Special Governing Body Meeting
Wed, Oct 9, 2024 · Governing Body
https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/20

== Executive Summary ==
The City Council meeting covered a wide range of topics, with a significant focus on a proposed $25 million General Obligation (GO) Bond for road improvements, which will appear on the November 5th ballot. City staff and councilors presented detailed information on the bond's necessity, financial implications, and the specific projects it would fund across all districts. They emphasized the bond's role in addressing deferred maintenance, improving road safety, and enhancing overall infrastructure, while maintaining a stable property tax rate.

Another major discussion centered on the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee's (BPAC) Strategic Plan, outlining long-term goals for making Santa Fe a more bike and pedestrian-friendly city. This included ambitious targets for bicycle lanes, integration with the Metropolitan Planning Organization's plans, and a strong emphasis on community engagement and safety education. The meeting also touched on the city's recent credit rating downgrade by Fitch, which officials clarified was due to state-managed pension liabilities rather than the city's financial health, and would have minimal impact on bond interest rates. Public comments covered diverse issues, from concerns about nuclear weapons production at LANL to disappointment over a caboose renovation and support for the Office of Equity and Inclusion.

== Key Decisions ==
- Agenda approved as amended, with item 9F removed.
- Motion to approve a budget amendment resolution for airfield painting and maintenance passed.
- Motion to approve a budget amendment resolution of $634,500 for airport upgrades (crash phone, mechanic tools, repairs) passed.
- Motion to enter executive session for attorney-client privileged discussion of pending/threatened litigation (In re City of Camden et al. versus BASF Corporation) passed.
- Motion to reconvene in open session and confirm adherence to executive session topics passed.
- Motion to accept the City Attorney's recommendation in the case City of Camden et al. versus BASF Corporation passed.
- Motion to approve the bill amending golf rates at Marty Sanchez Links de Santa Fe passed unanimously.

== Motions & Votes ==
- Motion to approve the agenda as amended (item 9F removed) — Passed
- Motion to approve a budget amendment resolution for airfield painting and maintenance — Passed
- Motion to approve a budget amendment resolution of $634,500 for airport upgrades (crash phone, mechanic tools, repairs) — Passed
- Motion to enter executive session for attorney-client privileged discussion of pending/threatened litigation (In re City of Camden et al. versus BASF Corporation) — Passed
- Motion to reconvene in open session and confirm adherence to executive session topics — Passed
- Motion to accept the City Attorney's recommendation in the case City of Camden et al. versus BASF Corporation — Passed
- Motion to move 'petitions from the floor' to an earlier point in the agenda — Passed
- Motion to approve the bill amending golf rates at Marty Sanchez Links de Santa Fe — Passed unanimously

== Public Comment ==
Public comments covered a wide array of topics. Councilor Chavez led an invocation on untreated trauma in New Mexico and its link to public safety issues. The Mayor offered condolences for victims of violence and remembered local artist Jan Brooks. Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group raised concerns about new missions at LANL, particularly pit production. Rick Marcus expressed deep disappointment over the city's caboose renovation, citing a lack of public input. Elizabeth West offered to volunteer for the Office of Equity and Inclusion and shared personal experiences with biking safety. Nera Hitana argued that nuclear weapons are instruments of internationally lawless behavior. Stephanie Beninato criticized the city's legal spending and detailed issues with property enforcement. Jennifer Weber, President of Bike Santa Fe, announced upcoming bike audits and invited council members to participate. A citizen commenter shared two 'miracle' stories and urged the council to thank a federal judge for a ruling against plutonium pit trigger production. Councilors also praised District Attorney Sam Bregman's document on the fentanyl crisis and recommended a statewide summit.

== Topics ==
- Road Improvement Bond
- Fentanyl Crisis
- Marty Sanchez Golf Rates
- Untreated Trauma
- Telecommunications Franchise
- Ethics Review Board Nominations
- Henry Lynch Roundabout
- Agenda Approval
- Remembrances and Condolences
- Southside Event
- Indigenous Peoples' Day
- Designing Our City for People
- Balloon Fiesta
- Jewish New Year

== Full Transcript ==
Mayor, councilors, you are live. Thank you. Thank you very much. I am very happy to call to order this regular meeting of the governing body for October 9th of 2024. By my clock, it's 5:05 p.m. Let's begin with the Pledge of Allegiance led by Councilor Romero Worth, salute to the New Mexico flag led by Councilor Lee Garcia, and then invocation remembrances if Councilor Chavez would please lead us in that.

Good evening, everybody. So I wanted to start tonight on remembrances. I want to actually pay tribute and remember all of the individuals that we have lost to untreated trauma in the state of New Mexico. We've had a lot of conversations around public safety as councilors lately, and I feel a transition amongst our community in realizing that we have root causes that are outside just the crime that we are physically made aware of or can physically see. And they're seeing that we have behavioral health that has not been treated. There are individuals in our community that are suffering, and we are losing individuals who are victims of crime and who are perpetrators of crime, but who are all victims of trauma. And I feel like we need to really shine light on this fact, and I just have to really show my appreciation to the community in recognizing this and seeing that we are all humans that kind of suffer in our own way. Unfortunately, some of that suffering leads to irreversible actions that are taken that impact our life forever. But we're losing community members every single day to untreated trauma in the state of New Mexico. So I wanted to read a quote about trauma. It says, "Trauma isn't the result of weakness. Trauma is the result of something or many things that have been so overwhelming for our bodies that our brains literally change to adapt to what has happened. It's not something we make up. It's not something that we can just fix our mindset about. You can't just logically decide you're going to feel safe when your body has been bracing against impeding danger for years. You have to actually cultivate a real sense of safety within your body to reverse the impact of trauma." And that's by Em Marie. And I think that as a state and as city officials, we have to start creating that safe space for our community members to address the real issue that we're seeing and the root cause for many of the issues that we are facing as a community. How do we create that safe space? How do we as city officials, how do we as state representatives, start addressing what so many of our community members are suffering from and why so many of them are losing their lives? So tonight, I want to share my love and I want to remember all those that have lost their lives in one way or another to trauma.

People call to mind condolences. I'd add to what the councilor just said, our thoughts, families of Dominic Romo, Ebony Martinez, did lose their lives to a tragic act of violence, very much an example of what the councilor is talking about in our community. I'd also call to mind on a brighter note, a wonderful woman we lost, Jan Brooks, dear friend and a tremendous patron and artist herself, someone who knew more about artistry, the craftsmanship of Northern New Mexico than anybody I know. With her husband, they had a long-time gallery featuring arts and antiquities from Northern New Mexico and all of the furniture makers and builders and artists in our community. She was a delightful, fun person, as well as a deeply knowledgeable person about arts and crafts. She was just committed to this community and to the artists and the craftspeople in our community. And I'm very sad we lost her. There will be a memorial coming up for her on the 15th. Hope we can all remember her spirit, her heart, her brain, her hands, and all the gifts she gave to Santa Fe. We also call to mind the people who are suffering across our New Mexico for reasons involving health, well-being, sometimes poverty or afflictions that are beyond their control. Let us send the thoughts and best wishes and prayers to all of our community for these individuals. Take a minute to keep them in mind. Thank you, everybody. Please be seated.

Very good. Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll for this evening?

Certainly, Mayor. Councilor Cassutt? Here. Councilor Costales? Councilor Chavez? Councilor Faulkner? Councilor Lee Garcia? Here. Councilor Michael Garcia? Present. Councilor Lindell? Here. Councilor Romero Worth? Here. Mayor Weber? Present. Mayor, you have a quorum.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Do we have any changes to the agenda as published?

Yes, Mayor. Staff is requesting to remove item 9F from the agenda.

9F as in Frank?

Correct.

Right. Any other changes?

No, sir.

Approve as amended. Is there a discussion? Not. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll on the agenda as amended?

Certainly, Mayor. Councilor Cassutt? Yes. Councilor Costales? Yes. Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Lee Garcia? Yes. Councilor Michael Garcia? Yes. Councilor Lindell? Councilor Romero Worth? Yes. Mayor Weber? Motion passed.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. That would then take us to item 8A. If you could read that out loud for everybody who is listening or watching, as well as for the record.

Item 8A is a presentation. It's a discussion of proposed $25 million General Obligation Bond for Road Improvements on the 2024 general election ballot. We have the Public Works Director, Regina Wheeler, here, as well as the Finance Director, Emily Oster, to present.

Thank you. Director Wheeler, are you going to kick us off?

Thank you so much, Mayor, members of the governing body. Yes, we, I'd love to. We're here tonight to talk about the General Obligation Bond that the governing body approved to have a question on this year's November 4th general election ballot. The governing body approved that resolution on August 14th of 2024.

Matt, can you hang on one second, Director Wheeler? Are we going to create these screens? Are they live? Can they go live?

Certainly. Let me, let me get them on.

We don't actually have a PowerPoint presentation, so we're just...

I know, but I think for the purposes of making sure that all of our technology is fully engaged for people who are either zooming in or watching from other parts, we make sure that everything is operational before we start down the road of presentation that will follow yours. I think we're good, Madam Clerk. Thank you. Sorry to interrupt, Director Wheeler, you have the floor.

Thank you so much, Mayor. While you interrupted just at the right time for Director Oster to correct me, the election's on November 5th, not November 4th. So there will be a question on the ballot of the general election that asks if voters to approve a General Obligation Bond of $25 million towards road improvement projects in the city of Santa Fe. We as, as the Public Works team and the Complete Streets team are really excited about this potential investment. What this will do for the residents of Santa Fe is it'll reduce the number of potholes they experience. It'll provide safer roads without having obstructions that they need to avoid. It'll provide new paint striping as well after we rehabilitate the pavement. We restripe. We also will be improving sidewalks where any ADA compliant curb ramps are missing. They would be repaired along those same project lengths. There are 51 identified projects, specific projects, large and medium-sized, distributed across all four districts. And then 10% of the funds will be spent on residential roadway repairs. They're much smaller projects, and those will be, all of these projects have been identified with the input from the public, input from the governing body, assessment by our professionals that understand pavement and understand the historical investments in the roadway and the traffic volumes and the emergency routing is a really important piece of the puzzle when we look at what needs to be a really smooth, good road. So we're really excited in public works about the potential of making these investments quickly in all four districts. And to prepare for that, we have established on-call pavement contracts. The governing body has already approved those. We, that allows us to rapidly deploy the funds, engage contractors for the work, and also we have multiple contractors on those on-calls, so we can distribute the work and that gives us more capacity to move more quickly. And we're also actually working on an additional on-call contract now for smaller parts of the projects, which would be like the sidewalks, so that we can even make even faster progress so that the contractors that can do the big roadway work don't have to do the sidewalk work and we may be able to move faster. I think Director Oster, Finance Director, is going to speak after me and we'll talk about the requirements of expending the bond quickly, but we'll be looking to spend 85% of the funds within three years. So we'll start with the big projects, and then we'll move to the medium-sized projects and we'll move as quickly as we can. The team got together and has made some public information available to the public. There's a landing page now. There's a one-pager that I'd like to share with the governing body and it has a QR code on it that brings people to the landing page with that'll have the resolution, the memo from the resolution, which actually tells a good story about how the roadway segments were selected, what work will be done, and it'll also have the fiscal impact report there and this one-pager for additional information. And I think that's pretty much a summary from the public work side and I'll turn it over to Director Oster.

Thank you. And I'm sure we'll have questions afterward, but let's go to the finance side of the house, Director Oster.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and members of the governing body. I am also joined by Peter Franklin, who is our bond counsel, and he has some information to share with you as well. So just to kind of recap, there is going to be a bond question for a municipal General Obligation Bond on the ballot on November 5th, requesting authorization to issue up to $25 million worth of General Obligation Bonds for road and street improvements. The project list, which Director Wheeler mentioned, is divided into about $6 million per district with a small amount allocated for residential roadways in each district as well. And as Director Wheeler mentioned, in order to ensure that the bonds stay tax exempt, we have to expend 85% of the proceeds within three years. So one of the questions that I'd like to address for you all tonight is what is the appetite for a new city of Santa Fe bond issue? You know, if this is approved by the voters, what can we expect and how does the recent bond rating change that we saw from Fitch affect the market for our bonds? So a couple of things that I'd like to note. One is that the city of Santa Fe is fortunate to have positive name recognition among individual and institutional investors throughout the United States. That's very good. We have an excellent AA rating, and that combined with the investor recognition and the low volume of highly rated debt, meaning there aren't a lot of issuers in New Mexico issuing AA rated debt, makes a new General Obligation Bond, we expect that to achieve favorable interest rates in the prevailing market when we go to market. Another factor in our favor is that the last time the city has issued new money...

Geo bonds were in 2014, so it's been 10 years. Since that time, the city has been paying down and paying off previously issued Geo bonds, which has reduced the supply in the market. We do have several potential investors who have already reached out to city staff to express interest in purchasing some or all of these bonds if they're approved by the voters.

Additionally, the city is financially sound and stable. We are now caught up on our external financial statement audits, and we're maintaining a general fund cash balance of more than double the minimum reserve requirement that is set by the State Department of Finance and Administration. So, in my opinion, the Fitch rating change to a AA rating is expected to have minimal impact on the sale of Geo bonds by the city relative to the prior rating. The Geo bond rating of the city by Standard and Poor's is also AA, and having both ratings now at the AA level is consistent. AA is considered to be a very strong rating for municipal bonds. On that point, I'm going to turn the mic over to Peter to talk about what is a bond rating and what does it mean.

**Peter Franklin:** Good afternoon, Mayor and counselors. I'm Peter Franklin with Modrall Sperling. As Director Oster indicated, we've been bond counsel to the city for a number of years. So I thought I would try to speak briefly about what a bond rating actually is. What it really is is a conclusion about the financial soundness of the city and the likelihood that all the debt service, principal, and interest on the bonds will be repaid on time.

The things that rating agencies look at in providing a rating are the overall financial soundness of the city, its tax base importantly, the city's financial management practices, some kinds of demographic issues like are there mostly young people or mostly elderly people paying taxes. In Santa Fe, it's a mix. As Director Oster said, the AA rating is an excellent bond rating. AAA is the very highest rating. Few issuers are rated AAA. The United States is no longer rated AAA.

One of the reasons, one of the things to keep in mind about the Fitch rating, is that the change was as a result of a change in methodology which applies across the board to all local government issuers that Fitch rates. So as a result, even though there was a small change in the rating, for investors, they are all looking at the same comparable issuers. In other words, all issuers who had been AA+ and are now AA, they're still looking at all the same issuers with all the same types of bonds on offer. So we think the change will have marginal impact at the most. I think that covers my initial remarks.

**Director Oster:** Great, thank you so much, Peter. We're very fortunate to have Peter and Modrall Sperling as bond counsel to the city and having their institutional knowledge as well of the city's previous debt activity. So another question that I wanted to address this evening was the impact of the bond rating change on the property tax impact of the proposed bond for road improvements. So the proposed bond and the question on the ballot is $25 million in new bonding for road improvements. So one question that has come up is, does the Fitch bond rating change affect that $25 estimated property tax impact for homeowners? And the answer is no. The property tax estimate remains $25 per year for 20 years on a home with a market value of $500,000. So I wanted to make sure to address that question. Peter, can I turn it back over to you to talk about how the bond sale process works and in particular when the rating is considered?

**Peter Franklin:** Thank you. So if the voters approve, if the voters vote in favor of the issuance of GO bonds, the next step would be for the governing body to consider and adopt an ordinance authorizing the issuance of either all the $25 million in bonds or some portion of it. All the bonds have to be issued within, I think, two years, but they're not always issued all at once.

In any case, after the governing body adopts the ordinance, a preliminary official statement, which is like a prospectus, is prepared that discloses all information that would be considered material to investors: the city's tax base, the city's governance, the city's economic conditions, and things like that. In the course of preparing the preliminary official statement, the city will apply for a rating on the GO bonds, and typically the rating comes in shortly before the preliminary official statement is made available to investors, made available electronically on a website referred to as EMMA. It's the Electronic Municipal Market Access website. That's where institutional investors and investment banks look for bonds to purchase, both new issue and bonds that are being traded in the secondary market.

So the bonds would then be sold either at a competitive sale pursuant to a sort of a blind bidding process among investors that sign up to bid on the bonds, or occasionally the bonds may be sold in what's called a negotiated sale where the city selects an underwriter and negotiates for the terms of the bonds, the interest rates, the pricing, various features of the bonds. But once the bonds are sold, that doesn't mean they're issued. Another seven to ten days go by, and all the bond documents are signed. It's a stack of about an inch thick. And at that point, the bonds are issued and delivered to the purchaser, and the city gets the money the day that the bonds are actually issued.

**Director Oster:** Excellent, thank you for walking us through that process. A couple of other things that I wanted to address as part of my comments were about, is this common for local governments to issue bonds to fund improvements to roads and streets, or as Director Wheeler told me the other day, just roads, because they're the same thing, roads and streets are synonymous. So is it common for municipalities and counties to use bonding to help pay for improvements to infrastructure such as roads? And the answer is yes, it is. In fact, on this year's general election ballot, in addition to the city's bond question, there will also be a county bond question for road improvements as well. The county question is $4.9 million, and that is different, and it would fund different projects than the $25 million that is being proposed by the city. So I just want to emphasize that even on this ballot, there's another question related to road and street improvements, and it is a separate question that would fund different projects than the $25 million being proposed by the city.

So another thing that I've heard is, why not use cash for road improvements? Is it less expensive to use cash? So I wanted to reflect back on the budget amendment requests that we did over the summer from cash balances. The governing body did approve over $6.7 million in BARs for road improvements, pavement rehabilitation and maintenance, sidewalks, intersection markings, signal rewirings, and speed humps. So the city is using a mix of different funding sources to address infrastructure needs. The BARs that were approved over the summer were funded with cash balances. Now, at this point, further use of existing cash resources to fund road improvement projects could deplete cash balances that may be needed for other purposes or in unforeseen needs. As I mentioned earlier, we're currently maintaining the general fund cash balances at twice the amount required by the State Department of Finance and Administration for reserves. So we feel comfortable that we have a cushion in case unforeseen needs come up. And if we were relying solely on cash balances to pay for needed road improvements, it could require extended multi-year periods to complete needed projects, and or potentially higher taxes in order to pay for projects with cash. So I just wanted to address that question and acknowledge that we are using cash balances to fund some of these needs, and we are proposing to augment that with additional bonding.

So in summary, I just wanted to recap that there will be a $25 million municipal general obligation bond question on the November 5th ballot. The project list allocates approximately $6 million per district, and as Director Wheeler mentioned, we expect to spend at least 85% of the bond proceeds within three years, which ensures that those road improvement projects will move forward quickly. And with that, Mr. Mayor and members of the governing body, we're happy to stand for questions.

**Mayor:** Thank you. Let me kick it off for one second, and then I'll give everybody who wants to weigh in an opportunity. I'm not sure everybody remembers, and certainly not in the public, that we got to this point by bringing forward a proposal co-sponsored by several of my colleagues on the governing body who were eager to see if we could respond to the public's frequently voiced request for specific attention to streets, roads, infrastructure that desperately need help. And I think this measure does that, and I hope the public will support it. And also, the vote of the governing body to put it on the ballot was something we all agreed on. So I think we're standing as a strong and united governing body, a group of elected leaders for Santa Fe, saying this is something we really want the voters to take a hard look at and hopefully join in and improving.

I know you spent a good amount of time on the issue of finance, but Director Wheeler, I think it's also worth spending another few minutes to talk about, if we're talking about what the finances are, we also ought to talk about what the benefits are. And as has been mentioned, there are projects in every district, $6 million roughly per district, plus I think something that needs to be spoken to a little is the set aside that was put into the provision where we had some opportunity to look at smaller projects on the neighborhood basis as well. And maybe you could give a little more explanation about the community benefits from these projects, how they're located, where they're located, and also some of the things that people often say, "When is my neighborhood going to get some attention?" The answer is, this would address that as well.

**Director Wheeler:** Thank you so much, Mayor, members of the governing body. Yes, there is sort of compounding benefit from an investment like this in the roads, a very large, fast investment. Right now, our crews have to sort of go offline from their regular work of clearing drainage infrastructure, grading dirt roads, repairing sidewalks. They have to do an all-hands-on-deck effort two to three times a year where all they do is fill potholes. So they've been doing that lately. The number of potholes that our crew, while heroic, it sort of tells a story about the condition of our roads, has been going up by thousands of potholes a year, more every year. And so by making these investments in repaving the big roads, and small roads as well, then the maintenance work that has to be done can be more focused and more effective. So it sort of compounds the effectiveness of our maintenance work because some of the roads have been repaved rather than trying to hold so many roads together that are in very, very poor condition. It's, you know, we're going to be, like I said, when we do the pavement rehabilitation, we get new curb ramps. If there's any ADA curb ramps missing, new striping, new detection at the signals, those are often not working that well. And so that'll give, this will give us an opportunity to make that investment. So this is more than just a pavement, it's a, it's really a complete street rehabilitation. Some of the roads that I know that people will be happy to hear will be making investments in Cerrillos Road, a very large investment. Cerrillos Road, that road was built way over a decade ago.

it hasn't been rehabilitated since then. By making these investments in these roads, we add another 15 years to their life. So it's an important investment to make now because soon the cost could double to get that back to a 15-year road. So this is a really good time to make these investments.

We have Cerros Road, a very long road, all the way from Cello Court, which is before Sawyer, all the way to Airport Road will be rehabilitated, all six lanes. We're going to do Airport Road from Cerros to 599. Rodeo Road from Yucca to Sawmill is a big project. Old Santa Fe Trail from Corrales to East Zia. Pollo del Sur from Vieta to Indian Rock. Avenida Pera end to end. Cerros Colorados end to end. These names ring like a song in my ears because I've been talking to residents for so many years about their needs in these areas and been hearing from their counselors as their advocates for these investments. Second Street, Cordova, Sawmill Road, Fifth Street, Beo, that's all in D2. We'll be getting all of that attention. As Director Oster said, it's approximately $6 million in each district. So, really taking it, reducing the number of potholes people experience, increasing the effectiveness of our maintenance teams, addressing these issues before we lose the road completely and it costs us more money in the future, are all really great benefits. I think it's safety, it's quality of life in Santa Fe improvement. Thank you.

And I know you mentioned the information. If I'm interested in finding out what the list of projects looks like, I think you mentioned more than 50. Where would I find that list if I'm just an interested resident?

Right at this very moment, it's on Prime Gov associated with the resolution. But it will be within the next couple of days that you could just Google "City of Santa Fe $25 million Bond" or "Road Bond" and you'll come to a landing page that'll have all this information. Street by street, those projects will be listed. That's correct. Thank you.

Thank you. Other questions or comments? Councilor Chavez.

Thank you, Mayor. So I absolutely think this is necessary. I think we have to address a lot of our road issues. I do want to say though, so in my experience with my other job, contracting out is much more expensive. And I want to just get some information on our vacancy rate in Public Works because I feel like it would be, we would be utilizing these funds in a better way if we were able to be, our vacancies would be full. What is our vacancy rate right now in Public Works?

Thank you so much for the question, Mayor, Councilor Chavez. The, there, the places that we have vacancy is we're missing about four workers in the streets maintenance team. So two senior workers and two equipment operators. And then we're missing like 80% of our stripes, our street, sorry, signs, signals, and painting shop is vacant.

Thank you so much, Director. And I think at one point I heard it was like about 49% overall in Public Works. Is that where we're still sitting?

Not at all. We're doing much better. Parks has been staffing up with the comp and class and the adjustments to the pay there. We've had some, two at least, rapid hires. We've hired parts maintenance workers. We're getting, I think we've had five transit drivers come into the team. We have great professional staff staffing. So no, we're nowhere near a number like that. And I don't have the number for the department off the top of my head.

Okay. And so I want to say there's a deep appreciation I have for contract workers because I think when stuff needs to be done, that's where we need to go. I would just make the suggestion that if we have vacancies that are consistent in a department, that we start examining why those vacancies are existing and we address them. I think if we have employees that can do the job in-house, then we're better at maintaining the work that is done. When we contract out, we really live by their expectations and their guidelines and what's within the contract. Having staff in-house is much more beneficial. I think we're in a place right now though, if the staff's not there, the job still needs to get done and I understand that. But I think that for the public to know, usually, and I can't speak for this situation specifically, but from my experience, contracting out is much more expensive. We are living by a timeline of the contracting agency. And we go ahead and go that avenue when work needs to be done and we can't hire. And I understand that. Like I said, I have an appreciation for contract workers. They've saved me in my leadership position when I had to get a job done and I didn't have the staff. But I think besides a bond, what we also need to look at is why within this department we are not able to hire and retain staff. I think that's a huge issue that we have to consider and examine closely because a lot of the jobs that need to be addressed in the city right now would be addressed if we were fully staffed. Of course, the money helps as well. Having the money to do the work matters, but having the employees who are on the front line actually getting it done matters more. So yes, we need the funds and if we have to go the contract route, we have to because we have to address the needs of Santa Fe. But I think a bigger issue that we have to take time to examine is the fact that we have struggled with staffing in this area and we need to figure out why. So I just want to leave that comment.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Mayor, if I could, and Councilor Chavez, clarify a couple things. The city is not actually able to do this work in-house. It requires gigantic machinery that's really millions and millions and millions of dollars. And so big firms that do nothing but go from one place to the other doing these pavement rehabilitations. In fact, some of the firms are doing the work at the taxi, the runways at the airport. They do the work for DOT. These are huge, you see these trains. We don't have any kind of equipment like that. So the contracts I was talking about are for those big pieces of equipment, really. But I did, I was, I appreciate your support for our staff. It really is important that we have city staff because city staff manage the contractors. They perform the inspections and it is, those are essential roles. And we do have quite a bit of vacancy, about 50% in our project manager roles. We've been working with HR. We've made some improvements to those job descriptions, to the pay, and we'll be advertising for all those vacancies and that will make a huge difference in our ability to deliver quality work at a good price. It's great.

Thank you. And a lot of, so the big machinery is one thing, but eventually those roads need to be striped as well, right? And that comes from in-house.

Mayor, Councilor Chavez, we do have in-house striping as you've noticed around town lately. And that is the team that's understaffed right now. So that would be an opportunity to bring the striping back in-house if we can staff that team.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilor. I'm going to go with Councilor Lee Garcia next and then we'll come over on this side of the dais.

Thank you, Mayor. Really just a couple of questions. I think I, you know, to Councilor Chavez's point, I think that once these projects are finished, if this goes through with the voters, it is very important that we continue to do upkeep on the roads because that'll make them last. And that kind of leads me into kind of some questionings, questioning around going out to bond. And we go out to bond and it's $25 million, right? And so how long does it take? So do, is it our expectancy to pay, and I guess it might be per financing, finance department, to pay over 25 years? Is that how it works?

Mr. Mayor and counselors, Councilor Lee Garcia, it's a 20-year bond.

20-year bond. Okay. And so obviously the roads probably won't last that long. And so if we pay for 20 years on a bond and we only get 10 or 15 years out of the roads, kind of backwards. So it's kind of like continue to pay on a car and it doesn't hold its value. But so I'm looking at it from that perspective. I'm also looking at it from the perspective of the percentage on the bonds. And I think maybe a rep or Director Oster, so the AA rating versus the AA+ rating, what could be the potential difference in percentage rate that we have to pay on that bond because of that?

Mayor, Councilor, if it's okay if I address that. So the interest rates on bonds depend on the interest rate market at the time the bonds are priced. The difference between a AA+ and AA is going to be a few basis points, a few hundreds of a percent over the life of the bonds.

Okay. So like to put that in perspective, you have an 800 credit rating versus a 520 credit rating, you're going to pay more for that money, especially over the long term. Just the reality of it when you go to finance something.

Mr. Mayor, Councilor, certainly that's true. I think the city's AA rating is in the 800 range as opposed to the 500 range.

I understand that, but it's just to kind of give us a baseline and a perspective. So we, you know, we are potentially going to pay a little bit more just because of the downgrading, even if it's just a little bit. But you know, going back to, I think I did ask this question in finance in regards to cash. And thank you for addressing that, Director Oster. It does seem to me that if you can utilize cash or pay down debt, then obviously that's a benefit to the taxpayer. And so, because you're paying out of pocket and you have the money. And so, I think those are just some points that I wanted to make. I kind of wanted to understand a little bit more about the bond rating. And you did mention that we have outstanding bond ratings that are, are they still outstanding from 20, from 2014, you mentioned?

Mr. Mayor, counselors, Councilor Garcia, so yes, we do have outstanding debt still from 2013 and 2014 general obligation series that are still active that we're making the debt service payments on. I think that would be a good time for me to mention that the debt service payments on general obligation bonds are made through property taxes. So, you know, when we're building our operating budget, our primary revenue source that funds our recurring operating expenditures is gross receipts tax. And that recurring gross receipts tax is a precious and limited commodity. By doing this type of bonding, issuing general obligation bonds, the impact doesn't hit that recurring GRT that we need so, so, you know, that's so precious to us in terms of funding recurring operating needs.

Thank you. So, you know, again, I just kind of want to go down that, that road of us being fiscally responsible. And it sounds like, you know, we're, we're in good positions. And just so what people do understand that when we go out to bond, we're basically borrowing money. And how long does it take us to pay that money down? Do we ever pay it down ahead of time?

Mr. Mayor and counselors, Councilor Garcia, so, you know, we could do a refunding, which would be essentially a refinancing of debt if interest rate conditions were, were favorable. I think that would be, you know, sort of the situation where you would pay your debt off early is if you were able to, you know, lower the interest rate and save money on the interest costs. One thing that also, you know, we considered and that I, I think is, is important here is stability in property tax rates. We don't want to have, you know, pay off so much debt that the property tax rates drop to a level that's not sustainable and then in the future they have to come back up in order to meet the city's needs for things like infrastructure, improvements to, to the streets. And then I also just wanted to circle back on one previous point and say that, you know, in

In my opinion, a credit score of 520 is not analogous to a double-A rating for a government. I wasn't making that comparison. I just was trying to make the comparison, so an 850 rating versus an 800 rating, I guess, is what we're probably more comparing to what's happening here. But the reality is that we are downgraded, and we do have to pay a little bit more for their bonds. It's just the reality.

Mayor and Councilors: Yes, something on the order of a few hundredths of a percent on the interest rate. It leads me back to again, just comments in regards to fiscally. When do we use cash? When do we go out to borrow money? When it's lucrative, when it's good, when the market's good. So, we did have a presentation on the current market and finance, and I think that really talks about, and to Councilor Romero Worth's analogy of the teeter-totter effect, where do we stay so we keep it good so it doesn't go off the slope in the wrong direction? So, those are the questions I had. Thank you for the presentation.

Thank you, Councilor. Go back to this side. Councilor Castro, sorry, I'm not used to not having the little foam. Thank you for the presentation, and I'm sorry, I did have some questions sort of in the same vein. So, when we do some of these public works, and we have had presentations about some of the deferred maintenance, is doing a lot of this work at the same time sort of detrimental to us in that way that we're using a lot of tax money, a lot of bonds, and then there are these expectations that we are going to have to function at that level? Do we need to grow our Public Works departments and our streets so that we can maybe do this in a different way?

Thank you so much for that question, Mayor and Councilor Castro. What we've been doing for the past five years is investing about $3 million per year in road rehabilitation from cash, from GRT. And prior to that, we did about an $11 million gas tax bond. Gas tax bonds pay back very slowly because the increment of gas tax is small. So, to pay back the $11 million takes quite a bit of time. So, our roads need this investment now, or we will, as I said, be facing twice the cost to get back to the quality of roadways that we want.

You know, Councilor Chavez pointed out that we can do some of the striping work ourselves because we did just get this awesome new striping truck that the council bought us a couple years ago and just arrived, and you may have seen the new striping happening all over town. We're super excited about that. But most of this work is not about growing the Public Works Department. It is about growing our contractors, which we've actually been doing really intentionally ever since the Infrastructure Jobs Act was passed by President Biden. And I heard it on the radio, I was like, "Oh my gosh, we need contracts in place to use to funnel this money." When we do that, our vendors invest in their companies. They've expanded and gotten bigger to meet our needs, the county's needs. So, there is a little bit of a challenge right now. There's no doubt about it. There's a lot of infrastructure money rolling around from the federal government, from our local governments. But what we work with our vendors, we get them the purchase orders, we get into their schedule, and they line us up. I don't think we can wait because this infrastructure money from the feds is going to be around for another five years, and our roads really, really need the investment. And it's not about a bigger department, except for filling the paint and sign shops positions and the project manager positions, which you'll see posting really soon. It's about making the investment that we're trying to make here. I think it's really the right move at the right time.

As our needs grow, I do think that we should be looking at some of these long-term, maybe growing the department. My concern with contractors is we don't, to Councilor Chavez's point, we don't have a lot of control of the tools, of the way they're treated, of how they're paid. And we've had some concerns with other contractors and other departments. So, as we grow our list of contractors, how are we holding them accountable to make sure that if you do work for the city or on city projects, we are being model employers?

Thank you so much, Mayor, Councilor Castro. You know, we have our contractual requirements that all of our contractors comply with FLSA overtime standards. They must, if it's an over $25,000 project, they must use New Mexico wage rates. Over $60,000, they have to use New Mexico wage rates. So, they're paying really good pay. They're checked by the Department of Labor that they're actually doing that. They have certified payrolls. So, Public Works projects do have quite a bit of state framework and state enforcement on that framework. But I hear you and Councilor Chavez's interest, and you know, as the city grows, it is important that we have a Public Works Department that's large enough to meet the needs. And I think the streets maintenance team would say they definitely could use another crew to help with road grading and clearing culverts and filling potholes and repairing sidewalks. So, definitely look forward to partnering with you and the mayor and leadership to talk about what is needed in the Public Works Department in the long run to maintain this investment that we're making in the roads right now.

I wanted to address Councilor Garcia's point about the life span of these investments, and if we do our maintenance, then it will last us 20 years. But that's a really important piece, and so that's a really good point. We can take a look at, make sure that we are staffed to perform that maintenance to preserve this investment for the duration of the bond. I just don't want to be here again, you know, in another six years, hoping that we can do this.

And my final question is around the bond rating. Can you explain to us a little bit what happened and why that rating changed, and also how it's looking in terms of other municipalities? Is that true that, or is that the case that a lot of municipalities actually went down in their rating based on this new structure?

Mr. Mayor and Councilors, Councilor Castro, thank you for that question. So, what happened is that Fitch, one of the companies that does bond ratings, changed their criteria for local governments. And so, we had our first review with them in August and into September, where they applied the new criteria, and the emphasis on pension liabilities changed significantly in the new criteria. So, what happened was that during the review, Fitch had concerns about the ratio of funding in the PA of plans for municipal police and municipal fire. And they had some metrics that those plans didn't meet, and as a result of that, under their new criteria, there was a what they call a one-notch or one-level downgrade. As far as, you know, have we seen this happen to other entities? The City of Albuquerque received the same downgrade for the same reason in August. So, yes, we are seeing that. The only two municipalities in New Mexico that are rated by Fitch are Albuquerque and Santa Fe. So, this new methodology has been applied consistently to both with the same effect.

And that had to do with some state regulations that changed.

Mr. Mayor and Councilors, Councilor Castro, it had to do with Fitch's new rating criteria. There was no change at the state level. It had to do with the emphasis and the metrics that were used to evaluate the funding levels of these pension plans.

Last question, is there anything we can do to sort of help us get to a better rating?

Mr. Mayor and Councilors, Councilor Castro, you know, this is where this rating change is particularly challenging and frustrating for me. The analysts at Fitch told us that there is nothing we can do about this because the PA plans are multiple employer cost-sharing plans. So, we can't, for example, choose to contribute more just to cover our share of the liability. If we made additional contributions, they would go into the pool that's shared across all of the employers. Now, one thing that we can do is speak with our colleagues at the state level and ask them to take a look at this issue and to fully fund the liabilities of all of our pension plans. So, you know, that is something that we can do. But as far as, you know, like a financial measure of, could we just pay more into the plan to take care of our portion of this? We can't because it's a cost-sharing multiple employer plan. So, our contributions go into the general pool that funds the plan's obligation to all retirees.

So, I think what the council was referring to in terms of not so much a change of the state, but the state's oversight or management of this is really beyond our control. And so, if the concern in the public is that the city has done something that has triggered this change by Fitch, the accurate portrayal as put out at the time of the Fitch's advising of this, as you presented it, then was really it's an internal policy of Fitch measured against a state-run program that's really beyond the reach of the City of Santa Fe, and that's why Albuquerque got dinged first, and then we were followed up. But it is not a reflection on any of our financial practices. It is a state funding of retirement benefits.

Councilor, I took by your head shaking up and down that I was basically...

Mr. Mayor and Councilors, yes, that is correct. You know, so I think the thing that triggered this change was completely out of the city's control. It was Fitch's adoption of their new rating criteria. And, you know, they applied their criteria to the two entities that they rate in New Mexico, Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and in both cases, the outcome was the same as Mr. Franklin was describing. That has the effect of, you know, lowering everyone. And, you know, this criteria is being applied to other entities nationwide as well. So, I'm not as familiar with what might be happening in other states. But certainly, you know, there was no change in the city's financial position. The Fitch rating announcement actually acknowledges that the city has very healthy cash balances and is financially sound and stable. So, there was really just the one issue, the, they call the amortization period of the funded liability, which roughly translates to how long would it take to fully fund these pension plans, was outside of the parameters Fitch established in their new criteria, and that, you know, resulted in the rating change.

Thank you. I'm going to go back and forth. Councilor Cassie, your hand was up.

Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor, and thank you everybody for being here. I had a quick question, I think actually both for Director Wheeler and Director Abar, regarding kind of back to the conversation around this investment and how we continue to protect this investment. And we've had a lot of conversations recently about deferred maintenance and how we got to this place where we are in a challenge where we're seeing a lot of streets that are in dire need of repair. And we've talked about, you know, needing to continue to invest financially, but we've also been having some conversations throughout budget hearings and throughout some other meetings around this of how we are utilizing some new technologies and how we are basically structuring our ability to manage our, as we call it, capital assets, but, you know, our streets and our, not our streets and roads, which apparently are the same, sidewalks, buildings, parks. So, I was hoping you could speak to some of that because I do think that that pie...

It is important that it's not just an investment now, but that we are working on some policy, some practices, as well as some technologies that are going to help us make sure that we're protecting this investment going forward in a way that perhaps we haven't in the past. Thank you so much, Councilor Cassett and Mayor, for that question.

There's a number of things that we're doing. During Pothole Palooza, that's happening right now, we do more crack sealing. We got a new machine to support the crew to do more. This is sort of a preservation activity, so we need to really focus on pavement preservation now that we make all these investments. Fog sealing is the other thing. That's where you turn this road quite black because it gets a seal of oil coat. We need to be doing more of that, and we need to put that in our operating budget so it can happen every single year.

We're getting some, we've been getting additional machinery. The governing body just approved a whole bunch of additional machinery for the crews so that they can be more efficient and effective at their maintenance and repair investments. We're also this year implementing a new software that will house the information about all of our assets, and that every work order we do on them will be correlated. So it's an asset management software. We're in partnership with the utility department. We're going to use the same software. We're creating the same GIS platform that'll let us do much better analysis on where are we spending a lot of money, recording what the conditions are that we see out there. When we get constituent complaints, they'll be correlated to our asset, and we can look at them over time. It'll really help us do better, as you say, analysis of our needs and planning and investment to preserve our infrastructure.

And as you said, I know we have been talking about this quite a bit because it was a finding in our internal audit. Their concern was that we weren't making enough regular investment in our infrastructure. And so, this investment that we make with the bond helps us in that pursuit because we can make more maintenance and preservation investment with our crew time rather than trying to hold together streets that are falling apart.

Yeah, thank you. And if I recall the conversations... Oh, I'm sorry, Dr. Alder, did you, was there more to add to that?

Mr. Mayor and councilors, I just wanted to add that we are investing in technology as well in the finance department. Our new budget software, called Questica, has a capital budgeting function. So, we're looking forward to improving our capital budgeting and allowing us to make more concrete plans in terms of multiple years of funding needed for capital budgeting through that Questica.

Wonderful, thank you. I appreciate that. And now we've talked about Questica quite a bit in finance committee, definitely very much looking forward to that coming online. What I'm really concerned about, and I think that this does fall within what we've been discussing as being more proactive, so not just waiting for the work order to come through, but understanding when we would expect some of these decaying, some of this decaying to occur based on how long something has, it's been since something's been paved or fogged or crack sealed or whatever the case may be, so that we're not getting to this place where things have to degrade first before we are able to do some of those proactive measures. Are these, are these systems and technologies going to be able to assist us with those as well?

Thank you, Mayor, Councilor Cassett, for the question. They will. We're in a bit of a catch-up mode at this point. So, as proactive as I'm hoping to get is that we are, because the governing body gave us a one-time appropriation of a million dollars towards sidewalks, we are actually ramping up a program that hasn't existed where we actually proactively go out and inspect the sidewalks and record the problems and have some funding to address those issues. It's not something that has been funded to the level that we could really take that on. So that's the kind of proactivity. We won't be looking at when will this new sidewalk fail, but really where is something already failed and we need to address it. So I think we'll be in a little bit of a catch-up mode for a while, but we will definitely be doing pavement preservation on a proactive timeline, knowing that if we pave something within the first, after six years, it needs to get fog sealing. That gives it an extra 10 years. So we will be able to be proactive on the pavement with this investment to bring it all to baseline.

Wonderful. Glad, glad to hear that. And then I know the other piece that I always get from constituents is conversations around, "My street is so terrible, how is this not the number one priority?" Or, "My trail is so terrible, how is this not the number one priority?" And so I, you know, we've discussed this before, but how do we, and me as a councilor, you know, I see particular roads or pieces, but how we communicate, I would say I would love this information as well as to the public, how things are being analyzed and, you know, if we're able to really show where we're seeing some of the priorities in the area so that people know where they are on this list or why are they 13th when they feel like obviously this should be in the top five. And I think that that's, that's really challenging for constituents because, and it's challenging for me as well when there's not as much, there's not clarity. I would love to see what these issues are, when have things been assessed? Is the road that I'm talking about that is far down on the list, was it assessed in the last six months? Was it assessed in the last five years? And that's a big difference. How have things changed? And I would really like to see how we can be better at communicating both the process by which things are prioritized, as well as, you know, where different areas are on the prioritization list.

I do know that we, you know, tend to look at complaints, of course, and that's great. I'm glad that, you know, we have the opportunity to respond when we hear from constituents, but I also know that not all of our constituents necessarily are getting to us. And sometimes those are really bad areas that I want to make sure not being ignored simply because this might be an area where people either don't know, don't have the time, just haven't had the ability to make a lot of noise about it as opposed to some areas where they get really organized and, you know, I'll hear from 14 people about, you know, the same small stretch of trail or road. And so I think that that's one of the areas that I'm really struggling with, both wanting to make sure that we are being equitable despite, you know, how organized a community is able to get, which doesn't mean, you know, please do keep coming to us because that is helpful, but also how we are able to really display that to us and the public in a way that's really understandable so people have expectations and understand why it can take some time to get to places or get to, you know, different areas that might be of a comment. I'm not sure that we have a solution for that, so if you have a response, I don't need one right now, but I do want to continue to really to work on that piece. I think that that would be very beneficial. And also showing people how much these things cost, you know, so when they're like, "Well, you just, you just gave a million dollars to, you know, or six million," and that money isn't going as far as it used to, and I think that that also is really important. And so how we continue to communicate these pieces to the public is, is really important. So, we can definitely continue to work on that. That'd be appreciated.

Thank you so much, Councilor Castro, for those suggestions. It's, I mean, Councilor Cassett, sorry, it's very good time for you to give those suggestions as we implement our new asset management software, and it will have a public portal aspect. And you've just given us some really good thoughts and requirements for data that we'll want to have available, if not real time all the time, but to respond to people's questions. So thank, thank you for those suggestions.

Absolutely, thank you. Very glad to hear that. Thank you so much, Mayor. Councilor Garcia, you have the floor, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a couple things I want to confirm because this is a major reason why I supported the bond measure: is the ADA curb improvements as well as the complete streets requirements as we begin to modernize this infrastructure. Those are both still in place, correct?

Thank you, Mayor, Councilor Garcia, for the question. Wherever the sidewalks do not have ADA compliant curb ramps, they will, they have to be repaired by federal law. We're not reconfiguring the streets, so we're not like making the sidewalks wider and making the roads narrower. It's just a rehabilitation, but we have been taking pavement rehabilitation opportunities to really take a look at the striping and see if we could maybe increase the size of the bike lane when we do the restriping and narrow the traffic lanes a little bit, which can calm traffic, as well as make people feel safer on the sidewalks and the bike lane. So there is, there are those types of complete streets improvements that we do make on a pavement rehabilitation project.

Okay, great. Just wanted to make sure they were still in place. I took a look at the landing page that you said has gone live, and I would highly recommend that the list that was referenced in the packet for the resolution be added to that way folks don't have to go searching for it. In addition, another tip as we begin, should this pass, and we begin to rehabilitate some major roadways, in particular Ceros Road, Airport Road, anywhere where there's any businesses, I would highly recommend that we coordinate with businesses due to the impact that it will have on them. I've seen, and I'm sure my colleagues on the council have heard from constituents and business owners, the impact that the Guadalupe reconstruction is having, even minor shutdowns when, you know, I heard a lot from folks on Second Street being shut down for, and it wasn't roadway improvements, it was some water infrastructure being improved, but we want to minimize the impact to local business as much as possible. So if we can begin to incorporate that into the plan as well, I would greatly appreciate that.

Mr. Franklin, I do got a question for you just since we have you here and would like to hear from your expertise. Councilor Castro brought up a great question in regards to, is there anything we can do? And I think that in regards to setting up systems, possibly not, but maybe utilizing another vendor. So could we not even move forward with Fitch if we didn't want to, and they fit, thanks for your rating, but we're going to stick with S&P or Moody's. And so can, just for the general public, can maybe help folks understand what that looks like, why we're going with Fitch when there are other issuers?

Mayor, Councilor Garcia, it's a great question. Occasionally, local governments that I represent have switched rating agencies. In this case, Moody's and S&P are also sort of engaged in an across-the-board program of, you know, essentially downgrading their clientele. That's been going on for at least five years. The differences in methodologies that, or rather the things they are changing, are not identical, but by and large, that's been a general trend for a while now. So I, for example, I represent the city of Riano as its bond counsel. They received that, they are rated by S&P. They received the same.

a one-notch downgrade from AA+ to AA. The thing about the AA rating is that it basically says the city is doing everything right, and the downgrade is really because of something that, as the Mayor indicated, the city has no control over. I think the city should continue to do a great job managing its finances and governance overall. I think maintaining its capital, what do you call that, its capital portfolio, all its capital projects and improvements, is also an important thing to do and to keep the maintenance at a high level.

Gotcha. But so, for a lack of a better word, shopping around would be an option?

It is an option, yes.

Okay. Regarding the memo from Fitch, and I'm going to read from them, so I've got a question for you, Mr. Franklin, just as a follow-up. They state, "Fitch Ratings downgrading the following ratings of Santa Fe from AA+ to AA due to the criteria changes: long-term issuer default rating, outstanding general obligation bonds, outstanding gross receipts tax revenue bonds, outstanding subordinate lien GRT revenue bonds." So it seems like there's a lot more criteria that played into the downgrade versus just the solely identified pension plan. There's additional criteria. I think the pension plan was a big part of it, but there's additional factors that went into it because I don't want the public to have the perception it was the only reason for the downgrade. There were additional contributing factors. Am I understanding that correctly?

Excuse me, Mr. Mayor, Councilor Garcia, I don't think that's the way I understand the statement in the memo. I think they are only pointing out the different kinds of debt that have rated and stating the rating change applies to all those different types of outstanding bonds. That's the way I understand. I don't have the memo in front of me, so I'm not positive, but...

And then what it sounds like... No, no worries. And then one last question, and I don't know if you would be the appropriate person or Director Oster, is it fair to say that it was solely fire and police when there could have been additional factors for pension liabilities, such as high salaries for employees that add to the liabilities?

Mr. Mayor and Councilors, Councilor Garcia, so what they cited, what Fitch cited, was the amortization rate of the unfunded liability for the municipal fire and municipal police plans. So under the new Fitch criteria, they want that number to be 30 years or less. And in the case of police, it was 66 years, and in the case of municipal fire, it was infinite, so they were unable to calculate that. So that is the reason that Fitch gave to me for the one-notch downgrade, that those plans didn't fall under that 30-year metric that was set in their new criteria.

Gotcha. And as I said before, that's pretty much out of our control because it's the state that carries the liability, not the city.

And Mr. Mayor and Councilors, Councilor Garcia, so the plans are managed by the state through the Public Employees Retirement Association, and our responsibility is to make the contributions. And we've done that, and in the past, that's been good enough for Fitch. We've made all the contributions that we were required to make. But under these new criteria, they're now looking at actuarially determined contribution rates and these unfunded amounts in these plans. And we don't have the ability, as I said when Castro asked, to make additional contributions, for example, to specifically address our portion of the liability. The liability and the assets of the plan get allocated out across all of the participants, which, in the case of municipal fire and municipal police, is most municipal governments in New Mexico. So as far as whether this is something we have control over, we just don't. This is something that the state legislature and the PERA board would have to take up.

Well, I thank you for the responses, Director Oster, Director Wheeler, Mr. Franklin. I really appreciate your time this evening. No other questions, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Faulkner, and then... Well, you can back clean up. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see your hand up, but Councilor Faulkner did have her hand. So just a couple of things. It seems to me, just from a layman's perspective, that the amount we're talking about in the shift of the rating is nominal. Do you have like a number or a percentage? I mean, you already quoted a percentage, but I think it'd be easier for the public to understand that this is like a nominal shift. Thanks.

I want to pick up on Councilor Garcia's analogy with personal credit scoring. I think it's essentially the difference between an 835 rating and an 825 rating, something like that. So...

I'm sorry, go ahead. Would it be fair to say this might be a mountain out of a molehill?

I would not contest that characterization myself. I think it is a nominal change in the city's outlook as far as issuing bonds and paying interest costs. And I'm not unsympathetic to the frustration that if you take care of your employees and you give them what they need to remain, I don't know, to be whole in the community, that it's almost like, it feels like a punitive response that you take care of the two most important departments in the city, and for that, you get dinged because the state has something going on that we can't control. Right? It actually does, it reminds me a little bit, and I'll go off of Councilor Garcia's analogy, if you pay off all your credit, your credit rating drops. Right? So if you don't keep your credit at 30% of what your available credit is, your credit rating drops. So it's like, it's counterintuitive, and I think it's hard for the public to understand because I certainly find it frustrating that if you do the right thing, then there's, it feels punitive in the sense that then you get dinged for doing what looks like the right thing. I'm sure it's way more complicated than I understand.

The other thing I would say is I'd like to thank Director Wheeler for using the QR codes because this is something I'm a big champion of. I feel like it's much easier for the public if we go to the public rather than expect the public to come to us. And so I just applaud you for using the QR codes on this. And I want to also echo Councilor Michael Garcia's comments around making sure like the list of the projects are maybe part of the QR code access. And then I would also say, I think all of us have social media outlets, and if I could get emailed the list, then I can pop it onto my Facebook and Instagram, and that's another easy way for the public to access this information. And I just feel like anything this big, I'm in full support of this bond. I will be championing it in my district, and I just want to give the public every single opportunity to get the information they need so that they can support this issue. Thank you so much.

Councilor Faulkner, we'll definitely share all the information with all the councilors so they can share it to their networks, and we will definitely put the road project list on the landing page that the QR code brings people to. Thank you so much for your support.

Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Lindell, and then Councilor Maestas.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you all for being here. We've waited a long time to get this bond out to the voters. We've talked about it for a while, and we've been through a lot of stuff, and I love the list. People are going to love the list. And I think about it in terms of what's the cost if we don't do this? The cost is great if we don't do this. Director Wheeler, I think you said, maybe you even put a number on it or a percentage, maybe two times, is that what you said?

That's correct, Councilor Lindell.

Yeah, so let's get this bond passed. Let's not pay two times as much and be overly cautious and go too far out into the weeds on this stuff. This is a good thing for the city. That's why we do this. I can't wait for some of these roads to get redone. So the 50 projects, they're broken up into all the different districts. Everyone benefits from this, and we need to do this now. So I really encourage people to support this bond. We need it. If we don't do this, it's going to cost us twice as much money. So thank you for bringing this to us. Thank you for all the work on it, and that's all I have, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilor. And Councilor Maestas, I think you've been very patient. It's your turn.

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to thank you all for being here. Thank you for the work. I agree with Councilor Lindell. I'm excited to be at this moment where we put this in front of voters, and I would just note, you all have been talking as though it's going to be on the ballot in November. I just want to tell you, I voted today. Early voting has started. It runs October 8th to November 2nd, Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at all the different sites. There's some Saturday expanded voting sites. I encourage you to look at the Santa Fe County page so that you can get out there and vote now.

I just want to emphasize a few things. The rating we have is a good rating. Can you confirm that for me? There's nothing to be ashamed about of that rating. It's an excellent rating. Okay. Yeah, thank you. So I think it's important that everybody know that AA is a good rating, and you know, it's, yeah, so people should have confidence in that. Also want everyone to understand that the size of this bond at 25 million was picked for two reasons, and maybe you all can speak to this in greater detail. One is to the impact that it'll have on people's property tax rates. We want to keep that minimal. We want to keep it stable. We don't want people's property tax rates to fluctuate wildly. So the amount was picked partially on just keeping what we all pay if we own property in property tax at an even level and to have enough money to make a difference in the road infrastructure that we have and the deferred maintenance that desperately needs attention, as has been pointed out. But then also just the stability on the mill rate is really important because these are important tools for governments. I would note because I voted today, there are four bonds, GO bonds, that the state is issuing. There are three bonds that the county is issuing, and we have one, and we haven't done one in 10 years. So these are important tools, and you all, your team, Director Oster and Mr. Franklin and Director Wheeler, have really thought about this and hitting the sweet spot. And if you could just speak to that briefly, this is what you all have done here is amazing, and the voters should feel confident in voting for this because a lot of consideration has gone into it.

Thank you, Councilor Romero-Wirth. That's absolutely true. This was very carefully planned and considered. As you mentioned, keeping the property tax rates stable to avoid ups and downs is something that we considered. I'd like to have Mr. Franklin talk about strategies for maintaining that consistency in the property tax rates.

Thank you, Director Oster, Mr. Mayor, and Councilor Romero-Wirth. Many local governments issue bonds, particularly GO bonds, on a periodic basis. So that's what we call it a cycling program, so that as debt that's been outstanding begins to be paid off, new bonds are issued, which keep the property tax rate at the same level. Santa Fe County issues bond issues, GO bonds, every two years. That's most of the local governments that I work with, or most of the local governments that issue bonds in New Mexico have some form of cycling program. I believe that the City of Santa Fe had a cycling program that sort of tailed off about 10 years ago.

I think that's a really important point because going forward, hopefully, we can get into a cycling program. That'll help us keep up with our deferred maintenance because, again, this is one of the tools that governments use to fund this kind of capital need in the city. There's a lot of it, and we're a little behind, but here we are. We're getting going, and hopefully, we can get a cycling program going, starting with this one. Yes.

All right. Well, I just wanted to let everybody know you can vote now. Please do. I think, as has been noted, there's some really important road infrastructure that's going to be addressed with this. It's really important for a whole bunch of reasons, not only just keeping our mill rate at a level place that we're not losing any of our capacity, and that we're starting to chip away at some of that deferred maintenance. So thank you for the work, and I really encourage people to vote yes on this bond. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Counselor. I just thank you all for being here and for the robust discussion. For me, the bottom line is the public has asked us, please, to fix the roads. We have a ballot measure that will fix $25 million worth of roads, and in addition, speak to some of the social issues that Councilor Garcia raised. It is a well-thought-out program. Every district benefits, projects of all sizes, and a yes vote is really a community benefit. So you've made it clear why we're doing it, how the amount was chosen, what the mechanism is, and it is on the ballot. As Councilor Mayworth noted, voting has already started, so we will be eagerly explaining and supporting this measure to our voters with the great hope that with a yes vote, we'll be able to put $25 million worth of street and road improvements to work, and it'll be substantially finished within three years, so it happens right away. Thank you all for being here and for answering all the questions and making the presentation. Very, very, very grateful. Thank you, Madam Clerk.

We have another presentation.

Yes, we do, Mayor. The next presentation is the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee Strategic Plan for FY 2023 to 2033. We have Steven Piler and Yolanda Eisenstein here from the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee. You're going to need to connect for making a presentation. I can tell. Madam Clerk, can you provide some IT support in the moment?

First of all, Mayor Weber and members of the governing body, thank you so much for your time today. My name is Yolanda Eisenstein, and this is my fifth year on BPAC. It has been, and my last year, it's been a pleasure and an honor to serve with Councilor Michael Garcia and Romela Glorioso Moss. It has been wonderful. And because I've been on the committee for a while, that's the reason I'm here presenting today. And the committee is certainly going to be in good hands with Steve Pure, who's the Vice Chair, and my other committee members. So I'm going to give you a brief overview of the strategic plan. I'm not going to bore you with a lot of details because you have the presentation, and then I will just open it up for questions, and you can ask how we came about this and anything else that you need to know going forward. So, and there it is.

Okay, so as you know, we have two resolutions that have provided the duties and responsibilities we have. We changed it in 2021 to more accurately reflect the fact that we don't do trails, that we do pedestrian and we do cycling. So that was the main reason that we changed the resolution. Our purpose, which is from the resolution, is basically to advise and review policies, programs, everything related to the safety of pedestrians and those who ride bikes in the city. And here we are. We have 10 members on the committee, one Councilor Michael Garcia, we have eight city residents, and one county resident. So one of the things we did is we divided the committee up into subcommittees. So the Policy, Planning, and Law, which I was the chair of that subcommittee, basically dealt with things like ordinances, monitoring laws, anything that was from a governing standpoint. We have Promotion and Education and Communications. This is all about outreach. And then we have Technical Review, which, as you would guess, this is review of plans that the city has for any sort of infrastructure where our goal is to make sure that pedestrians and bicycles are considered in that.

So in 2021, we did a little survey, but I thought it was very informative. And the details of the survey and all the questions are in your packet. I've just summarized what we learned from this. It was largely comprised of District 1 and 2 residents. We found that exercise and entertainment are the most common uses of bicycles in the city rather than commuting. And the overwhelming majority of respondents don't use city bike or walking trails because they're inconvenient to access or they don't go where people want to go. And finally, the most important thing is we really have to look at physically separate and protected bike lanes. We cannot control the car culture and drivers. We can't control distracted drivers. We can't control intoxicated drivers. And so we have to protect our bikers with separate lanes, and this is what came out of the survey.

So this is a lovely little diagram that explains how we started the strategic planning process. And I'm not going to go into detail, but one of the things you might be thinking is why did we go through the strategic planning process? Well, it's not just because we want a document that tells us how to go forward. The whole process in itself is valuable because we have a team of people, some of whom are new, some we haven't worked with. And when we sit down at a table together in a casual setting, we can collaborate with each other, we can disagree. And so there's more to strategic planning than just coming up with a plan. And so the plan, the first addition of it, was adopted in 2022. It's a living document. We've talked about it regularly. We updated. We've had two other updates. The second update was in 2024 in June. We used the League of American Bicyclists report card that talks about issues related to how to make your city bike-friendly.

So we have a vision for 2050. We would like to have the diamond level of the bike-friendly community. We would like to see 20% of Santa Feans commuting by bicycle, 90% of arterial streets have lanes, lowered fatalities, and then the top third of walkability of cities our size. So the bike-friendly communities is much more than just an awards program. It's really a guide to a lot of things that we want in our city to make it a bike-friendly and a pedestrian-friendly city. And this is a vision. I think it's doubtful that I'll be around in 2050. I certainly won't be biking in 2050, but if by chance I'm around, I hope that I can look at this and say that I helped contribute to a diamond-friendly level of Santa Fe.

So a little bit less of a time span, we put a 10-year goal in terms of our strategic planning. So basically, the end of the plan will be 2033. And we're still looking at League of American Bicyclists having a gold level status. And basically, it's just we're looking at as we go forward, let's improve, let's have this measurement. There's really not a lot of measurement for walkability. The only thing that we could find there is in the real estate community, they rate cities in terms of their walkability, and they have a whole different set of metrics. And so we looked at that, but and we sort of set a goal to be in the top third of walkability, but basically, we're looking at the various bike standards. So we're trying to do a little bit of both. There's just not a lot out there on walkability.

So this is kind of a complex analysis that we went through. We looked at a lot of different external factors. We looked at the car culture, which is very important when we're looking at bike safety and pedestrian safety and commuting. And then the other issue is funding. And so these are things that we don't have a lot of control over. So when we came up with these four scenarios, we came up with scenario D, which is a concept of, okay, this is what we're looking at in the future. This is what we think we're going to be looking at in the future, and that's kind of where we're operating at. And as these factors change, we have seven or I think eight key indicators, and we just kind of take a look at those and see if there are improvements in places, are things changing a lot. And one of the things we haven't looked at, which I'm doing quite a bit of research on right now, is artificial intelligence is going to change everybody's lives, and it's already changing everybody's lives. So this scenario could certainly change in a number of ways, and hopefully, a lot of the changes will be to the better. You have self-driving cars that may have cameras that are better able to avoid hitting pedestrians or hitting bikers. And so I think going forward, our committee, as well as all of you and all of us, are going to be looking at how artificial intelligence is going to change, and hopefully, we can use it as a tool to make things better.

So a basic, as you probably all know in strategic planning, is strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. So we went through that whole process when we were doing our strategic planning, and we came up with some key issues. Number one is the car culture. The car culture is pervasive in the United States, so we're not just talking about the Santa Fe community. So it's something that has to be changed, and it's going to require everyone and collaboration, and it's going to be a challenge, but I think it's certainly doable, but it's one of the key issues that we're looking at as BPAC. We need an integrated approach. We don't operate in a vacuum. Nobody operates in a vacuum. So anytime we're working on projects, we certainly have to take the various entities and government entities and people who are stakeholders in consideration. We have to include the public. I think one of the things that we have with our subcommittee is we have focused more, I have seen us focus more over the past five years on public education and outreach, and I think we need to continue to do that. Everyone's not going to agree, but I think it's really important that we have the public ear, that they know we're working on these projects, and that it's important to have a pedestrian and bike-friendly community, not only for the citizens, but for the many people who come and visit this gorgeous city. And then just to sum everything up, we realize there has to be a paradigm shift, and I think everybody has talked about that. We all understand this. I don't think we're saying anything new here, and I think we're certainly moving in that direction.

So now I'll just briefly go over our action plan, and this is something that's in your materials, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, but basically, we need to formulate policies, programs, and practices in terms of trying to get people to use their bikes to go to work, to try to make commuting and shopping easier. We have tasks that we're working on now. We're working with the Land Use Department and the land use code. We're looking at connectivity, which is a big issue. One of the things we accomplished in 2023 is an e-bike regulation. We have new tasks, and this is something we're doing at all of our meetings, things that we think need to be addressed. Our second action is to assist Public Works and the Land Use Department. We want to look at design and the construction of all the city's projects that consider bicycle and pedestrians. Again, we have tasks that are in progress, and you've seen this in your packet. We have new tasks. One of the things we want to do is look at prime.gov complete street.

looking at codification of complete streets. Finally, the action number three is to educate the public. As I've said before, we really think this is important. Some in-progress tasks are developing a website. We want to support the Bike Santa Fe and holding a bike summit, so we want public support. We want to interact with the public. We had some tabling events where that's when we did our survey. We're looking at doing possible other surveys so we can take the temperature of the public. And then in terms of outreach, as was mentioned earlier, social media is important. We want to make sure that we interact not only with government entities but also with the public. One of our accomplishments and one of the things that's ongoing is to make sure that we have strong partnerships, which we already do, with Santa Fe Conservation Trust, with the Safe Routes to School. And with that, I will close and open it up for questions. Thank you.

Mayor: Thanks so much. Very, very, very good presentation. And I'm sure you will be bicycling far past. I hope so. I see a future of you on a bicycle.

Speaker: I could. I hope so. With a big backpack T-shirt.

Mayor: Maybe Vision 2050 is coming at us, right? I'm just going to, first of all, Councilor Garcia, you're the chair of the committee. Maybe you'd like to open up with some of your own.

Councilor Garcia: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to thank Member Eisenstein for all of her work on this. This was, she actually helped lead the charge on developing this strategic plan. I think BAC was one of the first, if not the first, citizen-led advisory committee to have a really comprehensive strategic plan. So many thanks to you, as well as Member Pure. I see some other members, Member Gerets back there. You see Bike Santa Fe. This is definitely a team effort. It's been one of my joys as a councilor, having the opportunity to work with BAC. The passion and vision that this committee has is reflective in this strategic plan. And I'm just thankful that we've got strong community members that are willing to dedicate their time, energy, and talents to BAC and ultimately lead to a more safe community for cycling and pedestrian activities. So thank you, Member Eisenstein. And just open it up to any of my colleagues that might have any questions. We'll do what we did with the prior presentation, just go back and forth and as folks raise a hand. Councilor Faulkner, why don't you take the floor to open us up?

Councilor Faulkner: Thank you, Mayor. I walked in a little bit into the presentation. Did you say that the survey was mostly done in Districts 1 and 2?

Speaker: Yes, we did have a mix, but we found that the majority were from Districts 1 and 2. And I think it's important, Councilor Faulkner, to expand that, and it's something that we're looking at as far as in the future. This was just a preliminary, out-of-the-box survey. We didn't hire a research firm to do this. This was at an event that we were tabling, and we thought, "Okay, this is an opportunity to start asking questions," which I think is a good start.

Councilor Faulkner: Was the survey provided in Spanish and English?

Speaker: Yes.

Councilor Faulkner: Okay, that's good.

Speaker: Just a quick clarification. So the two events were, one event was held in District 1, one event was held in District 2. We tabled there, but it was available to anybody and everybody. We promoted the survey citywide, so it was available. We just, those were the in-person opportunities, but anybody throughout the entire community had the opportunity to complete the survey.

Councilor Faulkner: And that by no means am I criticizing the process. Just moving forward, I think if you could do some surveying in Districts 3 and 4, I know that I walk the green belt that leads to Swan Park every morning, and there are a lot of people who bike along that green belt. And there's a whole program of biking to school that's happening in our district where, you know, the parents and the kids bike to school rather than use their cars. And so I think if, at least for my district, if possible, we could get some information of our district about how biking is a big part of our community. And I think it's, there's more people biking in District 3 than people realize.

Speaker: Absolutely, Mayor. Councilor Faulkner, we are definitely on the same page with that.

Councilor Faulkner: Fantastically. And anything I can do to help, I am ready to serve you.

Mayor: How about Councilor Castro?

Councilor Castro: Very quick comment. I just want to thank you so much for the presentation and let you know that it's super important. As we were getting information, I was thinking about sitting on the Metropolitan Planning Organization and how we should be working more in tandem. And so hopefully things like this will help us work collaboratively. So thank you.

Speaker: Thank you.

Councilor Garcia: You want to, yeah, just to follow up to that. Every BAC meeting, we have a representative that gives us a five, sometimes half-hour update. And so collaboration is one of the things that's stressed, not only the Santa Fe, but Bike Santa Fe gives an update, Santa Fe Conservation Trust as well as a member of BAC sits on the Public Safety Committee. And so there's also an update. Those are part of our updates.

Mayor: Other questions or comments? Councilor Cassie.

Councilor Cassie: Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. Thank you so much for being here and for all of this work. Really, very comprehensive and impressive and very grateful. I'm sure it was a lot of time and energy. I wanted to echo around Districts 3 and 4 and getting some more of that information from those districts. Obviously, Councilor Faulkner and Garcia in District 3 and Councilor Chavez and I in District 4. In any way that we can assisting in gathering that, I think that each of these districts have a very interesting and unique interaction. These are also the areas where most of the development is happening. And so I think really advocating for those complete streets and understanding where that connectivity needs to happen. I know speaking for District 4, we are actually the smallest geographic district because we are the densest district. And then we also have the most commercial. And I'm, and it's a very interesting combination. And that that has been a lot of conversation with some of our constituents who do prefer to bike. Fortunately, we do have really incredible access through the Rio Mesa Trail. But we also know that the River Trail is moving forward in District 3. So for future events, would really love to get those outside voices going. And please do reach out to us so that we can help engage our constituents and let you know about events that are occurring. So, and then Councilor Garcia, obviously, you know, when there are more, when you guys are doing more surveys, please let us know and we'll, we'll coordinate with you. So the other thing I wanted to mention is you had briefly brought up AI. At Quality of Life, I believe in November, we will be getting a presentation on AI in the future. To be honest, I'm not sure what, what is going to be in that one, but we do have some presenters that are going to come in and talking about all of the different ways that AI can potentially be impacting our quality of life. So I just wanted to make you all aware of it since you did mention it. And obviously, Councilor Garcia, it's on Quality of Life, so we'll be able to see that as well.

Speaker: Definitely. I think it's something that BAC should be involved in. I've been doing some research in other areas of AI, but I see a lot of potential.

Councilor Cassie: Wonderful. Well, I'll confirm the date that we do have it scheduled. I know it's, I think we only have one meeting in November. Anyway, I'll confirm the date and I'll go ahead and send it over to Councilor Garcia so he can relay it over to any of you who'd be interested in either attending or watching on YouTube at your leisure. So thank you again so much. Truly appreciate it.

Speaker: Thank you.

Mayor: Yes, go ahead, Councilor Chavez.

Councilor Chavez: Thank you, Mayor. I'm sorry if I missed this when I stepped out. I will like to say also that though District 3 and 4 are also districts that I think have the highest population of students, like elementary age, middle school age students, many of which walk to school. And I think that Santa Fe Public Schools has many means in communicating with parents. So not only partnering with Santa Fe Public Schools in regards to education, but also partnering in regards to collecting data from their community would be a wise choice to make. And just is gathering some information, especially in those two districts. A lot of those schools are community schools or they have community in schools within their school, which means they reach out to parents regularly anyway, just for needs assessment, so on and so forth. And transportation could be part of that needs assessment. So I think really partnering with community schools, communities in schools, which are two different entities. Community schools is within Santa Fe Public Schools, community in schools as a different partnership. And just partnering with public schools in general. We also have charter schools in District 4. And I want to say maybe we have, trying to think of one of the locations. Anyway, there's a lot of schools. So you're hitting organizations that have a high population that they regularly speak to. So I actually think getting some survey data in regards to needs and and just to be really insightful for needs around transportation would be really, it would be beneficial and valuable to partner with the schools within those districts to start there.

Speaker: Absolutely, Mayor. Councilor Chavez, I know BAC has been very involved with Safe Routes to School and Tim Rogers goes to the schools and they do the walks to school. And I know that we've had BAC members who have actually joined in that. So that's been one way that we've been able to do outreach to to students and and walking with them to school. So absolutely.

Councilor Garcia: Thank you. Ryan Harris, who is a Santa Fe Public School employee, is a point of contact now for Safe Routes to School. And so he, as I mentioned earlier, he will provide updates to us monthly. But that, thank you for the tip. He would be a good avenue to involve public school students and their parents in regards to replying to future surveys.

Councilor Chavez: And Michelle Katz is the, she's leading Communities In Schools, which is within a lot of our schools. And she is absolutely amazing. And they have a needs assessment. And I'm sure if you would coordinate with them, they would just input some survey questions within their needs assessment around that. Easily done. And they have to target like the entire school population that they're working with. They try to get a lot of survey responses. So, and I could share Michelle's contact information. She's just, she's a gift. So that would be a great start. Thank you.

Mayor: Others? Let's, I, well, she had a bite at the apple. Your turn next, Councilor Maez. A quick, a quick comment.

Councilor Faulkner: Okay, go ahead. I have to say this morning it was delightful because I was on my walk and there was a whole group of kids and parents walking to school together on the green belt. And it was, it was just awesome to see because the kids seem to really be starting their day in kind of a delightful way, getting a little bit of nature on the way to school. So I just, I want to commend you on that because that, that was so cool to see. I, I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Mayor: Thank you. Councilor Maez, you were very polite. Your turn.

Councilor Maez: Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Councilor Faulkner. I know I've participated in those bike to school events periodically over my tenure as a councilor. And I agree, they are very joyful events. It's fun to be out with the kids and their teachers and their parents. And just whether you're walking or biking, it's just a lot of fun. So I want to thank you all for the work on this. And really important visioning exercises. I guess I, I do have a couple questions. When your vision,

In 2050, has 20% of Santa Feans commuting by bike. Do you have any sense of how many Santa Feans commute by bike now?

Mayor: Councilor Romero-Wirth, I hear it's 1%.

Councilor Romero-Wirth: Okay, that's helpful to know kind of what kind of challenge we have in front of us. And 90%, the other vision, 90% of arterial streets have bicycle lanes is your vision by 2050. Any sense of what that percentage is at the moment?

Mayor: 65%.

Councilor Romero-Wirth: Okay, very helpful to have a sense of the context of, you know, you guys are really being aggressive and making us a bike city, which I appreciate. Do you know, so and I guess I'm also curious how the MPO's strategic bicycle plan informed your strategic plan? Did you, I hear that the MPO comes and updates you, but they do have a strategic plan. Just curious how that helped or didn't help, or is it outdated?

Well, did you look at? They come to all of our meetings. I think they actually may have sat in on some of our strategic planning meetings. So, I mean, I know during the whole process I was in touch with, you know, the people who were at the MPO. So I don't think there was one thing I can point to. I think it's just been an ongoing relationship and we have the plan as part of the whole planning process. If Councilor Garcia would like to make a comment on that.

Councilor Garcia: Sure. I think it's been an example of a strong, solid, collaborative relationship where the goals of MPO have been reinforced through the BPAC strategic plan. We've got to remember the MPO's kind of helped us lead the charge, but the BPAC members wanted to develop their own goal and vision because MPO also addresses not just City of Santa Fe, but it's city and county as well. And so this is just a city-focused vision. And part of the process was to ensure that there was no conflicting ideologies in place. And so there's been none. And so I don't know if I see Romela getting up, our superstar staff team member.

Mayor Weber: Councilor Garcia.

Romela: So there are some projects that BPAC is adding that is not included in the SFMPO bicycle master plan. So when BPAC prioritizes these projects and it's in the plan, those out of projects, the next step is to ask the MPO if they can include those projects in the bike master or in the Metropolitan Transportation, which is more projects in those, in those, in that, in that plan. So we, for example, the Bishop's Lodge Road reconstruction project, initially it was not in the SFMPO Transportation Plan. But when BPAC prioritized it in their, in their strategic plan, the MPO included it in the, in their transportation plan. The benefit of it is that when we apply for funding for design or construction, we are scored by how many, how many plans this project is included or prioritized. So we can say, oh, it's prioritized in the SFMPO Metropolitan Transportation Plan, it's prioritized in BPAC plan, it's prioritized in our ICIP, it's prioritized in IFIP. So we get a lot of points.

Councilor Romero-Wirth: Thank you. Thank you, Romela. That's very helpful. Because as I look at the Santa Fe MPO Bicycle Master Plan, you know, it does kind of list here and, you know, projects across the city that are in design, some are fully funded in progress, some are completed, some are proposed. And I think that's great that BPAC is able to, you know, kind of add that community voice, your, that residential voice from across the city to the MPO, which then is obviously an important organizing body in terms of actually getting some of this work done. So I'm glad to hear, glad to hear that. And I, and thank you for bringing up Bishop's Lodge Road. I remember when I was on the MPO, there were bicyclists who were reaching out about getting that project prioritized. And so glad to hear that BPAC played an important role in getting that prioritized so that could actually get funding. Again, I just, I'm going back to your switching around to different websites and that's always a bad idea. But back to your plan, I just, I just think it's important, both the visioning, the SWOT analysis, and the different things that you all are doing to continue to move us in the direction of being a bike-friendly community. I think it's going to be more and more important. I would echo my colleagues about, next time you do a survey, please, please be cognizant of getting the whole community because things like, you know, who's commuting, people who commute with their bikes probably live in districts three and four, whereas it doesn't surprise me that people who lived in districts one and two are more recreational users. Now, that's broad brush painting, but so I just, it speaks to the importance of why it's really important to make sure that we're trying as hard as we can to get a full picture of the city. And I know it's hard, we, we struggle with this a lot. But just want to encourage you and sounds like you're, you're well on your way to acknowledging that and knowing how to do it in the future. And I appreciate the councilors who are offering to help connect you to folks to get a more well-rounded survey. So again, thank you for the work. Thank you for being here. Really appreciate it.

Thank you. And I would like to mention to all the members of the governing body, we did have responses from every district. It's just predominantly the responses were for one from one and two. So, so we did have other districts represented, but the majority was. So, well, thank you so much.

Councilor Garcia: Just some closing comments. I do want to thank the BPAC members that weren't able to attend tonight's meeting. So I'm just going to run through the list of members. I got member Yolanda Eisenstein, member Judith Gabriel, member Tony Guret, member Steve Pilcher, member Angela Biger, member Ben Pingley, member Eric, newly appointed member Gary Schiff Miller, member Dan Painer, and former member Dan Call Spencer. And then his well, staff, Romela Glor Oas. And we've also got key partners, as I mentioned, Jen Weber, who's with Bike Santa Fe in the audience. Strong, strong partners. And it's again, just a pleasure and an opportunity to work with these individuals every, every time I have the chance. So thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Thank you. I think we have a couple more questions if you have a few more minutes. Councilor Lindell, you've been patient. It's your turn. You have the floor.

Councilor Lindell: I'm seldom patient, but thank you. Thank you for the amount of volunteer work you've done with this. Our committee process is really important. I had a few questions on the action items, the action plan. There were three actions and it seems like they had multi-parts. Were the actions or the parts within the three different actions, are they prioritized?

They're not prioritized, Councilor Lindell, the Mayor, as much as they are segmented for our subcommittees. So what we tried to do is come up with sort of an equally divided areas of work. So some of them are under planning and, you know, law, some are under outreach and public education. So rather than have a hierarchy, I think it's been more of how do we divide and conquer, so to speak, in terms of the work.

Councilor Lindell: So correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the time frames that have been put on these are pretty ambitious.

Well, that's probably true in some senses, but given that it's a living document and we're constantly talking about the work that we're doing, we can always change those dates. But I think it's important to have a fairly aggressive timeline so that we're always thinking about it and every meeting we can talk about it. So, and some of them, I think it's difficult to put a time frame on it because a lot of other factors are involved that are out of our control. So I think they're just tentative. They're goals.

Councilor Lindell: So, so do you get a report on these action items on a regular basis?

Yes, we do. Action item 2.1 talks about developing a checklist. 2.1, it's develop a user-friendly checklist for reviewing roadway and trail design and construction plans based on complete streets design principles and Vision Zero. The completion date on that was December 2023. What's the progress? What's the actual progress on it at this point? It's, it's the action plan. I mean, is, does the committee?

Romela: So thank you for that question, Mayor Weber, Councilor Lindell. I'm just looking for the plan, the copy of the plan. I think on my computer, I don't have. I think it is an error because that is complete. The, the action plan is five year, it has a five-year term, time frame. So we started this plan fiscal year 2023. The completion date of that P 2.1, it's not 2023 because we just started. So and the plan and task 2.1 completed by December 2026. The lead subcommittee will be the technical review. And when we did our update on June 13, 2024, the technical review is still working on the checklist. The difficulty with the technical review is they review all our design plans. So for this year alone, since January of this year, they have conducted 11 design plan reviews. What it does is it, the skills that they obtain from reviewing the design plans contribute to the for developing a user-friendly checklist. But the com, the target for completing that checklist is December of 2026.

Councilor Lindell: Okay. I had basically the same question on task 2.3, dealing with inspection and maintenance plan for on-road bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. I think that was accomplished this year.

Romela: Pardon me. I, I can clarify. So that was accomplished in 2024 and it's an appendix G. I can get you that document, Councilor Lindell.

Councilor Lindell: And is the committee, how many members are on the committee?

Romela: 10. At capacity, it's 10, Councilor. There's two representatives from each council district. The one city councilor sits is the chair. Then we have one open position for anybody that sits in Santa County. So that could be somebody that's in the city or in the county limits.

Councilor Lindell: I just make the comment that I'd like to have some input on the district one selection. Well, thank you very much for being here and thank you, Mayor.

Mayor: Thank you. Councilor Lee Garcia.

Councilor Lee Garcia: Thank you, Mayor. Suffering from allergies, so a little quiet here, but just to, to make a comment in regards, thank you for your work. And, you know, the district three and four for sure, you know, I look at it as connecting the dots and, and there's a lot of opportunity, a lot of opportunity to, to make the whole vision of connectivity just as we do in streets. How do we do that with parkways or pathways and biking and walking to districts and so on and so, kudos to you all for the work that you've done for the legislation that's been brought forth and, and looking into the future because I, I do, I think the comment was made is that district three and four, a lot of people may utilize those pathways to get places because they don't have a vehicle. And so, very good comments, very good discussion. And I do appreciate, thank you so much.

Mayor: Thank you. I'm going to bat last here, it looks like. There is so many really great suggestions and recommendations in this document. I tried to go through it as carefully as I could and I probably missed or misunderstood a bunch of things, so bear with me. One of the thing I was looking for, you know, what you could consider to be kind of not so much low-hanging fruit, but, but wins that would demonstrate the, the momentum behind the strategy. And a couple of those things that, that jumped out at me and I'd love your just feedback or response, positive or negative. I could be way out of line here. If I read it correctly, the, the plan says that one of the best ways to get improvement in a relatively quick fashion for a more multimodal future for the city is education. And, and I frankly agree with that. I think we don't do enough education around opportunities for people to make a difference, to participate, to advocate. How, I think education, and the other thing that's pretty good about education is it's cost-effective. It's not a huge capital.

capital investment, it's marketing. How can we support you with more education and outreach so that we both educate the bicyclists, the pedestrians, and then as you mentioned early on, the community as to why this is so critical for the future, the current Santa Fe, but very much the evolution of Santa Fe to be a much more bike-friendly, pedestrian-friendly community? Where would we go for an education program and how can we effectively mount one?

Mayor: I think there are a couple of things that come to mind. First of all, Judith Gabriel, who joined our committee, I don't know, a year and a half, maybe two years ago, has been fantastic in her commitment to community outreach. I think there are events that we need to look at. I think the website, we need help in getting that up and running and make sure it's connected to other government city portals. I think we just, I know that she created a banner, any materials that need to be created and support that we could have, she could have from that sense. Collaborations, I mean, we're working on partnerships with the bike organizations. There are, we have a whole list of organizations that we want to outreach to, local businesses. So I think in terms of, yes, this is low-hanging fruit and I think that we're definitely working on it. So she has a whole subcommittee and I'll let Councilor Garcia, Councilor Garcia and I'll be the person that says, we need some money. It's one of those things where it would be fantastic to do promotional videos, promotional events and really shows that the city is deeply invested in this. And so we've been able to leverage relationships with entities such as Bike Santa Fe, but I think the city has a responsibility to also lead some of that charge and it's not free. Educating the community ultimately is not free. It costs time, energy, effort, resource, time of staff. And I think appropriating some resources for cycling and pedestrian safety in our community would go a great distance. I know that the committee could put their mind behind it and figure out how to get the best investment out of any resource that's allocated to the committee.

Thank you, Councilor. Well, I think it's not free, but it is cost-effective and it is often done with partnerships and word of mouth and videos that people can create on their own smartphones and distribute through social media. And I just, I think that's a great opportunity with the energy and the team you've already got working with you on the committee and with city staff support. More, just more education, more promotion, more advocacy is clearly, maybe clearly just job one to get the word out more effectively. I would, I would put on that same category, I don't know when the last, you mentioned on your list of things to do as a task, I don't know the last bike summit was, but that's another, I find convenings are a form of education and advocacy and inclusivity. So if there is an issue of reaching everybody in the city and promoting diversity and opportunity for everybody to get in the mix, young people, old people, trying to stay healthy and get exercise or use it as a work, work bike to work program, I think a bike summit is probably overdue. Do you know when the last bike summit was? I don't have it top of mind. You have it, Councilor Garcia?

Yeah, from my recollection, it was in May, held by Bike Santa Fe. So it would be fantastic if the city could put resources behind hosting their own bike summit.

Great idea. Yeah, I, I also put in that same category one of your other recommendations I've been arguing for as well, and that is, I think we need to be a Vision Zero city. It is, it is a problem for all of New Mexico that we have, we are, unfortunately, a leader in pedestrian injury and fatality. And we kind of, I don't think this is true, but the attitude is, oh well, that's just the cost of doing business in a car culture. But I think Vision Zero changes that game dramatically and again, puts everybody in the same sense of purpose, aligns everybody and is measurable. There's a metric. It's not just an aspiration. There's a way of discovering whether and clocking whether or not we are making progress toward a real Vision Zero for our community. So I'm glad to see that on the list of things to do. I'm not sure it's low-hanging fruit, but I do think it's fruitful as something to do. And there again, if there's something we can do to be supportive of moving that forward, I would be very much personally in that, in that camp as well.

Councilor Garcia: On that note, BPAC will be working on finalizing some proposed legislation for moving the city to being a Vision Zero city. So happy to have anybody's support behind that resolution as it will be coming to the governing body.

Yeah, I think, you know, these are, I, I don't think anything is low-hanging fruit. Probably that's a misnomer. They're all hard. But when you think about a, and it's a very ambitious plan and it covers a lot of factors. If, if I were going to hone it down to the basics, the fundamentals, the first things first, I would put what you've already touched on, education, outreach, promotion, inclusion. There is, as I, I think it is accurately noted in the report that even the BPAC needs more diversity on BPAC. And so opening up BPAC to an inclusive community engagement helps spread the word by virtue of who's on BPAC. And ultimately it will, I hope, create momentum and build more support across the community for what is really a really strong series of proposals and recommendations. We could spend all night, I could, going through what you've, what you've put together here because so much of it does call us to step up and make a difference. I, I, I noted that something like the need to update our way of providing slowing down traffic on streets, street calming and speed calming devices. That's not that expensive and we haven't updated our policy for a long time. It's, it, it is way overdue to look at what can we do. Again, that's a safety measure. When you do traffic calming, you end up with, you advocate for bicyclists and pedestrians, but you also advocate for safer streets. And that's also on your list of things that you're recommending. As I said, nothing's low-hanging fruit, but some of these seem more manageable than others. And if you would kind of clock it down to the top five or the top, you know, five or six things to get to right away, I've mentioned some of my personal favorites with summits and education and Vision Zero and and traffic calming. Some of the others I think are going to be harder and take more time. Doesn't mean we don't advocate for them, but if we can start the momentum going toward some of these measures that are, they are in front of us to adopt, I think it builds momentum in favor of the philosophy behind your plan. So I think it's really super of you guys to take this on and I know it's community and citizen and volunteer driven. So thank you so much for all that hard work and for such comprehensive look at a different mobility strategy for Santa Fe.

Thank you so much, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you to the governing body. And you're right, it's ambitious and we have a lot of work to do, but it's a very engaged team and I think that you're going to continue to see progress and we have great leadership in Councilor Garcia and Romela. So with that, I will just say, I'll see you in 2050. Please ride your bike over so we can give you a round of applause. Ride it right into the governing, right, right into our chambers wherever they happen to be at that time. All right, thank you. That completes our presentation. I note that at 7:30, I would entertain a motion to, motion to move item 17 to after item nine, which is the consent agenda where we have no items pulled. Move the petitions from the floor to where we are now. Is there a second? Second. We have a motion and a second to go to petitions from the floor at this time before we resume regular order of business. Madam Clerk, can you call a roll on that?

Certainly, Mayor. Councilor Travis? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Lee Garcia? Yes. Councilor Michael Garcia? Yes. Councilor Lindell? Councilor Rawlsworth? Yes. Councilor Cassett? Yes. Councilor Crow? Mayor Weber? Yes. Motion passed.

Thank you. So if there's anyone here in the chambers who would like to step up to the microphone and speak to the governing body for two minutes on any subject on your mind, as long as it is not a public hearing of which we have one later, you would, the clerk will, will be running the time clock and we'll ask you to hold yourself to two minutes, but you have the floor to speak on any subject on your mind. I'm not sure the mic is on, however. You may have to push the button at the base of the microphone. Okay, there we go.

Thank you, Mayor, City Councilors. I want to talk to you briefly about, and whoever's watching this, this is really important. You know, about 40 years ago, there was a fire at the, at the Basilica and a big fire on the roof. And a friend of mine, Albert Lee, climbed up the ladder, looked in the hole where it was and there was St. Francis's head. So he had a 30-ton crane across the street because he was building the La Fonda garage. And he went over and picked up the statue of St. Francis, brought him over, lowered the boom, moved it to its present place. That's, that's kind of a miracle. I wrote it all up and sent it to the Pope. And secondly, the another serious miracle, equally serious in a secular sense, is this decision by Mary Guyer Lewis, a federal judge in South Carolina, an Obama appointee, who ruled that the, the LANL and Savannah River cannot continue to make plutonium pit triggers. You know, the, the LANL and the Pentagon and and all those kind of folks will look at it as, oh, this is just a bump in the road. But it's a really big bump in the road. And I'm asking you all nine of you to send a note to her, either your own note or sign it all together and thank her. Thank Judge Mary Guyer Lewis because she put to, put to rest this whole ongoing controversy, which is now out of the reach of Bechtel, out of the reach of the Pentagon. And it's really good news. October 24th is UN Day. I guess my time's running out. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Yes, you have the floor.

Good. Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Council members. Jennifer Weber, President of Bike Santa Fe. Since we're on bikes, I want to take the opportunity to preview an email that you'll all be getting from me tomorrow. A couple months ago, I shared with you that Bike Santa Fe was awarded a community grant from the national AARP to conduct some bike audits around town. And we will be doing those in the coming week. You are invited to join us Sunday morning at 10:00 if, if you like. We're going to be starting these audits Friday morning during rush hour. We'll be at Cerrillos and Lujan, looking at how cars, pedestrians and bikes interact, how we can improve that intersection. On Sunday, we will be at, on Airport Road between Cerrillos and South Meadows. We'll be on Richards between Governor Henry Miles, down just south of the Community College. We'll be at Camino Carlos Rey at Zafarano and Rodeo. And we'll also be looking at how the Maze Connector, how people can get there from Siler and Rufina to the Maze Connector via Harrison. One of the reasons we picked these routes is we got crowdsourced information via a survey, via in-person feedback from our members. And then we met with partners, Chain Breakers, SOBS, that's a term of endearment, not a swear word, it's Seniors on Bikes. And and Ryan from Safe Routes to Schools, BPAC members. And so we kind of solidified those routes. And I also looked at data, where do people live in the city who don't have cars and who need safe bike routes? Where do seniors live given our, our grand tour? We looked at that and where are schools?

and daycare centers. That's how we looked at those areas, and we look forward to gathering that information and bringing it back and presenting it to you. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor and councilors, my name is Greg Mello, Executive Director, Los Alamos Study Group. I am also here to talk about the new missions at Los Alamos National Laboratory, kind of reminding you that we are here. I'll give you a few things here. First, we are larger than we used to be. There are now about 241 businesses and organizations endorsing our call for halting pit production, first and foremost, for strong reasons. Over a thousand individuals, I'm going to give you copies of that along with an update that was in the Santa Fe Reporter. We are having a public discussion on Saturday at St. Bede's at 1:00 for four hours, involving a former presidential briefer, Ron Govern, and an international law expert. We are also having a briefing in Los Alamos at the Sala Event Center on the 24th. That is probably more fundamental in a lot of ways, and so that would be recommended. We can brief you at any time, given our own schedules.

This mission at Los Alamos, we know, will be temporary. It may be, if not temporary, it will be much larger. So there is a battle taking shape over whether Los Alamos will do this mission or whether Savannah River will do this mission. The two sites together will cost, acquisition costs through the 30s, is about $63 billion, and I don't think anyone believes that the government will actually pay for both of those. Our word from Congress is that Los Alamos will be temporary. I guess I'm out of time. Thank you. Yes, sir. Wow. Someone reminded me that people do not know how large these weapons are, what 600 million pounds of TNT, which is what these are, would actually do. So I'm leaving copies of that with you as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much. My name is Rick Marcus. I stood here nine years ago to ask for help for the caboose, to save it. I got a sign, probably get a sign tonight. But what happened after that is the New Mexican picked it up and did a story about it, and we raised $23,000. The community raised the money to save it, to keep it there. The next week we had a big ribbon cutting, and that $23,000 was $1,000, $5, $10 from people from the community. So really, basically, what happened is the community raised the money, and the community is the one that owns the caboose, not a gallery owner, not key people, not the city. The community owns the caboose.

When asked, when they redid the caboose just a couple weeks ago, how they got permission, I got no response. The city manager didn't even respond back to me. The mayor and everybody knew that I was there to help in any way, but I got no response. He painted it over a weekend. The big question is why they only painted one side. It didn't make sense. You just go one side and do your logo on it. Besides, the other thing too is why are there two Santa Fes on the caboose? The Zia symbol, you have Santa Fe, New Mexico. Those aren't historic. I mean, they're calling it, they're bringing it back to the historic Santa Fe. New Mexico was my design, not anybody else's design. If you're calling that historic, then I'm historic, and I feel good about that. No public input was ever given to the public about the design they did when the community owns the caboose. It just really disappoints me that the way you guys went about it. Even the person that helped raise, bring the caboose to the community, didn't even go out to say, "How can you help?" The mayor and the city manager both know that I had offered to paint that caboose for free. The chair of the committee says, "Well, the committee wanted to repaint it," so they repainted it, but they didn't do the same thing. That was kind of sad. I mean, I think the whole city, the way you guys did this whole thing, was sad, and the way you treat a local guy from Santa Fe who tries to do as much as he can for Santa Fe, that disgraced me. Thank you.

Thank you. Don't forget your water bottle.

Hi, my name is Elizabeth West, and I wanted to come tonight because I'm one of those old people. I'm going to get older too. By Halloween, I turn 80. Years ago, when I was biking in town one time, somebody sideswiped me. The truck didn't actually hit me, but I got so jittered that I fell over, and that's my fault to get so jittered. But I'm really looking forward to being able to bike all around town before, you know, 2050. I don't know about that marvelous group of people, and thank you, Councilor. I'm also here to say there are so many good things that are happening, and I actually appreciate all of you, believe it or not. I think some of you know I really do mean it, even though I'm kind of crazy sometimes, but I'm really not crazy. I'm actually a caring person, and that leads me to something that I think is important, and I think I can get it said quickly. That is that the Office of Equity and Inclusion, I hope I get it correctly here, is something that I'm wanting to follow. I'm wanting it to be registered as something that I would like to help with, volunteer or something. So I'm here saying it so that it's in the record. I think it's an extension of what CHART aimed to do, and I'm one of those people, as most of you have learned, that I actually feel very positive about CHART, and I participated to some degree, and I had an uplifting time and sort of an amazing time. Someday I'll do a little show about it. But the Office of Equity and Inclusion, is that the correct term? Thank you. It is a follow-up. Thank you.

Okay, yes, thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Councilmen and women. My name is Nera Hitana, and like Socrates, I'm a citizen of the world. I want to bring to you some excerpts from distinguished law professor Francis Boyle in his keynote address to the 28th Conference of Courage for Ethics on September 5th, 2010, in Austria. The title: "The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence." Today, the world is at a precipice for another world war. The start of any program resolving our nuclear predicament as human beings must come from the realization that nuclear weapons and deterrence have never been the legitimate instruments of state policy, but have always constituted instrumentalities of internationally lawless and criminal behavior. And those states that wield nuclear weapons, their government officials are criminals in accordance with the Nuremberg Charter, judgment and principles, and the Tokyo Charter and judgment. As our administration has told us, all options are on the table. They mean it, and not just the use of force, but the use of nuclear weapons as well. These are prohibited by conventional and customary international law, including the Genocide Convention of 1948. The UN General Assembly has repeatedly condemned their use as an international crime. When dealing with this issue, they are not simply immoral, they are not simply illegal, but they are criminals across the world. Let me just finish this. The design, research, testing, production, manufacture, fabrication, transportation, deployment, installation, stocking, stockpile, sale, and purchase, and the threat to use nuclear weapons are criminal under well-recognized principles of international law. I bring this before you for your next consideration on any matters regarding what's happening up there, which are criminal. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Madam Clerk, are there people in the Zoom room waiting their turn?

Yes, Mayor. We'll start with Stephanie Beninato. Thank you.

Stephanie Beninato, if you can't hear me, please let me know. I want to bring to your attention the waste of money that the city is spending on Cuddy McCarthy in a particular lawsuit. Not only have there been violations of professional code of conduct, but it took six months to respond, and they still tell me that the city doesn't know what it means to operate and maintain a recreational facility. They don't have a plan for the setup of the weight room. They don't have maintenance records for certain machines, and it's way too much trouble to give me the resumes of the people who are supposed to be operating that facility. There was a 44-page motion to file a late response. The day the young, the junior lawyer left, she was the second junior lawyer to leave that firm and that case, and the paralegal left. So there's been a huge turnover, and all that time, everybody has to come back up to speed because the senior attorney doesn't really do very much. Again, I believe it's a waste of city resources because the city cannot prove that it took reasonable care without plans and et cetera.

The other thing is, I sent you some photographs today, which I will make part of the record, and I will send you a better description. But that's my neighbor's property. I have waited two years to have an 8-foot fence cut back down to 6 feet. It took them, the city, two years to have an inspector come on there because she kept refusing it. They took her to court two years ago, but then dropped the case because they were going to let, you know, be allowed on. Before the inspector came, she had three very large truckfuls of dirt trucked up back up on that east side wall where this high fence is. I spoke to Mr. Cluke. He said that was improper. The inspector who finally came out only had her decrease it by 8 inches, not 2 feet, and there was no dirt removed. The photos you are seeing is a shed that is inches from my wall. It has a screen door lodged up against my wall because of the dirt that's between the shed and the east wall. My wall is on the south. You can see where the bottom of the shed is in 1071, and you can see the dirt behind that shed in 1069. I don't know why it was not taken out, and about this discriminatory enforcement. Thank you.

Thank you. Others in the Zoom room, Madam Clerk, waiting to speak on matters, petitions from the floor?

No, Mayor, there are no other attendees.

Right, thank you. Is there anybody who didn't get a chance who's in the chambers? I can't see behind the screen. No more. All right, thank you. In that case, Madam Clerk, why don't we go back to our regular order of business and take up whatever is next?

Yes, Mayor. We're going back to item 10A. This is an action item on the discussion agenda. It's a request for approval of a budget amendment resolution in the amount of $250,000 to increase WIP construction for Airfield Markings Project using FY2 available revenue in excess of budgeted expenditures. I am going to allow James Harris, Airport Manager, to speak.

All right, let's first get a motion on the floor if there is one. There's a motion, and there are multiple seconds. Mr. Harris, I know you're zooming in with us. Do you want to briefly give the folks who are tuning in, as well as members of the governing body who are not up to speed on this request, why we are being asked to make this allocation?

Thank you, Mayor, and City Councilors. So this is the BAR to remove $215,000 from our cash reserves to our, I think it's going into work in progress. So the project that we need to do, our runway has these grooving markings, and it helps with water runoff, and it helps eliminate the accumulation of ice during the winter months. Without this, we have the potential of our runways to get icy, and it could cause aircraft incidents and accidents. The other portion will be used to paint some of the portions of the airfield that are getting a little light, and at nighttime and in inclement weather, pilots will have a hard time.

order time seeing where they need to be on the airfield. So this BAR is to transfer money to do those projects. Thank you.

Questions of Mr. Harris, Director Harris?

No questions. We have a motion, Madam Clerk, and a second. Could you please call the roll?

Certainly, Mayor.

Councilor Faulkner?

Yes.

Councilor Lee Garcia?

Yes.

Councilor Michael Garcia?

Yes.

Councilor Lindell?

Councilor Romero Wirth?

Yes.

Councilor Cassutt?

Yes.

Councilor Castro?

Councilor Chavez?

Yes.

Mayor Weber?

Yes.

Motion passed. Thank you. And if you could take us to the next item, which is also airport related.

Certainly. That is 10. It's a request for approval of a budget amendment resolution in the amount of $634,500 to increase professional contracts, equipment and machinery, and WIP construction to approve.

Second. There's a motion to approve. Again, Director Harris, you're still with us, I believe. If you, this is the BAR in the amount of $634,500. If you wanted to give us an overview of what that BAR is going to be put for, I think folks would like to know a little more detail.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. So we got a reimbursement for salaries from fiscal year 2023 in the amount of $634,500. We want to use that to continue to upgrade the airport facilities and the equipment. So we have $180,000 going towards a new crash phone, what we in the airport call crash phone alert system. Our current system is really outdated. It doesn't give us the proper notifications. Like the 911 system gets the notification, but nobody from the airport gets a notification. And that's a problem because if there is an incident, we need to be on station and the airport closes until one of us opens it. But if we're not getting the notifications, the airport is supposed to stay closed. So this system, it's one of the best systems. Dallas uses it, San Francisco uses it. It has Wi-Fi capability, cell phone notification, it can text us, email. So we put in whoever needs to know and it sends out all the notifications immediately.

And we have $250,450 that's going towards the upgrade and equipment, the repair equipment that we need for our mechanics. So we brought our heavy equipment mechanic in-house to help us out with all of the equipment that we have. But the problem is the airport never bought the tools necessary to sustain our own repair work. So this money is going into lifts, tools, and other repair equipment for vehicles, heavy equipment, and everything. Sorry about that, that's my new baby. I don't know if you can hear him. And then we have an additional $2,882 that's going towards some exterior repairs to the airport's fire station, Fire Station 10, and hangar repairs for hangars that we just acquired.

Okay, hang in there. We have a question or comment from Council Castro, please.

I don't really want to go too far on the weeds. I think that I could probably talk to the director offline about this, but I do, since we're talking about foam and fire and crash, just want to sort of flag that we have some new rules at the state level around PFAS, and we should just keep that in mind as we're buying equipment.

Good, good point. PFAS is a big issue and we need to be mindful as we protect people's safety, we don't endanger it in a different way. Good point. Other questions about this contract, this request? Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll?

Certainly, Mayor. Councilor Lee Garcia?

Yes.

Councilor Michael Garcia?

Yes.

Councilor Lindell?

Councilor Romero Wirth?

Yes.

Councilor Cassutt?

Yes.

Councilor Castro?

Councilor Chavez?

Councilor Faulkner?

Yes.

Mayor Weber?

Yes.

Motion passed. Thank you. Director Harris, give your, give your newborn baby a little chuck under the chin for us. Thank you, sir. Madam Clerk, take us to the next item, please.

Next item is Matters from the City Manager, Mr. Blair.

Evening, Mr. Mayor, Councilors. Just two quick things. One of which is a reminder for everyone watching at home and listening that we are closed on Monday for Indigenous Peoples' Day. The city has been communicating that, but just always helps to remind. And then we are going to have some additional announcements of anniversaries. Councilor Garcia, we did ask HR that they're going to start trying to pull the list of people who are retiring as well. I don't have that tonight, but they're working on that.

The significant five-year anniversaries we have tonight include Liliana Jimenez Reyes, who is a Court Clerk, five years with the City of Santa Fe. Kyle Hibner, Assistant City Attorney, five years. Jacob Martinez, a Streets Equipment Operator, five years. Brian Montoya, an Operations Superintendent with Public Utilities, five years. And Andrew Wilkins, who is a Public Superintendent with Public Works, also at five years. Our tenure crew include Tomas Martinez, who's a Transit Operations and Maintenance Division Director with Public Works. Marcos Escobel, who's a Street Supervisor with Public Works. And David Hado, who is the Fleet Section Manager with the Finance Department. All those folks are at 10 years. Our 20-year winner tonight is Gary Mochino, who's a Planning Manager with the Land Use Department, is at 20 years.

And I'm going to use privilege to use items 1 through 11 real fast. People with more than 20 years: Jane Rodriguez is a Building Permit Specialist with Land Use, 21 years. Philip Peto, who is a Streets and Drainage Superintendent with Public Works, 21 years. Thea Tru is a Senior Services Program Manager with Community Services, 22 years. Andy Hopkins, who you all know well, Budget Officer with the Finance Department, 23 years. Shirley Spencer, who's an Admin Manager with Tourism Santa Fe, at 23 years. Javier Rael, who's a Fire Captain, is at 24 years. Edward Duran, an IT End User Services Manager, aka EJ, is an Information with our IT team, is at 24 years. Daniel Ladaga is a Fire Captain with 24 years. And we're going to jump up to Edward Romero, a Network Engineer at IT, at 27 years. I think that's older than Councilor Cassutt. Michelle Romero Babcock, an Environmental Programs Coordinator in Public Utilities, at 27 years. And the big anniversary of the night, Christina Adon, who's a Records Technician Lead with the Police Department, comes in at a record 31 years with the City of Santa Fe. So thank you to all of them for the great work they've been doing for the residents of Santa Fe and the great work they do as great team members, great colleagues. And that's all for tonight. Thank you, Mayor.

Wow, thank you. That's a great track record and it's good to call those names forward and give them some well-deserved praise, recognition, and gratitude from all of us. Madam Clerk, who do we talk to next?

Next, we have Matters from the City Attorney.

Madam City Attorney, you have the floor.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, Councilors. Next Governing Body meeting, I will be doing a quarterly update. So if there's any particular cases or matters that you would like me to do a more in-depth review of or bring the council who is intimately involved with the particular case, please let me know. I'm happy to do that. But I'll be sending that out the week before. And I also do have a recommendation for an executive session this evening in relation to PFAS, in fact. But in relation to the Open Meetings Act, subpart H7, section 10151, about attorney-client privileged discussion of pending and threatened litigation, in particular, In re City of Camden et al. versus BASF Corporation. I do recommend we go into executive session. Thank you, Mayor.

Councilor Mayor Wirth, you have the floor.

I move that we enter into executive session pursuant to the Open Meetings Act, section 10-15-18, subpart 7, for discussion of threatened or pending litigation in which the Governing Body is or may become a participant.

Second.

A motion and a second that would take us into executive session. Any discussion? Would you call the roll, Madam Clerk?

Certainly. Councilor Michael Garcia?

Yes.

Councilor Lindell?

Councilor Romero Wirth?

Yes.

Councilor Cassutt?

Yes.

Councilor Castro?

Yes.

Councilor Chavez?

Yes.

Councilor Faulkner?

Yes.

Mayor Weber?

Yes.

Motion passed. Thank you. I think we're all due for a little break.

Under any circumstances, vote in the affirmative. Oh, did you get, I'm sorry, Councilor Lee Garcia. We will go into executive session. Bring your, bring your refreshments with you.

Councilor Romero Wirth, I believe you have a motion for us.

Yes. I think we're still, we're still live. Yes. Okay. Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Okay. I move, what do I move? Pursuant to the Open Meetings Act, section 10-5-1J, I move that the Governing Body reconvene in open session and state for the record that the matters discussed in the closed session were those, were limited to those specified in the motion for closure.

Is there a second?

There is a second. Is there any discussion? Did we do anything illegal you want to bring to bear? I didn't see it. All right. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? The City Attorney's having a meltdown.

Councilor Lindell?

Councilor Romero Wirth?

Yes.

Councilor Cassutt?

Yes.

Councilor Castro?

Yes.

Councilor Chavez?

Yes.

Councilor Faulkner?

Yes.

Councilor Lee Garcia?

Yes.

Councilor Michael Garcia?

Yes.

Mayor Weber?

Yes.

Motion passed. Very good.

Thank you, Mayor. I have another motion.

Oh, I'm all for you.

I move that we accept the City Attorney's recommendation in the case City of Camden et al. versus BASF Corporation.

Is there a second?

Second. Multiple seconds. Madam Clerk, you picked the winner. Can you call the roll on the motion, please?

Sure. Let's start. Councilor Romero Wirth?

Yes.

Yes. Councilor Cassutt?

Yes.

Councilor Castro?

Councilor Chavez?

Councilor Faulkner?

Yes.

Councilor Lee Garcia?

Yes.

Councilor Michael Garcia?

Yes.

Councilor Lindell?

Mayor Weber?

Yes.

Motion passed. Thank you. The next item on the agenda, Madam Clerk.

Next item is Matters from the City Clerk.

I have nothing to report today. All right. We'll move on to 15, Communications from the Governing Body. Very good. We'll start this time. We'll reach out to the right hand of the dais.

I just have a couple of announcements on events. I am holding a town hall on mental health on October 25th at Genoveva Chavez at 5:00 p.m. And any councilors that are interested, please feel free to come by. And then we do have the Halloween Walk on Canyon Road on Thursday, October 31st. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor.

Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank Councilor Cassutt and Mr. Ron for putting on a small community meeting at Genoveva Chavez on public safety. He worked to bring some neighborhood leaders or community members together to start a conversation that will grow larger. And I just have to say it's really amazing to see our community members coming with concerns, but also solutions. I have yet to attend a community meeting on public safety where there aren't solutions presented by the community. So I think it's really important that we acknowledge and really consider some of their suggestions as they are really putting their minds together and helping us come up with ways to make our lives easier while making our community safer and our community members happy. I also want to wish my daughter's father, Chad Williams, a happy birthday. His birthday is on Friday, and I hope him and my daughter have a wonderful and very, very happy weekend. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Michael Garcia.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to give a shout-out to the Constituent Services team. There's been some requests recently that they've helped me out and closed some requests. So lots of work they've been undertaken. So just want to thank them. So from Izzy to Daniel, everybody else that's had a hand in it, many thanks to them.

Thank you, Councilor. I second that motion. Councilor Lindell. She skips, she passes. Councilor Faulkner.

Okay. So I have just one thing that I'm really thinking about, and it is that it's come to my attention that if a young person, a minor,

nor wants to check into the Youth Shelter, they need parental permission to do so. So one of the initiatives I'm going to hopefully work on moving forward, it's very preliminary, but I would like to work with the council to request from the state that we somehow make that better for the kids who are on the street. My concern is if they can't get into the shelter, then we are just basically setting them up for a lot of trauma. And so that's one initiative I will be coming forward with in the future. Thank you.

Councilor Marworth, you have the floor.

I don't have anything tonight, Mayor. Thank you.

Councilor Cassidy, you have the floor.

Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. Just a few things. I also want to echo what Councilor Travis said, really thanking Mr. Gabone in the Las Citas neighborhood, and some of the other neighbors surrounding her Martinez Park, to really discuss some of the issues that they are having. And as Councilor Travis said, came forward with some solutions and suggestions that we can now be working with staff to move forward on. And Captain Burnett from the Police Department joined us as well. Really want to thank him. Melissa McDonald happened to be next door for the median public engagement process, and also was able to provide some really useful feedback.

The next step is actually Councilor Travis and I will be hosting on October 22nd a meeting really focusing that we've had a number of District 4 neighborhoods that have come forward and they've been organizing. Some of them are creating neighborhood watch programs. We've gotten a lot of questions on some of our different processes. So this is going to be a pretty focused meeting looking at constituent services processes and how you get a hold of constituent services. Who do you call for what? Where do you call the non-emergency? When do you call 911? When do you call us? When do you call constituent services? Information from the Police Department on their neighborhood watch program, as well as discussion on the nuisance process because we sometimes get a lot of questions about this that it sounds like we need some clarification, but also some feedback from some individuals who have been experiencing that. As well as, of course, we will as always have opportunity for constituents to come forward with some suggestions and ideas. But this is going to be a pretty focused meeting where we are looking at some of the processes we have in place that people may not be aware of or may not understand. And then making sure that they know how to access them as well as getting some feedback there. So again, that's going to be on October 22nd, 5:30 at the Chavea Center.

As Councilor Castro mentioned, there is on Halloween, there's the Canyon Road walk. There's also the Children's Museum. They are having their annual Weird Science event on October 29th from 3:00 to 7:00 p.m. And I believe that we are partially sponsoring that through the, oh, maybe the Economic Development Department. I don't know. Somebody, somebody wrote to me about that. So I wanted to let everybody know that that is happening and encourage people to go. It's another fun way to celebrate.

We do also have, I believe, our last Livability Series talk next Thursday. And forgive me, I cannot find the topic right now. But that will be happening next Thursday, the 17th. And there can be more information on the, if you search Home Wise Livability, you'll be able to find it unless one of my colleagues happens to know it off the top of their head.

Last but not least, I want to wish my brother a very happy birthday. His birthday is tomorrow. So I hope that he has a wonderful day celebrating with my nephews and my sister-in-law and our family over there.

Oh, thank you, Councilor Marworth. Happy birthday, Brian. Going back to the last topic, it's Designing Our City for People, Not Cars. Very relevant given our presentation today. It's 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at, where are we at this one? At Site Santa Fe. So I'm sure there's still tickets available, or if not, we can always watch them online. But this has been an incredible series, second year that we're doing it. This will be the last one. So I do hope that everyone can be there and take advantage. These are really, really incredible conversations that I know I've learned a lot and I know that our community has really appreciated. So that is all. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Garcia.

Thank you, Mayor. Just briefly, I'd like to thank everyone who contributed to our Southside event a couple weekends past. I believe it was a great success. It's the third year. And even though it was spread out, I think there was a lot of people who attended. And so thanks to the Teen Center staff, the library, Earthcare, SOSOS also there. Yeah, Southwest Ane Advocates. And so just thank you.

Councilor, I have a couple things on my mind. One is to wish all the Jewish community members a happy New Year and a very easy fast as Yom Kippur approaches. I think we're all hopeful that the new year will be a sweeter and more peaceful year on Earth.

I'd like to flag the ongoing, soon to be the end, but still going on, Balloon Fiesta. If you haven't had a chance to go see the Santa Fe Zobora balloon, I've only seen pictures, but it's pretty stunning looking and has captured the imagination of a lot of people because of how striking and strong and tall and really amazing it is.

Obviously, we've got Indigenous Peoples' Day coming up. I hope everybody is respectful and participates in ways that show the native community that we really appreciate their presence and their ability to host a celebration. That there will be a powwow, second annual, on the Plaza coming up on Monday, I believe, and Saturday and Sunday, a variety of dances and celebration that are really quite ingrained in our community.

I want to take up, I did a little talk last time about education. I want to spend a minute on a document that I just got today. It was released yesterday by the District Attorney, Sam Bregman, talking about fentanyl. And I have been saying, we all have been saying for some time, that when you track back what's going on in our community and in our state, so much of it is driven by fentanyl, which is one of the nastiest and most horrific drugs to come along. District Attorney Bregman has issued a really thoughtful and I think significant document. It's only eight or nine pages long, but it covers a lot of ground and starts out by saying that there is a fentanyl crisis in Bernalillo County. I think we can agree there's a fentanyl crisis in New Mexico. He talks about the lack of a coordinated effort when it comes to fentanyl treatment in the state of New Mexico. I know the Attorney General of the state of Oregon not too long ago had a statewide fentanyl summit that she created because there was no coordinated effort for fentanyl treatment in Oregon. And I, one of my takeaways from reading the District Attorney's paper is we are, we really need a statewide summit on fentanyl. It includes everybody. It's a, it's law enforcement, but it's significantly, even the District Attorney says at the end of his paper, we cannot, with the fentanyl crisis, cannot be solved by prosecuting our way out of it or just throwing money at the issue without a succinct course of action. Coordination is the only way to solve the problem. And he outlines some of the things. We need a clear one-stop page for recovery services, rebuild the behavioral health service provider network that was dismantled in 2013, a more holistic approach to treatment, expanding the specialty court system, expanding services for youth experiencing addiction, expanding services for indigent and unhoused people, better understanding of the dosage of methadone needed for fentanyl users, a more consistent sentencing system for drug traffickers, and a stronger safety net for those on the back end of addiction and recovery. I, I really recommend this document to everybody. We are all concerned about crime. We're all concerned about issues that intersect around crime. But when I trace back to the root cause of so much of what we're experiencing, I think an awful lot of it has to do with fentanyl as the for driving addictive source. I went down to a meeting in Albuquerque around big box store shoplifting and the approach being taken around New Mexico with the Orca system. But when you look at the people who are being arrested, they are often times shoplifting to feed their fentanyl drug habit. So I salute the District Attorney for putting this paper out. I think it should begin a statewide conversation and I, I am a great believer in a statewide convening summit on fentanyl coordination and treatment and interdiction. Thank you.

Madam Clerk, what's next?

Next item is 16, Introduction of Legislation. 16a is consideration of a resolution sponsored by Councilor Alma Castro. It's a resolution approving Amendment Number One to a Local Government Roads Fund Program Cooperative Agreement from the New Mexico Department of Transportation, identified as Control Number L500532, and granting a time extension for the planning, design, and construction of the Henry Lynch Roundabout Project. Councilor Castro, you want to say a few words?

It's pretty self-explanatory, but I am excited that this extension is because we are trying to become ADA compliant and we are going to include that in this roundabout. So thank you.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. What else have you got for us tonight?

16b is consideration of Bill 2024-the Review Board Nominations, amending Section 6-16.1 of SFCC 1987 to remove the requirement that the First Judicial Bar Association submit a list of eight nominees from which the four attorney members must be appointed, and requiring that the City Clerk solicit nominations for board members from at least three local sources. This is in fact a response to a request, a suggestion from the First Judicial Bar that what we've been doing under our ordinance is not working for them. They are unable to fulfill that request. They don't want to fulfill that request. They'd rather have us adopt a different method to get nominees for the Ethics Board. So I think this is going to bring us into a place where we'll be able to source names more effectively than we have in the past. That's it.

Madam Clerk, next item is 16c, consideration of Bill 2024-5 and adoption of an ordinance sponsored by Mayor Alan Weber. It's a bill granting Easy Fiber Texas LLC a non-exclusive franchise to operate a telecommunications network within the City of Santa Fe, the right to use city public rights of way to provide telecommunication services within the city, and fixing the terms and conditions thereof. This is an opportunity. We've been, we have another provider who's interested in setting up a network here, and this goes, takes us through the process of granting that kind of a franchise. We have others competing to provide service, and I think our community benefits by more competition and more options. So this bill will simply give the franchisee an opportunity to operate here in town. Back to you, Madam Clerk.

Next item is 19, Final Action on Legislation. This is a public hearing. 19a is consideration of Bill Number 2024-4 and adoption of an ordinance sponsored by Councilor Signy Lindell and Mayor Alan Weber. The bill relating to Marty Sanchez Links de Santa Fe, amending Sections 23-7.3 and 23-7.4 of SFCC 1987 to update golf rates. This is a public hearing. Let me entertain a motion and then we'll take public testimony.

Motion to approve.

Second.

There's a motion to approve. There's a second. Before we go to the public, Councilor Lindell, you're such a champion for the Marty Sanchez Links de Santa Fe.

might want to use this as a moment to speak about why this is important, why it's happening now, and what do you think the benefits of this will be. The golf course at this point has not had an increase since 2020, and we're due for one. With the improvements planned for the course and the improvements that are already taking place at the course with our new management company, we need to do this. One of the really good things about this is it still continues to favor the Santa Fe City residents in the rates. The city residents support this through taxes and through our general fund. But this is a terrific golf course, and it's only gotten better and better this year. A lot of improvements, and I think that the number of rounds that are being played on that golf course right now attest to just how great it is. There's another regional golf course that's probably doing 10 to 12,000 rounds this year. My best guess with the Links at Santa Fe Marty Sanchez course is that they will do over 40,000 rounds this year. It's a lot of golf, and if you don't believe it, just go ahead and try to get on the website and get a tee time. They're getting scarcer and scarcer, and the truth is, that's a good thing. We like to see all of our recreation facilities being used to the greatest extent possible. You see people, I mean, it's a terrific facility. The breakdown on the players out there is probably, it's a course that draws a lot of seniors, and it's wonderful to see people out there enjoying themselves, being outdoors, having a great time, maybe cheating a little, I don't know. I've heard about that in golf, using the floor shim wedge. But we're due for an increase. We have some improvements that we need to make, and these rates will help us to move toward that. But the course has improved tremendously this year. It's in great shape, and if you don't play golf, I encourage you to give it some consideration. I didn't start playing golf until I was about 60 years old, and it's just a terrific sport. I highly encourage all of you to give it a try, and if you'd like to go out and play some golf with me, I'd love to have you do that. Thank you, Council. It's time for us to do this, and I hope everyone will support this. Thank you, Mayor.

Mayor: Before we go to members of the governing body, do we have anybody in the Zoom room who wants to speak on this issue, Madam Clerk? Are there any hands up? It is a public hearing.

Clerk: No, Mayor, no hands are raised in the Zoom room.

Councilor: Councilor Cotter, I don't want to take us down too many rabbit holes. There's a little bit of a change in terms of how the pricing is with the cart, without the cart, so I just want to make sure that our signage is clear and people know the change.

Mayor: Good point. Any other comments about this? Anybody want to go play golf with Councilor Lindell? I highly recommend it. She's a very good golf, she's a good golf coach. No further comments. Can you call the roll, Madam Clerk?

Clerk: Certainly, Mayor. Councilor Cotter?

Councilor Cotter: Yes.

Clerk: Councilor Castro?

Councilor Castro: Yes.

Clerk: Councilor Travis?

Councilor Travis: Yes.

Clerk: Councilor Faulkner?

Councilor Faulkner: Yes.

Clerk: Councilor Lee Garcia?

Councilor Lee Garcia: Yes.

Clerk: Councilor Michael Garcia?

Councilor Michael Garcia: Yes.

Clerk: Councilor Lindell?

Councilor Lindell: Yes.

Clerk: Councilor Villarreal?

Councilor Villarreal: Yes.

Clerk: Mayor Weber?

Mayor Weber: Yes.

Clerk: Motion passed.

Mayor: Madam Clerk, is there any other business for us tonight on the agenda?

Clerk: There are no other items on the agenda, Mayor.

Mayor: In that case, we are, thank you everybody, adjourned.