOT access decision permit, no proof of application receipt, and no coordination memos or meeting notes resolving movements. Specifically in the scoping letters that I mentioned before, it shows the attendees to that meeting and it lists everybody by name and their association. NMDOT is excluded from that list. So they were not consulted or considered when this TIA and traffic study was initially developed. The only item that was present was a staff comment about driveway B, which we already heard about. However, that is not a substitute for a dated NMDOT decision. And under the NMDOT, we referenced for SAMS and the city's TIA guidelines. These omissions mean state access impacts were never formally established. NMDOT coordination was omitted from the required traffic analysis. Regarding state roadways, the national highway system and right-of-way, a specific hierarchy is required and must be followed. That is the Federal Highway Administration's regulations, followed by the State of New Mexico's, and finally by the city's TIA guidelines. The bottom line is that this development TIA and scoping lettered issue does not follow the city requirements, does not follow the state traffic statewide traffic monitoring standards, or FHWA traffic requirements as it directly affects the state highway and state right-of-way. Next is the preliminary water budget plan. So the developer has the preliminary water development budget plan. They describe exactly how they calculated it. They describe exactly how they calculated it. So the first bar that you see on the left is the acre-feet per year that they stated. They use two similar in size hotels. One is actually an 86-room hotel and the other's roughly 120 rooms. We're establishing the usage for 150-room hotel. Using the exact same data, we're not able to actually calculate 12.839, which they reported. Using the exact same data, we calculate 13.58 acre-feet per year. Further, when you take that same data and you actually scale it to 150 rooms instead of just using the 86 and 120, you actually come out with an acre-feet per year of, excuse me, 14.196 acre-feet per year, which is roughly 442,224 gallons per year shortfall. So this shows the misrepresentation of the project's potential actual water usage. But going back to traffic for a minute. So this is actually one of the third most hazardous intersections in the city. So adding 43% more traffic and using the ITE trip generation estimates on current traffic during peak hours at an intersection that is already documented as high crash significantly elevates the risk of collisions, increases pedestrian exposure, and worsens queue-related conflicts. When you layer that onto intersections serving schools, transit, and emergency routes, the added traffic doesn't just slow vehicles. It compounds safety hazards and can directly affect emergency access and response times. We have a short video. This was filmed on June 19th and June 22nd. It is copyrighted. And in this film, it is time-elapsed. So, please keep that in mind as I play this. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council members. I urge you to overturn the Planning Commission's recommendation of the proposed four-story, 150-room AC Hotel by Marriott on Cerrillos Road. This project poses an unacceptable risk to public safety and exacerbates existing traffic chaos. The intersection of Cerrillos Road and St. Francis Drive is already the third most hazardous in Santa Fe. The NMDOT itself raised concerns about the hotel's proposed driveway B. And the developer's own traffic impact analysis confirms that Railrunner crossings will continue to cause eastbound traffic to back up past the hotel entrance, creating dangerous gridlock and blocking access. Furthermore, this development lacks a comprehensive city-level two corridor package for transit and road upgrades, and critical state highway access permits remain unfinalized. Placing a 150-room hotel directly across from the New Mexico School for the Deaf with potential for black ice from building shadows is irresponsible. We ask you to prioritize the safety and well-being of our community over this ill-conceived development. Overturn this decision. Thank you. Please, please, audience, please. No, no. I don't want to have to tell folks again, or else I might have to clear the room. Please, we need to keep the audience silent. Thank you. I wanted to share with the governing body and the Mayor that we have also had a petition that has gone throughout the residents of Santa Fe. And as of a few moments ago, you see that those who are not able to attend, while we do have some of them in the room for support, we have over 500, 520, 523 actual signatures for our petition requesting the appeal to be approved for this development. In conclusion, our presentation has shown that the city and state processes were not followed, required standards and data were not used, and our proposed action for the governing body is to grant the appeal based on the facts presented that there was not substantial evidence to support the Planning Commission's February 5th, 2026 decision. Thank you. This appendix is just a summary of... If you wouldn't mind just stepping up to the mic again. Sorry. So this appendix is just a summary of the slides and the corresponding city code, the state traffic monitoring standards, and the NMDOT that require driveway access permits. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, if you're done with the presentation, the next item on the list is for the appellant, if desired. Willing to grant up to 10 minutes for questions of staff. The appellant has up to 10 minutes for any questions of staff. At this time, we don't have any questions. Okay. Thank you. So then the next item is the applicant, Titan Development/Jennifer Jakens, to provide an opening statement and sworn witness testimony for up to 20 minutes. So if we can get a clock up, please. Thank you, Mayor Garcia and Councilors. If I could have my team stand up and we can be sworn at the same time. Thank you. If you'll please raise your right hand and state your name. Do you solemnly declare and affirm that the testimony you have in reference to this item shall be the truth and nothing but the truth, and do this under the penalties of perjury? Thank you. I am actually in the Zoom, so if you could elevate me because I would prefer just to share my presentation through Zoom. I find that to be a little more seamless. Thank you. I think I'm ready to go. Thank you, Mayor Garcia, counselors. My name is Jennifer Jenkins, and I'm with Jenkins Gavin, here this evening on behalf of Titan Development. I'm also joined by Josh Rogers and Ian Robertson with Titan Development, as well as Ron Bohannan with Tierra West Engineering, who was the civil engineer and the traffic engineer for the project, as well as Frank Herdman, our legal counsel. So, I'm going to move through some of these slides relatively quickly because I think we all, you know, I don't want to be too duplicative or redundant. I thought Mr. Googleid was quite thorough. So, we have our site, 3.4 acres, located southeast of the intersection of Cerrillos Road and St. Francis Drive. As you can see, existing development on the property is a bit of a hodgepodge of various businesses and old warehouse buildings, and a lot of vehicles being stored on the property at this time. So, the property is zoned C2 General Commercial, and what we have just on the right side of the screen is just a few key standards. So, how do we determine what's appropriate development on a particular parcel? I have really good news for you. We have something called a Land Development Code that lays out the standards for what is considered appropriate. And if you meet those standards, that is the metric that every applicant, every developer knows. This is the playbook. I must meet these standards, and they govern height, setbacks, open space, landscaping, terrain management. The list is long. The project you have before you this evening is 100% compliant with every single standard in the C2 zoning district. Every single one. So, here's our proposed site plan, which you saw already. Again, we have a just under 3 1/2 acre parcel, and we have a requirement for 20% of the parcel set aside as open space landscaped area. We are providing over 25% open space and landscaping. We are just over our parking requirement at 151 spaces. So, in terms of architectural design, that is also regulated. There are also standards for architectural design, and it's a point system. So, depending on which zoning district you're in, you have to achieve a certain number of points. We have achieved the requisite number of points with the design that is presented, which did go through quite a bit of revision from the initial concept based upon feedback we received from the neighborhood. And this is very important: no variances are before you. No variance requests at all. And in the findings of fact, a conclusion of law adopted by the Planning Commission, as pursuant to SFCC Section 14-3.8C1, applicant met the applicable submittal requirements. So, a couple of things on this slide I do want to point out. So, as mentioned, we have two access points. Our primary access is a full access. We'll have a dedicated right turn lane on Cerrillos Road, also a dedicated left turn lane. Our southern entrance is right out only. It is only an exit. Mr. Ruby was correct. We proposed a left in there. DOT's like, "Nope." They were not comfortable with that. We said, "Great." They actually said, "Well, you can have a right in right there if you want, but it doesn't really work because we can't achieve an appropriate right turn lane as we do for the main entrance." And so we said, "You know what? We'll just let it be an exit. It'll work great. It's great for fire access." So, not a problem. And the traffic study absolutely analyzed Driveway B as an exit, as an exit only. Also, we are building a 6-foot sidewalk that does not currently exist along our frontage. We have a 5-foot planter strip with landscaping and street trees. Behind the sidewalk, we have another 10-foot landscape buffer. So, and as Mr. Ruby pointed out, our building is 67 feet away from Cerrillos Road. So, we have 15 feet of landscaping and a really important pedestrian amenity for this intersection in this part of town being developed as part of this project. So, we've heard some commentary previously about, "The site is so tiny, and the hotel is so big." So, we said, "Well, let's look at it." So, we have a 3.4-acre site with 150 rooms. So, this is just a collection of hotels I'm sure we're all familiar with. The average size of a parcel to accommodate a hotel is 2 1/2 acres, based on our selection of hotels here. The average room count, so it averages out to 46 rooms per acre of land. We're actually less than that, or 44 rooms per acre. So, to characterize this as somehow the site doesn't accommodate, it's not big enough, I think that is a misrepresentation. And here's another important factor. One of the other standards in C2 is lot coverage. How much of your lot can you cover with roofed area? In C2, you can go up to 60% roofed area of the parcel. Our lot coverage is 13.4%. 13.4%. So, maybe we could just put that particular narrative to bed right now. So, zooming out a little bit just to provide kind of some context for our surroundings in our neighborhood. You can see the proposed hotel here. We are adjacent to the train tracks, and across on the other side of the proverbial tracks, we have the Capitol Flats community. On the other side of Cordova Road, we have our South Capitol State complex of some very large, significant state buildings. Also across the street, our neighbors across the street, School for the Deaf, also have some large, significant buildings. And so I think it's really important just to see this in the context of its surroundings. What really sets this apart is the amount of open space, frankly, from what you see around it. So, we also are fortunate to be in a rich multimodal area with great access to downtown and the relevant amenities. And so everything you see here in yellow is either an existing sidewalk, an existing trail, or a proposed sidewalk that we will be developing. So, we have great access to the Acequia Trail, to the Rail Trail. We are an 8-minute walk from the Railyard Park in the Railyard District. We have bus stops. We have the train, so visitors can take the train up here, walk to the hotel. It's right there. And so this is a really diverse multimodal environment. We're walking distance to services and restaurants and areas of interest in our downtown core. So, we conducted a traffic study. So, that traffic study was scoped. The first step in any process, you meet with Public Works and you say, "This is our project." They tell us what to do. "You study these intersections. This is how we want you to do it," and we document that. I will say we had multiple interactions with the Department of Transportation, multiple meetings, multiple phone calls. This is their facility. So, because we had a lot of conversation about Driveway B and a lot of back and forth. So, I think that's very important to point out, and the study was prepared in accordance with the city's TIA guidelines, and the study was approved by both your Public Works Department as well as the Department of Transportation. Traffic counts were conducted in the AM peak hour, rush hour in the morning, the rush hour in the late afternoon, as is standard practice, and that was the directive to us to do that. We evaluated multimodal impacts, and based upon the improvements that we're proposing, there are no mitigation measures required around multimodal connectivity. And we're going to talk about, so there was a point made about that we didn't have an overall corridor level queuing analysis. We absolutely analyzed queue, or as cars might stack up at the studied intersections. And this is a really important point. So, the DOT will have to issue us an access permit in order for us to be allowed to construct those driveways and utilize those driveways on Cerrillos Road. The DOT does not issue those until we build it. I couldn't get an access permit out of the DOT right now if I tried to pay for it. It just is not a thing. It's not the process. They review the plans. They have to approve the engineered plans, which they have reviewed. And then once we build it in accordance with the plans, they come out, they inspect, they're like, "Looks good. Here's your access permit. You can start using your driveways." That's how it works. So, we analyzed five intersections at the direction of the City of Santa Fe and the DOT, starting with Cerrillos and St. Francis, going all the way down to Cordova Road. Great. Thank you. I appreciate that little time check. So, traffic studies are based upon how the studied intersections, the approximate intersections to the project, how do they function? And that is determined by what we call a level of service. Okay, like a grading system, and it's based upon the amount of delay a vehicle will experience going through, navigating a particular intersection. Level of service A, minimal delay. You're cruising right through. And then as the delay slightly increases, the level of service goes down. So, anything from an A to a D is considered acceptable, and that this is a functioning intersection. And in real busy urban areas, it's very common to have levels of service at kind of a C or D range, and there are different standards for signalized intersections as well as unsignalized intersections, as you can imagine. But if you start getting into E and F levels of service, then you have to mitigate. Are you building a new turn lane? Are you checking, revising signal timing? What, you know, what is the mitigant that can be constructed in order to raise that level of service to an acceptable level? So, these are our results based upon the counts that were conducted. So, we did absolutely look at existing conditions. So, as you can see here, starting at Cerrillos and St. Francis, currently today, the cars on the road, it operates as a C. Busiest intersection in the city, that's pretty great. Cerrillos and Cordova is a B. Cerrillos and the northern access drive into the School for the Deaf, that's where you go in to go to James A. Little Theater, that operates as a B, and then as a C in the PMP. And then we have a B and a C for the main access. And then Driveway B doesn't exist yet, so there's no existing conditions there. And then what we do is we project forward to when the hotel is expected to be constructed, and this our build year is anticipated here at 2027. So, we know population doesn't remain stagnant. So, we add a growth rate. So, we take that existing those existing traffic counts and we add a 1% growth rate to them. So, we beef them up, making an assumption that population is going to increase. So, those are the no-build numbers that you see there. This project never happens. What does the traffic look like in 2027? So, then we take those 2027 no-build and we add the traffic from the project on top of that, and we reanalyze it. And so, as you can see, we have acceptable levels of service across the board. The only place where a level of service degrades, you can see here, goes from a B to a C in the morning. That only impacts people exiting the hotel. It has no bearing on cars, through traffic on Cerrillos Road. It has no bearing on School for the Deaf traffic. It's only a slight increase in delay for people exiting the hotel. That is it. So, real quick, this just shows the improvements that are being constructed as part of the project. We have our left turn lane, and as part of, you know, lengthening this left turn lane, we had an opportunity to also lengthen the left turn lane serving the James A. Little Theater access here because theirs was pretty short. And so in our communications with the School for the Deaf, we said, "Look, we're going to be out here." We're going to be doing the work. Let's make, because when there's an event there, that left turn gets pretty busy. And so we are really excited that we have an opportunity to lengthen that to a really generous left turn lane for the, and we have our right turn lane and of course the ride out only. And then of course the sidewalk and landscaping improvements along Cerrillos. And there was, so you've heard talk about when the train is going through in the morning that there's a possibility for a brief period that eastbound vehicles could queue up on Cerrillos past our main access, which means cars wanting to turn left would have to wait, cars just turning left into the hotel. But that is an easily remedied situation. We have these, there's many examples of this around town, and this was a suggestion from Public Works as well as our own traffic engineers. You basically stripe in the road that says, "Don't stop here, keep it clear right here," so cars can continue to turn left. Is that, so this is an example. So this is the north leg of Paseo de Peralta. So you're leaving DeVargas Mall and you're heading towards St. Francis, and you got the bank coming up on your right, and that's Fiesta Street. We've all driven by this, I'm sure, many, many times. And you can see there's the big box with a big X through it, and there's a sign that says, "Do not block intersection." It's a standard practice, and there, like I said, there are many examples of this. So it's a really good solution to address that. So one of the things that I, actually I'm going to come back to that. So safety, we've heard a lot about safety this evening. So over the last five years, our crash data that we pulled up align with the appellants. We're all looking at the same data, and a five-year crash assessment is standard practice for a traffic study. There's an average of 37.4 collisions per year at this intersection. In the last five years, there have been zero fatalities and zero serious injuries. Over 14 million cars go through this intersection annually. 14 million cars. So those collisions amount to 0.00267% of the total volume. I do not see, nor in consulting with my engineers, that under any circumstances could this be characterized as a dangerous intersection based upon the data. That's all we're talking about is the data. Is it a big intersection? Yes. Is it a busy intersection? Absolutely. But the data does not support the characterization that it is dangerous. And currently on the site, there are seven curb cuts coming out of the site on Cerrillos Road. Seven. It's nuts. So we are greatly improving safety by reducing that down to two. So this is our conceptual rendering, which you already saw. This is if you are southbound on Cerrillos Road looking off to the, looking off to the east. You can see the landscaping improvements along the frontage. And this is as you're traveling north on Cerrillos. There is no blocking of view of the mountains. We love looking at the mountains as we travel north on Cerrillos. It's beautiful. And but that view is clearly preserved. And streetscape. As we all know, this is one of the key entries into the downtown. And so what we have today, I would not say this is Santa Fe putting its best foot forward. And with that, I'd be happy to stand for any questions and really appreciate your attention. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is, if the applicant is desired to ask any questions of staff, we're willing to give 10 minutes for that. Okay. So then next up is sworn public comment. If members of the public would like to provide testimony on this item, please stand and line up to speak at the podium. We are going to allow for two minutes per individual. We will take the community members that are in the chamber, council chambers first, and then we will move forward to public comment from anybody that might be participating online. You want me to swear in everybody at the same time? May. Yes. So if, if I would say if, if for those all the way up to the young woman at the back of the line, everybody please raise your, yes, yes, raise your hand that way, because that way we can swear you all in at once. And then if you do plan on providing testimony, you just don't want to wait in line, feel free to stand in your space, but we need to make sure everybody is sworn, get sworn in, because there might be questions or there could be questions asked if you do provide sworn testimony to any individual. And so with that, Madame City Clerk. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, please raise your right hand, state your name. Dario Romero. Do you solemnly declare and affirm that the testimony you have in reference to this item shall be the truth and nothing but the truth, and do this under the penalties of perjury? Thank you. Okay, with that, Mike, can we get the timer up, please? My name is Rome. Hold on one second, Mr. Romero. Let's get the timer up. And for those that might be new to this process, the timer will be up and there will also be a chime or some type of music that will sound off when your time has expired. And so at that moment, I'll ask that you please wrap up your comments. Mayor, the timer is not loading, but I will keep track. Okay. So I would say anybody in the chambers, please keep an eye on the City Clerk, and she'll let you know when your time has expired. She'll, and you'll hear a chime from her. My name is Ari Romero, 1561 Las Acequias. I am the president of the Las Acequias HOA and Neighborhood Association. 200 houses and 60 elderly apartments. And we as a group have met several times on this, and I would say that the majority of the people that have, that have talked with me in meetings have agreed, and I've also gone door-to-door as much as I can at short notice, very short notice. It makes no sense to put a 100-room four-story hotel at the intersection of two state highways near downtown Santa Fe. All full-time permanent residents of Santa Fe would have to live with this chaos it would create, especially those who commute to work using St. Francis. As you saw in the video, a left turn is impossible. The former speaker said that it was possible. It's impossible. I'll tell you why later. Pedestrians, bike riders, cars, et cetera, all the vehicles basically with the Acequia Trail in the middle, the train track in the middle, four access areas of traffic. Santa Fe being the capital hosts the legislature, conventions, concerts, film festivals, Spanish and Indian markets, they all contribute to what you have seen in the video. Parking, especially downtown, becomes more difficult than it is already. I personally have experienced traffic jams at this intersection since it was built, and I was there on Friday and Monday filming, producing and directing the video that you saw. So I have a firsthand, firsthand experience there for two solid days, Friday and Monday. We have a quality of life in our small city. Mr. Romero, the time is up. So if you wouldn't mind please just wrapping up. Okay. My suggestion to Titan Development is to take the Marriott to Albuquerque where it is appropriate and put it near the Balloon Fiesta Park in the soccer stadium. We have shown the city of Santa Fe the action that they must take for the good of our community. We need your vote in favor of the appeal, and thank you. Good evening, Mayor, counselors, fellow citizens. My name is Matt Johns, and I want to tell you a short story about Santa Fe. For centuries, Santa Fe has existed as a destination, a home to those who live here, and a treasured retreat for visitors. A place unlike any other in heritage, culture, art, spirit, landscapes, hospitality, and delicious food with red and green. Decades ago, this community came together to redevelop the railyard, a shared vision to thoughtfully present the best of Santa Fe for everyone. That vision carried us past stage coaches and dusty warehouses by the tracks to an awesome community space and new challenges. Those forward thinkers did great work, but one task remained: to bring world-class hospitality to the railyard, the final piece, giving our city the economic, cultural, and civic strength to prosper in the future while celebrating the things that matter. This is how we got here, and this is how we move forward. Opportunities like this are rare, even in Santa Fe's centuries of history. Let's move forward with confidence. We will overcome resolvable obstacles. Santa Fe is a worldwide treasure with enduring character, special purpose, and obligations to all peoples. Thank you, and have a wonderful evening on the best place on Earth. Good evening. My name is Annie Hansen. I'm a former county commissioner and president of the Casa Alegre Neighborhood Association. I drive Cerrillos Road almost every day. Not as much as I used to. Anyhow, I am concerned as you're working on Chapter 14 that unelected officials are making decisions for the city. You know, I feel that this needs to change, especially at an intersection like Cerrillos and St. Francis that affect the whole city. So I would like you to please think about that. This corridor has been, has a plan that has been being worked on for years. I sat on the MPO, and I would like to know where that corridor study is and why that is not being part, is not part of this, because we really need four lanes at that intersection. It is a failed intersection by any AASHTO standards. I sympathize with the data, but the data is incorrect from living here for over 50 years. I think I'm happy to know that DOT was involved, but I think we have a very old problem here of allowing buildings to be built before roadways are really completed. If we have a corridor plan, we should find and follow the corridor plan and then decide if this kind of hotel is appropriate. This hotel is also incredibly ugly. We have plenty of hotels in this town that are beautiful, Inn of Loretto. Even the El Dorado is a better-looking hotel than this. If they're going to build a hotel, can they not at least respect our tradition and culture? So I also want to state that Capitol Flats was approved with no one being noticed because it was done in an area where there are no residents. This happened under the Gonzalez Weber administrations, and it really needed to have more public input because it was another ugly building. So I thank you for the time that I have here, and I thank you for having us have this appeal, because I really feel like you as our leaders need to hear from our citizens and know that we care about the tradition, culture, and the way our city looks. Please pay attention to that. Thank you very much. I'm going to again, if folks agree or disagree with comments, raise your hands, thumbs down, but no clapping. Again, this is the last warning. I do not want to have to ask folks to leave the chamber. Go ahead and proceed. Ready? Yes. Go ahead, sir. Martinez, 725 Mia Road. I add in her handouts that what I want, what I'm saying, and I wanted to show you that in the back of that handout there's a city staff position that talks about compatibility, which is misleading. Let me go ahead and, but I'd like you to read that. I would like to, to, Mr. Martinez, if you wouldn't mind putting the mic a little closer to, there you go. The folks online won't be able to hear you. Okay. I'd like to share my concern about the land use staff findings that the proposed Marriott hotel is compatible with the surrounding building structures along Cerrillos Road. I support through infield responsible development, but I do not believe the current proposal is evaluated in a way that fully reflects the actual streetscape of the surrounding context. Staff's response proposed that the Capital Flats exclude New Mexico, the South Capital Complex. However, those comparisons overlook the key difference in relationship to these buildings to Cerrillos Road. To my knowledge, there's not another four-story along Cerrillos that has a 65 to 67-foot setback from the street. Not one nearby property, such as the Department of DOT, New Mexico School for the Deaf, or Capital Flats, has much steeper setbacks along this corridor. So for this reason, describing the hotel as compatible with existing streetscape appears misleading without additional visual review. The issue is simply whether the hotel is allowed in the C2 district, whether this particular building form, massing, and setbacks are compatible with the character of this portion of this road. I previously requested story poles. I hope you all know what story poles are. And before that, when this first started at the CNN on the site, that was never put up for the public to understand what kind of shading it has, and yet how important the transparency of that is to the nearby residents of the broader community to better evaluate that. I respectfully ask the city to require a visual demonstration of the proposed height, setbacks, and shadow impacts, concluding the project to be compatible with the surrounding area. A more complete review would give the public more confidence and more transparency to ensure the development along Cerrillos Road is compatible with what's going up. What I'm trying to say, basically, Mr. Martinez, if you wouldn't mind wrapping up, your time is up. Okay. No. Okay. Hello, my name is Mary Charlotte Doandi. I live on Valarde Street in Santa Fe. And I was going to come here and talk about the question of whether Santa Fe has a shortage of hotels, and whether a project like this is going to actually bring economic development to Santa Fe, or whether the money is going to go straight out of state, as so many of these projects do, and whether or not it's beautiful. But listening to the proceedings tonight, it seems clear to me that what this is about is whether or not the original application met the standards of the requirements of the application. The appellants seem to have made a good case that the application did not meet those standards, and the applicants did not really respond to that. So it seems to me that just on the basis of the letter of Santa Fe's own rules and the state of New Mexico's rules, where traffic and those rules are concerned, that if the original application did not meet the standards that the Planning Commission was required to honor, then this is a valid appeal, and you, as a quasi-judicial body, need to take that into account first and foremost. Thank you. I'm Fletcher Katherine. I live at 1062 Encantado Drive. I'm going to limit myself to the traffic question. First of all, I just have to say that the traffic entrances and exits at that point are terrible, and adding this hotel will make them worse. But my own personal experience is of cycling through that intersection most days. I travel from the Rail Trail across the intersection. And the traffic coming north, northeast, I guess, on Cerrillos Road often turns right onto St. Francis Drive without looking for me crossing on my bicycle, without looking for pedestrians. And I can't help but think that it's going to be much worse with the addition of a hotel at that point. Traffic simply is very dangerous at that intersection with the free right turns that I have to be careful of because motorists are not, and I think making it worse is a mistake. Thanks. Good evening. Hold on one second and let us do the time for you. We're going to move the screen that way the folks speaking can have a visual of the timer as well. You tell me when. There we go. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the governing body. My name is Maya Martinez. I live off of Pinon Drive in District 1. I'm a lifelong resident of the city of Santa Fe. So I've grown up driving this intersection my entire life, and I didn't prepare anything. I just want to kind of respond to a couple of the points made by the appellant and then by the developer. The traffic, I think the issue here is if this was approved according to the rules and guidelines that this governing body and the state provide to developers and to staff. I will say that as our representatives and staff being an extension of that, I think that staff need to do a, I mean, I think that people need to do a better job at representing us as citizens and what is safe, healthy, and in the best interest of citizens and not developers. And I don't think that that was done here. And it's not to discredit any staff. It's just we need to take that into consideration, or the people that represent us need to take that into consideration, and I don't think that was done here. Another thing with the water, I'm not a water professional. I did work in the water division for a long time, but we do these water credits and we do these water rights that are brought forward for these developments. And that's all great on paper, but we're in the middle of a drought and we don't have wet water to provide for those water credits and water rights. So at some point, somebody in county commission, city council, planning commission are going to need to take that into consideration when we're approving all of these developments. The other thing I want to just speak on is these developers and these in-town developers, they're either out of touch with the people that work, drive, take their kids to school, go through these intersections, but that is not a safe intersection by no means. So hoping that they can take that into consideration as well. Thank you. My time start. Not yet. You'll see the timer there on the top left once it resets for you. There we go. Go ahead, sir. Good evening, Mayor, City Council. My name is Donald Serrano. I live on Santa Rosa Drive by Monterey. And the motto of this city used to be "the city different." I think it still might be. I don't know. But for my set of my mind, it's become "the city indifferent" because people aren't being listened to. And we've heard all the fine remarks. I think Old Santa Fe Association did a wonderful job really summarizing the impacts. Maya certainly did, a lot of other folks. These people will build this wonderful giant monstrous hotel and walk away. They'll walk away with their millions and their smiles. Live in a different state. We live with it every day. We live with the traffic. We live with the congestion. We live with the sirens at night. We live with the loud cars. We live with all these things that are cumulative impact. If this was a federal project, this would be required an environmental impact statement. And what that means, that when you do an environmental impact statement, there's an irretrievable consequence of your actions. You cannot reverse those things. And that's what this project will do. We experienced that on the Monterey Baca intersection, and that whole conglomerate was built. I told the city engineers that behind Taco Bell that would become a default street. And guess what, man? Sure enough, it is. So you got to really think these out. You guys got time, okay? You represent Santa Fe. Do a better job at it. Listen to your people. Listen to your citizens. I beg of you. God bless you and have a wonderful evening. Thank you. I can't really see it. I can give you a heads up, ma'am, when it's time. When you hear the chime, you have about 10 more seconds. Go ahead. 100 years ago, in 1926, this, oh, I'm sorry. Nancy Fay, 728 Messia Road. 100 years ago, in 1926, the Supreme Court of the U.S. delivered a ruling called Euclid v. Ambler that provided the foundation for modern zoning laws. A key element of modern zoning identified by Chief Justice George Sutherland, who wrote for the majority, is environmental context. Residential, rural, and industrial areas have substantially different needs in managing traffic, pedestrian, and safety and access to firefighting. Specifically here, we have to look at, are there other four-story buildings on Cerrillos Road? Well, not nearby. Single-story motor lodges, we got those. Are there buildings nearby with historic and architectural significance? Yes, the School for the Deaf, designed by John Gaw Meem, right across the street. This is why we look at streetscapes and environmental context. This is proposed to be at one of the busiest crossroads in the city that serves 72,000 vehicles per day, according to NMDOT. And we also have, as you know, an active railroad crossing running right through the middle. Is this really the smartest place we could situate another 150 hotel rooms? Justice Sutherland famously wrote, "A nuisance may be merely a right thing in the wrong place, like a pig in the parlor instead of the barnyard." What is needed and where does it belong? We must dedicate ourselves to make wise choices that benefit the general welfare, or we will make a regrettable lasting capitulation for a pig we neither want nor need. I would like to close with the information that I spent 10 years working emergency and critical care in this town, and I take public safety as seriously as anyone, and we're talking about making a very busy intersection more dangerous. Please think carefully when you vote. Thank you. Hello, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. My name is Judith Gabriel. I live at 2520 Camino Cabro, and I'm in District 2. I was going to start with talking about my own personal concerns, but after the presentations this evening, I agree that the application was incomplete and should be dismissed on that alone, and that the Planning Commission has made a serious mistake in approving this project. On a personal note, I cycle through that intersection regularly. I drive through it, as most people who live in Santa Fe do, and I think it's an extremely dangerous intersection. One of my habits is to count how many people run the red lights at that intersection. The highest number that I've counted is 12. To say this is not a dangerous intersection, I think is seriously misguided. I also see people parked in the "do not stop in the box" places all the time and think that that's not an appropriate solution to fixing the traffic problems at this destination. What I worry about, in addition to the fact that I think it's inappropriate for traffic, is that people are going to become more and more frustrated at this intersection, and it will become more dangerous because people are more likely to run lights and do stupid things because they're angry and frustrated about the amount of traffic at the intersection. I'm asking you to please put quality of life over money and development. I am not anti-development. I think hotels are necessary for our city. As the previous speaker said, we need to think carefully about where and why we're doing something and think about the quality of life for our residents. Thank you. Hello, my name is Rachel Olri. I live on Monterey Drive, and I'm a statistician at Los Alamos National Lab. Issues in Santa Fe regarding affordable housing, short-term vacation rentals, and tourism have been a long-standing issue. Downtown Santa Fe, the 87501 zip code, holds 60% of all short-term rentals. The number of absentee homeowners exceeds 20%. While this is likely underestimated, neither of these figures includes non-compliance properties. The slew of problems created by this supersaturation of tourism is well known and includes aggressive and distracted drivers, illegal use of private property, damage to property, litter, and increasing crime. As a personal anecdote, having rented an apartment on Alameda across from the art road, we had four bikes stolen with the aid of bolt cutters, our mailbox and retaining walls damaged by cars plowing into them, and our personal vehicle hit in our own driveway by a taxi and vacationer at the VOB next door because he was driving in ski boots. The retired owner of our neighboring apartment once sat outside to count the number of cars illegally turning around in our driveway. She observed over 90 cars in under three hours. In short, downtown Santa Fe has been sacrificed to tourism. We have since relocated to Monterey Drive where we finally feel like we are part of a real neighborhood in real Santa Fe. And now, instead of addressing the issues that have turned our downtown into a southwestern Disneyland, the city is proposing to push these same pressures further afield into the 87505 zip code. The establishment of this hotel would exponentially increase the already congested traffic on Cerrillos, would bring more aggressive and distracted drivers navigating the hotel's awkward entrance and exit patterns, cutting through nearby neighborhoods and local businesses. The proposed hotel is also located between the School for the Deaf and the Early Learning Center, two groups of pedestrians especially vulnerable to unsafe traffic conditions. This proposal would encroach on one of the few remaining areas in Santa Fe that is both historic and occupied mainly by full-time residents. For these neighborhoods, it would be the beginning of the end. I am a statistician and I love data, but I don't think that you can build a community purely on data. Otherwise, you won't have much community left. It's especially painful because the story has already been told too many times across the Rocky Mountains: Jackson Hole, Vail, Aspen, Bozeman. I don't want Santa Fe to become the next cautionary tale of culture lost to the pursuit of profit. I want Santa Fe to be the next Santa Fe. Go ahead, sir. 1419 Meter. Yeah. So, as you heard from my partner, we moved out of a busy, busy part of Can you speak a little more into the mic? I apologize. Just because the line needed no worries. As you heard from my partner, we moved from a busy part of town over to what I feel like is a real neighborhood. And as a bike rider, I use a bike to get all over Santa Fe. Moving to our neighborhood, it has been delightful. It's felt a lot safer than riding in downtown. But I have picked up on some tricks and I know that a lot of people have picked up on tricks of how to get around that area. It's busy. We try and stay out of the intersection. Go through Baca. People drive behind Taco Bell. You have Cordova. People find creative ways to go through these streets. As a biker, I find myself in a lot of these intersections. And to be honest, I'm finding rental cars and people not from the neighborhood have given me a lot of problems. I've nearly been hit multiple times even this month. I'm afraid the addition of more tourists, more people who are confused by this already confusing area, are just going to create more of a problem for pedestrians and bikers. And I just want you guys to think about this as you go. So, Stacy Foils, 2522 Camino Cabro. The big issue here is the law, and the law is created for our protection. The statutes were written so that we can continue to have a community and we do it safely. And yeah, it's irritating to all of us at different times. When I want to add something onto my house, I'm irritated. I have to get a permit for this. I have to get it for that. I have to stop at stop signs when nobody's there. And I do. And the reason I do is for the safety of my neighbors, the safety of myself, the safety of the animals around us. You people are here and voted in to respect our laws. These people did not respect our laws. The planning commission did not respect our laws. And as Obama reminded us when he opened his library, democracy is difficult. It's boring sometimes. It's lengthy. It's tedious. But it leads to all of us having a community together. So that's all I ask is that you respect the law. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and City Council. My name is John Penn Lafarge. I live at 647 Old Santa Fe Trail. I have something of an unusual connection to this intersection. As Jennifer Jenkins pointed out, one of the roads in this intersection is Penn Road. My middle name is Penn, and ever since I was a small child, I've always assumed the road was named for me. First, I want to address traffic. I, along with everybody else, drive through this intersection not frequently, but frequently enough to know that it is unpleasant even at its current state. And it's very difficult for me to believe that it will not become more unpleasant with more traffic and people turning in and out of driveways. The statistics to the contrary, I just don't believe that that is possible. I believe it will remain and become more unpleasant. Then aesthetics. I think it is important to note that the aesthetics of this town are under continual pressure. Now, Anna Hansen noted that we have a lot of good-looking hotels in this town, which is nice. We also have a lot of not good-looking hotels in this town. And I think the last thing we need is yet another. And we do not need a four-story hotel in a two-story town. If we want to keep this town special for us and for visitors from around the world, we cannot and must not continually uglify the town. Thank you. Hello, Mayor and City Council. Thank you very much for hearing us. I'm Jan Boyer and I live at 815 Rio Vista Street. I've lived here for 40 years and I know this intersection very well. I'm pretty amazed that according to the data we received, this hotel would add 15 to 25 seconds to everybody going through this intersection. I think if that, if I'm not mistaken, I think that's what it said. And it says 72,000 people drive through this intersection every day. So that's a big piece of Santa Fe. That's a lot of the citizens of Santa Fe. So, it's like you're saying, they're saying, "Oh, well, it's fine if everybody in Santa Fe drives through this intersection and has to wait an extra 15 to 25 seconds." That doesn't sound like a lot of time, but when you add it up, why would we give this to them? So, I have a lot of issues with this project, with the traffic, with the two driveways they have, with the water, with the need for it. But again, I have to say, I can't believe the insult of them giving us such ugliness. This city has so much beauty in it. That's why I live here. We have a lot of people who come here just for the beauty. And then to have that monstrosity sitting there delaying us all at an intersection that we know is already formidable, it's really quite intense as it is. But I also, I kind of don't like it the way things seem to get a little bit twisted in the presentations, but I know that and you know that most people in Santa Fe, the building and especially this one that would cause the traffic to be so much worse at that intersection that's already so bad. We have one of those painted out X places in various places in town. And I have seen more accidents over those than I have any place else in town. I know that that's happened in front of DeVargas Mall at that big X because somebody crashed right into my car one day right in the middle of, I was in the X. Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to wrap up your comments, Miss Boyer. Good afternoon. My name is Elizabeth West. I live at 318 Sena Street in the South Capitol. And I, too, am a newcomer. I came in 1966. Actually, I was here in 1955 when I was 11. And we stayed, my parents and my brother and me stayed in a trailer park, which is still in existence. I'm not still there, but I drive by it on this incredible road, Cerrillos Road, which is a state highway. It's called the Trailer Ranch. And by the way, it was hand-carved, the advertisement to it, which is long gone, by my future father-in-law. But when I was 10 years old, I didn't know that then. However, I came in 1966, and like a lot of people, I think I sort of got our history here. However, today we're mostly, I thought, talking about traffic. It was a lovely presentation from the Marriott Hotel and Company people, and it was a good advertisement for it, and it's pretty and well done. I was impressed by what I'm a member of the Old Santa Fe Association and I got to see the performance and the layout of a very fine response. So there are three main things. Where is it? Okay. Number one, the city of Santa Fe, is it staff or is it the governing body? When I read in the paper, the city of Santa Fe says, so who is doing that? I'm echoing what Miss Hansen said about who's in charge. Number two, referencing Mr. Martinez or Miss Martinez. Ray, who decides? Who decides? I talked to somebody, a nice person who said, "I think we should let the Marriott people decide. They know they build hotels." That's not the approach I approve of. Number three, final comment. I'm referencing Miss Doandi. Similar data was used. That's what we were told. Yes, we used OSA's appeal. Use the data that was misused by the company who wants to put a hotel there. Of course, we used the same data and we used it to prove that they failed to provide real authoritative references. Miss Swift, the time is expired. Thank you. Good evening, counselors and mayor. My name is Barbara Fix. I live at 610 Alicia Street and have lived there for over 40 years. That's six blocks from St. Francis behind the School for the Deaf, and I have volunteered. I'm the caretaker of the Acequia Garden there on the Acequia Trail and have helped try to clean it up. I go through this intersection frequently. I've noticed over time that the traffic backup both on Cerrillos and St. Francis has gotten greater and greater. And there's also changes in the culture of driving. Sometimes, have you noticed that sometimes it takes people a time to get started? It's because they're looking at their phone while there's a red light. I've seen confusion of people there. I bicycle there frequently and walk my dog and also drive across it. I'm afraid of the frustration that's building with people and the confusion at that intersection. There are such things, there are statistics and then there are damn statistics, and what is not shown in the data of what crashes there may have been. It doesn't show the near crashes and you see those, you can see the impatience of people and the frustration and I fear what the effect of this hotel is going to be and I thank you very much for your kind consideration of the rest of the city. Thank you. Hello, my name is Judy Klinger. I live at 501 Rio Grande Avenue. I've been in Santa Fe for 50 years now and I've seen a lot of changes. Excuse me. Thank you, honorable mayor and counselors. I believe the appellant tonight has successfully raised many questions about the approval process for this project. Obviously, the main concern for most people is the traffic. We know that the Department of Transportation has listed this intersection as one of the, as the one with the third most accidents in town. There are many complications with the railroad tracks running through, no lane lines for vehicles, the proximity to the deaf school, and who knows how many deaf pedestrians are trying to use that intersection in addition to the many bicyclists and other pedestrians. The potential hotel project would add numerous additional vehicles and pedestrians to the mix. The developer's own traffic study states that traffic backs up when the train passes through the intersection, "As traffic volumes continue to grow over time, this issue is expected to worsen" and will potentially result in "complaints to the city and/or NMDO." And that's even before counting the additional 150 additional hotel rooms. So, do we need another hotel? According to a recent article in the New Mexican, data indicates that occupancy rates at downtown hotels are flat compared to last year. Those figures have been achieved by rate reductions. One of the things I think about this project is that it was barely approved by the Planning Commission by one vote, by the chair breaking the tie. So, who are the members of the Planning Commission? Who are they accountable to? You, the governing body, are accountable to the citizens of Santa Fe. I hope that as you review this project, that the new information provided tonight, that you will take into account public safety over corporate interests. And lastly, I will say, I'm just wondering, by show of hands, who here is for the hotel being built? Okay. And who is against it? Enough said. Thank you. My name is Pelican Lee. I live at 808. Hold on one second, Pelican. Let us, let us get the timer reset for you. We want to give you your appropriate time. Okay. My name is Pelican Lee. I live at 808 West Manhattan in the railyard, and I drive through that intersection most every day, and I walk through it about once a week. So, I feel like this, for all the reasons you've heard from everybody here, is not an appropriate use for that plot of land, that hotel. Why do we need more hotels, more tourists? What we need is housing here, and we need housing for very low-income people, but I'm not sure that a housing project there would be the most appropriate thing either, but definitely not a hotel. And since this City Council saw fit to shoot down the rock for an emergency shelter for another year, I think maybe the city should consider putting an emergency shelter there. I mean, there is no plan for an emergency shelter, and that is a serious problem. Thank you. Mayor Garcia, members of City Council, my name is Joe Simmons. I live at 216 Barela Street in the Guadalupe neighborhood. I wanted to first start by thanking this governing body for appointing me as the licensed architect on the H board. I've been a member for just a few short weeks, and I believe I'm making a good impact and a good effect. I have established good relationships with all my other members. So, thank you very much for that. I'm here tonight speaking as an architect who works in numerous cities. I'm in and out of land use codes all the time, and I'm just here to advocate for property rights. That if an applicant has met all the conditions of the land use code, they have a legal right to develop. Nobody here is arguing that the intersection of Cerrillos Road and St. Francis Drive is a big pain for everyone. I don't believe that it is the property owner's obligation to fix the city's and state's problem. And perhaps the good outcome out of this hearing would be that there would be some desire to conduct a study. I personally believe that a solution to the traffic problem would be to regrade, recreate that terribly designed intersection to allow St. Francis to go underneath Cerrillos and the train track. That's entirely feasible. I've looked at it. I've driven by many times. So, I'm here to advocate that we're talking about 310 cars per day on a street that sees 21,000 cars a day. That is an infinitesimally small increase in the amount of traffic. They are not the cause of the problem, but I think that the city has an obligation to correct that problem and allow this developer and property owner to enjoy their legal right, having complied with the land use code, and keep them. Hi, my name is Carrie, and I live on Palace Avenue. I'm going to dovetail on what he just said by saying that I'm a daughter of a developer from a town that was used as a cautionary tale this evening. And that's why I come to these meetings, because I don't want to happen to Santa Fe what happened to my hometown. And we are on the way. I want to thank you all for having us here, and this is another way that democracy looks like. So, thank you for hearing us tonight, really hearing us. My question is, why are they building this hotel there? I'm not anti-developer. I loved my dad, but why there? My guess is the land was cheap. I just want to bring up one thing that was mentioned tonight, because I agree with a lot that's said, and I don't want to be redundant, but the city attorney today said, "We think it's a great enhancement to the entrance of Santa Fe." I do not agree. Is a big box corporate building what Santa Fe is now? Is this what we want our welcome mat to look like? Is this the legacy that we want to start right now today? Think about that. Thank you. Hi, my name is Tony Malmmet. I live on Camino Rancheros, if you like the new kid, because I've only been here for 44 years. You guys, you are the, and women, of course, is under guys in this, are, you're obviously well-intentioned, or you wouldn't be doing this job. You're not here because you're rolling in the dough from this, and I know you care about Santa Fe, and you serve the public, if that's the right word for it. And I think that if we did a referendum of the whole city, it would probably be a good 90% of the people here don't want this. And the thing I realize is, you guys again, are, you're holding, like, you're the ones who are responsible right now for decisions that will affect the city forever after this. And I, I had a store downtown for like 40 years, so I would meet a lot of these developer types, and they, they have a playbook they use. They lean in. They find the loopholes, literally. I mean, they've, they've told me this. They're not thinking about the city. It's, it's especially billionaires who don't even live here. I'm not against billionaires. Maybe they're not my favorite, but they won't stop. But the idea is, you also have loopholes and things you can do. From my understanding, there's a lot of things that are wrong with this application. Obviously, to put a hotel there is a dumb idea. I mean, everyone drives through. Did you ever notice how contracted you feel at that intersection? Especially from the Cerrillos and, say, well, at the, whatever that is, the more southern side. I actually, I just want to ask you to use what you can use to do what you probably know is right. And, as personally, I, I like the prairie dogs there. Anyway, thank you. Good evening, members of the City Council. My name is Donna Rietta Tensio, and I live on Four Rudy Rodriguez Drive in Santa Fe, Santa Fe, and I've been here all my life. My family's been here for centuries, and I'd just like to start with a question. Whoever did this study, was it at 2:00 a.m.? Because I do not know how else they could see that there was enough room and space for traffic to go in safely, to merge in safely, even if it is only 300 approximately people. But what I'd like to talk to you about is that you are the stewards. You're the stewards of our environment, our water. How are we going to increase more water usage in the city? And you're also stewards of our economy. You're ignoring the other hotels that are on Cerrillos Road to build another one here instead of dealing with the issues of homelessness that are on the south side and the hotels that have already invested in Santa Fe and supporting them and trying to make sure that tourists will want to stay on the south side of Santa Fe. Instead, we're just building more and more downtown. Let's support the south side and ensure that the homeless issue is dealt with so that we're not wanting to constantly just build up the downtown area. So, to me, it looks like you're trading building another hotel closer to Santa Fe downtown where more tourists will feel safe and secure and ignoring the hotels and businesses and the employees that already work on the south side. So, that's my take, and thank you for your interest. Good evening. My name is Marian. Good evening. My name is Maryanne Stickler. I live in District 2. The thing that's really stuck in my head the last few weeks about this controversy is the process. So, I want to repeat something that Commissioner Hansen said early in the public comments. I can't get it out of my head that one volunteer citizen has made this decision for a city of 90,000 people. That one volunteer that serves on our planning board broke a tie and has put us in this position today of being conflicted about this development. I'm a retired real estate developer. I understand the processes. I understand, you know, defending my project in front of a public hearing. But the issue that I've just never witnessed in my 45 years here is having one volunteer citizen make such an inconsequential decision when she was not hired by the city in the capacity of an experienced land use planner or administrator. She was not elected to represent the interests of the citizens of Santa Fe. And all of you were, as you all know, I followed all of your campaigns very closely. I know that the one thread through everyone's campaigns was to serve the residents of Santa Fe, not the investors, and not any particular economic sector, but the residents. And you serve the residents by representing balance. I think that the appeal has given you enough technical grounds to legally overturn this decision, and I just really implore you to look at your commitment as elected officials to override a decision that was made by an earnest volunteer, but a volunteer that doesn't come from the land use and planning industry. Thank you. Hold on one second. The time. Let us get it reset for you. There you go. Is the mic turned on? Is it green? Now it's on. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We'll start over. Thank you, Mayor, counselors. My name is Rosemary Romero. I live in Casa Linda, and I'm a, I'm a fellow counselor and planning commissioner from years ago. And most of what I do for a living is public involvement and facilitation and mediation. What I want to talk about is something I hadn't heard tonight that I hope you'll take into consideration, and that is cumulative impacts. Having worked with agencies who do not take into consideration air quality or extraordinary land issues on and the impact it has on communities. This project has an incredible impact on Casa Linda, which we've already experienced from all around us, and that's been briefly stated tonight. The public reporting describes the project as a four-story, 150-room hotel on a narrow triangular parcel near the St. Francis Cerrillos intersection, and notes that the Planning Commission approved it 4 to 3 after significant public concern about traffic and design. Even if projects are reviewed individually, the combined effect is what residents experience in daily life. Increased congestion and turning, and turning conflicts, more pressure on local streets and neighborhood circulation, which is what Casa Linda experiences on a day-to-day basis. Changes to neighborhood views and visual character, and reduced overall quality of life. Traffic impacts should be evaluated beyond a narrow level service finding. A project of this size will generate substantial new vehicle activity, including guest arrivals and departures, employee trips, delivery service traffic, ride share pickups and drop-offs, and associated turning and curbside conflicts. There are many more conflicts. I ask you to please consider the cumulative impacts on communities and neighborhoods like Casa Linda. We are experiencing the traffic from Taco Bell, and we love that we can go get a cup of coffee across the street. It's great. But you add to that the effects of the train and a new hotel. We can't take more. Please take this into consideration with all due respect, and I really honor all of you for doing the hard work. Good evening, Mayor. Hold on one second. Let us get... There we go. Mayor Garcia and councilors, I wasn't sworn in earlier, so Madame City Clerk, if you wouldn't mind swearing me in, please. Please state your name. Raise your right hand. Okay. Okay. Randall Bell. Do you solemnly declare and affirm that the testimony you have in reference to this item shall be the truth and nothing but the truth, and do this under the penalties of perjury? I do. Thank you. Michael, can you please restart the clock? Again, my name is Randall Bell. Hold on one second, Mr. Bell. Let us get the clock to reset for you. There you go. Yes, my name is Randall Bell. I live at 2991 Via Pavo Real, Santa Fe. I'm going to make this simple. As some of you may know, I'm president of the Old Santa Fe Association. I believe our presentation is kind of not capable of being questioned. The data that was presented clearly shows that the required information criteria and data necessary to have a complete TIA, which is the basis of how they considered and decided to approve this thing, is completely deficient. You have copies of what was submitted throughout the list: missing, missing, missing. This is critical data that Ms. Jenkins sort of waves off. "Oh, we talked to the DOT." That data is not in there. That TIA is not acceptable with the traffic analysis and thus does not constitute substantial evidence on which this project could be approved. And as many people have pointed out, it was unfortunately approved by a small number of volunteer planning commissioners. That shouldn't cut it for such an important thing. My last comment is, looking at the first time I saw the actual image of the design, it looks like it would be a great addition out at the penitentiary. It really is not suitable for Santa Fe. It does not contribute really in any way visually to this beautiful town that we have. So I urge you to uphold our appeal. Thank you. Hi, Peter McCarthy. I own a home at 1421 Monterey Drive in Casa Linda. Regarding all the technicalities of this approval, I don't know all of them. I haven't gone through them, but I do know that neighborhood, and I know the Rail Trail really well. I run it three nights a week. I go down to that area, turn around, and go back up to Siringo. And I also spend a lot of time there and going downtown. At certain times of the day, if you want to go downtown from our neighborhood, Monterey Drive, you take a right turn and the traffic is backed up because of that intersection, starting at Cordova. Cordova sometimes is just a total logjam. I also realized that in the running I do and the time I spent, I walk my dogs there. I go there quite a bit to Rail Yard. You know, you see so many near misses at that. I mean, it's such a complicated intersection in so many ways, and it's so dangerous. People pull up and they take right-hand turns. I've almost been hit two or three times trying to cross the street. I'm sure many people have been hit there. I just think that the data hasn't been collected on this to just show the impact that this is going to cause to those surrounding neighborhoods. The School for the Deaf, there's so much around there. There's our neighborhood that's there. It's such a bad idea, and it's such a mass development. I read somewhere there was an article in the paper saying, "Oh, well, it won't distract, you know, traffic won't be bad while they're building it. They can just do it from Penn." And I was going like, "Doesn't that person know that there's a train that goes by there six, eight, ten times a day?" I mean, that train, there's been so many times where I've been going up where it gets stuck. Somebody pulls too far up and stops and has to honk the horns. Can you imagine with so many out-of-towners aggravating that situation? I mean, it's just awful. And I just hope as our reelected representatives, all the life in these neighborhoods is deteriorating. Casa Linda is such a beautiful neighborhood. Please save these neighborhoods. You want to do it when you're developing Midtown. You were very conscientious. Don't blow it. Thank you. One last call for anybody in the audience. If not, we'll go ahead and move towards any public comment online. Mayor, there are some hands raised in the Zoom room, and we will start with Bob White. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, councilors, first thing I've got to say, I had to change what I was going to say tonight as I listened to the presentation. I never thought I'd see a traffic design as bad as the one in front of Zia Flats, but if they are going to allow a left turn onto Cerrillos Road out of that driveway, forget about the diamonds in the road because they get ignored every traffic cycle in front of Fiesta Street. What's going to make it different there? I don't think there will be anything different, and it's going to be extremely dangerous. This hotel, and the other thing I would ask you to do, put in your mind the length of Cerrillos Road and the length of St. Francis Road. Can you think in your mind of a worse place to put a hotel than right there? That should jump out. And finally, I've been thinking about this a lot. In March, I visited my brother in the low country of South Carolina. Environmentally and temperamentally, the low country of South Carolina is vastly different from New Mexico, but they're identical in the sense that they are both magical and enchanted places. When I visited there in March, I'm an old white guy and I don't cry, but my eyes welled up with tears looking at what developers, private equity, and corporate development has done to the low country of South Carolina. The horse is out of the barn for the Plaza in downtown Santa Fe. If you came here after, I'd say, 1985 or 90, you got no idea what the magical place was, and that's gone. Now, let's just not make the city dangerous, and that's what this hotel will do. And let's think about, do we want to develop every square inch of land in this city and county so tourists can come in and gawk at what used to be here but ain't here anymore? Thank you. All right, we'll allow Stephanie Benonato to speak. Thank you very much, Stephanie Benonato. I believe that you should not approve this project, and I believe that the Old Santa Fe Association has given you plenty of reasons in its appeal, technical reasons for a deficient application, and that you should pay close attention to that. I also wonder, and I'm just going to bring up some specific things, the so-called deceleration lane that's coming if you're going north on Cerrillos, you're going to decelerate into the hotel property. Is that on Cerrillos Road or is that taking a chunk out of the property? Because if it's on Cerrillos Road, it's just going to add to the problem and add to congestion. And then Mr. Rubel's statement about how this somehow is an enhancement to our town is just a bogus statement driven by developers. This is a gateway, a main gateway to Santa Fe. This is a generic, rather ugly-looking hotel. It is right across from the School for the Deaf. At least it could be in the mission style that the School for the Deaf is in. And to look at the Capitol Flats apartments, again, they're new and they are equally ugly. Also promoted by Jenkins Gavin. And I'm concerned because when Mr. Rubel says, "Well, there's a lot of details and they can't tell about grading and this and that till they start the project." Well, that's exactly what happened at Capitol Flats. The west side of those buildings were supposed to be level with the sidewalk. They are now three feet above the sidewalk. There was no public notice that that was going to happen. So again, will that happen here? Will it get even taller? I understand that they've technically met all the zoning requirements, but I don't really think that that means you should approve it. I don't see why they need a rooftop decking. And I wonder if they could get an easement through Taco Spot or build a road across the railroad tracks, across the railroad tracks on Penn Road, and come in from Penn Road. I know there'd be another gate that has to be there, but it would seem a lot safer than coming in from Cerrillos. Thank you. We'll move on to Laura Miller. Hello. We can hear you. Okay. So I wanted to make a comment. I'm Laura Miller. I have a house in the Casa Linda neighborhood. And I guess my main comment is that I respectfully disagree that the record supports that the project is 100% compliant. For this appeal, it's basically whether there's evidence to support the required finding that the project will not adversely affect the public interest. And I think that that standard has not been met for these reasons. First, visual impact, I think, is a serious concern at this location. It's a gateway intersection and shouldn't be treated as a minor issue. The city really already recognized this when the planning process for the Acequia Trail went through. When an overpass was considered, visual impacts were a huge concern, and the underpass was selected as the alternative. And I think that's directly relevant for this, because if that sort of small over bike and pedestrian overpass mattered for that trail crossing, I think those visual impacts should be more of a concern for a four-story, 150-room hotel at the intersection. I also think the multimodal benefits are a bit overstated. All of the data and record relies on proximity, but it doesn't really analyze how people actually walk. And so I think simply being near a trail like that is not the same as providing safe, functional, and intuitive access. Third, I think, or I'm just going to go fourth because that one's more important. I think the safety record should be improved, and we shouldn't rely on those data numbers. They come from a five-year analysis that doesn't take into account the Acequia Trail and the improvements for pedestrian safety at that. When the city applied for grants for that underpass, it was highlighted. Wrap up the comments. Time is expired. So that's it for me, really. Thank you for your consideration and for hosting this meeting to get public comment. Okay, we'll move on to Stephen. Oh, I'm sorry. One moment, Stephen. Go ahead. Can you hear me? Stephen, can you hear us? I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yes, sir. Go ahead. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Mayor Garcia and City Councilors, my name is Stephen Barela. I'm a resident, lifelong resident of Santa Fe. One thing that hasn't been addressed tonight, I don't want to be redundant about what's already been presented, but one thing that hasn't been presented tonight is the major traffic congestion that exists already on Cerrillos Road and St. Francis Drive. I'm sure many of you have experienced the congestion of traffic that goes from basically from Cordova Road and even further towards the interstate, all the way beyond Alfredo Street, and that's three lanes of traffic on each side on St. Francis Drive. Imagine if an emergency vehicle needs to get through. That's basically impossible. People's lives are at stake with the existing congestion, and it's only going to get worse if this hotel is allowed to be built. Thank you. Okay, let's move to Rachel Thompson. Good evening, Mayor and counselors. My name is Rachel Thompson. I live at 3101 Old Pecos Trail, District 2. I know why, what is the company? Is it Marriott? I know why they want to put their hotel there. It's because everything's walkable. And I guess I just want to talk about walking around this hotel and how that's going to be. Unlike, well, first off, we genuflect to the international transportation engineers, if that's what it's called, the Institute of Traffic Engineers, which provides us these hard and fast estimates of traffic at AM and PM, and in and out, based on the square footage or the number of hotel rooms. So we have that, but there is something that's being called forth here, called the pedestrian level of traffic stress. But anyway, so I was curious, how do you calculate pedestrians? Because people are going to go there because they want to be able to walk. And then there's going to be more business, probably more hotel, more restaurants and so forth that will grow up around that area. But there are errands to be done. I mean, there are all these great places to shop. What the Institute of Traffic Engineers, I believe, says is that in terms of a pedestrian modal split, if you have an urban downtown walkable district, 20% to 40% of your trips will be pedestrian during the business hour. According to 150 rooms, that's 34 pedestrian movements. So, we have during the busiest hour, 34 pedestrian movements. But of course, people aren't really just going across the intersection because they're going to go across two intersections. They're going to want to go to the railyard park. So, first they're going to cross over, you know, either St. Francis or Cerrillos, and then they're going to cross over the other one. And I think it's going to be mayhem, especially when those big hatch trucks come. And at 4:00 in the afternoon, when we're all trying to drive down Cerrillos Road and none of us can see doodly because the sun is in our face. So, I really, really think that, and there's just some weird chart. I've never seen a chart like this in the applicant's traffic study that, of course, says that people of all ages will be completely relaxed as they cross this intersection. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Okay, we'll move on to Beverly Spears. Hello. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and counselors. So, I would like to say I've lived in this town for more than 50 years and been practicing architecture, and I have served on the Business Capital District Design Review Committee as chair. And I want to say I am so glad that the appeal has legal merit because this building should not be built frankly anywhere in Santa Fe, but particularly not at this location. The location is wrong. This is a really ugly piece of architecture, and the height, four stories, is really offensive to me, really, anywhere in Santa Fe. So, I hope you do the right thing, and I'm glad that you have the legal backing to do it with this very solid appeal. So, please do not let this building be built. Thank you very much. Okay, we'll move on to Seth Friedman. Yeah. Can you hear me? Yes. Great. So, this is Seth Freeman. I'm a chiropractor in Santa Fe for the past 35 years. I live relatively close to this proposed aberration of a development. I support a lot of the previous speakers. What I've seen is slowly but methodically the traditional qualities and livability of our city that many have thrived in here for years and much of their lives has been eroded, transformed, disregarded, and reprioritized to a low status. We've seen developments sprout up in many unavailable empty spaces that were previously considered unusable, unappealing, and water deprived, mostly for the sake of modernization and mostly for the sake of profiteers. We've seen historic buildings carefully transformed into hotels to accommodate increased popularity of Santa Fe. Our selections of hotels is tasteful, mostly non-invasive, and appropriate to Santa Fe culture. Hotels have faced challenges to keep up with the popularity of Airbnb. So why do we need another hotel? I'm no charismatic expert prepared with a PowerPoint, but as a resident and having some connection to the hospitality industry here, I find we are now saturated with priced accommodations. So then, other than the additional contributions to the city's coffers, as well as the profits for the developers, building yet another hotel here is an aberration and an insult to our reputation of being the city different in the land of enchantment. We might as we might otherwise have to rename this part of South Capitol as the Bronx of the Southwest. Part of what has an appeal in Santa Fe is what some of us might call its spunkiness. I'm not saying that that's necessarily something we should capitalize on, but it's not something we should eradicate with the swift gesture of putting in a four-story hotel. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to Aku Oppenheimer. Thank you very much. My name is Aku Oppenheimer. I live in the Candlelight neighborhood. This meeting tonight is happening because of the OSPA appeal. That is why it's happening. The appeal is on legal grounds. The claim is that statutes were not followed. The governing body, as it always does in recent years, has asserted that it is operating on a quasi-judicial basis. If this is true, then this is simple. I don't need to give you my opinion of the development. I don't need to try to convince you of anything. You have before you a legal appeal, and your conversation should be short. Your ability to adjourn should be rapid. All you have to do is determine with the help of the city attorney's excellent, I'm sure, legal assistance whether there is a basis for this appeal. And if there is, then it needs to be done. No spot rezoning, no text amendments, no, well, I know it's the law, but should we pay attention to other factors? No, it should be simple. So, I thank you so much, Mayor, counselors, for the ability to come before you and voice my opinion. And I also thank you very much for your conscientiousness in following through on your commitment to the quasi-judicial process. Thank you very much. If there are any other attendees in the Zoom room that would like to speak, please raise your hand now. Mayor, no other hands have been raised in the Zoom room. Okay, with that being said, next up is governing body. Questions of staff, parties, witnesses, and the public or anyone testifying facts outside of the record must be sworn in. So, with that, I'm just going to go left to right if any of the governing body members have any questions. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. So, Mr. Mayor. Yes. Can we go ahead and do the 10-minute rule and do our rounds and rounds because I know I myself could take 45, and I'm sure you guys have other things that would be helpful. So, Absolutely. To keep time in absence of council. Why don't we just, Mike, can we do a timekeeper 10 minutes? That way everybody, we don't need somebody bumping in, and everybody can keep track of their own time and wrap up as the 10 minutes is getting, it's getting close to expire, and then many, we can have many, many rounds. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. I had a question, and this is on A106, which was provided for us. I think this would probably go to the people who did the traffic study. This one's more a curiosity question, but under number three, under special considerations, it says the New Mexico DOT is project to restrict access on Cerrillos Road from St. Michael's to St. Francis. Discuss this project. What exactly does that mean, and what is the impact on the traffic around this hotel, proposed hotel? Thank you. Mayor, if you can speak closer into the mic, please. I'm Ron Bohannan. I'm a licensed civil engineer registered in the state of New Mexico. Next week I'll have been practicing 40 years doing traffic studies and development. What we do on traffic studies is we work with all of the reviewing agencies, which is both the city and the state. This is state roadway access. So, we do a scoping meeting with the city, and it's run by the state, the DOT state traffic engineer, Kathleen Garcia. She reviews all of the assumptions and comments whether or not we are following the right correct protocol on this. This statement, this traffic study was reviewed by six licensed professional traffic engineers, and all approved the study. I don't know if I answered your question specifically. I'm not sure, so I'll just go ahead and move on. These studies are conducted at a specific point in time, right? Obviously, to fit in with the construction, et cetera. Is that correct? That is correct. And when you do these, do you use knowledge of traffic patterns throughout the year, or do you just look at that specific point in time? No. So what we do is we actually have counted the five intersections. So you not only use the data that is published, but you actually go out and do actual counts. We do counts at the peak hours, which under the direction of both the city and the DOT, represents the most peak use of that network at that time. And so we look at it at those particular two times throughout that, through that area, and we average the three days so that it represents the most impact to the network. Okay. So just a comment, I guess this is one of my problems with these point in time traffic studies because that intersection in particular, and I have seen this every year, and I use that intersection frequently, the crossing guards on that railroad crossing, they frequently, as soon as the weather turns cold, they malfunction. They go down, and they stay down, or they go into a weird little dance sort of movement, and they stay like that until somebody can get out there. Last year, while I was campaigning, I missed a meeting because I was stuck in traffic for over half an hour sitting at that intersection waiting for those, somebody to fix that crossing guard. And to me, and this is not something that has been addressed, but it prevents a very serious public safety issue, especially when we're looking at only two entrances. Because as I look at the diagram, I'm looking at diagram A1, which shows that the fence there will be a fence along Cordova Road and a wall along Penn. So there really is no other way for emergency vehicles to gain access except for those two entrances on St. Francis. Is that correct? With your permission. I'm Leroy Pacheco, and I represent public works traffic engineering, and I thought it would be helpful given all of the data and into the weeds we've waited and been presented even with Ron's answer to give you a context of traffic engineering and how I basically manage that process for the city. And so, with your permission, Mr. Councilor Bamonte, it's up to you. You asked the question. I, you know, I don't necessarily need to know the process because I just want to know how that affects emergency vehicle access to this when something like that happens. Or it could be anything. It could be an accident. It could be any number of things that would prevent a fire truck from being able to respond because access to Cerrillos Road is blocked. My concern with this, and you know, I'm going off of one of the approval criteria, right? Approving the plan would not adversely affect the public, right? One second, please. Because my concern, sorry, I lost my train of your thoughts. So, go ahead. Okay. I actually was coming up to answer your first question, and then you kind of digressed. But to your specific current question, absolutely. Emergency access, emergency response as part of the design review team process, and so those considerations are part of the review process for traffic, emergency response, et cetera. So that is absolutely covered. It seems to me in this particular situation, though, it's not adequately covered because that is the only way they can get in. There is no alternative access through other roads. The site has built into it, regardless of what would be developed or what currently exists, the intersections of Cordova Road and St. Francis, the Rios Cordo. I mean, that will not change. I mean, that is a given existing condition. But emergency response access is adequate and will continue to be adequate. It's the same constraint. We might disagree on what adequate means because I'm looking at a scenario, especially in a situation like that where the guards are down, where we're not just adding seconds, we're adding minutes, maybe several minutes to an emergency situation. And we just had a hotel fire recently. We're adding minutes to a situation where seconds count. Absolutely. And when I'm looking again at that approval criteria, I just personally have a difficult time looking at a way to approve this project when we're putting 150 rooms. If it's at high capacity, we're putting a significant number of the public at risk in my opinion. Thank you, Mayor. That's all I have. If I may, quickly, just because emergency access is critical. Thank you, Mayor Garcia. Councilor Bamonte, the closest fire station that would respond to an emergency at the hotel is actually a little further south down Serios Road near the intersection. Yes, ma'am. I'm understanding where it is, but it's going to get blocked off when those guards are down, or if something else. And that's my particular concern because I'm sorry, but I have seen this every year, and I'm sure many people in this room have also experienced. So maybe, apologies, maybe I misunderstood because I thought you were concerned about emergency. I am talking about emergency response. Yes, ma'am. I am talking about that, and that is affected by this condition that happens every year. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. I want to... Oh, thanks. Cut any time out from you. So, Mike, if we could reset the clock, please. 10 minutes. A new 10 minutes. Is there a question that we should be answering at the moment? No, no, no, no. We're moving on to the next councilor. Sorry. I apologize. Sorry about that. We do. We're kind of trying to keep each other in line in 10 minutes. And so, just like the public's got two minutes, we're trying to allow 10 minutes each and move on accordingly. That way, try to keep our process equitable. Mike in the back. Can we reset the timer, please? I can try. Okay. I can try. And you know, to be perfectly honest, I think to just set the stage, I'm probably going to sacrifice a good amount of my time over to really understanding the traffic analysis. So, I have a couple questions as you go into this because I think a number of things have been brought up. One, and some of this might be for you, Mr. Pacheco, it might be for land use staff. So I do at some point want to go through this checklist of items to understand what is, you know, what's happening here with the things that are presented as missing, partially incomplete. I also want to talk a little bit about conditional approval, conditions of approval. This is something that's a really common practice within, I see, I think I see it with almost every single case that there is a condition of approval. And so understanding that process from the land use perspective, I think will be important because I, from my understanding, this is part of this conversation because there are things that have to be determined later that cannot move forward until there are, until the original planning commission says, "Yes, go forward and start doing this project," and what that looks like at the city to making sure that staff is really checking up and what happens if those conditions of approval are not met at some point. So, understanding that and then potentially how some of these pieces are in there. So, I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to a conglomerate of staff who can answer that process piece because that's something that's a little mushy in my head right now. I think it is important to understand the traffic engineering review context, and I'll be really brief. It is, I mean, the highest level of law that we begin with is state law, state statute 612326. It is unlawful for the state or any of its political subdivisions, such as the city, or any person to engage in the construction of any public work involving engineering unless the engineering is under the responsible charge of a licensed professional engineer. So the traffic analysis must be done by licensed professional engineers, both from the developer and from the city's peer review process. The city's contract peer review company is Wilson and Company, and on the Zoom call and able to be advanced to panel is Phil Gyos, who's a licensed state engineer, as well as myself. He did development review for DOT prior to his retirement, and he now works for Wilson and Company. The other thing I think that needs to be understood because these terms keep being bandied about, this is the state access management manual, and for decades this is the bible that traffic engineering at the city used for processing all development that came through the city. It's still part of the, this is an appendix, and it's a component of the city's guidelines. So we didn't throw the bible out the window. We added a new testament. And in 2022 to 2023, the MO, along with the land use department and its director, decided and identified the need for updating these guidelines to tailor them to the city of Santa Fe's urban context, multimodal transportation goals, complete streets criteria, and local safety priorities. So we kind of, this is great, but we wanted to really make it Santa Fe. This is the traffic that we're looking at for Santa Fe. So the SAM remains in effect for all DOT maintained and owned roads in the city. And also as context is needed, we actually have it within our TI guidelines to pull it up as well. And again, it's guided by licensed engineering criteria, which is kind of the governing state law criteria. These are guidelines, and we're mandated by state law to be where we're at. The NO contracted with Felsburg, Holton, Oolivig. I hope I pronounced their names right. It's a Colorado-based transportation engineering firm, and they helped develop the guidelines and prepared drafts. And this process was led by then city traffic engineer Gene Wolfenbar, who with external input through myself and our peer review group within the city of licensed traffic engineers, reviewed and developed and commented. So our guidelines didn't come from Colorado. They were guided to us and developed and digested by the city, city staff, and the peer and traffic engineering community to create the TIA guidelines that we use, and these are used by every development that comes to the city. Iterative revisions address study areas, trip thresholds, horizons, multimodal aspects, turn lanes, et cetera, et cetera. I don't want to bore you with the details because it is kind of boring. This was adopted formally by the city August 29th, 2024, and they're now in active use. And I think they may ultimately become codified in the new chapter 14. So, we're using them. We might be tweaking them as we go, but this is what we're using. So, right, stop there real fast. I just again, I'm trying to understand what is the relationship between the SAM and the city's TIA, and which has precedence in terms of what we, the city's TIA? Okay, because we're in the city of Santa Fe. So when this project came through, another piece of context is Serrios Road is State Road 14 from St. Michaels to St. Francis is under current NMDOT jurisdiction. St. Michaels to I25, it's a city road. The state wants to give that back to the city. They need to improve it to a certain standard that the city will accept, but it's on the cusp of becoming a city street. So when this development came forward, we of course immediately contacted NMDOT and brought them into this scoping process to what are the intersections, what do we need to look at, what's because also their headquarters is right at that court of intersection. So NMDOT was involved, and that's evidenced by the, it was in the packet, the DOT responses to access that they deny the developer a left in to the development of the southern end. I just, I think that context is helpful. NMDOT engineering district engineers and the project development engineers for the Serrios Road reconstruction project were involved, were advised, and did provide input to the study. We, I don't know exactly what these criteria that the former DOT employees used. I do know I am familiar with the city's MO traffic counting model and such, and development engineers are always asking us, "Can we use that traffic? Can we?" We say, "No, go out, you need to count fresh data." I'm not really sure of what criteria they brought to the table. But this is the legal criteria that the city uses, which is our TIA guidelines, and this is what the city, we, we reviewed, NMDOT reviewed, and Phil Ggo should be online. I hope to God he is. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I mean, I just thought the context would be helpful. No, that's helpful. And so, so our TIA, that's what has to be followed per our rules, per our code. Okay. And so were you the individual that over, that you would, you for the city basically double-checked the work of the developer's engineer to make sure that this was followed? Am I understanding that correctly? The detailed engineering review is performed by Wilson and Company. Of course, I'm involved in that. That's Phil, who's online somewhere. So maybe Phil is the... In terms of getting into the technical, but I definitely was the conductor of the orchestra and the music being made. Okay. Okay, that's helpful. Do you have this list handy? So I, I do want to go, take the remaining time that I have to just start, I want to check these off one by one and understand, you know, obviously we have heard, the, is the appellant or the appell, it doesn't matter. We've heard OSA's viewpoint. I want to hear y'all's response to this, and are these things partial and incomplete? Are they to come? Are they somewhere that I can see in the giant 300-page packet? So, Councilor Cassid, I don't believe Leroy has a copy of this. Oh, you do? Okay, perfect. So, starting with substantial evidence missing, incomplete, or partial at time of decision. That would be the title of the first slide. I think it's one, two, three, five pages in. So I feel, I'm going to, I hope you're listening. I mean, we'll just rattle off the first three, and I think that the developer actually provided a response for the record, but all of the technical criteria of the traffic impact analysis that was required met city guideline criteria. And that came from documents and letters and memos to me from Wilson. And this wasn't one time. It went through at least two or three different iterations and drafts before it became a final approved. And so I think to kind of summarize, best I can, the adequacy of it, on November 3rd, 2025, I did send the Planning Commission for this case a letter with the technical corrections dated November 3rd, 2025, from Wilson. And it's two pages of comments to the TIA, and also it included a letter from NMDOT talking about the access constraints that were denied to the developer because they had requested a left-in at the southern, at the western exit, and the DOT said no. So all of that was included. Okay. And this was in November. I believe there was another draft post that, and I can find, the developer then addressed all of those comments, and I have a message from Phil at a later date saying all of these comments after review have been approved. All of that would include analysis of turning movements, counts, Synchro files, all of these items that have been listed. And I'm not really sure, I don't think this framework that was presented, and I'd be happy to be corrected, but again, these were done by licensed engineers reviewing the criteria, and they're telling me all of these were met. So we definitely look at turning movements, we look at volumes, we look at queuing, we look at delays, levels of service at the signalized intersections. Again, I just feel like there's comfort in saying that traffic impact analysis passed the muster that almost any traffic engineering analysis citywide would go through. And this is a little bit, it's looking out a different window, but again, I don't know if this was prepared by licensed engineers who would debate it or question it. I don't know. Okay. All right. I am out of time, but thank you, and you guys will see me again soon, and don't go too far. Councilor Castro, so go right ahead. Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Mayor. Sorry I've been stepping all over you this week. Feel free to continue. I think my concern really was the application process, but I do, and I think this might be for City Attorney, just so that we're all on the same page. What is the criteria under which the Planning Commission, and maybe this is also for Assistant City Attorney Rubel, that the Planning Commission felt there would be no adverse effect to the public, because that seems to be to me the biggest concern. Can we just dive into a little the adverse effect to the community? Trying to give him some time to get down here. Go right ahead. Yes. Thank you, Mayor, members of the governing body, Councilor Castro. So, one of the biggest things that we have to deal with is we have two books that we have to adhere to. We have the General Plan and we have Chapter 14. But Chapter 14 is much bigger when it comes to development and subdivision because we also have to incorporate other chapters within the city code that deal with water and sewer and affordable housing and whatever is triggered by that development. Those rules and regulations that are developed are based on the will of the council, which is based on policies and procedures developed through a community input, just like we're going through the General Plan and code book of now. We encourage everybody to come and participate. If they don't like the rules and regulations as they have specified, they're welcome to come and participate in the code update and the General Plan update. That would be a perfect time for that. So those rules and regulations that are derived from the policy and the will of the council, the ordinances that we use, are those minimum standards to meet health, safety, and welfare. So when we meet those regulations and we force the applicant to address those needs, they are meeting those minimum standards for health, safety, and welfare. Thank you so much, Assistant Director. And I believe that that means that when the Planning Commission stated in our packet, and I'm looking at page three of 10, I believe, that it would not have an adverse effect on the public interest, they were looking at these minimum standards. Could you just give us a quick overview of what they would have had to meet for minimum standards? For minimum standards. Well, then you have, when you're looking at a development of this type, you have about 12 to 15 city departments that get activated to help us review the application. Those minimum standards are going to address city water, city sewer. They're going to address terrain management for the hydrology issues that are dealt with for terrain management. You're going to address ADA compliance. You're going to address traffic and access. You're going to address architecture, landscaping. All of these design parameters come into play in order to meet all of those ordinance criteria that meet those minimum standards that then go to the public interest. So, some of the testimony that we've heard about potentially having credits that don't have real assets behind them, and some of these studies being done without the understanding that we're going to grow in population, for example. All of that is already built into that process. Correct. Well, the General Plan and the code need to be updated, and that's what we're doing now. And that's going to give us a new horizon in order to achieve those goals. So currently we're probably past that horizon, and we're in between, and that's why we're moving to get the General Plan and code update done. But our ordinances are still in play. We have to follow the rule of law. So no matter what, we're obligated to require the applicants to meet all of those design parameters that do meet those minimum standards. Completely understand. And we are in this process, and I do encourage everyone to be an active participant in us updating these codes in particular because of some of the things I heard around big box stores, how we want our city to look. All of these things are affected by the General Plan and by Chapter 14. Go ahead. If I can add, you know, because we always have a staffing issue. We're always trying to do more with less. And we've come very far in the 20 years that I've been here doing this, and I've been doing this for 30 years total. We now have for the first time templates that developers can download and put in their AutoCAD so that they can start with something that helps them meet those standards so that when that application comes in, they're not rejected right away because if it's an incomplete application, they don't get processed, they get sent back. And if we miss something and it does go through a process of review, there's a game of ping-pong because we have to get the applicant to address those needs of the requirements of the application before we even start reviewing. So these templates now help us, and Jennifer was one of the very first for this development to help us, I guess, experiment with what we were doing in order to meet those demands. Was the very first to use one of these things, which is this project. So this project is a template. This project is a template that, well, I didn't do it. Claudia Cath did. We owe all of those templates to her, that all the developers are now using. And that goes, what that does is not only does it help them understand what we want and what we need, but she went beyond, it's not just a land use template. She negotiated and got with every city department to aggregate their templates to put that template together, the main template, so that every department that is going to see this application, they already know what they're going to need. And then once that's approved and they're ready for the building permit, all the conditions of approval, because this was a question that was asked, are listed on a separate page so that we can manage those conditions at the building permit. We're no longer looking through reports and findings to try to figure out what was approved by this, because sometimes they don't come in for a while. This automatically places them on that development plan upfront and center so that whoever's looking at that building permit knows exactly how to implement those conditions. Thank you so very much. And I think my last question again might be for either City Attorney or Assistant City Attorney. If we as a body decide that those minimum standards are not what we're in agreement with, and we do find that there is an adverse effect to the public interest, what would our options be? You have essentially what you have before you are, or the way I say, you have two options. You can grant the appeal, in which case then you reverse the Planning Commission's decision and deny the application, or you deny the appeal and the planning, the project moves forward. I think you may be able to impose some additional conditions. But that's what I was sort of scratching for. And in my last few minutes, in this option of additional conditions, are we limited in any way to those conditions? Well, when you think about additional conditions that you may want to impose, you may have to ask, does engineering support these additional conditions? You know, if you say, well, we need to put a traffic light there. Well, I don't know that all of you have the expertise to say that would either solve the problem or not create more problems. My belief is there would have to be another engineering survey or another engineering study to tell you whether or not that's viable. Thank you so much. And yes, I do also want to underscore that we have great experts that are well-licensed and informed, and we don't necessarily, I'm not trying to say that our staff is not doing their due diligence. I just want to understand what my options are today. I think my final question would be, and this potentially could be for the developer, what happens if we deny or we approve this appeal and your application is denied? Okay. And, Councilor Castro, I should, there's a statute that controls your decision. And what it reads is that this is 3-21-8 C. You can authorize in appropriate cases, subject to appropriate conditions and safeguards, variances or special exceptions that are not contrary to the public interest where, owing to special conditions, you know, there's a list of things you can do so that the spirit of the zoning ordinances observed and substantial justice is done so that the goals and policies of the comprehensive plan are implemented. You know, there's a lot to consider there. And I think before you impose conditions, you'll want to ask the engineers and the planners what's feasible, what's not feasible. And of course, the developer can always say, "Oh, we don't accept that," and they can appeal the district court. So there's a lot to consider. Yeah. Thank you so very much. And I'm sure before we come back around, I'll be reviewing all of the options. But just as a standard question, what happens if your project gets denied tonight and this appeal goes forward? So, Mayor Garcia, Councilor Castro, and councilors, my honest answer is I don't know. There would obviously be a regrouping and a revisit likely of the permissible uses in the C2 zoning district. The city of Santa Fe decided a long time ago that C2 zoning was the appropriate zoning for this property. And the permissible use list is long, and so probably an exploration around those permissible uses such as gas stations, car washes, those types of vehicle service would be very desirable in this location. So, just exploring those options relative to the zoning. Thank you. And I see the floor, Mayor. Councilor Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you to the applicants for bringing this forward, for the city staff for being here to answer these questions, and everyone else. I want to focus a little bit on the reasoning why the appeal has been brought forth, because it seems to me that the basis upon your appeal is the fact that we have inadequate traffic TIA studies. And in your presentation, you've noted that there was not adequate information provided for a certain time period. And I think is that future, the development and the representatives have stated that they provided those that data. I want to hear from you guys again in regards to why you feel that that was not adequate, and the reasoning for that is because the data that was provided, how that would have swayed the Planning Commission's ability to decide whether this was a or not. Good afternoon, or good evening at this point. Governor Barding, Mayor Garcia. So the reason we're saying that the traffic data is inadequate is because they were directed to do a four-hour count, essentially two hours in the morning, two hours in the PM. And they based the entire TIA traffic analysis on those four hours. The TIA guidelines require a 24-hour count. And on this scoping memo slide, we actually have that. That's in TIA section 4, paragraph B, subsection 5, on page nine. Conduct a 24-hour count. When you look at the actual handout that we provided, or even the screenshot, there is no 24-hour count. A 24-hour count is supposed to be on a roadway according to the TIA guidelines, not at an intersection. So, in the application, there's no 24-hour count. There's no roadway count. There are only the intersections that the developer mentioned during that four-hour period. So, as the city staff mentioned, New Mexico 14 Srios is a state-owned road between St. Michaels and St. Francis. I'm going to stop you right there. I want to ask the city traffic engineer a question. Is our requirements as a city similar or the same to the traffic impact analysis that's required by TIA or the state? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Garcia, I think it's important to understand. I think that the window they're looking at is a little bit different for traffic counts, and I'm not really familiar. Are you, do you do the MO traffic counts that are all over the city? There's like, yeah. And we don't use that data in traffic impact analyses. It would be great for the developers. We don't necessarily come as their adversaries, but we are playing a devil's advocate role of making sure they're meeting the musters. The criteria that we use is in the city's mandated policy TIA guidelines and not. We're following the city guidelines. And I think that Phil, who's online, or Ron, who's here, can give you the details of the counting that we're doing. Why don't you do that? Just real quick, if you can give us the criteria that we're using. Sure. So, what we do is we do the four-hour counts versus the 24-hour counts because what we are trying to do is determine the most impact to the network. And so, with that, we have found that those two windows have the most impact on a 24-hour period. In the middle of the night, you're not going to have that kind of traffic. So, in other words, we're focusing on the time of day that we have peak traffic at those intersections. That's correct. Okay. And that's our standard as a city. That's correct. That's pretty standard across all municipalities in the state. Okay. Real quick to the applicant, do you, so what is the missing data or that you think you, what you are presenting as the data that is not being used that is pertinent to your appeal is, is would give reasoning for your appeal? So, let me give some context to this. The TIA guidelines, they're great for city roads, great. But the intersection that we're dealing with right now actually has different requirements under the state rules and regulations, which they own those two roads. So even if they go and they're maintained by the city, they are still under state jurisdiction, which is actually under FHWA jurisdiction. So the requirements are always going to be different on state roads, and those requirements are not what they are in the TIA. The level two is not enough, and it wasn't given as a level two. And I have, sorry, on 13, there is a hierarchy that is there. That hierarchy is what they are supposed to be following. FHWA supersedes the state. The state supersedes the city. And this is what did not happen. And I want, I know that word engineer has been thrown around a lot. No, I am not a licensed engineer. Neither is Sean. But we were the ones that actually worked together with engineers explaining the compliance of FHWA to engineers, and I'm not sure if anybody anymore understands those rules and regulations, but they haven't changed, and we've double-checked them. They are still there. And so the reasoning behind this that the scope of work, and I'll let you speak to that. Excuse me. So the scoping letter, where we just mentioned, it only covered the four hours. And as I was alluding to or stating before, the state-owned highway. So, as Aora stated, there's that hierarchy, and in the New Mexico Department of Transportation statewide traffic monitoring standards, which was co-authored by an engineering firm and undertaken by an executive engineer at the Department of Transportation, actually states that any turning movement count should be done at three periods during the day. There are three hours in the morning, and I don't have that off the top of my head, three hours in the afternoon from 11:00 to 2:00, and then three hours in the later afternoon from 4:00 to 7:00. You're disputing that that did not happen. No, that did not happen. And it's actually documented in the scoping letter. And the TIA guidelines actually say if current existing conditions identify an additional peak hour, that time shall be analyzed as well. Mentioned during our presentation, the NMDOT traffic data is open to the public. You click on a location right at the project location. It gives you a peak hour, and during that peak hour, the traffic was not evaluated. And further, even though they said they only did the four hours, that 24-hour requirement is a city requirement. That's a city TIA, and that data is missing from. Application. I do want to ask the city now. Did we count traffic during the peak hours of traffic? We did. How do we identify that? How did we, how do we identify the peak hours of traffic during the during the days? It's, it's traffic engineering standards of morning AM peak. Is it 8:00 to 10:00, 7:00 to 9:00? I mean, so it's a, it's an industry standard, but I believe also had we not adopted our own guidelines and been using the state's access management manual, the protocols would have been the same. And I'm, I kind of think I'm hearing you wanting to understand the difference between these two standards that are coming at us. We use the city standards that are grounded and founded upon the SAM. Bill Gyos from Wilson worked for the DOT and did development review for the DOT and the state, and he's now doing it for the city is on behalf of Wilson. Maybe he can have an insight as to what exactly the traffic criteria. Okay. I, you, you guys are going where I'm just leading to another, and I just have a last question for the attorney, Mr. Rubald. So based upon the information and data that's been provided, because again, the discrepancy, I believe, for the appeal is the fact that they didn't weren't provided with the correct data to make a good decision for this for this development. Which standard holds merit? Are our own city rules, or does it supersede to state statute? That is a question that I think is, I would either have for research, or you would have to talk with the state engineer. Okay. So again, we've approved the, the, the plan, our Planning Commission did, based upon the criteria that was provided and the information that was there, and they were following the information that was provided based upon the city standards. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Correct. Mayor Garcia and Councilor Garcia, correct? Okay. I think I pretty much have the information that I need. I may have a few more questions regarding this because it's all based upon the reason for the appeal. Whether I want this or not, I think it's kind of immaterial. I kind of give you my opinions on that, but I think that it has to be based upon fact and what we really truly are able to do and what our right is. Thank you. Mayor Garcia and Council Garcia, we, we follow the city standards, but the city standards comply with state standards. It may have something to do with Santa Fe being a home rule city to a certain degree. You know, we develop standards, but we're concerned about public safety, and we're concerned about industry standards and the city standards. I don't know that there would be very much variation between the two. Thank you. Councilor Bar. I'm out of time now, so we're going to move on to the next. You still got 30 seconds, counselor. Okay, 30 seconds to respond. You got 15, and the city's got 15. I just want to point out on the slide, the city didn't follow its own standards. So whether it was DOT standards or the city standards, the city scoping letter excluded items that are required in the TIA for level two TIA analysis. 15. The only thing I wanted to add was the standards that the state gave birth to in terms of the city standards didn't change. In other words, we'd be using the same protocols, and the state engineering team was involved in the scoping and review of the TIA. We had state DOT licensed engineers involved in the renew, the review of this traffic study with comments, et cetera. So they didn't point out any of, I don't understand what their traffic criteria is or what they're doing, but apparently it met state muster. Sure. And the appellant is claiming here that the NMDOT representative attended the scoping meeting. Is that correct? That's not technically correct. The, I don't know exactly because again, there were, there have been a lot of, but the state was definitely involved both in review. They provided documents that became public record at the Planning Commission. They, I, we gave them the option. We don't really know which access permit they will need because is this going to be a city road by the time this is built, or is it going to be a state? If it's a city road, you don't need an access permit until a building permit is being requested. So the appeal point about access permit is also, we, they wouldn't have an access permit at Planning Commission. So things could change in the future based upon different who, who's in charge or who has jurisdiction. Thank you. No further questions, Mayor. Councilor, I had similar questions as Councilor Garcia. So I think my questions got answered about the omitted data collection and the no state concurrent. So I think I'm good. Go ahead. Thank you. I have another question for the city attorney or assistant city attorney, which is, how does Old Santa Fe Association have standing to question traffic decisions in this case? That is a question we have. We understood you would have a question about that, and we reviewed the, the controlling section of the city code, and standing is conferred under a specific section in 14-3.17, which reads that an existing organization that was in place when the Planning Commission made the decision has standing when it alleges harm to its economic, aesthetic, or environmental interest. Which one of those did they allege that traffic was harming? I don't think they made that specific allegation. Okay. All right. I don't know that they alleged that injury with any specificity. Okay. Yes, I see you raising your hand. Do you want to comment? My name is Frank Herdman. Microphone, please. My name is Frank Herdman. I'm counsel for the applicant. So, Counselor Fideli, as an attorney, you may be familiar with organizational standing. And under well-established federal and state law, organizational standing requires an organization to demonstrate, among other things, that the issue that it is raising and the injury that it is alleging is germane to its mission. Traffic is not germane to the mission of the Old Santa Fe Association, and so I submit that it does not have standing. We did not intend to raise that as an issue. Were there to be an appeal of this to district court, I certainly will, because standing can be raised at any time. But that's the answer to your question. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, quickly, because I have more questions. Yeah, standing issue. I'm Frank Katz, a former city attorney, now a member and a board member of the Old Santa Fe Association. I mean, the Old Santa Fe Association issue, it's whether the traffic is going to harm Santa Fe and all of the increased traffic and what would occur with the fact that the backup from the Cerrillos Road would block the entrance to the hotel and the medical issues there. And that's what was so frustrating is to not get the right information. And it seems like people are picking and choosing the hours. How do we know the peak hours if we don't know what the full 24 hours are and things like that? And I mean, to say that the Old Santa Fe Association that's been trying to preserve Old Santa Fe, the good parts of it, for 100 years now, somehow doesn't have an aesthetic in environment. Would you say that the rafting company storage area is aesthetically pleasing? What's there now on the corner? Is that? I think that's awful, but that's, you know, we don't get to tell them to do something different than they're doing now. They're not asking to build a four-story, 150-bedroom apartment with all of the traffic that's going to cause at that difficult intersection. City Attorney, did you have something? Counselor Pagali, members of the governing body, I don't see in their appeal petition any specific allegation of economic, environmental, or aesthetic interests. I see a quick jump into a discussion of the traffic. I don't see it in their petition. Okay. I just wanted to clear that up for myself. We've all been talking about the road as it exists right now. It's not great. I live a couple blocks from it. It's fine. It's not wonderful. But it's already like that. We cannot base all of the future problems that might happen on this road based on something that doesn't exist yet and traffic patterns that already exist. So, I just want to point that out. It is a walkable location. I can walk there from my home. I know it is right next to the Farmers Market where a billion people drive every weekend. Even though they could all walk there, hopefully many people who will go there from this hotel will walk there. This project didn't require any variances. It meets all the criteria. It is an appropriate use for a C2. It could be a storage unit. We could end up with, you know, more storage units or car washes or drive-thrus, or I'm not sure all of the uses in C2 that I would prefer to not have there. But it could end up as any of those and wouldn't need to even come to us. But you know that traffic issues are not the end of the world. That intersection is not something that we cannot change. Someone brought up the fact that maybe we could have St. Francis be an underpass. That'd be great. I don't know how many billions of dollars that would cost, but you know, it's a thing that could happen. We could change the way that the pedestrian intersection works. We could, you know, upgrade the train gates. There's a lot of things that we could do. And I don't see how adding potentially a few hundred trips to a road that sees 20,000 cars a day is the end of the world. So, thank you. Thank you, Counselor. I guess it's my turn now. So, it's my understanding a lot of this appeal relies upon missing documentation that should have been evident or part of the packet as the Planning Commission was considering this. So, and just a yes or no question for city staff, whether whomever can answer this question. Just quick yes or no. And I'm looking at a document, TIA document, dated August 29th, 2024. And I'm going to page nine of this document. And it starts off with page eight, section five, data collection requirements. It goes on to page nine. One of the requirements is 24-hour traffic counts, including non-motorized users, should be conducted along major roadways being accessed by the proposed development and if appropriate on roadways adjacent to a site. The 24-hour counts should be taken during time periods with higher traffic volumes. As an example, Santa Fe, a major tourist community, has significant traffic in summer months. So, was this done during summer months? Was this study done during summer months? Yes or no? It's in the public record. The date of the traffic counts is in the TIA. I'm sorry. Okay. It's in the public record. I believe it was because it came to us in October. Okay. So, the study, just for the record, is at least from what I'm looking at, Terra West study, August 12th. Okay. So, but the gist of that, and I want to make sure I'm following this as well, because as noted, you've got state, you've got federal law, state law, city law. This is a city imposition. Did we do 24-hour traffic counts as required for this TIA? And I don't believe so because it clearly says right here on this study, traffic count data, 7 to 9:00 a.m. or to 6:00 p.m. So why didn't we follow the process? Mr. Mayor, Counselors, that particular item has been a question that's come to us a lot through the process of implementing these guidelines. And I'm glad she used the word "should" and not "shall" because it wasn't the standard protocol of the SAM. And so we've been getting, you know, discussion and pushback from the industry standards. So I believe I would defer to Phil Gyos, who's online. Phil, could you talk to that? But Mr. Particular, I don't want to get into legal technicalities. I mean, should, shall, no. These are things we should be doing. And so I don't believe those merits were met. I think that this, if and as Counselor Cassid was trying to go through during her questioning, this is just one example of something that was not followed and it's not complete, thus rendering, in my opinion, just one thing, if it's not there during a Planning Commission proceeding, the proceeding is invalid. Whereas there's many, many instances, and we can go through each of these if we want, but I think just that one instance makes that process invalid. What should grant this appeal? We can go through each one to have the justification to have the findings and facts move forward. That way, should Mr. Herdman want to take us to court, we didn't follow us. We didn't follow our process, so we had to grant the appeal. I mean, I think it's to me, black and white right there. Now, follow one other question, because again, I'm happy to go through this and if we need to go down that route, this is for Mr. Rubble, where's Mr. City Attorney? You had mentioned in your opening comments that to grant this or deny this, it required five votes. What do you mean by that? According to the controlling statute about zoning authorities, and we're looking at NMSA 3-21-8. Hold on one second because I want to look it up. It's MSA what? 3-21-8, subsection C. Subsection C. Hold on one second, because I want to be looking at what you're looking at. Okay. Just because it has merits potentially on how we vote. We operate on a majority. There's, we've got two counselors absent, which could impact that decision, and I want to make sure, is it a majority of the body or is it, I would be surprised that it explicitly states that five, because where's the number five come from? The what the statute reads is that when an appeal alleges there is an error, the zoning authority by a majority vote of all its members may, and it gives a list of things you can do. You can either approve the appeal, deny the appeal. So, so would that, I'm going to ask this, Mr. City Attorney, does that mean majority members present of a meeting? So that would be for, I'm asking our City Attorney, Mr. Herdman. So thank you. It, this is a specific statute that requires a majority vote of all the members, not all of the members present. There is another, there are other statutes governing municipal laws that specify that majority action can be taken by a majority of the members present, except when otherwise required by law. Because this is a specific requirement by law, it would fall into that higher threshold category for taking action. Okay. So, thank you, Mr. City Attorney. So, with that being said, I would make the motion, and I'm not making a motion, I'm just hypothetically based off the answer that a decision not be made tonight because we do not have a full body. We do not have the ability to meet the merits of this law. We owe it to the public to meet the merits because it is now saying the majority of the body. We do not have a quorum of the majority of the body. Thus, it makes it much more challenging for the merits of this to be met one way or the other. And so I think it's, it, to me, because we've got members absent, the path forward should, no matter how we move with this, a final decision should be postponed because we've got two members absent. So with that, I'll go ahead and yield my time and I'll go back to down the line. Counselor Bamonte. Thank you, Mayor. I just had one question to clarify something. There was mention earlier about whether this approval, I guess, was done on whether this, the state or the street in question was going to be later be a street, state or state city street or a state street. Wouldn't that be, wouldn't that approval be made on that street based on today's condition, not on a future condition? So then that's not really something in play, right? They're not really looking to see if it's going to be a, like, like they're not making a decision today based on the fact that it may be a city street in the future. Am I getting that across clearly? I think you are. Counselor Bamonte, Mayor Garcia, thank you. So, there is a project that is almost 100% designed, that a DOT project to upgrade that stretch of from St. Francis, St. Michael's, similar to the work that had been going on, you know, south of St. Michael's, all those improvements, and then the DOT gives that right of way over to the city, it becomes a city street. So, we, the design for our access was done through the lens of that project, of that DOT project, to make sure that our design aligned with the design intent of the DOT project. So, absolutely, currently today, we will be seeking an access permit from the state of New Mexico. Okay. And that is why they were involved with the scoping and review and of the traffic study. We prepared a traffic study that we were told to prepare by the DOT and the city of Santa Fe. But isn't one of the applicant's claims that you're missing that piece of information right now? The DOT will not issue an access permit until we build the driveways. They approve the engineering drawings, and then we build the improvements. They come out and inspect, and then once they approve the work and that you did the work in accordance with the plans, then they say, "Okay, here's your access permit. Now you can start using your driveways." That's a weird Catch-22. Yeah. So, and there is no requirement in the code that access permits must be in hand prior to Planning Commission. It's a very important point. Okay. Thank you. That's all I have. Mr. Mayor. Councilor Casset. Thank you, Mayor. I'll try to be speedy since I didn't get through any of my big questions last time. So, a couple things back to the state versus city road. We have approved plenty of things that are on state roads before in the last few years. This might be a Dan, a Leroy, I'm not sure, whoever you think, somebody from the city. In the past, when we've been approving projects or Planning Commission or have been seeing projects on state roads, which is plenty, do we use city traffic impact analysis or guidelines from the state? Very similar experience at the DXD storage facility that's going to, that was approved at Planning Commission for the Empire Builder site. And yeah, we same sort of coordination. We know there's going to be, it's a Catch-22. We don't know when they build it, will it be a city road or a state, but there was state involvement and same criteria, same TIA guidelines used. Okay. Okay. So, there's precedence for how we went about this. Mr. Gyos, I believe, who's online, you've been mentioned a lot and you've never been given the opportunity to speak. I think I would love to hear your perspective on this, given your unique position of being former DOT as well as now a city contractor. Can you shed some light on some of these pieces of this conversation around whether or not an appropriate traffic impact analysis was done, whether the state would be requiring something different? I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot of kind of the challenge that I'm hearing is a lot of people saying very different things. We don't have DOT here to ask. So, that's a, that's, you know, don't know what to do when we have, you know, individuals saying we worked with DOT, individuals who've worked for DOT saying no DOT would never allow this. So, let's hear from somebody else who currently does not work for DOT because apparently that might be helpful. I don't know. He's there. I was muted. Sorry. But I recall during the scoping meeting, and I remember Leroy contacted Kathleen Garcia from the NMDOT, and she kind of deferred for us to follow the city of Santa Fe TIA guidelines to have the developer do that instead of the full-blown NMDOT review process, which was, like Leroy said, it's similar. The Tier 2 TIA is very similar to the full DOT process. And the other comment that I had was on the 24-hour count. That, that whole paragraph kind of gives the discretion to the city engineers or during the scoping meaning to determine if 24-hour counts or 4-hour counts, or like it says in the previous paragraph of on that page, that the 2-hour counts and broken up into 15-minute intervals. Reading it now, I think it does need to clarify that a little bit better, but this TIA guidelines does give the engineers, the city engineers, the discretion to require the developers to do the 24-hour count or to do a 4-hour count. And it does that throughout this document. It gives the engineer, the city engineers, that discretion to make it more stringent, depending on the roadway. And like in this case, I remember during that scoping meeting, we all decided on the 4-hour counts. Okay. So, that was during that scoping meeting that you are recalling with DOT. And does he need to be sworn at this point as not city staff? And maybe it'd be better to just swear based on statements made on memory, if you don't mind, sir. Yeah. Go ahead and swear me in. Okay. Mr. Gyos, do you solemnly declare and affirm that the testimony you have in reference to this item shall be the truth and nothing but the truth and do this under the penalties of perjury? Yes. Thank you. And sir, now that you're sworn, would you agree with everything that you just stated just so we check all of our boxes there? Yes, we do. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thanks for joining. I'm sorry for interrupting. Just one more thing is that the process was followed with the city of Santa Fe TIA guidelines. I provided my review back in November 2025. It was several pages long. The developer came back and did address all of my comments that I did have to that TIA. They did include in dependencies all the required analyses that are required for a TIA. Thank you. I appreciate that. Sorry, there's been a little, there's a little noise. I think I, but from what I'm hearing is that you're saying that everything that you, that the developer completed everything that was required of the TIA, and you checked that and you gave back some comments and they responded. Yes. In an appropriate manner that you felt as our traffic engineer that is for the city. Correct. Yes. That you met those, that met the standards. Yes. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. You know what? I'm on a timeline, so I'm going to keep rolling because I'm moving to a new, new topic, but I'll give you, you know, 30 seconds. Super. A quick question. This Mr. Gagos is somebody who was working for the applicant. No, they work for the city. This is a city, city contracted engineer. That's what I'm trying to understand because he's somebody who, we are short on engineers. So, we have to contract out because we don't have any at the city. So, this gentleman, his contract is with the city of Santa Fe through Wilson & Company. It's our primary traffic engineer contract, although we got Leroy for a lot of things as well. I want to go to water because there was some conversation around the water budget about whether or not the budget plan is one, did it meet our requirements from the water department? Let's just stand, start there. Yeah. Thank you for the question. So, just from the sort of basis that we have, per Planning Commission, per the rules, per the city statute, we just have to have a water budget included before we go to Planning Commission. At the time we went to Planning Commission, it wasn't fully solidified. We're working with them right now to finally get that down. But per this process, to my, the best of my knowledge, it complied with all of the city statutes and the policies. Okay, thank you. And in terms of the hotel comps, sorry everybody, I'm being a little brusque, trying to be quick. The hotel comps that were quoted, they were, I believe, smaller hotels. Can you speak to which hotels were they? Thank you, Mayor Garcia and Councilor Casset. So, we presented what they call an alternative water budget. So, the city has water budget formulas that are really old, and Santa Fe just conserves water annually. You've seen the water reports. It's like we are incredibly conservative. So, few projects use the city's numbers, and if you want to provide an alternative water budget, it's like we're not going to use that much water. You have to substantiate your budget. So, we chose three hotels, two in Santa Fe and one in Albuquerque owned by the applicant. So, we like, well, it's an applicant property. Maybe that's applicable. And we submitted that budget and we got the history of the water use and the whole thing. And then they came back and they said, "Well, this one hotel, I think it was the Hyatt Place. That's fine." But the other one, I think we picked the El Rey. It's kind of a different kind of property, so not really applicable. And they're like, "We don't want the Albuquerque." So, I said, "No problem." So, we selected two additional hotels. One is the Courtyard Marriott, a little further down, and the other one is the Fairfield Inn. Okay. And so, in terms of just size and scope, and so we put, we submitted an IPA request to the city to get that water data. And months went by, no data. So, I'm like, call, I mean, I'm doing everything I can, and I spoke with the, with Levi and Alan Hook. I said, "Can you guys help me here with this data because I can't do what you're asking me to do. I'm happy to revise this budget, but I need the data." So, just quite recently, they were able to work with the billing department and get me the data. So, we revised the budget, and it actually, I think, went down a tiny bit, interestingly, but we presented fresh data on these three properties that they have accepted as comparable properties. But we look at it on a per room basis. So, if we have how much water a 100-room hotel is using, we're like, how much are they using per room? We don't look at just the 100-room hotel because that's not applicable. So, we extrapolate it down to per room. So, we submitted a revision, and I think we're there. I think we're, yeah. And so, we're, so yeah, we're good. Okay. And then in terms of water efficiencies, I, this is a newer hotel. We have better water efficiencies. Is that part of what is being calculated into this budget is utilizing? Absolutely. In terms of irrigation, in terms of plumbing fixtures, in terms of HVAC, all the, all the elements, and you know, the choice of planting materials for the landscaping, all the, you know, the basically the best practices that we have available to us now in terms of water conservation. Okay. And meeting all city codes, I am hearing. Yes. Good. Just want to add one thing to that, is that we're in the process, you know, as we're in the process of doing a code rewrite as well as chapter for Chapter 25, which is the kind of the more specific to, you know, water. And as part of this, we want to start working with these developers to understand, as you know, as Jennifer mentioned, the data that we use, we have a standard set of calculations. It's like every hotel room uses this amount of water per year, and we haven't really looked at those and updated those in a while. And so that's kind of why we have this alternative water budget where if you can prove that, you know what, you're going to do is going to be better than our standards, and we'll allow you to use it. So, it sounds like our standards that are in our city code at this moment in time are less water efficient than when you have people using. Okay. Gosh, we, we should fix that. Yeah. No, we're, we're definitely, it's, it's on our list of things to do. Well, I'm sure you did. All right. Let me just go down my list and make sure we talk about that. Sorry guys, just doing everything that I took notes on. Ah, last question. For the applicant, were other options for ingress and egress explored? Oh, absolutely. Mayor Garcia, Councilor Casset, and councilors. So, as, I mean, there's like seven, what is it? Seven driveways there right now. So, yeah. Anything off Cerrillos. Yeah. So, it's, it's, it's kind of a mess today. And so, when we start, you know, laying out the site plan and looking at, and it's not just about the access, and it's like what is across the street, right? Because when you put in a new access, you need to ideally align so you create a clean, you know, four-way intersection. And so we looked at what our, what we thought made the most sense, right? Relative to what's going on in Cerros Road, relative to other access, relative to the median, where can we make improvements? And then we explore that with the DOT in the city. We say this is what we're proposing. Everybody's heard about, we wanted a left in at the south entry. DOT is like, nope. And we're like, okay, we scrapped it, no problem. And so there was a lot of back and forth. So it is vetted, but it is, we, there are a lot of factors that go into analyzing that in terms of where are those optimal locations. Okay, thank you. And there, and there wasn't options off Cos Chance, like... You mean off Cordova? No, like, yeah, like, I'm sorry, not on CIO. So off of Cordova and not on Cerros. Yeah, we have, we have no frontage on Cordova and also proximity to that intersection with Cordova, you know, would be, would be challenging. Okay. All right. And, and we don't own that property. So that's the other piece. Yeah, property ownership's a big deal. Thank you. All right. Some colleagues have some other comments, so I'm not going to call the question, but I will be very brief. I just want to sort of hit on this one point, which I think I'm stuck on procedurally. Frank, "shoulders" versus "shall" and 24 hours versus 4-hour increments. And maybe City Attorney, if you could help out a little bit here. What is the importance of the "should" versus "shall" that was brought up earlier regarding the traffic study in the TIA? Mayor Garcia and Council Court Castro, legally "should" gives the actor discretion. It's an advisory directive saying, you know, you should do this, but you're not legally obligated to. Whereas the word "shall," it means you have no choice. There's no discretion. You must conform with that directive. So if, so sorry to interrupt. So if previous governing bodies wanted this to be a requirement, they would have potentially put "shall," not "should." Is that my understanding? That is correct. Wonderful. And so why do we give leeway for options of 24-hour study versus 4-hour increment studies? And I do see our traffic engineer walking up. I imagine the traffic engineer could answer that better. But something to consider is if what this, the design has to compensate and be feasible during peak traffic hours, right? So you know that, that time between 6:00 and 8:30 in the morning and between 4:00 and 6:00 in the evening are what you really need to study to come up with a feasible design. What good does it do to do a traffic study from 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. when, when the traffic is only a fraction of what it is during the peak hours? That's my understanding. But... But we would have covered that under the 24 hours. So maybe our traffic engineer can help me out on why we don't just across the board require 24-hour study. Mr. Mayor, Counselor Castro, that is an innovation in these guidelines because it wasn't in the SAM and it was really kind of standard operating procedure to do these peak hour, as the City Attorney very eloquently put it. You're, most of the times our levels of service off-peak are great. I mean, levels of service at intersections or it's peak hours where things begin to break down because everybody's coming or going at the same time and that's what you want to design to. So it's an efficiency choice of doing this. You might want to do 24-hour and I think we required it on the Amazon heart business complex because we, with, with Phil and that engineering team determined we don't, I mean, peak hour of Amazon coming and going and whatnot. We actually wanted to know when that peak hour would be and in, in other locations like this, we know what the peak hour is with commuters and such. And if Phil wants to add to that, but it has come up as a point of question because it was a unique request in these current guidelines and it passed the peer review that the engineering peer review committee gave it somehow. But now they're, they're ask, they're asking these questions. But I think it's a good thing to have because with the Amazon development, we did require them 24 hours so we would pinpoint the peak hour and see what it might be. Wonderful. So we've just heard testimony today sort of suggesting that we should have been doing a 24-hour review and my understanding now is that this is actually above and beyond and something that we are looking into additionally in our TIA that wasn't in the state requirements. Correct. Right. Awesome. State SAM. In the state SAM, I'm not sure what this, what exactly. Yes. So in the TIA guidelines for the state. Thank you so very much. And the next question I have quickly, I think, is for Ms. Jenkins. I apologize. It's been a long night. I'm fading fast. I think that there is a hotel that I would have liked to see on the list, which is very close to this location and has an egress on a street. Did we take a look at the Sage Inn and what that sort of driveway might look like today under the current circumstances? So, if I may, Mayor Garcia and Counselor Castro. So, we, we looked at hotels for a couple of different reasons. We looked at hotels to establish our water budget, comparable hotels, and then we, I also shared a list saying, you know, how big are hotel properties relative to the size of the hotels. So that was that. So, but we typically when we, when we count cars for a traffic study, we, we, we're counting intersections, right? And so if we were going to count, like I've been in situations, so we have the Institute of Transportation Engineers establishes the trip generation. They say hotels generate national statistics this many cars in the peak hour and this many cars throughout the day, right? Sometimes there can be a land use that's not on the ITE's list. It's something really unique. And so then you would try to find a comparable land use and go count cars at that land use. We had to do that for Girls Inc. because there wasn't anything in the ITE for a youth center. So we had to count cars at the existing youth center. So that's why we didn't is because... There is an intersection at Diego and actually there are two driveways, which I feel can be particularly dangerous. The only reason I'm bringing that up is that there are some properties that are finding that the traffic is potentially an issue for them. And I was just surprised to not see it on the list. Now, I do understand that this is a different size and, and we're looking at potentially a different intersection, but it is in the area. I do just want to make the comment that, you know, regardless of what happens today, I think we've heard that we need to improve this intersection. The MO is taking a look at it. We are doing a safety study on the Cerros Road corridor. This is not the last conversation we're going to have about traffic at this intersection. Thank you, Mayor. Counselor Garcia, I actually don't really have many more questions. You know, I'm think we're getting a little bit closer to having a discussion and over what we can do here or what we are able to do. I still am going back and forth with the 4 hours to 24 hours. But it does seem as the "should" versus "shall" has been vetted. I, I see that in our own guidelines there are times where it shows that a 24-hour analysis may be used for specific reasons. Maybe somebody from City, can I ask the traffic engineer, what makes us... That was Siri and this thing is off too, so my apologies to turn it off completely. What triggers us to do a full 24-hour analysis or a 4-hour analysis? Mr. Mayor, Counselor Garcia, I think the context of the development and its traffic, as it fits into a context, is it normal? Is it something that we can say your peak hours is when you're, you're going to be designing this to or is it, and, and the example I gave was we required it for the Amazon in terms of their traffic to Bill. Phil, can you pipe in on this as well if you're able? Geraldine, is it... I mean, we have required it. It is something I know that comes up and is like, we're being asked why this is very interesting and odd that you're asking us to do. And so there's a discussion around that question on the... Is correct. Yeah, that's exactly correct because their, their delivery trucks, because it is a distribution center, their delivery trucks run 24/7 and we didn't know, they didn't fit the pattern of, of, you know, morning rush hour or evening rush hour traffic. So we require them to do the 24. I think that satisfies my, my question because I, I mean, we at these intersections, we pretty much know when peak times are. And so to get the, the level of data that we need to make a decision would be during peak time hours. And so, yeah, I, I guess if Amazon was going to put a warehouse on, on this property because at this point, based on the zoning, there could be a slew of any other things on this property in the future. And I know we're talking about this one. However, you know, if it's not this, then what is it going to be? So, the traffic is going to always be an issue, and I think it's an issue throughout the whole city. However, this is a very important intersection and so I will, I, I'll seed the floor. I don't have any other questions. And to the next. Thank you. I don't have any, I don't, oh, sorry. You recognize me? Sorry. Okay. You know, I just have a couple thoughts on this. As far as livability and... Sorry, Mr. Mayor. Oh, sorry. I, I apologize with land use cases. We have this very specific part where we do questions and then we close the public hearing and then we all get to, you know... And I just, yeah, no questions. Just a statement in a moment. Thank you. Counselor Faggali. I don't have any further questions. Thanks. Okay. Last question just because there was some data referenced and I guess this is for the appellants. Where did you get the NMDOT MO data from? Good evening, Governing Body Garcia. So the NMDOT or Santa Fe MO data is actually accessible from the Santa Fe MO's traffic portal and also from the NMDOT portal. It is the exact same data. Actually, we're the ones that implemented the system and at that time Santa Fe MO backdoored into the NMDOT's traffic data system. We were able to go to the public portal, find the location that was right, right there at the project spot and just clicked on it and that's where it's accessible to anybody that has the internet. And the reason I ask is because it's significantly different from what's presented. Yes. Significantly. And I, that, that can have a huge impact. So, um, let me ask Mr. Pacheco, why, why would there be such a significant difference especially since this data was conducted later? I would, I don't know if I would consider it tourist season or not, but why, why would there be such a big difference in the data? Mr. Mayor, I am familiar with the, the MO traffic data nodes of that are available to the public and to the developers. We do not permit that to be used. We're often asked, can we have it? We, and you know, it's, it's sort of like sugar blood sugar levels or heart rates traffic. I mean, I don't know what the date was and when they took it, but for instance, when the old PCOS trail subdivision came through and we were looking at data, it varied and actually fell. I mean, traffic volumes were falling. If you look at Hez Road, if you look at their data from 2007, I think Hez was five times the volumes it's carrying today. So there's a lot of dynamic things happening on roads there. It's, it is a living system so to speak and so we like the traffic impact analysis data to be fresh and it's so we, we don't allow our developers to use that data that's kind of static. I don't know how often they collect the data there or what the date was, but we just don't use their data. We collect fresh data and take the measurements then, and that's just standard operating procedure. Okay, to hold that thought, and you confirm for me that this impact study, this traffic impact study, was August 12th, 2025. I'm seeing a yes in the back. Yes. So, when was the NMDOT? Well, the NMDOT traffic data was done July 8th and 9th of 2025, one month prior. So that's pretty fresh to me. During peak tourism season, not after school has gone back into session. During peak tourism season. Okay, so, a full 48-hour count because it is a state road. What is required on those state roads is actually a little bit higher requirements and standards. They should be using not just the SAM, but the New Mexico state standards. This is all, it's state roads. It has to be done at the requirements at state level, not at city level. And so, with that being said, there were lots of things on here that you're claiming that are not meeting state standards. That's correct. I guess the broad question is, do we have, given that it is adjacent to a state road, do we have to meet state standards? We do if it's affecting a state facility. So US 84, 285, St. Francis, that's a corridor that intersects and is adjacent. So therefore, it has to follow state standards. Furthermore, the New Mexico state traffic monitoring standards actually were developed with NPOs and local governments. So they've been around for years, like over a decade. Right. And so, I guess let me ask this question because it came up, or at least I think it was referenced in this sense that previous projects were approved without meeting certain state standards. That's neither here nor there. This is the matter in front of us right now because we're deciding, did this meet state standards? No, it does not. Okay, that's my question. And so, why aren't we not working to meet state standards? I'll ask the engineer. Mr. Mayor, counselors, were we using state standards, we'd be using the state access management manual guidelines for TAS. I'm not particularly sure what standards they're speaking about, but and Phil, you've been involved in DOT development. I don't believe that data would be used. They would be collecting them per the state access management manual guidelines, and I don't think the data collection would be different. Phil, am I correct? Well, I mean, there's a whole process and procedures. So yeah, they're, I think they're using these guidelines and these standards somewhat incorrectly because the state access management manual guidelines that govern traffic development are within the city's TIA guidelines. It's in our appendices, and they are at times used. For instance, when we did the Zia Flats development and whatnot, because of its proximity and involvement, and the age of the development when that came through the process, those were the governing guidelines. So we are under the auspices of the state guidelines, but when we talk about guidelines and the state criteria, I'm referring to the state access management manual policies and procedures, and I'm not sure that their data is used for development review of state projects. Okay. So let me just, just again, I want to make sure we're crystal clear in this. There's the claim that there is, we've kind of clarified this state road, we've got to meet certain state standards. Claim that we're missing an NMDOT access decision or signed permit. I believe that couldn't be done until after. Right. So we've the catch-22 situation. And this is the claim that this was not part of the packet, not whether you have it or not. It was not part of the materials the planning commission used to make their decision. Dated NMDOT application receipt. There's missing or no proof of that in the packet. There is missing dated NMDOT coordination memos, meeting notes resolving movements. So, another document that's claimed to be missing from the packet, missing NMDOT required plan sheets or permit conditions, missing staff report citation of NMDOT exhibits and staff verification. And so, a lot of information that is required, at least on the state side, we've confirmed and we've got it adhered to state, is missing from the packet. Whether it was done or not is not the question. And the question is, is it part of the packet that allowed the planning commission to make their decision? I'm going to ask you, where did you get this information from to say this, that it was not part of the packet? So, we looked at the packet that was posted online for the planning commission's hearing. We went through it. We identified everything that was in it and compared it to the New Mexico state standards. So, I know he keeps mentioning what standards we're talking about. So, federal government FHWA 23 CFR 500 requires every state to develop a traffic monitoring program. And in that traffic monitoring program, they're required to develop statewide traffic monitoring standards that the SAM does follow. The reason I say that is because that governs the data collection. So if the data is not collected in guidance with the New Mexico state traffic monitoring standards, it is rejected and then not used in the SAM. That is the positions that the two of us had at the New Mexico Department of Transportation. We received traffic data from developers. Half the time we rejected it for these very reasons because they did not meet the Mexico Department of Transportation's statewide traffic monitoring standards. Turning movement counts had to be done three hours in the a.m., three hours right at noon, and three hours in the afternoon. Not a predetermined peak hour that we don't know for a fact that that peak is from 7 to 9. TIA just says AM and PM peak. It doesn't dictate a time. Current existing conditions actually show a different time from the New Mexico Department of Transportation. They actually have a permanent counter that's just south of that project location that can confirm. And a permanent counter is a traffic sensor that counts 24 hours a day, every day. And the one that was just south of that actually supports and confirms the data we provided to you. It does not confirm the data that the developer did. So to answer your question, how did we go through and find all of that? We looked at the department standards. We looked at what the FHWA required because this is a state highway in that section, and state highways in that section must follow federal, state, and lastly city. And because it is state-owned, whether it's going to be transferred two years from now, this corridor has been, there's been a study for this corridor since 2000, and very little movement has been made. And to address a question that was asked earlier, what is that DOT project? They're actually going to narrow the roadway. They're going to narrow the driving lanes by half a foot in each direction for both lanes. They're going to add a 6-foot bike path. So that's going to further congest and complicate. So, when we're talking about the coordination and collaboration, the only document that is in there showing any coordination that the planning commission could have seen was an email from Kathleen Garcia that says, "We cannot support that driveway." There is no other documentation from DO's participation. The scoping meeting letter lists the attendees, whether she was called or not. She's not listed on there. And so it's not in the record. So again, just to address what you asked, I'm sorry, Mayor. We just went through each state requirement. We looked at the federal requirements. We looked at the city requirements, and we outlined it in table format to show what should have been done, what wasn't done, and then provided the sources. And some of those sources are because DOT requires reconciliation if the traffic data is in a variance. Because what the DOT can do, developer submits that data, it goes into that database, and the database smooths the data, which is what we did for years, which helps you get a better picture of what current conditions are like. But now that we're almost a year removed and the data we presented to you has already been annualized and presented to FHWA and accepted, that data can no longer be put into that system because it's a data record. NMDOT database is authoritative data of record, not a developer data, not a few hours in the morning, two hours afternoon on a state-owned highway. It is not the authoritative record. And the New Mexico state traffic monitoring standards actually state that. And they were developed in accordance with 23 CFR 500, which also develops the Federal Highway Administration's traffic monitoring guide, and which is done at the guidance of engineers. So it's not just, I was a staff manager. It's not management analysts that are just creating it on their own. You have your licensed engineer. We had our executive director engineer. She reviewed it. She gave guidance. We hired an engineering consulting firm. We went through with them line by line by line because it was outdated. Like we're talking the water budget plan. It was outdated, updated it, met with the NPOs, met with all the district engineers, but there's been turnover. It was our job to actually remind the district engineers and the traffic engineers across all six districts of NMDOT of the standards and compliance for federal highway. Thank you. I appreciate that. I got a quick question. There's again the claim that this documentation should have been part of the packet, wasn't part of the packet. Why was it not part of the packet? Or let me ask this question. Is it, can you point to me where this is in the packet? It's as simple as that. Can you point to me where these required documents are in the packet? The data collection that their product serves is part of the state data collection for traffic on state highways that supports transportation planning, but there's nothing within our guidelines or the SAM. It's a kind of a different database, and I'm not questioning their data, the accuracy and whatnot, but it's just not the traffic protocols that we use whether we were using the SAM or the city's guidelines to use the available data. It's there. No, no, no, Mr. PCO, that's not the question. The question is that there's a claim that there's certain documents per the state requirements because it's adjacent to a state road that certain criteria has to be met, and I went through a list of at least five items that are not part of the packet that should have been part of the packet materials for the planning commission. Can you confirm for me what the appellant is saying is true? The only way you can do that is, can you or Miss Jenkins tell me, we do have this part of the packet. It's on page X, Y, and Z of the application. Can we do that? Well, some of the things on their list would not be required as part of our packet. So, in other words, there are things on their list that they're saying need to be there that I would question whether they need to be there. So, some items may be needed to be in their packet for their database and for their procedures, but they're not on our list of checklists. And what I'm saying, our city traffic impact analysis guidelines and scoping were followed. The DOT, as Phil corroborated, was involved in the scoping and analysis of the product. And, you know, they deferred its analysis to the city. And so they're making these claims, but I guess I'm contesting that a list of items, it's, you know, they're making a different product, we're making this product, and there may be overlap, and yeah, we're talking about traffic, but our data doesn't, I, we don't accept developers would love to use their data, and we don't permit it. We have them do individual unique counts. And so traffic is different different times you measure it. They measured it in July. It was higher. Apparently, he measured it in August. It was what it was. But that's the data we used and that's very typical. Okay, Mr. Pacheco. So Mr. Nan, what do you have to say to that? That some of the data that you're saying should have been part of the packet. Mr. Pacheco saying it didn't need to be part of the packet, was not part of the project. Again, I'm not an expert on this. You seem like you know what you're referencing. I just need to ensure that we're moving forward with information that is factual. Yes, so again, based off this being a state highway, the highway's regulations supersede also. So in the TIA, it does reference Appendix C, which references the New Mexico State Traffic Monitoring Standards. So the city TIA already references it. We're just bringing to light the actual requirements that are in it. And because this is a state highway, it requires that information. And further, developers have used the NMTO traffic data. They've used it for years. When I was there, I had phone calls all the time about, "Can I get this information? Can I get this information?" We would provide it. I would actually provide the future calculations myself. So that's why I'm very familiar with the procedures and policies that are required by the state. And again, Mayor Garcia, because this is a state highway, should and shall the requirements in the traffic monitoring standards for the state of New Mexico say "shall." It's not "should," it says "shall be done." It even addresses private developers. Their traffic data shall be turned into the New Mexico Department of Transportation if their project affects a state facility or right-of-way. This project affects the state facility, which is New Mexico 14, and it affects their right-of-way, which is from sidewalk to sidewalk. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Any other questions from governing body members? Councilor Casset. Thank you, Mayor. This might be a question for staff around a potential condition I might want to impose. I don't know. Hey Dan, again, this question around NMDOT, back to what we actually make decisions on. FYI, this, I mean, it's not whether or not we like this project. Personally, I'm not a fan, actually. Really, I'm not a fan. However, from where I'm sitting, I think that the requirements have been met per our city code. Now, this question around traffic in NMDOT. Can we have a condition of approval that will require that we get a sign-off from NMDOT regarding this traffic impact analysis and NMDOT saying, "Yes, we accept it," or, "No, we do not." And if no, they do not, then I'm not sure what happens at that point. Then we have to redo a traffic impact analysis with NMDOT, and then, you know, that goes back to, you know, that probably then shoots everything back to Planning Commission because that this is the problem. This is the crux of the issue. It's this, "Well, they said this should happen, this shouldn't happen," and DOT said, "Yes." DOT is going to say, "No," and they're not here to speak for themselves. And so at this point, I don't have the information. That, I mean, that's the missing piece. Everything else looks like code's been met, but this component is the question mark. Mayor, members of the council, I guess during an appeal hearing, it is de novo. Is that not correct? Yes. So if you are deliberating to add a condition, you would have that right to add it. Okay. We have often made applicants get something from the state, whether that's a septic tank permit or whatever. You know, getting a simple signature or a permit wouldn't be out of line with that. Okay. They may already have it. So the question here is what would be the request from the state that you're looking for? Okay, wonderful. Thank you. And to the applicant, is that something that you would agree to? Absolutely. Okay. All right. Thank you, Mayor. Any other questions from governing body members? Okay. Seeing none, we will then move forward to the appellant. If new evidence has arisen during questioning, you have the opportunity to ask questions of staff or applicant's witnesses. And I'll allow 10 minutes for this. This just take me a moment to set up. Michael, can you please reset the timer? Can we get my screen to duplicate? Plugged in. Mike, can we use your assistance for bringing online a visual from somebody's computer? Are you able to all see the screen? Before you start, let us just get a timer up that way we can make sure again it's equitable. And Mike in the back, can we get a 10-minute timer, please? Okay, go ahead. What I want to show you is the New Mexico State Traffic Monitoring Standards, prepared by NMDOT by Lee Engineering, which I'm pretty sure they're familiar with as well. They're based out of Albuquerque and locations across Texas, Arizona, whatnot. We had initially contracted them to help us revise this. So what I want to show you first is in Mexico truth and data requirements. Go to page four. The truth and data requirements. So first, you're supposed to use AAD for any traffic data analysis, not ADT. ADT is average daily traffic. That's what you get when you do a 4-hour count or even a 24-hour count. An AAD traffic count is when it's been annualized. It's been put into a database that takes into account seasonal factors and growth factors. Excuse me while I scroll down. They asked about when traffic data traffic is collected. So that depends on the functional system. And I know I'm getting into technical details here. That's usually like a highway. A highway shall be collected every three years. But New Mexico 14 is a highway. Shall be collected every three years. Lower functional class systems, I'm looking for specific slides. Sorry. Lower functional class systems revert down to a six-year traffic count. So that'd be like quarter of a road that'd be done every six years or Alta Vista local roads, which are typical like neighborhoods, it's usually every seven to 10 years. So in these standards, as you can see right here, fixed intersection count. These are the standards we mentioned, shall be done between 7:00 to 10:00, 11:00 to 2:00, and 3:00 to 6:00. If you're going to do a flexible count, then you shall do a 48-hour count, which means you're going to put a camera up at intersection and let it sit for 48 hours. From there, that data will be analyzed. So you may ask me where I got this data from. I'm going to show you first. Here's the Santa Fe MPO's website. They said they're in partnership, as highlighted in blue, with the New Mexico Department of Transportation's traffic monitoring program. I want to show you the maps for both. So, Mr. Nan, I just want to pause for two quick seconds. This is the opportunity for you to ask questions. There will be an opportunity for you to give a closing statement. So I want to make sure there's a difference in the two. I apologize. I guess the question I would have would be why have city engineers not seen any of this before what I just showed when other engineers that we have worked with across the state have? Mr. Mayor, this is Vegas. Can I add to that? Good afternoon, Mayor. And thank you. I actually have seen this data. You use it. Data is amazing. When I looked at his report as he as it was going through, this was for data to be accepted into the New Mexico TMS transportation modeling program and whatnot. So it had a very, it has a very specific criteria for the data to enter into this database. And it so for traffic data to be used and going into his program to feed this map needs to meet that criteria. Yeah, we didn't, we're not submitting our data to the state to go into this NMTMS. We're using our data to analyze traffic. It does give me a moment to make all of us aware there's an amazing amount of traffic data being collected and that the city contracts for through Urban SDK and it's based on devices in your car, devices you're carrying, whatnot. So we have access to volume speeds, 85th percentile speeds. We also don't let that data be used for our TIA guidelines. I do use it for planning, for traffic calming questions, for traffic questions that come up. Very powerful model of data. I also use this data to kind of look at and compare. But again, these are data sets being used for very particular purposes. And the criteria he's putting on this table to be asked for is the criteria for the traffic data to go into this system. The way I read quickly as he was scanning through his report by Lee Engineering, our data collected was never intended to be used and to go into the NMTMS system or this TIA guideline. It was specifically used to analyze the traffic impacts to existing city-state infrastructure to talk about how it would be met. So I think that helps me close my confusion about this criteria they're talking about. We don't meet the criteria to go into this NMTMS system. Weren't even trying. I'm aware of it. I'm aware of the data. We use the data. I've looked at the data for a lot of different reasons. Be it traffic calming, traffic impact analysis for development. Basically, to get a sense or a pulse, but just like going to a doctor over a year, your data for collecting blood or whatever you might be measuring, it's not going to always be the same. And so traffic as a living system is also going to be different. And there's windows of, here's we're submitting our traffic. This is the time you need to do it here and there. And we took our counts in these specific windows and we used our traffic for our guidelines. So it's just two different criteria systems. But our argument for the city's defense is that the city public works department followed state law in using licensed engineers to perform all of these analyses both as peer review and as applicant, and we used a city established TIA guidelines to analyze that data and per our city code, we, you know, the public should feel that we've adequately did our job on their behalf. Mayor, I think Mr. Gagos had something to add as well. Yeah, this data that they're presenting, it's for planning. Mr. Gagos, please pause because Mr. Nan, it's his time and I want to make sure he makes best use of his time. I do have another question. You stated that this data is used for planning purposes and why wouldn't it been considered by the Planning Commission with their decision? This data is never used for analysis or design. I was in charge of the district by traffic engineering section for quite a while. And we never use this data for TIA. We always have the developers conduct counts that we require and use that data. This is this data that the DOT collects is for planning level use only and we don't use it in design. We've never used it in design or any kind of analysis. And so that's why this data wasn't used. We were, you know, having the developer follow the NMDOT TIA standards that the districts implement and the city of Santa Fe with their guidelines. Were the TIA standards that the NMDOT sent over to you? Were they in the record? I don't know what the current ones are. I've been retired for like 14 years now. When I was in charge of the traffic section, I was the district traffic engineer supervisor. We have this data available to us that you're talking about, but we always, the TIA, the way we evaluate TIA are exactly the way the city's doing. We require the developers to take real-time traffic counts that we outlined for them to take in the scoping meetings. And that's exactly what we did here for the city. What standards would those traffic counts have followed? How is a four-hour count representative of traffic data that's supposed to represent every day, all day, all year long? Well, these, these, these, we won't use for design. We won't use them for any kind of analysis. They're just for planning purposes, and that's why the DOT collects that data. So that's my question about this four-hour traffic data. If it's supposed to be for planning purposes for long-term and future construction and implementation, like in 2037, what guidelines is a four-hour count actually following to be representative, to represent all of Santa Fe and all the residents and citizens here? That's in the traffic analysis. I have one last question. In your analysis, did you actually analyze the traffic data beyond the driveways and the one queuing that you mentioned? Same question, because looking at the DRT, the only comments that were mentioned have nothing to do with actual traffic data itself. Oh, I'm not. Could you say that again? I was asking if you actually reviewed the traffic data itself, not just the geographic geometry of the roadway, because reviewing the DRT, the only comments that are in there are about the driveway and about one storage area. I don't see comments about time of collection, the feasibility of the traffic data itself. If there's any concerns in the traffic data, there's no comment or discussion about that. Okay, I'll have to look at that again. I reviewed it in November, and they did follow everything the city required them to do. Phil, I guess I would disagree with that comment. Within the record and in the packet, the developer addressed two pages of your comments related to traffic. So, in other words, the traffic impact analysis is basically tons, I mean, hundreds of pages of traffic data, and it did result in a series of communications between you and the developer as it made its way toward getting final acceptance from a draft to the final TIA that was in the packet. So the traffic did look beyond just geometry, but geometry is a part of it as well, and I think a full analysis prepared by licensed engineers and reviewed and peer-reviewed by licensed engineers did take place. Yeah, there was. I'm sorry, Mr. Non, but your time has expired. So we will now move towards the applicant. Thank you, Mayor. Applicant, it's your time to ask any questions. And again, I'll just, this is the time for questions. There will be soon time for a closing statement. Thank you, Mayor Garcia. Counselors, I'll be relatively brief. Leroy, could you join me here again? So, just for the sake of clarity, there's been a lot of data and a lot of talk about standards. Does this traffic study meet the standards for the State of New Mexico State Access Management Manual, the SAM? Does it meet the City of Santa Fe TIA guidelines? We use the City of Santa Fe TIA guidelines, and within that is the SAM, and the DOT staff was involved in its review. Okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you very much for clarifying that. So, just to point out, we prepared the study. We were directed to prepare. If the City of Santa Fe wants to revisit that process, great. Now is not the time to do that. We did exactly what we were tasked with doing in accordance with the state requirements and the City of Santa Fe requirements. So, I'd ask Dan Escoel, as the planner manager, could you confirm that the development plan application for the proposed hotel meets all standards of the C2 zoning district? Yes, subject to conditions. Thank you. I'm done. I appreciate your time and attention. Thank you, Miss Jenkins. We will now move on to the Assistant City Attorney. Any responses to the appellant and/or applicant submitted evidence and/or testimony? I'll allow for the same 10 minutes as well. Mayor Garcia, thank you. I don't have any more to add. I believe that the appellants and the applicants are in a better position to focus on the issues that they think are important. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Assistant City Attorney. Let's now go back to the appellant for a closing statement of five minutes. And before you start, can we get a clock up for us just to make sure? And Michael, can you please change the time to five minutes? There you go, Mr. Catz. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, staff. I had the experience twice in this last week of driving through that intersection, and lo and behold, I had the nightmare that any woman would have going through, which is you're waiting at the red light, light turns green, traffic moves forward, you get close to the intersection, light turns red, and you wait again. And that happened both on St. Francis and Surios. I think we're all aware of, there suddenly seems to be a great increase in traffic in the city. I mean, I don't drive that much, but I sure see that, and I suspect you all do also. And the problem that I have with the application and with all of this discussion about how much traffic is there and how long is where that hotel is, it seems like a bad place. It even seemed like a bad place as Jennifer was describing this high-end hotel that's so nice, and it has this, not all build, it's not all building, it's open space. Well, it's parking lot is what it is. This is, I mean, if I, I would love to go stay at a nice hotel, but I would like to have some maybe outdoor space, and it ain't there. I would think there'd be many better places for this hotel. But the problem is that the one thing that I do know about is that the queue coming up road towards the northeast so often will be completely blocking that driveway, that it doesn't work for the hotel. It doesn't work for the people who are staying at the hotel. They certainly are going to have a hell of a time getting across that completely blocked lane to go southwest on Surios Road. It just does not make sense to me. And to get better clarification on how much traffic really is there, how often does the queue go all the way back there, to make sort of a sensible decision for the city. I just am thinking, gee, we're responsible for all the city and all of the people who drive there, who get stuck in the traffic, and the more that it is trafficy, the more people take risks, go through the red lights, do whatever. And it just does not make sense to me to just simply say, "Oh, well, we met every one of those little rules and we went, did the study from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m." I think we could do better is my feeling on it. And I think it is the traffic. It is what's happening there. And putting a 150-room hotel there makes no sense. Thank you. We'll move on now to the applicant for a closing statement. Same five minutes. And Mike, if we can get the timer reset, please. Are we good? I think. Not yet. You'll see it pop up in the top left corner. There you go. Thank you, Mayor Garcia. Counselors, I just want to touch on a few very important points from a standpoint of context. We have talked a lot tonight about this intersection. Yes, we all experience the intersection. We experience the busyness. We experience the frustration when the train's going through there and you got to wait through another signal. And the State of New Mexico, the City of Santa Fe, and the federal government have invested millions of dollars in this intersection over probably the last 20 years in order to make it safer. And we have made it safer. It's been a huge public investment. We have a public investment in the underpass to create more safety for bicycles and pedestrians. Actually, on the surface crossings with the crosswalks, there's a median refuge. So, you only have to cross the northbound lane of traffic. Then you can wait if you need to before you cross the next. There's been so much improvement. It's a very, it's a busy intersection. It's a robust intersection. It's a multimodal intersection. And here's the really key point here. The traffic to be generated by this hotel is 0.5% of the total traffic. It is a drop in the proverbial bucket. And we have demonstrated through the traffic study that has been approved by the DOT in the City of Santa Fe that it has excellent levels of service. Levels of service of C is fantastic in the busiest intersection in the city. It's fantastic. If there any delay that is going to be experienced as a result of this hotel is for hotel guests. And I find it mildly disingenuous that there are folks in the room who seem very concerned about the convenience of these hotel guests if they have to wait a moment to turn in or if they have to wait a moment to turn out. There is no other delay caused to any other portion of this roadway network that is proven by the data. So I think we are characterizing this intersection in a way that is not supported by the data. So I think it's very, it's a very important context, and the safety assessment supports that as well. 37 on average collisions a year when there's 14 million cars going through that intersection. And those 14 million cars are absolutely based on the no and the DOT counts. Absolutely 0.00267%. That's what those collisions amount to. The investments in this intersection are working. Is it busy? Yes, it's busy. Is it sometimes going to be slow? Yes. But this project, you cannot point to this project as worsening anything that's there. You just can't. It's math. You can't point to it. And we had six New Mexico licensed engineers, six involved in the preparation and the review and approval of this traffic study. That is what is before you this evening. Again, if the city wants to maybe revisit how that is done, is there something we've learned here today that maybe we need to rethink something? I think that's great. We should all be learning all of the time. All of the time. So what you have before you is a project that complies with your rules, with your code, with the standards established by your public works department and the New Mexico Department of Transportation with standard practice. We didn't get any special treatment. This traffic study was prepared and analyzed in accordance with every other, do you know how many traffic studies I've been involved in over the last longer than I care to admit. That is the process. And if the city thinks we need to revisit the process, by all means. So, thank you for your time and attention. I appreciate it. Let's go ahead and close the public hearing. We will now move to the governing body for a potential motion or second on whether to grant or deny the appeal. The person making the motion should state the member's reasoning for the motion. So that being said, I'll start on the left that time. Let's start on the right this time, but happy to go down the line. Great. I move to deny the appeal on the grounds that substantial evidence supported the Planning Commission's February 5th, 2026 decision approving the AC Marriott Hotel project at 1101 and 113 Serrios Road. A second. And I'd like to suggest an amendment to the motion. I would suggest that there be a condition on the denial that a, or yeah, on the, it gets a little confusing, that there would be a letter from NM DOT that states that this is a valid traffic study, or traffic impact analysis, excuse me, that it meets their standards. And if they do not provide that, if they state that that is not the case, then a new TIA would have to be performed, and this case would need to be brought back to the Planning Commission. Second. As the motion maker, are you cool with that? I'm good with that amendment. So, Mr. City Attorney, do we need to write this just so it's documented? How do we want to move forward with this condition? I don't think we need to write it out right now, but I think restating it would be useful perhaps for the governing body members as you deliberate. So there's a motion on the table to deny the appeal with a friendly amendment, and the amendment is a condition that the applicant obtain some kind of writing showing a letter of support from the New Mexico DOT. If they obtain that, then the project can proceed as it would normally. If they are unable to attain such a letter of support, then this project would be remanded back to the Planning Commission for further factual finding. Almost remanded back to the Planning Commission with a new TIA performed that meets stated requirements that are not if DOT is like, "No, this doesn't meet it." Whatever DOT says they need to do to meet it, that they have to go back, redo a TIA, and then with that information, head back to Planning Commission to rehear the case. Does that make sense? Thank you for that clarification, Councilor Kess. I have a question on that. Sure, Councilor Garcia. Does it mean go back to the Planning Commission, or being that it's already at the level of the governing body, would it come back here? I would prefer. What would be the legality around that? I think the governing body has the discretion to remand it back to the Planning Commission if it wants to do that. But if you want to retain the matter, I think it's a little bit unusual because this is an appeal, and I feel like the factual record, I would recommend that the factual record be better developed at the Planning Commission. Which is unusual to come back here, go back to the Planning Commission. I think to keep it here while facts are still developed, seeing as this is an appeal, I think it would be better if more of the facts are established at the Planning Commission. Okay. I would send it back to Planning Commission then. Any other questions or comments? Just one quick clarification, just because the state would them writing the letter be based off the foundation of the SAM, their guidelines, because somebody can just write it. A staffer can write it, but their approval should be based off their actual guidance, which is the SAM. My intention is that DOT essentially take a look at the TIA that has been completed and state whether or not they find it acceptable for this case. If they do not, then to provide direction as to what should otherwise be done. Okay. Any other comments, questions? Mayor, I do have just one comment. I also am not super excited about this development and this plan, but I have some concerns about us relying on the SAM in particular on some of these roads, only because as we heard today, the street diet is a priority of mine. Making sure that we have bike lanes and we have more narrow lanes is super, super important. And so the reason that we have this TIA is because we have a much more urban center and area that we're looking at. So I just want to caution us from looking at state highway standards versus urban road standards. Thank you. Mr. Kesset. Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. You know, I do just want to repeat what I said regarding, I really am not a fan of this project. I can actually see pros and cons to it. On the one hand, if we're worried about traffic on Cerillos, then perhaps a hotel that is closer to the downtown area with access to the train might actually reduce traffic because people are able to walk or take the train down to the rail yard and therefore be in the downtown area. So, who knows what people's behavior is going to be. I'm sure cell phones could have people track that. I think the big issue, and this is, you know, I always go back to this with land use, and I always state it with land use, is I frequently will have cases that I don't like that I'll approve because they meet the standards, and we are not in a policymaking role here, and I think that that distinction is extremely important. Our job is to say, did this meet the requirements that the policy says it has to meet? And I know this can get really frustrating. But I also think that it's really important because it is important that we follow our own laws. I think right now we're seeing what happens at the federal level when our government does not follow its own laws, and it's dangerous. I mean, it's not, and so that is what this decision is based on. But I never miss an opportunity, especially during land use, and especially during tough cases. It's already been mentioned today that the general plan and the code update are in process, and it does address things like, "Hey, if you have a commercially zoned area and maybe the land doesn't fit really well, and we're late taking a look at the future land use map and really understanding what it means for something to be zoned C2 right here." You know, this is the time to have these conversations, and it's not going to be perfect. It never is. We've had a number of cases where we have noticed the challenges. I think another piece that we're all going to have to be mindful of, sure, who knows who'll be sitting up on this dais at the time, but part of our problem is that our general plan and our land use code were not updated for a really long time, and it's a hard, it's a, you know, it's a huge lift, which is part of why it wasn't done. So, I keep telling the public, get involved now, and then in about five years, make sure we're revisiting this thing because that's a huge issue that we keep running into. That's a spot zoning that's been referred to, is it's just been this kind of crazy monster that keeps going, but it is also what we have right now. I can't go off of what I wish it were. I can't go off of what I think it may be, because that's not said at this moment. But please, please, please get involved in the land use processes. Now, I know you are, Elizabeth. You're always here. Stay involved in the land use processes. And when by the processes, I don't just mean the cases when we go to quasi-judicial and we have to basically say, "What does the law say? Do we think this fits or not?" But the part where the policy is actually made, those pieces where like this moment is based on those times. So, please, please get involved because I also, I don't, I don't like this. I don't think it's the best. Honestly, if I could find a way to deny it, I would if I could find a legal mechanism. But that's also why I try to hold myself to such high standards with it because when I can deny something, I want to know that I am doing it in a way where I feel like I'm actually listening to the law, and this is how I'm interpreting it at this moment in time. So, thank you all so much. I know you worked really hard. We obviously don't know what the vote's going to be at this moment. I've obviously put my claim on where I'm headed. But I really do want to appreciate all of you and all the time and effort that you put into this. And please come to the policy conversations because I think you all have a lot to add. Thank you. Any other comments from governing body members? Last call. All right. Well, I do believe that there was sufficient evidence to grant the appeal tonight, and should in the instance that I do get the opportunity to vote, I would vote against this motion. So with that, Madame City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Certainly, Mr. Mayor, Councilor Barrett. This is the amendment, and then we go on the overall. Yes. Wait, we're voting on the amendment to the motion, or are we just voting on a whole motion? Amendment. You got to do the amendment first, and then the overall. The DOT study. Right. Yes. Councilor Wamonte. No. Councilor Casset. Yes. Councilor Castro. Yes. Councilor Fagali. Yes. Councilor Garcia. Yes. Motion passed. Okay. Now, any final comments before main motion? And seeing none, Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Yes, Mr. Mayor. Councilor Bamante. No. Councilor Casset. Yes. Councilor Castro. I'm going to abstain. I don't have enough information. Councilor Councilor Vagali. Yes. Councilor Garcia. Yes. Councilor Barrett. Yes. Motion passes. What was the count total? So four to one. That doesn't meet the merits of the requirement, which has got to pass by five. Overturn the decision of the Planning Commission needs five. It's per the law that was just sent to me. I believe. That's why I recommended it be postponed until we have enough folks that. Frank, are you going to come explain it to us? The zoning authority may, the way it was explained earlier, was that it has to be a majority of the body, which is five, not the majority of a quorum. So if we're, as a point of clarification, would that be in order to grant the appeal? That would be, I believe, in order to grant the appeal. That's the way I'm interpreting it. In this case, there was a motion for denial. Therefore, it would enact us to have a vote on the majority of the governing body present. And I'm just trying to brainstorm here. I know that when we brought forth, Councilor Falconer and myself brought forth the notion that the mayor would not vote, there was some discussion over this in the case of a quasi-judicial proceeding in this specific situation, that the mayor would vote. What they would have to vote, and I'd like to actually see if the City Attorney remembers that it was direction by your predecessor and boss at the time. Thank you. Councilor Garcia, members of the governing body, I want to address what the governing body procedural rules say about abstention. It states that if one or more governing body members abstain and the action being voted on is other than the passage of an ordinance or resolution, then the abstention shall be counted as acquiescence with the majority. So we can take the vote again, but I think technically, that abstention that I made would go with the majority. So, Mr. City Attorney, so before we, because I mean, we would have to do a lot of untangling to redo a vote according to the rules, the abstention goes with or is the majority of the vote, whatever direction it went. And so in this case, the direction was to approve the denial of the appeal. That is correct. We deny the appeal with the conditions as stated by Councilor Casset. Okay. All right. So, with that being said, I believe that completes tonight's agenda's work. With that, we stand adjourned.