Regular Finance Committee Meeting Mon, Jul 7, 2025 ยท Finance Committee https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/283 == Executive Summary == The Finance Committee held a meeting where they approved the agenda and consent calendar, and recognized Kathy M. Thompson for her significant contributions as Grants Manager. The primary focus of the meeting was the 2027-2031 Infrastructure Capital Improvements Plan (ICIP), presented by Director Regina Wheeler. The committee discussed the city's capital needs and priorities, emphasizing the importance of the ICIP for legislative investment and grant applications. Concerns were raised about the transparency of the capital process and the need for improved project tracking. The committee ultimately approved the ICIP for submission to the Department of Finance and Administration (DFA) by the July 11th deadline. Key priorities within the ICIP include a new large capacity non-congregate shelter, continued investment in the PO Real Wastewater Treatment Plant, a police training facility, airport terminal improvements, and long-term development at Midtown. Staff committed to providing more detailed project information and improving capital project tracking through new software. == Key Decisions == - Approved the meeting agenda. - Approved the consent calendar, with one item pulled for separate discussion. - Approved the 2027-2031 Infrastructure Capital Improvements Plan (ICIP) for submission to the Department of Finance and Administration (DFA). == Motions & Votes == - Motion to approve the agenda โ€” Approved (All in favor: Aye). - Motion to approve the consent calendar (as amended, with Item K pulled) โ€” Approved (All in favor: Aye). - Motion to approve the ICIP โ€” Passed (Councilor Cassett: Yes, Councilor Lindell: Yes, Councilor Lee Garcia: Yes). == Public Comment == Councilor Cassid expressed concerns about the "opacity" of the capital process and sought clarification on whether the ICIP includes all capital priorities or if other lists exist, aiming for a comprehensive view of city projects. Director Wheeler acknowledged the current lack of a robust tracking system and mentioned ongoing efforts to improve this through Munis and new asset management software. == Topics == - Infrastructure Capital Improvement Plan (ICIP) - Homelessness Solutions - Wastewater Treatment Plant - Police Training Facility - Airport Terminal Expansion - Midtown Redevelopment - Grant Management - Richards Avenue Extension - Stormwater Management - Road and Bridge Infrastructure - Carlos Ray Corridor Safety Study - Herb Martinez Park Updates == Full Transcript == Are we ready to go? All right. I'm going to call this meeting of the Finance Committee, July 7th, to order. We have a roll call, please. Absolutely, Chair. Councilor Cassid, here. Councilor Lindell. Chair Lindell. Councilor Lee Garcia, here. Councilor Polar Falner and Councilor Romero Worth, excused. Excused. Okay. Next, we have, do we have any changes to the agenda from staff? No changes from staff. And Chair, let me confirm with Michael Nitt that we are live. Michael, are we live on YouTube? We are live. Thank you. Do we have items pulled from the consent agenda? Madam Chair, we need to approve the agenda as a whole first. I'm sorry. We have to approve the agenda first. Oh, we have a motion to approve. So moved. Second. Thank you. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Do we have any items from the consent agenda pulled? Yes. Chair, we have one item. It is Item K, which is a resolution adopting the City of Santa Fe's 2027 through, excuse me, 2031 Infrastructure Capital Improvements Plan. And we have Director Regina Wheeler here of the Public Works Department to speak to that item. Okay. Prior to that, we have a presentation from the Chair of the Finance, the Director, rather. Yes, thank you so much, Chair. Yes, we do have a presentation this evening, and I will go over to the podium. Thank you. Sorry, Madam Chair, we haven't approved consent yet. We need to approve the consent calendar. We approved the agenda, but not consent. We didn't approve the items pulled, you mean? No, no, no. We didn't approve consent after we pulled an item. Motion to approve on that. Move to approve as amended. Yeah. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you. So, next up, we have the presentation. Thank you so much, everyone, for the opportunity to present this certificate of appreciation to Kathy M. Thompson. We have Kathy with us here tonight. We also have Erica Luhan, our Grants Manager. Kathy works in our grants team, and I think she knows many of you. Kathy has been with the city for just over, I think, three or four, four years. Kathy came to the city at a time when the CDBG program was really struggling, and Kathy has helped turn that around. We went from having a qualified opinion and a number of findings on the CDBG program to now having a clean opinion on the single audit and having a very strong CDBG program. Kathy has been really instrumental. And in addition to CDBG, Kathy works on a variety of other grant programs, too many to list. Everything from domestic violence prevention grants to the Greenwater State Revolving Loan Fund grants. She has helped spearhead the implementation of project ledgers to track grants and expenditures against grants within the city. And Kathy is just an amazing person and an incredible asset to our team. So, it is really my honor and my pleasure to recognize Kathy this evening. She's just been wonderful to work with during my time at the city and so knowledgeable. Her way of sharing information is very calm and very reassuring. She's a great teacher. She helps us all learn the compliance requirements. Kathy is an expert in federal and state grant compliance. So, whenever we have a question, we know that we can call on Kathy. Eric, I don't know, is there more that you'd like to share? Well, Kathy. Okay. All right. Well, and prior to coming to the state, Kathy worked in a variety of capacities at the, excuse me, prior to coming to the city, Kathy worked in a variety of different capacities at the state and served, served the citizens of New Mexico in many ways, even before joining us here at the city. So, we're incredibly happy to have Kathy as part of our grants team in the Finance Department. And it is my honor and my pleasure to recognize her tonight. Kathy, do you want to come up so I can? Well, thank you again. Thank you so much. And it is my pleasure to present you with this certificate of appreciation, which says, "The following award is given to Kathy M. Thompson in appreciation for performance, dedication, and service to the City of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Finance Department." Thank you so much, Kathy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Kathy. Everybody likes working with you. I see you coming down the hall, and it makes everybody happy. So, thank you for being willing to come over and help us here at the city. I know you had a long career at the state, and remember when you came over here that it was a very happy day for all of us. So, thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Director, rather. Sorry. Okay. So, that moves us on to, we have one item pulled, and you said that was, I know it's for Miss Wheeler, but what's the number? Is it, Chair? It's Item K. Item K. And that item is the resolution adopting the city's, excuse me, a resolution adopting the City of Santa Fe's 2027 through 2031 Infrastructure Capital Improvements Plan. And we have Director Wheeler of Public Works here. Thank you, Madam Chair. Would we, would you like a little presentation, or should we just move to questions? Want a little presentation? Well, sure. Your presentation may answer some of my questions. So, please go right ahead. Thank you. Thank you so much, Madam Chair, Councilor Casset, Director Oster. So, we are presenting the Infrastructure Capital Improvement Plan that will be submitted to DFA by July 11th is our deadline. And it will be seen by the legislators in the session in 2026. This capital plan embodies the needs of all the departments from a capital perspective. The entries in this plan that you see here are created by all the project managers and reviewed by the department directors as confirming that these are priorities for capital investment for their areas. It's quite a long list with lots of needs, as you can see. But the city has a very multi-pronged approach to meeting their capital needs, and that is that every department has project managers that manage these projects that seek funding, other funding sources. So, the city leverages a very wide variety of funding, the legislative funding, various grants, city funding, of course. And so, the city is actually able to deploy quite a lot of money and improvements into the community on an annual basis. This list was, as I said, updated by project managers, reviewed by the department directors, and then really prioritized by looking at what the council, the community, the leadership in our city see as real priorities. And so, the top five is a really strong slate of projects. The first one is a new project on the list, the large capacity non-congregate shelter that would be envisioned to have more capacity and better serve the community that's being served currently by Pete's Shelter and by Consuelos. It would have service offices wrapped in. That's a really important project. I think it's sort of been on the radar for some time, and now it's really taking the front highlight position as number one. Last year, our number one request was permanent and transitional housing to end homelessness. So, it's the same theme, but instead of sort of a general bucket for addressing things like having funds for making micro-communities or that, this is a very specific project that's really, really important to the city right now. And so, it's number one, and obviously, Director Hammond Paul, you know, was instrumental in designing this project. The other homeless project is still on the list. So, if someone in the legislature did want to give funds to a micro-community or other aspects of our homelessness strategy, there is another project that's available for that type of a contribution. The PO Real Wastewater Treatment Plant, of course, is still super high priority for the city. Investments have been ongoing as the city has, as the governing body has been approving investments to get the plant into better operations. They're taking that multi-pronged approach of, you know, what do we need to replace? How do we improve it? And so, this did get funding of $1.6 million last year from the legislature, and every little bit helps with a big project like this to offset it. And it also demonstrates the city's commitment to compliance and such a fundamental asset to the city to continue to make that a priority. Last year's number three was, was the Richards Avenue Extension. But this year, it is the Police Training Facility, and that change was made based on the fact that the Richards Avenue Extension project can continue through to a 100% design using impact fees. So, it has a readily available secure funding source to keep that project going. Whereas the Police Training Facility is a really important improvement that doesn't have that type of a funding source. So, it took number three. It also seems to the, to the executive team like it was a strong message that we both provide services to solve our homelessness problem, and we also make sure that our police department has everything they need to help us address these kinds of issues in the community. Airport Terminal Phase 2, of course, is an ongoing, we're just completing the Phase 1 project, rolling in around $19 million. About half of that was funded by the legislature, and they continue to provide extensive support for the airport. So, it, it behooves the city to continue to make that a priority and keep moving on. This Phase 2 will actually get rid of the baggage claim in the modular building and add a restaurant, and it'll really round out the improvements that we're all seeking at the airport. And that project did get $2 million last year, and there is an RFP for the design services outright or being developed right now. And then, of course, Midtown, that's been a long-term investment. The state has been a huge partner, that whole $7 million of the $8 million you can see funded to date on Midtown was from the legislature, and so that has really been providing the funding to do everything from parcelization to the beginning of the infrastructure design. And so, and now it will be ready for major investment in the infrastructure coming up here very soon. So, it's a really significant fifth top priority for the city. I think that would end my presentation and be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Thank you, Director Wheeler. I do appreciate that. That did provide some, some of the information. I think for me, I still find so much, you know, opacity, is that how you pronounce the word? I think so, with the capital process. And I know that we've, we've discussed a little bit of this in terms of, you know, getting some more systems up and getting Questica up. And so, I think it's just, you know, trying to wrap my head around this. So, a couple questions. Does our ICIP, because I feel like I've gotten different answers for this, does it include, like, all of the, should all of the capital priorities that we would like to see be on here, or are there other lists of other things? Not like facility upgrades, because most of this tends to be new builds, although there are some facility upgrades on here as well. So, I, I mean, I think I've answered my own question in that sense that I, I know of some things that aren't on here, but I'm just trying to understand all the different lists of all the different projects that are either in the pipeline that we would like to fund that have been expressed as priorities by the governing body or by council members, and how do we get a really full picture of what this looks like in the city? Thank you so much, Madam Chair, Councilor Cassid. There is a bit of opacity to the process, definitely, because we don't have a really robust system that's tracking this for us. And we're working with finance all the time on improving that, using Munis to help us with that. As you know, facilities and public works are also implementing an asset management software, and that will spin out some tracking for our capital program in both utilities as well as in public works. Everything is not on here, as you say. Mostly, these are types of projects that either would be attractive and important for the legislature to consider investment in. Also, it is a criteria for many grants. So, for instance, stormwater projects, you'll find some listed here, but they also are pursuing drinking water revolving loan fund money for that. And they have their stormwater, they have other grants. We have FEMA grants that we've gotten for some of our stormwater. So, I think it's sort of that where the big nexus for the ICIP really is what would be attractive or likely to attract legislative investment and where is it required that it be on a list in order to pursue other funds. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. And then how often do we have the ability to amend this? I mean, can we bring an amendment to this at any time? I'm really excited the Herb Martinez Park updates are on there. That's obviously a project that's been very near and dear to my district. But I know that I had some conversations with Melissa, like, "Okay, when can I get it on the ICIP for even the ability to go try to seek grants?" I see it come up once a year, but again, this is a process that I feel like I still, after six years, am grasping to figure out. Thank you. Chair: So, Madam Chair, Councilor Cassett, thank you for the question. We need to pass this on Wednesday in order to make the deadline with DFA for submittal. It is not really amendable once it goes into the DFA system, but we do take year-round input from that. What's baked in here now is what we've heard from constituents and the councilors for the past year. And as our capital plan matures over time, as our assets need investment, it gets updated that way. So we always are happy to have your input on our capital program at any time. Okay, got it. Thank you. And then I think the next, the primary thing is we normally get much more description. We get like a little blurb about it, as if I recall correctly. We'd have this list that we're seeing right now, and then we'd have this lovely little blurb that would talk about what the thing is. I find that to be really helpful. But the other thing that I am curious about is what came on this list that's new this year, but also what has fallen off. So, for example, the Carlos Ray Corridor Safety Study, I recall, was on last year's ICIP, and I'm not seeing it on here this year. And I'd like it to stay on because I understand this is some of those longer-term projects, but again, we've talked about everything that's about to happen with Midtown and some of the ability to implement this thing slowly but surely. We know that a lot of these are going to be long-term projects. They have to be done in phases. So I'm curious about how things fall off of it, especially things that are not completed. Obviously, if it's completed or fully funded, that makes sense. But I'm not really seeing that information, and I'm not sure what I'm not remembering that came off and why, and if that is still something that is a priority for us. We didn't really get the opportunity to say, "No, no, please keep this thing on." I don't believe that there's a limit to how much money or the length of this, is there? Chair: Madam Chair, Councilor Cassett, there is not a limit to the length. However, there is sort of a limit to people's attention span and ability to execute projects. So the way that the changes happened was that each department reviewed all their capital lists. And one of the things that did, and that included MPO with the Complete Streets team, as well as the whole the director of Complete Streets and Romela. One of the things that did happen in Complete Streets is there are some really dire drainage and bridge needs right now. And so we, as you know, we have the bridge at Sarra Gordo that has limited weight. We have other bridges that are listed in poor condition. And we have bridges, pedestrian bridges that are in challenging. So I think what happened was is that there's some sort of dire needs that are taking a little bit, eclipsing some of the other smaller needs, you could say. That study could be implemented in small chunks, right? So there could be a raised crosswalk or a hawk signal or narrowing the lanes with the striping as we do pavement rehabilitation. A lot of tools in the toolkit for that. And so I would say that the team was focused on sort of the really dire infrastructure needs a little bit in the streets area. Got it. And that definitely makes sense. And so again, this information and this context, and then knowing that these projects that are not on here at this moment, they're not gone. They haven't gone poof. There's, they're still being tracked somewhere. I don't know where. I'd like to know. You know, again, this goes back to the asset management system that we're, that you know, we're working towards. And I could add a little bit to that, Council President, and you'd be very familiar with this. A big part of where our streets improvements come from is our Master Transportation Plan that MPO manages. Our Master Pedestrian Plan that MPO manages, and our bicycling plans. And those really have our capital roadmap in there. They don't have the bridges and they don't have the drainage issues, which I have are a big priority for us right now. It's really interesting the way our rain comes in hundred-year floods every single time. And every time it rains, we get a whole bunch of feedback from the community about impacts. And so the team is really sort of shifting focus to try to address some of those impacts on property, private property. So those are some of the places that the lists of projects are kept. Also, the Comprehensive Stormwater Plan is a place. The Sustainability Plan is another place where projects are listed. So there we are with this capital plan there. The things don't come out of the blue. A lot of them do come from adopted master plans. Got it. So there's a lot of different documents that we're trying to track and read and understand. Okay. That is helpful. I do really like it when we get the little blurb of the information as to what the thing is, and why, you know, it was on here. I think it's also helpful understanding funding sources. You know, is everything that has been funded, has it all come from the legislature? Are there other funding sources that we can, should, want to utilize for these things? And just really getting that complete picture. So, again, there's a lot on here. I'm really excited about. I know we get to have our district priority conversations a little bit later in the year, and so you know I can zone in on some of the District 4 needs at that time. But I think in general, just more understanding of how this came to be, why these decisions were made, and making that really clear, you know, and putting it in the packet. I think that that is really helpful. I know at least for me, and would be helpful because I get, you know, a lot of, you know, capital improvements is a big thing that we hear from our constituents about, "Why aren't you doing this? Why aren't you doing this? What's happening here?" And so understanding the prioritization, you know, there are things that we would like, but you're right, bridges about to collapse, or not about to collapse, you know, but bridges that need to be reinforced for safety is going to take priority over, you know, striping. So, I think that that's my big request for this. I know that we will see this, we see the ICIP again when we do our legislative priorities, and at that time I would like to see this built out a bit more. So, this document does have more of that information and explanation, because I do find it to be extremely helpful as I'm talking to constituents about the things that they find important in the city and how does that fit into the overall plan. Chair: Madam Chair, Councilor Cassett, thank you so much for that reminder. I think what you're referring to is that for the top five priorities, we have from time to time put in the whole project workbook. It's about a six-page document. It has the legislative language. It has sort of the overview of the scope. No, no. There was, you know, we'd get this list and then we'd get all these different pages and it would have, I'll find the ones from last year and I'll send it your way. And maybe it wasn't the ICIP. Maybe it was another list of, but I'm pretty sure it was the ICIP. Another list of capital improvements, but it had a title, a brief description, and then the kind of the information about how much does need to be funded, how much has been funded to date. And so I, I'll try to find out and send it your way. Chair: Thank you so much. I just, so this is an output from the DFA system, and the only other output that we have access to is the project workbook for each project, which is like a six-page document, but the first page is really nice and does have that scope of work in sort of very verbose terms and then the legislative language, which really nails down what the money can be spent on. And I could certainly get that for you for the top five projects. I could share it with all the, all the governing body because I, I remember that from time to time I have included that in, in this packet as well. So I could, I could provide that and any other particular project that you'd like details, I can provide you with that project workbook on that. And then if you could show me that document. Yeah, I'll find, I'll find it and that would be great. And I'll definitely email you some of these that I have, you know, Herb Martinez obviously is on that list for me. But I'll send you an email with some of the other ones as well. Chair: Thank you so much. Thank you. I think those are all my questions. Thank you. Councilor Garcia, do you have anything? You're good. We have a motion. Second. Have a roll call, please. Councilor Cassett, yes. Councilor Lindell, yes. Councilor Lee Garcia, yes. Motion passes. Thank you, Miss Wheeler. I think that that concludes our business for tonight. Does it not, Madam Chair? We have, let's see, matters from staff, and I don't have any for this evening. There's also matters from the committee listed. I don't think we have anything. So I think that does take us to adjournment. Thank you very much. Thank you.