Regular Finance Committee Meeting
Mon, Oct 6, 2025 · Finance Committee
https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/286

== Executive Summary ==
The Finance Committee meeting covered several critical city initiatives, including the ongoing implementation of new software for short-term rental (STR) enforcement and tax administration, an update on a proposed living wage increase, and significant infrastructure projects. The committee approved a budget amendment to reclassify positions within the Public Utilities Department to improve staffing and competitiveness, and discussed the allocation of $10 million for FY26 paving projects, with a strong focus on the deteriorating Airport Road. 

A major theme was the city's commitment to improving efficiency and service delivery through technology and strategic investments. The new STR software is expected to enhance compliance and tax collection, while the OpenGov system aims to streamline land use permitting. Discussions around the living wage highlighted community support for an increase, balanced with concerns from small businesses about potential impacts. The committee also emphasized the importance of clear communication with the public regarding project timelines and the city's efforts to address critical infrastructure needs.

== Key Decisions ==
- Approved the agenda as amended.
- Approved the consent agenda as amended.
- Approved a budget amendment resolution from the Water and Wastewater Enterprise Fund to reclassify 87 positions in the Public Utilities Department.
- Approved a motion related to road projects, likely the allocation of $10 million for FY26 paving projects.

== Motions & Votes ==
- Motion to approve the agenda as amended — Passed unanimously.
- Motion to approve the consent agenda as amended — Passed unanimously.
- Motion to approve a budget amendment resolution from the Water and Wastewater Enterprise Fund to reclassify 87 positions in the Public Utilities Department — Passed 5-0.
- Motion to approve an unspecified item (likely related to the OpenGov discussion or a preceding agenda item) — Passed (Councilor Cassidy, Councilor Faulkner, Councilor Lee Garcia, and Chair Romero voted Yes).
- Motion to approve an unspecified item (likely related to the road projects discussed) — Passed unanimously (Councilor Casset, Councilor Falner, Councilor Lee Garcia, and Chair Maroworth voted Yes).

== Public Comment ==
Public comments and councilor discussions highlighted strong community support for raising the living wage, though concerns were raised by small business owners about potential impacts. Councilors expressed excitement about the new short-term rental software's potential to inform policy and improve compliance. There was also significant public and councilor concern regarding the deteriorating condition of Airport Road and the need for urgent action and clear communication on paving projects.

== Topics ==
- Pavement Rehabilitation
- Short-Term Rental Enforcement
- Software Implementation (NUMO/Avenue)
- Tax Administration
- Public Communication & Engagement
- Finance Department Staffing
- Contractor Relationships
- City Liability
- Project Timelines

== Full Transcript ==
Madame Chair, Councilor Romero, we are live.

Thank you. What time is it? 5:03. At 5:03, I'm calling to order the Finance Committee for today, October 6th. Then if we could get a roll call, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Councilor Cassidy.

Here.

Councilor Lindell. Councilor Faulkner.

Here.

Councilor Lee Garcia is... he's on his way, so he's excused until he gets here. Chair Maestas.

I am here.

Madam Chair, you have a quorum.

Great. I believe we do have a change to the agenda tonight. Do you want to walk us through that?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, we have one requested change to the agenda from staff. It is in regards to item N, item 6N on the consent agenda. The committee review schedule for that resolution has it scheduled for Finance Committee on 10/27 at our next meeting. It was inadvertently included on this agenda. I have been advised by the City Attorney's office that we need to remove it from tonight's agenda and bring it back at the next Finance Committee meeting on 10/27.

Okay. Any other changes?

No, Madam Chair.

If not, is there a motion?

Move to approve as amended.

We have a motion and a second to approve the agenda as amended. All those in favor, aye. Anybody opposed? That motion passes. On to approval of the consent agenda. I believe we have a number of items that have been pulled. Do you want to give me the list? I forgot about it.

Yes, Madam Chair. Item D, item J, and item K have been pulled for discussion.

Anything else the committee is interested in tonight? And if not, is there a motion?

Move to approve as amended.

We have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda as amended. All those in favor, aye. Anybody opposed? That motion passes. All right, we're zipping right along here. We do have kind of a long agenda tonight. Three items off of consent, two presentations, and we'll start with the first one. Director Auster, I believe you have a Finance Department staff recognition. So, I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, the person that we're recognizing tonight is not able to be here in person, so I will talk about her and then present her with her certificate tomorrow. Diane Arsenna has been with the City of Santa Fe since January of 2022, starting out as an accounting supervisor and promoted into the role of Treasury Manager in February of 2023. Diane has 14 years of experience working in government and a strong background in finance, management, and human resources, achieving her bachelor's degree in business administration with a concentration in management along with an associate's degree in accounting. And outside of work, Diane is very family-oriented and loves spending time with her family, her children, and her husband. And that is why she's not able to be here with us tonight is because she's with her children. So, in addition to that brief bio, I just wanted to share a little bit about my experiences with Diane. Diane is an exceptional leader and just this month, for the first time in three years since I've been with the city, Diane and Clarence Romero, who's our Treasurer, have achieved their goal of being fully staffed in the Treasury Division. And there was a time during COVID when Clarence was by himself in that division, and it has a staff of 12. So rebuilding from 1 to 12 has been an ongoing project and they did it. They have achieved that goal of being fully staffed. So really want to celebrate that. It's really a testament to Clarence and Diane's leadership and their support for their employees. The Cashier's Office here in City Hall as part of the Treasury Division. Those are among the most challenging positions in the Finance Department. It's front-facing customer service. And in addition to providing cashiering services and taking payments, they've in the past often provided wayfinding and really served as the front door of City Hall. And as you might imagine, those jobs are challenging. We've had some turnover in those positions. So, getting to a place where we're fully staffed is really something to be celebrated. So tonight I really want to recognize Diane's role in that. You know, she does have some formal education in management and it really shows. She's an excellent manager. She's very good at supporting her employees, providing them with opportunities for growth and training. An example of that is Diane has been a founding member, an instrumental part of our planning committee for the Finance Department, which is the group that helps plan events. Diane recently spearheaded an effort to hold a staff retreat, which we did on September 12th. We had an off-site retreat for all Finance Department staff. That was Diane's idea originally. She was instrumental in making that happen. So were many, many others. There was a whole group that worked hard to put that retreat on, but Diane really brought that idea forward and has done that a number of times with other events for employee recognition, training, and just general support for staff in the Treasury Division, but also throughout the Finance Department. So, those are just, you know, two things. I could go on about Diane as I could with all of our employees in the Finance Department, but really proud to recognize Diane's achievements this evening with this certificate of appreciation, which I will present to Diane tomorrow in the office. This is in appreciation for her performance, service, and dedication to the City of Santa Fe Finance Department.

Thank you. So, I'm sorry she's not here tonight, but completely understand why. So, please send her our congratulations and thank you for all the work that she has been doing to get fully staffed and support all the work of that area. So, really appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, we are going to move on to our first presentation. I believe we have our Assistant Land Use Director Maggie Moore with us to talk about some really important software implementation that's happening. I think there are a number of us, and there's little hoorays going on up here. A number of us are very interested in this software and what it can do for the city and how it can inform our policy choices. And I just, I can't tell you how excited I am to finally have this on the horizon here. So, Director Moore, I'll turn it over to you. Welcome and thank you again. So excited about this. Tell us, tell us.

I'm happy to be here and have only good things to report. So that's lovely. And I have a few members of our consultant team from the software company Avenue online to help with any questions that you might have after a very brief presentation. And first want to just acknowledge that Avenue Insight and Analytics has merged with Govos and ITI, and so they're under a new company called NUMO. So I just, as we kind of move forward, you might start hearing about NUMO over Avenue, but just understand it's the same thing. They merged, but we have the same team of people that we were working with from the beginning and, you know, everything's going smoothly. So start with that. And yes, we, so we've procured this new software to help with short-term rental enforcement, as well as with our tax administration, collecting of lodgers tax for the city. And our team from Santa Fe involves Land Use Department Director Lamboy, myself, and Tom Graham, the other assistant director, our code enforcement team, Jason Senna, Vidal Garcia, and Carl Krings, who have been instrumental in kind of the last few months, transferring our data and doing, you know, checks and confirmation on that over to Avenue and making sure that they have, you know, all of our records so that they can do the comprehensive scrubbing of the all of the, you know, I think it'll go over 80 sites. The RBO, of course, what's the big one? Airbnb, but many, many, many more that are out there. You know, that software has the capacity to kind of monitor in real time short-term rental advertisements on all of these web applications and then kind of develop a list of potential compliance issues for us. So we're, we're moving forward with that. And then from Finance, Director Auster here, a part of her team, we have Diane Senna, Alex Lo, David Tapia, and Clarence Romero, who are working with the Avenue team on setting up all the proper finance accounts so that we can start taking in lodgers tax revenue from all these short-term rentals. And so this kind of just gives an outline of the team from Avenue, from NUMO. Dana is on the call tonight. She's kind of the overarching coordinating project manager that we've been working with. And then you can see the entire team listed here. I won't go out to everybody, but we're kind of, we finished with the, and then actually I'll just go to the next slide. This is our Gantt chart. I don't know if you can really see that. Great. Oh, there's Dana. Hi. But essentially we started implementation in July. Like I said, over the last couple months, we've been transmitting the data and doing checks on that data and kind of going back and forth and making sure, you know, that is sound information. And you're going to get a little demo from the, from Dana, I think, in a little bit on the dashboard that we have. It's accessible to staff and it kind of shows us that real-time enforcement information on short-term rentals and compliance. So that's really exciting.

Can I ask just really quickly, is it possible if our guests just take their cameras off if we can then see the presentation on the data a little better? I don't know if it makes, yeah, there we go. And okay, so I don't mean to be rude, but we'll bring you back in a minute. But so this is essentially, this is the timeline you're working on in terms of getting all this underway.

That's correct. Yeah, this, so this is our implementation timeline for the short-term rental component. The next slide will show you the tax administration component. And so, so like you said, yeah, we're, we're in October. We've done an initial review and scrub. We've got, we've identified about 250 non-compliant properties and we're going to be issuing compliance letters to those properties in the coming weeks to invite them to become compliant and get a license or a registration as required by the ordinance. And so, some of the other items I just wanted to highlight is that we are going to be holding two town hall meetings for the public on November 13th. We're going to host a webinar during the day at kind of over the lunch hour. And this will be taped so we can post up on the website and use it in perpetuity for, you know, sharing information. And then we've scheduled a town hall at the Convention Center for that evening. So if folks want to come in person, we'll have space for a little over a hundred people to join us, you know, for an in-person town hall. And the team from NUMO will be on hand for those for that day. So that's going to be a really important part of, you know, sharing this new system with short-term rental operators and owners and just general other folks in the community who are concerned about short-term rentals in the community. And of course, staff is going to be doing training on running reports and, you know, managing this information on our end as well. Okay. And then this is the tax administration implementation. And as you can see, it does go a little bit further into 2026. And they are also holding a town hall meeting, I think, tentatively for January.

So this is the kind of tax admin implementation. I haven't been largely a part of these meetings, but if you have any questions, I'm sure Director Auster can answer anything. Oh, sorry to put you, but I don't see anyone else from Oh, sorry. There you go. Wonderful. So, we do have some staff who can answer questions about tax admin and folks from NUMO as well.

And then this is kind of a static shot of our dashboard. And then I believe Dana is going to give you a live tour of this. But this is real data information from the dashboard. And again, this is what staff has access to from the code enforcement side of things. So Jason, Senna, and Carl, and myself, we have access to this information. You can see the total unidentified listings. And a listing is might be one property listed on multiple sites. So if a property is listed on VBO and Airbnb and then like a third site, that would count as three listings even though it's one property. So we're tracking both property and listing information and collecting all of that. And we have various, we have tax revenue projections. So from what we're actually collecting to potential collection, and it's in a magnitude of million plus dollars a year. So we're excited about that and want to make sure that we're fully compliant. And I think in the upper right corner right now, our grade for compliance is a C. And we want that to be an A very soon. So that's what we're moving to right now.

And Dana, if you're on and want to, I think that was, oh, and then I just again wanted to highlight the dates and times of our short-term rental community engagement events on Thursday, November 13th, a virtual meeting 12:30 to 1:30, and then an in-person meeting at the Santa Fe Convention Center. And then hopefully Dana can give you a tour.

Hello. Yes, I'm thinking I wanted to share. Hey there. Good evening and thank you. Let's see here. I think if I click share, let's see if this gets you to my screen with the dashboard. So, and as Maggie had mentioned, you know, that the first initial part is a lot of that data gathering and scrubbing, getting that into the system, building that out. And so, you know, the work that all happens for the STR piece now actually now flows into our tax administration. So Obie, who unfortunately couldn't be here this evening, works very closely with Carol who oversees the tax administration part of it. So as I think you've gone even from a C to a, let me see if I can get this piece out of a little bit. You're now a B minus. Maggie, you're getting there. Getting there closely.

And so again, there's two different sides to this. Is right now what you're seeing is a part of that dashboard. And what we're finishing building out as well is all of that workflow. So for example, when you have your STR owner that wants to register, renew, all those pieces, we've been working very closely with Maggie and her team to ensure we've got all the steps. It's the automated review, approval, all those kind of pieces. And so right now we are on track to be able to go live by November 10th. And then we've been working with Maggie in terms of when we actually flip the switch, but ideally a little bit ahead of that public meeting and then ready to go. So this is in a really great spot. And again, it's exciting to see the amount of information that we already have scrubbed and identified. But there is about, as she said, about 250 properties that will be working again with Maggie on the compliance notifications and those pieces. So and then on the tax administration side, that one we're building out. It's a little bit more complexity with some of the banking that we're working with the city and Wells Fargo on and getting that development complete. But again, before we, we'll be also having an open house meeting in January as we get close to roll out for that.

Dana, maybe you want to highlight some of the kind of data that we're seeing here or what information is available on the dashboard.

Oh, sure. So again, you can sort of see as I start to click into listings, if I go into properties, and I did sort of pre-put one in here just to give you the type of information that you'll see here. There's also connection. So here you can see our group is constantly harvesting information. So in this particular property, it does have an active permit. Some of these numbers once we go live and we're starting to have the implementation with the tax, we'll have in there. So in this case, for example, once we have your complaint line open, if there complaints coming in, you'll be able to track that in here as well. You'll see the history of photos. So our software is also scraping all of the information and documentation and that stays with that record. So that's one of the things you'll, you know, again, at the very granular level. So instead of just an Excel list of information, you'll have that deep dive. And again, as you start to look at different revenues, different ways to do your slice and dice reports as well in terms of what other, what platforms it's coming in from, that type of thing. So again, a lot of flexibility for staff as they go through here to not only manage the activities, it then turns into much more of that financial reporting and just that deep dive and level of detail that you'll need for managing this. And again, you sort of see on your, and some of these things are still populating and pulling in, but you can see where some of that scraping has started to occur. Your top property owners, that type of thing. So at a glance there. Okay. Is that, that's all we have? Okay. Any questions or?

So yeah, there are going to be lots of questions because I have a handful. If our guests want to put their cameras back on, that's fine. I just, it was helpful to have the presentation a little bigger. So, thank you. And welcome back. I have a bunch of questions. I will defer to the committee first. Councilor Faulkner, for my part, I will yield to the chair because the chair usually has really good questions.

Oh, that's true. So this is, this is the second time this presentation has been made. And Quality of Life got it last week. Is that right? So what's exciting about that is that when you do either Quality of Life and Finance or Public Works, Utilities and Finance, you get all of the counselors to see the presentation. And I had asked that this come to Finance. Councilor Lindell, Councilor Casset and I have been, had some meetings with staff to look at our short-term rental ordinance and, you know, kind of how it's been doing and what we can do to shore it up. But one of the pieces that we really needed was this, the data that this software will bring us to help us understand where we have, where the, like the concentrations are, I guess, is one thing I'm interested in. Is that something that when it goes live, you'll be able to give us some maps and help us understand what parts of town we're seeing, you know, more or, you know, where, where they are.

Yeah, we, we will have a map that will be publicly accessible to everyone. And it will be all of the compliant properties. We won't have a map of, you know, non-compliant properties, but we will be pursuing those, you know, through our enforcement measures. But there, yeah, we will have a full map of all of the licensed and registered short-term rentals in the city. Okay. So, we have a cap of short-term rentals outside of the BCD and outside of commercial zones of a thousand. We are not at that cap. I take it.

That is correct. We're just a bit under it.

That is correct. Yeah. And as you said in your presentation, so some, if, if you're outside of the BCD and you're out and, and you're in a, yeah, if you're outside, if, sorry, if you're outside of the BCD and you're outside of a commercial area, you fall under the cap and you have to get a license. If you're in the commercial area, you have to have a registration. And what about the BCD? Do you have to have a registration if you're in the BCD?

That is correct. Yeah, you still have to have a registration and a business license regardless of where you are.

Okay. And I guess it might be interesting to know, I, I know there are going to be people who think that we have more than 250 non-compliant properties. We've heard and I'm, I'm just kind of curious, you know, it might be good to know, have some sense even if of, you know, you tend the, these 250 are spread all over the city. They're, you know, mostly in District one or maybe they're in District two. That kind of information would be helpful even if it, if it's something that I, I think I would be interested in and, and the counselors that are working on reviewing our short-term rental ordinance, that would be useful information to understand kind of where those are coming up and if they are concentrated in any area in particular.

Yes. Yeah. Councilor Maroworth, that is really useful information. And I think our, our first goal with those properties is to try to bring them into compliance and make sure that if, if we can license or register them that we are doing that. And that's the work that we're going to start doing in the next, you know, very like now. So, you know, because we've identified them and now we want to, you know, we're going to send letters out, like I said, to those people and saying, you know, you need to come in and apply. And that is going to, you know, put them on a path to compliance. If they, you know, if we reach that cap, you know, for example, some of those, you know, a number of those 250 are in residential areas, let's say, and we only have, you know, 50 permits left, but we have a hundred that are in residential areas. Well then, yeah, they're not going to be able to come into compliance and we'll reach our cap. But at least we've identified them and we can move forward with, you know, closing those short-term rentals down presumably, right? And, and I think that that is besides the data that we get about kind of the nature of where we have short-term rentals and, I mean, that, that's one of, one of the exciting things about this is how it's going to enable us to do more around enforcement. And then I think the third piece is, as you mentioned, is making sure we're actually collecting the taxes from these because that is something, I think we probably can improve on as well. So that's another exciting aspect of this. You mentioned there'll be a, somebody mentioned there'll be a complaint, an ability to file complaints once it goes live. How does that work? Is there going to be a phone number? You do it online. You call the land use department. What, how, if, how's that going to work?

Oh, I, that will be a hotline number. Again, I, I don't have Obie on with me right now, but that is how I think that will be logged or I know Obie is working with the staff on that.

So, there'll be a hotline number you'll call and will you talk to a real person? You talk to a computer voice? Do you, does it just record the information in the thing or how, how does, how does that work?

Hey Dana, this is Carol. I can answer that. It is a live operator. They'll receive all of the complaints or concerns will come in into a ticketing system and they'll be categorized for city staff, but they do speak to a live operator and it's 24/7 as well.

Great. That's, that's also exciting. I'm curious if in this, as you've been building out and populating your software, if there were any provisions in our law that were hard to account for or work with.

For instance, we have some rules. One of the things we did in the new law was to be more clear about density. So that if you were in, and I forget the exact wording, but if you're in proximity to another short-term rental, there's a rule about whether you can get a permit. If you're too close, you can't. There had been trouble previously in interpreting the rule around what was controlling density. We tried to improve that. Just curious if in the implementation of the software, something like the density provision was hard to work with, or was there any provision in the law that was hard to work with that could be improved?

Well, I do know again, Obie, who unfortunately couldn't be here this evening, but he's been working with staff. So, as he's had questions or as we were doing that initial data load, he worked very closely with Maggie and with Carl. So, if questions did come up, but I'm definitely making note of that and can get back to you as well, if there was anything specific. But I think as they've been doing the data load and migration, having a lot of those conversations as he and his team were putting that in.

Okay.

Council, I'll just add that in working with Obie and sitting down and going over the ordinance and what the requirements are, nothing came up that he said, "We can't accommodate that request." It's more about structuring the application so that we're asking for the information upfront that we need to evaluate the compliance with the ordinance. And so, I think that we don't have any obstacles in our way there.

Okay. And then on the flip side, if there's something that you're seeing in other cities where you're operating this software that we don't have in our ordinance that might be useful in both enforcing, making sure people are compliant, and also that they're paying their taxes, I'd be interested in that. Again, we're trying to review what we have and better understand the landscape and make changes to the policy. So that would be helpful as well. And then I just want to, it would also be helpful to get a list of the 80 sites that you're scrubbing if that's possible. I want to make sure that we are capturing the ones, there are some interested people in the community who are interested in this topic and who have done a lot of research, and I'd love to kind of compare notes about the things they're looking at versus the things that you've identified to make sure we're capturing the sites that we should be that offer these kinds of advertisements. And then I will wrap up here, I promise, Committee. Let's see, just really quickly again, the two town halls, the purpose of them is, who should attend? I'm sorry, I think I missed that part of your presentation. If you could just go over that again really quickly.

Yeah, absolutely. I would say the purpose of the town hall is really to introduce the public to this new software system and how they are going to be engaging with it, that they're going to be going to this new site to either renew or to apply for their short-term rental permits and registrations. And then kind of highlight some of the bells and whistles, if you will, of our new enforcement tool technology that we're going to be able to do and how they're going to receive communication. Obviously, educate on the hotline and how they can call and get information or if they have concerns. So I think it's both those owners and operators of short-term rentals or people who are interested in owning or operating a short-term rental in Santa Fe. It's also just members of the community who are concerned about short-term rentals and want to understand this new tool that we're going to be deploying. So, and that first meeting, like I said, is on November 13th, Thursday evening, oh, Thursday lunchtime and then evening. And that's going to be mostly focusing on that short-term rental component. And then the tax administration component is going to be in January. So there's going to be another kind of public engagement around that. I think that one, again, probably the same audience but maybe a little bit more focused towards owners and operators so they can understand how are they going to be remitting and what are we looking for for compliance?

Okay. And I just for that one, I'll just flag, I won't be here, but I think a question that comes up a lot is if you rent for over, there's a question, and we should maybe get together offline about if you rent for over 30 days or under 30 days, and it's, there's a tax issue there. And we should probably make sure that we are, we know the question better articulated than I just did, and B, what the answer is, because I think I have had constituents reach out to me, not sure whether they pay or they don't pay. So I think that would be an important opportunity to bring some clarity around that question that keeps coming up.

Director Oster, you're flagging. Yes, Madam Chair. There is a distinction when it comes to gross receipts tax between a lease and a short-term rental and what's subject to gross receipts tax and what's not. And that 30-day timeframe is an important part of that. We can certainly talk more about that.

Okay. And maybe that part makes it into the presentation when we go to the public for that. So, just flagging that that's been a question repeatedly asked. Okay, I will stop. I will just say thank you to our guests for joining us. I probably have other committee, yeah, other committee members who may want to weigh in here, but I just want to say how excited I am that we're finally at this moment.

Councilor Falner, just quickly, could you revisit the number of people who can attend the town halls on this issue?

Yeah, thank you, Councilor Faulner. So we're hosting two. So we have a webinar during the day, and I believe, I think that's kind of unlimited, right? Do you guys, The Avenue will be hosting that. Oh, that can be.

Correct.

Yeah. And we'll be sending out registration information for that shortly. And then at the convention center, I booked a space that can accommodate like over a hundred. I'm going to be doing a registration so we can track how many people show up. And if we reach capacity or have a really large interest, then in theory, we could hold another one. But we also are taping the webinar. We're going to be recording that. And so that will be the same presentation will be given at the webinar and at the in-person session. So it's usually good practice to collect questions from those sessions and do like an FAQ, summarizing our responses. We generally do that for these types of new outreach efforts. So I'm sure we can do that as well.

Okay. And I know 100 doesn't seem like a lot, but when you do these town halls, 100 people is a lot to show up. So I'm also glad to hear that you guys have a backup plan. If more people want to attend and they can't, then we can do another one. I just want to make sure the public understands that you're doing your best effort to get the most feedback you can from the community as this is going through the process.

Yeah, absolutely. We want to, that was our thinking around having a lunchtime one and having a webinar because I think my preference is either fully in person or fully online. Not a hybrid is not ideal. So we wanted to accommodate different timelines and different preferences for that and also have a record of the presentation and the conversation for the public to use in perpetuity.

Thank you. And I assume you'll be sending out a press release on those town halls and this new tool we have.

Yes. Yes, Councilor, we will. Other questions from the committee, statements, enthusiasm? Councilor Lindell.

Thank you.

Happy moments.

I'm relieved that this is happening before I walk out the door. I think this is the third time that I've visited the short-term rental ordinance and situation, and this one has gained the greatest amount of traction. Thanks for all the effort on it. We did the best job this time. Thank you.

Anybody else? Councilor Cassid.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair, and thank you everybody for being here again. And really appreciated you also coming to Quality of Life. One thing that we discussed there that I just want to discuss here for anybody who wasn't listening is regarding reporting and that there will be an opportunity for Maggie to download reports and be giving us updates, especially as we have these continued questions that come up. But I think that's going to be really important for the public because short-term rentals, I think, have, they can take on a life of their own in the imagination of the public of what's happening. And I think it's going to be really important for all of us to really understand, as Councilor Maroworth was mentioning, where they are and how many are in compliance. And also, I think being able to show getting into compliance. I'm already seeing the change from a month, from going from a C to a B minus. That's, I like it. I like that we are on the upward trajectory. So, really, really grateful for this work. Really excited that this is coming forward. I was sad that I'm not going to get my very own password to go play in there, but I will be inviting myself to Maggie's office so I can play with the data, as this just looks like a fun area to explore. But really, really going to be beneficial as I know Councilor Falner and I will carry on the work of looking at our short-term rental ordinance and is it a compliance issue? And once we have things under compliance, how's that going to impact what people are seeing, or is it both? We'll get that compliance to really understand what the field looks like and be able to take it from there. So, I really want to thank everybody for everything, and I really want to thank Councilor Marworth and Councilor Lindell for all of the work and conversation that we have had over this past year. I am sad that you won't be there to move forward the policy, but I won't leave you alone very much in general at all. Well, I want to thank you because there was a lot of really wonderful insight from both these individuals, and I think what is being presented now captures so much of the historical knowledge that both Councilor Lindell and Romero brought to this work from having worked on this ordinance once or twice before. So, thank you to you two as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Casset. Anything else? Okay. Again, thank you for being here. Really excited. And we'll move on to our next presentation.

I'm going to, thank you for having us.

Thanks.

Okay. Our next presentation is results of civic engagement on the living wage proposal. Alisa Mononttoya, our Community Development Director, is here. It looks, I see other folks in the audience who may be providing support on this presentation.

So, I will turn it over to you, Director.

Mayor: Thank you. And, Madam Chair, Johanna Nelson, our Director of the Office of Economic Development, is in the Zoom room.

Okay. And I don't think your mic is on.

No.

Oh, there you go. You're going to have to talk right into it, otherwise people can't hear you in the Zoom world. If we could let Johanna Nelson, Director Nelson, in, that'd be great.

Madam Chair, she's here in the Zoom room. I just promoted her to panelist.

Terrific. Can you see? I have a presentation here. I'm trying to share.

We don't have it here on the screens in the chamber yet. If I can provide some support,

Director Oster, can you hear my audio? Yes, we can hear you. Perfect.

Great. Share.

And while we're waiting for the screen share, I do have extra cards. These are cards with QR codes. As you know, the living wage survey is still open, so we want to create every opportunity for more people to participate. So just raise your hand and I'll give you some cards.

Presentation. Yeah. Great.

Oh, here we have it. Help coming down. Director Nelson, when we do get the presentation up, I might have you turn your camera off, just because it makes the presentation bigger in the chamber here. And then once we're through it, we can have you come back if that's okay. Does that mess up the presentation at all, does it?

Not at all.

Okay. I just think it's easier to see when we have the full screen.

I agree. All right, Madam Chair, counselors, let's dive in here to an update on our civic engagement efforts on the living wage proposal. So, here's just a quick agenda for the presentation. I'm just going to give you a quick update on activity around the living wage proposal. I'm going to touch on key meetings that have been had. I'm going to also touch on the community conversations that we've had around town, and then I will give you the update on the survey.

So, we have a recent committee endorsement. On Tuesday, September 30th, the Economic Development Advisory Committee voted 6 to 2 to endorse the living wage proposal. We also have an endorsement from the Honorable Robert Rich, a former Secretary of Labor, and the Santa Fe County Democratic Party. In addition, I wanted to flag for you all that since the ASME agreement was finalized, as a result of it, we now only have six employees who work for the city earning less than $17.50. They're at $17.46.

So, we've met with and spoken with a range of organizations and community leaders. Here's a sample of different groups. We've met with the groups and/or leadership of the groups. So, we have our Santa Fe Chamber, Chainbreaker Collective, ASME, hospitality industry, small business owners. Some of those small business owners are also part of the hospitality industry. Christus St. Vincent, Food Depot, Somos, Pueblo Unido, and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. This is just a high-level list. There's more, but I didn't want to ram the slides.

So, our community conversations, we have had three of them, not including the public hearing here at Governing Body, but about over 60 participants at the Southside Library. We had a Zoom meeting, and then when we launched our Go Local, Go Different meeting, targeting small businesses in Santa Fe, we had about 25 participants there. We also talked about the living wage proposal, and here's some key themes from these meetings that have arisen. Key three themes: wages versus rising costs. Participants across all sections emphasized that they feel $15 an hour is not enough to cover housing, utilities, food, and fuel here. And then here's a quote under each summary: "It's not enough for rent, food, gas, and everything else."

There's broad support for the increase, is something we've learned. Many residents welcome the proposed increase, citing that it's a realistic step toward relieving financial strain, especially for families. "$17.50 won't make me rich, it'll let me live." And we have received concerns from small business owners about the adjustments, and even individuals who aren't small business owners have expressed concern that they're worried the increase could lead to reduced work hours, higher cost of products, and increased layoffs during tourism's low season. So, here's a quote: "I'm concerned that businesses say they can't afford it and will lay people off."

So, let's jump into the survey results. So, remember this survey is still in progress, and we have over 600 responses to date, but we're continuing to push this out. So, before we dive into the details, let's just set it up a little, give you a little data about who this was distributed to. We have English and Spanish versions of the survey. The Office of Economic Development sent over 10,000. They have a list of 10,000. They sent this e-blast to their subscribers twice. They also sent information about participating in the survey in their various newsletters. I know the City of Santa Fe has also included it in their newsletters, and we have had community partners offer to share the information about participating in the survey with their membership.

So, are these respondents city residents? This is interesting. About 77% of respondents currently live within the City of Santa Fe. 23% live outside of Santa Fe. Most non-residents said they previously lived in the city but moved away due to rising housing costs and limited availability. And a majority of these former residents said they would move back if housing were more affordable and accessible. So, these comments reflected a deep connection to community and desire to return if cost barriers were reduced.

So, who are they? So, you see here, of people who have responded, nearly 50% of them are employee workers. About 21%, or 139, are retired. We had about 71 business owner or manager responses. That's 11% of the respondents. And then we have some smaller percentages in other. And then we also have a pretty wide sample of zip codes. I thought this was interesting, of people living across the city.

So, here's another couple more questions to help us better understand the respondents. How many people live in your household? Nearly half of these respondents are two-person households. 25% are one-person households, and then down to 14% are three-person households, with 75 respondents, and 50 people responded who live in four-person households. What's your annual household income? So, over 30% of individuals who replied make over $100,000 a year. And then you see how it cascades down into lower amounts. We asked how much of their monthly household budget goes to housing costs, and 44% of respondents say 25 to 50% of their monthly household budget goes to housing costs. And then you see the breakdown there. And then on the right, and about how much of your monthly household budget goes to childcare? So, you see here, most of the respondents do not have children. That's something, as we look at these, while we think about wanting to get a wider swath of respondents to get more people represented. So, but still, 29 of the respondents, that's 6% of all respondents, pay more than $1,000 a month on childcare, which is a lot of money.

So, some key takeaways from the survey before I dive into more of the questions. We found strong community support. In the response, nearly three-quarters of respondents support raising the living wage. Most believe the $15 an hour rate does not meet Santa Fe's current cost of living. There are real affordability pressures in our city. Housing remains the top financial strain. If we look at workforce and resident connection, 77% of the respondents live in Santa Fe. Many who don't said they would move back again, back to housing, if housing was more affordable. The balance business perspectives, we found that business owners/managers are actually evenly split. Roughly a third foresee challenges, a third expect positive impacts, and a third anticipate little change. This is when we ask them their thoughts on what the impact would be of raising the living wage. This also highlights an important need for collaboration and support for small businesses during implementation and beyond. So, shared community values. Respondents also emphasized dignity, fairness, and sustainability, linking living wages to Santa Fe's identity as a community that supports people.

So, here's the living wage data that's in process, but our respondents are a pretty large body of folks who have responded. In general, how well does the current living wage, $15 an hour, meet the cost of living in Santa Fe? 80% responded, "It's not enough." 13% "just enough." Do you support or oppose raising the living wage in Santa Fe to $17.50 per hour with potential annual incremental increases? We got 63% strongly support and 7% somewhat support, and then 18% strongly oppose and then 6% somewhat opposed. So, and then there is a small group of folks who responded who could see the pros and the cons to doing something like this.

So, we asked folks, what ideas would you recommend as additional ways to increase affordable and workforce housing in Santa Fe? And here are the ideas that folks gave us: build more housing, allow greater density, expand affordable workforce units, rent control, caps on increases, reduce second homes and vacancies, tax incentives, landlord support, and limit short-term rentals. So, it was really interesting for us to hear this from the respondents and see what different topics they personally prioritize that they want us to look at.

We asked folks, what do you see as the main benefits of raising the living wage? And they describe the benefits in terms of basic security and dignity, improved financial stability, ability to meet basic needs, better quality of life, support for families and children, increased local spending and economic boost, improved employee retention and morale, and then fairness and equity. We also asked them what do they see as the main challenges or risks in raising the living wage? And these are the common themes that resonated in their response: higher business costs, layoffs or reduced hours for hourly employees. Many cited the potential strain on small businesses, fear of job cuts, and concerns about higher operating costs being passed on to consumers, inflation, and higher prices. Some were worried that raising the wages would increase the overall cost of living, negating any benefits for workers, resistance from employers. There were ideas expressed of concern about this leads into enforcement and compliance, concern about how this would be implemented and monitored. And then a notable minority saw no downside, saying higher wages were overdue and necessary.

So then, to wrap this up, the last data point I want to cover with you all, we asked folks, what is the biggest obstacle you face living and working in Santa Fe? And they overwhelmingly cited the cost of housing as their biggest barrier, followed by wages, transportation, and childcare challenges. So, here are a sample of comments from them: housing costs and affordability. Many said high rents and home prices make it difficult to work and live where they work or stay in Santa Fe. Transportation came up. Respondents cited limited public transportation options and long commutes, high vehicle costs, wage and pay levels. Many said wages haven't kept pace with Santa Fe's rising cost of living.

Access to business resources. Small business owners noted challenges working with the city in their processes, permits, and access to support staff. Childcare, families cited limited access, long waitlists, high costs, discrimination, and inequity came up. Some mentioned unequal opportunities, tourism, and gentrification was of note. And then a notable minority, that's 179 mentions to date, reported they felt there were no obstacles or major challenges. So that in a nutshell is a summary of our current living wage survey and also community outreach efforts. Thank you.

Thank you. And if Director Nelson is still there, maybe we can take the... Yeah, there we go. Didn't want to exclude her. Before I go to committee members, I just want to have you comment briefly on the 600 respondents. That's a pretty healthy response rate and statistically significant, I believe, in terms of helping us understand trends and kind of the temperature of the community on the questions you've asked. Am I correct in that?

Yes, Madam Chair. Whoops, sorry. We're pleased with the response and we're hopeful that we're going to get more voices joining what we have to date. And that survey closes on the 10th.

Yes, it closes on October 10th.

Which is Friday.

Yes, yeah, Friday. It's Friday.

Great. And when that's closed and you update these slides, will you share the presentation with all of us?

Absolutely. Yes.

Okay. Members of the committee, questions that both of you want. Okay, Councilor Faulkner. Okay. So, did the survey contemplate whether or not or ask the question whether or not people felt that the living wage increase would have a benefit to getting them, well, solving the housing issue? Because I've done the math. If someone was working 40 hours a week and they got a $2 increase, it'd only be $320 a month.

Yeah, the increase. Well, it's about an extra $100 a week. We did not... We don't have a direct correlation between the increase of the living wage and individuals no longer having concerns with affordable housing. But raising the living wage, even that extra $100 a week, makes a big difference when someone's making choices between which necessities to buy.

So, it seems like on the survey results that housing was the number one concern, affordable housing. And my concern is that this living wage possibly isn't enough. And it might be in some space where it's like it seems like a good idea, but it's not really taking into consideration what actually has to be done, which is we need to do something about affordable housing. We need to readdress fee in lieu of. We need to possibly look into public-run housing. The issue seems to be more around housing than it is about wages. The wages that the living, this living wage, and most living wage proposals are not enough to really break the barrier around whether or not people can afford their housing. The issue is housing's too expensive. And I feel like this is kind of like sort of answering the problem, but not... I'm not 100% sold on it because in my mind, I'm like if housing is the issue and affordable housing is the issue, we hit affordable housing. Like we lean into that. This amount of money is... I can tell you in the apartments in Santa Fe, $100 a week is not going to move, is not going to move the barrier for people. It's not. Housing's way too expensive in Santa Fe. My nephews rent in Santa Fe and I can tell you that their rent is more than my mortgage. And $100 a week is not going to get them to that space where they don't have to live together to make it work. And so this, this is my concern around this living wage is I'm not, I'm not sure it's, it's enough to bump people into the space they need to be in. And I know many people disagree, but I have had economists look at this package and I, and and and pretty sophisticated economists. This is not taking into consideration things like when a business owner pays a living wage increase, it increases their payroll taxes. It increases their unemployment taxes. So the employee, employer is actually going to end up paying like more than $2 an hour per employee, a lot more. And the business owners that I have talked to are saying like this could make or break our business. And I've talked to conservative business owners and I've talked to progressive business owners. And this amount is problematic in that it's not just $2. It's being sold like it's just $2 per hour per person. And some companies that have 25 employees, that could be up to like $30 to $60,000 a year, depending on what their tax, what their payroll taxes and their unemployment taxes increase. So, it's, it's a little more complicated than just $2 more an hour, especially when $2 more an hour is not likely to get our community into that space where they can afford housing. It, it just isn't.

Madam Chair, Councilor Faulkner, thank you. That's, you've made some really, really good points. This is not, raising the living wage is not going to solve all of the challenges that we currently face in Santa Fe and enabling our community to live here, work here in a livable community. This is one of the tools that we are using. And if I can, I can touch a little on housing. I'm going to share my screen. So I just plugged in the cord to share the HDMI cord to share my screen. If you could help. So as that is coming up, I can flag for you that we have had a significant, Madam Chair, Councilor Faulkner, we have seen a significant amount of housing development in our pipeline where a decade ago we were permitting fewer than 200 new units per year. In the past eight years, the landscape has changed dramatically and we're now permitting between 400 and 900 new units per year. So, in this, this graph here, you see that we currently have over 3,000 homes under construction. Over 4,000 homes are in the pipeline. You see the orange with white dots. These swaths represent affordable homes. So in total, we have over 1,360 affordable homes either approved or under construction. So, you know, in total with over 4,000 homes approved and then you see here under review, we have about 413. So we are also doing our best to address the livability issue through affordable homes. I certainly agree with you. We need to do more. Some of our affordable housing programs are 20 years old. So there's opportunity to for us to, you know, all work together and make this better. Just a quick...

So if these, if these numbers were only in the context of the city of Santa Fe, that would bring me some peace of mind. What I do know is true is that Los Alamos is hiring another thousand people and they cannot live in Los Alamos. They will be moving to Santa Fe. There are entire, almost entire complexes, apartment complexes like South Meadows apartment complex is full of people from Los Alamos who are working in Los Alamos and can't live there because there's no housing in Los Alamos at all. So this number doesn't bring me any peace of mind in that we're not dealing with affordable housing in the context of we're in a vacuum of only worrying about the city of Santa Fe. Rio Rancho is taking Santa Fe people. Affordable housing has become a regional issue. And so we can't rely on this number to make us feel good that the living wage in conjunction with this number is going to get us past the limit because we're not going to be just dealing with Santa Fe residents. We're going to be dealing with Los Alamos residents. I mean Los Alamos workers. And so this is, these are parts of this formula that I don't, that are make, make me uncomfortable in that we're relying on information that is out of the context of the reality of what's happening in the region and in the entire United States. This is, this again doesn't bring me peace of mind because I know at least a thousand of these houses are likely going to be taken up by Los Alamos employees. And so there's some things being taken for granted in the, in the strategy around this living wage, like that the excise tax is going to go through is likely not going to go through and the state will probably not pass something that supports an excise tax throughout the state. I know the chairs of judiciary and senate finance, excise tax will never see the light of day on those two committees. And so my concern is, is that this formula was constructed under the pretense that some of the things that we're using as, well, this is part of a bigger idea. Several of the parts of that bigger idea are not reliable, like they're being taken out of context of what we're facing as a region and what we're facing as a nation. And so that's my biggest concern with this living wage proposal is that it's, it's just, it's not, it's relying on information that is not reliable. And by the way, I just want to say you guys are doing a good job and I appreciate all the work you do.

Madam Chair, Councilor Faulkner, thank you for the feedback. And what's interesting about the studies on living wage broadly that we've looked at is two of them are looking at Santa Fe. So, one looked at Santa Fe after it was required under, after the first living wage ordinance was passed, they were required to conduct a study. And another one in 2024 completed by UNM took a look at Santa Fe again to see if the impacts have changed. But I, I, I do understand your concern about just studies generally. I really do believe that by increasing the living wage, from what I've learned from talking with community members, my work on this survey, my meetings with groups, and looking at studies as well, I think that increasing the living wage will make a significant impact in some people's lives. And it is a tool and in a tool belt of a lot of things that we need to continue working on as a city and I look forward to doing that with you in the future.

Councilor Cassidy.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair. You know, I'll speak to the, to the measure more when we actually hear it in, in committee. But, but I think that what's really important for all of us to remember, for members of the public to remember that there is literally no single policy that's going to solve this issue. We've talked about this with housing. We've talked about this with childcare. I would not say that those numbers or kind of the thoughts around housing from where I'm sitting are out of context. I'm very aware of what is happening in the region. We've been dealing with it for a while, very aware that this is a national issue. So while for some families, and if you have two families that are making $100 or two-person household, they're making $200 more a week, looking at almost $800 more a month or more. That's pretty significant. And for some people that's not going to make or break the rent. But what I do think is important is that we start to look at what this package needs to look like. Cannot start to look at like, let's be honest, every single one of these things we have discussed, what's helpful here is this, you know, continues to provide us a roadmap with here are the issues that make it really challenging to afford to live in Santa Fe. We've been talking about childcare for, you know, I've been talking about childcare for six years since I've been on this council. We've been talking about housing constantly. And we, and we do have a variety of housing policies that we need to take into consideration and that we need to continue to formulate and continue to shift and grow. I would say that we don't know whether or not the excise tax will come into being.

That is still a question mark. And so I think that there are also some assumptions about why this doesn't work that are also not accurate. If you take this assumption that this is the silver bullet, nothing is a silver bullet. We will continue to have to look at every single one of these issues that have come up. And again, none of these are shocking. None of these, I'm sitting there being like, "Oh my gosh, I had no idea that transportation was an issue." We know that transportation is an issue. Child care, what's encouraging there is that there are some big strides being made at the state to make child care vastly more affordable. I can tell you that when I had one kid in child care, prior to the governor making it free for many, many families, I was paying $1,600 a month for my son, and I have one. That is a huge chunk of change out of individuals' and families' pockets. I mean, it is extraordinary. And yes, housing is still going to be the biggest issue, the biggest concern. We need to continue to move forward with every single thing that we can throw at housing. And one of the big problems with housing is that we can't control all of it. A lot of it's market-driven. A lot of it, we have private property rights. We have a variety of things that we can't control. And that doesn't mean that we don't look at every single housing lever that we have and pull it as hard as we possibly can.

So what I'm really appreciating that's beyond just the conversation of the policy, which again, we'll get to do a really great deep dive into, is as they actually, the actual ordinances coming through committees. It reminds us that, one again, I like the fact that nothing is a surprise. So I mean, it does show us that we know what we need to be working on. Where are some of those trajectories? What do these packages start to look like? None of these pieces can ever be looked at from just that one component, because no single component is going to fix this issue. It's not happening. And I hate to say it, we as a city can't fix this on our own. There are federal policies, there are state policies that are going to continue to make the challenge, but it does not mean again that we don't pull every single lever that we have as hard as possible. This is not something, we've said with homelessness, we don't get to wash our hands of it because we can't do it on our own. So that's what I love about this survey is that it really provides the range of policies that we need to continue pursuing, the range of topics.

That said, a couple questions. I'm happy to hear it's still open for another week. I know that the Chamber of Commerce did run a survey as well, and we did have this response rate, more were employees as opposed to employers. And so I'm hoping that the Chamber will help with some of that information. I would be really curious. We had a very robust conversation in EDAC about this. As I always say, what are the things that people are concerned with? What are the downsides? Because every single policy we do will have a downside. And if we know about them, we get to take a look at what we can do to mitigate them, and then we get to decide whether or not we can live with them. So I'm curious if you've had any conversations with the Chamber about when we will be seeing the results of that survey, if you've had any previews about it, because I think that it will help to have the variety of populations and questions that are being proposed.

>> Madame Chair, Councilor Casset, thank you for that question. Yes, we have been talking with the Chamber, and they plan to provide us with a preview of responses that they've received by Wednesday morning. So we'll be able to present some of their ongoing results at governing body Wednesday evening.

>> Wonderful. And are they, when are they closing their survey? Do we know?

>> The 10th, on Friday as well.

>> That's wonderful. That's some great alignment there. I appreciate that.

>> And you know, Madame Chair, Councilor Casset, the wonderful thing about the opportunity to present at governing body is, we're going to reach more people. So it's like a last-minute push to get more people participating in the survey, and then we'll see where we land after the 10th.

>> Wonderful. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that, and I am glad that we'll be able to get that attention and hopefully continue to get that information out there. If we've shared it on social media already, let me know. I'm happy to share it on whatever. I'm not the best, as I've always said, I'm the worst millennial to ever millennial. So, but I do have a social media presence that I don't utilize very often, but happy to push it out wherever we can. And then I'm glad that it was going out through the economic development listserv. That makes a lot of sense to me in terms of who we are hoping to get answers from. The last thing that did come up here, came up in EDAC, that I will want to be discussing, is the strategy. If this were to pass, the strategy during that year of what do we need to be looking at for individuals and for businesses? What does this increase mean for individuals? How do we assess their federal benefits, which Lord knows if we'll have them at all anymore? And what, how are they providing some guidance? So how do we get the Connect Network in? And then also, Director Nelson, can you speak a little bit to some of the work happening in OEED that is really focused in on small businesses, and that I think will be a benefit, especially for some of these individuals that are saying they want more small business support? That's something you and your team have been pursuing very aggressively, even before this was a conversation. So can you just elaborate on that briefly?

>> Madame Chair, Councilor Casset, Councilors, thank you so much for raising this really important question. Councilor Casset, as you know, through our conversations at EDAC, you're aware of the investment we've made recently to develop and deploy our Small Business Navigator program. And that's a significant program that we have worked on really hard over the last two years to be able to partner with New Mexico State University's Arrowhead program. And what that is, is basically a person, a coordinator, that is housed at the Santa Fe Business Incubator. And she has been online and available for the last couple of months. We're just still getting our wheels tightened. And she's meeting with businesses one-on-one to provide referrals to our resource partners, as well as limited technical assistance. So I'm not surprised either to see that businesses are requesting supports, because as we are well familiar, due to federal cuts, some of our small business technical assistance providers have closed shop in Santa Fe. So it's a really perfect time for us to have been working on this and been able to deploy it in the last couple of months when our business community really needs it. But we also could benefit with strengthening the response and the services that are available to businesses, because we're seeing a demand and a need for it currently, and can foresee it growing as well.

>> Yeah, wonderful. Thank you, Director Nelson. And I think that will also be an important piece of information again, if this were to pass, both in that interim year, but also afterwards, if this goes into effect. That is a really wonderful opportunity for us to have some canary in the coal mines, if we are looking and seeing some small businesses that are really struggling. That gives us an opportunity to take a look at what other supports and policies we need to pursue. So happy that we'll have that, and really want to make sure that the integration between this policy and this program is secure and strong and understood, so that we can do our best to support everybody. Thank you all so much. Really, really appreciate it.

>> Councilor Lee Garcia.

>> Thank you, Madam Chair. You have to excuse me, I'm getting a little bit of a cold here. Thank you for the presentation. Obviously, all the information that we receive is very valuable in us weighing out a decision. And obviously, whether we agree with this is going to work or not going to work, what economist says it's going to be fine and others. So all of that information is very important. I want to focus a little bit on the survey, because I think that is what we're, the data that we're deciphering here. And when we're, when we're asking a general question, "How well does the current living wage of $15 meet the living, the cost of living of Santa Fe?" And anybody in their right mind is going to say it's not enough. Most everybody that you ask. And so it's very leading in that way. And so it's kind of like, in the way that, let me frame this in another way. If you lived in a specific area and there were five McDonald's, how likely would you eat at McDonald's? Most people would probably say more than likely, because that's all there is that's available. And you frame it in a way of giving them five different choices, they may choose a different, to choose to answer in a different way. And the only reason I go there is, I do want to take the data for truth and for what it is. But I also want to believe in the fact that people were given the chance to say, and there are some questions in here. "Do you support or oppose raising the living wage in Santa Fe to $17.50 per hour with potential annual incremental increases?" So if somebody answered on the first question, "Not enough," more than likely, they're going to answer "strongly support" or "somewhat support," because we do, we do see what the cost of living is. And so I'm just intrigued to see how many, more people respond to this. I did have a question in regards to one of the slides that you showed. A big majority of the respondents were in a category of income that was already way above this. Can you tell me what that percentage was?

>> Madame Chair, let me find that slide. But it was annual income, correct? "What is your approximate annual income?" And we had 32% of respondents replied "$100,000 or more." 17%, or 91 people, replied "prefer not to say." 16%, or 89 people, replied "$50,000 to $74,999." So $50,000 to about $75,000, about 16%. $75,000 to $99,000, 13%. $25,000 to $49,999, that's 72 people. And 33 respondents responded "under $25,000," 6%. And Councilor, once the survey is closed, we can share the raw data with all of you, and I think from there you could kind of dissect it deeper in any way you want to.

>> Thank you. And again, I think that's just important to kind of keep a note of. You know, again, we don't really know exactly who in each of these categories is responding, because it's pretty anonymous. And so it is helpful to have people identify what their income levels were. And so going back to the questionnaire, and I'm hoping to see whatever the Chamber survey is, it's possibly in a different format, and maybe it isn't. And so, again, focusing on information, focusing on which demographic of people are being, and I know I have a small business, and I got the emails a couple of times already. And so the offices are doing their job.

Director Nelson, thank you. You guys are working, and sometimes people are really busy and they don't pass right through it. You get tons of emails that come in, so it needs to be on the radar to take a look at these things.

I'm not going to go into specifically whether I'm for or against this. I still want to hear all the information. I want to go back to Councilor Faulkner's point in regards to what is enough. For some businesses, this would be difficult, I could see, and for others, they're already at that level because we're already having to compete. If we want somebody to work for us and have them either live here or travel here, you're going to have to pay them enough so that way they come. And that's just the free market.

Again, I wasn't going to get into whether I believe this is right or wrong, or going to work, or not going to work. But the information is very important to me. So I do look forward to diving a little bit more into that data once it's complete. And then from there, I think in committees, we will kind of hash out what we feel will work or not work. So I think I'll leave it at that, Madam Chair.

I would have liked to see a few questions in there that weren't—I mean, obviously, whether you feel it's going to make an impact, sure it does. But then at the end of the day, there could have been a question, and I don't know if there was, maybe I missed it. If you were to receive a raise to $17.50 an hour, once inflation hits, is it actually going to be a raise? You might say no, because that's a real reality of what kind of does happen. And we can't control that. Prices. Businesses will charge what they need to charge to make their overhead, and if they don't, they stop doing business or they go elsewhere. So you've got to figure that out. And again, the free market kind of depicts that. A competitor down the street is charging so much, you can charge that. You can charge a little higher if your service is exceptional. There are so many other variables to it all. And I think that having this information, especially from the small business community, I think that's really important to hear because each small business has different tax structures and how it affects people.

$17.50 an hour raises your overall overhead. Sure, it's an extra expense. So depending on what tax bracket you fall into, you may receive a higher cost, you show less income, maybe you get a better tax benefit. But payroll taxes, and so on and so forth. $17.50 at the end of the day, once you remove all other taxes out of there, is it really $17.50? It's probably $15 take home, and maybe even less than that. I'll leave it at that, Madam Chair. Thank you for the time. I yield the floor.

Thank you, Councilor. Hope you feel better. Councilor Lindell.

Chair, just a couple thoughts on this. Councilor Faulkner, you said that if you have information that contradicts information that we have from an economist, I would love for you to share that with us. That makes sense to me. And I do think that if you have multiple workers in a household and you get $400 extra per month with three or four people in a household, I think it does make a difference. I think it makes a real difference. Whether it makes a difference in housing, I don't know. I think it makes a difference in what you might eat, and that's important. We put that in the necessity category. And I think that an increased wage supports small business.

I also don't think that there are probably very many businesses that—I think Councilor Garcia made the point that if you're going to hire somebody that's worth hiring, it's a competitive marketplace. And if everybody else is paying $17.50 or already paying that, and you're only paying $15, probably in the big scheme of business, you're not getting a very good deal for yourself because turnover and training and all of those kinds of things are very, very expensive. Having owned a small business for a number of years, one of the most aggravating things for me was having to train people. Super time-consuming. Once you get somebody trained, if someone else came along and hired them for a dollar more per hour, it was very, very frustrating. And I did not let that happen.

We don't really have any way of knowing, do we, what small businesses are currently paying? I mean, do we think that people are already paying over $15 an hour? Certainly, people that I talked to, for example, downtown hotels paying housekeeping workers $25 an hour. Okay, it's a lot more than $17.50. It's a lot more than $15. So my hunch is that we're already there. I don't know that. I think the data is going to show us that, but I think we're already there or we're pretty darn close. How many city workers did you say were under—did you say four?

Madam Chair, Councilor Lindell, six.

Oh, so I have to use both hands. Got it. Hopefully not for long. I don't have anything else really to add to this other than if someone has data that is in disagreement with data that we've already been given, we need to take a look at it. So thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilor. I think that's a great point. I just have a couple things. We've gone on for quite a while here. I think this has been an important beginning conversation using the data. And I'm curious, some of these arguments on both sides are pretty well worn. We heard them when we passed the living wage originally. They're the same arguments that come up at the legislature every time they take up a statewide—I'm sure other communities are hearing this. You had a slide about challenges and risks, and a lot of the things on there were arguments we've heard before. Do you have any data that helps us understand whether those arguments materialized in the last increase, in the last time we did, or when we did this originally?

Madam Chair, that is a great question, and I don't have an answer for you right now, but I'm going to ask my colleague Rod Gould to come up.

Okay. And Rod, if you just introduce yourself for people out in Zoom land, they may not know you.

Rod Gould, Senior Advisor. Thank you, Madam Chair. One of the provisions of the original living wage ordinance that was adopted at the end of 2003 required a study to be done within 18 months to determine whether or not some of the greatest fears were coming to pass. That study was completed, and it found that it didn't. In fact, the benefits that were anticipated did materialize, and many of the disadvantages to small business and others did not. And that study was done by the University of New Mexico's business school.

Okay. And is that—that has been provided to councilors, correct?

It has.

Yeah, I think I've seen that in my email. I just—I guess a couple of things. Business—the econ—so this has gone out to the Economic Development Department's listserv. There is a large business component in that listserv, correct, Director Nelson? Can you just speak or characterize that list? I want to—I did note, as Councilor Lee Garcia did, that we do have—I think it was Councilor Lee Garcia who talked about how we have more employees than employers, but it's not for lack of trying. The survey is going out to employers.

Madam Chair, Councilor Romero Worth, you're exactly right. So our distribution is about 10,000 folks, and that does include a large swath of business owners. In addition, we also have a great relationship with a lot of our what we call business associations or organizations that are supporting businesses and have their own networks of business owners. So we made it a point to send it to them to send to their networks. So I would agree with you that we've made a pretty valiant effort to get this thing out. To Councilor Garcia's point, business owners are busy, and it's just the underscore around continuing to send this out to our respective networks so we can get a good response.

Okay, thank you. That's helpful. I just want to touch briefly on, you know, this argument that this isn't going to solve our affordable housing problem, and we know it's deep in the community. I would agree. You know, there are no silver bullets. We have to do—we have to fight this on multiple fronts, and we are. The excise tax is in front of the appellate court. An appellate panel has been named. We are waiting to hear the result from that appellate panel and the appellate court. I don't think anybody has a crystal ball about where that's going to fall. And but I—I hope they meet. I hope they—we'll have to ask the city attorney if they've asked for briefing or oral arguments or anything, or if there's any timeline. I'd be curious on an update on that. And boy, wouldn't that be nice to hear something here soon because they have had it for a while.

I would note that the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, the Community Development Commission, did meet and evaluated grants that or grant proposals that came under a new RFP that was focused on awarding Affordable Housing Trust Fund dollars to building—to applicants who were ready to build units. I think that is an important shift in the city to go along with your slide about how we've seen an increase in the last eight years. And maybe I don't know if you can comment because you weren't here at the time, but I believe that that housing pipeline that we've seen over the last eight years is because of the tweaks we made early on in the last eight years around the fee in lieu of. And I know that gets a lot of lip service, but I think it's a complicated thing. We think we are in the last year of the payments that developers pay, and so we're going to need to—that's something that in the coming years, we're going to need to look at what is happening there and making sure that we are continuing to incentivize the chart that you showed us around the permitted housing that's—that we're seeing over the last eight years because of the changes we made to fee in lieu. I don't know if you have any comment on that or whether anybody else who's here can comment on that, but I think it's an important point to make.

Madam Chair, I agree. Before we amended the ordinance to allow fee in lieu, we had zero affordable rental developments in process or proposed. And then after we introduced fee in lieu, you see the dramatic change in projects being approved. And also, for example, in 2025, the fees in lieu paid totaled nearly $950,000. So those monies go back into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. And as you noted, the CDC has made recommendations, and we're just dotting the i's, crossing the t's in our work, and the focus this year in the Affordable Housing Trust Fund grants is on development.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's a really important pivot. And again, when Councilor Cassid talked about pulling on all the levers, that's a big one. And I just—I just want to underscore that the city is moving on multiple fronts to try to address housing and the affordability issue we have.

I just would, oh, did you, did you want to add to that? Sorry.

Yeah, I would just like to point out as well that the law of supply and demand is still very much in effect in Santa Fe. As the director made a point earlier, there had been fairly meager new housing being developed until eight years ago, less than 200 units a year, and increased rental rates were common, sometimes three, five, 10% in a year. In the last eight years, where the increases have been more like 800 to 1,200 units per year, we've seen that increase per year drop. So last year, the increase in fair market rents went up less than 1.5%. That shows a flattening of the increase that tells us that supply is beginning to catch up with demand. That doesn't solve the whole problem, as many of you have said, but it does say that the city's increased emphasis on housing production is working.

Thank you. That, that is a very informative point. I appreciate it. Just one other thing, I did have a conversation this afternoon or this morning, at some point today, with Director Oster. And Director, I don't know if you want to paraphrase any of it. I'm going to kind of put you on the spot, but this idea around, I think we are on the right track in knowing that in the year before the wage increase actually takes effect, there are things that we can do with individuals around benefits. And there are things that we can do to support businesses. And I think, tying them in particular, both to other kinds of resources that can help them, will be important. And I think sometimes this work, and I think Director Oster, you were telling me that in your career you have seen the value of working with people one-on-one. And it may not be a policy per se that is important here, but really more working with individuals or individual businesses to address particular problems. And I just want to give you the opportunity to comment on that piece of the conversation that we had earlier.

Sure, Madam Chair. Thank you for the opportunity. Essentially, what I said was that throughout my career, mainly in the state government world, I have had employees from time to time approach me to request that they would like to decline an across-the-board pay increase due to concerns about loss of eligibility for things like Medicaid and SNAP. So, that's a very sad situation to begin with, where we have full-time government employees making such a small wage that they're dependent on programs like Medicaid and SNAP. However, when I first started at the Tax Department in 2019, one of the first actions that I was asked to approve was about 20 hire packets for the temps that work seasonally to open the mail and help process tax returns. And at that time, in 2019, based on a policy from the previous governor, Governor Martinez, the state was paying federal minimum wage. So those hire packets that I was asked to sign were for, I think it was $7.25 per hour full-time for these temps. And I didn't do that. We worked with the State Personnel Office and we revised those to honor the local minimum wage. However, there are state employees that make less than $17.50 per hour. So, in my experience though, in those cases where folks came to me or others in those state agencies and said, "You know, I'm concerned about losing benefits as a result of this pay increase," we were able to work with them on an individual basis to find solutions. And I just really strongly believe that suppressing wage growth is not an answer to that question. There are real issues with benefit eligibility, and the loss of benefits can be very devastating. But based on my experience, those are things that can be worked out on an individual basis between the employer and the person who's in that situation.

Thank you. I appreciate the benefit of that. And Director Nelson, I think you've already noted that on the business side, there are things that we can do to support businesses as they transition to this increase. And so I don't, I don't know, you've kind of commented already. I don't know that anything else is needed, but the mic is yours if you want to.

Chair Romero and councilors, I'd love the opportunity just to underscore that I appreciate the conversation and the opportunity to just highlight the need in our community to support our small business owners. And due to this discussion about how this would impact small businesses, we're right there ready to go to increase our assistance. So they have the support that they need. And I'm happy to chat with anyone further and get into the program that we are currently deploying, the Small Business Navigator program.

And Madam Chair, what's really exciting about the potential to increase living wage and that we already have this Small Business Navigator in process, is we're sitting back and we're strategizing how to grow, and not just how we talk about this and share accessibility of these resources with the public, but also how we can, you know, we're thinking of the next budget, the next budget season, and what we can do to grow this program because it's more than, "Here's someone to provide you with consultation." It's, "We're going to roll up our sleeves. We're going to look under the hood of your business, and we're going to help you to live into the mission that you want to be." Our goal is to ensure that no business, no small business in Santa Fe, needs to close because they just, for whatever reason, can't cut it. We want to be there to provide support.

Okay. And I'll just end on, I think that that's really important work and important messaging to send because as I, we haven't really talked about this bill, and I'm sure we'll get into it when it arrives here at Finance, does tie increases to housing metrics. And so that support is going to be something that is ongoing, and it's something we're going to continue to need to do as, you know, we see increases happen incrementally over time to keep working on the wage issue. So, just want to draw that. Okay. I think we've spent enough time on that. Really appreciate the staff being here tonight. Really appreciate the committee digging in and asking great questions and providing information. This is the kind of conversation that we need to be having, and really, really grateful for the opportunity we've had tonight to look at it. So, thank you everyone. Appreciate it. We're going to move on with our agenda. We have three items pulled off of consent. The first one is item D. Request for approval of a budget amendment resolution from the Water and Wastewater Enterprise Fund to salary and benefits in the total amount of, I believe this is $1,595, to reclassify 87 positions in the Public Utilities Department. We don't have Jesse Roach, but we have Jonathan Montoya. Welcome. Sorry you've had to hang out with us. And Councilor Cassidy, I believe you pulled this, and anybody else pull this? Well, we can answer any questions necessary, but I'll go to you, Councilor Cassidy.

Well, thank you. Thank you so much for being here, and yeah, this is a later meeting this evening, so really appreciate it. I really just wanted to pull this because there's been a lot of conversation around staffing in public utilities and a lot of concern around staffing in public utilities and the utilization of contracts because of staffing shortages. And so I did not want to just let this slide by because I think that this is really important. I know it's been part of this larger conversation and strategy. And so if you don't mind speaking to not just the mechanics of it that's in the packet, but a lot of the philosophy and where we are looking for how this is going to actually improve staffing capability for the City of Santa Fe.

Sure, Madam Chair, Councilor Cassidy. So I think one thing to understand is the Public Utilities Department is operating three water treatment plants, a distribution system, and a collection system that spans the whole city. And there's a very specific requirement for a water operator certification or a wastewater operator certification. And that requires a very specific set of skills. And we employ a large group of those folks. But I guess what I'm getting at is we want to even the playing field out, build in more capabilities so we can go across divisions, across departments, so we can help staff. Right now, currently in our current structure, we don't have that ability because the job descriptions are very specific: water, wastewater, treatment plant, collection system, and it doesn't allow us to cross-pollinate like that. Though the skill set is very similar, the requirements are very similar. So, we're trying to build in the ability for folks to move around. Not only that, the pay increases that are going to be associated with this are going to take us into a level of being competitive or trying to compete for the workforce that our neighboring municipalities are also trying to get at. So there's a very limited number of water operators, and it's kind of a niche field that doesn't get a lot of publicity, but it's a very important field. So, I'm hoping that this will garner some attention, and I think Jesse and Director Doer are also feeling the same way. So we can try to build in a career ladder where we can hire entry-level folks and offer, you know, we're talking about 20% increase per level here to incentivize. We want to get, we want to build you up. We want to get you experience. We want to send you to get your certification because it's important to us not only to build a strong workforce, but from a regulatory compliance standpoint as well. So I hope that kind of answers your question.

It, it answered it perfectly. You even brought up an area that I didn't know was also going to be addressed here, which is that issue of redundancy, you know, where if essentially somebody, we have some openings in water and really need help, and somebody from wastewater will have better capability or, you know, to be able to go in and fill in those holes.

Councilor Cassidy, if I could add one thing too, is like, you know, so we're talking about competing for the workforce with neighboring municipalities. The last thing we want to do is compete for the workforce internally. So, this is going to address that as well.

And if I understand, that was, that was an issue that there was, there was some mismatching of salaries to different positions based on which department or which division within the department you were in.

That's correct.

Wonderful. Well, that, that was it. I really just wanted to make sure that this did not slide by. I think that this is something that we should recognize and celebrate. This has really been a large conversation. There's been a lot of consternation around having to use contracts and also this understanding that, you know, this isn't something that we can just let slide by while we're trying to build something. So, I really appreciate that the team in utilities has both found the contracts needed to make sure that we are delivering clean water to the community because that is literally one of the very most important things that we do, if not the most important thing that we do with the city. And, but also looking at longevity, looking at how you build the workforce, how we grow our own, how we really, really create that staff, that workforce that we need that'll have the knowledge across the department as well as, you know, growing some of that historical knowledge.

So, thank you, and thank you to everybody who's worked on this. I really appreciate it.

Other questions from the committee? If not, is there a motion?

Motion to approve.

Second.

We have a motion and a second to approve this item. Director Oster, can you give us a roll call, please?

Absolutely. Madam Chair, Councilor Cassidy?

Yes.

Councilor Lindell. Councilor Faulkner?

Yes.

Councilor Lee Garcia?

Yes.

Chair Romero-Wirth?

Yes.

Motion passes.

Okay, we're on to item J: Request for approval of a budget amendment resolution to reappropriate unused funding from FY25 in the total amount of $1,225,850 from the General Fund to land use contracts for the General Plan Update and short-term rental software.

Madam Chair, we have Director Heather Lamboy on Zoom.

Okay. And we also have, I'm sorry, you're going to have to introduce yourself again.

Janice Bletnikoff with the Land Use Department.

Okay, great. And Councilor Cassidy, I think you pulled this.

I sure did. Janice, I should have caught you in the back and been like, "I'm not sure I have a question for you," but glad you're here because I'm always happy to see you. What I wanted to bring up was if this Finance Committee remembers when we were discussing contracts and we were discussing how each department, we were assessing the contract amount for each department, and there was, you know, taking a look at the past however many years and how much was appropriated, how much was actually used. This came up in Land Use because there were some of these really long, big, expensive projects that we had appropriated money for, but because of a variety of reasons, we actually hadn't expended it. And so, of course, that contract amount got cut. And I had said in budget hearings that I'm going to want to understand when we, if Land Use gets to the place where once we are finally appropriating those dollars and we're spending them out, if we still have the contracts that are needed for the department. I'm glad to hear, you know, the General Plan is moving forward, short-term rental software. But this might be a question for Director Lamboy or Director Oster, City Manager Scott, when they're done making us icicles because it is freezing in here. I did not dress appropriately for these chambers today. About, you know, where we are with that and making sure that we are really on top of these things. We've made a lot of progress. We're continuing to make progress with the efficiency in Land Use. I would hate to see us lose some of it because we weren't staying on top of this contract issue. So, Director Lamboy, that might be for you at this point.

Thank you, Councilor Cassidy, Chair Romero-Wirth. Yes, there has been a lot of momentum, and we are super pleased about that and really want to keep the momentum going. Sorry about the glare here. But with reference to the code update, we will be launching into Phase Two as soon as we get through the adoption of Phase One. We have done some preliminary work. Part of this funding is for that, but it's only a small part, and so we will be returning to the governing body for additional requests. And also, we will be speeding up the process of the General Plan Update so that we can align the Land Development Code Phase Two with visioning efforts and make sure that everything is consistent with the General Plan Update and the Land Development Code Update. Those big Phase Two issues include architectural design standards as well as a creation of districts, more mixed-use districts that will be more compatible with the overall development patterns of today, plus many other things as well.

And, you know, in terms of the dollars for contracts, are we, you know, we've talked about, you can, what is it, you can have two things: fast, good, cheap. We need this fast and good. So, how are we in terms of dollars if we do speed up that General Plan process? Are we funded enough currently, or is that also going to be something we'll have to take into consideration at some point?

Chair Romero, Councilor Cassidy, we will have to take that into consideration. We are looking at speeding up the process slightly, but it really, the intent is to align with the Land Development Code and also provide direction for that Phase Two of the Land Development Code. All the components of Phase Two will still be accounted for and still have the same quality. The consultant has the capacity. We've had long conversations about that to adopt this accelerated schedule and still produce a result that we all care about.

Wonderful. I'm glad to hear about that and definitely want to make sure that when those funding questions, you know, come up, definitely something I want to make sure that we have a good conversation about. This is important work. We've been talking about it forever. We know how much it impacts. Last question. We have OpenGov, InterGov. I can't keep track of all the Govs. I don't remember what this one is called. Anyway, the new permitting process because of some of the delays there and some of the challenges with starting with one of the Govs that we didn't like and then going to a different Gov. We had a lot of contractors that were coming in and supporting that work. How are we doing with that? And is that going to be necessary at this point now that whichever Gov is being implemented? I can't remember them.

That is a great question. Thank you, Councilor Cassidy, Chair Romero. The good news about OpenGov is we've already had several kickoff meetings, and the OpenGov team will be coming to the city, to Santa Fe, to actually have several work sessions with all of our divisions, including business licensing, code enforcement, of course, permitting. It's going to be covering all of those land use functions that we have. This past Friday, we had actually a visioning and goal-setting session with our Land Use leadership so that we could really be informed as we meet with the OpenGov development team at the end of October. And so we should be seeing some results, you know, in the spring. They are ready to move quickly, and a lot of the great components of this is that we aren't stuck with one program. We'll actually be able to configure it ourselves to respond to the changing needs that we have through permitting and all of Land Use, you know, different components of operations.

Wonderful. Very exciting to hear that. And a quick side note, it does relate to the code update. While you guys were in that, I got to sit in on the architectural design history, which was fascinating, and I highly hope that we continue to bring these types of trainings, and if we can, you know, let the governing body know or bring them to Quality of Life. But it was, Janice was there for a moment, and then she had to run off for other duties. But as we look at architectural design standards, I think bringing in that information, I know for me, was extremely helpful, and even just driving around the city, I had a deeper appreciation of our architectural history. So, thank you for bringing that over to staff, and I would love to see that as well with the governing body. So, thank you so much.

Councilor Faulkner. So, Director Lamboy, I know that in getting this OpenGov software in play, I just want to make sure that you guys have all the equipment and all of the support you need. Is there any more equipment that you need that we could help with? Is there any more funding you need to kind of, because from what I can tell, and I just know enough to be incredibly dangerous, this new program is going to expedite permitting. It's going to make things work so much faster, probably by months in some cases. Is there anything else you guys need? Equipment, more funding, anything to help with this process?

Thank you, Councilor Faulkner, Chair Romero-Wirth. That is a wonderful question to ask, specifically as it supports our OpenGov transition. I had hoped to use salary savings from last year and got quotes for approximately $200,000 worth of computer software, tough boxes for the trucks, the inspector's trucks, printers for the inspector's trucks to be able to provide instant feedback to the contractors so they could submit another inspection request for the next day once they do that particular item. And unfortunately, that did not happen before the beginning of the new fiscal year. So it would still be super helpful to have those components. We looked at our software and the capability of reviewing 90-page documents in Acrobat and redlining those. A big part of that is going to be redlining the documents. And those are super large files. And right now, many of the computers sort of freeze, and you have the sort of wheel of death that just sort of happens to stare at you until nothing happens. So, that would be super helpful to us.

So, I'm going to just say to everybody who's listening, let's try to get them their computers. Land Use is like one of the things that I know Heather gets in trouble all the time for things not moving fast enough, and I know your department's doing the best they can. Land Use is up there with police and fire on how impactful it is to the city and the residents of the City of Santa Fe. And so, I will start having conversations. I'm pretty certain Councilor Cassidy will be side by side with me on that. And so we will be fighting for you to get that money so you can get the equipment you need so that when we roll out this program, we have what we need to make it work, and so you guys are not left in another frustrating situation of having the idea but not the means to make things work better in the Land Use Department. And I just want to note, Director Lamboy, I appreciate everything that you do as the Land Use Director, and I appreciate everything that your staff does. It's a very big job, and I don't think the average person fully understands what an enormous job you guys have and how important it is that we support the Land Use Department as much as possible.

Thank you, Councilor Faulkner.

Thank you, Councilor Faulkner. Anybody else?

Is there a motion? Motion, second.

Move to approve.

Second.

We have a motion and a second to approve this item. Director Oster, can we get a roll call? Councilor Cassidy?

Yes.

Councilor Lindell. Councilor Faulkner?

Yes.

Councilor Lee Garcia?

Yes.

Chair Romero?

Yes.

Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you all for being with us tonight. Okay, last item. Item K: Request for approval of a budget amendment resolution to allocate $10 million from the 2025 GEO bond to FY26 Complete Streets revenue, WIP design, and WIP construction for paving projects planned for FY26. We have Director Wheeler with us, and Councilor Cassidy and Councilor Lee Garcia pulled this item. I don't know which one of you want to go first. Okay, Councilor Lee Garcia, you have the floor.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I basically pulled this because obviously it's been on my radar. Both of pretty much all councilors have had this on their radar. And, you know, I think I can't stress this enough. Come to the Southside, drive down Airport Road, and it's like I'm four-wheeling out there in Caja del Rio. And it's horrible. And so I just kind of wanted to get a, you know, kind of a temperature as to the process and where we're going to be with that road specifically. And that's my first question.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair, Councilor Garcia. Yes, that's what we came here to talk a little about.

This is the moment when the money actually gets into the budget to be able to spend. But ever since we actually got the bonds approved, the Complete Streets team, particularly with the leadership of Marcos Esavl, who just got promoted to Project Manager II in Complete Streets, he is the man that invented, well, the mayor invented it, but who executed the Pothole Palooza and made it what it is today. So he's very accomplished and experienced with pavement. So there is a lot of work to do before the money arrives, and we always, on our capital projects, start that work before we get the money. So Marcos has been working on it for over six months to take contractors out to the roads to get their estimates, to really assess the whole thing. And I can have him tell you a little bit more about it, but we're actually ready to issue purchase orders right now. So that's the very next thing. And then that will get us on the schedule for the contractors. We actually communicated this strategy to the investors on the bond as well, that every year about this time, we'll be issuing the purchase orders for the next paving season. You have to issue the purchase orders almost a year in advance. We've been doing that all along with our paving. So we issue them in the fall, and then the work can start in the spring. Airport Road is, of course, at the top of the list. And I can give the microphone to Marcos to talk a little bit more about, as you asked, what the process is and where we're at with Airport Road specifically.

**Marcos Esavl:** Thank you. Excuse me, Madam Chair, Councilor Garcia. So, yes, with Airport Road specifically, we have been visiting with the contractors. We've made numerous visits to the site to walk Airport Road to determine the scope of the work that needs to be done. The scope changes pretty regularly based on weather conditions, the wear and tear of the road. So, we did complete our final walk-through last week to determine the scope of the concrete work that needs to be done on it. The paving's pretty much set in terms of what we need to do there, but that's completed. And now, once they get the final quote in place, because they have to make those adjustments, we're ready to get started on that. We are trying to get the concrete portion done that always has to be done prior to the paving. We're trying to get the concrete portion started before winter hits, or even through winter if temperatures hold. We need like 45 degrees and rising. That way, come springtime, we're ready to just roll through with the actual pavement rehabilitation.

**Councilor Garcia:** Thank you. And I think I continue to explain that to people. There's a process, especially when they call us. You can't just bring a pavement machine and just in 24 hours have it repaved. There's a lot of prep work. Definitely curbing, a lot of the concrete work that goes around the intersections is very important to make sure it all ties together. The process in regards to RFP, how long is that going to take us? We're, because we still have to go through the committee process, correct?

**Director Wheeler:** Madam Chair, Councilor Garcia, that's why you might remember some time ago approving some really large on-call pavement contracts. And so that's why we set these up, is so that we don't have to bid out every project. That's basically what Marcos gets to do is walk it with one of our on-call contractors, and they provide a quote. And then after you give us this money, we'll cut the PO. There's no RFP. We don't do it for our concrete, and we don't do it for our striping, and we don't do it for our paving. We have all contracts set up for that.

**Councilor Garcia:** Thank you. And we have a few paving companies that are on call, correct? And we're obviously doing our due diligence and making sure that we, obviously, we want the right person to do the job, but it all comes at a cost to the taxpayer. So,

**Marcos Esavl:** Yes, sir. And that's exactly right. We do have a variety of contractors we're able to utilize, and having utilized these contractors for already the last five years, this specific group, we kind of know who is the appropriate contractor for what job. They all do a really good job, but some of them have specific perks to the job that we need done depending on the roadway we're trying to address. So yes, we do do our diligence with that. However, there are contractors that are just primed for specific jobs who need done. So that's, it is a process, but we kind of determine that while we're determining the scope of who would be most appropriate to use.

**Councilor Garcia:** Thank you. And the last question I have is really, and there are a couple of areas that are just very, very bad. I mean, I'm not in the mode of trying to throw away money, but there can be something that can be done. I mean, between now and then. I again, I don't want to spend half a million dollars on something that we're going to redo anyway. But there are some areas that are very, very bad, and I think a lot of people try to avoid them either by driving a little bit on the shoulder or moving over into the other lane, which causes a lot of safety issues. And so I really want to make sure that we as a city do not end up in any kind of a liability because of that. And I hope we can look at that.

**Marcos Esavl:** Yeah. So, one of the specific challenges we're facing with that section of roadway you're talking about is that Airport Road has what's called an OGFC, an open-graded friction course layer on top of it. And it's intended to be a water-permeable layer so that the water drops down. It's about 3/8 to 5/8, and then drains off the road without sitting in the surface. Problem is, once that starts to come apart, especially on a road like Airport with that much volume of traffic in those speeds, it just literally crumbles. And we've tried a few different applications. The patch, the patching itself won't hold. The OGFC, it's too shallow. Some of the methods we've attempted, they just refuse to hold as it's such a shallow depth that's affected. But also because the whole perimeter around whatever you're patching, whatever application you're doing, is crumbling, it's hard to keep anything to kind of hold. So I know the patching crew, they're doing their best to kind of go through and apply what they can where they can. And if anything's getting excessive, but just nothing's really...

**Councilor Garcia:** Yeah. And I don't think patching would work because it's beyond patching. It would be a mill and fill on that section that's really bad. And so if the cost is worth the benefit of not putting us as a liability as a city, I think we need to look at that.

**Marcos Esavl:** Absolutely.

**Marcos Esavl:** Yeah. And so, yeah, and that's one of the challenges we're facing as well here is the paving season is quickly getting behind us, right? So that's why we're trying to have everything to roll once we get temperatures in the spring and once we get on the contractor schedule, we can disrupt the roll started actual pave process of it. But we are trying to use the proper application based on the condition of the roadway, all the roadways that we're addressing through this field.

**Councilor Garcia:** Thank you. And again, it's just frustrating. I've seen this deteriorating for the better part of a year, and could we have addressed some of these things beforehand through our budget? But it is what it is. We're here. And I do obviously want to continue to address the constituents that reached out to us day in and day out over the severity of what's happening there. And I, we do have, both Councilor Faulkner and I have to reiterate that it's on our radar, but it can't come soon enough, just so you guys know. Thank you so much.

**Councilor K:** Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Councilor Garcia covered what I wanted to discuss, which was, yay, I'm glad that this is coming forward. Very excited to see this. And also, what does this timeline look like? What does this process look like? So, should we expect all of these roads listed here to be completed next paving season or just to be contracted by this fall?

**Director Wheeler:** Yes. So, it's yes and no. The goal is to get them all paved. The reality is that the contractors also have full schedules, right? They work, they're already getting their schedules in place. So a lot of it is dependent on, do they get freed up on other projects? I mean, we can, the goal is to get everything scheduled, but that's not always the reality, right? They can run into a ton of issues on any project they're on. And to get them started and completed is, there's so many variables. You can't just say yes and no. But the goal is yes, to get them all completed. And the goal is to have them all have POs issued on all those roadways by before spring so we can get...

**Councilor K:** Yeah. Wonder and get them on our schedule and get us on their schedule because I know that this is one of those things that we don't always control with the contract. I mean, we don't get to direct the contractors. So I really appreciate this early PO process so that we can really try to get them on contract. My one request, and I'm sure it's not going to be at all a shock, is how we communicate these timelines. We've had a number of projects where we have this guess, and then something shifts, and it's not always our fault. It's not always something the city could have done or could have foreseen. But I think how we continue to figure out the ways that we communicate the timeline that our constituents can be expecting, especially for some of these really high-profile roads. And they'll see kind of like, oh my gosh, you got the money for it. Hooray. And then a year will go by, and it hasn't actually happened. And there can be a lot of frustration and confusion there. So, something that I want us to continue to be looking at. I don't know if this is, and I don't sit on Public Works Utilities, but if there are updates for what's going on with the bond projects, I think that could be helpful, or whether they come to, we could take them to Quality of Life, or, you know, who knows? Things are about to change in about two months, or to governing body and just really understanding where we are so that we can be letting our constituents know, and that they can see that things are actually moving even if you don't see pavement being laid. I don't know the correct terminology, but work actually happening, machines on the streets, that the necessary steps are occurring, and this is where we are, and here's things the city can do, and sometimes there are things that are out of the city's hand. So, thank you.

**Madam Chair:** Just really quickly, Director Wheeler, maybe can you just speak to the work you have done over your term here at the city to develop the relationships with the contractors and make sure that the city really is positioned to have work that they can rely on seasonally, so that we do have opportunities with them and get on their schedule? Like, I think prior to your term, there had been kind of starts and stops, and probably contractors didn't know whether we were going to have work or not. And so I know at one point you and I had a conversation about how you were really working to make sure that contractors know and that we actually had work every season so that we were sort of in the queue and working with them. And maybe you could just speak to that briefly.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Yes, that has been a really big focus for us in Public Works, which was building the capacity in our contractor community to handle the work that was coming from us. And so we've probably doubled the size of GM Emulsion. We've really grown some of our contractors, both in their capacity. Jimmy Molion actually just bought one of the asphalt plants. And so they did Guadalupe, they've done the West Alamita Culvert. MCO did Po de Las Vista. So we have, and it's thanks to the governing body for consistently every year giving us $3 million of one-time. So they knew that was coming. Romela has all of her big reconstruction projects going. We did Henry Lynch as part of hers. So we work really, really closely with these contractors and we've grown them through our consistent, as you say, funding and execution of projects. So now we feel really strongly that that's another thing that Marcos used in selecting the vendors is not just where their expertise is. That's a really important part, like what equipment do they have? Where do they seem to really shine? Is it shorter projects, longer projects, but also spreading it around so that we're using all the different contractors and we can, and we get pieces of their capacity and use that to our advantage. For instance, GM Emulsion actually just sent us a message. It's like, "When can we get that West Alamita Culvert Improvement PO?" They knew that project was coming. They got done with Guadalupe and they're ready to go and they contacted us for it. So they know our pipeline, they know our process, and they're really strong partners and we have grown a lot of capacity in that community.

Yeah. So I think Councilor Casset was emphasizing the communication to the community about the process and the steps and what it takes to actually get to the point of doing the work. But also the communication also goes the other way where the contractors can anticipate the projects that we have coming forward and that's really important from a business perspective. So I think this is just a thing I wanted to emphasize. So thank you for giving us the background and thank you for the work. Really appreciate it.

All right. Is there anything else or is there a motion?

Approve.

Second.

Okay. I think we have a motion and a second. Not sure who made what, but can we get a roll call, please?

Councilor Casset,

Yes.

Councilor Lindel.

Councilor Falner,

Yep.

Councilor Lee Garcia,

Yes.

Chair Maroworth,

Yes.

Motion passes.

Thank you. All right, that is the end of our consent agenda. Matters from staff,

None at this time.

Matters from the committee. Matters from the chair. I just want to thank the committee for the work tonight. It's reminiscent of budget hearings, spending so much time with all of you. But I think this was a productive meeting and I thank you for your time and attention tonight. Our next meeting is Monday, October 27th. And with that, we are adjourned. Thanks everyone.