Regular Governing Body Meeting - Second Wednesday Wed, Mar 12, 2025 · Governing Body https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/259 == Executive Summary == The city council meeting covered a range of important topics, with significant discussion dedicated to the employee wellness pilot program and the city's strategy for addressing homelessness, particularly through micro-communities. The employee wellness program, which offers two hours of weekly leave for physical and mental well-being, received positive feedback for its impact on employee morale, retention, and health, though councilors requested more detailed data on its cost-benefit and impact on sick leave. There was strong support for making the program permanent and removing the six-month probationary period for new employees. Addressing homelessness was a major focus, with detailed presentations on the success of the Christ Lutheran micro-community and plans for expanding the program with additional sites. Councilors emphasized the need for robust community engagement, transparency in site selection, and a clear timeline for implementation. Concerns were raised about the program's cost, the definition of 'low-barrier' access, and the potential impact on surrounding neighborhoods. The city also discussed efforts to improve budget transparency, recognize long-serving employees, and provided updates on various city operations and legal matters. == Key Decisions == - Approved the meeting agenda unanimously. - Approved the consent agenda unanimously. - Approved the reappointments of Jake Lyon and Heidi Kingle, and the appointment of Karen Jackson to the Santa Fe River Commission (8-0). - Approved the reappointments of Jill De Haven, Rosemary Thompson, Len Rand, and Lutz Arnold to the Airport Advisory Board (8-0). - Approved the reappointment of Jasmine and the appointment of Sergio Matos to the Santa Fe City and County Advisory Council on Food Policy (8-0). - Approved the reappointments of Gary Friedman, Colleen Dearing, Teague Douglas, and Daniel Painter to the Board of Adjustment (8-0). - Approved the appointment of Scott Cherry and the reappointments of Madeline Aguilar Medrano and Cecilia Rios to the Historic Districts Review Board (8-0). - Approved the appointments of Elizabeth Travis and Bill Keller to the Audit Committee (8-0). == Motions & Votes == - Motion to approve the agenda — Passed (unanimous "Aye") - Motion to approve the consent agenda — Passed (unanimous "Aye") - Motion to move to "petitions from the floor" and then return to the regular order of business — Passed (6-0, with Counselor Lee Garcia, Counselor Michael Garcia, Counselor Cassett, Counselor Castro, Counselor Chavez, and Mayor Weaver voting Yes) - Santa Fe River Commission Appointments — Passed (8-0) - Airport Advisory Board Appointments — Passed (8-0) - Santa Fe City and County Advisory Council on Food Policy Appointments — Passed (8-0) - Board of Adjustment Appointments — Passed (8-0) - Historic Districts Review Board Appointments — Passed (8-0) - Audit Committee Appointments — Passed (8-0) == Public Comment == The public comment period featured strong opposition to the proposed relocation of a historic monument from the Plaza, with speakers criticizing the city's decision to fund a study for its relocation and advocating for its restoration to its original place. Concerns were raised about the City Manager's understanding of the monument's significance and alleged violations of the Open Meetings Act. Residents also voiced significant concerns about homelessness and pallet shelters, including the impact of encampments on neighborhoods, potential increases in crime and drug use, and the need for transparency regarding the advisory board for pallet shelters. One speaker suggested that Santa Fe's incentives attract homeless individuals from other areas and proposed a work requirement for recipients of free housing. Other comments included concerns about the number of short-term rentals impacting local housing availability, allegations of the city's lack of transparency and proper documentation in a lawsuit, and a call for more community support for aging residents. A speaker also addressed the council regarding a recent court ruling concerning the Obelisk/Soldiers Monument. == Topics == - Employee Well-being Program - Personnel Appointments - Budget and Finance Legislation - Agenda Approval & Consent - Public Comment on Bills - Affordable Housing Trust Fund - Invocation and Remembrances - Railyard Plaza Concerts Alcohol - HZ Road Sewer Improvements - City Manager's Report - Site Santa Fe Gala Alcohol - Pledge of Allegiance - Meeting Logistics == Full Transcript == We are live. Thank you, everybody. Let me gavel us into session. This is a regular meeting of the governing body. The time is 6:50 p.m. Thank you, everybody, for being here. Let's begin with the Pledge of Allegiance, led by Councilor Lindell, salute to the New Mexico flag, led by Councilor Michael Garcia, and then I'll ask Councilor Faulkner to lead us in invocation and remembrances. Tonight, I would just like to send my prayers and my love out to my cousin, Greg Paul Alander. He is passing away from a very aggressive cancer, and so I just want to send love to his family and to everyone who is facing something. Are there others who'd like to be remembered at this time? Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to send my prayers out to one of my very best friends, Zoe, and her husband, Craig. They unfortunately lost their baby over the weekend at full term, and they are obviously going through what no family should go through, but are wrapped by community. I just want to send my prayers out to them and to their baby girl, and ask the community to also send those prayers of love and healing as they move through this really difficult time. I have several folks I'd like to call to mind. First, our city colleague and friend, Bernadette Perero, from the Finance Department, who was a dedicated part of the city since August of 2006 and was in different parts of the city and in different roles, including CAR Legal Administrative Assistant. She had an illness and finally took her, but she was really valued everywhere she worked in city government, and she really made friends and made the city a better place. We'll miss her and send out our heartfelt love for her. I'd also like to call to mind Joan Pollen, who was sister to Jill Rudall, born in St. Louis, as was Jill. Attended the same Sunday school I went to and had a long and very, very illustrious life contribution here and in St. Louis, going back and forth and making a contribution to both communities. To Jill and the Rudalls, and to Joan's family, we send our love as well. And to those in our community who are struggling and suffering and dealing with hardship, whether we mention them here tonight or not, let's all take a second and bow our heads and send our thoughts and prayers to people in our own community and in Mexico, around the country, who are dealing with hard times, whether from health, financial struggles, or other things that make life a harder time. Let's hope they find an easier path. Thanks, everybody. Madam Clerk, would you call the roll, please? Yes, Mayor. Councilor Cassett? Here. Councilor Castro? Here. Councilor Chavez? Here. Councilor Faulkner? Here. Councilor Lee Garcia? Here. Councilor Michael Garcia? Present. Councilor Lindell? Councilor Romero-Wirth? Mayor Weber? Present. Everyone is here. Thank you. Are there any changes to the agenda as it is in front of us, Madam? No changes. Can I get a motion to approve? Second. There we go. All in favor of approving the agenda, say "Aye." Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. And, Madam Clerk, was anything taken off of the consent agenda? Nothing was removed from the consent agenda. I'd like to get a motion to approve. Motion to approve. Second. All in favor, say "Aye." Aye. I believe we have an approval of the consent agenda. With that, Madam Clerk, can you take us to the first item on the agenda for this evening? Item 8A: Report on the City of Santa Fe Employee Physical and Mental Well-being Two-Year Pilot Program Presentation. And here to speak is Alvin Valdez, the Benefits and Wellness Manager. Welcome, sir. Mr. Mayor, Councilor, thank you for having me today. Ma'am, as you tee this up, one second. I think a councilor has something she wants to say. We just implemented the 10-minute rule. I'll keep time, but I know we have a lot to get through in our presentations and whatnot, and I just want to make sure we'll go around and everybody will get a shot. Thank you. Sorry. Can I also have... Yes, ma'am. Can we make sure that everyone in the audience is being respectful and make sure we're silent as possible? Thank you so much. Okay, you have your device plugged in and you've got your deck up and running. Yes, sir. All right. So today, we're going to do a quick report on our two-year pilot program of the physical and mental well-being rules that we implemented. What's going on here? What's going on here? Really, that's not good. Looks good. Not wanting to advance for you. Wanting to advance here. Unfortunately, we have a crackerjack IT right. We came up with some backup here, so hopefully this will work. Okay, so back to where we were. Sorry about the technical difficulties there. So just to remind you what the two-year temporary pilot program was, was we added to Rule 13, which is part of our Santa Fe Personnel Rules and Regulations, a wellness day leave as Rule 13.9, and then as Rule 13.9.2, a physical and mental fitness leave. So for Rule 13.9, the wellness day leave, we gave 16 hours of wellness leave to all full-time, part-time, exempt, and temporary employees who completed the employee probation period. We also made sure that the day had to be taken during a current calendar year, or it would be forfeited. And then also, upon separation from employment, the employees would not be compensated. Rule 13.9.2, the physical and mental fitness leave, we gave two hours per week to all full-time, part-time, exempt, and temporary employees who passed their probationary period. They've worked with us for more than six months. We requested that they put in for a modified schedule and that it was approved by the immediate supervisor, division director, department director, and the city manager. There were three options that they could use this leave: they could use four half-hour segments over four days during the lunch period, two hours either in the morning or the afternoon for two days out of that week, or an entire two-hour period one day out of that week. So our job, or my job, was to find out, was it effective in FY24? What would we look for to prove that it was effective? So there were two ways we thought that we could measure its effectiveness. Number one was, could we find data that was quantifiable? Could we look at enrollment and utilization rates? Could we look at some health metrics such as weight loss or BMI, body mass index, blood pressure, or stress level? We also wanted to look for qualitative data. Qualitative data. So we wanted to check in with employee satisfaction or morale, some type of positive influence that we got from it, usage data, how are we actually using the programs, and were there any feedback mechanisms that could give us an indication how this program actually worked this year for FY, or for FY24? So, quantifiable data. So this information is only for FY24. We did not do FY23 because we don't have a full year of data, so we didn't want to skew any information. So for FY24, from July 1 to June 30 of 2024, we had a total enrollment number of 305 employees in the program. And so this is for Rule 13.9.2. Out of those 305 employees who enrolled, only 303 employees utilized it. And then we wanted to know how often they utilized that leave. When they checked in and checked, or clocked out and clocked back in, we came up with 9,788 times. So we used the computation to figure out the average overall utilization of that leave, which came out to about 32.3 times per employee over that year. So employees used it about 32.3 times for the year. Out of those 305 employees who enrolled, 303 employees utilized the leave, meaning that 99.3% of the employees utilized the program sometime during FY24. Qualitative data. So what we did here is, I don't know why that keeps doing that. We did survey questions. We sent out a survey. These are the questions we asked. We wanted to look at stress levels. We wanted to see what type of morale we had. We wanted to see if it helped retain our employees. We wanted to see if there was any notable changes from the implementation to the end of the program. And then we also wanted to know how employees were actually using their leave. And so out of the 303 employees who we sent this information, this survey out to, 155 responded. So we got about a 51% response rate, which is pretty good. More than half is a pretty good indication for us to have quality data here. So on the retention portion of the survey, on a scale from 1 to 10, with one being the lowest and 10 being the highest, would this program increase your desire to stay employed with the City of Santa Fe? We saw that 87 of those employees answered 10 in the top bracket. We had another 23 and 19 at 8 and 9. Towards the middle of the group, where they were kind of passive to whether it would make them stay with the city or had any impact on that thought, was a much slower number. And then, as you can see, there were very few negative responses to that retention question. So what was the primary use of our physical activities? Was it physical or was it mental well-being? We show that 60%, 62% of the employees used it for physical activity, and the other 38% used it for mental well-being. And the question morale, we saw that morale did impact, was impacted by the physical and mental fitness leave. So most people rated high on that one. Almost everybody said that it did make an impact on their morale and their work production. And then stress levels, we know that working for the city can be stressful at times. So we asked them to rate what their, if there was any sort of reduction, and 87% saw a significant reduction in stress. There was about 11% for some reduction, and there was 2% who said it didn't make any impact. There was no reduction at all. So we thought, well, how is this affecting our wellness program that we have here in the City of Santa Fe? Has anything changed from the baseline of 2023 or to 2024? So we looked at our health risk assessments. There was a slight drop there. We looked at our Rec Center benefits, where we give employees a free membership for a year. We saw an increase, quite a big increase, almost half the amount went from 100 to 192. Our Omada program, which is our diabetes program, we saw an increase, large increase there as well. And then for our monthly participations, we did see a decrease in the group participation, but that's maybe because they're going to the gym on their own and they don't need to participate in our challenges or our wellness program. All right. And then we took two health metrics. So when we did the survey, we asked if there was anybody who saw a large impact to their work life, their personal life, how it helped them. And so we voluntarily requested this information. We had two employees throughout the city who wanted you to know how this has impacted their life and how it has positively impacted. So we're going to show some information on Andrew Baca from our Transit Department, and we're going to talk about Raquel Ariola, who works for General Government over at Municipal Court. So we saw a direct impact on Andrew. His numbers are, they're inspirational to me. But he reduced his weight from 407 to 247. His shirt size dropped from a 6XL to 2XL. Pants decreased. He saw enhanced work performance, improved evaluation so that he didn't have to do his mandatory medical reviews every single year. He usually uses his Transit onsite gym that we built through the wellness program six days a week. He really enjoyed the program. It had, it helped him to change his meal plan and the whole nine. And you can see the chart that's on the board where he lost 160 pounds in one year. Very impressive. Move on. So we also have Raquel here. She uses her program one hour twice a week. She has a young child, 7 years old, and she goes to college full-time. So she stated that without this program, she would not be able to find the time to make it to the gym, which she uses her time for. She says it's reduced her stress and improved her mental health. Her morale and attitude at work is increased. She now meal preps and eats healthier. She went from pre-diabetic to no longer, or she's no longer in the pre-diabetic range, and she lost about 41 pounds over the last year. So we do see a significant impact to our employees. And then, Here are some other testimonials. I'll let you, you have the slide deck and you can look at that on your own. But we saw that a majority of the individuals that we sent that survey to had something to say to us. They did have positive feedback. Some were just more enthusiastic than others. So finally, it comes to you here now that we're at the end of the pilot program, coming up on 6/30/2025. We're seeking feedback from you, the governing body, Mr. Mayor and councilors, to let us know what your options could be and how you would like to proceed forward. Of course, so we could continue the pilot program for one more year. You can make the program permanent under the City of Santa Fe rules, regulations, Rule 13 leave, or you could allow the pilot program to expire. Thank you. Thanks very much. I think we'll just see who raises their hands and try to remember what Councilor Faulkner said, just keep it within 10 minutes and we'll come back around. But please go ahead. Thank you. So I was the one that brought this pilot forward. This is very important to me. I will work to make it permanent. I do want to hear some information about outreach. Has the pilot program been part of the conversation when we onboard employees yet? Mr. Mayor and Councilor Chavis, yes ma'am. That is, we definitely at new employee orientation, we let employees know that if they can stay the six months after that program, that probationary period, that they would be eligible for this program. Great, thank you. I think the trend that I have seen, for example, the state of New Mexico, is what we kind of mirrored in this program, and theirs is very well established, it's well used. So I think that making this permanent, really going and making sure that there is outreach, all of the department heads are communicating this clearly to their employees, is going to be key so we increase participation. And I think it's key. I think that we do, we work in public service and the job can be very stressful and there are high demands. And the only thing I would really change about this pilot program is just emphasizing it more so that employees know that it's okay. I think a lot of employees want to stay quiet because they don't want to alter their time or they don't understand. And really giving language to the directors and saying, "No, it's okay. We want you to take care of you. I will work with you on your schedule. I will be flexible. This is part of the City of Santa Fe for a reason, and it's because we care about your well-being." And having that message be very often heard by employees from their directors is what's going to increase participation. And I think it'll just help our retention and help our recruitment even more so. I love the statistics. And new employees can immediately be part of this program, correct? Mr. Mayor and Councilor Chavis, no, the employees do need to wait a probationary period of six months. Once that six months expires, they are eligible for that. Okay. And so that is the only thing that I would want to work on and make us different. Right now, most other agencies that I see have that, and I disagree in the fact of saying, "You have to prove to us before we take care of you." I think it should be the other way around, like, "Let me take care of you so that you could prove to me that you have all that you need to be a good employee." So that's the only thing that I would change. But just so you know, everyone here and the community knows, I'm in support of this. I was the one that brought it forward. The only thing that I would change is the fact that I think that if we're going to use this as a recruitment effort, that we have to let our new employees know that we care about their well-being. And I think that should be taken care of sooner than later. And I know that there may be complications because of leave and how leave works when someone first enters our agency, but I would love to work with you all in figuring that out. But what's more important than emphasizing the fact that our employees matter to us? They are the people that keep our city running, whether new or veteran, they matter, and we wouldn't be able to accomplish what we accomplished as a city without them. So let's take care of them. Mr. Mayor and Councilor, I totally agree. As the wellness and benefits manager for the city, that is literally my job. I want you to be healthy. You, the employees, are my job. And I agree 100%. I don't know how they would change that six-month probationary period. That's probably something that you and the council and HR and those individuals would have to take care of, but I'm in agreement with you 100%, and I will work on that. And I will say, different from other agencies, ours is only six months. Most others are a year. So that is positive, but I don't think there should be, I don't think that we should tell a new employee who, what we say is drinking from a fire hose, that their stress level and well-being has to wait six months. So I will advocate for that. The only other data point that I would want to see, I made a note, sorry, hold on. So we talked about retention, and I lost that thought. Yeah, I'll come back around. Let me look for that. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Next. Councilor Garcia, you have the... Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. I appreciate it. In the data, you didn't give the number of folks that utilize the one day. I believe your metrics here says, I'm assuming that's hours because that would be a high rate if it was 9,788 days of leave. So is that, or is that all together? Can you pull that apart for me? Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor, Councilor Garcia, we did not add that portion. It, so all of our data is according to the 13.9 to the two-hour per week rule. So that 9,788 number represents the amount of times an employee clocked out to use physical leave, not the wellness day, but the physical and mental wellness leave. Gotcha. And are we tracking the day of leave as well? We do have that data. The overall data collected for FY24, for including both the data of wellness day you used and the physical and mental two-hour leave per week used, you want the total amount is what you're asking for? Well, separated, because I don't want the numbers to be to speak. Okay. And if we don't need it at this moment, but if we can get it, just because it helps to justify at the end of the day, we got to ensure that the cost benefit is worth it. I completely and 100% support our employees, but we've got to understand what the cost of is coming to the city, and that way we can justify, you know, when so many people say this is benefiting them, this is worth X investment, and that's ultimately what we need to be able to justify. So, Mr. Mayor, what I, and Councilor Garcia, what I do have, and this, remember this is part of our budgeted amount and the part of the employees 280 hours. The total cost of the program leave, I do have that amount on there. We used 8,412 hours, and it, the total cost was $261,126.35. So we do have that for fiscal year 24. That is correct. Fiscal year 24, $261,000. So if we're on par, have you looked at the data? Are we on par of 24, higher, lower? We're actually a little bit higher this year, probably just because folks see the benefit and encourages others to participate. Yes, Councilor, we had more individuals participating at this current time, so we have more enrollment and more people involved, and that's why we see that increase for FY25. Gotcha. And then last question in regards to the survey not been completed by everybody, and we make it a requirement that if you want to participate in this benefit, you got to take 10 minutes to fill out a survey. Mr. Mayor, Councilor Garcia, I think that's a great idea. How we would implement that, we would have to go back and see what we could do to require it. But I think that I would love to have more or all people chime in than just a handful. So I think it's a great idea. We'll look back and see how we can do the next survey where it is a requirement. Okay, thank you. Well, thank you, Councilor Chavis, for bringing this forward. I'm glad employees are utilizing this program, and let's see what 2025 numbers bring. Thanks, Elvin. No other questions, Mr. Mark. I think Councilor Chavis remembered her last lost question. Sorry about that. So the only piece of data that I would like to see is the impact on attendance, like how many employees are showing up to work. So if we could get that, because I, so there, when we talk about cost, we have to consider two things. We have to consider, well, the main thing is jobs getting done, right? And when people show up for work, then we're productive, and that's cost-efficient. The other thing is recruitment. When we're able to fill positions and not contract out, that means that we are saving money. And so there are a lot of components when we're considering what is the impact in regards to our budget. And I think that we need some data on that, especially the attendance, because if we have people showing up, we're productive, we're making things happen, that saves us money. So if that could just be included at some point. But like I said, I would love to make this program permanent. I would love to work with you all in seeing how we could emphasize it more as a resource to be used to really get a good idea of what that data looks like. Mr. Mayor and Councilor Chavis, we do have the overall FY24 sick leave usage if that's the data point you were looking for. Yeah, I think if we could just see if there was a difference since the program was implemented on how leave looked. Okay. So in FY23, people used, or employees used 2,283 hours. In FY24, they used 32,105.85 hours. So in other words, they used an extra 6,822.42 hours more during the one year on the program. Great, thank you. Good. Councilor Lindell for being here and thanks for all that you do. Here, busy guy. Couple of things that I see with this. So part-time employees, do you know what we define as a part-time employee? I believe that is 16 to 20, 20 hours classified, or wait, what is it? 16 to 39 hours of classified. Okay. I would want to look at the inclusion of part-time employees. Two hours ends up being 10% of the work week, and I'm not sure that that's our most fiscally responsible thing to do. Secondly, I would like to try to, if we continue this program, get a better definition of what fitness and wellness activities are. It doesn't seem like we have any guardrail at all on what you can do in your two hours. If you want to sit at home and play video games, I think that we don't have any, am I right that we don't have any guidelines at all on what activities qualify for fitness and wellness? Mr. Mayor and Councilor Lindell, the Exhibit A that we use on there, you're quite correct, it's broad. So an individual who feels like walking their dog at the end of the day to use that time would be able to use that leave as a mental wellness, mental well-being time. I think some stricter definitions to what you feel physical activity and mental wellness is would be is plausible, because right now it is a broad range, and it seems like people can use it however they feel relaxes them and reduces stress. And so guardrails would be acceptable, and that would of course be at the council, at the council member's discretion. But it is plausible, yes ma'am. And there, there could be, yeah, I, I think for me to support this, I'd need some clarification on qualifying activities. I'm not sure that I think two hours, 10% of the work week for a part-time employee is reasonable. That would be something I would want to look at. So we spent $261,000, which isn't a small amount of money. And we had approximately 300 employees active in this. If we started getting this up to 1,000 employees, we're talking about some real money in this, and there's different budget. ting considerations for three-quarters of a million dollars as opposed to a quarter million dollars. So I think that those are, these are very, very feel-good kinds of programs, but I think we also need to take a good look at them and make sure that we do have some guardrails on them and we're being responsible in offering these. So that's where I'm at with it. Thank you very much for your work on this, by the way. I don't, I don't have on the slide deck, I don't have anything on cost. I can share, Mr. Mayor and Madame Counselor Lindell, I can share that slide deck with you if you would like that. That would be great. Thank you very much. I will. Just go down the line. Faulkner: So first, I want to say I love this program. I've said this before, I do organizational development and leadership training, and this kind of response to employee needs is always effective. And so if you can give your employees a place where they can find what works for them, to give them someplace to land where stress is concerned, productivity goes up. So maybe they're not working those two hours or whatever percentage time, but when they are working, their productivity is much higher. And so, although I do have to agree with Counselor Lindell, and that maybe we can do it by percentages with the part-time employees, there's got to be some way to figure that out, because I kind of agree with her on that. But I also think that it's important that we don't tell employees how they should spend their mental health time. Everybody's different, everybody's unique. What works for me doesn't work for somebody else and vice versa. And so I don't, I'm not supportive of restricting what they can use their time for. If it's what they need to be happier and healthier, then that's what works for them. And there's a lot of younger people who some of the things that some of us who are over a certain age find relaxing, that they don't find relaxing. And so I, I also feel like we need to definitely use this as a way to encourage people to come to work for the City of Santa Fe. There's not enough expertise out there in New Mexico, and we're competing with a lot of other organizations, and some of them are private sector, and they have more money and they can do more things than we can do. And so if we want to attract better employees, experts, all the things that we need to make this city work, we have to have programs like this. We have to have other incentives to encourage them that even if they're not getting paid more here, they're getting more things here that tangibly affect their lives. I love this program and I'm in full support. Thank you. Mayor: Al, you want to weigh in? Al: Just really quickly, Alvin, thank you so much for all you do in this area, not just with this pilot, but in developing healthy habits for the city workforce. I know you work really hard at it, and I know you, I know the depth of knowledge you have in this area. So I would just say that, you know, if this is a way for us to help people have time to start and build healthy habits, it's good for them, but then it ultimately, as you've described, is good for the city too. And it's good for making sure we attract people that we have productivity and that people are happy because they spend an awful lot of time at work. So again, really thankful for the work you do on this and other things in this area. Thank you. Cassidy: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much, Alvin, for being here, and thank you, Counselor Travis, for bringing this forward. I really, really appreciate that you had the foresight to start this pilot, and Alvin, for you to actually go and implement it. I know, I know it hasn't been easy. I know there's been a lot of complications to work through, especially people have different types of jobs and different hours, and whether or not they can step away varies, and that has been something that everyone has had to work through. I will say I'm in full support of this program. Prior to getting a degree in public health, I was actually in corporate wellness. I was a health coach, and I did, I coached people on weight loss, tobacco cessation, stress management, and the number one barrier was always time. It was, it was always time. You know, I had very motivated individuals. I had individuals that were getting up, you know, really early a lot of days, and then they were exhausted and trying to go home and be with their kids and family. And so removing that barrier, I think is incredibly important. As I say with all public health programs, I know that it is hard to see the full benefit in a short amount of time. Three years is your typical public health pilot, and it's not enough time to actually get the data to see if something has worked. So I would say absolutely to another, another year, but I, I'm in agreement that at this point, I, I see a benefit in making it, you know, permanent unless we are otherwise shown that it is not effective. I think another thing that we have to consider, I know cost is, is that's always what it comes down to. We are self-insured, and so that to me is, is a really big component of this. We know that chronic disease that are caused by lifestyle, gosh, this was back when I was in grad school, and it was, you know, cost the US $33 billion or something every year, and I'm sure it's only, maybe it's 300, it was, it was in a really high number, and that was in 2012, so I'm sure it's gone up. And, you know, with us being self-insured, I, I think that that is a really important consideration that when we are looking at the long-term health of our employees, not only do we have, you know, the benefit of, of increasing morale, which is really important, and retention and recruitment, which Counselor Faulkner demonstrated, and Counselor Travis already spoke to, you know, the benefits there. But when we start to take a look at what those actual physical health outcomes are and how that impacts our, our employee population, that, that to me cannot be understated, because we know what that can eventually look like. And the problem with a lot of these chronic diseases is they creep up on you. So it's, you know, everything's fine, and then they're not. So in terms of, of data collection, one thing that I, I don't believe was done, but correct me if I'm wrong, did we utilize essentially the fact that we have an active control population of people who are not utilizing this benefit within the city? Mr. Mayor and Counselor Cassidy, we did not, but that's an excellent idea. We did not think of that, but that's, that's, that's a great idea. I would love to see it. And, and kind of matching, you know, with Counselor Garcia's comments around, you know, if you're going to, if you're going to do this, you can fill out a survey. You can take the time to fill out a survey. So I think gathering that data, but also looking at how morale changes over time, how does job satisfaction change over time? Things get really wonky when we start to get into actual insurance claims. I don't know if there's a way that we can tap into our insurance provider so that it can be de-individualized and we can, you know, make sure that we're following all HIPAA guidelines, but being able to get, you know, populations, we may not be able to do that, but it is an interesting conversation as well as, you know, people sometimes are willing to, to, to say, you know, as, as some of our participants were around what their benefits were in terms of weight loss or, or coming away from being pre-diabetic. But, but I would be really interested, you know, I think that when we start to take a look at sick leave as a whole, that one's challenging. I, I would say part of it, you know, with, with sick leave going up, we are coming out of our pandemic years where we spent a lot of time in isolation. Our immune systems are low. We've had really bad flu, you know, flu seasons. COVID is still active. So hours, you know, sick leave hours utilized at this point, I don't think is, is a great data point. Plus, I think we still had COVID leave at the beginning, so that they weren't dipping into their sick leave because, so, point being, I really like control populations wherever we might be able to get them, whether it's from the general population in Santa Fe, whether it is within our own employee base that are not utilizing this program, so that we can really start to take a look at the benefit. And I do think it's important that we invest enough time to really understand what the impact is because it, it just, it takes time with these things. These are big things to shift. So that was a lot of comments all in one. If you have questions about them, please feel free to follow up with me. But, Mr. Mayor and Counselor, can I actually do so? There was a theory on why the sick leave went up. We were in a COVID leave year where they were using that COVID, and all of a sudden that no longer existed, and now we're just using regular sick leave. But I think what we also saw were people were becoming more aware of their health as they were going to the gym, they were getting more checkups, more physicals, they were taking more sick time if they felt a little sick. Like it, their health started to matter, and that's what we want to see. Yeah, that makes sense. And, and also, I will say COVID did for what public health people have been saying for years, if you feel sick, don't come to, don't come to work, don't come to school. And so I, I do think that you're right, there was this, this awareness of, of what was going on in the combination with healthy habits as well as COVID, COVID has changed a lot of things. So yes, it has. So I really again, thank you, Counselor Chavez. Really truly appreciate this. Also in full support of continuing this program, looking for the tweaks where we need to. I think continuing to evaluate it so that we can continue to tweak, but at this point, it really is, you know, making these fine tune, fine tunes, is that a word? I'm not sure, as opposed to, to big over sweeping changes and, and looking for to continued updates on this. Thank you. Mayor: Thank you. Counselor Garcia. Garcia: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the presentation, Mr. Valdez. And, you know, I, I did support this program or this pilot program when it came forward. I would really be interested in, in kind of knowing, to kind of go off of where Counselor Cassidy started in regards to understanding those that did not participate in this. How many city employees do we have? Are we in, we're a thousand. We have currently 1,184 city employees. Okay. So only 35 were enrolled. Mr. Mayor and Counselor Garcia, that was our FY24 numbers. I have the number in my office at FY25. I think we have 528, if I, if I remember correctly, but we have about 500 employees enrolled currently. So it's increased. And so, you know, I also would like to try to understand and see if some of those employees that do not participate in the program, what are the reasons for that? I mean, could it be a route driver that is on a trash truck? They don't have the, the opportunity to, to take the time because they have a job for X amount of time. It's a route. There's not another driver that's just going to be able to jump in their truck and, and, and go. That's just one example. And so how do we make it so that it is available to everyone and they're not, you know, they, they can participate in the program? The, the other thing that was concerning to me when this came forward was that how do we measure the quality of service that we're giving? And, and understanding you have admin and you have people that are doing other specific jobs that, I just say for example, in utility billing, somebody needs to be there to answer that phone call. And so when, you know, when we get calls from constituents, so, you know, aside from the benefit and, and the benefits that you have provided are very, very important. important benefits for all of us as human beings. So I guess just those would be kind of my concerns going forward, and how do we really create a program that is beneficial to our workforce, but at the same time, what we are asked of as individuals, whether it's an elected official, somebody who works for the city, service is provided. You know, when the water utility is called out to do something, they've got to be there, and maybe they may not be able to participate in the program for that reason. So I think those are just some of my major concerns. Mayor: Councilor Lee Garcia, thank you for those comments. And you're absolutely right. When we onboarded this pilot program, the first priority was our service delivery to our constituents. So that's still a priority. And you're absolutely correct that there are some employees who are unable to participate because of their shift or the type of work that they do. The one thing that Elvin has worked really hard to do with employees who are unable to take the time, maybe they can take it sometimes, maybe they go a few weeks without being able to take it, or maybe their route, like you say, a bus route, doesn't allow them to take it at all, is building some space at their facilities to do some workout either before their shift starts, during a lunch break, or after their work shift. And working with those groups of employees on different wellness topics like exercising at home, stretching if you're in a vehicle for, you know, six hours straight, meal prepping, different types of healthy habits, focused on those particular employee groups. So you're absolutely right, and thank you for your comments on that. Thank you. And then the last thing I'll leave you with is, and I don't know how you can quantify this, but when you do have, so in an HR, you have a unit that has that provide a team, so to speak, is there a certain amount of more people that you need to cover the level of service that's needed, or can it be done within the same amount of people? And so again, that's another, I guess you can consider a hidden cost of doing business, so to speak. And so, you know, instead of having five people, do you need six? Do you need seven to cover the times when people are taking, you know, when they're utilizing the program? So again, those are really hard to really identify what your actual cost of it is. It is somewhat like opportunity costs. Those are also things that are very hard to put your finger down on. But I think some of those areas are where I would like to have more information on going forward. Again, knowing that the program is working for certain individuals, for some individuals in our workforce, and why the remainder of the individuals aren't or haven't jumped on board with participating. Those are my comments. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilor Castro, coming back around. Your turn. Thank you. I just want to take a few minutes to push back a little bit on my co-councilor Lindell. I try not to do this too often, but as a gamer and somebody who has dogs, I think that I have a moment to sort of step up and talk a little bit about trusting our employees with the time that they have and how they choose to spend that time. I think that's super duper important. So thank you, Councilor Faulkner, for pointing that out. Also, I think in particular, the idea of our transit workers, thank you for the example of Director Andrew Baca, because that having that facility in his workplace, I think, made all of the difference in meeting folks where they are. So yeah, those are my comments. Thank you so much for the amazing work, and I think that it's really, really valuable. Thank you. Round again. I just want to say one more thing. In regards to the individuals that can't take the leave, I would like to explore how we could be more flexible on the times that they don't have a full workload during their day and how they could maybe utilize more time during those days than others. You know, we have the time where people are taking it daily, they're taking it different ways. But if we have a transit worker, for example, or someone that works for Waste Management that can only take it on the second Thursday of every month, then how can we work with them? And I think we need to have that flexibility. And I want to just thank Councilor Castro because I think it's true. If they just need time, whether it is to sleep or rest or play or be able to pick up their kids, which they never do, or go to cooking with kids with their kids during the school day, whatever it may be, we don't get to dictate what makes us feel better as individuals, what helps us be more productive in our job. That is based on the individual themselves. And so I would love to look at those employees that aren't being able to utilize the program as we have it written to see what kind of flexibility we could write into it so that if the leave is taken monthly or bi-weekly or whatever it may be, we could work with them on that. You know, I always talk about social emotional health, behavioral health. It's a real issue. It's a huge issue. And so being able to be a place, an organization that says, like, this matters to us and we're going to be flexible in what you need to take care of you as our employee, goes a long way. And so I want to thank you for your work. Thank you. Thank you. You are just amazing, Director Salazar, and everything that you do. I know that you've worked a lot with me, but I want to continue working with you to make this permanent and look at the flexibility in how we could make it so it's inclusive of all employees. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments or questions from the governing body? Thank you very much. Appreciate the presentation and follow-up. It's really helpful to have the data and to take a look at what our options are going forward. Thanks a lot. Mr. Mayor, counselors, thank you for your time today. I have a lot to digest and go home to. But in the end, I think that all programs that are worth having, they may cost us. You have some great feedback for me, and we're going to diligently work forward and come back with some more material for you. Thank you very much. Madam Clerk, what's next on our agenda? Item 8B, pallet communities and the community engagement plans. And here to present is Community Health and Safety Director Henry Hammond Paul and Youth and Family Division Director Julie Sanchez. It'd be helpful if I brought that and oriented it towards the counselors. Okay, excellent. All good. Everybody okay with the way the screen is oriented? We're good. Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor, counselors, thank you for having me and the team up here to present an update that we promised last time, or maybe two governing body meetings ago. Before I start, though, following up on the AOP and very important topic that Alvin was raising, I just want to say a little of staff appreciation for the work that my team does. This is a complex, difficult work that often times doesn't feel like there's a right answer for. But I know that every day my staff comes to the office wanting to improve the quality of life for residents, businesses, and individuals suffering from a variety of types of challenges. So it's an immense honor and privilege to be able to support them in their work. I'm going to start, and I will try and breeze through some of these things, knowing that you all have access to this presentation should you choose to refer to anything in more detail. But just a little bit of the state of where we're at in the city. So we currently have on our by-name list 385 individuals. We have about 285 beds in our emergency housing system, emergency shelter system. So that leaves us with about a deficit of 105 beds. Also, there was more than meets the eye when we talk about the unhoused population. So, and I referenced this in a previous presentation, Santa Fe Public Schools is required by the McKinney-Vento Act to report homeless youth. This is a broader definition of homelessness than we use on our by-name list, and it includes housing unstable individuals or people crashing on relatives' couches or doubled up. But that number is 741 homeless youth, according to the Santa Fe Public Schools. It's also accountable and specific population that we can speak to. So the Santa Fe Veterans Advisory Board has recently identified 15 homeless veterans in our community, and that is that's a number we can wrap our arms around and actually support and get housed. So trying to add some numbers to the flavor of this conversation and make it feel tangible very quickly. The team does a lot of different types of activities to support this work, not only supporting housing, but we try and keep people housed through eviction prevention programming. We support a lot of community service providers through grants. We have outreach and engagement work that we do through collaboration with the park rangers, as well as through the Alternative Response Unit and community providers again. And we are deeply committed to growing this work and making it effective. So very quickly, when we talk about housing, we think of it on a continuum. So at one side of the spectrum, you have unsheltered homeless. And then there's a length that you can travel through a housing continuum. So emergency shelter is the next lowest barrier entry to getting people off the streets. And then when you move people out of the emergency situation and bring them into what we'd call transitional housing, which helps people get stabilized and be prepared for ultimately a more independent lifestyle. And then further down on the spectrum, you have things like affordable housing and then market rate housing. What we're really talking about when we speak to the micro-communities is transitional and temporary housing. And this fills a very specific need for two reasons. One is the pallet units themselves are designed to be deployable temporary assets that we can use with some speed. So we can deploy these quickly, and they serve as a stopgap to longer-term investments that the city needs to make on this, the right side of the spectrum, which is costly and takes time to build affordable housing and other more permanent solutions. Speaking quickly to the value and the proven effectiveness of these types of units, we have seen from studies in Portland and King County, where Seattle is, that the lower capital costs of doing the pallet communities and the micro-communities is a big reason that they are becoming more and more prevalent throughout the country. Because when you talk about brick and mortar infrastructure, it takes time and it's very costly. We do need those types of investments, but this is again a stopgap. There's also some really interesting and important statistics to reference. So, and this is data that comes from the company Pallet, and I think it points to a couple key benefits that we can expect around villages and pallet communities, micro-communities that we end up building. So in Vancouver, they saw a 29% decrease in police visits to where a pallet community was put up. Outside of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County, when the rest of the county saw a 20% increase in homelessness crime, the sites near pallet communities or the areas around pallet communities saw a 25% decrease in crime. So very contrasting results there. In our neighbors to the north in Denver, while the rest of the city saw a 14% increase in crime, the direct neighborhoods where the pallet communities were saw a nearly 3% decrease in neighborhood crime. In addition, compared, and this is again data from Pallet, where these communities are implemented and stood up, they have seen positive impacts, actually, including increases in home sales and home value. So, over 24 months, home sales within a half-mile radius of a Pallet Village increased by an average of $15,000. This is reflected in other ways as well, and I want to speak a little bit to where we are here in Santa Fe because this month, March, we are marking one year of our pilot, and we have seen some pretty wonderful successes there so far. While Santa Fe has one site, there are 125 similar sites across the country. The key benefits of these are that they're private and secure. They do offer, and I think this is something that I would love to take the opportunity to clarify for folks in the community, these aren't just units that are put out there and then hope that they're managed well. These are managed sites with on-site services, trained professionals. They're 24/7, providing care and case management and security. And really importantly, they're a bridge to long-term stability and housing. So, at our micro-community in Santa Fe, which has been active for one year, there are 10 units. Nine people have been housed permanently already, and seven have completed either detox or medically assisted treatment therapy. I'm going to skip this slide, which is just a little bit of a deeper dive, but I'm happy to go into that during questions if you have any. So, where are we now? This is getting back to why I'm in front of you, which is that we are approaching this work in a phased process. The first phase was the pilot, where we had one site, that's the Christ Lutheran Church site. Now we're entering phase two, which is expansion. Our goal is to scale up based on lessons learned and ultimately have two to three additional sites during phase two. If we get to a phase three, we will be excited to embark on that, where we would again add additional sites to meet the needs in the community. So, we are ready to move forward. Thanks to you all, we have funding secured to purchase the additional units, and we are really moving towards site implementation with speed and urgency. I'll speak a little about where we're at in the site selection process and the community engagement process. I do want to say that the choice in front of us in a lot of ways is between unsheltered homelessness, so people on the streets, and I think that's what a lot of that data points to, unsheltered homelessness or people housed. So, when you go back to this data, I think it makes a lot of sense that when you start housing people and creating stability, neighborhoods that were experiencing crime or unsheltered homelessness will start to see reductions in those areas. So, importantly, and responding to the requests of the council, we have developed a thorough community engagement process that I'd like to overview. There are three levels of engagement that we are embarking on. The first is city-wide public engagement, so working with community partners and local organizations and philanthropies to do broad education sessions about evidence-based practices when it comes to ending and addressing homelessness, and really making this as open to many people as possible. We also are going to be looking to counselors to help plan district-level conversations, so engaging with your districts in partnership with you all to help again do broader education and hear concerns from the community. Then, the most granular level of engagement, and in some ways the most important, is doing site-specific engagement. This is really about doing direct discussions with proximate communities to where sites might be, and this is what happened at the Christ Lutheran Church pilot, and it's what we will do as well with additional sites as we move forward. The bedrock of this type of engagement is that the city wants to be good neighbors. There are a lot of ways we do that, an anchor of which is a good neighbor agreement. I think I spoke to you all about the good neighbor agreements previously, and I'm happy to review those, but for the sake of time, I won't unless asked during questions. But there's also a cadence of regular touchpoints with the site and the neighborhood and the city and the operators. So, we expect and will make sure that there is deep coordination and touchpoints between all of the relevant stakeholders when a site is being designed, developed, implemented, and maintained. So, when it comes to site selection, we again are moving forward with a transparent and open process that is also guided by a micro-community Advisory Board, which is constituted of a variety of groups and representatives from the community. So, on the micro-community Advisory Board, or as I say, the MCAB, we have service providers, the faith-based community, people with lived experience, and community organizations, all helping make sure that the way that we are going through the process is not only something that's happening behind a closed door but something that is happening with involvement from a broad group of individuals. So, we have, at their behest, gone through a site review and scoring process, which I'll show some of the preliminary information on, where they reviewed 10 city sites and scored them to identify some top options. We are now narrowing that, or we've now narrowed that group of 10 to five additional sites, or to five sites, and our next step, and where we're at right now, is looking at those five sites, which I'll show in a moment, and selecting two or three for development. We'll be doing that based on a technical review with a project management firm and a construction firm who's going to be looking at the actual feasibility of these sites from a technical perspective. The micro-community Advisory Board ranks sites based on access to sewer and water, proximity to services and resources, the site layout, and proximity to transit. This is difficult for you all to see on the screen, but again, I'm happy to refer to this during questions. I think the next map is a little more illustrative. So, the five sites that are being considered for continued investigation, we have actually five distributed across all four districts. They all importantly would serve different types of populations as they're currently identified, and I think this gets back to something I was hoping to convey at the earlier slides, which is that when we talk about homelessness, it's not a single group. So, the micro-community Advisory Board has looked at each of these sites and tried to figure out who they'd be best suited for. So, there's one site where veterans would be an ideal population to be residents at. Another site, it would be veterans or seniors. We have one that would be great for families. We have some that would be great for families or sober residents, and others that would be good for a more general audience or youth or families. So, we want to make sure that it's clear to both the governing body as well as the public that this is not just put up some sites and hope for the best. This is intentional. They would be designed for specific populations. There is 24/7 supervision and support, and again, making sure that this is an intentional and thoughtful and well-thought and supervised exercise. So, we definitely need help as we move forward. So, I will make a plea for any support that you can give as we move forward is greatly welcomed. So, if you want to meet with us and help us plan a district meeting to share updates and gather input, I would love that support. We want to help keep the community informed through your deep networks and have conversations. Also, we want to help identify stakeholders as we move towards the more granular community-level engagement, making sure that the right folks are at the table and key stakeholders are brought in, especially for these kind of more site-specific conversations. I'll also say that my team and I are scrappy and hungry, and if people give us a lead, we will chase it down. One counselor asked us to investigate a site, and I was in the car driving, getting the phone number of the building that afternoon and tried to chase it down. I will do the same with any leads that come my way. So, wrapping up, we are narrowing our sites and hoping to pick at least two. We are actually on the consent agenda was the operator contract with LifeLink, and we are beginning outreach, and ultimately we want to move towards deployment. So, with that, I will love to answer any questions that the governing body has. Thank you. Mayor: And I appreciate that last comment you made about adding more sites at any time. If people have ideas, suggestions, locations they'd like to see checked out, I assume the table is open for additional possibilities that might add more and different locations to the list for the committee to check into. Director: Mr. Mayor, counselors, that's correct. I think there's two pieces to answering that. One is we have a deep urgency to move forward as quickly as possible with the current set of options that we have. That said, there are immense needs in this community, and we will again chase down any and every thing that is put in front of us, and that includes trying to work with the county and the state to see what they can come up with because this really is a regional and statewide challenge. But again, if folks have ideas, we will hunt them down and work on trying to bring them to bear. Mayor: Thank you. So, let's just go down the line and offer everybody, we'll go as many times as it takes, 10 minutes at a bite. Councilor Lee, RC. Councilor Lee: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Director Hammond Paul and Director Sanchez, for the presentation. I think that, you know, this process of doing this, and we're so early in, and the knowing of, you know, our sample is somewhat small. I think part of the outreach that I have received, and I know other counselors that I've that that have received information from our communities, and that process, and I know you have it mapped out in regards to the public engagement process. I don't know if you can touch base a little bit on that because, you know, ultimately, we want to see these succeed. The reality is that I think you said we're just not looking at popping up these small micro-communities just anywhere and see what happens. We don't want to just see what happens. I think the community is somewhat apprehensive in regards to other, and obviously the other non-shelters that are in our communities and what's coming out, you know, what are the what happens around those, and we don't want, they don't want to see that. So, the more examples and and we can take a look at other other communities, but I think what's more important is that we make ours work. Yes, we can use other cities and other other places as examples, but what's worked, hasn't worked. Not only that, but I think that it's really important that, you know, when we do identify whatever community, whatever area that these might be placed in, when there are issues, that we address them quickly and immediately because the community does want that. So, you know, I don't know if you can address a little of the community engagement process. I think that's really high on very many people's radar in regards to these, and they want transparency. They want to know. Mayor: Counselor, I think Julie will do a great job with the community engagement piece, but I do want to say one kind of anecdote that I think is really important to tell about our current SOS, our current micro-community at the Christ Lutheran Church, which is that a couple of months ago when I was talking with Chief Moya and Chief Joy, the police and fire chiefs, and this is not an indictment on them by any means, but they didn't know the location because it's such a non-issue from a public safety standpoint. And that to me reflected really positively on the site because it meant that if it's not on the radar as a hot spot or an active area that police and fire are constantly going, that means that they're doing their job well and that it's being well-managed and it's not a thorn in the side of the community. So that's just an anecdote, and I hope the chiefs are okay with me saying that. Mr. Mayor, Counselor Garcia, I appreciate your question and your comments. At this time, our public engagement strategy, which has been created actually by our Micro-Community Advisory Board, is really going to be focused on site selection and giving us their final recommendations. Looking at those recommendations and again, whittling it down to two sites that would be the most feasible to start developing. And then from there, meeting with all of the counselors as well as starting the community engagement process, looking at stakeholders, HOAs in those areas, and other community partners that we need to be in contact with as we start the development process. And then from there, of course, engaging in our Good Neighbor Agreement and coming up with how the city can support those neighborhoods and also the micro-community in being really successful. Then I just have a comment that I would, it'd be really great to have prepared when you are in this process, to, because the hard questions are going to be what happens when, and have a contingency plan in regards to what we need to do as a city, what we are required to do as a city, because a lot of the funds, I mean, the funds are coming from the city, and so we have to be responsible in that area. Just that comment. And then the last question I would have in regards to going forward, you know, there's a cost of doing business here. And you know, initially we had, we were hoping, and correct me if I'm wrong, we were hoping that organizations would provide their property, would provide some of their services, and this has transitioned into utilizing city property, utilizing pretty much funding from the city to do this. And so if you, you know, you can just take a basic analysis of cost, property, construction, you know, once it's built, all the way, how much is each unit costing us? Now I know you can't really put a value on success because when you do transition somebody from the streets to this temporary housing onto permanent housing of some sort, when you do succeed there, it's invaluable. But when you're not succeeding, also finding out what, you know, because each unit is going to have its own cost. It's going to have its current cost. It's going to have its operational cost, and then into the future, how far can we sustain that without partners, you know, again, choosing LifeLink or others that are, this is what they do, and they do a great job at it. And so I think those are important because, you know, a lot of times the community thinks we could just build housing. Okay, well, what's that, what's the alternative? And so the, I think it's just so important that the community does understand the very specific purpose for this. And I hope it is the most cost-effective, but at the same time, understanding that if it is successful, it does help people in our community, basic needs. And again, thank you for being here and presenting. Thank you, Counselor. Councilor Cassett: Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. And thank you both for being here and really do want to thank your staff. As you said, Director Hammond Paul, these are issues that there really is no right answer. There's nothing that's going to be perfect. There's nothing that's going to be a silver bullet. This is a part of a larger strategy that we will now get to discuss the quality of life on the 16th. We did get, we had a wind out, not a rain out, but a wind out for the last one. So I think that will also be really important in context. I do want to highlight, Dr. Hammond Paul, what you stated about it's really about, you know, do we have unsheltered homeless versus people who are housed? And I know that the conversation, you know, just to piggyback off of what Counselor Garcia was saying around cost, is very important. Obviously, we know we need to utilize our resources well. However, what we're doing is not working. It's not working for us financially. I know, Julie, did we confirm that number, $14 million per year to not solve homelessness? And more importantly, it's not working for our community. The status quo is not something we can sustain. It's not something our constituents, whether they are housed or currently experiencing homelessness, can sustain. We have heard very loud and clear that we have to address this. We do not have a choice. That, you know, it's, we did, I would still choose this, but really when we look at what is one of the number one issues that we hear from our community, this is high on the list. I really appreciate all the work that's going into this, and I do want to speak a little bit to the community engagement process. Looking at the two sites that are located within District 4, both on Richards Avenue, I know we had discussed this, and I don't know if you guys have been able to get more information. And we've talked about decreased crime and other neighborhoods where pallet shelters, pallet communities have been stood up. Did we ever ascertain whether or not those neighborhoods were ones that were experiencing a high volume of crime or challenges caused by homelessness the way that we see along the Cerrillos Road Corridor? Because to me, that's, that's a really, if our baseline is, you know, not as high, and we see a decrease, my concern for the initial pilot was not to put in the Cerrillos Road Corridor because I was concerned about both public perception of its success as well as would it actually be successful if we are putting it in an environment that we are addressing, we have, we have plans to address, but that is currently experiencing a number of challenges. Mr. Mayor, Councilor Cassett, so that area is really interesting because in looking at CRM data over the last three years, there's actually been a number of encampment removals along that area. So we could use baseline data from what the CRM is telling us. There's also been quite a few break-ins and vandalism of the GCCC, not only facility, but also the vehicles. So when we talk about heightened security in those areas, we are also benefiting all of the surrounding areas. So because there's 24-hour security, there's going to be closed patrols from, or potential, based on the GNA, the Good Neighbor Agreement, potential for closed patrol in those areas really regularly. We'll see, hopefully, fingers crossed, and we will, according to the data, that the crime in that area will go down. Okay. And so, and so we have seen in other communities where we're seeing similar crime levels to what we are experiencing in this arena, they put in a pallet shelter, and it's, okay, glad to hear there's a comparable one. One additional piece, the cost conversation is, I think it's, when we talk, there's cost-saving or cost-reduction measures in addition because the unsheltered homeless, unsheltered homelessness has considerable cost to the city, including encampment cleanup, calls for service from police and fire EMS. And so, so we, while these do have costs associated with them, and I'll be very happy to work on a specific number per unit cost, Counselor Garcia, but there are also cost savings where we could expect reductions in other types of cost to the city. Right. And that was that, I believe that $14 million in what was that, 2022, something along those lines. So, and I, I think that how we continue to track those as we look at the success of these programs will be important. And you, you've all already heard my evaluation speech today, so you can apply it here as well. But I also, in regards to community meetings, I'm absolutely more than, more than happy and thrilled to help have these discussions. I think what would be really helpful if possible, if we are able to hear from not the service providers or the advocates, but neighbors in other communities, in other residential areas, whether it's Denver, Portland, if we're able to speak with any of them to understand what their experience looked like, I think that would be extremely helpful. When speaking with some of my constituents about this issue, you know, a month ago or so when this first came up, one of, one of the problems is that, you know, the only thing they've really truly experienced is a scenario that's not working for them. And it's really hard to imagine a scenario that would, given, you know, what you just said about the CRMs and and the calls for service in that area, they're high, and it, it has been a real challenge. So I think that would be important for the conversation. I think both for us to learn about when we're looking at these Good Neighbor Agreements, but also what did this look like for neighbors, you know, that that maybe were skeptical or were against this or even for it, whatever the case may be. But I think understanding what that looks like, I would love for, for that, my, my constituents to be able to have that conversation with individuals that have experienced this themselves. I don't know if that's possible. I know that working with our partners across the country will be necessary there. But Mr. Mayor, Councilor Cassett, we'll be happy to try and make that happen. I think there's a lot to bring those stories to bear. Okay, whether remotely or maybe even in person from some of our neighboring cities. That's wonderful. Thank you. I really, I really appreciate that effort. Just getting all the different, the different conversations going. You mentioned talking to the county for land and partnership. I, I would really like to see that happen. You know, it, it is a regional issue. I know that their, their constituents are our constituents. And we, you know, we passed a resolution, oh gosh, two, three years ago to talk about how we were going to be collaborative in this process. I know that you guys do a lot of collaboration that we don't see. But I, I would really like to be having very in-depth conversations with the county on this as well. I know it impacts them. And I think that we can really leverage, and I would really appreciate, you know, any assistance that they can provide. Are private locations out? Are we still having that conversation? Do we still have some potential communities that are exploring this, that are considering this, or not at this moment in time? And we are open for others to come forward. So Mr. Mayor, Councilor Cassett, I think that may be a legal question that we need to talk further on being able to use and develop private sites for some of these micro-communities. Okay. I mean, I mean, similar to like Christ Lutheran, you know, other faith-based communities. I know there was a conversation around nonprofit organizations had had an exception to our land use regulations in this regard. So that that is very much on the table. Okay. That, that piece, I think the, the private. Maybe we were a little confused by the, like, if somebody just owned their own open plot of land and wanted to utilize. Yeah, that that is different from our perspective than working with nonprofit organizations or faith-based organizations. Rephrasing, are we still doing that? Yes, we are. We are very open to and working towards finding additional sites that are not city-owned or publicly owned, but instead working with nonprofit and faith-based community providers, and are actively pursuing those. Okay, okay, thank you. And welcome more people to come to the table with potential sites. Well, and again, I think that as we have more, maybe some more of these communities will see that Christ Lutheran is not a one-off. You know, it's not an anomaly that we can replicate this in other areas and feel confident. I'm sure my 10 minutes is really close. I really do appreciate the target populations. I know when I was speaking with my constituents, that was a big difference for them. You know, when I was saying, you know, if this is families or veterans, you know, it does how the integration into the community helps. However, I think that one of the things about Christ Lutheran that we talked about was this being a no-barrier, and so finding a correct location, an appropriate location, which may not be a neighborhood, probably isn't a neighborhood, for individuals that are still struggling with or working with addiction. And we know that that is going to be an arena that we're going to need to work on. I think that the low-barrier aspect is so important. As I frequently tell people when they have concerns about this, I would much rather if somebody is going to be using a substance, that they one be somewhere that they're safe, but also if they're going to drop a needle, I don't want it in my kid's park. I don't want my children running around somewhere that there could be something harmful. So I think again, there is benefit to both the unhoused and the housed populations in all of these, and how we look at them from all those sides is going to be important. I will go ahead and stop for now. Thank you. You nailed the 10-minute mark perfectly. You were right on the money. Councilor Marworth: Thank you, Mayor. Just a quick question on your data that you started in the beginning. The 15 homeless veterans and the homeless youth number, those are outside of the 385 actively homeless number, correct? That's like an addition to. That's correct, Counselor. Okay, yeah. That's what I thought. Just wanted to clarify. Can you elaborate a little bit more on the technical review of the sites? And you have professional folks doing that. Can you just give us a little bit more? I know you covered that pretty quickly, but. So, Mr. Mayor, Councilor Romero Worth, so that's really looking at, and I believe we had talked about this previously, but looking at grading, sloping, installing utilities, seeing if it's feasibly, if it's feasible on a cost basis, right? If a site is going to take a million dollars to develop to make it usable, it's probably at this time not going to be, we probably would think about investing that kind of money elsewhere. So we're really looking at the two sites both infrastructurally, making sure that there's easements to get in and out and that, you know, it follows all the fire protocols. So there's this whole large set of kind of next steps and looking at the sites to make sure that both the residents are going to be safe and that we can put utilities and things like that in. And are you looking at, so the micro-community that we have that is successful is in District 2 at Christ Lutheran. One of the things that was done for that site, I think that has been helpful in making it a success, a lot of things happened, but is sort of fencing it and making sure that it's very contained. Is that something that is part of the technical review, what would be required to make sure that it's a secure area to protect the folks who are living there? So, Mr. Mayor, Councilor Romero Worth, that is definitely something that's going to be taken into consideration, as well as placement of things like security cameras and things like that. Okay. And I just lost my train of thought, so I'm going to go to a different question. The $14 million that Councilor Cassett brought up, she seemed very comfortable with what that number represented. And can you elaborate on that? So that $14 million was an estimate from a particular year on what the city spends outside of this kind of thing. We have homeless people and we, there are things we have to do, but it's not solving the underlying problem, is what I took that number to mean. Can you talk about it a little bit more? Yes, so Mr. Mayor, Councilor Romero Worth, when Emily came on board, she, our finance director, she asked each of the departments a number for how much it was costing for them to respond to issues of homelessness. And this was everything from encampment cleanups, which at that time we saw one of the largest encampment cleanups, which happened under the rail yard bridge. I believe it was costing the city $221,000 for both cleanup and removal of property that was under that bridge, as well as the cost in responding to folks who are currently living unsheltered, who may be, you know, in some form of distress. And it also looked into costs, the time around security and vandalism that was happening from around city facilities, whether that was things like, I think at the time the elevator had been set on fire down to the Sandal Law, which required a lot of repair. And individuals had lit a fire to keep warm during the winter months. And so all of those things were taken into account when we came up with that $14 million estimate. Thank you. I think that's a helpful reminder. I want to go back to the pallet community, the micro-community in District 2 at Christ Lutheran. The last time we had a big conversation about these communities, I didn't have a voice. And I think Councilor Cassett read this statistic. I'm curious if it's still true. There have been no calls for service at that site. Are you, is that just still accurate? Are you aware? Counselor Romero Worth, I'll, I want to verify with the Chiefs. Okay. Where I can say that, but I can say that they do know now the locations of it. Okay. But I would just like to, okay, I'd be interested in what that looks like. I think it's important. Or we'll say there is some complexity around the broader area data because it is next to the hospitals. So there are other types of calls for services that could get, unless you're looking at that specific location. So we do sometimes kind of circumference analyses for calls for service, but if we get it too broad, it'll capture a lot of stuff that happens at the hospital. Okay. And I noticed the site in, just the an additional site that's being looked at in District 2 is Plaza del Sol, where I, as I look at Google Maps, I'm having a hard time understanding where exactly you're thinking. Is there any way to provide more information about that? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Romero Worth, so I, I, we can in the study that was discussed last time, the affordable housing feasibility study, I believe the, the, and that's posted on the city's affordable housing website, the site information is accessible there. I'll send a follow-up email. Okay, I'm happy to look there. Great. And I too want to stress the opportunity for county collaboration. Happy to see you doing that. And I want to go back to that resolution that we passed in 2022, saying that we would collaborate in this area. It sounds like there's interest in there being collaboration between the city and county. I would note that actually the city and county do work together in a lot of different ways, particularly I will cite in an area that I'm very familiar with around water, our water systems, and how we meet the needs there and share the costs. And so I, and I think as Councilor Cassett noted, you know, our staffs work a lot with the county and then end up, you know, bringing things that we then endorse and embrace and implement, have you all implement. So I think there is a lot of county collaboration. Sometimes it may go unnoticed. And we did say in 2022, this was an area ripe for that. And I would just note, you know, we've got pallet shelters. Maybe they have land would be such a great thing to work together in this area. So I hope we can pursue that. Mr. Mayor, Councilor Romero Worth, the probably greatest tragedy of the Public Safety Power Shutoff that wasn't was that we had to cancel a meeting with the county to discuss exactly this. So we are working to get that back on the calendar because this is a major priority of ours, which is trying to find those areas of collaboration where we can combine what one group has with what another has to get to yes, right? And I think when we say ours, we mean, I mean, the county said they wanted to work with us in this area. We said we wanted to work with them in this area. So, you know, let's, let's work with each other in this area. Sounds like a great launching point for some of what everybody says they're looking for. So I just want to emphasize that. That's all I have for now, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councilor Faulkner, can you time yourself while you use your 10 minutes? Watching, sir. All right, we trust you. You have the floor. So one of the things that I would like to call on as a leader is that this problem is going to take all hands on deck. This is a sizable challenge, and I think sometimes we forget as leaders, and maybe the community forgets as well, there's a thing called the social contract, which means that the community also has to be a part of the problem-solving process. And so I know there's a lot of fear out there around what these pallet shelters look like. I personally pulled the numbers from the fire department around how many calls have gone out to the pallet shelters. There has been one, I think one police assist, but the rest have all just been related to health stuff. So these pallet shelters are not dangerous. And the reality is, is we have to all of us work together to solve this problem. The city cannot do it by itself. The community is going to have to lean into this as well. And I think to some degree, we need to remember that although there's crime around this issue and there's scary things around this issue that make people fearful, the reality is, is that we're only going to solve it if we remember that these are our fellow human beings and that this isn't, the city cannot solve this by itself. We need community to be a part of the problem-solving. And so as much as the community is calling to us to help problem-solve, and I think the pallet shelter plan is a really good plan, we need the community to also be leaders. We need the community to lean into this situation and for us to work on this together. Thank you. Thank you, Counselor. I appreciate that. And we'll go to my right to Councilor Lindell and then just continue. Thank you, Mayor. So can we put together a hopeful timeline? How long does it take us to, we've identified some sites. How long's it going to take us to do our community outreach, decide on, are we doing two, are we doing three? And I'm not asking you to give me the answer now, just can we put together a timeline of best of, because I think we better do it on a best of timeline, not drag our feet and, you know, not be pulling and tugging and let's get this done. And once we identify two or three sites, I'm not sure what our goal really is. What is our timeline for implementing and getting this up and running? So if you could give us a best of, because I'm shooting for best of. I don't. I don't want to drag our feet on this, and I think that the community needs to know. I'd like to see this Council make a commitment that we're not going to drag our feet on this, and we're going to make a commitment and get it done. So I don't really have a question for you, but thanks for getting that information to me. Thank you, Counselor. Councilor Garcia, you have the floor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Director Paim and Ms. Senses, for the information. We've had many, many conversations on this topic, and tonight is just one of the many, many more that we'll be having on how we're moving forward, not only with pallet shelters, but more importantly, how we're addressing homelessness as a city, how the city is investing resources to not only be proactive but ensure residents are living in a safe community. And what I mean by community, not just the streets, that means the parks, the recreational facilities, businesses. And I think right now, unfortunately, there are a lot of unhappy residents right now because of the challenges faced in the community. I mean, for example, I was at an encampment site today, and the neighboring property owner is faced with thousands of dollars of cleanup. It's not just the city that's faced with this; it's also private owners. And so how do we as a city be responsible and work to protect everybody? And so I guess one quick question in regards to the $14 million that solely wasn't for cleanup. I mean, there were also efforts like purchasing the hotel allocations from the affordable housing trust fund, because I don't want to give scare tactics to the public to say we either do this, or else it's going to cost us $14 million. There were investments made in that $14 million. Am I understanding that? Yeah, so I okay, so I just don't want us to think it's costing us $14 million to deal with encampments because we've also been investing in other measures. Now, to get down to brass tacks in regards to the vets, I know that through the presentation that the Veterans Advisory Committee identified 15 folks, but that's not the universe of unhoused vets in our city, is it? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Garcia, like most things, that's a number that was presented through the Veterans Advisory Board, and in reality, it's probably, I mean, in reality, it's much higher, right? And so the reason being is I don't want us to get into a situation where if we develop a health shelter community and we're able to house these 15 vets, then there is this great acclamation, "We've ended homelessness for veterans in Santa Fe." That absolutely will not be the truth. I mean, because even there was an article that came out a couple years ago where a veteran who is homeless made a statement, and he clearly said he doesn't want to be housed, and that's his right. And I, you know, but we don't want to be put in a position where we're making false claims to the public, especially for our veterans community. That is one of the biggest signs of disrespected folks that have given the ultimate sacrifice to this country. So I just want to caution that. As far as next steps, I echo Councilor Lindell in regards to we need to see a timeline. I think that was one thing that was missing from this presentation is ultimately seeing a timeline, not only for the counselors but for the public. That way, the public can be ultimately aware of when these community meetings are being had, and what they are, you know, because there was the two different types of engagement. The, it was like, I can't remember what it was called, robust community engagement, was that first citywide public engagement? So we need a better explain what that means, what that looks like, how folks are going to participate. But then to the district level conversations, absolutely will help. Let's get to work tomorrow to start to plan these, given that there are sites potentially identified for District 2. We need to start wrapping folks' heads around it and for that site so we can get more information around the public engagement process. Happy to work with you to start developing that because the sooner we get public engaged, the sooner we can address issues, concerns, and begin to have them buy into the process. It was mentioned the county is a partner, but we can't forget the state of New Mexico. They are also a huge partner in this. I know that the governor has committed to helping address this issue as well, and there are many dollars at the state level that can help us achieve the goals that we as a community are setting out. So let's not forget the state of New Mexico as well. This federal government's a different scenario right now. Maybe in the future, that could be an option. But as Councilor Faulkner said, this is an all-hands-on-deck effort. We can't leave any stone unturned as we're working to address this issue. The question around the site selection, it was mentioned, am I understanding correctly that is it the advisory board you formed is ultimately going to decide the sites, or can you help me understand that process? Is once the recommendation is made, is that going to come back before the governing body? What does that process look like? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Michael Garcia, thank you for the questions. With regard to the micro-community advisory board, they analyzed based on the four or so criteria that I had on the slide, which sites would be best to narrow down and remove to get us to a smaller number. Ultimately, we want to have the decision-making process and the selection-making process be one that's based on the technical feasibility of how we can get this done, and really then engage with communities and the council about socializing that those sites and making sure that people's voices are heard as we move forward with development. I think to Councilor Lindell's point earlier, and I will be very happy to hear other thoughts on how to pursue this, there is a, we're trying to figure out how we can move quickly and do it well with engagement, but at the same time, make sure that we are moving on the best timeline possible in a quick time. So we want to try and balance all those things at once. And our current process is going to be having a technical review from a contractor and a project management firm to help us of those five sites, like at least two that we can viably know that we are going to be able to turn into micro-communities quickly and cost-effectively. Okay, but the big question, who's making the final decision? Is it staff? Is it the Technical Review Committee? Is it the governing body? Who is making the final decision? I think what we will do is we will come back to governing body once we've gone through this next step of analysis and present the recommendations. Okay, to move forward and purpose, because again, you're presenting to us, but you're also presenting to the rest of the world right now, and I know these are questions that I get because ultimately folks want to participate in the process and anything we can do again to get to yes on this and to move this forward. Okay. I know we were working off of a list, but there's many, many, many more city-owned sites. Have we begun to explore any other sites besides that little teeny tiny ballpark we've been looking at? Because I think those are questions folks have asked, why, why specifically these when there are many others? And you mentioned there's insights you've looked into. Is there a plan to do an analysis on all city-owned sites? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Michael Garcia, thank you for the question. There's been a bunch of different types of analyses that we've done. One of them has looked at all city-owned sites. It's quite a large number. This was a great starting point, and one that we feel very comfortable with as a baseline because they were previously analyzed for affordable housing development. And I think one piece that I want to take the opportunity to kind of emphasize here is that these are temporary, and we're not building these as, you know, permanent fixtures in communities, but instead ways to improve a plot of land, get some utility out of having a stop-gap solution, but ultimately move these back into broader plans for development. So that's why we've focused on the ones that were analyzed for affordable housing. But I will also say that nothing is off the table for us. If people come forward with ideas, we will chase them down, and we will add them into our process. But we want to make sure that we're balancing more incoming with also not letting it bog down the speed because I do think, you know, the every day we wait on breaking ground, so to speak, compounds things that people are feeling in the community of trash and encampments. So we want to have as big a net as we can, but also make sure we're being decisive. Gotcha. And so last question I've got just because it came up around these are temporary, and the low barrier entry has been a topic as well tonight. And so I guess a question that came up just because I had a constituent who had their car stolen, and when it was recovered, there were multiple signs of paraphernalia, and I don't know what type of drugs, et cetera, were found in there. But ultimately, what happened was the car was totaled out by the insurance company because it was uninhabitable, and it provided a different outcome for that person. And so I'm looking at in the sense of these shelters, if it does, and I guess this is a legal question, Director Paim, and maybe we got to investigate this, does allowing for drug use in them allow, does not allow somebody to come in after them and use them? Does that put us at legal risk, et cetera? Because it's, you know, studies have shown that even the smallest amount of fentanyl can ultimately kill somebody, and that's the last thing I'd want is to allow somebody who's trying to improve their lives go into one of the pallet homes that was previously used, and they put themselves in a more dangerous situation. So I know we don't have the answer to that. It's more so planting a seed for us to ensure that we're keeping folks safe. That that's the ultimate goal here is not only the folks that are inhabiting the units but folks in the community. So look forward to working with you on this. I'll email you. Let's begin to coordinate for a District 2 meeting on the site that's being identified somewhat because again, this is something we really need to engage the community on. So thank you for all the work that went into this. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Counselor. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. Sorry, can I interrupt you for one sec? I apologize. I'm just noting for the record, it's a little after 7:00. We typically try to get to petitions from the floor at 7:00. There are three people, if I count myself, who still have a chance to say a few words on this subject. And so nobody's under a gun to rush, but I want to note for the public that we'll be a little bit late getting to petitions to the floor. Thank you, Mayor, and I'll be as quick as I can. I wanted to also just mention the timeline. I think that we have an idea of how the progression of this process looks, and I think that's, like, I know that I made some comments in prior committees about this, and I think that that's what would be beneficial to the community is kind of exposing them to how the timeline of progression has looked in the past, what we see as areas of improvement, and things that we would be doing differently so they have an idea of how that timeline may adjust. And I know that there's a lot of other factors that we're collecting right now, and there's people we're consulting with, but we do have that prior experience that I think could shine light on what that timeline looks like. So I just wanted to make that comment. And my big thing is sustainability. So I think as, you know, a lot of nonprofits, a lot of government agencies, we throw a lot of resources and we throw a lot of funding where it matters, which is supporting our community, but we often utilize those for the same community members over and over and over again. To me, that is not progress. So I just want to emphasize with this project that we're looking at sustainability efforts. When we get these individuals into transitional housing, how do we keep them from needing the level of resources that they needed previously? That's true progress, right? When we talk about housing the unhoused, them staying housed is where we really find success. And so I just want to make sure that we're looking at that piece of data because that's what matters. When we're talking about fiscal impact on the city, when we're reusing resources for the same individuals over and over again, that's not a good use of our money. If we're doing that, it means we have to do something different because what we're doing isn't working. I think that a lot of agencies that provide resources tend to do that. They're meeting people's needs, and like I said, I won't take away from that because I think that's great. But when that person's needs persist, then we're actually not reaching a goal of helping them. So with this, I just want to make sure that we kind of track those individuals. And I do have a question if there's a plan, because I want to have an understanding of what's the plan around sustainability. What's the plan when they go into transitional housing? What supports are we continuing or our partners are continuing to provide to those individuals so that they don't kind of fall back into that need again? Mayor: Counselor Chavez, thank you for that question. It's one, and there are two pieces to it that I'd like to touch. One is that is something that we are eagerly looking into, and there are a lot of systems already in place that are supposed to be tracking this and figuring this out. One of them is, I'll spare everybody the details of kind of the structure of all these things, but effectively a statewide database exists, and it's managed by the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness. So they in some ways own the data, and you can track flow. So when I say flow, it's people moving into a system, being currently unhoused, and then people moving out and being stabilized and housed. So that data system, again, that database is owned and managed by the New Mexico Coalition, and we're working to make sure the city has better access to that information. The second piece is we do have a platform that we invest in, which is the Connect program, which can play a similar function in that we can understand how people are using services in the community. So that can be both at a big level, we can see what types of services people are using, but also more at the individual level. And this isn't something that the city would themselves do, looking at individual clients, but it's what providers do, which is making sure that the people that they're serving are actually being moved progressively through a system as opposed to just placed. I'll answer your sustainability question in a little bit of a different way because I do think there's a physical asset sustainability that we have with these units. And I'll put on my other hat, which is as overseeing the Emergency Management function here, which is these are really great assets to own as a city. And I think I probably didn't do a great job previously of saying that it's these are actually okay to have in storage sometimes because it means that we can use them if we need. So during the potential Public Safety Power Shutoff that wasn't, my team and I were looking into how do we potentially convert the GAC to shelter 600 individuals. We can imagine a lot of instances where there's a disaster that we need to be able to stand up a unit quickly to support someone in need. So when we move towards having less of these serving the unhoused population, eventually we will still have them as assets that we can use for other needs. And that's a different type of sustainability now. And I see that being a positive use, and I see them as assets. I absolutely do. And I do want to work closely with you in really looking at that topic, though, of how as the city can we be leaders in monitoring and tracking the progress of individuals that are utilizing the extra resources that they can't provide for themselves and making it so they eventually don't need those resources? Because in fact, Santa Fe is very rich in resources. We have great community partners, we have even great private agency partners that are willing to give and give. So we're actually very rich in resources, but I think that we lack tracking how repeatedly those resources are used for the same purposes. And funding and funds can be lost in that process. And I think as a city, we could kind of lead in that. And then really looking at the sustainability and what we're trying to achieve. In this conversation right now, we're trying to achieve housing then housed. So how can we track it so that individuals that are seeking supports and being housed don't need those supports in the future? How do those wraparound services continue for them? How is their monitoring set for them so that they don't kind of fall into this unfortunate situation again? So I just really want to emphasize that because I think we talk a lot about our money being utilized effectively and how our community members are really concerned about that. But there's a huge part that we, or a huge piece of our resources, are being used for the same purpose over and over and over again. And a lot of that falls in your department, a lot of that falls in a lot of our nonprofits. It's not their money, it's nonprofits, but still, I think that we could stand up and be an example of this is how we create sustainable change. So it's not a Band-Aid fix as an immediate, but it's a lifelong fix so that we're actually repairing future for individuals that we see are seeking our services. So I would love to continue looking at that with you and figuring out how we could really set the example so that we could truly utilize how rich we are as a city in regards to resources. Thank you. Counselor: Thank you, Counselor Castro. You have the floor. Muchas. And I'm going to take the opportunity to be a broken record for our new city manager and say that performance-based budgeting is a way that we could maybe keep tabs on that and encourage people to do great work that they keep tabs on. So that's just my little plug. Mayor: Counselor Castro, thank you for the question. And these are really intended to be temporary assets and temporarily deployed. If we're having these things in communities for more than four years or five years, then they're not doing their job. And yes, they are intended for veterans, families, sober individuals. As we're currently mapping out, that's the populations that we're looking to place in there, and families and youth as well. Mayor: Counselor Castro, thank you. So the intention is to have good neighbor agreements in every location that a site is, and those agreements involve the community, the direct community, in the conversation around how these sites are managed and function. In addition, as you mentioned, it is correct that we have seen instances, and the data shows that crime is sometimes and often reduced in areas where these micro-communities are. So those are both accurate. Yes, I'm going to be very, very brief. I think I appreciate enormously the presentation, the update, and the ongoing engagement that will take place not only with the members of the governing body but with the community at large and every respect as you described it. And the formulation of the advisory committee, I think, is a huge first step. There's a lot to be said about our strategy that's in place for addressing homelessness large and in a comprehensive way. But I don't want to lose one of the nuggets that was in your presentation. Our Veterans Advisory Board tells us they have the names of 15 veterans. This is the benefit of a by-name list. This is why we are part of Built for Zero as a model, the only model that I know nationally and internationally that has actually gotten to functional zero in homelessness. We have 15 names of veterans who live in our community and who are homeless. This is not a question for you. This is a call for action for this community, for the state, for the county, for nonprofits, for faith-based organizations. We are a city that frequently, if not every single day, says how much we appreciate the men and women who have gone into the service to protect us, and yet we have 15 veterans whose names we know who are homeless. I think we have an urgent requirement to get 15 veterans off the streets and into a pallet community to serve them specifically. And if we can't do that in the next two months, we should be very much ashamed of ourselves, not just as a city, but as a state and as a county and as a region. Let's make a commitment that within two months we will find a site, not necessarily city-owned, could be a state site, could be a Veterans Administration site, could be a county site, it could be a faith community site. Let's make a commitment that within two months we will have a pallet community that takes 15 veterans whose names we know and finds a safe and compassionate and constructive place for them to have housing. That to me is what I take away from your very, very outstanding presentation. But let's do one thing rapidly and let's focus on one by-name group and get them housed. Thank you. Counselor Garcia: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I hesitate to say this, but I got to, in honor of veterans, I sure hope this doesn't go the way of the veterans banners that this administration just made into a debacle. Mayor: I think that's out of order. Is there anybody else who wishes to say something about this, about this issue? Thank you for being here tonight, and I will entertain a motion to move now to the petitions from the floor. Motion: So moved. Second: Second. Mayor: So the motion is to move to petitions from the floor and then return to our regular order. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll on that? Clerk: Counselor Faulkner. Counselor Lee Garcia. Counselor Lee Garcia: Yes. Clerk: Counselor Michael Garcia. Counselor Michael Garcia: Yes. Clerk: Counselor Lindell. She has been excused for the rest of the evening. Counselor Romero Worth. Counselor Cassett. Counselor Cassett: Yes. Clerk: Counselor Castro. Counselor Castro: Yes. Clerk: Counselor Chavez. Counselor Chavez: Yes. Clerk: Mayor Weaver. Mayor: Yes. Motion. So I will now entertain anyone who is here to speak to any topic that is not a public hearing item. I don't know that we have any, but any subject you would like to speak to the governing body on. And the city clerk will keep the clock so that everybody is treated equally and is given a chance for a two-minute presentation to the governing body. If you'll just give us your name, we'll start the clock. Speaker: Hello, yes. My name is Eric Quintas. I was here about, I don't know, a month ago or so. My family goes back 400 years here in Santa Fe. Mr. Mayor, ladies and gentlemen of the council, I'm going to discuss the Obelisk, the Soldiers Monument built in 1867, the very monument that was erected primarily to honor the defeat of the Confederate Army at Glorieta Pass, you know, the Confederate Army that was fighting to continue slavery. Judge Wilson's ruling states rebuilding the monument or follow a rarely used state historic preservation process instead of appealing this decision. You have decided to incorporate yet another study, a $100,000 study. It likely would cost less to appeal. I'm sure some of you think that it will not cost $100,000. This government, who by the way, works for us, we don't. work for you to spend less than appropriate amounts. It is more than likely the government will overspend. Presently, I understand this task has been assigned to the City Manager, who is not from New Mexico, and he does not understand the significance of this monument as perhaps you do not either, Mr. Weber. The Union defeated the Confederate Army was and still is a positive outcome that was and should be honored on the Plaza. Santa Fe was a celebrated tricultural city. Due to your unilateral choice to allow the monument's destruction, you have decreased the divide amongst the people of Santa Fe. You simply could have allowed the police to do their job, and we would not be in this situation. Currently, you're electing to double down and have stated, "I think what we are looking for is an outcome that the community can get behind." I don't believe you, or you wouldn't be doubling down. I believe you are seeking the outcome you prefer. Preserving the history of Santa Fe is essential for the people from here, apparently not for the people who move here. The historic monument on the Historic Plaza is the outcome that people can get behind. Why would you want to move this to a cemetery to bury a part of Santa Fe's history and of the Civil War? This is embarrassing. Let's move this to a cemetery and bury this part of Santa Fe's history. It's senseless, and quite frankly, the symbology of it is gross. It would likely cost less to put the monument back on the Plaza than to continue this charade. I ask you and the City Council to install it in its rightful place back on the Plaza. If you don't like the monument, then don't look at it. From discussions I've had all around Santa Fe, this will certainly be an extreme minority. Furthermore, Mr. Weber, your unilateral choice to dictate this should dictate that you pay for this reinstallation. Thank you, sir. Hi, my name is Danny Katz. I'm speaking on a couple issues today. I hear you guys talking about the homeless situation and saying it's an all-hands-on-deck situation that the community needs to lean in, but I don't hear you talking about the root cause, which is the vast and over-the-top incentives that the City of Santa Fe provides to the homeless that has people moving here, drug addicts moving here from all over the country because of all the free services that they're going to get. So I look forward to addressing that. I do have a solution that I think would help in terms of using taxpayer money to pay for these pallet houses for the homeless. There's this whole recycling issue where when people recycle and things are dirty or the labels are still on them, all of that just gets thrown into a landfill. Why don't we have the people who are being given free housing and free services work at the recycling center to wash out containers, to remove labels, which will improve our city's recycling, improve our environmentalism, and even out the exchange. Number two, as I mentioned last month, we still have over 3,000 rental units that are not available to the people who live and work in this community because they're for VRBO and Airbnb as well. That's over 3,000 paying customers who are not using our hotels. It is a lose-lose. If people need to make money, they can rent out their casitas and their rooms to people who live here. We need to outlaw Airbnb and VRBO. Regarding the obelisk, I find it amazing that since 2020, we haven't had enough money to remove the graffiti that is defacing the statue in the center of our city, which people come to from all over the world. So we have no dignity, we have no self-respect, just continued demoralization because of the graffiti that's still there. But you guys have dictated among yourselves, not representative of the will of the people, that you have $100,000 to give to someone to think about or study whether we should move it. As well, you're having all your meetings about the obelisk behind closed doors in clear violation of the Open Meetings Act. You work for us. Your job is to represent the will of the people. You don't know the will of the people when these meetings are being held behind closed doors, and I don't recall being asked to vote on whether we wanted to move the obelisk to the cemetery instead of restoring it back to where it belongs. Thank you so much. Council members, my name is Jebediah. I speak words on behalf of my neighbors in the subdivision, which is situated right next door to one of the two sites, if not both of the two sites, that are currently being contemplated for the pallet shelter home situation. Now, one of our council members that I was listening to on the radio as I was driving over here this morning said that she had reached out to her constituents and solicited. I've just now polled five of my neighbors. None of us have been in contact or were contacted by our council member. One of my neighbors has just moved out, and it's because of the homeless situation that places the very same site right next door to our property, to our subdivision. I live 100 feet from that property line. I see the homeless encampments every day in that site area. They come through the neighborhoods. They deal the drugs. I find needles. We're cleaning up after them. We called the city to try to get the city to come and clear out the trash and the human waste and the fire, leftover fire and trash that plagues that site. We rarely get help. We're not being heard, and the area is not safe. One of my neighbors is the one who just moved out. They're putting their home up for sale, and they moved out because of the homeless who come through and are a constant problem, not only as a migrant in the neighborhood every night, every day, but also encamped out in that area. We are on the other side of the kitchen subdivision. It's yet another, it's a stage coach apartments, which is transitional housing for the homeless, for those who have come from challenging situations. I would ask the city, please open your doors, open other sites. Help us as hardworking, taxpaying citizens to maintain our neighborhood, not be surrounded of our values and our lifestyles, our families put at risk. Thank you. Thank you. Stephanie Benan. Although I'd like to say some things about the pallet house, I'm not going to. I do agree with Councilor Garcia that the most disrespectful thing that you can do is to lie to somebody, and I've been consistently lied to by the City of Santa Fe in this lawsuit that I have. And again, just recently, that is last Thursday, the city began to find a receipt that actually was signed on. So here's a purchase order that, and I sent these to you so you have these, and I would ask that you read them. There's no signature or date as to when it was accepted. I sent you also a contract. There's no signature. It's not valid until it's signed. McCue and McCarthy have been in receipt since May of 2024 with responses from Fitness Superstore that clearly said they did not make a plan in 2018 for the fitness, for the weight room at Pets. They did not make one in 2021. They don't have any contracts, any invoices, any purchase orders to show that Fitness Superstore was hired. And yet, just the other day, Mr. Hatcher sent a letter that said, although, so Greg Fernandez, and Greg Fernandez has been all over the place in his answers, flipping, flopping all over. He now recalls 14 months later that Jerry Reynal having a diagram that was never supplied to the city here. In the second supplemental answer that was 57 pages submitted to the court on Friday, that we paid for, it says, "The vendor, the city did not determine the placement of the equipment, but relied on the expertise of the vendor. The city was never shown any plan, schematic, or diagram. The city was told by salesperson vendor Larry Reynal that he did have a plan, but Fitness Superstore's responses say there never was a plan. They never were hired, and your lawyers that we're paying big bucks to have known that since May of 2024. You don't have a record. You can't prove it. You can say things till you're blue in the face, but the court cases require a written record. It is time for the city to sit down and talk to me about settlement, talk about damages, rather than jerking me around and telling me that I was supposed to know that something wasn't in the right place 30 feet from where I entered the pool, that I should have requested this plan that apparently doesn't even exist right away. But I did request a film of the weight room on the morning that I was injured, and the city's cameras, after paying $2.5 million and taking 2.5 years to reopen Pets, those cameras weren't working on that day. Two months later, thank you. I sent you a, excuse me, I sent you, you didn't cut anybody else off, and they went over two minutes, so I'm sorry, but you didn't let me finish, and now I'm really, you know, you really do this all the time, Mr. Weber, and it's really stressing to me, but I actually filed a tort claim within five months of this, of the Pets reopening, and so you were on notice that all those documents needed to be preserved, and there's none preserved. Thank you. Mayor: Is there anybody else here in the chamber who'd like to take two minutes and speak to the governing body on any matter whatsoever? This would be a time to come forward, or if somebody's on the Zoom, they could also take two minutes to speak on any subject. Mayor: We do have one attendee with their hand up, Rachel Thompson. I'm going to allow you to talk. Rachel Thompson: Yeah, thank you. My name is Rachel Thompson, and I live at 3306 Camino Seco Vista. And I have allergies, excuse me. I did want to comment on the presentation about pallet shelters, which was really, really excellent. But first, I just want to request evidence for the claim a woman made who spoke before me that people are being attracted from all over the country to come and be homeless in Santa Fe because of all of the goodies we provide. I have to say, I've worked quite a lot with homeless people, and I don't think that's the case at all, and it really bothers me when people make sweeping claims without providing any evidence. I really think it's important when we have an advisory board that we know who is on the advisory board, and I don't say that with any kind of sense of suspicion. I just think that in the past, we've had kind of committees and boards and ad hoc things, and we never really can find out who's on them. So I understand that there is a mix of providers and, I don't know, mental health professionals and so forth, but I would like, and I don't know that this relates to the Open Meeting Act, whether the meetings of this group should be publicized, but I think that the citizens deserve to know exactly who is on this advisory board, so I hope that you'll do something about that. I also just want to comment that, you know, throughout all of the stuff about, you know, homelessness and pallet shelters and everything, I really feel like there's some people who are MIA, and I want to say that I wonder where are the very senior executives of Life Link, for instance, or St. Elizabeth's. I feel that Karina Lopez at Pets has taken so much, has had so many attacks on her, and but God, she keeps showing up and talking to people, being open. And the other thing is that we have seniors. Veterans are wonderful, but they're, they're pretty much men, whereas we know that the aging population is disproportionately women. And I don't even think our coordinated entry system that's part of the Coalition to End Homelessness, I don't think HUD databases and so forth even track seniors, and I, I just wish for the, you know, in favor of compassion. I know that fiscal responsibility is important, but that there are a lot of aging people on our street and a growing number, and they need community. They often don't have families. They usually don't have families, community. So thank you very much. Mayor: Thank you very much. Is there anyone else in the Zoom room who wants to speak? There is no one else with their hand. All right, and one last try. Anybody here in the council chamber who hasn't had a chance to come forward and take two minutes to talk about whatever is on your mind? All right, in that case, we'll go back to the regular order. Madame Clerk, if you'll take us to the next item on the agenda, item 11, Matters from the City Manager. Not sure your button is pushed there, Mr. City Manager. Oh, it was already on. Then there you go. That's why I couldn't make it go on. It was already on. Yes, thank you very much. I've got a couple of lists here of employees that deserve some recognition. The first one that I want to take a minute and acknowledge are the list of employees in February who celebrated years of service anniversaries with the city. I want to say that I think it, I guess it's the practice to acknowledge them at the meetings, and I want to do that. We're also going to start doing a quarterly reception to honor all these people. We want to make a little bigger deal out of it, and we certainly, we would love to have the Mayor and City Councilors attend to the extent that you're able to do so. But let me just very quickly, appropriately go through and acknowledge these wonderful employees that have got significant years of service with the city. We have a 25-year employee in February, John Vill from Transit Driver in Community Services. We have a 20-year employee, Maria Finley, Administrative Manager, also in Community Services. We have two 15-year employees, Amanda Montano, Police Captain, and Sergio Sis in Environmental Services. And we have one 10-year employee, Melissa McDonald, our great director in Parks at Public Works. And then the rest of these employees are all five-year honorees: Dylan Bass, Patrick Baca, John Delmar, Christopher Francisco, Ralph Lopez, Joshua Kidding, Daniel Montoya. Oh, we've got a bunch. Anthony Ratliff, Nathan Baca, Matthew Madrid, Isaac Mantras, Daniel Ojinaga, hopefully that's close. Adrian Per, Israel Rosales Molina, Gabriel Garcia, Ryan Gonzalez, Matthew Petski, and Lawrence Rivera. And we thank them all for their significant contributions to this community. Thank you. And again, we're going to honor them some more, and we'd like to have you join us. I also have a list of all the new employees in the month of February. Are you interested in having me read 29 names? Is that, we, I wish we could put them up on the wall, but okay, very quickly. Joshua, oh boy, this is a good one. Joshua Van Slamr, Michael Marant, Benjamin Jensen, Morgan Cynthia Abbott, Ran Carruth, Megan Meeks, Uro Munis, Luis Buos, Robert Kabi, William Callus, Blair Britt, Sean Malugin or Mugan, Christopher Lopez, Rod Gould, Christopher Lura, Daniel Brown, Tevin Dice, Michael Romero, Dominic Vasquez, Matthew Romero, Brandon Holly, Martin Pon, T, oh boy, Tel, Danny Vill, somebody named Mark Scott, Carol Grubby, Groby, Groby, A B, Camille Marquez, Claire Jordy, Angelina Baca, and Sophia Dennis. That's a lot of new employees in one month. Yeah, thank you. And I wanted to say that we're going to have more because we had such a wonderful rapid hire event this weekend on Saturday. There were so many people who showed up. I'm going to let the, I'm sure the Mayor's going to mention it, so I'm not going to take your thunder, but 37 new offers of employment in that one event. And so we are really filling some vacancies, and that's really important. But it's really encouraging to see so many local people working so hard to improve their lot and to improve their community. But we were very pleased with that entire event, and I'm going to stop there. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Madame Clerk, what's next? Item 12, Matters from the City Attorney. Thank you, Mayor, Weber, Councilors. I did just want to flag that I sent out this evening some of the recent filings from the city and some of the city's litigation that's been progressing. In particular, the excise tax appellate brief from the city and three of the four anticipated Amici briefs. The city is being supported by the New Mexico Center for Housing Law in a brief authored by one of the New Mexico A&M School of Law professors, Elizabeth Elia. Home is also filing, or also has already filed an Amicus brief, and the International Municipal Lawyers Association has filed their brief. We anticipate one more Amicus brief, and that's from the Santa Fe Housing Action Coalition. So the briefing for that appeal will be complete in April. You also have the first amended complaint in the San Francisco versus Trump case. That was the case that was on the agenda during the last governing body meeting, and that is challenging executive orders restricting federal funding and threats of civil and criminal enforcement that violate the anti-commandeering principle, which is inherent in the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. And we were joined with a number of additional municipalities and counties. There's now 16 local governments that are participating in that lawsuit. And there's also a temporary restraining order that is being filed, or was filed, or will be filed very soon, actually. And that's based on all those communities' need for a rapid resolution of that matter. And so that, that hopefully will get addressed soon. And then we did also file this week challenging the ability of the AmeriCorps to require the city to certify compliance with all administrative executive orders, and that its Foster Grandparent Program, Senior Companions Program, and Retired and Senior Volunteer Program, they were requiring the city to certify that those programs do not include any activities that promote DEI. So we're also challenging their ability to add those types of restrictions to that grant without any sort of, one, not defining what those activities are, and then two, without having them as part of the Congressional authority for that funding source and that program. So we are being assisted with the Public Rights Project, which is a nonprofit that supports city and civil liberties litigation in that. So that's been very helpful. And if you have any questions, I'm happy to speak with you one-on-one. Thank you. Thank you. Item 14, Matters from the City Clerk. I have a couple things I wanted to tell you all about. One is staffing. So I wanted to give you all an update. We are able to kind of do some things that I'm pretty proud of, which is we got to reclassify Jocelyn as a Deputy City Clerk. So she is now my deputy. We got to reclassify Javier V. Hill as an Assistant City Clerk. We also are having an administrative assistant join us on Monday, Julie Rasmussen. We were able to place Aaron Pulsifer into the Public and Community Relations Officer position, which means we're going to have to find a website content and social media developer. So if you know any people who are interested in that, please send them our way. We have filled our Constituent Services Division team, which I'm really excited about. The City Manager talked about Michael Marant. He's our newest Constituent Services Specialist and our Project Administrator, who's our event coordinator, Simon Satell, who will be joining us. So those are some exciting things. Our Easter countdown, we're a month out. So we have our eggs that have been shipped in, 55,000 toys and candy eggs. And I also wanted to mention that the Communications team has been working on doing YouTube shorts. And so if you look at YouTube, you'll see little videos that document events that have been happening. There are some fun events that you can see have been happening, like ribbon cuttings and the UNESCO 20-year celebration. So check those out and send them around. Tell them, tell us what you think about them. And I think that is it. Thank you. Thank you, Madame Clerk. I think we'll go to Communications from the Governing Body, and we'll just get right to it. And I'll start. Am I right with Councilor Castro? You're going to pass. All right, Councilor Travis. Thank you, Mayor. I do want to give a shout-out to our City Manager. I think you've done a wonderful job. Your communication is amazing. Some of the things that you've started, for example, just your summary before meeting that you emailed to us, I think that it just helps us all be on the same page. So I think you're promoting unity amongst this governing body very, very early on, and I want to say I appreciate that. So thank you. And then I want to shout out, so how do I say this? So in 2018, when I was principal at Cesar Chavez Elementary School, I met a six-year-old boy and his brothers. And this six-year-old boy and his brothers became very, very close to me. And I remember him showing up to school late sometimes, but coming up to me and running and saying, "Miss Amanda, can I please have a hug?" It just so happens that I have the honor of saying that this six-year-old boy is now my bonus son. And he has been living with me since December and has completed a piece of my heart that I never knew was missing. So I have a great love for him, and I have a great love for his brothers. But this six-year-old boy now turns 13 years old on the 26th of March. And we're having a big birthday party for him and his best friend, who happens to be my son, this Saturday. I just want to publicly say that he has a heart of gold, a beauty that is hard to go unnoticed, and I know he's going to do amazing things. And I just want to publicly say to him that, as I've said in the past, whether it's two weeks from now or 20 years or 40 years, he comes knocking on my door, he will always have a home with me. I love him dearly, and I hope he has the best birthday he's ever had with me this weekend. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Garcia, you have the floor, sir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I, as well, would like to thank City Manager Scott. I think I took him on his first arroyo tour today when we were visiting the site of what used to be an encampment. It got cleared out over the last couple days. But hopefully, he didn't end up with any stickers in your shoes or socks. I know it was some high weeds over there. So thank you for taking the trek and meeting with the concerned residents. And yeah, I was there in jeans and boots, and he was in the attire he's wearing now. So thank you. I mean, thank you so much. And I appreciate all the work that you're going to be doing to work with us to get that city property in order and make it safe. So thank you so much. That's all I got, Mr. Mayor. Very good. Thank you. Councilor Faulkner, directly go to you. So I also want to thank the new City Manager. Every interaction we've had, I have truly enjoyed. And I think you bring so much experience to the city that we really need some guidance on right now. And so I just appreciate your willingness to have conversations and your expertise, and I'm just so glad that you're part of the city. I also would like to say that I will be looking forward to working with the administration and the City Manager and the Finance Chair on making the finance, the budgeting process, more transparent. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean, there's, I think there's ways we can find common ground and support the administration and also get a little more information on the budget. And so I've had conversations with the Mayor and the Finance Chair and the City Manager, and I do think there's a way we can make the budget process a little more transparent for everybody. So I appreciate all of you having those conversations. Thank you. Councilor Mayor Worth. Thank you, Mayor. I'm, I want to flag for anybody who's interested, a presentation that was given to the Finance Committee on Monday about our gross receipts tax revenues, the history of those revenues. I know Councilor Cassidy has been flagging presentations at the Quality of Life Committee. I think this is an interesting one that was given to us at the Finance Committee as kind of a lead-up to the budget. what our revenue sources are from gross receipts, how they've done historically, and how they compare to some of the large cities around us. If anybody's interested in that, I just want to flag that it's there on our YouTube channel. Thank you, Mayor. **Councilor Cassutt:** Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. I will continue the committee presentation conversation. We were supposed to have a presentation on the overall strategy to address homelessness in the city. However, for what Director Hammon-Paul kept referring to as "the emergency that wasn't," we had to cancel that. So that has been rescheduled to our next Quality of Life Committee meeting. Upcoming, we will also be having presentations on the updates of Midtown, which I know many people are very interested in. And then, actually, at the Economic Development Advisory Committee, which you can attend in person, we do have a presentation on the Main Street program coming forward, I believe, in April. So that will be a really interesting conversation to have at EDAC. I wanted to wish Councilor Faulkner a happy belated birthday last week. I hope that you had a wonderful time, and happy birthday. We will continue to celebrate you. We've got a lot of fun March birthdays in this governing body. And then I will continue the praise of Mr. Scott. I really, truly have appreciated everything that you've brought to the city, and I agree with Councilor Travis that that kind of synopsis of some of the things that came up in committee. Thank you for attending our committee meetings. I know a lot happens there, and we try to, as Councilor Mayworth and I say, "do too much work in committee." But really, wanting to be having those robust discussions in committee, since obviously we always have so much on our governing body agenda. So thank you for attending. Really, truly appreciate it, and thank you for all the work that you've given so far. We're very happy to have you. Thank you, Mayor. **Councilor Garcia:** Mayor, I'd also like to extend my gratitude to the city manager and welcome again in regards to good communication to us, and looking forward to the future in regards to that open communication. In regards to Councilor Faulkner's points, and I think this goes down towards full transparency over how can we be involved, aside from just hearing it at Finance or our final governing body for our budgets. Going back to the conversation that we just had with Director Henry Hammon-Paul, it's really important as a governing body that does vote on funds that we know where everything is placed, and I think that's very important. So I do appreciate bringing that up. And lastly, I would like to mention something. Today, there was a very large police presence on Airport Road. There were a lot of police officers from different jurisdictions. They were doing a training exercise, and there was a lot of fear in the community over possible ICE in the area. But I think we got that clarified with many of them that thought it was something other than what it was. So if there's ever any of those questions, please reach out to us as your representatives. It was actually right in front of my business, so I was able to go out there and address and ask them what was going on, and they clarified very respectfully that they were just there doing some training exercises with radar detection. Anyways, lastly, I'll just say we won't be here next week, and I wish my lovely wife a happy, happy birthday next Wednesday. And that's all I have, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. **Mayor:** Thank you. I have a few items I'd like to mention. One, I want to give a big salute to the entire city team that was so responsive to the potential electrical plug-pulling, the emergency cut-off of energy. It didn't happen, but the work that was done by our emergency management team, by the city manager, by all parts of the city who had to come together and be prepared in case there was an electrical suspension, really demonstrated how the people in the city government work together and work across department boundaries. No egos, no barriers, but great collaboration and preparation. Ultimately, the emergency did not manifest, but it was a great exercise, and we learned a lot from it. There are upcoming after-action reviews and a survey out right now to department heads saying, "What did you learn? What could we do better?" I think we will constantly improve in our emergency preparedness because we take these things so seriously. Also, a great round of applause to Regina Re for the enormously, the tremendous amount of work she put in. We were all very saddened by the deaths of Gene Hackman and his wife, and what it meant for Regina was a lot of calls and requests from television stations, newspapers, national publications, international publications. She handled it all absolutely flawlessly and with great professionalism and dignity. And I think we all feel sad for the loss of such a great actor and members of the community, but we also know that we really, as a community, respected them and gave them the kind of recognition they deserve. And Regina coordinated so much of that. On that note, I will give a round of applause to the folks at Violet Crown who are hosting a Gene Hackman retrospective. If you're a Gene Hackman fan like I am, they're going to show some of his great films that really do represent some of the greatest acting I've ever seen. So if you want to continue to give Gene Hackman your respects, go see one of these movies. The city manager mentioned the rapid hire event, and that was spectacular. The Teen Center was filled with job applicants and with our own departments. Thirty-seven offer letters, all conducted without the benefit of IT because Tyler had an interruption of service. So our team was doing job offers the old-fashioned way with pencil and paper and taking people's names. KSWV was there broadcasting live, and I think a lot of people, for some of the job applicants, but also some of the residents who came by to see what was going on, it was the first time they'd ever been in the Teen Center, and they were all not only impressed by the rapid hiring opportunity, but also by what an amazing first-class facility that is for our teens. A lot of offers made. Transit was well represented. Lifeguards were well represented. A lot of drivers for Environmental Services. So it takes a lot of work to put that on and make it look easy, and our team really did a spectacular job. HR and then all the departments that were there did a great, great job of representing the city and making job offers that will help staff up important functions that really need support. Upcoming activities: I know many of us will be at the first practice at the South Park this Saturday. There's also on Sunday a chance to meet the new executive director of the Friends of the Library, which does great work to support one of our most visited city facilities, the libraries. Tomorrow morning, there's a coffee and collaboration that Economic Development continues to promote ways for people to come together and build our local economy. So there's a lot going on. I won't dwell on the fact that Monday is St. Patrick's Day, and I don't know that we have any fountains to turn green like other cities do, but it's a good thing to celebrate the Irish on their day. So have a good time on Monday as well. And thanks to everybody for the good words about our city manager. I think they are well-earned, well-deserved. I think we will continue to benefit from Mr. Scott's years of experience and his steady hand, and I feel like we're all moving forward as a group because of the evenness of his approach to being the city manager. So, Mr. Scott, thank you. I don't know what day you're celebrating. For a while, were you keeping track? But maybe at some point you stop knowing the exact number of days and just blend into the job. My goal is to learn how to use the microphone. So that's my report. Thank you, everybody. What's up next, Madam Clerk? **Clerk:** Item 16a: Introduction of legislation. Consideration of Resolution Number TBD, sponsored by Councilor Alma Castro, a resolution authorizing the sale and consumption of beer and wine during the 2025 Railyard Plaza Summer Scene Concerts on June 5th, 2025; June 6th, 2025; June 12th, 2025; June 13th, 2025; June 19th, 2025; June 20th, 2025; June 26th, 2025; July 18th, 2025; July 25th, 2025; August 1st, 2025; August 8th, 2025; August 22nd, 2025; and August 29th, 2025, pursuant to Subsection 23-6.2 C SFCC 1987. **Councilor Castro:** Would you like to speak to this? No, so for this, at the next resolution, I just want to point out that we have quite a few alcohol resolutions, and so we are working on maybe offloading some of that work from staff and maybe making a resolution to be able to pass all of these all at once. As you can see, there are many dates of our series. **Mayor:** Thank you, Madam Clerk. What's the next item? **Clerk:** Item 16b: Consideration of Resolution Number TBD, sponsored by Councilor Alma Castro, a resolution approving the consumption of beer and wine during Site Santa Fe's Annual Gala Dinner Event on June 18th, 2025, at the Roda and the Railyard Park, pursuant to Subsection 23-6.2 C SFCC 1987, and rescinding the approval for consumption on June 26th, 2025, which was granted in resolution. So you're good. **Mayor:** All right, next item, please. **Clerk:** Item 16c: Consideration of Resolution Number TBD, sponsored by Councilor Amanda Chavez, a resolution authorizing representatives and agents for an agreement with the New Mexico Environment Department regarding Agreement Number SA-I 2457 DGF to plan, design, and construct improvements on HZ Road, including a sewer line south of Airport Road, to improve residential septic systems. **Councilor Chavez:** I think it speaks for itself, Mayor. **Mayor:** Thank you. Next item, Madam Clerk. **Clerk:** We go to 18: Public comment on bills. First public comment, no action. 18a: Consideration of Bill Number 2025-TBD, sponsored by Councilor Garcia and Amanda Chavez, a bill amending Ordinance Number 2024-6 to approve three individual loan agreements with the New Mexico Environmental Department to be paid with revenues from each system respectively: one, a Wastewater Project Loan Agreement; two, a Water Project Loan Agreement; and three, a Solid Waste Collection Project Loan Agreement, incorporating defections and covenants relating to wastewater, water, and wastewater system debt obligations in each loan agreement respectfully by reference herein, ratifying prior action consistent with the provisions hereof, and repealing prior action inconsistent with the provisions hereof, but only to the extent of such inconsistency. **Mayor:** Thank you. This is an opportunity for first public comment. If anybody here would like to come take two minutes to address this bill, now would be the time to do it. Okay. Is there anybody on the Zoom room who has a hand up to speak to this? **Clerk:** No one is in the Zoom room. **Mayor:** All right, let's try the next item. **Clerk:** Item 18b: Consideration of Bill Number 2025-TBD, sponsored by Mayor Ellen Weber, a bill regarding annual budgets, including multi-year appropriations, amending Section 11-2.1 to conform to the city's charter, establish multi-year appropriations for capital outlay, grant-funded projects, and special appropriations, effective December 31st, 2025, amending Section 11-2.4 to sunset the Finance Director budget amendment authority to carry over certain unexpended appropriations into the next fiscal year. **Mayor:** And this is an opportunity for first public comment. If anyone here wants to come up and speak to this item for two minutes. The clerk will keep the time. Hold on one second. Michael, will you start the clock? Stephanie Benat: Given the lackadaisical recordkeeping that I've received on contracts without being signed, and some that were supposedly carried from 2018 but they were going to be executed in 2021 with no agreement, nothing in writing, I'm a little concerned about the multi-year aspect of this bill and how you will keep track of that, and whether the entity that you're entering into the contract with will be functional in, say, five years if it's a five-year contract. So, I guess it's the multi-year part that concerns me, not so much carrying over unexpended funds, but keeping track of multi-year contracts, especially when your staff changes a lot. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else want to come speak to this bill? Now is the time. And I assume there's still not anyone in the Zoom. Okay, correct. Next item, Madam Clerk. 18C: Consideration of Bill Number 225-924-5527, an ordinance amending Section 2-19.1 of the City Code to extend the sunset date for the use of funds in the Affordable Housing Trust Fund from December 31st, 2025 to December 31st, 2030. Again, is there anyone here who wants to address this bill for two minutes? This is the time to speak up. So, Madam Clerk, take us to the next item if you would, please. Next item is 21: Appointments. 21A: Santa Fe River Commission. Jake Lyon, reappointment, term ending February 2028. Heidi Kingle, reappointment, term ending February 2028. Karen Jackson, appointment, term ending July, sorry, February 2028. Is there a motion? Move to approve. Second. Motion and there's two seconds. Any discussion of these appointments? Madam Clerk, can you call the roll, recognizing that Councilor Lindell is excused? Councilor Lee Garcia? Yes. Councilor Michael Garcia? Yes. Councilor Romero Worth? Yes. Councilor Cassett? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Mayor Weber? Yes. Motion is approved. Thank you. Next item, please. Item 21B: Appointments to the Airport Advisory Board. Jill De Haven, reappointment, term ending February 2028. Rosemary Thompson, reappointment, term ending February 2028. Len Rand, reappointment, term ending February 2028. Lutz Arnold, reappointment, term ending February 2028. Move to approve. Second. There's a motion and a second to approve these appointments. Is there discussion? Madam Clerk, could you call the roll? Councilor Michael Garcia? Yes. Councilor Worth? Yes. Councilor Cassett? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Lee Garcia? Yes. Mayor Weber? Yes. Motion is approved. Thank you. And the next item, please. 21C: Santa Fe City and County Advisory Council on Food Policy. Jasmine, reappointment, term ending January 2028. Sergio Matos, appointment, filling an unexpected term ending January 2026. Approve. Second. There's a motion and a second. Discussion? Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? Councilor Romero Worth? Yes. Councilor Cassett? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Chavez? Councilor Faulkner? Councilor Lee Garcia? Yes. Councilor Michael Garcia? Yes. Mayor Weber? Thank you. Next item. 21D: Board of Adjustment. Gary Friedman, reappointment, term ending September 2027. Colleen Dearing, reappointment, term ending September 2027. Teague Douglas, reappointment, term ending September 2027. Daniel Painter, reappointment, term ending September 2027. Approve. Motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Madam Clerk, if you'd call the roll, please. Councilor Cassett? Sorry, Cassett. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Councilor Lee Garcia? Yes. Councilor Michael Garcia? Yes. Councilor Romero Worth? Yes. Mayor Weber? Yes. And I believe we have another one. 21E: Historic Districts Review Board. Scott Cherry, appointment, term ending January 2027. Madeline Aguilar Medrano, reappointment, term ending January 2027. Cecilia Rios, reappointment, term ending January 2027. Should approve. Second. Motion and a second. Any discussion? Please call the roll, please. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Councilor Lee Garcia? Yes. Councilor Michael Garcia? Yes. Councilor Romero Worth? Yes. Councilor Cassett? Yes. Mayor Weber? Item 21F: Audit Committee. Elizabeth Travis, appointment, term ending November 2028. Bill Keller, appointment, term ending November 2028. Second. Second. Is there a discussion? Can you call the roll, please? Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Lee Garcia? Hi. Councilor Michael Garcia? Yes. Councilor Romero Worth? Yes. Councilor Cassett? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Mayor Weber? Yes. Motion is approved. Thank you. I believe, Madam Clerk, that completes tonight's agenda. Thank you, everybody. Appreciate everybody being here. We are adjourned.