Regular Finance Committee Meeting - Last Monday Mon, Jul 28, 2025 · Finance Committee https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/294 == Executive Summary == The Finance Committee meeting covered a range of critical city business, starting with the recognition of Chief Procurement Officer Travis Dutton-Leah for his significant contributions to modernizing the city's procurement process. A major focus of the meeting was a comprehensive presentation by Rod Gould on proposed improvements to Santa Fe's budget process, aiming to transition to a performance-based budgeting model for the 2026-2027 fiscal year. This new approach emphasizes clear goals, objectives, and key performance indicators (KPIs) for departments, with earlier and more structured engagement from the City Council in setting priorities. The committee also conducted a quasi-judicial hearing regarding a cease and desist order for "Good Luck Body Massage" due to operating without a business license and employing unlicensed massage therapists. Following deliberation, the committee unanimously approved the cease and desist order. A significant portion of the meeting was dedicated to a contentious discussion and vote on a proposed charter amendment that would require Governing Body consent for the Mayor to remove the City Manager, City Attorney, or City Clerk, except during the first 100 days of their term. After an amendment to increase the required councilor votes for removal from five to six, the resolution was approved by the committee. == Key Decisions == - Approved the meeting agenda. - Approved the consent agenda, with items W and X pulled for separate discussion. - Unanimously approved a cease and desist order against "Good Luck Body Massage" for operating without a business license and employing unlicensed massage therapists. - Approved a resolution to propose a charter amendment for the November 2025 ballot, requiring six city councilor votes to remove the City Manager, City Attorney, or City Clerk (outside the Mayor's first 100 days). == Motions & Votes == - Motion to approve agenda — Passed unanimously (4-0, with Councilor Lee Garcia excused). - Motion to approve consent agenda as amended — Passed unanimously (4-0, with Councilor Lee Garcia excused). - Motion to amend the agenda to move directly to the public hearing (Item 8A) — Passed unanimously (5-0). - Motion to approve the request to issue a cease and desist order against Good Luck Body Massage — Passed unanimously (5-0). - Motion to amend the proposed charter amendment resolution to increase the number of councilors required for removal from five to six — Passed (3-2, Yes: Cassett, Lindell, Maroworth; No: Faulkner, Lee Garcia). - Motion to approve the amended resolution proposing the charter amendment — Passed (4-1, Yes: Cassett, Lindell, Faulkner, Lee Garcia; No: Maroworth). == Public Comment == Public comments were primarily from city staff and councilors during specific agenda items. Director Oster and Travis Dutton-Leah spoke about the improvements in procurement. Rod Gould introduced the budget improvements presentation. No public comments were made by general citizens during the cease and desist order hearing. == Topics == - Appointee Removal Process - Procurement Process Improvements - Budget Process Improvements - Charter Review Commission - Staff Recognition - External Audit == Full Transcript == Madame Chair, Councilor Romero, we are live. At 5:01, I am calling to order the Finance Committee for today, Monday, July 28th. If we could get a roll call, we will be doing roll calls today because we do have members on Zoom. **Certainly, Madam Chair.** **Councilor Cassett.** Here. **Councilor Lindell.** Here. **Councilor Faulkner.** Councilor Lee Garcia is excused. He's excused until he gets to the chamber. I think he's just running a little late. **Chair Marroworth.** I am present. **Madam Chair, you have a quorum.** Okay. Do we have changes to this evening's agenda? No changes from staff. If there are no changes from the committee, can I get a motion to approve? Move to approve. Second. We have a motion from Councilor Faulkner, a second from Councilor Cassett to approve tonight's agenda. If we could get a roll call, please. **Certainly. Councilor Cassett.** Yes. **Councilor Lindell.** Yes. **Councilor Faulkner.** Yes. **Councilor Lee Garcia is excused and Chairworth.** Yes. Motion passes. Okay, thank you. We are on to approval of the consent agenda. I believe there are two items that have been pulled from consent. They are items W and X. Correct? Yes, correct. And those, just for the public, those are the charter ballot question legislation. Is there anything else the committee would like to hear tonight? If not, is there a motion? Motion to approve as amended. Second. We have a motion from Councilor Cassett, a second from Councilor Faulkner to approve the consent agenda as amended. Can we get a roll call, please? **Councilor Cassett.** Yes. **Councilor Lindell.** Yes. **Councilor Faulkner.** Yes. **Lee Garcia is excused and Chairworth.** Yes. Motion passes. Okay. With that housekeeping work taken care of, we'll go to presentations. I believe we are starting with staff recognition. I'll turn it over to you, Director Oster. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good evening, members of the Finance Committee. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here with you this evening. It is my pleasure tonight to recognize our Chief Procurement Officer, Travis Dutton-Leah, in our staff recognition segment. It was brought to my attention that we've never recognized Travis before, and I thought, "Oh my, we better do that because Travis is key to making things run around here." Travis is a Santa Fe native and a graduate of Santa Fe High. He began his government career in the state in landscaping, and after an injury brought him indoors, he steadily moved up through public service, earning about eight promotions and eventually serving for several years as the Bureau Chief for IT and Construction Procurement before joining the City of Santa Fe. Travis currently has 17 years of procurement experience, including nine years as a NASPO member. He currently serves as Vice President of the New Mexico Public Purchasing Association, NMPPA, and New Mexico's chapter of NIGP. His expertise includes formal procurement processing, cooperative purchasing, statewide contracting, policy development, and procurement system modernization. Travis joined the city on February 27th, 2023, about 29 months ago, but who's counting, right? And has since led major improvements. He combines deep technical knowledge with a strong commitment to serving the community he grew up in. Travis really has been a leader in terms of driving positive change within our organization. When he came in, one of the most common complaints I got was about the purchasing process, and there were also concerns about whether or not what we were doing with purchasing was meeting all the requirements. So Travis has really taken that on and made major improvements to ensure that we're both complying with all the applicable requirements and we're also looking for opportunities to streamline the process, improve efficiency, make it easier for users, provide training, and eliminate tools that don't work. One great example is that we implemented the bid module in the Munis system, which is one of the procurement tools, and we've wrestled with it for about 18 months now, and we just determined that it wasn't meeting our needs. So Travis brought that to me after a really good faith effort to make it work with the bid module in Munis and said, "You know, it's just not, and we need this other tool, OpenGov." So now we're in the process of implementing OpenGov. The initial feedback has been great so far. One example that I would give is we went from getting maybe four or five bids on average to our construction ITBs, and one of the first ones we did through OpenGov, we got 22, which is great. So we want to improve vendors' ability to participate in our procurements. We want to make it easier for vendors and for city staff for us to purchase things that we need. And Travis has really done an exceptional job of identifying opportunities to do that and then driving them forward. As you all know, change can be challenging, especially in a large organization. So Travis is pretty much fearless in that regard. He's always ready for a challenge. So with that, Travis, do you want to come up? Do you want to say anything to the committee? Thank you, boss. Thank you. Thank you. Chair, Councilors, thank you for this opportunity. It's been great working for Santa Fe. As you heard, I grew up here. I'm kind of like a transplant because my parents didn't grow up here. My father was on the way to California and stopped here and then called my mom and said, "Actually, change of plans. We're going to live here in Santa Fe." So, it was an accident, but you know, it's been great. It's definitely different than the state. At the state, we kind of just posted the contracts and then everybody used them. Here, we get to see from inception to death, everything that happens. And then, of course, working in finance. I think Emily's built a great team. There's a lot of great people in finance right now and in the city too. We get to work with all the different departments, and it's obvious when we're talking to everybody how much they care about each of their sections and how much effort they put into the different responsibilities they have. So, it's been great to see that. And it's good to be, I always say that we're the parachute packers. We pack the parachutes. We don't get the glory. We don't get to use the parachutes, but we help pack them for the sky divers, all the staff that actually get to be on the front line. And then my team, we have an amazing team in purchasing. I would not be able to do anything that I do without them. They're always ready for a challenge. They're always ready to help people, call them up, and walk them through every single process. And as far as streamlining, it's been great to, you know, take things that we don't need because procurement is hard enough as it is, you know, take those things out of the mix. And then balance what's required with trying to make things easier. So, we want things to take less time, but we also want to have enough oversight. But I think if things are too complicated, then people try to figure out how to get around them, which we don't want to make them that complicated. So, it's been good trying to find a balance, but thank you so much for this opportunity. Well, thank you, Travis, and it's my pleasure to present you with this certificate of appreciation, which says, "The following award is given to Travis K. Dutton-Leah. This certificate is given to Travis K. Dutton-Leah in appreciation for performance, service, and dedication to the City of Santa Fe Finance Department." Thank you so much. Well, congratulations. And you know already how crucial your shop is to the functioning of city government. So really, thank you for all your work. And also, just want to say he has the cutest dog on the planet. Just adorable. So, congratulations on that too, even though you had nothing to do with that. Well, other than owning him or her. Councilor Lee Garcia. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks, Travis, for coming aboard. I did notice a lot of things kind of streamline, and I noticed how much of an asset you became to the organization and to the Department of Finance when you came on, including when we're having issues with audits and things like that. But it just seemed like your expertise coming in really gave a good positive added value to the Finance Department. Kudos. Councilor Faulkner, the newest councilor. I have to say that there's been several situations where we've been trying to figure out how to make something work, and everyone says, "I have to talk to Travis." So, I just want to commend you for that because that means everyone's talking to Travis, and Travis is still trying to do his job. And I know it's been a lot, but I've heard so many great things about you, and I'm glad you're on our team. Councilor Cassett. Thank you so much, Madam Chair, and thank you so much, Travis, for all of your work. Procurement is much more complex than I think anybody who just enters this role could possibly imagine if you don't already have experience with it. So, I really appreciate all the work that you've done. I know that there's been many times that I've had to call you about an issue, about a question, and you've been able to answer that. But also, I do, and I think we talked about this during budget hearings, just being able to take a look at a very entrenched system and say, "How can we make this better?" is not an easy task to take on because there's just so many complexities that you have to deal with. So, I really appreciate the work that you're doing there, both in recognizing the importance of the work to keep the city going, but also in being willing to take on looking for improvements when it, you know, it could be fine to be like, "Ah, this is just procurement rules. Sorry. You know, we're going to keep going this way," even though there are some challenges. So, really want to express my appreciation for that work. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor. Thanks for being here tonight. Really appreciate it. Okay. We are on to our next presentation, which is one that I know I have been very interested in, and I am glad is finally here and in front of us. I think other councilors share that interest. We have a Santa Fe budget improvements presentation, and we have Rod Gold, the Senior Advisor and Public Engagement Coordinator for the city, who has done the work on this and has a presentation to give us about how we can move forward in the next fiscal year with a different kind of process that I think addresses a lot of the needs that we have and that's grounded in best practices more broadly, nationally, regionally. I'll certainly turn it over to you, Mr. Gould, and let you take it from there. And you can delve into more detail on that, all the little hints I just gave you, all the cues I gave you. So, welcome and thank you. And I'm so sorry. I think your mic is not on. Is the green light on? Okay. And then, just really speak into it. We can hear you in the chamber, but unfortunately, anybody who's watching can't hear you unless the thing... Is this better? Yes. And if you need to put it up on the podium like Travis had it, fine. But you may not need to. So, just want you to know there's that option. Anyway, back to you. Thank you very much. I appreciate this opportunity to speak with members of the committee about our budget process in Santa Fe and some improvements that you might want to consider for the coming budget year. My name is Rod Gould. My wife and I moved to Santa Fe five years ago, and we couldn't be happier and more proud of our new hometown. I also have the opportunity in recent months to serve as an adviser, as you indicated, to both the mayor and City Manager Mark Scott in operations administration. I enjoy that very much because I get to work with some outstanding people, elected officials and staff, to benefit where I now live and work. I want to get to the topic, but I want to first take a segue and describe to you an internal effort that we are undertaking right now to create and enhance a management system for the City of Santa Fe. You ask, what is a management system? Well, it is simply all of the processes and procedures that are necessary to get the work of a city done. So it could be strategic planning, it could be council goal setting, it could be employee attraction and retention, it could be goals and objectives for departments, it could be employee evaluation—a whole raft of things that have to go right in order to provide highest quality services, projects, and activities for the residents, businesses, and visitors of Santa Fe. We've had three workshops so far. We're making good progress. And one of these management system components, obviously, is budgeting. As you all know, the budget is probably the most important legislative action that any council takes in any given year. In this case, you're allocating almost a half billion dollars of public dollars towards services, capital projects, activities, and events that affect all those that reside and that visit our fair city. It shows what your values are, it shows what your priorities are, and it represents commitments. Next slide, please. The suggestions that I'd like to make today, and by the way, I don't pretend the same level of expertise that Director Oster possesses, but I was a city manager in California for 30 years. I'm official in a number of our professional organizations. I taught public management at three universities, with an often-time focus on budgeting. And I have a great deal of respect for this legislative action. So the discussion that I'd like to have today is about changing the type of budgeting that we do in Santa Fe. Not only its contents, but more importantly, its use once it's adopted. And then, secondly, the budget development process, in particular, the role of the City Council. Let me just talk about that in general to begin with. And by the way, I am joined here by Andy Hopkins, who is our budget czar. There are a number of types of municipal budgets out there, and I could go through them in some detail, but I would just tell you that the type of budget that you've been adopting in Santa Fe would be described as a combination line item and program budget. If you look at our budgets, for each department, it describes what the department is generally about and what the services are supposed to do. And then it'll break down the spending into seven or ten categories called line items. Whether it's salaries and benefits, or contracts, or maintenance and repairs, or equipment, it tells you what we're intending to spend in each of those line items. I don't know that that's particularly helpful to most people because it's very hard for most people to look at a line item and ask and answer, "Is that enough? Is that too much? Is it just right?" It's hard to know. Further, the budgets offer evidence of what had been accomplished the year before by the departments and then offer some aspirational hopes about things that each department would like to complete in the coming year. But these are generally not very verifiable; they're pretty general. And the important point here is that there is no feedback loop. Once you adopt the budget, it becomes a spending document only used by the finance department to control spending. There's no connection back to operations, administration, or performance. There's no reporting back to anyone. It just becomes a spending document. I suggest to you that the budget should be a key policy document and one used for management and oversight of the resources that you are deploying to serve the City of Santa Fe. So what I'm suggesting, in line of what the chair intimated, is that you move to what is now the convention in municipal budgeting across America, called a performance budget. A performance budget still contains all the financial documentation that you could ever want. There's lots of numbers in it, but its focus is on results and outcomes. It tells the reader what the residents and business people of Santa Fe can expect in the coming year from each department if these dollars are allocated to it. And it is, in essence, a commitment to seek to hit very well-defined goals and objectives during the calendar fiscal year. This is considered to be a best practice. The Government Finance Officers Association, of which we are members, considers a performance budget to be the minimum necessary to be accredited as a nationally recognized budget. We do not qualify currently because we do not practice performance budgeting, and I'm suggesting to you that this happen, and happen soon. I don't think it'll be that difficult. We've discussed this at the management team's level. The organization is ready for it, and we think it's important to do. One of the things that a performance budget contains for each department, each division, is clearly identified goals, objectives, and in some cases, performance measures, sometimes called key performance indicators. These are verifiable. They are measurable, and they become the essence of the management tool that is then used by the council and the senior staff to manage what we actually do. What's key about these goals and objectives is that they define a performance level. You can tell very clearly what you can get from each department, what you should expect as outcomes. Equally important, it's clear what isn't going to be done by that department and division. And this is where the hard work comes for you. As the council, it is your duty to adopt a budget each year. And budgets essentially are a dilemma for everyone involved because in almost every city I can name, there are more community needs than there are resources. You must make trade-offs, and the trade-offs have to be clear to everyone. A good performance budget will make clear what the level of services in each of the major operational and administrative areas is so that you know what you would be getting. And then if it's not sufficient, you can talk about augmenting it. But then you have to do the hard work of deciding where do the resources come from to augment that budget if you want more. Further, it's important that the process start with the elected leaders of the city. I believe that creating goals and objectives and key performance indicators for each department is something that we can do, and we would like to bring them to the council sometime later this fall so that you could see them. And we would like to report back to you where we stand in this fiscal year against these goals and objectives in this current year as we ease into this new form of budgeting and oversight. But as far as the council's role, it is typical in most cities that the budget year begin with the council meeting in special session to decide what are its goals and priorities for the coming year. What is most important to the elected body for the coming year budget? This signals the start of the budget period. This is often done in a half-day session outside of the chamber, sometimes where you don't have anything else on the agenda, and you're just focusing on longer term, what do you want to accomplish as a City Council and mayor? And equally important, if you had your druthers, where would you like to see more effort, energy, and resources put in the coming years? Where would you like to see that additional emphasis placed for the benefit of the community? That sends a very powerful signal to management, which will then begin to develop the budget submittals with an eye toward meeting the council's goals and priorities. We would indicate as part of our submittals which of our programs and activities would be supportive, advance the council's priorities, and make that explicit to everyone. The charter says that the mayor shall work in concert with the senior staff to develop a budget proposal. That is unchanged. But then when it comes forward, there is a greater understanding by the council about what its priorities are, and the staff is showing how it would advance those priorities. And there will be give and take to achieve a budget that accomplishes as many of the council and mayor's goals as possible and still will remain well within the resources of the city itself. Let me give you a sense of what this looks like in terms of a process. So, I mentioned that we have this management system process that is working. Next item, please. We would like to spend this summer talking to you about what this process might look like, what the schedule might entail, and how the budget might be used in the coming year. Get the Finance Committee's directives on that and ultimately a resolution to take it to the governing body for approval so that staff knows what are the rules of the road for the 26-27 budget. We would hold a study session with the council. It could be next month. It could be September, October, whatever you choose, to discuss these similar ideas and whatever suggestions you make for improvement and get the entire council to buy into this new process for developing the budget, its budget content, and its use as a management and oversight tool. In December, after the election, we suggest two days of hearings, and we know you're all very busy, but the thought would be to allow two things. One, each department to come before the current council as well as the newly elected councilors and mayor to describe what their activities are and what those goals, objectives, and indicators that I mentioned earlier would look like for this current fiscal year. And then, just as importantly, where we stand halfway into that fiscal year, six months in, how are we doing against these goals and objectives that we set for this current fiscal year? This should give the council a lot more information about what is being done across the breadth of the organization, where we're having success, where we're struggling, where we need some direction. This is a good check-in with the elected body on how we're doing in the current fiscal year, and then it would include the participation of the newly elected leaders. Then in January, when the new council is seated, we're suggesting a half or maybe three-quarters day session to do two things. One, set long-term goals for the council. It will be a new council, given members, what you all would like to accomplish for the benefit of your residents and businesses in town, and one-year priorities for the next budgetary session. We'd also like to discuss some governance issues, which is just good governance hygiene: what the rules are, how it's set forth in the charter, what are best practices, what role clarifications, how you work together as a team amongst yourselves, with the residents that you serve, with your staff, a code of conduct perhaps. And that would start the budget process for 26-27 later in that month. The finance would give us best estimates on what revenues and expenditures are going to look like for the coming year. And I don't want to get ahead of the story here, but I think it's going to be a more difficult budgetary year. I think actions that are being taken at the federal level are going to compound issues at the local level. People are going to need assistance from cities and counties across this nation in ways they never imagined before. People will seek you for help and things that aren't necessarily normally part of the municipal service package. I don't see expenditures even flat for the coming year. I think they will continue to rise and perhaps faster than revenue. So the budgeting is going to be tough in the coming year. Then the Mayor and the City Manager would give direction to the department directors to begin developing their budget submittals for the coming year. And in the second week of February, the departments would submit those requests, including their goals and objectives and KPIs, the performance indicators for the coming year. Essentially, they would be telling the Mayor and City Manager, "If you give us this money, here's what we can accomplish within our mission, and here's what we need to do it." The Mayor and City Manager would then work with the Finance Department and the operating departments to discuss these proposals and by early April begin to shape the budget for 26-27. In May, we're suggesting joint hearings between the Finance Committee and the City Council. My reasoning for that is, having watched this process this year, members of this Finance Committee sat through, I think, 23 hours of hearings on the budget, and yet some members of the Council were not available, were not present, and so did not have the benefit of all the information that you all absorbed, the discussions that you held, the questions that you asked, and the answers that were provided. The charter says that the Finance Committee shall recommend a budget to the City Council, and I believe that that requirement can be met by a joint meeting between the Finance Committee and Council so everyone's involved from the start. Everyone gets the same information at the same time, everybody hears the discussion. So I think that will improve the discussion and I hope save some time in the overall budget adoption process. We would also at that time review what we accomplished for 25-26. The departments would tell you what they actually accomplished against the goals and objectives set in December for this current fiscal year. You'd have that check-in, and that would give you perspective on the coming year. And at the end of those hearings, we would expect this Finance Committee to make a recommendation to the full governing body for adoption of the budget. At the end of all that process, the governing body would adopt the budget in the third week of May, and then, as is customary, in the first week of June, to submit it to the State Department of Finance and Administration for the state's review. That's a quick summary of the recommendations that I have for you this evening, and I'm happy to take your comments and questions. Thank you, Mr. Gold. Really appreciate it. Appreciate all the work that has gone into this. And is it possible? Oh, there you are. I want to make sure that you're visible on Zoom so people can know who you are and know who's speaking. I have, there is a request for a resolution in, so I will be bringing that forward and certainly interested in collaborators on that and interested in the thoughts of this committee in terms of what you've heard and what you like and don't like, and if there are things that we can, you know, either provide more information so it's easier to understand or make tweaks, I think now would be the time. And I'll just make one other editorial comment before I turn it over for questions from the committee. I do think that this process is one that will ultimately lead to more honest conversations about what we can and can't do. We see need across the city in every department. Every department needs more, and as you allude, the situation that's happening at the federal level may push responsibility for certain things down to the state and local level. And so we may be asked to take on more responsibility. And yet, our pie, our funding resources, as you mentioned, are not growing probably at the same level. And so I think you and I had a conversation earlier today about resource allocation being really the tough thing and being very clear with the community and each other about where we have the ability to make changes and put more resources to make some changes that hopefully address some of the public's concerns. But we can't be all things to all people and do all the things that we know need to happen, and certainly not overnight. It's going to take time. It's, you know, it may take additional funding streams. Those are really conversations that I think this process will better position us to have. And so I think we can have, in my opinion, more honest conversation about what we can and can't do with the resources we have and the demands that are placed on city government that are only continuing to grow. So, without editorial comment, I'll turn it over to the committee. Councilor Cassid, I see your hand up first. I'll go to you. Councilor Cassid: Thank you so much, Madam Chair, and thank you, Rod, for being here and for this. I know this has been a long time coming. Something that, you know, Councilor Marworth and I have had hours-long conversations, and they were started before we were back in chambers, so it must have been 2021, back during the COVID years. So I am really excited to see this. First and foremost, I would love to also sign on as a co-sponsor to this resolution. I think that this is really crucial. A couple questions that I do have. I know that New Mexico's budgets, municipal budgets can get a little, are a little different sometimes because of the role of the state and DFA. And so I, you know, I know that's been a conversation that I've had with some of our incredible finance staff. And that is, that is one of the things that as I'm looking at this, where are those constraints, or do we not know about them yet, that, you know, DFA may come in? What do we need to be aware of as we're having these conversations? Have you already had these conversations with Andy and the finance team, and what does that start to look like? Chair: Councilor Cassett, I'm going to defer to our director who worked with the state for some years before joining us. And we also have Andy here to help us with that question. Thank you so much, Councilor Cassid and members of the committee. Thank you, Mr. Gold. We also, in answer to a couple of your questions, this presentation was reviewed by staff, both by Andy and Alexis and the budget team, and by me, and we provided input which Rod incorporated into the proposed process. Based on the proposal that we're discussing this evening, I am confident that it will meet the requirements of the state. I don't know if Andy has anything else that you'd like to add. Madam Chair, Councilor Casset, no, there are, the state does have some general restrictions. The budget must be balanced. The budget must have, you know, limited use of one-time funding because it's intended to be an annual operating budget, not necessarily a capital or a one-time budget. So, you know, we just need to be aware of those. If I could, I just wanted to make a couple of points that are not directly related to DFA, but that I need the Finance Committee to keep in mind. We have had several attempts in my years here to do performance measurement in various flavors. Generally, I would call all of them failures. The reason being, all of the onus was put onto finance, specifically budget, to say, "You have to keep up with all these people. You have to keep after them to do their performance indicators. You have to go out there and help them measure." And that's just not something that, you know, budget has the authority or the bandwidth to do. This is something where we're really going to need active input from the senior administration, particularly the Mayor and City Manager's office, but also senior staff in the city. This is not something they just couldn't be, we could say, "We're going to do performance measures now, budget, go out and do it," because that's the way it's been done in the past, and it's, you know, departments will tell us, "Why do I have to listen to you? You know, I paid more." So that's a point I want to make. One other point I've made in the past, and it bears repeating, and Rod touched on this as well. When we're talking about priorities, one of the things that, you know, we have tried to solicit a listing of priorities from the governing body in the past with varied results. I just want to keep in mind that one of the things, you know, the most critical rule of setting priorities is that everything cannot be a priority. When you're telling us priorities, you also have to tell us what are you willing to sacrifice to make those priorities happen, because, you know, I know a lot of the department directors, I know the councilors, I know even the City Manager's office, and Rod probably are frustrated with year after year of flat budgets, because that is what we get when we have everything as a priority, and budget and finance and senior staff are in a competitive atmosphere where, you know, parks are a priority, public safety is a priority, land use is a priority, affordable housing is a priority. All those things together, you know, cannot necessarily be at an equal level of priority, or nothing is going to get seriously done. So, I just wanted to make those points for everyone to keep in mind as we launch in this. And just one final point, of course, we are, both Emily and I, work for the Mayor's administration. We will have a new administration coming online. So we're going to have to keep in mind of that, of there may be some design changes, you know, depending on what the new Mayor wants to do, how he wants to... Not necessarily he. Or she. Yes, absolutely. Thank you for, thank you for making. Let's make it gender neutral. Yes. I'll say they, what they want to do. Ultimately, we work for the Mayor. We want to please the Council and the Finance Committee as much as we can, but we are, you know, working for the Mayor's administration. So their priorities are going to have to be taken into account as well when they begin. So that might throw some a few monkey wrenches into the process. So just something to look out for there. I'll leave my editorial comments there. Thank you. Right. And Councilor Cassid, if I can, I'm just going to jump in here and thank you, Mr. Hopkins, for being here, and you are our budget guru. Mr. Gold, can you just touch on two things? One, yes, I think you did talk about how the newly elected councilors and the newly elected Mayor would be involved at the end of this calendar year. Clearly, a new administration, new councilors may want to tweak a process once they are fully seated. And so I think there's consideration and room for that just to address Mr. Hopkins' concern. And then, and then the other thing if you could touch on is, I asked you this afternoon about how difficult it would be to come up with these performance standards, and as Mr. Hopkins noted, we did try this before when I was first elected. The city was trying to do this, and it turned out to be too big a leap for us. You seem to think we're better positioned now. And I think with your council and Mark Scott's council, in terms of how these things get done, you're already working with staff around doing that. That may ultimately be a different situation in the future. So if you could just touch on those two things, and thank you, Councilor Casset, for the latitude here. Thank you for that. Absolutely, under the charter, the mayor and council make changes to this process, and you have every prerogative for doing so. That said, I heard a lot of discontent by this council at the conclusion of this year's budget process and a lot of suggestions that the council should have a larger role, or that the budget should be more transparent, or that there should be some checking back because the council was very interested in what we were actually doing and felt that it didn't get enough information about what the city was actually operating like and performing. And so these suggestions are made to address some of those concerns. And yes, a future council and mayor could change them, toss them out, go back to the way we've been doing them. Second point, the city manager, Mark Scott, is used to what I think is the convention in our profession of meeting with the department directors regularly, meaning every two weeks, sometimes weekly, to talk about performance, to talk about performance under the budget, to check to see what we're doing against the express goals and objectives. That's something that he has begun and he will continue once we have them well established as a way of exercising his management oversight and the goal of providing a higher level of service. All of this stuff, whether it's the management system or the budget, is about providing focus. Where can we put limited resources for the greatest impact? And that's your job as well as ours in management. We have to do that together. To Andy's other points, the difficulty of creating the goals, objectives, and performance indicators. As I indicated, we've had three workshops with most of the management team in the last two months. And in the most recent one, we asked the participants, after discussing what they were, to begin to develop some for their own departments. And in just a short period of time, some very reasonable-looking goals and objectives were developed, including some performance indicators. Now, we're going to need to refine that. That's going to need some work on the inside. And some departments will put the goals and objectives way up here, and they will be unattainable, and we're going to need to bring them down a bit. Others are going to put them so low that they could trip over them as they go over them. We don't need that either. But we will work until we have something that we think is representative of what we can do with a little stretch involved. And then it'll be senior management, meaning the mayor and city manager, to make sure that the departments are actually performing at these levels. And if we're finding difficulty doing so, find out why and what can be done, what course corrections are needed to get back on course in order to achieve the highest level performance. Okay. Okay. And just one other thing, while a new council and mayor can certainly make changes to the budget process and actually scrap it altogether, either in the next fiscal year or a year from now, I don't think we can afford to wait for them because of the length of time it takes to put a budget together. Even under our current system, we start doing this work in the fall. And I remember the mayor telling me when he was first elected, our current mayor, that he was pretty much handed a budget that had already been done and there wasn't a whole bunch he could do at that point. Of course, we were elected in a different time period then, in March, when the budget is due to the state at the end of June, right? And so that's even a shorter time frame. Here, we're talking about electing a new council and mayor in November. They come on January 1st, and there's a little bit more room, but even so, we really need to get to work on this process starting right away, even if we have changes or tweaks with a new set of folks. And I think I just answered, I just gave probably the answer. It was supposed to be a question, but it ended up being just more of a why we can't wait. And I would just add that if you agree with this idea of moving to performance budgeting and directing us to develop clearly identifiable and measurable goals, objectives, and indicators for this current year, we need to work on that now and then bring that to you in December for you to adopt it and then to hold us accountable for those goals and objectives and indicators for the duration of this current fiscal year. So indeed, there's not only work to be done for the next year, but work to be done on this fiscal year. Yeah, thank you. All right, back to you, Councilor Cassid. So sorry to... Not a problem. That was very good conversation. I'll be better at cutting to the chase because I could wax poetic about the importance of this process at this point. But we've already done that. We've already talked about it in every single budget hearing and across Finance Committee a thousand times. A couple things that I want to make sure that we are looking at as we're developing this process. One, we've had a hard time, and I know that we've talked about software. I know we've talked about processes in terms of how we are looking at how that budget is being spent, checking on it throughout the fiscal year so that we are able to know if the money that we allocated is being spent the way we want it to be. If it's not, why? What shifts can we make? So I do want to think about what that reporting process looks like. And potentially that may be where the utilization of our committees actually really starts to come into play because it will be very hard for, for example, the Finance Committee to be able to look at every single performance indicator. We can take a look at budgeting, but performance indicator and whether or not our departments are reaching those. But just kind of as I'm thinking about the different ways that that could be used, I see room for the other committees to come into play here. And then the other thing that I know that we've talked about, and I understand that it's steps in the way that we're doing things, but capital budgeting. Because similar to our operational budget, as I always say, I have no idea what was left on the cutting room floor. I don't know what priorities came up, what projects came up, that then was decided somewhere by somebody that this is not a priority. And I might have a different opinion of that. And so I'm really looking forward to that conversation. I think it's going to be a very hard conversation. I think we'd be fooling ourselves if we're like, "Oh, yeah, it's going to be a piece of cake." Because as Andy mentioned, right now everything is a priority. But I know that we're talking about a capital budgeting process, and I'm hopeful that it's going to follow a bit of a similar trajectory where there is this conversation around the different priorities. I know that does start to get a little bit complex, but also with this area as well, that we do have different funding sources that can be utilized for different things and leveraged, and we need to be smart about that. We're not always, I think sometimes, like pull things from the general fund. So that would be another area that I want to make sure that as we are building this process, we will be aware of. I will yield the floor because again, I could talk about this forever, and I know that we will have plenty more conversation about this. But looking forward to working with you all and continuing these conversations and co-sponsoring that resolution. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Falner. I'm so excited about this. You have no idea. I was hassling Chairworth from day one about our budget process. Like the first time I saw our budget, what we were calling a budget, I was shocked. And so I'm super thrilled about this. I will also co-sponsor legislation to support this. In a great world, the entire Finance Committee would push this forward as a committee priority. And so I think if this committee could say like this is a priority and we've been trying to work on this. I know it's complicated. It's never as easy as it seems. But the reality is, I think we can do this lift. And I always believe as a leader and also as a consultant, failure is a matter of time. If you do not stop trying, you will never fail. At some point, you will hit the mark and it will be successful. You just have to not give up. So even though there's been times where we've tried this kind of thing before and we didn't quite get it right, we have to keep trying until we get to the sweet spot. And I feel like this is a Goldilocks moment in the sense that we have some professional city manager folks who really do know how to guide the city in a way that will get us to this point. And I do want to make sure that we support the finance staff because I think this is going to be a big lift because it's going to be a sizable shift from how we've been doing it before. But I also think that we have the bandwidth and we are smart enough, hopefully sometimes, to make this happen. And so I am super excited about this. I really support this and I'm willing to help however I can. Lee Garcia, thank you for your comments. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Mr. Gold, for the presentation. Change, I've always said this, change is not an optional event. And I think that we have to adapt. A lot of times we get entrenched in, "Well, this is the way we've always done it," or to Anthony Hopkins' point, "We've tried key performance measures and or performance measures and it just didn't work." And so, but trying to look at those goals and objectives from a different perspective will lead us into what I would hope is a new generation of how we do this. One of the things that I really like during your presentation was looking at best practices. How are other municipalities or subsidiaries of any state governments doing their budgeting process? What is successful? What isn't successful? During your presentation, there are areas where I think this is going to, it will be a heavy lift for a lot because change many times comes with opposition of, "Oh man, again, this has always worked." But from the perspective of a governing body member, I think that there are some areas where we do need to look at, and I do appreciate bringing in the entire governing body. There is going to be some give and take on our perspectives because, "Oh, these are my priorities," but there's eight governing body members and then there is a mayor that has an agenda and what they want to achieve. And so I am a firm believer in giving your top management and directors the autonomy to do the best job possible. Now, I do like the performance measures built in because it really, it's kind of like in private business, why are we going to invest in a department without a return on investment, so to speak? And not only that, but what are the step processes on how you're doing it and how you're going to get there if there is a change? I think those are very, very important for all of us to understand. I do believe that it does have to come from leadership, the city manager's office and advisors. And obviously, that gets somewhat cloudy when we have specific agendas from a governing body perspective. But the basics, you mentioned something about how from a federal level there are things that are changing. Well, then we just need to figure it out at our level because you take care of the basics first and everything else follows after that. And so I'm a firm believer in that, and as long as everybody is working together, then I think we have a direction that will be given. And once that is understood by everyone, then we all tow the line in the same way. Thank you very much. Chair: Councilor Lee Garcia, you make a very good point that I neglected to, and that is based on studies of hundreds of cities across the country, dozens that I've consulted with, and those that I've run. Local government ultimately is a team sport, and the cities that get the most traction, the cities that have the greatest goal attainment, the cities that have the greatest customer satisfaction, cities that seem to control their destinies, are the ones where the mayor and the counselors and the senior staff are all working together. As you say, now we have a charter that says this is the role of the mayor, this is the role of the council, this is the role of the city manager and key staff. There's nothing in the charter that prevents or precludes this level of collaboration, which I think will benefit all of us. Then going back to a comment made by my good colleague here, Mr. Hopkins, I don't envision dozens of goals, objectives, or key performance indicators for every department. No, they would be a few. They will be the most important. They will be the key ones. And similarly, when we ask the governing body for your priorities for the coming year, I'm thinking that's three to four, because the assumption is that we're keeping the level of service about the same in all the departments across the board, and we're hoping to do a little bit better in these areas. And that will give direction to the senior staff to figure out how to craft their work plans to try to accomplish what the council would like to accomplish. And I think that with good common respect and civility amongst everyone, I think we can make it work. It won't be perfect the first time out. It'll be an iterative process. We'll get better as we get to it, but we have to start. Thank you. Mr. Gold, Andy wanted to say something. Thank you, Madam Chair. Councilor Garcia, I just wanted to give you all two little pithy expressions maybe to keep in mind. The performance budget, which Mr. Gold is correct, is something that a lot of cities are moving to, and with good reason. I just want everyone to keep in mind that it is not a sprint, it is a marathon. To have, if a department identifies meaningful performance indicators, some of them may have it right out of the box. I can give you two years of data going back in time showing where we're at. But keep in mind, whatever a performance indicator is, if you think of it as a graph, one of the axes of that graph is always going to be time. And if this is something where, let's say, land use says, "We just came up with a great idea for a new indicator. We think it's going to be awesome." Everyone agrees it's fantastic, but we don't have any data on that indicator yet. It may be a year, it may be two years, it may be three years before they have meaningful data to put behind that. So I'm just going to counsel patience with some of that. You're not going to get a whole raft of the best performance indicators you've already or always already seen full of data to do them. When we design those indicators, some of them may be ready to go right out of the box, but some of them may be, "Okay, now we need to start collecting the data," and it may be a year or two before we actually get meaningful data to look at. So, I'm just going to counsel patience on that. And the other, I guess, pithy expression I would have is, you know, kind of reflecting my comments earlier and Mr. Gold's comments, that keep in mind that for this to work, we as staff are the servants of the council and of the mayor. You guys are the servants of the people, and you are the voice of the people, and you tell us what the priorities are. So I know there's a lot of fashion in management for bottom-up management, and certainly that has its place, but this kind of what we're talking about here really has to be top-down. It has to be driven by the policymakers to say, "This is what I want staff to do." For a lot of things, you know, when we're talking about budget adjustments, contracts, and stuff, it makes sense for staff to come to you and say, "Okay, this is what we want to do. Great, let's do it." But for something on this level, where we're talking about, you know, making sure the city's going in the right direction, making sure that we're going in the direction that the people whose voice you are want us to go, that has to be a top-down process. And so I want to make sure that that's understood. Thank you. The last thing I'll just make a point of is, as we're going through each councilor and what their priorities are, we all represent a different district. Overall, we represent the city, but if each of us focuses on what the priorities of our district are, and then you take all of that and you start doing a little matrix, you're going to find that a lot of those priorities are going to be similar. And so that's where you narrow down the overall priorities of this budget. And so, I think that again, this process, like you said, is going to be for the long term, hopefully. And once again, it will probably take away some of the, well, overall political ideologies if we're looking at just fixing things, because we all hear from our constituents day in and day out of what the struggles are in each district, and I'll bet you it's going to be pretty similar throughout. It does change because of the demographics of the city and the map and overall, but if we come down to top five best practices overall, you're narrowing it down, and we've got to have faith that that works. So, no more questions, Madam Chair. Thank you, Councilor Faulkner. Just quickly, I will say, and I keep saying this, but I think we're going to be in a space and time in the political arena where leadership is going to have to be brave, and we're going to have to make some tough decisions. And if that means we don't get reelected, but it was the right decision to make, we have to make those decisions. We're going to face some things that I don't think we've faced in quite a long time, and we're going to be asked to make decisions that are going to be very difficult, and they're going to put people's political careers at risk. But I know that from this committee, you're going to have three councilors who absolutely support this approach, who will still be on the council. And so I think with confidence, I can speak for Councilor Cassid and Councilor Garcia that we will support this, and we will still be on the council. And so hopefully, one of my goals is if there are new councilors and they are trying to find their way, that we can bring them on board about being leaders and not politicians. Thank you. Okay. I appreciate the conversation here. I'm glad we've taken the time for it. I do appreciate Mr. Hopkins' comment about everything can't be a priority. That is why I said that this is, I think, going to bring us to more honest conversations about what we can and can't do with the resources we have, and really force us to make some allocations, hopefully, in a manner that everybody feels they have some agency in, which I think has been one of the primary complaints about the system that we have, even though the mayor under the charter does bring the budget. They do kind of set the course for the city, and I believe in that strongly because I think what we had prior to having a full-time mayor is we had a council and a government that swung around wherever there were five votes. So I still very much support what we have done with the mayor's role to be that sort of captain and to set the course. But doing that with collaboration is something that I think would be an improvement. And what's going to make it in my mind possible this time is the professionals we have in Mr. Gold and Mr. Scott to help us as electeds set priorities. We will, as has been mentioned, we will do that with the newly electeds. And the professionalism, I think, will also, as you've already spoken to, help the department heads set the key performance indicators and really suss that out in a way that will serve the city and help us allocate resources appropriately. So, I do have just one last quick question. This committee has been very excited about the software that's coming on board. And I assume that that will help in both, as Councilor Casset mentioned, some of the reporting and in helping us understand how the resources are being used and kind of budgets to actuals as time goes on in a particular fiscal year. Will that add value? Refer to Director. Thank you, Madam Chair, for the question. Thank you, Mr. Gold. So we are in the process of implementing the new Questica budget software, which will interface with our Munis ERP system. And it is my understanding that as part of that software, we will have more robust reporting, including the ability to run periodic budget to actuals reports, which is a standard practice in most organizations in terms of monitoring the budget. And that's something that I'm really looking forward to. I'll look to Mr. Hopkins. Is there anything else you want to add? Thank you, Director Oster. Madam Chair, councilors, that is pretty much the goal. One of the surprises, though, that we had as we went into this is the length of time that it's going to take for meaningful adoption. We are going to be working on this particularly late summer, early fall, when things calm down for us a little. We're going to start training. We're going to start building the system. But this isn't quite on the level of the Munis upgrade where we're completely changing our financial system, but it's just a step shy of that or two. So, I was actually surprised when Albuquerque, we have reached out to some other entities that have adopted Questica, and one of the things that they saw as a failure point was that, for example, Albuquerque did not really initially devote enough time to the implementation. They thought it was going to be done in eight months to a year. They're two months, they're pretty much two years in and still in the implementation phase. So, I would just, you know, this is going to be, this is going to be great. It's going to add a lot of functionality to us, and it's going to make us a lot more responsive and a lot more able to provide much more sophisticated reporting to the council and the finance committee. But it is something that again, I will have to counsel patience because everyone that has implemented it has told us is that you have to devote sufficient time. You're not building a shanty; you're building an apartment building, and you have to really make sure at every step of the way that you are doing it correctly, or else, you know, you can't build the roof before the walls. Yep. Yep. Got it. So, back to that axis, and one of the axes being time. So, Correct. Appreciate the forewarning, and honestly, sorry to hear that. Okay. Do we have any other questions on this from the committee? Mr. Gold, anything else to add before we move on? No, ma'am. Thank you very much for all the work that you've done to put into this and help guide us. As you've heard, this is something this committee, and I think other counselors outside of this committee, have been very interested in for a long time. So, very happy to be taking steps to move this forward. So, I really appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, with that, we have a consent agenda. We have two items. I am just wondering whether the committee would be willing to go to the public hearing and then come back to the two items that have been pulled from consent, or if you want to do the items that are on consent and then do the public hearing. Up to you. Just public hearing. Just kind of throwing that out there. Second. All right. We have a motion and a second to, I assume, amend our agenda to make the next order of business the public hearing. Correct. Okay. Can we get a roll call, please? Certainly, Madam Chair. Let me make sure I got the motion correct. That was Councilor Faulkner who made the motion. Councilor Lee Lee Garcia with a second. Yes. I'm sorry. Great. Councilor Cassid. Yes. Councilor Lindell, Yes. Councilor Faulkner, Yes. Councilor Lee Garcia, Yes. Chair Romero, yes. Motion passes. Okay, so we are going to go to item 8A. This is a request for issuance of a cease and desist order to close Good Luck Body Massage, 360 East Palace Avenue. I'm going to pronounce this wrong, I'm sure. Ha. Hongig. Ding is the operator owner. And the code enforcement case number is 2025-4176. Violation of the Santa Fe, well, violation of SFCC 18-1.7, notice of violation, penalty notice of violation issued for operating without business license and in a manner contrary to public welfare. We do have the City Attorney's Office here. Will we have the Assistant Land Use Director, or did I just mess things up by moving this forward? Is she available? You and you need Worth. I think they should be along any moment now. Okay. So, maybe I surprised them by moving this around. Sorry about that. There they come. Here they come rushing in. Okay. We have the Land Use Department and the City Attorney's Office here. I just want to start by saying this is something that we have never done before. But, at least we have never, the Finance Committee has never been presented with something like this, and the Finance Committee has never gone through a process to issue a cease and desist order. But as counselors, we certainly are familiar with the land use process and the quasi-judicial process that we undertake for various land use decisions. And so this is very much like that. It's parallel to it. It's, we're going to follow a lot of what we do at the governing body in taking on this item. So we are going to start, so this is a quasi-judicial proceeding for us, and we're going to do it like we do quasi-judicial proceedings at the governing body. And, yeah, and Councilor Lee Garcia, you have a question before we get started. Thank you, Madam Chair. As I was going through this, I was just wondering at what point, why isn't this at the governing body level and at our Finance Committee? Yeah, that's a great question. And, I think the, probably the City Attorney's Office can answer that. This under our, under our ordinances, somebody decided that the Finance Committee was the right place to park this power. So maybe Is there more, is there more you can point to in terms of, I think there was in the packet, there it does cite the ordinances, but maybe Frank, you can go through that a little bit. Thank you, Chair Romero Worth. This is a hearing that is distinguished from a hearing with respect to a business license denial. If a business license is denied, there has to be a hearing in front of the governing body. But in this case here, where we're specifically seeking a cease and desist order, with respect to a business that either has a license or should have applied for a license, it is heard under Section 18-1.8 of the Santa Fe City Code. And it reads that show cause hearings why a business should not be closed and why a cease and desist order should not be issued against a business are heard before the Finance Committee. There is an appeal process by which the business owner can appeal the decision of the Finance Committee to the governing body, but that's the way it's set forth in the City Code. I myself wondered why there is that distinction. Maybe it's to preserve the appellate process within the city so that there is a judicial administrative determination and an opportunity. Yeah. And if I, if I can, it's, just in case anybody wants to read along, it's 18-1.7, correct? 18, Which is notice, notice of violation penalty. Yes. And it's Section B, the, where it says the person shall appear before the Finance Committee to show cause why the business should not be closed. The notice shall set date, time, place of hearing by the Finance Committee. And I believe there's a certain number of days, let's see, that this has to be presented in front of the Finance Committee from when the notice of violation was issued. Am I correct in that? That is correct. Yes. And how many days was that? I think it's 15, but And Chair Romero Worth, Vidon Garcia, who's the code enforcement officer who issued this notice, is present, but Oh, here, here we go. The hearing. Okay, so an 18-1.8 enforcement hearing, cease and desist order. Paragraph B, the hearing before the Finance Committee shall not be less than 30 days after the notice provided in subsection 18-1.7 of this section is mailed. So that's why it is in front of us at this point. And the business has been notified. So we, you know, we get this because the law says we get it, and it's timely now. So, that's why it's in front of you. I guess it's final unless it's appealed, correct? Yes. And, there, I'm, I'm not entirely sure what the appeal, I think the appeal process is found under 18-1.8. A person aggrieved by the decision of the Finance Committee may submit to the governing body a written petition for appeal 30 days. So, it's different from a land use because that is 15 days after, say, after the findings of fact and conclusions of law. Now, ultimately, we will have some findings of fact and conclusions of law that we'll ask you to approve on next Finance Committee. Great. Just make sure you're really speaking into that mic. Sorry. Okay. Thank you. In case there's interest in this later, I want to make sure they can hear you. Councilor Lee Garcia, other questions? Thank you. Okay. Other questions from the committee? Okay. So, what we're going to do, as we often do, is disclosure of any pre-hearing communications regarding the merits of this request and recusal. If a member cannot be fair and impartial, I'll just pause here if anybody has anything to report or feels that they can't be fair and impartial. And I'm not seeing any hands online and none in the chamber. So, we will move on. And we, I guess from here, go the order of the hearing. We're going to have a staff presentation. If the business owner arrives, they will be allowed to do a presentation. They have been notified of this hearing. They at this moment are not in the chambers. There is opportunity for public comment, questions from Finance Committee, closing statements from the parties, and then a motion and deliberation and then voting. I would note that I have been told by the City Attorney's Office that we can do our deliberation in executive session if the committee feels that that's necessary. And if not, we can stay in the public session. Voting, of course, as always, happens in the public session. So, I just want you all, since we haven't done this before, to be aware of, of kind of the process and what's available to us. So, with that, if there are no questions about kind of the run of show here, I'm going to go to code enforcement and land use staff. And I believe you have a staff report for us about why you are asking for a cease and desist order of this business. So, I'll, I'll turn it over to you, Miss Moore, for your presentation. And I think we have, you know, probably 10 minutes would be appropriate if that suits. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Romero Worth and members of the Finance Committee for having us here tonight. I don't have a formal presentation, but I'll walk you through the series of events that, you know, brought us here tonight with this request for the cease and desist order for Good Luck Body Massage that's located at 360 East Palace Avenue. This initiated out of a constituent complaint that arrived to me about some suspicious activity and things that were happening at the business at the property. So, I directed enforcement staff to conduct an inspection of the property, and Vidal Garcia and Jason Senna participated in that initial inspection, and Vidal is here to testify to, you know, what he observed and who he interacted with at the property. Based on that initial inspection, we identified several code violations. There were illegal unpermitted signage and window wrappings, and then, so we, you know, that was the initial violation that was issued. And then their business, they had a business license at the initial time of the inspection. But there were no licensed massage therapists on site at the time of the initial inspection. And so we, we followed up and said, you know, their business license was actually up for renewal on July 7th, I believe. And so we, we told them, you need to come in and get a new business license. And they were not able to do that and meet the requirements of our, you know, business license requirements. And so, you know, since then, I think then it was on July 16th, we issued them the second violation, which was for, you know, operating without a business license and in a manner contrary to the public welfare. And based on, you know, other information that we had gathered, and so that was, you know, and then we, we noticed them of this hearing on this date. I did, Vidal and I both just spoke with Mr. Robert Alonia, who is, I believe, who presented himself as the spouse of the owner operator of this business, a Miss Hungi Ding, who is listed in the packet. And so they, you know, are not planning on coming, they said, to the hearing this evening, and have, you know, they've said that they have closed the business. That is what they said, you know, to me this evening. Verified that we still, you know, would like to proceed with the request to ensure that, you know, they don't, you know, continue operations. Okay. From there, we go to an opening statement and sworn witness testimony. This would have been the opportunity for the business owner or their agent to present information and sworn testimony, witness testimony in front of this committee about why they think they should not be ordered to cease and desist. We've just heard that they will not be attending tonight. From there, we would have gone to the business owner. If desired, they could have asked questions of staff. And again, since the business owner is not here, we will not be doing that. So from there, we move to sworn public comment on this. I don't see anybody in the chamber, and I don't think there's anybody online from the public on this. **Madame Chair:** The only people in the Zoom room are Counselors Cassid and Lindell. Okay. So, just for information about the process, if there was public comment, it would have to have been sworn testimony, and as we do in other hearings, it would have been two minutes per person. So from there, since we have no public members here tonight, either on Zoom or in the chamber, we will then go to the Finance Committee, and the Finance Committee can ask questions of staff. If we had the business owner here, or witnesses, or the public, the Finance Committee would have been able to ask questions of those parties as well. And we will then just direct our questions to staff because that is the only constituency in the chamber that is here on this matter. Counselor Casset, you have your hand up, so I will turn it over to you. **Counselor Casset:** Well, thank you so much, Madam Chair. Thank you for walking us through this brand new process, and thank you, Maggie, for being here and for bringing this to our attention. I am curious about, as you mentioned, the operators have said they have already shut down. We want to move forward with this. If the Finance Committee does find that it is appropriate to remove their business license to ensure that they do not continue to operate or start operating again, is there any extra protection or processes if they try to open up a new business in the same location, a new business in a different location? Given the nature of the concerns here, I am curious what protections there are or what extra processes there may be if we start to see just a movement of this business and its name to just another location or to another operating name. Thank you. Chair Melorth and Counselor Casset. So, I think from what I understand from my conversation with Mr. Robert Olenia tonight was that, because I did ask him this question, if they owned any other businesses within the city, and he said they did not, and that they weren't interested. So that is the information I have. I don't, you know, if they were going to move to another location or request a business license to open up another type of business, we would certainly accept their application and verify that they had all of the relevant information that we required for that license. And if they had that, then we would issue it to them. It's a hypothetical, but so I would just say it doesn't necessarily prevent them from, I think the cease and desist order, the language, and Frank, maybe help me out with the code actual section, but it can be very specific language about not operating this type of business at this location. You know, that sort of a thing. So until all of the requirements have been met, you know, if they can produce one of the big issues here, Counselor Casset, is that when we conducted the inspection, there was an individual there, but they were not a licensed massage therapist, and they presented a license that belonged to the business owner, Miss Hungji Ding, but who was not present at the time of the inspection when the business is operating. So there is this incongruity there where you have a massage business without licensed massage therapists. And so that is what, you know, part of the issue that we're trying to prevent, and looking after the public welfare, is having licensed practitioners conducting the business of massage therapy within the city. And, you know, this was one site where that was not being held to that standard. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate that additional information. This is, we're in slightly new territory here, I think for all of us. So, out of curiosity, are there regulations, and these are state regulations, right? This has to do with state licensing and ensuring that they are complying with the state regulations for being a licensed massage therapist. Yes. Chair Marworth and Counselor Casset. Yes. The state of New Mexico licenses all individuals who report themselves or advertise themselves to be massage therapists or to practice massage. They do not regulate businesses or any massage-related businesses, but only the individuals. Okay. Okay. I don't think I have any other questions. Thank you. Other questions from the committee? So I want to go back to this. Okay. So it's state law that says in order to practice massage, you have to be licensed as a massage therapist. They don't enforce that. Is that what you just said? Yes, Chair Marworth, they do not enforce that, and I have contacted the state licensing, that's the Massage Therapy Board that oversees all the licensing requirements and continuing education, much like all the other licensed professions within the state. And yeah, they have said, you know, we only deal with individuals. They do deal with complaints that are put forward against individual massage therapists, but they do not in any way inspect or regulate massage therapy businesses, massage parlors, spas, or anything like that. Okay. And so then that falls to us. Yes, that is correct. So, it's because we issue a business license for, because we issue business licenses, we are looking at this business to see if the business they say they're in, they actually are in. Is that what, what the, is that our job is to make sure that if you hold yourself out as a massage business, you actually are capable of doing massage? Yes. Chair Romero. Yes. And similarly, if we receive an application for a daycare center, we want to make sure that that daycare center is licensed by the state and MECD and has their credentials. Or if we are licensing a cannabis business, we do coordinate with the state and make sure that they have their licensing requirements. And so, and we've, we've taken a little bit more of an, under my leadership and with Director Lamboy, we've taken an approach with massage therapy, with massage parlors, that we want to verify that they are employing and utilizing a licensed massage therapist to ensure the public safety and welfare. Okay. And I guess to the point that Counselor Casset raised about, you know, really making sure that we're actually shutting down, if we vote to do that, this operation. Is it possible to list the name of the owner in the cease and desist? And does that change in terms of, you know, if the owner came back to the city and said, you know, I'm interested in a massage parlor, and a business license to run a massage parlor. I don't know. Does that mean that they cannot do that because we've said this owner is not doing that? Or would they be allowed to pursue that and then we'd have to see if they actually had licensed people and that they were actually doing massage work with licensed providers? I think that's a great question, and you know, I would say, and Frank, you can help me out, that if they presented all the information that we require, which is name and contact information, we require tax ID number for all, this is like stuff we do for all businesses. And then additional information for massage therapy is the two licenses that we can verify are people that are actually working there. Then they could get a license under the current code standards, even with the cease and desist order, because the cease and desist, I think, is tied to them not being in compliance. Okay. So if they come into compliance and present the information that is required, then they could be issued a business license theoretically. Okay. So it's not just a matter of, I mean, obviously a business name is pretty easy to change, but the owner, you know, could be the same owner. And so the, I guess the question is, how do you make sure that the owner is who we, who we are possibly flagging is not operating in the public welfare? Let me have Frank answer this question, and then I'll go to you, Counselor Falner. Is that okay? Frank, if you want to help us. **Frank:** Thank you. Chair Romero Worth, we can put in the findings of fact, reasons of law, the name, and we can probably put the license number of this particular therapist so that it's clear it applies not only to the owner, it applies to this business and what the enforcement hearing, the code provision that controls enforcement hearings, I'm looking at 18-1.8A. It reads, "Such cease and desist orders shall prevent the owner or operator of the business from conducting any business in the building, structure, or on the land until the terms of this section have been complied with." So, it is specific to building, structure, or on the land. She could feasibly move someplace else because she does have a massage therapist license, start another massage therapy business, but they would have to comply with the code. They would have to get a business license requirements under the Santa Fe City Code. So, this doesn't essentially put her out of business. There could be, and since I'm not involved with this and not real familiar with the license regulations for massage therapists, **Chair:** Make sure you're talking into the mic there. What you're saying is important. **Frank:** Okay. The New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Division could take it upon itself to go after her license and revoke her license. And it is possible that the fact that she's operating in non-compliance with the city code and that there is some indication that her massage business is connected to prostitution or soliciting for prostitution, something that the state regulation could take into account. Yeah. Might be interested in Counselor Falner. **Counselor Falner:** I also think there's another layer that could complicate things a little more. I think if her business is going in as a sole proprietorship, you can tie it to her. But if it's an LLC or a corporation, that's an individual under the law. So then I think that could also complicate things about tracking this person. Okay. I don't think that's what we have here in front of us, though. Yeah. Yeah. I had another question. What was it? Counselor Lee Garcia, are you raising your hand? **Counselor Lee Garcia:** Yes, ma'am. Great. Thank you. I guess I want to focus on this. In the packet, it does, so I just want to confirm the basis of the cease and desist order is on the basis of them having massage therapists who are not licensed. Is that correct? Thank you, Chair Maroworth and Counselor Garcia. The basis is that they don't have a business license currently. It expired on July 7th, and in order to get one, they need to have licensed massage therapists present to say that they're working there, and they don't have that. So, it's kind of a business license requires it. They don't have it. So, they can't operate. Thank you. And so this is not because we're not trying to prove that they are operating an illicit business, is correct. Like providing sex trafficking or other services, prostitution, and so on and so forth. Thank you. Yeah, Chair Marroworth and Councilor Garcia. We are just trying to establish that they don't have a business license and they're operating in a manner that is contrary to the public welfare, which is why I presented the information in the packet that I did. Okay. Well, yeah, and that is evidence of the way that they're operating. Correct. I would say it's contrary to the public welfare. Yes. Okay. All right. That's all I have. Thank you. Oh, I know what my question was. I think in the packet you refer not only to the owner of the business but the owner of the property. The owner of the property is not being implicated by this hearing. Did you also issue a notice of violation to the property owner, or what is the role of the property owner? Yes, thank you for that question, Chair Marroworth. We do issue notices to both the business owner that we have on record and to the property owner as well as part of the notification process. But I understand that the property owner lives next door to the business, and so they, maybe Vid Doll can come up and testify. I haven't communicated with the property owner, but we didn't, other than through the notice that was posted on the property and mailed certified mail to their address. So, let me stop you right there. So, the notice that was given to the property owner was just that there's a business that doesn't have a business license and doesn't meet the requirements for a business license operating on that person's property. Is that the nature of the notice to the property owner? That is correct. They're basically mirror notices, but that is correct. Yeah. It's just alerting them that there's enforcement action on their property, assuming that sometimes the business owner and the property owner are the same. In this instance, there are two separate individuals. So, we issue to the business owner to let them know and then also to the property owner so they are aware of enforcement action taking place on their property. But we're not doing any enforcement action of the property owner. That is correct. Just notifying them of what's happening on the property they own. That's correct. All right. Other questions from the committee? All right. Let me go back to my run of show here. Hold on just a second. Let's see. So, we ask questions. If the business owner was here, they would have an opportunity to ask additional questions if new evidence had arisen during the questioning. So they would get another opportunity to ask questions of staff if that new evidence had been brought forward. We do not have that. And then of course the staff would have been able to provide responses to the business owner submitting evidence and/or testimony in response. We would then go to a closing statement by the business owner and we would close the public hearing. So from here, I am going to close the public hearing, which means that we can ask no further questions of staff or witnesses or the business owner. Is there any objection to that from the committee? Okay. Sorry, I'm taking this a little slow. This is, we're doing this step by step. So from here, we can entertain a motion and we can of course have more discussion or deliberation between ourselves prior to that motion. We can go into an executive session to deliberate if the committee felt that that was necessary. So at this point, I guess I would just give the committee the opportunity either one to go into executive session for further deliberation or to have further deliberation here in public or, so I'll stop there. Are there things you all want to talk about among ourselves either in private in executive session or in public? Okay. I'm not seeing any interest in going into executive session. I'm also not seeing any interest in any kind of deliberation among ourselves. So from there, we can entertain a motion and I believe, do you have a sample motion for us? I think I had one in my email. And I think Councilor, yeah. Why don't you try it and see if it meets what Mr. Frank Rubal approved the cease and desist. Okay. Yeah, thank you. That's what I was looking for. So, I guess the sample motion would be to approve the request to issue a cease and desist order preventing the owner or operator of Good Luck Body Massage at 360 East Palace A from conducting any business in the building, structure, or on the land until the terms of Chapter 18 of the Santa Fe Code have been complied with. So moved. We have a second. Second. Second. All right. We have a motion being made by Councilor Falner, a second by Councilor Casset, and if we could, is there any discussion on the motion? I'm not seeing any. So then if we could get a roll call, please. Director Oster. Certainly. Councilor Cassid. Yes. Councilor Lindell. Yes. Councilor Falner. Yes. Councilor Lee Garcia. Yes. Chair Marroworth. Yes. Motion passes. Okay. Thank you, members of the staff, for helping walk us through this new process and thing we've never done before. Thank you, committee members, for your patience as we did that. We will now go to, oh, well, and I just let you know that apparently we will be getting findings of fact and conclusions of law at our next meeting. We'll vote on that and just like we do in other land use situations. Correct. All right. I'm hearing nods of heads here. I'm hearing nods of heads. I'm seeing heads nodding. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Yeah. Thank you, committee. Thank you. All right. With that, we are going to move on to the items that were taken off of consent. And let's see. I believe the first one is item, Director Oster, help me. I lost my item W. Chair. Correct. Yes, item W. All right. So, here we go. Item W, consideration of Resolution Number 2025, sponsored by Councilor Polar Falner, Councilor Lee Garcia, Councilor Amanda Chavez, a resolution proposing a ballot question to be submitted to the City of Santa Fe voters during the November 4th, 2025 regular local election regarding amending the city's charter to require governing body consent before a mayor can remove a city manager, city attorney, or city clerk, except during the first 100 days of a mayor's term. We have our legislative policy and innovation manager, Marcy. How do I, I should know this. I'm so sorry. You say it then I'll say it back. It is so, okay. There are way too many vowels. So tell me, tell me, help me. Ianarino. Ianarino. I don't think I've ever said that out loud. It's very phonetic. Rio. Okay. Yeah. I, you're gonna, I have to hear it a couple times sometimes to help. All right. Councilor Casset and I, I think both pulled this item. Councilor Casset, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Well, except I don't know. I, I know we've talked about this a lot. I don't know. I think we've all done rounds of this. So, I don't know if the sponsors wanted to talk. And sorry about that, Councilor Casset. I think we've said we all know, at least from where I sit. Okay. Councilor Lee Garcia, did you want to say anything? No. I'll yield for now. All right. Over to you, Councilor Cassid. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. As you mentioned, we've had very robust conversations about this. I know you all had one in Public Works Utilities and we definitely had one in Quality of Life. So I don't have too much to say. I pulled this one simply because I'm not in agreement with this proposal. As I had discussed in Quality of Life, I do, I want, I want the mayor to be successful regardless of how I feel about the mayor. And so I do support the mayor being able to choose their team. That said, you know, and and also if they are finding that they're not working well with somebody, I want them to be working well with the team that they have and that they're able to assist in fulfilling the agenda that the voters elected them to fulfill. So that, I know we'll have a robust conversation about it again or at a governing body, I am sure. So that was the only reason that I had pulled this. Thank you. Great. Thank you. And I, I pulled it because I also do not support it. But I have not been speaking about the merits as much as the process. I, I think that when we are talking about the charter, the city's constitution, we, while again, I think we've talked about this before, while the councilor certainly can bring these types of pieces of legislation, I do think that when we're talking about balance of power issues, we really should follow the larger process of calling a charter review commission, charging them with looking at this, really vetting a proposal before it's put in front of the voters. We did in the last round of charter changes suggest that they needed more time and more staff support because we really do want them, the charter review commission, to take a hard look at things, look at them holistically, and and really have, you know, a full debate, be informed with research and with comments from the public. So, I, I pulled this so that we could vote on it. And with that, anything else from the committee on this? Madam Chair, I guess we are talking about W, correct? Okay. Yeah, I didn't give any perspective on it, but I do appreciate the reasoning from those that are in opposition to it. I believe that going through the process, as some of this conversation was happening through the charter review process that happened last year, and discussions with others that, you know, listening to the general public that this is kind of something that from their perspective wasn't really vetted enough to bring forward, that a larger consensus of the general public is in favor of this, just from my observation and my communication with people. And so, you know, given the fact that we can initiate another charter review commission, and I think that's something that many on the governing body do have an appetite for that coming forward, and I think that would be something that I would support. But in this case, if this were to pass and go to the consensus of the general public for a vote on the ballot come November, I think it warrants at least a nod by the voters. And so that's why we brought this forward. And I think that having this conversation is very fruitful and very well received from our perspective. But I, you know, that's where, you know, it's why it's in front of us. And it is somewhat controversial amongst the governing body members. It's been postponed. It's been rescheduled. It's been advanced without recommendation. And so having a broader conversation at governing body, I think is going to be very important. So, with that, I don't know if there's any other comments. Thank you. Councilor Falner, did you want to weigh in? I would just weigh in and say that, again, we are still having a conversation about how to protect the powers of the mayor when what's being asked for in the community is how do we balance the power of the mayoral seat with the council? And I have contended from the beginning that the council is actually more representative of the public in total than the mayor is. The mayor runs to represent the entire city, but the mayor is not from each of our districts. The mayor is going to be from one district. And so if you take the collective understanding of what constituents want, the city councilors, two of which represent each district, are going to have a stronger pulse check on what the community wants. And I worked to bring this forward with Councilors Chavez and Lee Garcia because this is all I hear about: that the mayor has too much power and the council doesn't have enough power. And I don't look at it as taking power away from the mayor. I look at it as empowering the council to balance the scales of power when it comes to making decisions for the city of Santa Fe. Okay. I would just note that mayors are elected by the entire city. They may live in one district, but they're elected on an agenda for the entire city. And I also want to just dispel one other thing which I keep hearing as we've been talking about this as it's moved through the process, is that this idea of who hires, who fires, was not vetted. And I just want to remind everyone that I did sit on the Charter Review Commission that brought the changes for the mayor to the governing body at that time. They were approved by that governing body. They did go in front of the voters. The voters did approve them. And I can tell you that we had a lot of conversations about who the mayor should be able to hire and fire and what really constituted their team. And we, at one point, we even thought about whether the department directors should be similarly positioned. So there was robust conversation at that time about this. I completely agree that this is a conversation that needs to happen. We've had one mayor under the current system that we have. I think it probably needs some more time, but I also think there are some things that we've experienced that can be tweaked. And I think a perfect example of that is our budgeting process, which we spent some time on earlier this evening, that I think will go a long way in how we all feel about working together as a team and being collaborative. So those are my only other thoughts, and obviously, I have room if others have other things to comment about. Councilor Faulkner: So briefly, I would just note that when it comes to the voting population, I would offer that the south side of Santa Fe votes a lot less than the northern part of Santa Fe. So the charter review process, and again, I say this, anything that I challenge that other councils have done or other groups have done, I always say it was a great idea when it happened. It may not be the best idea now, given what we're experiencing and the tone of at least the people in my district and some of the people in District 4 and 1 and 2 that I've talked to, that it seemed like a good idea because we were going to, we tried it. It's been eight years. Correct. Eight years, one mayor. Two terms. But I will say that saying that the population in total supported this may not be accurate because the population in total doesn't necessarily vote. And we can get into a debate about, well, you should be voting, which I think I would say to anyone in my district, if you don't like something, vote. But I would also say that I think that the understanding of what a powerful mayor or a strong mayor looks like has shifted, and that I think for certain in our district, our constituents would like to see the council have more, to be more empowered to balance the power. Okay. And I would say I don't think I said population, I said the voters agreed back at that time. So that would be those who voted. But your point's well taken that not every district, not every part of town votes at the same level. Okay. I don't have anything else. Is there anybody else have things to say? And if not, is there a motion? Move to approve. Second. We have a motion and a second to approve this item. Can we get a roll call, please? Absolutely, Madam Chair. And you got the motion and who made the motion and who made the second? Sorry, I didn't. I have the motion to approve from Councilor Lee Garcia and the second from Councilor Polar Faulkner. Great. Councilor Cassett? No. Councilor Lindell? No. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Lee Garcia? Yes. Chair Maroworth? No. Motion fails. Okay. We will talk about this more at Governing Body. Let us go on to item, I believe it's X, correct? Hold on. X. Yes, Madam Chair, that's correct. All right, let me get there. T, U, V. It's way down here at the bottom. X, a consideration of Resolution Number 2025. Again, sponsored by Councilors Polar Faulkner, Councilor Amanda Chavez, Councilor Lee Garcia, a resolution proposing a ballot question to be submitted to the city of Santa Fe voters during the November 4th, 2025 regular local election regarding amending Articles 6, Section 6.02, and 7, Section 8. So it's Article 7, Section 8.04 of the City Municipal Charter to allow five councilors to suspend or remove the City Manager, City Attorney, and City Clerk at a regularly scheduled meeting. And we again have our Legislative and Policy Innovation Manager with us. And Councilor Cassett and I pulled this item as well. Councilor Cassett, I'll turn this over to you. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Again, we had a pretty robust conversation about this at Quality of Life. I actually am in favor of this almost. I have an amendment coming forward. You know, as I really think about my reasoning about this, I apologize. I have a child with growing pains right by me. So if you hear some "ouch," that's what that is. But, you know, again, we want a functioning city, and I do think that the council being able to take a look at some of these top positions and saying this is not serving the community well because these positions aren't functioning, these individuals are not serving the community. That still does allow the mayor to appoint somebody that they feel they can work with, or some buddies if it's multiple positions. That being said, I do think that it should be a pretty high bar. You know, I think that you should have a large majority of the city council that is really looking at this and saying that this is not functional. And in the conversation with Quality of Life, you know, Councilor Faulkner had mentioned, and this makes sense to me, they were going for parity with appointment of the City Manager versus potential removal of the City Manager, one of these positions, and that is a simple majority. But I do think that actually should be a pretty high bar, too. You know, when we're looking at appointment, we want to make sure that people are coming in that are highly qualified. And that is something that we do have the ability to. That's where the check is there. So, I am in favor of this, but with the amendment that I would like to move is that they would move the number of councilors that would have to approve from five to six. And again, I just think that this should be challenging to do. I think that it should be something that there is a lot of consensus that we're seeing because it is a very big deal. It's a big decision. These are important positions. Again, you want a mayor that is going to be successful. And I think that the motivation behind a potential removal of these should be based on really looking at qualifications of the position or of the individual who's serving the position. Are they doing a really good job and not as much as some of the kind of political hits we can sometimes see. And so that is my, sorry, one second, Oliver. That is my reasoning and philosophy there and why I pulled this item tonight. I will yield the floor. Thank you, and let me know when I can rush into all my amendments. Thank you. And do you, are those amendments ready tonight? Yes, they are in the packet. In the packet, it does say something about a simple majority and kind of like the title of the amendment, but it does what it simply does is it says, and where it says five city councilors, it moves it to six city councilors. Okay. All right. I see it here. Okay. I, you know, I pulled this item to vote on it. I, again, I don't support this, although I do think Councilor Cassett is on the right track in terms of making it difficult to remove these folks. I think we will have trouble getting professional people to work for the city if, at the slightest disagreement, members of the council could get rid of them, and if they were still, you know, serving the city in other ways. I just don't want us to take that lightly. But again, same objection on this one. I do think it would be better if we called the City Charter Review Commission and really took the time to look at these ideas in context and really understand and have the debate and do the research and take the time. So that's my objection here. We do have again, have two sponsors. I don't know if you want to say anything at this point, Councilor Lee Garcia. Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, great discussion. I think that the concern about the number of votes to initiate this action, from my perspective, somewhat is dependent upon whether or not the mayor at the time would have a vote for this because when Councilor Cassett alludes to council members, at this point in time, the governing body consists of the mayor. In this case, if the vote were to be called, a resolution would be brought forward and a vote would be called on the action. I believe that having a six vote, or what you would may consider a super majority, makes it even more difficult because the mayor already has a vote. Whoever the mayor is has a vote in the affirmative or for or against. Therefore, would only need four other votes to, five other votes, well, four, just trying to do the math here, because once again, this is, this would be a consensus of the actual governing body. And in the case that the mayor does have a vote, then that would be one against. You'd still have to get the remainder of the votes in order to initiate the action. That's what changes this. And so I think that's, I know the amendment hasn't been moved, but that I think that's where this kind of complicates it. The reasoning for bringing it forward is there again, to bring the will of the governing body itself to take action on an appointed member in the case that there's something going on that needs action and the mayor won't, because they're their appointee, is not taking action upon. And so, I think that it does have to, there, the discussion is great. But, I believe that having a simple majority of five, from my perspective, is, I think it's good. It only takes five persons on the governing body to approve. And so kind of goes back to the previous resolution that we just discussed in regards to consenting for removal. You know, if that, if that one doesn't pass this governing body or the voters, then a mayor at any time removes one of the appointees without any consent. And so what we are trying to achieve here is just some checks and balances over that process. Councilor Faulkner, I will save some of my comments around the amendment until we discuss the amendment. But I would say, in general, there is parity. It takes five to appoint. I think five to fire or terminate, there's parity in there. It makes sense to suspend or remove. I would also say that I think it's difficult to get five of us to agree on a whole lot of things unless it's a slam dunk, which we don't have a ton of slam dunks. And again, it goes to, are we looking at protecting a powerful mayor? Are we looking at a strong mayor? Are we looking to provide checks and balances? And one of the things that I keep saying over and over and over again, Councilor Cassett and I, sidebar, have, we want to do a resolution that calls for a charter review that is focused on the balance of checks and power, a balance of power. And so the way I look at it is, we can pass this now, this measure that gives council a little bit more empowerment while we do the charter review. And it can always be changed. We look at these things like, this is once we do it, we can't change it. We should be changing the law all the time when appropriate. It's not infallible. And so I don't look at this as like, this decision's being made, it will be made forever. It will never change again. I look at it like, let's just put a little guardrails up in this one specific place until we do the charter review. And that just allows the council a little bit of empowerment to set some balance until we can do this larger charter review. Councilor Cassett: Thank you so much, Madam Chair. I just want to clarify because I know that it gets complex for individuals who don't speak about this all the time. Governing body is the council plus mayor. City council is just the eight city councilors. So, for this one, we clarified this a quality of life, but please correct me if I'm wrong. This is a discussion of the number of city councilors that would have to vote. So in this, in the current proposal, it'd be five councilors. So mayor does not get a vote here, or mayor's vote does not matter here. And then in my proposal, it'd be six councilors. Whereas currently, to appoint, it's five members of the governing body. So four plus a mayor can appoint a city manager, clerk, or attorney. Is that correct? I think Marcy, you would be the one to answer all the fun ins and outs. Chair Maroworth: Councilor Cassett, let me, I was not ready. I want to double-check because I was saying last time, I get nervous when I stand up here. So... Speaker: We won't bite. Speaker: I know. Speaker: We might yell, but we don't bite. Speaker: No. Speaker: Just, we just like to be sure. Chair Maroworth: So I will look up. It's in the, this what we're speaking about is in the powers and duties of the mayor. So I'm going in the charter to look that up for us. And it is item B in that list. And it says, this is what it actually says for mayor: "Appoint with the consent of the governing body, the city manager, city attorney, city clerk, and members of advisory commissions." So that's correct, Councilor Cassett. Councilor Cassett: And then this, this resolution is only considering the votes of city councilors. Correct, sponsors? That is the intention and that is how I read it. I'm seeing nods of yes. Okay. So just, I wanted to clarify that because I know that that can get a little, a little confusing and wonky. The other thing I'll say is that, you know, the governing body actually votes together or votes 8-1, 7-2 the vast majority of the time. I know we pulled some statistics the previous election, it was something like, I don't know, 95% of the time the governing body is voting unanimously. So although we do sometimes have some pretty intense discussions, which is good, you know, it is good that we have these conversations. I think a lot of times we find ways to come to compromises, to come to places where a lot of us can agree. There have been some very hot topic controversial issues that have gone on a 5-4 vote either way. But it is, it is one thing that I have, you know, appreciated, is that I do think I've seen with many instances, some very robust conversation and then a place where the vast majority of us, if not all of us, are able to find agreement and vote together. So I actually don't think that it is that far-fetched for there to be a scenario where you are getting six councilors to say, you know what, no, this isn't, this is not what we signed up for. This is not what we would like to see. You know, people may disagree on that. And again, I, this goes back to my thoughts around this should be a really high bar. And, you know, to Councilor Maroworth's point about how this does, you know, we really do need to look at this as a whole. Again, I do find that when I'm thinking about my overall purpose, which is I want a city that functions. You know, I want a city that things are moving in the right direction for our constituents, that they feel like the functioning at City Hall, that we're solving the very complex, intricate problems that we have both inherited and, you know, that are new just based on the changes of the world that sometimes we create and need to uncreate. You know, government is a messy process actually. And so I do think that it should be a high bar, but I want to make sure that that is where we are moving towards. Which is why again, I would actually prefer instead of to lower the bar potentially on removal, to increase the bar on appointment. And so, I think I already said that, so I apologize. I was very distracted by a child. So that is all. I'll yield the floor. Thank you. Chair Maroworth: Thank you. I just want to address one more thing which I heard when I watched the Quality of Life Committee and I heard again tonight about how we can always change laws. And I do agree with that. And in fact, you know, job security for us that there are always laws that need tweaking and changing as the world evolves and our problems change and our issues change and our solutions change. And I completely agree with that. Although I think when you're talking about governance issues, it's really important that you put well-vetted ideas in front of voters and not put things in front of them that you might even recognize now may not be perfect and you may be coming back around to change or you may not have fully thought out the implications because we haven't given the process that we have enshrined a chance. And I'm, you know, I, though there's hurry for some, I don't feel that same sense of urgency that this needs to be done in this election. I, sorry, I won't be here to call a charter review commission. I think it's a great idea to do it, that we do have the ability to do it every 10 years, but we can do it more often. And of course, in the last round, we do have, as I mentioned earlier, new rules about the resources we give that commission to fully do the work that we give them. So with that, any other, any other thoughts, comments? I'll let Councilor Cassett move her amendment. Oh, I guess we need to move, we need an underlying motion. Yeah. Speaker: Motion to approve. Speaker: Second. Chair Maroworth: We have a motion from Councilor Faulkner to approve this item, this resolution, seconded by Councilor Lee Garcia. And Councilor Cassett, if you want to move your amendment. Councilor Cassett: Yes, I'd like to move Amendment A. Chair Maroworth: And again, just briefly, your amendment increases the number of councilors from five to six. Correct. Councilor Cassett: Correct. Speaker: Second. Chair Maroworth: Okay. We have a motion from Councilor Cassett. We have a second from Councilor Lindell. Any other discussion on this, on the motion? Can we get a roll call on the motion, please? Speaker: Yes, Madam Chair. The, uh, coun, hold on a second. Councilor Lee, I'm sorry. Councilor Sig Lindell. Councilor Lindell: Thank you. Which motion are we voting on? Chair Maroworth: Well, we're voting on the amendment to change the, to make it harder. You need one more vote. Councilor Lindell: Thank you. Chair Maroworth: Yeah. All right. Let's do a roll call. Okay. Madam Chair and members of the Finance Committee, on the motion to adopt Amendment A. Councilor Cassett. Councilor Cassett: Yes. Councilor Lindell: Yes. Councilor Faulkner: No. Councilor Lee Garcia: No. Chair Maroworth: Yes. Motion passes. Okay. So we have an amended bill. And is there further discussion on the amended bill? And if not, can we get a roll call on the amended bill? Speaker: Madam Chair, so the original motion made by Councilor Faulkner was to approve the bill prior to the amendment. Do we need a new? Chair Maroworth: No. So on the motion to approve, Councilor Cassett. Councilor Cassett: Yes. Councilor Lindell: Yes. Councilor Faulkner: Yes. Councilor Lee Garcia: Yes. Chair Maroworth: No. Motion passes. Okay, we are done with our consent items. Let me go back to our agenda. Thank you, everybody. A lot of alphabet. Okay, matters from staff. Speaker: Thank you, Madam Chair. I have one item for the committee this evening. The audit entrance conference for the FY25 external audit is this week on Wednesday, July 30th. Chair Maroworth: Okay. Matters from the committee. Speaker: I have one point. Chair Maroworth: Yes. Speaker: I would just like to commend Councilor Lindell for being such an incredible leader and for being so brave. And I just respect you a lot. And I just want you to know we're here for you. Chair Maroworth: Thank you, Councilor Faulkner. Yes. Thank you, Councilor Lindell, for being here tonight. Really appreciate it. Anything else from the committee? Matters from the chair. Our next meeting is Monday, August 11th. And with that, we're adjourned. We'll see everybody Wednesday night. Thanks for the good conversation tonight. We're adjourned.