Regular Governing Body Meeting - Last Wednesday Wed, Feb 26, 2025 · Governing Body https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/269 == Executive Summary == The city council meeting covered a wide range of topics, including an annual ethics review, budget amendments for various city projects, and a significant debate over the proposed reorganization of the Police and Fire Departments. Key decisions included approving budget amendments for Midtown Redevelopment, automated traffic enforcement equipment, and human services initiatives. The council also approved joining litigation against Trump Administration federal grant policies. A major point of contention was the proposal to move the Police and Fire Chiefs to report directly to the City Manager, removing an intermediate director position. While proponents argued for efficiency and direct oversight, many council members and public commenters raised concerns about accountability, transparency, and the potential impact on community trust, particularly within the immigrant community. After extensive discussion, the council ultimately approved the reorganization, but with an amendment to retain the department's name as "Community Health and Safety." The meeting also saw discussions on small business crime mitigation grants, the Soldiers Monument evaluation, and the need for better data collection on existing city programs. == Key Decisions == - Agenda approved as amended. - Consent agenda approved as amended. - Budget Amendment Resolution (BAR) for Midtown Redevelopment project ($135,000) approved. - Motion to approve contracted positions passed (7-0-0-2). - Motion to approve an unspecified item (likely related to traffic enforcement) passed (7-0-2). - Budget Amendment Resolution (BAR) for Soldiers Monument evaluation ($100,000) approved (unanimous). - Budget Amendment Resolution (BAR) for human services ($3,438,000) approved. - Motion to approve homelessness coordination initiative approved (unanimous roll call vote). - Motion to postpone $50,000 BAR for Public Utilities Department to March 12th approved (unanimous roll call vote). - Motion to move agenda to 'petitions from the floor' at 7:00 p.m. approved (roll call vote). - Motion to enter Executive Session approved (roll call vote). - Motion to reconvene in Open Session approved (roll call vote). - Motion to accept council's recommendation on the Stephanie Grayson and Lily Gordon litigation approved (roll call vote, Councilor Chavez recused). - Motion to join litigation/amicus briefs challenging Trump Administration federal grant policies approved (roll call vote). - Amendment to Bill 2025-4 (loan agreements) to push back public hearing from March 26th to April 9th approved. - Motion to deny proposed reorganization of Police and Fire Departments failed (6 No, 1 Yes, 2 abstentions/not present). - Amendment to delete the change of title from the department's name (keeping 'Community Health and Safety') approved (9-0). - Motion to approve the reorganization of Police and Fire Departments as amended approved (8 Yes, 1 No, 1 abstention/not present). == Motions & Votes == - Motion to approve agenda as amended — Passed. - Motion to approve consent agenda as amended — Passed. - Motion to approve budget amendment resolution to allocate $135,000 for the Midtown Redevelopment project — Passed. - Motion to approve the contracted positions — Passed 7-0-0-2. - Motion to approve an unspecified item (likely related to traffic enforcement) — Passed 7-0-2. - Motion to approve Budget Amendment Resolution (BAR) for Soldiers Monument evaluation ($100,000) — Passed unanimously. - Motion to approve Budget Amendment Resolution (BAR) for human services ($3,438,000) — Passed. - Motion to approve the homelessness coordination initiative — Passed unanimously (roll call vote). - Motion to postpone the $50,000 BAR for the Public Utilities Department to March 12th — Passed unanimously (roll call vote). - Motion to move the agenda to 'petitions from the floor' at 7:00 p.m. — Passed (roll call vote, with some councilors absent/excused). - Motion to enter Executive Session — Passed (roll call vote). - Motion to reconvene in Open Session — Passed (roll call vote). - Motion to accept council's recommendation on the Stephanie Grayson and Lily Gordon litigation — Passed (roll call vote, Councilor Chavez recused). - Motion to join litigation/amicus briefs challenging Trump Administration federal grant policies — Passed (roll call vote). - Motion to push back the public hearing for Bill 2025-4 (loan agreements) from March 26th to April 9th — Passed. - Motion to deny the proposed reorganization of Police and Fire Departments — Failed (6 No votes, 1 Yes vote, 2 abstentions/not present). - Amendment to delete the change of title from the department's name (keeping 'Community Health and Safety') — Approved 9-0. - Motion to approve the reorganization of Police and Fire Departments as amended — Approved 8-1-1. == Public Comment == Public comments included an invocation by Councilor Chavez and personal remembrances from councilors Cassutt and Lee Garcia, and Mayor Weber. A public commenter raised concerns about the H-Board's fee structure and the City Attorney's interpretation of quorum and voting rules, arguing it disadvantages citizens. Greg Weager (District 2) opposed the departmental reorganization, specifically the separation of the Police Department, arguing it would diminish oversight. Several public speakers, including Eric Schultz, Miguel Acosta, John Paul Gano, Stephanie Beninato, and Nikel P., expressed strong concerns about the proposed reorganization of the Police and Fire Departments, emphasizing the importance of community policing, robust oversight, accountability, and the potential negative impact on trust within the immigrant community. They urged the council to maintain strong checks and balances on police power. == Topics == - Code of Ethics Review - Public Safety Reorganization - Community Policing - Homelessness and Social Issues - Consent Agenda Items - Agenda Approval - Invocation and Remembrances - Quorum and Voting Procedures - Emergency Response - Civilian Oversight - Mexican Consulate Outreach - Ceros Road Funding == Full Transcript == We are live. We are live. Great. Thank you. With the information that we're now streaming live, I'm going to call the regular meeting of the governing body, February 26, 2025, 5:03 PM, to order. We'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance from Councilor Romero-Wirth. Councilor Lee Garcia will lead us in the New Mexico flag, and Councilor Chavez will start us off with invocation and remembrances. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I'm going to keep this short. What I want to share this evening is a Prayer of St. Francis: "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. Oh, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life." Thank you. Thank you, Councilor. Are there other remembrances? Yes, Councilor Cassutt. Yes, Councilor. My Aunt Meg, who was an incredible human being, she passed away about a week ago, and she lived a full and amazing life and was a big part of my life. And then also, I would just like to say something for those of us who are brave enough to stand up to bullies and to power, regardless of how it impacts us personally, because it's the right thing to do and because we're courageous when we do that. Yes, Councilor Lee Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I don't have anyone specifically to remember, but following that same note, the Prayer of St. Francis is one of my favorite prayers, and I think that it's one of the prayers that kind of brings everything full circle, life. Not also to mention the fact that through that prayer, the definition of courage is mental or moral strength, venture, persevere, withstand danger, fear, or difficult. So with that, thank you. I just say a send a prayer out to everyone in our community who is struggling, whatever reasons: health, physical well-being, mental well-being, finances, family, sense of loss, whatever is the affliction that they are dealing with. Let's stand as a community, support each other, take a minute to remember those we've lost. Thanks, everybody. Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll? Councilor Cassutt. Here. Councilor Castro. Councilor Chavez. Councilor Faulkner. Councilor Lee Garcia. Here. Councilor Michael Garcia. Present. Councilor Lindell. Here. Councilor Romero-Wirth. Here. Mayor Weber. Present. All are present. Thank you. Madam Clerk, are there any changes to the agenda that we need to note? Item NN is being removed by staff from the agenda and will be postponed. Mayor Weber, I'm taking off 1614 P DEA from the executive session, and then as well. Yes, move to approve as amended. Second. A motion to approve the agenda as amended. Is there any discussion? Just a clarification, that was N as in Nancy, NN, double N. Yes, thank you. Any other questions or discussion? Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll? Councilor Castro. Yes. Councilor Chavez. Councilor Faulkner. Yes. Councilor Lee Garcia. Yes. Councilor Michael Garcia. Councilor Lindell. Councilor Romero-Wirth. Yes. Councilor Cassutt. Yes. Mayor Weber. Yes. Motion is approved. And Madam Clerk, there were items taken off of the consent agenda. Can you read us through those? And I think, per Councilor Michael Garcia's question, there are some things that it's hard to catch the letter, so give it to us slowly. Pulled for discussion are items P, R, S, FF, HH, and JJ. Anything else? We get a motion to approve consent as amended. Motion to approve as amended. Second. Motion to approve the consent agenda as amended. Is there a discussion on that? Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? Councilor Chavez. Councilor Faulkner. Yes. Councilor Lee Garcia. Yes. Councilor Michael Garcia. Yes. Councilor Lindell. Councilor Romero-Wirth. Yes. Councilor Cassutt. Yes. Councilor Castro. Yes. Mayor Weber. Yes. Motion is approved. Thank you. With that, Madam Clerk, could you take us to our first item on the agenda, item 8A, a presentation, annual code of ethics review. And here to present is Marcos Martinez, Senior Assistant City Attorney. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the governing body. Give me a moment while I connect my computer to the presentation. We need some IT assistance. We had a dry run. There we go. Thank you for bearing with me, those technical difficulties. This is the 2025 Code of Ethics Review. This is called by the code, shall be reviewed by the governing body on an annual basis, and this will your requirements. You may need to get a little closer to the microphone. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This annual review of the Code of Ethics is required by the governing body to do once a year, and this satisfies any requirement for that. Let's begin at the beginning. What's a Code of Ethics? A Code of Ethics represents a system of moral tenets or principles, collective doctrines relating to the ideals of human conduct and character. City of Santa Fe's Charter Section 2.01 calls for a Code of Ethics. The city's ethics code is codified by city ordinance. It's online. Go to the city's homepage, your government, Santa Fe Municipal Code, Chapter 1, General Provisions, and 1.7, you'll find the Code of Ethics. I'll also be covering the Governmental Conduct Act, which applies to the city's public officers as it relates and supplements the Code of Ethics. So the City of Santa Fe's Code of Ethics policy is as follows: The proper operation of a democratic government requires that public officials and public employees be independent, impartial, and responsible to the people. A governmental decision and policy be without conflicts of interest. The public office or employment not be used for personal gain. That the public has confidence in the integrity of its government. Governmental Conduct Act's principles are a public officer shall treat the public officer's government position as a public trust. Public officers shall use the powers and resources of public office only to advance the public interest and not to obtain personal benefits or pursue private interests. Legislators and public officers and employees shall conduct themselves in a manner that justifies confidence placed in them by the people, at all times maintaining the integrity and discharging ethically the high responsibilities of public service. Full disclosure of real or potential conflicts of interest shall be a guiding principle for determining the appropriate conduct. At all times, reasonable efforts shall be made to avoid undue influence in the abuse of office in public service. Now, there's a few terms that I think will be useful to familiarize ourselves with as we proceed through this ethical presentation. First is conflict of interest, something that we hear a lot about, but it has a defined term in the city's code. It represents a specific and identifiable prospect of pecuniary, that is, financial gain or loss, other than a gain or loss that is de minimis in amount or shared with a substantial segment of the general public, to any of the individuals or entities here listed from an official act of any public official or employee. Financial benefit means any money, service, a license, permit, contract, loan, travel, entertainment, gratuity, or any other thing of monetary value or promise of these. Family, which is implicated, includes members of the individual's household, his or her children, stepchildren, brothers, sisters, parents, stepparents, domestic partner, and all persons claimed as dependents on the individual's latest federal tax income return. An official act is an official decision, a vote, approval, and any acts that involve the use of discretionary authority. And a public official includes the city manager, the city attorney, the city clerk, and any member of a governmental body, including the governing body. So what is a conflict of interest? One has a conflict of interest if one's official act will result in a specific and identifiable prospect of financial gain or loss to oneself or an entity listed below. It includes the public official him or herself, or the public employee who is to perform the official act. Any member of his or her family that was broadly defined. Any business of which he or she has or any member of his or her household is an owner. Any employer, client, or customer from whom the public official or public employee knows has received remuneration of more than $500 during the year preceding the official act. Any civic group, labor union, or social, charitable, or religious organization which the public official or public employee or a member of his or her household as an officer or director. Or any business or any of its owners if the public official or public employee knows that the business or any of its owners has made contributions or has directed the making of contributions, as that term is defined in code, to the public official or public employee's campaign for elected office in an aggregate amount greater than $250 during the last two years preceding the official act. Not every action that benefits public officials creates a conflict. Not a conflict. An example would be a gain or loss that is de minimis in amount or a gain shared with a substantial segment of the general public. For example, you help draft legislation that will reduce taxes for all citizens of Santa Fe. You are a citizen of Santa Fe. It's not a conflict. Conflict represents an act likely to result in financial gain or loss to the list of entities on the preceding page. For example, you're paid $51 to provide catering services during an event. The restaurant that paid you is now seeking a grant from the city. Your involvement with a grant would be a conflict of interest. So what do you do when you have a conflict of interest? In the case of a member of the governing body at a public meeting, first, do not vote on the matter to which you have a conflict of interest. However, if compliance with a conflict provision by a public official would deprive a governmental body of a quorum for taking necessary action, and it is deemed an emergency, the public official shall be excused from such compliance when he or she has made the disclosure required. For example, imagine a special governing body meeting to approve the purchase of emergency equipment, which the vendor is related to a member of the governing body. The public official, to maintain a quorum, may vote to approve the purchase. The public official should disclose the conflict at the meeting and explain the exception that applies. And I return to the Governmental Conduct Act's statement that full disclosure of real or potential conflicts of interest shall be a guiding principle for determining the appropriate conduct. So required disclosures. Public officials, and that includes the mayor, the councilors, the city manager, city attorney, city clerk, and department heads, are required to disclose the following to the city clerk: name, address, and telephone number, employer if other than the city, professional, occupational, or business licenses, membership on board directors, boards of directors, corporations, public or private associations or organizations, and businesses that they own. The frequency is annually for public officials, and the Governmental Conduct Act also requires disclosure to the city of outside employees. Moving to gifts. Improper gifts. Generally, these would be gifts in excess of $50 are not allowed. However, an occasional meal or non-pecuniary gift with a fair market value not to exceed $50 is permissible. And if relevant to the performance of his or her official duties, members of the governing body, the city manager, the city attorney, or the city clerk may receive an occasional non-pecuniary gift not to exceed $250. So what about if you've received a gift or another financial benefit within the last calendar year and then discover that the gift giver has a prospect of direct or indirect benefit from your official act? You must return the gift, or you have a conflict of interest. interest, and you must disclose the gift and not take the official act as provided by the conflict of interest rules. So you can either return—well, no, return the gift and you can act, or disclose the gift and take official action. Honoraria: A public official or a public employee shall not request or receive an honorarium for a speech or service rendered in the performance of his or her duties as a public official or public employee. Honoraria means a payment of money or any other thing of monetary value, but does not include reasonable reimbursement for meals, lodging, or actual travel expenses incurred in making the speech or rendering the service. And similarly, under the Governmental Conduct Act, honoraria is regulated. Improper transactions with the city: First, elected officials shall not accept paid employment from the city for a period of one year following departure from public office. Second, a public official shall not enter into a contract or transaction with the city during one's term of office for a period of one year following the leaving of public office when the contract or transaction is a result of the official act by that public official. And finally, the Governmental Conduct Act again limits transactions with former officials or employees. Misuse of confidential information: The Code of Ethics states that a public official shall not use or disclose confidential information when he or she knows or reasonably should know that the use or disclosure will or may result in a financial gain or the avoidance of financial loss on the part of any person or entity other than the city. Confidential information means information which is acquired through public employment, has not previously been made public, which is not required to be made available to the public under the inspection of public records. Misuse of city resources: A public official or public employee shall not use city services, personnel, or equipment for personal benefit, convenience, or profit, except when such use is generally available to the public. So, what would not be okay would be a public official using the city's vehicles for private use. By contrast, anyone can use generally available public services provided by a public library, Wi-Fi, books, fairs. Improper political campaigning: A public official shall not knowingly request or authorize another person to request that any subordinate of the public official make a campaign contribution or provide services to a political campaign, and shall not engage in political campaigning while on duty for the city, or use city funds, supplies, or vehicles or facilities to benefit or assist a political campaign. Similarly, the Governmental Conduct Act states that a public officer or employee is prohibited from directly or indirectly coercing or attempting to coerce another public officer or employee to pay, lend, or contribute anything of value to a party committee, organization, agency, person for a political purpose. Personnel issues: A public official or public employee shall not perform any act to obtain the employment or to influence the employment by the city of a member of his or her family. No public official or public employee shall serve as the immediate supervisor of a member of his or her family. And there is also a prohibition for nepotism under state law, which I cited there. Financial dealings with subordinates: I just summarize this as no obligatory personal loans. A public official or public employee shall not knowingly require, expressly or impliedly, or authorize another person to require that any subordinate public official or public employee engage in a non-official financial transaction, including a personal loan or charitable contribution. City employment as a political reward: Public officials shall not promise an appointment or the use of his or her influence to obtain an appointment to any position with the city as a reward for any political activity or contribution. Similarly, the Governmental Conduct Act states that no legislator or public officer or employee may request or receive, no person may offer a legislator or public officer or employee any money, thing of value, or promise thereof as conditioned upon or given in exchange for promised performance of an official act. Bullying by governing body members: A governing body member shall not intentionally bully any employee, including the city manager, city attorney, or city clerk. Workplace bullying means behavior intended to create an abusive work environment for a public employee or public employees. Public should be a public official. Public employees. Workplace bullying includes, but is not limited to, the following: use of disrespectful and devaluing language, persistent or constant criticism in front of other persons, including coworkers, vendors, contractors, or members of the public for the purpose of humiliating an employee. Behavior or language that frightens, humiliates, belittles, or degrades, including criticism that is delivered with yelling and screaming, threats and intimidation, including threats to discipline or terminate a public employee. Similarly, we move to retaliation and whistleblower protection. Employees shall not be retaliated against for filing a complaint of a violation of the Code of Ethics or any other law or requirement, providing evidence for, or participating in an investigation of any such violation. Retaliation includes dismissal, threats of dismissal, or otherwise singling out an employee. The Whistleblower Protection Act, which is at 10-16 C-1, creates a civil action for retaliatory actions. A public employer shall not take any retaliatory action against a public employee because the public employee communicates to the public employer or a third party information about an action or a failure to act the public employee believes in good faith constitutes an unlawful or improper act, provides information to or testifies before a public body as part of an investigation, hearing, or inquiry into an unlawful improper act, or objects to or refuses to participate in an activity, policy, or practice that constitutes an unlawful or improper act. And maybe less sensationally, prohibited bidding. No local government shall accept a bid or proposal from a person who directly participated in the preparation of specifications, qualifications, or evaluation criteria on which the specific competitive bid or proposal was based. So if you helped prepare the proposal, you cannot bid on it, and the city cannot award it. And finally, we get to enforcement. Who enforces these rules? Well, alleged violations of the Ethics Code by public officials may be reported to the city's Ethics and Campaign Review Board, and an individual may submit a sworn statement. The city attorney may bring a complaint to the board, and the ECRB can issue opinions that are binding on the board. Alleged violations of the Governmental Conduct Act may be reported to the DA's office or the AG's office pursuant to a statute, and/or the State Ethics Commission, also pursuant to a different subsection of the same statute. That completes my presentation. I would stand for any questions, or if questions occur to you later, you can send me your questions. My email is there. I think you already have it. Otherwise, I would just stand for questions now. Thank you. Let's see if any hands arise for questions on this presentation. And as Attorney Martinez says, if anybody has a follow-up question, you're always available on individual discussions as well. "Yes, thank you." "Any questions?" "Thank you very well." And with that, Madam Clerk, we go to the next item on the agenda. Item 9P: Request for approval of a budget amendment resolution (BAR) to allocate $135,000 from general fund balances for Midtown Redevelopment project management and administrative management. Here to speak is Daniel Hernandez, Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency Director. First couple things, I think there are quite a few items. And they may involve multiple questions from multiple counselors. So if we run into a situation where there's a long back and forth, maybe we could remember others may want a shot at questions. So roughly speaking, let's, if it's relevant, adhere to the 10-minute per person way we've been doing business. We want to entertain a motion on this and then take questions. "Move to approve." "Okay, there's a motion and there's a second. And Councilor Michael Garcia, you are the counselor who took this from consent, and you can start the question, sir." "Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Hernandez, for being here this evening. The reason why I pulled this was I watched the proceeding in finance, and if you can help me understand a little more in regards to what's the plan for the work, because from what I took away from that meeting was that this contract is a short-term contract, and then we're going to continue to hire on these individuals beyond this contract. So if you can help me understand what this contract covers, length of time, next steps, et cetera." "So it's a part-time position that will be about 16 to 18 hours a week, and I had budgeted about $9,000 per month. And so we backed into—well, not backed into, it was about $9,000 that we, I had available. And again, it was 16 to 18 hours per week. The person's skills are in redevelopment finance and analysis, which is, I think, a really critical part of any real estate office. And he brings in expertise. It's pretty specialized, and one that we probably couldn't afford it on staff. So, and he was only available part-time, so we brought him into that as a part-time temp agency that the city has an agreement with, called It's Quest. And so, on board. Yeah, so that's how we budgeted that line item." "Okay. And long term, what's the plan?" "So I've put in a request in the 2026 budget to continue. So that's again, will be presented to you as part of the budget process." "Okay. And is it going to be at the consistent rate that that is, because this is short term? I mean, so, yeah, if you don't mind me asking, what is the budget request you put in for the fiscal year 26 budget?" "I'm sorry, I don't, but it was, it was at that consistent $9,000 per month is the way that I calculated it. So it's six months, five, six months." "And then so with that math, we wouldn't need the full $108,000 for fiscal year 26." "Yeah, so I put it in there just to make sure that there was some cushion more than anything else. So that we, if, if beyond the FY 26 period that we still needed this person on board, that there was a time period where we can carry that forward. Just I wanted the security of having someone in that position because again, he's bringing particularly specialized skills in real estate finance." "Understandable. And is there a reason why we're just not hiring this person full-time off the bat?" "Well, one, he is not available full-time. And his, his skills, I know well. I mean, I, that particular skill level and what he brings to the table, and we probably couldn't have afforded that real estate acumen as a full-time position in the office." "So, so let's take two steps back. So we're hiring him part-time with this contract. Your intention is to hire him full-time with the fiscal year?" "No, it's continual part-time." "So, yes, again, I guess the question I got to pose again, why aren't we hiring him full-time off part-time off the bat? Why are we utilizing a contract to initiate a full or employment with this city, permanent employment?" "Yeah, my understanding from the finance directives was that we were to maintain a consistent consistency in our staffing positions. And so I couldn't include an individual staff person in my office." "Okay. Is this the same case with the individual or $60,000?" "Yes." "Okay. And, and so, City Manager Scott, this is very problematic that we're beginning to use contracts as an entree to permanent." Employment with the city. How can we not get into this very, very problematic practice? Because it sets a bad precedent. We're circumventing everything we've been told previously around one-time funding. Mayor: Counselor, my understanding of this position, and I've met this gentleman that we're talking about because he's already doing some work with us, is the immediate purpose that he's going to be working on in the Midtown. There are what, 20 some pieces of property that we're getting ready to bring to this council to authorize putting out on the market so that we can get proposals, so we can develop the properties and pursue the plan for the Midtown area. This is very much, especially, a real estate function, not the kind of thing that you would long-term expect to have an employee on a continual ongoing basis to do that work. Plus, I don't know, and I agree with Mr. Fernandez, that it may be very difficult to find that specialty skill at a cost that we would feel comfortable with. So I don't think the purpose here is to use a contract in order to turn it into permanent, but I do think it's intended to continue it for more than a short period of time. So whether it's 18 months, 24 months, I believe that this will be a temporary position that will continue to be temporary and won't be converted into a full-time position. So I think this is a little different than the scenario you're talking about, which I understand would be a problematic circumstance. This one, I think, is purely the intention to hire a part-time person that we can't afford to have full-time, and I think that will serve our purposes. Understandable, but we're still hiring him part-time in a permanent manner once these funds are utilized, and I think that is not permanent. No, so we're going to continue to hire this person on a contract because that's not what Mr. Hernandez just mentioned, that we're going to utilize fiscal year 26 funds, which would be hiring this person on... We would be hiring them, we would be retaining, if the council approved it, we'd be retaining him for the whole fiscal year, but not as a benefited employee. Continued contractor, continued part-time contract employee. Okay, so these are two continual contractors. Never come on board as permanent, whether full-time or part-time staff. It's contractor. They're going to continue to be contractors. And I think my concern is because, and correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Hernandez, this is the type of service that is going to be ongoing throughout the duration of the development of the Midtown campus. Am I correct? This type of skill set is important. So why would we not hire somebody like this on a permanent part-time basis? If we could find somebody that brought the same skill level on a permanent basis going forward, then that would be a perfectly good decision to make. Right now, I don't think that's what we're looking at, and I do believe that what this gentleman brings to the table at 16 hours a week, or whatever you're looking at, is very valuable and really a higher-level skill than we want to pay on a full-time basis. So for now, it makes sense. If the day came that we thought we could get the same skill on a permanent basis, and that we needed it on a permanent basis, we'd come in and suggest that. Okay, thank you, and thank you for the clarification because the way I interpreted it was that we're hiring contract with these funds, then fiscal year 26, we were going to bring them on staff, not contract. So that's the difference there, because if it was going to continue, if it was that other scenario, then I would say we need to bring them on board as staff, not continue to contract work. Okay, no other questions. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Counselor Castro, you had a hand up. Yes, thank you so much. Thank you, Director. So this was also the item that I was a little concerned about in Quality of Life, and my concerns are really surrounding the temp agency. Do you happen to know what the overhead cost that the temp agency is getting? Don't. Sorry. Yeah, no worries. If you could follow up with that, that'd be great. I have some concern with the form in which temp agencies function and if we're getting the best bang for our buck, and if the employee is actually being offered the services that they would be if they were working for the city. So I'm not opposed, and I understand that you need support. I do think that we have a ton of assets in the city. We've been talking about our city land and how we want to develop all over the place, so we could definitely find a place for this person in the city of Santa Fe, and we could possibly offer them better benefits and a better working situation, even at those 16 hours. Thank you so much. Thank you. Other questions? No further questions. Madam Clerk, there's a motion and a second. If you could call the roll. Counselor Faulkner. Counselor Lee Garcia. Yes. Counselor Michael Garcia. Yes. Counselor Lindell. Counselor Romero Worth. Yes. Counselor Cassett. Yes. Counselor Castro. Yes. Counselor Chavez. Yes. Mayor Weber. Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, thank all of you for your support. I appreciate it. And Madam Clerk, if you could take us to the next item that was taken from the consent agenda. A request for approval of a budget amendment resolution, BAR, to allocate $1,646,000 from general fund balances to support staff capacity, small business crime mitigation and security grants, Small Business Development, Workforce Development, and office rent for Community Services and Economic Development. And here for questions is Johanna Nelson, Economic Development Director and Interim Housing Director. Could I... We'll do the same process. We'll start with a motion and then we'll go to questions from the two individuals who hold it, then anyone else who wants to participate. Motion to approve. Second. We have a motion and a second. Counselor Garcia, you and Counselor Lindell both asked for this to come off consent. Do you prefer one or the other to go first? Counselor Garcia, we'll start with you. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First question revolves around the rent. How come that it's not included in the operating budget and it's we're utilizing one-time funding for that? Mayor: City Councilors, thank you for the question, Counselor. Currently, because of the move to Marcy Street, we cover that rent for Community Services Department, and that does come from general funds. And we requested the additional assistance with one-time funding to see if that frees up additional funding as well. Okay, just wanted clarification, just make sure it was budgeted, because I don't want us to be put in a predicament where it wasn't budgeted and we're hoping money comes from somewhere to pay the rent. Doesn't sound like that was the case, so thank you for that. The last is the other question, it's not more so a question, just maybe something you can help to highlight, which is the small business crime mitigation and security grants. Thank you for bringing this forward, and I believe you and Director Paul Hammond were working collaboratively on this. Could you just help the public understand what this is, how it can help benefit them, how it's going to roll out, how folks are going to work with us ultimately to make a safer Santa Fe? Mayor: City Councilors, Counselor Garcia, thank you so much for the question. Correct, the Office of Economic Development has been in close collaboration with Director Hond Paul and Director Sanchez on this concept. We have heard collectively, their department as well as ours, from our business owners all over the city, frankly, in every district, that are dealing with impacts from vandalism and crime. This includes things like broken windows, vandalizing property, theft, and the list goes on. This program is proposed to be able to support those business owners on the front end of that with mitigation tactics. Maybe that is a security camera, signage, you name it, that can prevent those activities, as well as dealing with the impacts from the crimes that have already happened. We have had opportunity to look across the country at other examples that cities are deploying and didn't have to look far. We looked to our neighbors in Albuquerque who have deployed a very similar program called the Broken Windows Program. They as well started with $250,000 and have had great success. We're still in communication with their team to understand what's working, what is not, so we can have a successful program here. I will say that the collaboration between our office and Community Services allows for the expertise from supporting small businesses from our side, and the expertise of dealing with Community Services and crime prevention and mitigation from their department has been really fantastic, being able to leverage our respective expertise areas. Great. And so you're asking for $250,000. What happens in the instance it gets allocated pretty quickly? Mayor: City Councilors, Counselor Garcia, this is an excellent question that we're eager to explore and find out. We want to see the program of use and high value. If it is deployed quickly, then we would come to city leadership or look for additional funding sources like grant funding to sustain the program. Also learned from our practices, we want to see what we, when we roll out the program, we want to see what is working and what's of use, including everything from application to deployment. So I would imagine if we're looking at this as a pilot program and it's deployed very quickly, we can make alterations and improvements after that first deployment. Okay, then I guess last question is in regards to rollout. What is the plan for us to make all these small businesses aware of this new program and what does the outreach look like? Mayor: City Councilors, Counselor Garcia, this is an excellent question. This is where you really see the benefit of working between the two departments. We try to do a really excellent job with economic development of getting information out to the public through our newsletters, through radio shows, through social media. We can always do a better job. We would first utilize those networks that we have. We would tap the great partnerships that Community Services Department has. We would depend on you all. We would really have a robust campaign to get the information out. But you're hitting on a key point that not only this program is faced with, but many other resources out there, of how do we get the information out to our businesses. And we would do our best. I think this would create a lot of interest with our business community, so word of mouth would help very well too. I do want to note, we would also make this, just like many of our other programs, bilingual accessible, because many of our business owners, especially on the South Side, are struggling with some of the effects of these activities to their businesses. Thank you so much. I just thank, I'm thankful for bringing this forward because many folks know small businesses are the backbone of our local economy and the impact that they've felt, whether it be to a myriad of issues, we've seen businesses shutter because of it. I mean, sometimes franchises like the Sonic on Cerrillos Road, and we want to do everything we can to ensure that we are supportive of small business. Thankful later part of this package is to promote local, and so thank you to the team. No other questions. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Counselor. Thank you, Counselor. Counselor Lindell, you also had this pulled, and then we'll go to others whose hands are up, starting to my right and then to my left. Yes, you're up now. We had kind of a long discussion about this at Finance, and you got some information to me since then. Why don't you clarify, we're talking about three positions. You gave me some information. Why don't you clarify for everyone the three positions? We have five different parts of this. Staff capacity is number one. Let's talk about that. Mayor, City Councilors, Councilor Lindell, thank you for the question. Staff capacity is something that we want to address in our office, as well as some of our sister offices like the Office of Affordable Housing and MRA. We are challenged currently with capacity, specifically around the ability to write, draft, review, and administer contracts and grants. Although we have really excellent team members at the city, like many other departments, we would benefit from having a contract administrator. So we are requesting help in that area to pilot a position to increase our capacity to be able to review contracts and frankly, limit the work that our contracts department and our City Attorney's Office is having to do. So we've got three positions. None of these are full-time. Mayor, City Councilors, Councilor Lindell, they are full-time. All of them are full-time, correct? Okay, one of the contract administrator, the first one, I see it has 26 pay periods. The next one I see has an effective pay period of, even though it says 1 to 26, it says 47. So is that a two-year position? Mayor, City Councilors, Councilor Lindell, roughly. And these are estimates based off of what we ideally could pay them. And the third one is only 32 pay periods, so that one's for barely over a year. Okay, so two of them are non-union and one of them's union. Mayor, Councilors, I'm not certain of the union status. I think that if we were approved for funding, that is something we'd have to get confirmation with HR on. Yeah, I know it looks like I'm going into the weeds with this, but there are things we need to be kind of careful of and pay attention to. So just kind of a flag on that, that as we move forward with this, be aware of, we're not quite exactly upwards. Okay, so that's item one. I don't want to go on to item two, the small business crime mitigation and security grants. I'm not exactly sure that we want to use Albuquerque as the model that we follow. They had their own issues, but let's be careful and define in a different way than what it's defined nationally, the broken window program. It's the broken window program nationally that started in the early 2000s is a program that I'm not sure that we want to subscribe to. I suspect we're talking about something different, but let's dive into that and make sure. Okay, number three, I'm not going to talk about that. Maybe I will for just a second. I think that it applies to, actually, it's number four, Workforce Development Support. Those two items are a million dollars. So the kinds of things that I would like to know about those programs before I would invest a million dollars in them, like for the Santa Fe Community College program, is that supporting tuition? Is it supporting teacher pay? The number of participants that we've had in that program? What the percentage of completion of the program is? Who does the reporting? Those are the kind of dives into these programs I'd like to know to be clear that they're worth continuing supporting. On the surface, they look terrific, but I want to know that we're programming with a purpose and with proper outcomes. Same for the schools, that's five, that's a half a million bucks. What is the real distribution of that money? Is it for program administration? Number of participants? Cost per student? What are the completion stats? And how is the money actually distributed? Is it going to those checks going to? I'm pretty unclear on that one, how that's working. But I think that, like I said, on the surface, these are terrific programs. I love them, but I want to know that we're getting the results that we're paying for. And if we are, that's terrific. If we aren't, what are the little adjustments that we need to make? So those are the things that in the future, I would be interested in knowing. And also, I think that in order to continue robust support for these programs, that giving the council that information makes it easier to be a cheerleader about them. So thank you for being here tonight. Thank you, Councilor. Thank you, Mayor. I had brought up in committee just the importance of equity. I had mentioned that I feel like we have a lot of local businesses that have been waiting for the city to take action in regards to support with these issues, and they couldn't wait any longer and have taken on great expense to take care of things on their own. And it's important to me with this that we do not leave those businesses out. So I don't want us to just focus on the businesses that need to do work, but I think that there is a lot of gratitude we owe the businesses that had already taken initiative, and we should really highlight those businesses and see how we could give back and kind of offer some financial support moving forward and some of the initiatives they've taken the last, you know, two to four years. Because I know that a lot of them were vocal in needing help from the city. A lot of them were in very close communication, and unfortunately, we weren't able to act immediately. And so there have been great measures taken. I know multiple businesses that have, you know, hired their own security and really upgraded a lot of their security systems that are actually manned by people who are able to talk through cameras all night long and just keeping businesses safe. And I can imagine that that does not come at a very low cost. So I know that you addressed this question in committee, but I just want to have some reassurance there for those businesses that took initiative prior to waiting for a program to be in place, and kind of hear the details and how we will make sure they're not missed. Mayor, City Councilors, Councilor Chavez, thank you so much for that comment and question. It's extremely important to us to support businesses, bottom line. And we would want to work with you all, as well as our community members and business leaders, to make the application as easy and user-friendly as possible to apply and responsive to their needs. So we would be, as we're creating that program, nothing outside of research has been drafted. And we would want to work in hand with you all to make sure that your concerns are addressed, obviously, within the confines of our legal parameters and financial parameters. But your point is well heard and understood. And I think that I just want to make sure that people don't count themselves out when we do start publicizing this program to everyone. So we want to make sure our communication is very clear. And I know that we have to do some research with the City Attorney's Office to, you know, examine how that exactly will look. But if there is a way to offer support to those businesses that took initiative, I would want to make sure that we include them as individuals that qualify for support when we actually start communicating. So I look forward to that piece of information as we move along because I really think that a lot of businesses have taken a hit because they had no choice but to act prior to the city. So with that, I look forward. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Castro. Thank you so much, and thank you to my colleagues for just being able to speak to this very important issue. I think in particular, we have seen how community organizing in the downtown area, also Silo Rufina area, has helped come to these projects to come to fruition. So I do want to make sure that they're counted in. Also, I want to take into consideration the comments of Councilor Lindell. This is not broken windows policing. This is broken windows support. It is very expensive to deal with a broken window in the city of Santa Fe, and it is not about the way we're going to police. It is about the resources that we are giving, yes, our local businesses. Thank you so much. Director, do you want to just comment on that? Mayor and City Councilors, and Councilor, thank you for pointing that out. My colleague is reminding me that this is not broken windows, which I know is a case study in business school that we all have looked at and social services. But it's called the windows of opportunity, and I apologize about mis-titling that. I think the broken windows is well established in my brain. Yes, clarifying that this is not that program. We want to create our own optimistic program based on creating opportunity. Thank you. Question. Yes, Councilor Cassat. Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. Thank you so much, Dr. Nelson, for being here, especially you. I know we had robust conversations about all these topics in both Quality of Life and Finance. So thank you for coming up in front of us again. I know it is a lot for you guys. One thing that we had discussed at Quality of Life that I wanted to follow up on as we're looking at programs and speaks to Councilor Lindell's conversations around understanding whether or not things are effective as we are looking to continue to invest in them. We had discussed that Albuquerque's program is still a little bit too new to look at anything other than process evaluation, so we can't really understand what the impact is. And I know one thing that can be really challenging to measure and is really challenging for the community to see, which I think it's all the more important for us to be able to communicate, is what levels would be had we not done something. So actually, what I really think about is we once got an affordable housing report that was, you know, very dire, as we all know in Santa Fe. But then it showed us that even though the unaffordability had been going up, had been increasing, that it would have been so much worse had the city not done the work that it had established. And so I think that when we're looking at the Albuquerque model, as they move forward with analysis and as we analyze this, trying to understand, I know it is hard to do because we don't have a control environment, but trying to understand that even if we are seeing an increase or not seeing a decrease that we would like to see, if we're able to at all project and understand what things would be had we not done said program. I know coming from public health, a lot of issues will be that we don't invest in something enough, and so it's like, well, it didn't decrease. Well, yeah, if we had given it a bit more money, or if we had done this other component with it, or had paired it with this program, we would have seen, you know, a cumulative effect. So as we're doing that analysis, and I think this actually goes for pretty much every program that we do within, you know, Community Services, Economic Development, you name the social science, how we understand the what, what the null environment would look like if we hadn't done this, because sometimes the results are not as impressive when you're just looking at numbers, but it doesn't mean that when you're looking at the reality of the impact that it didn't do something and it's not worth either growing or investing. So I know it's a bit of a tall order, but just the conversation with the council tonight made me really think about how we look at the success of our programs and how we do evaluation. So that, that was all. Thank you. Thank you. Other comments or questions? This item, we have a couple folks who have stepped out, but we still have a quorum. So we have a motion and a second. There are no further questions. Madame Clerk, could you please call the roll? Councilor Lee Garcia? Yes. Councilor Michael Garcia? Yes. Councilor Lindell? Yes. Councilor Romero Worth? Yes. Councilor Cassat? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. And Councilor Chavez and Fuller are not in the room. They've stepped out for a minute, so they're excused. Mayor Weber? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you very much for being here. Mayor: You take us to the next item, Madam Clerk. Clerk: Item 9 is a request for approval of budget amendment resolution BAR to allocate $837,000 from general fund balances for the purchase of automated traffic enforcement equipment and evidence equipment. And here for questions is Deputy Chief of Police Ben Valdez. Mayor: Can I get a motion? Then we'll start the same process. Councilor: Second. Mayor: There's a motion and a second. And Councilor Garcia, you asked this to be taken off, so we'll start the questions with you, sir. Councilor Garcia: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, DC Valdez, for being here. I don't know, actually, if you'll be the appropriate person to answer the question, just because again, my question kind of stems, or clarification stems, from some conversation during the Finance Committee meeting on Monday, where it was brought up that there was money allocated for a noise camera pilot program. And I just got an email earlier that was from Tourism Director Randy Randall, saying that that money was not there. So I mean, this is, I'm a bit concerned. And the reason being is the last time we had these one-time allocations, folks came out loud and clear and strong that they wanted money allocated for some noise and speed cameras. And the response we were given, not from you, DC Valdez, I remember sitting up here hearing from the administration that $250,000 was allocated for a noise camera pilot program. Even so that, you know, I had checked in with Tourism Director Randy Randall last summer inquiring about it. He didn't know what was going on. But then his messaging today is that budget is not aware of any funding actually being allocated. So, is Director Oster here? I thought I saw her here earlier, but I don't see her, Councilor. So I guess I'm at a quandary here in regards to how to proceed, because I do want that commitment to be made whole in regards to, we were told there was a $250,000 allocation for a pilot program. Now it's, "Hey, we don't know where it's at, what's going on?" Because ultimately, DC Valdez, what I'm getting to is I want to ensure that that funding gets rolled into this request, that way we can provide a robust source of resources for you as you move forward with the RFP for such technology. And so, City Manager, I don't know how we proceed with this, because it's, so it's my understanding, and I know Mr. Scott, I apologize, it's my understanding that this money was coming from similar funds, but from tourism. Tourism is its own, got its own separate funds that are in excess of what their Lodgers Tax comes in at. And the $250,000 was going to be coming from there. Can we investigate if it's not, if it did not fully hit the books, then I'm requesting that we bring forward a BAR to pull the $250,000 that was committed to nearly a year ago. Councilor: Mr. Mayor, Councilor, I think I'd have to call on DC Valdez in talking about this. We've been talking about both the speed cameras and the noise measure. I don't know if that's a camera, but it measures the noise. And I'm not familiar with those. I'm very familiar with speed cameras. I'm very familiar with red light cameras, although I'm not 100% sure whether that's included. But do you know, is this, is this inclusive of the machinery that measures noise? Deputy Chief Valdez: Mr. Mayor, Councilors, so part of this process that we're doing for this $750,000, we want to explore an RFP to get automated traffic enforcement devices for measuring speed violations. And like I mentioned in the Finance meeting, if there is technology that allows us to also get sound violations, to have that in place, we want to move forward with that. In either case, we want to for sure get the speed portion going, because that has been well worked out and I think proven to be effective in many jurisdictions. But if we can get both, we certainly like to get both, because we understand and hear from the community that those are both pinch points that we have and challenges in our city. Councilor: Mr. Mayor, Councilor, our discussions on the staff level have definitely included both. And if there's a confusion over the funding, I don't, we're not at a point yet that we have equipment that we're going to bring in forward to purchase. We'd be at the procurement stage. And every intention is to find both. Councilor Garcia: Right. So, so I apologize, Mr. Mayor, let me, I guess, re-clarify my concern and potential course of action. So right now, this request is to appropriate $750,000 for noise and speed technology mitigation technology. We were told last summer that there had been $250,000 allocated for a noise camera pilot program stemming from Lodgers Taxes. Now, upon communication today from Director Randy Randall, and I'm going to quote here, it says, "From what I have been able to determine, budget is not aware that any funding was actually allocated previously for the sound and speed cameras," which is end quote. So that's problematic for me, because when we were told that information about the $250,000 allocation for the pilot program, we were in a similar situation where we were allocating one-time funding. And at that time, I was strongly advocating that we allocate funding for such technology. We were told, "Well, we've got money there, let's move forward with this, and then we'll see where we go." So that's where I somewhat hit the pause in this sense. We've got money allocated, let's move forward. But what I'm learning from this communication is that it doesn't look like from Director Randall that funding was actually allocated. And so I guess my request is that if we investigate, can investigate this, if it was, if it was allocated, that we begin to move those resources towards and consolidate with this request, because that would allow us to have a million dollars to purchase or move forward with such mitigation efforts. If it wasn't allocated, then I request that a BAR be brought forward so we can allocate the funds and again, put it towards all of this. So there's two kind of paths forward. If it was allocated, let's begin to move it towards the appropriation of this potential RFP. If it wasn't allocated, I'm requesting that a BAR be brought forth, because we were told that was the case previously. So hopefully that helps to clarify. I apologize. Okay. With that, I guess just if you can keep me updated, just because I want to make sure that DC Valdez and his team can get this RFP out quickly. This is an issue that impacts our community, not only in a safety means, but a quality of life means. And all you have to do is sit here, even in these chambers, and you can hear people speeding by. And it's unacceptable and it's unsafe. And I want to ensure that we get these measures moving forward as quick as possible, the entire City Council, because I know it matters to all of you. Councilor: Okay, thank you, Mr. Scott. City Manager: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, DC Valdez. Councilor, your memory is the same as mine with regard to that $250,000. I remember it vividly. And we had clearly identified it as money to be allocated specifically. So I share your puzzlement as to Randy, Director Randall's response. And we'll clarify it right away, because there was that agreement and commitment on all parties that the money was there. It was generous of Tourism to see that that had an impact on residents and also could be validated as a tourism expense. And so the money had been, in my mind, clearly set aside. And it would supplement and help augment what we're talking about here tonight. So we're all on board on that. Mayor: Councilor Castro. Councilor Castro: Yeah, sort of to continue on the same train of thought, DC Valdez, can you explain a little bit about the enforcement piece and how we're going to have non-officer members of our staff reviewing some of that footage, please? Deputy Chief Valdez: Mr. Mayor, Councilor Castro, so what our, I guess our big wish for this is to have non-police staff that serve in a code enforcement capacity to be able to review the violations, see if the violation occurred or not. Once it's validated, then the notice for those violations will go out for, be processed, and for the bill to be sent out to the offender. Ideally, we want to have our sworn officers out there to handle either higher priority calls or to be out there conducting traffic enforcement. We see that's going to be the best deployment of our resources instead of having to pull police officers from the field who could otherwise be handling calls to review these violations. So that is something that I know Chief Joy is working on with members of the Council to try to make sure that the ordinance reflects that. And when we put out the RFP, we want that to also be part of that. We can have the staff that can do that. And for us too, I think it also creates job growth and opportunities within our community for folks that maybe don't want to serve in a traditional law enforcement role. So I think it's a good opportunity that we can utilize. Councilor Castro: Perfect. No, and I agree with all of those points. And I know that you're a big proponent of community policing. Do you want to maybe talk a little bit about how this is part of our plan, long-term plan for community policing? Deputy Chief Valdez: I've shared a lot about community policing. Again, I don't feel it's a program, it's a philosophy. It's what you do. It's through the actions you do each and every day. You know, you have to get out there and have that relationship with, whatever it may be, whether it's through an in-person discussion, a call over the phone, but just make sure that you're present and you're hearing their concerns. That's most important. But the problem-solving aspect is a big piece of that, because that's what builds legitimacy. If someone comes forward with a challenge that, "Hey, we're having these issues in our neighborhoods," or, "We're having people that are driving unsafe in school zones," if you're being responsive to those concerns and you're working to address them, that's what builds that trust. And as you build that trust, that's some people get to find out that, "Hey, it's actually a person that is doing these types of things. It's not just an officer that we don't know who they are and they don't have that engagement with the community." So that has to be something that is ingrained in everything that we do. I know some folks, they say, "We have a community policing unit." I feel it's everyone's responsibility in our department to go out there and build those relationships, problem-solve, and sometimes it is taking criticism as well. And when we take that criticism, we can actually learn from those things, or we can find some middle ground. And I know you and I have had discussions and we find middle ground, and I do respect and appreciate that. That's really good, because we just have to understand that everyone has a different perspective on things. And as long as respect is there, I think everyone, we can respect each other's differences or where their position is. And it's not perfect where everyone gets along, but the golden rule, I think that's where community policing is, really the foundation of that, is that treat others the way you want to be treated, work together to solve problems. Councilor Castro: Perfect. Thank you so much. And I do want to comment DC Valdez and the Santa Fe Police Department for hearing our community and saying that we do want a range of different policing opportunities and different entry points. So thank you so much. And I yield the floor. Other questions or comments? Mayor: Couple, couple things. I just was in communication with Director Randall myself. And there's no question that the money was previously committed. He says that too as well. It's whether it was taken and put into a line item or moved into a direct allocation. But the commitment was made as both Councilor Garcia and I remember. And Director Randall has said if there is any question about it not having been moved appropriately, he's fully in support of doing that, make sure it doesn't end up somehow missing or unaccounted. So I think we're all squared away on that. Any other questions for? I would just to the point about what enforcement looks like. I had the occasion to be driving the other day, and there was a gentleman who looked very much like you, Deputy Chief, giving out a traffic citation to somebody. And I asked Chief Joy about it, and he said, "Well, that's something that you do personally as a part of augmenting our traffic enforcement because it's something that you personally think makes a big difference, and there's no distinction in rank that provides the difference between enforcement or non-enforcement." And I want to recognize you for that, sir. Seeing you handle a traffic stop personally made me feel like our officers and our leadership are unified in community safety and in traffic enforcement as a building block of how we keep people on the right track in this city. So I know you didn't see me, but I saw you, and I want to thank you for that work you do day in and day out on top of being Deputy Chief. **Deputy Chief:** Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate that. And the way I see it, you have to walk the walk if we ask our folks to go out there and engage in those activities, we have to lead from... **Mayor:** Thank you. Any other questions or comments about this item? If not, Madam Clerk, there's a motion and a second. Can we call the roll? **Clerk:** Councilor Michael Garcia? **Councilor Michael Garcia:** Yes. **Clerk:** Councilor Lindell? **Councilor Lindell:** Yes. **Clerk:** Councilor Romero Worth? **Councilor Romero Worth:** Yes. **Clerk:** Councilor Cassett? **Councilor Cassett:** Yes. **Clerk:** Councilor Castro? **Councilor Castro:** Yes. **Clerk:** Councilor Chavez? **Councilor Chavez:** Yes. **Clerk:** Councilor Faulkner? **Councilor Faulkner:** Yes. **Clerk:** Councilor Lee Garcia? **Councilor Lee Garcia:** Yes. **Clerk:** Mayor Weber? **Mayor:** Yes. **Clerk:** Motion is approved. **Mayor:** Thank you, sir. Madam Clerk, can you go to our next item, please? Item N9FF, request for approval of a budget amendment resolution, BAR, to allocate $100,000 from general fund balances to contracts for experts to evaluate options for the Soldiers Monument. And here to speak is City Manager Mark Scott. I'll entertain a motion and a second, and then I'll turn it over to Councilor Garcia to start the opportunity for everyone to ask questions. **Councilor:** So moved. **Councilor:** Second. **Mayor:** Very good. We have a motion and a second. Councilor Garcia, you asked this be taken, so you, sir, have the floor. **Councilor Michael Garcia:** Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Scott. It's my understanding that there was an RFP issued recently that would conduct the work being requested, that would fund that we're asking for the funding for. Am I understanding that correctly? **City Manager Scott:** Yeah, my understanding is there was an RFQ seeking firms that were capable of performing restoration of the monument, pieces of it, and also to look at the potential that whether or not it could be moved, if in fact it could be put back together. And the staff was able to find a firm that does feel capable, and the staff feels is capable of doing that work. So it's been... there wasn't a robust response to that, but there is a firm that's been identified that's capable of doing that work. And I have made progress in my eighth day. I have now actually talked to that firm one time, so I'm a little bit better suited now to answer the questions on this than I was last time. But yes, that's where we are. **Councilor Michael Garcia:** Okay, thank you. And is that... was their proposal to fully $100,000? **City Manager Scott:** It's no, no. I... we don't... we don't believe that the initial work is going to cost that much, maybe even as little as half of that much. But we don't know where it goes. We don't know where the initial work might lead. For instance, if they start looking at the techniques that it would take to through the restoration, they might... they may find techniques that they need to apply in order to make it get there. This is the work to decide whether it can be done. It's not the actual doing of the work. So we're probably far short of having funds to do that. **Councilor Michael Garcia:** Okay. And so with that being said, this request is solely for the feasibility study, not for rebuilding, not for movement. So I would ask that whatever the allocation is, that it not be, you know, the remainder, the leftover balance move towards now. I think that those funds should come through a similar approval process such as this. So if you can keep us updated on what that total cost is, that way... **City Manager Scott:** Absolutely. **Councilor Michael Garcia:** ...we're kept apprised of that. With that, no other question. I definitely look forward to... I know in Quality of Life, we had asked for a presentation to be given just on the topic in general, you know, the feasibility study, where we're at with it, where we're at with the outcomes of the Judge Wilson's orders, and that way we as a governing body as a whole can get an update from you on that. So thank you for being willing to give that to the governing body as well. With that, no other questions, Mr. Mayor. **Mayor:** Other questions on this item? Comments? Reactions? Thank you for the response, City Manager. If there are no other questions, Madam Clerk, could you call the roll? **Clerk:** Councilor Lindell? **Councilor Lindell:** Yes. **Clerk:** Councilor Romero Worth? **Councilor Romero Worth:** Yes. **Clerk:** Councilor Cassett? **Councilor Cassett:** Yes. **Clerk:** Councilor Castro? **Councilor Castro:** Yes. **Clerk:** Councilor Chavez? **Councilor Chavez:** Yes. **Clerk:** Councilor Faulkner? **Councilor Faulkner:** Yes. **Clerk:** Councilor Lee Garcia? **Councilor Lee Garcia:** Yes. **Clerk:** Councilor Michael Garcia? **Councilor Michael Garcia:** Yes. **Clerk:** Mayor Weber? **Mayor:** Yes. **Clerk:** Motion is approved. **Mayor:** Thank you. The next item, Madam Clerk, that was taken from consent, item 9A8HH, request for approval of a budget amendment resolution, BAR, to allocate $3,88,000 from general fund balances, $300,000 for a half percent capital GRT fund for a total amount of $3,438,000 to support and expand existing Human Services under Homeless Solutions, guaranteed income, and immigration support. And here to speak is Youth and Family Services Division Director Julie Sanchez. Thank you. I'll entertain a motion, and then we'll go to questions. **Councilor:** So moved. **Councilor:** Second. **Mayor:** We have multiple motions to approve and multiple seconds. Madam Clerk, you get to decide. You got it. All right. Councilor Michael Garcia, you also pulled this, and so, sir, you have the floor. **Councilor Michael Garcia:** Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Two different reasons why I pulled this. First, to cover the Cerrillos Road security contractor allocation request for $1,375,000. Thankful for this coming forward just because I know last summer or last winter, we allocated money for downtown and strongly advocated that security needed to be provided throughout our entire city. And so thank you, team, for bringing this forward. Director Paul Hammond, can you help the public understand what this investment means to them, how it will make our community more safe, and what the next steps are in regards to this request? **Director Hammond:** Mr. Mayor, Councilors, thanks very much for the question. First off, we are incredibly excited about this opportunity. I think this is in line with a lot of things that the city has been trying to achieve for quite some time, so we're excited to try and move this along. Effectively, what we are doing and working to achieve is a hybrid kind of mix between both community outreach as well as community-based public safety, deploying teams of trained individuals who are trained in a variety of different techniques, be they conflict mediation and conflict resolution training, bystander intervention trainings, as well as some opioid reversal, overdose reversal trainings, to go out and actually proactively, as opposed to reactively, engage people up and down both the Cerrillos corridor as well as specific areas downtown, but really focusing on bringing a set of resources to bear in an area of the city that has documented need and concerns. So we are in the process, and just for kind of a flavor of what this might look like, directly engaging individuals who may be either exhibiting symptoms of acute need that are not at the level of, for instance, warranting a 911 call. So whether it is aggressive behaviors or loitering that is disrupting businesses or making individuals concerned for their own safety, going and engaging directly, or on the kind of other side of that, being able to recognize instances that do not warrant law enforcement or emergency medical services to go in and actually support individuals who are in need of support. And then these services are going to be then not officially tied into our emergency services and 911 services, but be connected through coordination to make sure that when it is relevant, we can bring in the appropriate level of emergency response needed. Where we are at, should I pause? I can pause for a second if there are... So where we're at is we are finalizing getting approval on an RFP to be issued hopefully in the next couple weeks, so that we can then put out a request for proposals to solicit these services and get someone on board as soon as possible to begin doing this important and needed work in the community. **Councilor Michael Garcia:** How long do you think this process will take before residents start to see the support be deployed into the corridor? **Director Hammond:** That's an excellent question. I would like to say, you know, normatively, I would say as soon as possible. I think there are certain timelines that we are working on with the RFP process. I'm very thankful to both the City Attorney's Office as well as the Procurement Office for working with us to expedite the RFP approval process. So it is currently under review, and it's going to be, I believe, a two or three week window for applications, and then we'd hope to move that along as quickly as possible once we have a set of applications. **Councilor Michael Garcia:** Director Hammond, I appreciate that. My other question was regarding the project manager for homelessness, $125,000 for a term position. And I don't know if yourself or Director Sanchez wants to answer the question in regards to how long is this term position for? **Director Hammond:** So, Mr. Mayor, Councilors, thank you for that. And then I'll allow Director Sanchez to jump in with anything that I missed. So we're really looking at this as kind of project-specific support. So the two things that we have identified, and understanding the timeline for this being one-time funding and not long-term positions, which we are obviously, or full-time positions, which we need for many things, this is really specific to specific projects. So first, we're looking to build out a GIS capability within Director Sanchez's department so that we can use that for better tracking and transparency on things like identifying encampments and moving things through a workflow of identifying challenges and issues in the community and moving them to resolution. So that would be a specific and discrete project of building actually like a technical infrastructure for that work. And then the second tranche of that, or second part of that funding, we would be using for again, two parts. One, reporting, and a huge thanks to Director Nelson, still here, for our collaboration on the bus small business Windows to Opportunity Fund. So one, a small tranche of this would be used because that is a shared program that we're working on both to address homelessness as well as to address issues kind of parallel to homeless, or tangential, if you will. So some of this will be to help establish that fund and make sure we're putting in the right infrastructure needed to see if it as a pilot, we could then grow on it. And then the second part is to build out some broader data capabilities that we could use for again, future use in the department. **Councilor Michael Garcia:** And so can you help me understand, is any of this money going to the project manager position? Because you outlined three deliverables, three support systems: the GIS, the Windows to Opportunity, and data capabilities. I'm a little confused because it says here it's a one-time funding request for a contracted term position, but you gave me information on three different support systems. **Director Hammond:** Yeah, Mr. Mayor, Councilor, so I think we're probably focusing on the word "project," or my team is, which is these are discrete projects that we're looking to accomplish, and these individuals that would be hired with this funding would be tasked with a time-bound and discrete project to accomplish compared to something that we would be looking for in a different... type of position, which would be more of a long-term program. So we're really viewing this project-specific as opposed to longer-term program work. **Mayor:** Understandable, but it's still the way it's outlined in the request is "Project Manager for Homelessness." And so when I read that, is where the request is for $125,000 for an individual we're going to contract with for a contracted term position to assist the division with its homelessness work, whereas the information you just gave me is not that. And so, are we, let me ask this question: Are we hiring a contracted term position for a Project Manager for Homelessness with this money? **Speaker:** Mayor, City Councilors, yes, this work that I just described is specific to the homelessness portfolio, building out a GIS infrastructure for our team to work directly with understanding and inputting the unhoused individuals or aspects of the unhoused portfolio, working with the unhoused into GIS programming so we can map things and track. So that is specific to the homelessness portfolio, similar to the other two items, which would again be with regard to the shared program with the Office of Economic Development. We very much put that squarely in our homelessness emergency response plan as an element. It's not, it's kind of one of these affiliated aspects of what we understand as the homelessness crisis in the city, which is that it's not only about supporting individuals who are experiencing homelessness, but also supporting businesses or parts of the community that are kind of experiencing residual effects or collateral effects or externalities of broader homelessness and public safety circumstance. **Mayor:** Okay, thank you for that. So it sounds from what I'm hearing from you, this should have been separated in regards to contract costs and then support costs. You know, the contract is the cost that we're paying the individual. The support costs are the GIS, the Windows Opportunity, the data capabilities, that way we can ultimately determine, well, is these costs we want to allocate resources to? How much of this $125,000 is going to a contracted term position? **Speaker:** Mayor, City Councilors, all of it would be going to, I think I would position with an open parenthesis "S," we'd be looking to procure the services of two individuals, probably for this body of work. **Mayor:** So then where's the funding coming from for GIS, the Windows Opportunity, the data capabilities? Because it's very confusing because I asked the question around how long is this contract for, then we went down a different rabbit hole, which is it's good to learn, to know the support services needed for this position, but that wasn't necessarily the question. And now we're saying, well, we've got the term position, it's going to be 125K, but now I'm questioning, well, how are we going to cover the costs for the rest of this? And I think we can have that conversation later because ultimately, I wanted, my original question was, how long is the term position? Because that is a lot of money and I want to understand how long this person is going to be contracted on this term basis. How, you know, for that, that's a lot of money, $125,000 for one individual. How long is that term? **Speaker:** So, and I think I may not have been clear enough, and apologies if I wasn't. The support work and the work itself are one and the same. This is a body of work that we're looking to accomplish, you know, in a period of three to six months. I believe the one-time funding allows us to use the Trona funding through the end of the fiscal year. These aren't, it's not a position within support, like auxiliary support. It's a discrete body of work that we'd be looking for a contracted individual, so in either, yeah, a contracted term position to accomplish. **Mayor:** Gotcha. Three to six months, did I hear you correctly? We have, you said we have to spend this by the end of this fiscal year because that's not, that's not the case with one-time funding. One-time funding is money that was unanticipated. There's not a deadline date with it. It's not, there's not an expiration on it. So if that's the directive given, we need to correct that with staff because one-time funding can go from today to the year 3000 if we want, if we can allocate it that long. And I don't want staff operating under the misassumption that these funds have to be spent by the end of this fiscal year. **Speaker:** Thank you, Counselor. I can only speak for this in terms of the timeline that I'm hoping to use these funds. And I view these services, our department views these as deeply, or the discrete projects that we're looking to accomplish as things we need to accomplish within three to six months of getting these. Again, things like the Windows to Opportunity program up and running. So that's the timeline I'm using in my head. Sorry for any confusion. **Mayor:** I, so you wanted, let me see if anybody else wants to ask some questions because not to cut you off, but if anybody else wants to chime in, we can come back to you. So, and if there are no other hands, we still have the floor, Councilor Cassidy. **Councilor Cassidy:** Thank you so much, Mayor, and thank you both for being here. Regarding the Cerrillos Road Corridor, I am very excited. You know, when the contract for downtown did come up, this was a really big sticking point, and I was the only counselor to actually vote no because I really do feel that the focus needs to be in this arena. Although I will say that the program that we are now getting here is much more robust and I think much more appropriate for this area. So I appreciate you all really detailing it both at Quality of Life and then again tonight. My question actually, we use the word Cerrillos Road Corridor quite a bit, and with the Windows for Opportunities program, it makes sense that we're really looking at Cerrillos because most of the businesses are on Cerrillos. However, in terms of the impact along the Cerrillos Road Corridor, for what I'm really hearing from my constituents, it has to do a lot with going into the neighborhoods and the parks. So when we are discussing the Cerrillos Road Corridor and this work that will be happening along there, I am hoping and also requesting that it is not just along Cerrillos, but rather we will be really going into the neighborhoods to address the impact on the residents that are, you know, it's about, I think it's about a half mile, mile. I know that we have some data that we can pull to see where we really need to focus. Can you speak a little bit more to the geographic boundaries? **Speaker:** Mayor, City Councilors, thank you for the question. The short answer is yes. This, or I don't actually know if yes is the right word because that might be not responding to the question, but they are, it is not a geographically hard-lined area. The operative concept that we're using when pursuing this work is outreach and proactive. Those, that's where we're going with this. So the hotspot areas that we do have identified currently are a great starting point. That said, groups like this and services like this will be intended to identify the emerging hotspots as well and go and engage in those areas. If they are only doing work on a specific small area, that wouldn't be doing their job well. They need to be going out and find areas in need and engaging there. So I hope that that was the kind of yes I was alluding to at the beginning. **Councilor Cassidy:** Yes was, I think from my very long-winded question, yes would have been the appropriate one-word answer. So thank you for expanding on that. And then I apologize, I think, I think maybe Councilor Castro had brought this up at Quality of Life, and I am now not recalling our conversation around this, but in terms of how, and maybe we didn't talk about it and that's why I'm not remembering it, how this group would interact with, I know you said it's not going, you know, this is not necessarily going to be an arm or an extension of EMS, but our park rangers are also very involved in, you know, working with encampments. And what does that collaboration look like? You know, how do we make sure we're not replicating work or services or job duties? And actually, to that point, I know sometimes redundancy can be needed. So can you just give me a little bit more information on some of these groups that are already doing this work in this capacity, working with this, with this population, and how that collaboration is going to really benefit the program? **Speaker:** Mayor, City Councilors, thank you for the question. The short answer is that, and actually this relates to some earlier discussion tonight, so one way to ensure the right kind of redundancy and the right kind of coordination is through shared information tools. So we're hoping to leverage tools like ArcGIS to make sure that all people working in the space are actually inputting data into the same system and we're able to see the whole picture as opposed to one provider is using one data system, one city entity is using another process. So we hope to kind of bring everybody into the same level of work. Speaking to kind of more of the nuances of coordination models that we are, have, are looking at and and hoping to replicate here, there's different flavors. We want to start with the kind of quickest and quickest way to get people on the ground doing this work. That is going to be through what I would call kind of analog forms of coordination, so making sure that there are touch points between the different agencies and organizations and entities doing this work. That is on my team, the city, to help facilitate. That said, there is a digital version of the kind of coordination, which is we have seen in our research models where these kind of contracted entities are actually tied into systems like 211 or 911. That is not necessarily where we're going with this, but that is an opportunity for growth, so you have more fully integrated coordination there. **Speaker:** Mr. Mayor, Councilor Cassidy, I will also add that the park rangers are going to be working in coordination with this team. Currently, the park rangers are only being launched to public spaces. And so with this, with this collaborative group, they would actually be able to extend their reach to more private entities. So now we would be able to have an organization in which businesses, if there's somebody in need, can now call on to be, to be launched into those areas, I guess I would say. That also would be one of the other big benefits and again, non-duplication, is that they would be working in coordination with other outreach teams that are currently going out. And so our job in our office is actually looking at a coordinated group that would meet regularly to discuss how we can move people through this system as they're found. Park rangers could identify encampments on public property and have this organization come out and support getting those folks into a much more coordinated system and getting their needs addressed. So I hope that answers it. **Councilor Cassidy:** That does, thank you. And then it does bring up, you know, obviously we were using the Unitus platform for Connect, and some of these individuals may already be within that system. So I'm hoping that there's going to not just be information out, but also that they would have a way of pulling information in, so that we understand, you know, if they have already had touch points, which more likely than not, they, they probably have. Maybe you never know, but a lot of times we know that that can be the case. So, and then I would hope that, and then correct me if I'm wrong, oh gosh, are they called the Coalition to End Homelessness? Are, I'm hoping that they'll be part because they're, they took over a, are built for zero data collection and all of that. "Work, and so am I understanding that relationship correctly at this time?" Mayor: "Councilor Cassid, I wouldn't say that they took over, but one of the core components of Built for Zero is a shared data agenda, and that's being held by the Coalition and should be held by the Coalition because they're currently our COC, our Continuum of Care." "Okay, wonderful. And so that will all be communicating together with these." "Okay, yeah, it's a lot of data systems that have a lot of data. Yeah, well, I do want to thank both of you for your work and, of course, all of our partners. This is such a complex issue, and it just has had multiple implications. We've seen a lot of ripples throughout the city for individuals experiencing homelessness, for individuals who are impacted by people experiencing homelessness. It's just such a complex web and social issue, and I know that you both really work tirelessly to be finding different solutions, and I truly appreciate it and really look forward to hearing both as we get this program launched, as well as updates on how things are going and how this is working. So thank you." "Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Any other hands before I go back to Councilor Garcia? Councilor Garcia, you have the floor, sir." "Thank you, Mr. Mayor. If we can just be updated on the appropriation, that $125,000, just because I want to get you all the clarity you need, because if you were given the directive, it has to be spent by the end of this fiscal year, that's not true. And I want to make sure that you guys have the capability if it needs to go into July through the remainder of the calendar year. Beyond that, I don't want us to be in a situation where we have the mindset, 'Well, we've got it allocated, we need to spend it.' No, let's make sure we're spending it diligently and getting the products we need. I mean, because with the request in front of us, under $25,000 for three to six months, that's about $20,000 a month, and I don't know if we're getting our best bang for our buck on that. And so we can continue the conversation offline with that. But thank you for a lot of these projects that you're bringing forward, lots of benefit that's going to be brought to our community, whether it's the Cyrus Road Corridor, support services for our immigrant community, or even the homelessness project manager position. So thank you." "No other questions, Mr. Mayor." "Okay, thank you. Any other questions at this time? I just want to put in my own salute to you all, and also to ask that we not only see these as individual parts, but if you look at them collectively, you begin to see a pattern emerge as to how the pieces fit together and reinforce each other. And this, I think, this particular item may be more of a building block than some of the other ones that are important components, but this is, to my way of thinking, very much a central element of what has been laid out as our action agenda to address people who are experiencing homelessness, people who are victims of some of the impacts of homelessness. When you begin to allocate or pull together these different individual items, I think you see a strategy emerging that makes a great deal of sense, and it addresses public safety on the one hand. There are, as we just heard from DC Valdez, allocations for more safety on our streets. Now we're having more safety in a corridor and along in that corridor, and additional resources designed to address the people who are themselves experiencing the impact of homelessness. And I really do believe this item that we've spent some good amount of time on constructively does represent a kind of the linchpin of a lot of the work that's going forward, and I do hope it can move quickly, and I do hope that we can begin to see some of the rapid benefits of this approach. So thank you. Thank you for putting it together and then for explaining it tonight. I really appreciate it. Any other questions?" "Madam Clerk, there's a motion and a second. If you could call the roll." "Councilor Romero Worth?" "Yes." "Councilor Cassid?" "Yes." "Councilor Castro?" "Yes." "Councilor Chavez?" "Yes." "Councilor Faulkner?" "Yes." "Councilor Lee Garcia?" "Yes." "Councilor Michael Garcia?" "Yes." "Councilor Lindell?" "Mayor Weber?" "Yes." "Motion is approved. I'm calling my attention to the fact that it's five minutes till 7:00, and I'm wondering if we would like to entertain a motion to change our... Oh, Councilor Garcia, your hand's up, sir." "Yeah, I think the only last item we have on consent is JJ. I had pulled that, and I was actually going to propose that we table it because Ms. Jimenez is not available, and we can get through that item quickly. Is that amenable to everybody?" "Okay, in that case, I will pull back from my thought about going to our 7:00 agenda item and go, Madam Clerk, to the next item that was taken from consent. 9J, request for approval of a budget amendment resolution, BAR, in the amount of $50,000 to fund temporary positions within the Public Utilities Department Administration Division." "I'll make a motion to table that or postpone this item until our March 12th, I believe, governing body meeting." "Second." "There's a motion to postpone to a date certain. Is there any discussion? Second it." "What she second? I'm unaware of any reason, if there is one, why delaying it would negatively impact. Do we have any information?" "No, I just was sent an email from Director Jimenez that she was not able to attend, and unfortunately, additional staff, and she did not express that there was any emergency to this item." "Okay, we have a motion and second to postpone to a date certain. Would you please call the roll on that?" "Councilor Cassid?" "Yes." "Councilor Castro?" "Councilor Chavez?" "A brief, a brief exit." "Councilor Faulkner?" "Yes." "Councilor Lee Garcia?" "Yes." "Councilor Michael Garcia?" "Yes." "Councilor Lindell?" "Councilor Romero Worth?" "Yes." "Mayor Weber?" "Yes." "Motion is approved. Very well. With that, could we get a motion to move our agenda so that we now go to petitions from the floor as we are at 7:00 p.m., and then we'll come back subsequently to our regular order?" "I'll move." "Second." "And I just want to clarify for folks what is for comment now and what is for comment later, as we do have a final passage tonight in case folks are trying to comment on that." "I think it's always fair to say that when we are having a public hearing, you reserve your testimony for the public hearing. If there are things not to be covered on a public hearing item, then it's appropriate to bring it forward now under petitions from the floor. So that's a very good distinction. Thank you, Councilor." "So we have a motion to move our agenda so that we go now. Yep, Councilor Cassid, did you have your hand up? Okay, I think we're good. Can we take a call the roll on changing our agenda around so we go to the 7:00 petitions from the floor?" "Councilor Castro?" "Yes." "Councilor Chavez?" "Excuse." "Councilor Faulkner?" "She stepped out." "Councilor Lee Garcia?" "Yes." "Councilor Michael Garcia?" "Yes." "Councilor Lindell?" "Councilor Romero Worth?" "Councilor Cassid?" "Yes." "Mayor Weber?" "Yes." "And Councilor Faulkner, you stepped back in. This is on the motion to move our agenda so we go to petitions from the floor. Very good. Motion is approved. Very good. Thank you. So with that, we have now altered our agenda to go at 7:00 p.m. to petitions from the floor. Anyone who wants to come forward and address the governing body on any item other than a matter that is a public hearing, now would be the time to do that. The clerk will keep the clock, and everyone will have two minutes to speak, and we'll start with people who are here in the auditorium, and then afterward, we'll go to people who are perhaps in the Zoom room. So please go ahead. You have, excuse me, let me clear my throat for a minute before you start." "My name is Stephanie Beninato, and I'm here tonight. I sent you a, I sent you a public comment or petitions from the floor, and I'm bringing to your attention that Frank Rubal is misinterpreting the appeals ordinance, and that is 13 or 1431 H2. That is, I believe, when you have a recommendation from the Planning Commission, and you are the ones who make the actual decision, the only and final decision under that provision, it says that, and it says, 'Notice of public hearing before governing body, and the applicant shall publish one notice in a local daily paper of general circulation.' That's at least 15 days, calendar days prior. If you're having again something a recommendation from Planning Commission, I believe you are the applicant according to your definitions, because applications actually refer to subdivisions, and they refer to change of zoning boundaries and other land use, possible other land use cases. When the H-Board made recommendations and you actually voted on it, then I think this section would apply. But now when you're asking for Council determination, it is an appeal, and appeals do not require public legal public notice, legal ads. This is an expense. It's already expensive, as you know. I showed you the cost to a client that I have. It'll easily be $800 from paying $500 to the H-Board for one exception for a fence, and then the $200 fee, and then notifying people by first-class mail. I believe that you are trying, or Mr. Rubal is trying to push people out. The other thing that Mr. Rubal, we had a heated discussion about this last night at the H-Board. I've brought up again, and I gave you a copy of it now, and you should have it, Resolution 20098, I believe it is, oh, 20. And the important words are again, 'A majority of the members shall constitute a quorum,' and then further down, 'A vote of a majority of members present shall decide any questions brought.' I just would like to finish this if you would allow me. Last night, John Banden, who's a member of the H-Board, a lawyer, said that the City Attorney told him that they are interpreting this section and adding a word, which is 'voting members.' So they're reading it to be, 'The vote of a majority of voting members present shall decide the issue.' They, and Mr. Rubal quoted a case from 1954, a school board case where they didn't have any procedure. There were six people sitting there, three voted for, two against, and one abstained. The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled on the question of the person who abstained and said that that just didn't count. It was like the person wasn't in the room. So a 3-2 vote therefore was a majority of those actually present. This is not the case in these H-Board meetings where you have two for and one against. It is not a majority of the voting of the members present. There is decades of case law on you interpret statutory interpretation that both Mr. Rubal and the City Attorney are ignoring to the detriment, I believe, of people who get decisions made by two people of a seven-person board. One more thing, I just want to thank you for the sidewalks. I appreciate it. Gone in at P and SOS. Thank you. And also, please, please observe the time limit. Thank you." "Other, other people in the auditorium who would like to take the opportunity of petitions from the floor, recognizing that the public hearing is still to come. Madam Clerk, are there people in the Zoom room who want to speak from petitions from or during petitions from the floor? If you in the attendee Zoom room, please raise your hand at this time to speak during petitions from the floor. Any hands going up? No hands have been raised. They may be waiting for the public hearing. So with that, we will then go back to regular order. Madam Clerk, if you'll take us to the next item on the agenda." "Next item is number 11, Matters from the City Manager. Mr. City Manager, you have the floor." "Well, I will not use the floor tonight except to express my appreciation to everyone for the support that I've been getting. I've had great tours with three members of the governing body, and I'm looking forward to the tours with everyone else, and I also want to thank" my colleagues here at this table and elsewhere in the organization. It's been a great start and I'm really enjoying this a great deal, so thank you. Thank you, sir. Item 12: Matters from the City Attorney. Good evening, Mayor Weber, counselors. I do want to extend a public welcome to City Manager Mark Scott. We've enjoyed starting to get to know him in the last week and we're happy he's here, so thank you for being here. I would like to recommend that we go into executive session for a couple of matters. We did remove the 1616 Peralta earlier, but I am recommending we go into executive session regarding Section, attorney-client privilege, discussion of pending and threatened litigation, in particular, litigation about by the estate of Stephanie Grayson and Lily Gordon, and litigation concerning the Trump Administration limitations and requirements on federal grants imposed without Congressional authority and/or that are unrelated to the purpose of the grant, and/or orders that violate the 10th Amendment, including County and City of San Francisco versus Trump, and discussion of potential disposition of City properties, in particular, a quarter-acre parcel at 1522 West Alameda and a 0.85-acre parcel identified as APN 99308146, which is on West Alameda. Thank you. Councilor Mayworth, do you have a motion for us? I move that we enter an executive session pursuant to the Open Meetings Act, Section 15-1, subparts H7 and 8, for this discussion of pending or threatened litigation in which the government body is or may become a participant. Mayor Weber, counselor, if we could also get disposition of property on the motion, that'd be helpful. Thank you. And for discussion of purchase acquisition or disposal of real estate or water rights by the governing body. Second. There's a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Lee Garcia? Yes. Councilor Michael Garcia? Yes. Councilor Lindell? Councilor Romero Worth? Yes. Councilor Cassett? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Mayor Weber? Yes. Motion is approved. So we will go into executive session. We'll be back as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience, everyone, and stand by. Will you promote me for panelists? I assume we're still streaming live. We are still live, Madam. So, Councilor Mayworth, I believe you have a motion for. Pursuant to the Open Meetings Act, Section 10-5-1 J, I move that the governing body reconvene in open session and state for the record that the matters discussed in the closed session were limited to those specified in the motion for closure. Second. Is there a discussion? Could you call the roll, Madam Clerk? Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Lee Garcia? Yes. Councilor Michael Garcia? Yes. Councilor Lindell? Councilor Romero Worth? Yes. Councilor Cassett? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Chavez? Mayor Weber? Yes. Motion is approved. Thank you, Mayor. I have another motion. Yes, ma'am. Councilor. I move that we accept the council's recommendation on the litigation by the estate of Stephanie Grace and Lily Gordon. And I am just going to interrupt. I'm going to recuse myself from this, so I'll excuse myself for a bit. Wait. All right. Is there other discussion on this motion? If not, Madam Clerk, could you call the roll? This is, I believe, Item 13B. Yes. Councilor Lee Garcia? Yes. Councilor Michael Garcia? Yes. Councilor Lindell? Councilor Romero Worth? Yes. Councilor Cassett? Yes. Councilor Castro? Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Mayor Weber? Yes. Motion is approved. Thank you. If we could indicate to Councilor that it's safe for her to come back. And do we have a motion on 13A? I move. What do you want to state this motion? I don't know. Sure. Mayor, Council Mayworth, counselors, I am seeking approval to join litigation filed by other similarly situated municipalities and governmental agencies and/or amicus briefs filed by similarly situated municipalities and government agencies challenging the Trump Administration's one, imposition of limitations and requirements without Congressional authority in relation to the city's access to federal funds, and/or two, imposition of limitations and requirements that are unrelated to the purposes of the grant, and/or three, orders that violate the 10th Amendment or other constitutionals that protect the City of Santa Fe, including but not limited to joining the case County and City of San Francisco versus Trump, 2325 CV 01350. So moved. Second. Motion and second. Is there discussion? Councilor Garcia. Clarification from the City Attorney. Is this a matter I should recuse myself from? Good, Mayor Weber, counselor. At this point, this is a very general and not specifically, I think, implicating, other than the one case that's mentioned, which I do not think implicates your employer. It does not. The other cases could, but are, it's not clear yet. Okay. Thank you for the clarification. Very good. Any other questions or comments? If not, Madam Clerk, call the roll, please. Councilor Michael Garcia? Yes. Councilor Lindell? Councilor Romero Worth? Yes. Councilor Cassett? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Chavez? Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Lee Garcia? Mayor Weber? Yes. Motion is approved. Thank you. In that case, please take us to the next item on the agenda. Madam Clerk, the next item are Matters from the City Clerk. And I just have two items. I wanted to welcome City Manager Scott as well. It has been a nice week and some days. I also wanted to extend condolences to Erica Quintana, our administrative manager, who lost her father last week. And so I just wanted to put that on the record. And that is all. Thank you. To the next item then. Item 15: Communications from the Governing Body. Very good. I will start my right. So just very quickly, I want to invite everybody tomorrow at 5:30 to the HOV Center. We will be having a Know Your Rights training in collaboration with the county and the Mexican Consulate. Thank you so much. Yes, Councilor Chavez. You, Mayor, I am going to probably go on and on a little bit, so you could interrupt me. But my wonderful son turns 13 next Wednesday, March 5th. He becomes a teenager officially. But my, for those of you that have met Gray, he happens to be probably the one of the best humans on Earth. So he's becoming the most wonderful young man and just expanding his mind and more importantly, his heart. He cares about everybody. Everyone that meets him loves him. He makes good decisions. He makes us very, very proud. And so my, for the last 13 years, he has given me purpose in every possible way. And so I just want to thank him as he's becoming a teenager for everything he's given me in life and how beautiful he's made it. And just for being that man in my life that keeps me safe and loved and just hopeful because his heart just makes everything hopeful. So happy birthday, Gray. I love you. Thank you, Councilor Garcia. Nothing tonight, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Okay, Councilor Lindell. I want to wish Gray a happy too. I don't think I have anything else. Thank you, Mayor. Councilor Faulkner. Shen, Gray, happy birthday as well as Councilor Chavez's birthday. And additionally, could we please get a lifeguard or something at Fort Marcy? I am hearing endlessly. Working on it. I promise. It's not, they're not being there. It's like an endless complaint at the Roundhouse. So if we can work on that, that'd be great. Councilor Mayworth. All good. Thank you. Wow. Councilor Cassett. Thank you, Mayor. I'll be quick. I wanted to, as I've been trying to remember to do, presentations that occurred at Quality of Life or will be coming up for anyone that's interested. At our February 19th meeting, we had a presentation on retail leakage, which essentially means where are we missing opportunities for people to be spending money here? And then what is our plan from the Office of Economic Development to continue to make sure that people are spending money here? As we all know, we really love GRT, but also wanting to make sure that our small businesses are, you know, able to take advantage of the people that both live and and visit here being patrons of their businesses. And where might there be opportunity for business growth? So if that is something you're interested in, please watch that presentation. We also had a very quick presentation on the District Arts and Culture funding that is available for every single district. So Chelsea came and gave a quick reminder, mostly for us, to spend our money if we have not. But also, if you are a member of the community who has an idea for how that might be best utilized within your district, you know, you could always reach out to us. We have some great ideas that Councilor Chavez and I are working on right now that actually came from conversations with constituents. So very excited about that. I also did want to welcome Mark Scott. Thank you so much for being here. Really excited. I did have the opportunity to take him on a tour of District 4, which was a lot of fun for both of us. I got to go through the Beckner and Richards intersection and turn left at a stoplight, which was very exciting, long overdue. But it was great to drive through that intersection and see that it is open. And then the last would just be happy birthday to Councilor Chavez. And as always, I just, I love serving with you. I've loved knowing you for however many years it's been. 40 is not like, it doesn't feel different. So I was, I was hesitant about it as well. And I have to say, in my first, you know, two and a half months, I seem to be okay. So I'm sure you will be too. Thank you. Councilor Garcia. Mayor, happy birthday, Miss Chavez. Happy birthday to your boy, your little man, actually. And just, actually, that's all I have for tonight. Thank you. Welcome, Mr. Scott. Thank you. I admire everybody's brevity. I will seek to emulate. I want to first of all, salute Councilor Castro for her endless work in organizing this event tomorrow night. It's important to the community. It's important to the Mexican Consulate. It's important to all of us that we understand and know our rights and our people feel that we're looking out as best we can for them. So thank you for taking that on. It's a lot of work, I know. Congratulations to Councilor Lindell on adopting a new boxer. I'm not talking about Muhammad Ali. I'm talking about a boxer. And that's a big, a big deal for those who know Councilor Lindell. Dogs are the best people on Earth. And as of the what date in March? 8th of March, a new boxer named, I'm all in. What, what is the, what is the boxer's name? Or is there going to be a big reveal? Undecided. All right, a player to be named later. But I know how much it means to you. Saturday, March 1st, Santa Fe Police Department will conduct an end driving while impaired checkpoint to honor the memory of the Perea High sisters. Their photo is here in City Hall. They were killed March 5th, 2010, when a multiple time DWI offender caused a horrible crash by rear-ending their family's car. And the sisters were in the car's back seat as they were coming home from a basketball tournament. It's the 15th anniversary. It's something the police department does every year to their credit because this is not the kind of tragedy that we should just write off and forget about. So please respect it, honor it, remember the sisters who lost their lives to multiple time, multiple DWI offender. And thank you again to the police department for keeping this going and keeping their memories alive. One last matter of personal privilege. I want to thank everybody for their very kind thoughts, who, the many expressions of concern and support and friendship. that I received last week. It's very, very meaningful to me, so thank you, Madam Clerk. What do we have next? **Introduction of Legislation** **16a.** Consideration of Resolution Number 2025 TBD, sponsored by Councilor Amanda Chavez, a resolution authorizing representatives and agents for an agreement with New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration regarding Appropriation ID Number H336, New Mexico Department of Transportation Control Number C523360, to acquire rights of way for and to plan, design, and construct bicycle and pedestrian improvements along Pacho Street between West San Mateo Road and Alta Vista Street. We've had many of these come forward, which is a positive thing, but other than that, I think it speaks for itself. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Madam Clerk. **Item 16b.** Consideration of Resolution Number 2025 TBD, sponsored by Councilor Alma Castro, a resolution authorizing the sale and consumption of beer and wine in the Railyard Park during the 2025 Railyard Movies in the Park on May 31st, 2025; June 28th, 2025; July 26th, 2025; August 9th, 2025; and August 23rd, 2025, pursuant to Subsection 23-6.2C SFCC 1987. Let's all enjoy the movies at the Railyard. Very good. **Item 16c.** Consideration of Resolution Number 2025 TBD, sponsored by Councilor Michael Garcia, a resolution authorizing the sale and consumption of beer and hard cider during the Party on the Pitch Summer Tournament on May 31st, 2025, pursuant to Section 23-6.2C SFCC 1987. It speaks for itself. Thank you, sir. **Item 16d.** Consideration of Resolution Number 2025 TBD, sponsored by Mayor Alan Weber, a resolution approving budget amendments for the Buckman Direct Diversion Board and Santa Fe Solid Waste Management Agency, and requesting that New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration approve the City of Santa Fe's second quarter budget amendments for Fiscal Year 2025. I think it speaks for itself. **Item 16e.** Writing down numbers to help myself. Consideration of a Resolution 2025 TBD, sponsored by Councilor Amanda Chavez, a resolution authorizing representatives and agents for an agreement with the New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration regarding Appropriation ID Number H3359, New Mexico Department of Transportation Control Number C5233359, to acquire rights of way and to plan, design, construct, and improve Governor Miles Road from Richards Avenue to Nion Drive. Speaks for itself. I think we've got a thing going here. Next item, Madam Clerk. **16f.** Consideration of a Bill 2025-4, sponsored by Mayor Alan Weber, and Councilors Romero, Carol Romero-Wirth, Michael Garcia, and Amanda Chavez, a bill amending Ordinance Number 2024-1, which authorized the city to enter into three separate 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 respectively 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. Who would like to speak to this one? I think it mostly speaks to itself, but I would just say that it's, yeah, except for the "herefores" and "theretofore" and that part. But this is essentially a technical ordinance to break out the three, the loan agreements that we approved in 2024 around these projects and make them each align and be aligned with the system that they're, that's being loaned the money. Boy, I really mutilated that. I think it speaks for itself. I think it does. Here too, for anyway. But I yield to the other sponsors as well. Any other, any other sponsor wish to clarify how it speaks for itself? I think she covered it perfectly, Councilor. Any, you're good. Thumbs up. Okay, we have a problem, Mayor. Councilors, I think we just have two technical corrections on that one. Well, the first is that the way that City Clerk's rules are read, the last line is accurate, but it says "inconsistent." We'll change that to "inconsistent." And then one of the committees needs an update, or the final action looks like, so the final action, the public hearing that is currently scheduled for Governing Body on March 26th needs to be pushed back for public hearing due to noticing to April 9th. So I'd move the Governing Body hear the, make final action on this on April 9th. Second. Sorry, I forgot about that change. Okay, let's vote on that amendment to the committee process and voting schedule for the Governing Body. There's a motion and a second. Councilor Lindell, Councilor Romero-Wirth, yes. Councilor Cassett, yes. Councilor Castro, yes. Councilor Chavez, Councilor Faulkner, yes. Councilor Lee Garcia, yes. Councilor Michael Garcia, yes. Mayor Weber, yes. Motion is approved. Thank you. And that other correction needs to be made too. That's a technical correction. Next item, please. **Item 16h.** Consideration of Bill Number 2025. You may have jumped over G. Oh, sorry. **16g.** Consideration of Bill Number 2025, sponsored by Councilor Michael Garcia, Amanda Garcia, Alma Castro, and Pilar Faulkner, Amanda Chavez. Sorry, I'm really, really having a hard time reading. It's that last bill. A bill amending Section 11-14.5 of the Economic Development Fund Ordinance to change the sunset date for depositing certain land sale revenues in the Affordable Housing Trust Fund from December 31st, 2025, to December 31st, 2030. Mr. Garcia, speaks to itself. Everybody good? Thank you, ma'am. Let's go to the next one. **16h.** Consideration of Bill Number 2025, multi-year appropriations for capital outlay, grant, grant-funded projects, and special appropriations, and effective December 31st, 2025, amending Section 11-2.4 to sunset the Finance Director's budget amendment authority to carry over certain unexpended appropriations into the next fiscal year. Thank you. I'll let it go speak for itself. So let's keep going to our next item, Madam Clerk. **Next item: Final Action on Legislation for Public Hearing** **19a.** Consideration of Bill Number 2024-25 TBD, sponsored by Councilor Amanda Chavez, Faulkner, and Lee Garcia, a bill relating to City Administration, amending Section 2-8 SFCC 1987 to change the title from Community Health and Safety Department to Health and Human Services Department, remove the Police Department and the Fire Department from that section, and create two new sections, 2-8.8 and 2-8.9, for the Police Department and Fire Department respectively. And there also is an amendment that we sent from the City Clerk's office. Great. Thank you. So this is a public hearing. I, that said, I'd be happy to open up with any remarks that the sponsors would like to make before we go to the, we entertain motions and go to the public, or we can just go straight to public testimony. All right. It is a public hearing. If there's anyone either here in the auditorium who would like to come forward and speak to this proposed legislation, or somebody also, when the time's appropriate, who may be in the Zoom room, we'll entertain testimony from folks who'd like to address the bill. Now would be the time to step forward. And Madam Clerk, you'll keep an eye on the clock for us, please. Yes, you have the floor. Hi, thank you, Mayor, City Councilors. My name is Greg Weager. I live in District 2. I have been a resident of Santa Fe for 10 years, and I ask you to please oppose the law enforcement resolution. I believe that moving, effectively moving oversight from Community Health and Safety is a really bad idea, especially considering that in recent years, use of force has skyrocketed. I believe in 2022 to 23, use of force has gone up by 75%. It has continued to increase each year. Seems like a bad time to effectively change, reduce, and diminish oversight. Personally, I am fortunate enough to be in a lighter profession. I'm a musician with the Santa Fe Symphony. Not only do we have a conductor, we have oversight filled in the Lensic Theater with an audience from the community. If I don't do my job right, there are going to be thousands of people that see it. And if I make a mistake, nobody dies. So I think it's very foolish to remove such, you know, accountability from such an important part of our community. And, yeah, so please, this should be the easiest decision you make. I feel like this should not be hard. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Good night. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes, you have the floor, sir. Thanks. Good evening. My name is Eric Schultz. Let me preface my remarks by saying that I reside outside of the city limits, but I am in Santa Fe often on a daily basis. I'm also a graduate of Carlos Gilbert Elementary, so a long history in. I'm also with the Democratic Socialists of America, and very much believe in the principles of community policing, increased rather than managed. And that's the gist of what I have to say. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for being here. Good evening. Miguel Acosta, live in District 3. Director of Earth Care, an organization on the Southside. Happy birthday, Miss Amanda. Good to see you doing well, Mr. Mayor, and welcome to you and old, no, friends. The families that we work with and the young people that we work with in District 3, many of them, as you all have supported through like the immigrant friendly legislation that you have, many come from communities in the United States or in other parts of the world where they've had negative experiences both with police and military. And often those experiences cannot be in any way resolved because of the shields and because of the protections that military and police have. Now we're seeing in this country, we're seeing lots of, let's just call it, concern, right, and behaviors across the country that's increasing frustration, risk, and fear in our community. Police do their job best when the public is involved and participates in providing feedback and guidance, right, as we talked, as you've heard about community policing. I've been lucky or unlucky enough to have seen what happens when there isn't oversight, both here in New Mexico, in Albuquerque, and in my hometown in Chicago. When, when there's, we've seen what happens over the years when there isn't oversight, when there's shields, and when there's distance between police and and and the community and the public. This is not a good time to create distance. I'm not understanding necessarily the logic of the reorganization, but whatever it is, now is just not a good time to create this distance or any sense of a shield. The fear and anxiety that exists in the community right now is just, it, it, it calls for more cooperation and more participation and more conversation rather than less. We've seen like increased use of force. We've seen, you know, high-speed chases, shooting into the Fiestas parades, and other questionable behaviors. You know, now's when we have to be having more conversations in public, in the light of day, rather than behind closed doors. We should instead be looking for opportunities to create that kind of engagement and create more opportunities to create a safe and just community. Those are the kinds of resolutions that we'd like to be here supporting. I would encourage you all to at least table this until such time as we can have like a really good conversation about how do we create not just safety, because you can have, you know, in your documents, a safety plan for the Santa Fe, but if we don't feel it, if the community is not feeling it, then it doesn't exist. So I would suggest, I would hope that you vote against this, or at least table this until such time as as we can have a safer conversation. Right now in this country is just not a good time. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, guys. Good, good afternoon, Mayor, Councilors. My name is John Paul Gano. You know, I can beat Miguel. That was a good speech that he We did, but I would just ask that you guys table it right now. We're trying our hardest to build relationships in the immigrant community, and the distance that it would create, and the lack of trust that it would create, and all the momentum that we're trying to build in these relationships, it would be devastating and set back the work we've been doing for a very long time. So please, if you can, consider at least tabling it and having a larger conversation. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Madam Clerk, is there anyone in the Zoom room who wants an opportunity to have two minutes to speak to the governing body? We have one person right now. If anyone else would like to raise their hand, I will call on them after Stephanie Beninato. I am Michael, can you make me a co-host, please? Miss Beninato, you can speak. Thank you. I forgot to unplug a headset, so that's why I think you weren't hearing me. I appreciate the opportunity to speak. I'm in support of what some of the other speakers have said about the need to have community involvement and to feel that the police are approachable, especially during this time when there's uncertainty. I also think that the community policing program that was available several years ago, you had some really, really good officers who were involved in that program, and it seems to have gone pretty much all the way. I also just want to point out, and not that I mind that Mr. Acosta got to say his whole presentation, but I didn't see anybody interrupting him, and all that interference of music or noise was not there after a couple of seconds. So I do think you should treat people equally. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else in the Zoom room with a hand up? We have another person, Nikel P. You are allowed to speak. Hi, can you all hear me? Yes. Yeah, my name's Nikel, and I'm here to speak as others have against the removal of the Police Department from the Community and Health Safety Oversight Board. My great-grandfather was imprisoned in India for political reasons. My mother's earliest memories are visiting him in jail and seeing how many of the people in there were horribly treated, some even tortured with wounds that would stay with them for the rest of their life. And those memories gave my parents and myself a deep appreciation growing up for the freedoms and the liberties that are provided to American citizens under the Constitution. Now, those protections might exist on paper, the right to due process, the right against unreasonable arrest, the right to privacy, but those can only exist in practice with institutions, institutions that check and balance other components of government in power. And one of those in this case are boards like the community oversight. Removing the police from that level of oversight, I think, would be a very grave mistake right now. Not to say that we could instantly become like many other despotic countries around the world, but increasingly we've been seeing trends in the US and around the world towards more authoritarian forms of policing and incarceration. I'd like to point out that I agree that in many areas government inefficiency and excessive bureaucracy can certainly be a problem. But I think that if City Council is willing to spend until midnight litigating zoning disputes, if it's willing to sit on decaying properties for years and years trying to find resolution, I think we can afford a little bit of oversight for the use of force, the power to arrest, and potentially use lethal violence against their own people. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Anyone else? Anyone else wish to raise their hand? Not at this time. I do not see anyone, and I don't see anyone else in the chamber. So let's go to the governing body. I think I might entertain a motion, and then I do have an amendment to suggest, and then we can debate. Motion to deny. There's a motion to deny, and there's a second. That was first on the table. We can discuss. It's an opportunity to discuss the sponsors in particular or other supporters what this bill actually does and describe some of the thinking behind it if anybody wants to take that opportunity. Yes, if you don't mind, Mayor, I would like to start. Could we, could I ask that Chief Joy come up just so that you could kind of help me with some points I want to make? Thank you, Chief. So where I want to start is what I'm hearing from the community. I think this does not interfere with, it's actually, in my opinion, quite unfortunate that we think that because of a structure there have been accountability systems that really aren't necessarily there. The police report to the city manager. Collaboration has existed with the Community Health and Safety Department, and that has been the case. But when we talk about checks and balances, I, and I'm going to ask Chief Joy, maybe I'm just assuming, but I will not, in my opinion, from what I've seen and from what I know, I do not believe the checks and balances that people think were present because they were under this department are actually what has been the case. Councilor Chavez, that is correct. I'd also like to note that Fire was supposed to be here. I think I got punked. I was told they were coming, but they're, somebody's on their way. I feel comfortable speaking that they're so on board with this. He is online. Okay, great. Oh, okay. Right. Well, I'll harass him about that later. Yes, Councilor Chavez, that's correct. And also, I just, while I'm here and I have the mic, I'll note the event that we're attending tomorrow. Many of the committee, not committee meetings, but community meetings that we've had in various sections of the community, that's been done by myself and working with the councilors. I try, and I said this in the last mini meeting about this as well, I try not to advocate for or against particular legislation. So rather speak to the efficiency of the position, having worked currently as we are now, answering directly to the city manager, and also previously working under a Community Health and Safety Director. What I can say as far as efficiency is that it has been a more efficient process under this current configuration. Thank you, Chief. And so, you know, my point in hearing concerns, first of all, I want to thank everyone that shared a voice because I think that these are very important points that we have to highlight as city officials and city staff, is that, you know, our community does want checks and balances. Our community does want community involvement in regards to law enforcement and fire. This bill is not going to interfere with that. Right now, what you have been seeing is on paper or within our structure, on paper, it looks like they're reporting through multiple chains of command, but that's not necessarily the case. And so when we're talking about transparency, transparency is what we are proposing, is what has been taking place, which is our Chief of Police and Chief of Fire, and they could interrupt me and tell me if I'm wrong, work with an accountability system that is directly under the city manager. That does not exclude them collaborating with all departments, including directors in community health and safety to accomplish things that are best for the city. And I just wanted, Chief Moya, you're here too. Would you say that what I am saying is accurate or inaccurate? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Chavez, yeah, me and Chief Joy have been working with this structure for the last year and two months. I don't think either of you or any of you have seen a drop in our productivity. We have continued to provide the best service possible. What it did for us when we both started, we both started almost three months apart, was it made it harder for us because we had to also teach somebody that wasn't in the culture of the Fire Department or the Police Department. We are very different. The Police and Fire Department are very different, and it is hard to learn both of our structures. And then once you teach somebody, it took Director Ochoa, and I give her 100% credit, it took her over two years to get to the point where she understood both of our organizations. And it was still even hard for her to understand that. So, I think we did a great job moving forward. I was, sorry, I was not at the last meeting. I've had a lot of personal stuff that's been going on. But what I will also say is we didn't build the structure correctly. Me and Chief Joy were always in charge of disciplines, and I think that was never brought up before. Director Ochoa was never involved in disciplines in our departments. So it went from, you know, my under management to me to the city manager. So if we're going to restructure this correctly, or if we want to have a little deeper thought, we need to think about it in a bigger picture because Director Ochoa was never involved in any disciplines I did in my department. It went from me directly to the city manager. So we had some holes in the organization as well. Thank you so much, Chief Moya. And so what I, you know, what I really want to emphasize here is that the fact that I would like our structure to be true to what that accountability actually looks like. And it's not. So what's more accurate is what's being proposed in this bill right now. Now, what I'm hearing from the community, though, is within this possible new structure, which is actually an old structure, but new now, is that we need to involve community more within fire and within police so that they're confident and that there is an accountability system that not only that they're familiar with, but that they trust. And I think that that can take place in a more accurate way under a structure that on paper and in reality truly represents how the city functions within these departments. I also just want to emphasize because I know that there was a lot of conversations about community and there being a real fear. I have to say that I have probably seen fire and police at more town halls than many other directors. At when there's concerns about public safety, their face is there. And I have yet to be at a town hall where the community has voiced that they weren't appreciative of their presence. Every single time, they're very appreciative of their presence. They're very glad that they're there. They're very glad that that dialogue is present. And so, I just want to clarify that, you know, from what I have seen in, you know, the community, your presence actually offers a lot of insight and a lot of clarity that helps our community feel more at ease and just having an understanding of the processes that we may have. So I just, in my experience and what I have, you know, seen in multiple districts, that is, that is it. But I just wanted to clarify that. I'm going to let the other sponsors speak, but I just want everyone to hear one more time, the accountability system that you think is present within the structure as it is, is not present within the structure as it is. There is no oversight of anyone, because they exist in a department, they report to the city manager as they had before the reorg. So we are trying to create an accurate picture for our community of what the accountability system and the oversight truly looks like in these departments. So I just want to emphasize that, and I will turn it over to any other co-sponsor that would like to speak. Who would go to Councilor Faulkner next or Councilor Garcia? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Also, thank you, Councilor Chavez and Councilor Faulkner, for their collaboration on this. You know, I think speaking from my perspective and taking a look at again, the structure, and what our intent is, I think, you know, within public safety, when we're talking about specific functions of Each department, police have a specific charge and duty. It carries over to the fire department, but both do very specialty jobs and they're very different. Both have chiefs and leaders that are sworn officers that I believe for the most part, when there's a mission-critical and time-sensitive situation, I believe it is very important that they, through their expertise and their knowledge, because they are in their position, have to make those tough calls. Now, jumping through different layers, and again, we're talking about the layers of bureaucracy, so to speak, but how hard is it to have a director, and in this case, a Community Health and Safety Director, that oversees those decisions and many times still has to go up to the next level, which is the CM? And so, back again, I appreciate the comments by Councilor Chavis in regards to, we believe that we're already, we're continuing to use this structure because when there are very critical situations in our community, a lot of times that aren't either publicized or aren't known to the community, they're working behind the scenes, whether it's SWAT situations for police or very critical, dangerous fires or situations in the community from the fire department. And so, from that perspective, it was very important for me to reduce the time of collaboration. I guess I would have a question for Chief Joyce, since you're here. I don't know if you know of other structures like this in similar municipalities like ours, but how important is it for a director above you to have the knowledge base that you possess as a chief or in an officer, and what type of qualifications does that need, does that require? Mayor: Councilor Garcia, so I'm going to spin it, I guess, in a different way. So, speaking to the bureaucracy and where I, when I reference efficiencies, I'll say first, Director AOA, I don't think there's another person who could have done it better in the work that she did and the speed of which she tried to get herself spun up to what both myself and Chief Moya do. And if I were to try to put myself in a position where I have to manage us and also have to oversee fire, that would be a significant hill to climb. And then also have to do all of the things that Director Hammond Paul is tasked with doing. What we've done in this current iteration, again, where we've bounced around a little bit, the director is tasked with a lot with the community health and safety overall. And our respective departments, us and fire, we take up a lot of attention and capacity for what she was having to deal with, as well as also trying to work with the homelessness issues and the, what do you say, the pallet shelters and the various other projects that she was tasked with trying to get moving and off the ground. Just since Director Hammond Paul has been in place, seeing what he's been able to do with Code Blue, for instance, this past year, this past winter, I think the program probably ran the smoothest that it's run since its iteration getting off the ground. What we had in place before was, yes, I would brief Director AOA on something and we'd have conversation and I would try to get her as informed as I could, but then also I'd have to have that discussion again with Manager Blair and Director AOA and sometimes with the Mayor, trying to get everybody back on the same page again, which oftentimes in a high-stress incident or critical incident, that's time that I don't have because it pulls me away from managing my team and my commanders. So, I don't know if I really answered your question as much as just rambled on the microphone. Well, somewhat, but I also, just in terms of finding a person that, and I think you did, I mean, bringing somebody up to speed to not only understand police, what they do, how they do it, why they do it, and fire. Let's just say you have a situation where you have both police and fire at the same incident, and they're trying to understand why you're doing your specific decisions, they're having to understand why the fire chief is making their specific decisions and deciphering all of that data and making a good judgment call on that, or an authorization, then having to regurgitate that and bring it to the city manager, who then in turn may be like, I think like you said, in collaboration with the Mayor. I just think it just complicates so many things. How would this change affect your ability and your charge in working with the Community Health and Safety? I think that's one of the fears is that now police and fire are just going to act on their own and not assist other departments. How would this change your either willingness or not willingness to help another department? Sure. Well, I think proof is in what we've been doing currently. So, I think we work well together. I work well with Moya and Director Hammond Paul. I think in any event, in a situation where that wasn't the case, then we have, that's a management problem, and that's where the city manager would need to step in and influence the managers because either that's a chief problem here, it's a chief problem there, or it's a director problem with community health and safety. I think right now, we have a good set of collaborative managers and directors in place here, and I think we work well together. What we're doing now is going well. Thank you. I'm going to have one question, obviously, right now for our current city manager because this does put you right in the spot of, and obviously you're new on the job, but you bring to the table a lot of experience. And again, I think a lot of that experience also is great, but you also see how this community functions, the size of our community, and how you see this, how you've seen it in other situations and how you see it in our city. Mr. Mayor, Council, I've been itching to talk. I am, I think that there's a couple of things we need to keep in mind. First of all, I applaud every one of the people who got up here and spoke because I understand what they're talking about. I think we all understand what they're talking about. I think the organizational structure and the oversight of the police chief and fire chief in the departments is a different issue because, I mean, I don't want to sit here and read my resume for you, but I've been doing this for a long, long time. I've been overseeing police and fire departments and being a colleague at times and their oversight at times for 35 years, and this is the 12th city I've worked in. I've been very involved in police oversight, and fire oversight too, but police oversight gets more attention, and for many, many years. And I believe in it deeply. It is part of a city manager's job to provide that level of oversight. It's an obligation of the job, and I train for that my entire career to be able to do that. And I'm also trained to understand the operational side of a police department and a fire department. I don't relish the idea, and I've had one other experience where I had this for a while, I don't relish the idea of having an intermediate person in the staff who's less trained at it than me that I need to go through with something that's so important. This is a very important function, the overseeing of all of our departments, but certainly public safety. There's more at stake. So, I much prefer to have a situation where I have the direct relationship with those department heads. That doesn't in any way reduce the amount of concern I've got for the feelings of people in a community who haven't historically had that relationship of trust with the city or with the police department or fire department. That's critically important this day and age, and we need to continue doing that. And I think everybody, it sounds to me like everybody here's been trying to do that, and I don't think this change affects that at all. Councilor Chavez, I think, said it. I don't think that's what changes oversight. I think that comes from all of our resolution that we're going to get out in the community and we're going to give people a chance to know us and us to know them. There are things that should be civilianized. We'll continue to do that. It's good for lots of reasons. So, I think I don't think what's before you tonight is the issue. I think the issue is that we resolve ourselves to keep working on those policies, and I can do that working directly with the police chief and fire chief, and that's the way I prefer it. Sorry for the long answer. Thank you. Thank you, City Manager Scott. So, I think I'll leave it at that. I believe that, you know, to not take away from the fears of the community, and I do, I do take that to great concern. I believe that through good, strong structure and management, good quality leadership at each department, whether it be the police department, the fire department, or our Community Health and Safety Department, and I think when all those three areas or three departments are independently working but collaborating, I think that's where we're going to get the best result for our community. And I'll leave it at that, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Councilor. Other sponsors who want to speak to this now? Councilor F, keep the clock on yourself. No, I'll keep this brief for time, and staff is here. I echo everything that everyone just said. I also have empathy for the community who's living in fear right now. But I will say, they have the same fear about the Bearcats, and when they showed up to the community event, the Bearcats, many people were taking pictures with them, and it actually alleviated some of the fear around what that machine was about. But I also say that, more critically to me, is that by moving police and fire out from under Community Services, what we have done is then we've allowed Director Paul the bandwidth to not have to try to choose between police, fire, and the homeless issue, that now he has the bandwidth and the police and fire have a bandwidth to compete equally for budget. And housing everyone in one department was making that complicated. That's it. Thank you. Who else has a hand up? Councilor Cassett, you want to speak? Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, everybody. I just wanted to briefly speak on this because I went on a little bit of a journey with this proposal. I was really struggling back and forth because, you know, as we had discussions back with the reorganization around the purpose of the Community Health and Safety Department, and there have been some areas where I've really seen that collaboration occur in such a way that maybe it would have otherwise. But that I've been very happy to see, specifically some of the presentations that you, Chief Joyce, gave with Director Julie Sanchez around some of the violence prevention work that you all are doing, both with domestic violence and with youth violence. And I've just really been impressed at watching how both of you work together. That said, and this point has been made, it was actually your comment around Director AOA's capacity. I am a huge Kira fan. I was a huge Kira fan before I came to the city. She is a bit of a celebrity in the local public health world, so I had learned of her work earlier on. And I do think that I'm not sure anybody except for Kira could have taken this on, and yet I do know that it was something that she was very, very much stretched then. And then seeing Director Hammond Paul, who, you know, brings such an incredible skill set and being being able to really hone in on this area of really taking on the homelessness issue. I do think that we have some conversations around our overall structure still, but I actually think Director Ham and Paul made the best point when we were discussing this in Quality of Life around the need for organizational flexibility based on a city manager and what they're looking at day-to-day functioning and what does that start to look like. We, I don't think in our current form of how we do this, we don't quite have that. We're going to bring an ordinance every time we want to move somebody around. So I think that this is a broader conversation, but I think it's a conversation that we do need to have, and I think that it does actually speak a lot to the importance of the city manager and how that individual really does need to have the foresight to bring different departments together when they're needed, to be looking at the city as a whole, and not just each department as a segment, which sounds like a very hard job. Glad you have it, not me. So, I did come down and voted in favor of this at the Quality of Life Committee meeting for those reasons. One, I think that really seeing Director Ham and Paul being able to zone in where he needs to zone in, as well as the conversations around the chain of command and actually hearing from you, Mr. Scott, thank you, Councilor Garcia, for asking, because I was going to ask the same thing, and I really do appreciate your viewpoint and your experience in this, and that does help me in feeling more comfortable in moving this forward. That being said, I do want to talk about the things that I don't think this is going to address. And I do think community policing and that concept of the community engagement, I don't think that moving police and fire under community health and safety net kind of fixed that. And so I don't think moving it out is going to have a negative impact. I think that there have been other things that I have seen the departments do that have been beneficial. And actually, Councilor Travis, this would be a question for you or maybe for either of the Chiefs. You chair the Public Safety Committee. That's a resident advisory committee around Public Safety, and I'm curious about, I honestly don't know as much about that committee, and I was hoping you could speak to what that committee does, where does that fit into this, if at all? Maybe it doesn't. I actually think that that committee could do more. So I brought concerns early on about that committee. Talk about transparency, because I really have an issue with us as a city having committees just so that we could say we have committees. The individuals on Public Safety are brilliant individuals, brilliant, and they have a lot to offer, but I really think that committee has been set in place for that purpose. We actually had a discussion at our last Public Safety meeting about how we're going to add a discussion item where we're going to actually have a conversation with staff about what we want to learn about Public Safety, because it's a lot of information that our staff share with the committee members. There's not a lot of comment, but I think it's because there's not a real understanding, and there hasn't been a great conversation about what these members want to know so that they could be empowered to actually bring things forward. So that's coming, that's coming soon. And so I think that Public Safety Committee could be a great place where we could involve the committee more or community more. However, I do think that true, like what the community needs to see in regards to building trust and filling or addressing some of the concerns that the community brought up to date is like us going into the community and really learning that way. But I think the Public Safety Committee would be a good way to kind of start those discussions that we could take forward. And I'm looking forward to how that discussion item is going to go at our next meeting. I think that a lot of our members were really excited about just learning more, because right now they're just sitting on a committee, which I unfortunately think we have in place far more than what we should. So hopefully that'll bring change, and it could potentially be a starting point where we could start bringing topics and having conversation starters with community members outside of the city, meaning City Hall. Wonderful. Yeah, thank you, Council Travis, and I agree with you. I've had this conversation with numerous people about the resident advisory committees and how do we better utilize them and how does the community have input through that mechanism? And I know that I often call EAC, Economic Development Advisory Committee, which I chair, as a, that's a resident advisory committee. I call it my sandbox because I'm always trying to kind of play around with how do I take the brains that are in this room on this topic and use them in a way that is going to benefit us as decision makers who maybe do not necessarily have that expertise in that field, and then benefit the city and the community as a whole. So when we're thinking about some of these other issues that we want to solve, I do think that there are other avenues that are structures that are already somewhat established that we should be exploring. The other thing that I know keeps getting brought up is budget and this being an issue, and I know that we've had a lot of conversations. I will wrap up this, my last point. I know we've had a lot of conversations on the budgeting process and the, that the governing body or the City Council and the Finance Committee that we have, you know, expressed some challenges in how the budgeting process occurs and where those conversations happen and how are we able to really watch our budget and how do we understand what was prioritized and, as I always say, what was left on the cutting room floor. And I do not think that this change is going to fix that even for these two departments. So while I am in support of that and I understand, you know, this conversation around the different levels, I think that our budgeting process is going to be a separate conversation that we do need to undertake. And I, I, I am still in support, but I just, that is not something that I foresee as an outcome. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised, but just in terms of what I think this will do and will not do, I have a hard time seeing that simply because we had, we had this issue prior to the reorg occurring. But I do think that this does open up an avenue for us to continue to look at what is really needed from these departments. Maybe we do need to look at how we have more organizational flexibility so that somebody that is a professional in managing city departments is able to really have that capability to structure, structure the city as an organization in a way that's going to make the most sense, and we as policy makers continue to focus on policy as opposed to day-to-day operations. So I will, I will stop there for now. Thank you. Mayor: Thank you. Um, El from Merworth, we'll just, everybody will get 10 minutes. Go ahead. I'll be quick. I think it would be interesting to hear the mayor speak about why this Community Health and Safety Department was structured the way it was, because I think there was an idea that putting police and fire in with some of the under a director who was working on the community social issues, there could be collaboration, some teamwork, working together, and we could, you know, look at things more holistically than sort of in different silos. And I'm probably not saying that as well as I could, but maybe the mayor wants to speak to that. But I'd also note that we are operating right now with police and fire reporting to the city manager and not to the Community Health and Safety Department director. So this bill isn't changing anything because we're already operating this way. This change has already been made, and I don't think it affects the oversight of the police in the way that our community members in public comment are concerned. I think there is work that we can do again to build that trust, and we need to take seriously the feelings that are out there, but this bill isn't changing anything that relates to that. And I would also agree with Councilor Cassidy around if we think we're passing this bill and it's going to solve some sort of budget problems, I don't, that's not what this bill is going to do. So I would just echo that statement, and that's all I have, Mayor. Mayor: Thank you. Uh, we just, would you like to go first or would you, would you like to do just everybody have a shot at it? Thank you, Mayor. Councilor Lindo. Yeah, I don't know what this is going to solve. I have no idea. And it is my understanding that both the police and the fire wanted this to happen. So in saying that, you know, not supporting or not having a position on legislation, that's not been my understanding about this. My understanding is that both chiefs very much wanted this. I don't know how this city benefits from this. I don't know what the downside of having a director was other than it sounds like, how does the city manager have more capacity to do this than what a director does? That doesn't make sense to me. I just, I don't see the downside of having someone outside of the department having outside eyes on policy and programming. What's wrong with a new idea and collaborating outside of the department is not a bad thing. City manager is going to be pulled in on, kept in the loop on these things no matter what, but I don't think that to say that the director didn't have the capacity is correct or proper. And I think the city manager has plenty to do, and if having a director takes a little bit of that off the city manager, I love that because the city manager is going to be pulled in on it no matter what. And bringing people up to speed and capacity, we happen to have a city manager right now that has experience with this, not always the case and not always necessarily going to be the case in the future. We don't know that. I think that, you know, you're a unicorn on this. First time you've been called that tonight, isn't it? I just, I don't see how we benefit from not having a director that can bring some outside ideas in on policy, programming, and the negativity about it bothers me. I talk about collaboration. It bothers me that we don't want to have a director that isn't part of that, that is an outsider. I don't think that that's, you know, we're talking about community involvement and community caring. I don't think there's anything wrong with collaborating. Yeah, are they, are they different than other departments? Sure they are. We've dealt with tonight in some ways how they are different, but I, I'm, I'm not personally seeing how this benefits the city, how, how it benefits us. That's, and if it doesn't really benefit us and move us forward, I don't think that it's the best experiment for us to undertake. So I'm not going to support this. I'm not comfortable with it. I'm not comfortable with, you know, the comments about Director Ochoa and, so that's where I'm at with it. Thank you, Mayor. Mayor: Thank you, Councilor. We'll just keep going down the line if that's okay. Councilor Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You know, in something like this, I always try to tend back and think, well, we've got to understand where we've been, understand where we currently are, and what we're trying to achieve. And, you know, so I look back to 2020 when the reorganization was approved, which I did not support because I foresaw. challenges like this happening. There's been talk of collaboration, and you don't need to have a reorganization to have collaboration. When you reorg or collaboration, that's a forced collaboration, and it's not authentic. I just have a challenge with that. So there's been data shared with us, whether it's through email or even stated tonight, that police violence increased over the past couple years. Well, I look at that and say, "Well, that was under the structure that this proposal is one to actually get away from." So I find that a bit contradictory in regards to, "Well, we shifted, we reorged, police violence increased, but let's stick with that." That's what's actually being advocated, or at least I'm hearing being advocated for. Now, if we really want to, I guess, get at the crux of at least what I'm hearing from folks, their concerns are accountability and oversight. Adding an extra layer of bureaucracy does not achieve that. I think Mr. Scott attested to that in his testimony earlier. All it does is add an extra layer that our first responders have to go through in matters of emergencies, and that is not something as a public administrator I have been trained to avoid at all costs. So it gets back to that topic of accountability and oversight. And so I refer back to a committee that the council created back in 2020, and we got a report that had 34 recommendations. And one of those recommendations was to create a civilian oversight board for the police force. I'm believing that we've dragged our feet on that long enough, and that that would be the accountability that needs to be enacted. That way, the public is assured when something goes wrong or somebody needs to be held accountable, residents are going to be there to ensure that accountability is at hand. So let me ask you a question, Chief Joy, would you be opposed to the creation of a civilian police oversight board? Chief Joy: Counselor Garcia, I think it would need a more broad and longer conversation. I have not seen a community where there has been one enacted where it's been beneficial. And again, in the interest of reducing bureaucracy, I haven't seen one put in place where that hasn't just added another layer of bureaucracy. Councilor Garcia: Gotcha. Well, and I'm trying to find the middle ground here because as it's been stated multiple times, even the current structure we're under is what's ultimately being proposed right now. Who do you directly report to, Chief Joy? Chief Joy: Currently, I report to the city manager. Councilor Garcia: Okay. And so this proposal reaffirms that, correct? Chief Joy: That's my understanding, yes, sir. Councilor Garcia: So what happens if this is not proposed, City Manager Scott, or this is not adopted? Who would Chief Joy then report to? City Manager Scott: But that's not... So I assume it would report to Mr. Hammond Paul if the directive from the council is to not make the change that's in the code. I assume that's what it would be. City Attorney: Counselor, there's not really a reporting structure in this bill. It's more about what departments are part of which departments. But the city manager does have the authority to arrange departments and his authorities, correct? But ultimately, departments outline reporting structures. So I think we're not going to have a department director reporting to another department director in that sense. So I think that being said, you obviously heard my preference, and if it's appropriate, there's probably a couple additional comments I would make, but I don't want to stop your... Councilor Garcia: Sure. Well, and I think it just gets to the situation at hand where if this were not to be adopted tonight, who would Chief Joy and Chief Moya report to? Because it's been reaffirmed to us, and Mr. Mayor, maybe you can help us, because Director Hammond Paul, when he was hired, he was hired with no intention of oversight of police or fire. And so it puts us in a very precarious predicament where I really feel like, and I need to say a couple things. First of all, Mr. Hammond Paul, and I'm pointing to him because he's on the screen down here, is a tremendous, as we all know, tremendous talent. I've got tremendous confidence in him, and I think that he would do us a very credible job if, in fact, the departments reported to him. I personally don't prefer that organizational structure. I feel very strongly, and I've had plenty of years to understand this, that my job is easier with the direct relationship to the police and fire departments, and that I can do a better job of oversight by having that direct relationship. And except that I don't want to embarrass any of my communities, I could cite some specific examples of where the circumstances in providing that oversight were so difficult and so dark that having, if I had had to deal with somebody in between, it would have been very difficult, especially someone who didn't have my unique experience with working with the departments. I don't at all object to the concept behind the structure that created, that aspired to bring groups together, different functions together, aspired to put us closer to the community, aspired to create that level of trust. I think that's a phenomenal objective, and I think we can still accomplish that objective, however this is structured. I just know personally that as a city manager, it's a big part. I mean, this is half of the budget, half of the staffing, and the oversight of the function is so serious when things require it that I just prefer not to have an intermediate position involved. If you want to have an intermediate position, Mr. Hammond Paul is a terrific choice for that. I'm certainly no objection to that. But I don't think that's how that's necessarily fundamental to the other objectives of accomplishing collaboration and community trust. I don't think the structure is the key to that. I think there are other things that are the key to that. Councilor Garcia: Thank you, Mr. Scott. And I think that's what's quite challenging with this proposal, and I don't think the proposal is challenging. It's where do we fit in the accountability? Because I 100% agree that there needs to be accountability and oversight, but it should not come at an extra layer of bureaucracy. And even the way that we've been operating, Hammond Paul, how long have you been with the city? Director Hammond Paul: Mr. Mayor, counselors, I've been with the city about four months. Councilor Garcia: Okay. So at least for the minimum, at least of the last four months, and then prior to that, Director Ochoa had been gone with the city for quite some time before that. So it's been quite some time where we have not really had that extra layer of bureaucracy, and it's, in my opinion, I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, there are major issues happening with chain of command. I mean, I think that's where again, how do we figure the piece of the puzzle? I think that the public wants is accountability and oversight, and that's how do we fit this into this puzzle right now, which is typically in a police oversight board. But what I'm hearing from you, Chief Joy, is that you say it doesn't work well. And I mean, I'd love to hear from... We can't, can we? We can't ask the public questions, can we? Chief Joy: Counselor Garcia, I'm not presenting myself as an expert on civilian oversight boards. So I'm open to being wrong here in this particular topic. What I'm saying is I'm not aware of any examples where it's achieved the goal that I think you're looking for. Councilor Garcia: Well, and I think, and the reason why I shifted to that is because again, that was one of the many, many, many recommendations that the Public Health and Safety Task Force put forth in their final report to the governing body. And I want to honor the time commitment that they put in and would think that they did their due diligence and would not put forth a recommendation that they did not believe would ultimately hope to support the city of Santa Fe and ultimately have residents have full faith and confidence that there is accountability and oversight, and ultimately leading to a better relationship between residents and our police force. Because I think at the end of the day, that's what we all want to achieve is, as we keep saying, collaboration, we want accountability. Ultimately, at the end of the day, we want a safer community. How do we get there? And that's why I've supported this thus far is because I do not believe in adding an additional layer of bureaucracy does not help, especially with emergency services. It's those are life or death issues, and we don't need additional layer bureaucracy to interrupt that. That's all I have, Mr. Mayor. Mayor: Thank you, Counselor. I think Counselor Castro, you should have a chance to speak to your own motion. Councilor Castro: Thank you. I appreciate it. And Counselor Trujillo, I will try to be brief because I know you have a couple comments as well, so we'll get through this. All right, thank you everyone. I'm going to try to go through my list as quickly as possible. I do have some comments regarding Director Hammond Paul, and I was hoping that Director Brian Williams could be on as well. If I say anything that is incorrect, please feel free to correct me. I've heard a lot today about what we should do, what we shouldn't do, what's most effective, and what is most efficient. One of my biggest concerns is that we are functioning out of our code right now. We are out of compliance of our code, as mentioned by our colleague, Counselor Romero Worth. It is already outside of the purview of community health and safety under Director Hammond Paul for police and fire. Currently, they have not been reporting to Director Hammond Paul, is that correct, Chief Joy? You're directly reporting to the city manager. Chief Joy: Counselor Castro, that's correct. Councilor Castro: Is that consistent with our current city code? Maybe this is the city clerk or city attorney. City Attorney: Counselors, I briefly alluded to this earlier. We have not mandated a reporting structure, but we have described departments by including and excluding certain other divisions of the organizational chart. We have departments reporting to departments right now in terms of terminology and our code. This would not require the police and fire department to be part of the community health and safety department if we made this change, correct? Councilor Castro: But currently, as it states, they should be reporting to community health and safety, or is that... Mayor: Counselor, there's not really a reporting structure, but there is this idea of departments, right? Who's part of which department? So currently, they have not been acting as one department. Councilor Castro: Perfect. And so my understanding is that this was under the direction of a past city manager, which is part of my concern, as has been stated before. City Manager Scott, we are very lucky to have you, and yet we may not have you if we have a new incoming mayor, depending on what happens. This could be a very different person in a very different position. I'm also under the impression that Director Hammond Paul, before he applied for his current position, applied for a deputy director position, which I don't know if any of the sponsors did reach out to Director or former Director Ochoa, but her understanding of her position was as a deputy city manager to be coordinating some of these conversations and making sure that that collaboration was happening. I've also heard a lot about transparency, and yet we have recommendations, as stated by Counselor Garcia, that are from 2023 about civilian oversight that have yet to be addressed. There was a ton of recommendations that came out of community health and safety. None of those recommendations are something that I see in today's resolution. So I think we should start first with the recommendations that our community has already given us that we've spent a ridiculous amount of time, money, and resources on collecting and quantifying for them to give us a report, and yet we're going to go back and ask again what community is looking for. I disagree 100%. I also want to talk to culture and rank. I've heard from not from our ranks or doesn't... I think that was the intention, that somebody outside of police and fire, who is not part of those ranks, be part of these conversations and have some sort of input. So I don't see that as something that is a negative. I think it's something that's a positive and actually is building community and is building trust within that community. I think that the mechanisms by which we have some sort of understanding between law enforcement and the community should be open. So that leads me to my next question for both Chief Moya and Chief Joy: What are the mechanisms to hold your staff accountable currently? Chief Joy, you want to go first? Is it Moya first? I didn't know if he was going to do it. **Chief Moya:** Yeah, I'm sorry. I was trying to hit my mute. I'm sorry, Counselor, Mayor, Counselor Castro. We have internal, per the public safety recommendations, we created a complaint board on our website that we go through when we hold our staff accountable. Director Atova never held any of my people accountable. It went to me, to Director, to the City Manager. So there was no, she was never involved in any disciplines. She was never really involved in any of those processes because when this was created, it was never put in there that way. So if we would like to have that conversation, we can. But we, you're looking at two of the most senior city employees that you have here that have been here. I've been here 23 years. Chief Joy has been here 19 years. So when you're talking about community, I think we are part of the community. And I think if we're not holding those accountabilities, then it's to the point of you probably need to replace me and Chief Joy, because we are part of this place. I've been part of this place since I was a 20-year-old kid, part of the fire department. And if I'm not holding my people accountable, then you should hold me accountable, and I shouldn't be the chief of the department anymore. Because I think that's where we should stand today, because I've been here a long time, and my heart and soul is in this department. And that is what it's about, is I hold everybody accountable because it all falls back on me. If somebody's not doing their job, it's bad on me, and that's a bad place that I don't want to be. **Chief Joy:** Thank you, Chief. All right. And for my end, yeah, so it starts in, I'll bounce around a little bit because we have a formalized complaint process and we have an informal complaint process. Either way, it's going to be investigated. They can come in. We, so referencing the Community Health Safety Task Force recommendations, one of those was to make the complaint process easier. We did that. We set it up so that people could complain online. Those complaints go directly to myself and our IA man or investigators. Every complaint gets investigated, and every sustained policy violation, there is corrective action. Corrective action. The corrective action is done in compliance with department policy, which is available online, which is also something I believe we did at the request of the task force, and also our union contract, which is, I believe, is also available online. So there isn't, the mechanism through which the discipline process is handled is not a secret. **Councilor Castro:** Are there any community members or folks that are not law enforcement that are part of that process? **Chief Joy:** As far as which part? **Councilor Castro:** The complaint process or reviewing the complaints? **Chief Joy:** Anyone can make a complaint. As far as the IAs go, all IAs are reviewed by the City Legal and for making sure that the, again, it's the decisions rendered are in compliance with department policy. **Councilor Castro:** I'm sorry, I must not be understanding. Are there any civilian folks that are part of that process of accountability? **Chief Joy:** City Attorney's Office is our civilians. **Councilor Castro:** The only civilians? Okay. So no members of the public? **Chief Joy:** No, and that was the case when Director Atova was in place as well. That unchanged. **Councilor Castro:** And I apologize, I didn't mean to, sorry, Chief Brian Moya as well. I didn't mean to suggest that this was part of Director Atova's charge. I just want to honor members in the community that have concern about what is happening internally. And I think also members on the governing body have heard tonight some concerns about the way that PDA has been operating, and we just want to understand what that mechanism is to hold PD accountable. Thank you very much. I do have some questions in terms of how we're dealing with some of the community concerns around over-policing and militarized policing. I know we referenced today the event tomorrow at HOV Chavez for immigration rights information along with the Mexican Consulate. And it was actually the Mexican Consulate that requested law enforcement to be a part of that. And so we have asked, as you know, for law enforcement to dress down and not bring certain vehicles because there is a fear in the community. And I'm really excited that we were able to meet each other in the middle for that. But it is something that wasn't particularly easy. I had to have other counselors and other members of this governing body intervene just to get a confirmation that PD was going to be there. That was not the case with fire. And so I think there's a lot of work that we still need to do to be able to reach some sort of amicable relationship with community. And I applaud any efforts that this body can do to have that happen. Thank you. **Chief Joy:** Thank you. **Councilor Castro:** Is you're good? **Chief Joy:** I would also like to address, Councilor Castro, no one had to intervene to get additional cooperation. I've never said no to any community meeting, not now, not in the time I've been Chief. So I disagree with your comment. **Councilor Castro:** And you know, things happened quickly. Maybe while I was reaching out to other members of the governing body, you were not able to respond to the emails to the Mexican Consulate. I completely understand. And so we'll continue to build that relationship. Thank you. **Mayor:** Good. It's your turn here. We're good. **Councilor:** Yeah, I'd just like to make a few comments, thoughts. It's very complicated and sometimes frustrating when we co-mingle things that don't really go together and look for solutions or improvements in areas where the issue lies somewhere else. I think the challenge of having a sound and sensitive relationship between law enforcement, public safety in its many forms, and our community is complicated. It's always been complicated. I'm looking at an interview I did in 1991 with New York Police Commissioner Lee Brown, who is generally regarded as the father of community policing. And it was a big deal back then to try to introduce community policing as a way to change and adjust attitudes of those who are wearing a badge of any kind, police or fire, and those who are looking for help or responding in fear when those badges show up. This is, that's not a new challenge, and I think we'll always be struggling to do better, whether it's called community policing or it's simply more and more interaction through the very many different community forums that our police and fire and Emergency Management teams regularly and happily appear in front of. The original idea behind the reorganization that Councilor Mayor Worth asked about was not particularly revolutionary or novel. In other places, these kinds of structures are referred to as matrix organizations because not everything is linear, and the best organization chart isn't a pyramid. It's a series of interlocking circles and a Venn diagram, not a pyramid, but we're stuck with pyramids. We wanted to have the best of both worlds. That's what we aspired to. We wanted to have collaboration and coordination among all the different elements that bring community health and safety together. And tonight you saw and heard a horrific example of it when we passed the bar for that significant amount of money and support to go on Ceros Road. That bar, those ideas, those concepts that we voted on tonight were all generated from a task force that meets regularly, that Director Hammond Paul chairs, and has representation from all the people who are relevant in our departments, police, fire, most particularly because of the burden that homelessness and homeless individuals place on stressing our system. We've been innovating as much as we possibly can to find different ways of relieving the police from that specific responsibility. That's what the park rangers are about. That's what the Alternative Response Unit is about. That's what we're trying to do with the vote we took tonight to address Ceros Road. But they have to be a part of it. They have to be a willing and important collaborator in getting that work done. At the same time, we want direct and rapid response, not only accountability, but speed and efficiency when there is an emergency. And so we were trying to have both of those in the structure that we created. Structures aren't perfect. There's no perfect org chart, period, end of story. My experience under this Chief and under this structure is when there was an, under both of these Chiefs, whenever there was an immediate response needed, these Chiefs directly spoke to the City Manager, directly spoke to all the relevant parties because it's an emergency, and you're not going to be hamstrung by reporting relationships in those emergency situations. At the same time, we were hoping that there would be over time a generation, that we would be able to generate a really different kind of collaboration where police, fire, and civilians all melded their talents and their perspectives to yield an outcome that is a way to better serve the public. We're constantly, I've been, since I was Mayor, since I became Mayor, I've read three, four different ways to rethink policing. We're always rethinking policing. We're always imagining new and better ways to do it. And the structure was designed to provide a basis for those conversations to be more productive and to yield outcomes. The structure will not yield community trust in policing. The structure will not yield automatic public acceptance that the police are, and the fire department are acting always and every time in their best interest. And so there does need to be oversight. That oversight isn't changed dramatically by the structure. In the, in the, the question that was put to me is very clear to me that as we end, as we address this crisis in homelessness and the impacts of homelessness, mental health, behavioral health, drug addiction, the challenge of fentanyl, that Director Hammond Paul, in order to have his most effective time spent attacking those issues, would be, we would all be better off if the police and fire department directly went to see the City Manager, and Director Hammond Paul could be released from that responsibility. That doesn't mean they don't collaborate. That doesn't mean there isn't a task force. It is also the case that we are very fortunate that our Fire Chief and our Police Chief are exceptional individuals, and they do believe in collaboration. Chief Joy doesn't make much out of it, but the fact is that his mother was a social worker, and he comes from a position of understanding both sides of how you solve these complicated problems that are sometimes law and safety issues, and sometimes they're social issues that aren't addressed best by officers wearing a badge. Not everybody's going to be Chief Moya or Chief Joy. We are, I believe, enormously fortunate to have them. If we didn't have them, I would be much more inclined to have more collaboration and that intermediate step for a civilian person to provide that kind of oversight. Many cities have a Police Chief and a Police Commissioner, and they're different. In this instance, I think given where we are with our efforts to multitask between public health and public safety, I do. I don't have big objections to this amendment. I do think we need to keep an eye on how collaboration and coordination is being done in the future because there's no guarantee, as Council Lindell said, that we'll have a city manager who's a unicorn. I think we have a police chief and a fire chief who are unicorns. In the future, if we end up with people who don't believe in cooperation or collaboration with their civilian partners in health and community safety, I think we'll have to reconsider how well the adjustments work. But I go back to where I started. This is a tweak to a structure. It is not going to solve all the many other concerns we have about how people feel today about public safety, mental health, behavioral health. It's all part of a larger effort, and we need to rely on each other to solve it collaboratively. So with that, I am... I do have an amendment. I don't believe we need to change the name of the department because it still does have emergency management and other things that reflect safety. But for the moment, if we maintain the structure where Chief Joy and Chief Moya report directly to the city manager and collaborate with Director Hammond Paul in this task force effort to address the multi-elements, the multifaceted elements that really our community is most concerned about, I have confidence that we will continue to get the best of both worlds. Councilor Brunner, any more discussion or should we call for a vote? Call the question. The question. We have another motion, I imagine. All right, we have a motion to call the question. I'm sorry, we're voting now on defeating the proposal. A couple more. The motion is to turn down the motion before us now, is to not accept this proposal. We have to vote on this before we would get to my amendment. So there's a motion to call the question. Second. Madam Clerk, do you want to call the roll? Councilor Romero-Wirth? Yes. Councilor Cassutt? This is to question, okay. Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Fulmer? Yes. Councilor Lee Garcia? Yes. Councilor Michael Garcia? Yes. Councilor Lindell? Mayor Weber? Yes. Motion is approved. All right, so we have in front of us a motion to deny the proposal. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? Councilor Cassutt? No. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Chavez? No. Councilor Fulmer? No. Councilor Lee Garcia? No. Councilor Michael Garcia? No. Councilor Lindell? Councilor Romero-Wirth? No. Mayor Weber? No. Motion does not pass. All right, now we need a new motion to approve. Second. Motion to approve, and there's a second. And I would like to make a motion, or I would have anyone who'd like to make it on my behalf, that would in fact delete changing the title from Community Health and Safety and keep that title intact as an amendment to the bill that's in front of us. So moved. Second. There's a motion and a second that would delete the change of title from the name of the department and keep the rest of the ordinance intact. Is there a discussion on that? Madam Clerk, can you call the roll? Yes, Mayor. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Fulmer? Yes. Councilor Lee Garcia? Yes. Councilor Michael Garcia? Yes. Councilor Lindell? Councilor Romero-Wirth? Yes. Councilor Cassutt? Yes. Mayor Weber? Yes. Motion is approved. We have a motion as amended. Is there further discussion of the motion as amended? Madam Clerk, can you call the roll on the motion as amended, please? Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Fulmer? Yes. Councilor Lee Garcia? Yes. Councilor Michael Garcia? Yes. And I'd like to explain my vote. Councilor Lindell? Councilor Romero-Wirth? Yes. Councilor Cassutt? Yes. Councilor Castro? No. Mayor Weber? Yes. Motion is approved. Councilor Garcia, you have the floor to explain your vote. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate the conversation that was had tonight. It, I think, brought up some important topics, and it really is going to force us to revisit the Community Health and Safety Task Force's recommendations that were brought to us, in particular, looking at a civilian oversight board for the police force if that is a viable option. But it was, I think I just want to bring to light that there is a civilian that is overseeing the police force, and that is the city manager. And unless the city manager has become a uniformed officer, then in that, in the current structure, it's always been that way, whether it was with the reorg or even decades ago. So I think this really begins to allow us to have the conversations and how can we have more oversight, more collaboration. And Chief Joy, I'm looking to you and Chief Moya to work on this. I mean, I think the public wants it. I know you all want it. Let's work to get this done. But thank you all. Thank you, Councilor. Any other, well, nobody else said they want to explain their vote. Madam Clerk, is there any other items on our agenda? No, Mayor, there is not. In that case, we're adjourned. Thank you for everyone's attendance. Chief Joy, Chief Moya, thank you for being here. Director Hammond Paul, thank you for being here.