Quality of Life Committee Wed, Apr 2, 2025 · Quality of Life Committee https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/314 == Executive Summary == The Quality of Life Committee convened to discuss several critical issues, including the city's economic development strategy, a major transition in employee health insurance, and the designation of a Metropolitan Redevelopment Area in Midtown. Consultants from Ernst & Young presented initial findings on Santa Fe's economic landscape, highlighting population growth, an aging demographic, and significant housing cost increases. The committee emphasized the need for more quantitative data and broader stakeholder engagement in future strategic planning. A significant portion of the meeting focused on the city's transition to Blue Cross Blue Shield for employee health benefits. The committee approved the administrative services contract, but concerns were raised about the short enrollment window, potential service disruptions, and the composition of the RFP review committee. Staff committed to addressing these issues, including exploring an extended enrollment period and providing detailed support to employees. Finally, the committee reviewed a proposal to designate a commercial area in Midtown as a Metropolitan Redevelopment Area to unlock funding for revitalization, with discussions around including Franklin Miles Park and ensuring affordable housing considerations. == Key Decisions == - Approved the agenda and the amended consent agenda. - Approved a Budget Amendment Resolution for $794,000 for arts and culture initiatives and a feasibility study for the Greer Garson Theater. - Approved the administrative services contract with Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Mexico for employee health benefits. - Approved the designation of the Midtown Local Innovation Corridor Overlay District as a Metropolitan Redevelopment Area. == Motions & Votes == - Motion to approve the agenda — Carried unanimously. - Motion to approve the consent agenda as amended — Carried unanimously. - Motion to approve the BAR for $794,000 for arts and culture initiatives and the Greer Garson Theater feasibility study — Passed (Councilor Castro: Yes, Councilor Garcia: Yes, Councilor Faulkner: Yes, Councilor Cassett: Yes). - Motion to approve the transition to Blue Cross Blue Shield for employee health insurance — Passed (Councilor Castro: Yes, Councilor Garcia: Yes, Councilor Faulkner: Yes, Madam Chair: Yes). - Motion to approve an unspecified item (likely related to the Midtown discussion) — Passed unanimously (Councilor Castro: Yes, Councilor Garcia: Yes, Madam Chair: Yes; Councilor Faulkner was excused). == Public Comment == Councilor Castro inquired about incorporating data into the city's land code redevelopment and the disparity in median income. Councilor Garcia questioned the absence of city-specific housing permit data and the lack of interviews with the tourism and hospitality industry. Councilor Garcia strongly advocated for a quantitative-driven Phase Two of the economic development plan, expressing skepticism about making critical decisions based on unverified qualitative comments. He also stressed the importance of including city leadership and governing body members in stakeholder engagement and ensuring south side Santa Fe businesses are included. Councilor Garcia raised concerns about discrepancies in the financial figures for the Arts and Culture budget amendment resolution. Councilor Faulkner raised concerns about City of Santa Fe employees on Blue Cross Blue Shield plans not being able to access Presbyterian facilities in the Albuquerque area. Councilor Michael Garcia expressed strong concerns about the lack of non-union representation on the RFP review committee for healthcare, highlighting that the resolution explicitly required it. He also stressed the importance of a robust healthcare plan for employee recruitment and retention and the critical need to avoid any lapse in employee healthcare coverage during the transition, urging for an extension of the enrollment period. Councilor Cass expressed excitement about the change to Blue Cross Blue Shield, citing issues with the previous provider and praising Blue Cross Blue Shield's reputation. Councilor Garcia expressed concern about the exclusion of Tres Santos Apartments (affordable housing) and advocated for the inclusion of Franklin Miles Park in the MRA. Councilor Castro emphasized the importance of incorporating affordable housing into the development plans. == Topics == - Economic Development Strategy - Midtown Redevelopment - Housing Affordability - Quality of Life - Demographics and Workforce - Income and Education - Community Services & Programs - Tax Increment Financing (TIF) - Franklin Miles Park == Full Transcript == Are we live? We are live. Thank you so much. All right, I'm going to sit down. All right, at 5:04 p.m., I'm going to call the Wednesday, April 2nd, Quality of Life Committee meeting to order. May I please have a roll call? Councilor Castro: Yes. Councilor Garcia: Present. Councilor Faulkner: Madam Chair, here. You have a quorum, Madam Chair. Thank you so much. Moving on to approval of the agenda. Any changes from staff or the committee? And if not, can I have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. Motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Any opposed? And I also forgot to mention, Councilor Travis is excused. Missed that part during roll call. Okay, that motion carries. Moving on to approval of the consent agenda. Marcella, what did we have pulled today? Madam Chair, we had items B, item C, and item E pulled. Wonderful. Anything else that the committee would like to pull at this time? If not, can I get a motion to approve as amended? Motion to approve as amended. Second. A motion and a second. May I please have a roll call? Councilor Castro: Yes. Councilor Garcia: Yes. Councilor Faulkner: Yes. Madam Chair: Yes. Motion passes. Great, thank you so much. Moving on to our presentation. We have the Economic Development Strategic Planning Data Collections and Analysis Key Findings. We should, yep, we're online. We do have Tony Delisi, the Managing Director from Ernst & Young Economic Development Advisory Services, and Yung Kim, the Research Director from the same company. So I will go ahead and hand it over to them on the Zoom. I am assuming that you all are able to participate, so let me know if there's a problem. Yes, I believe we are. You can hear us? Yes, we can. Thank you so much. Okay, our video's not working. That's okay. Jung, can you share your screen? Is that? Yeah, I'll try to do that. Okay, well, good evening, everybody, and thank you for letting us join you today. And it's a pleasure to see you again, Councilor, after earlier. It hasn't been very long. They presented it at EAC earlier, so they're already very well practiced and ready for us. Well, you get a whole different set of information this time, so it's going to be terrific, or hopefully. And apologies, I don't, he already barged in once, but if you hear loud noises, I have a four-year-old who is finishing dinner in the other room at the moment. I'm an hour ahead of all of you. But thank you very much. We appreciate the time to be sharing with you. Jung, if you can share the next slide. But just a little background for those that haven't heard this, but my name's Tony Delisi. I lead our economic development team here at EY. Yeah, we are really lucky to work in economic development with a lot of different cities and counties and economic development organizations all across the country. I'm based in Austin, Texas. I'm joined by my colleague, Jung Kim, who is based in Columbus, Ohio. We're really passionate about this work, and we understand that every community is very different, and it's so important as the foundation for any strategic plan to take a strong assessment of where you are, how you're performing on a range of economic, demographic, other community indicators that are important to informing what your definition of success is, where you want to be, and thus, through this process, really understanding where you are, so then when you begin developing the strategy, you can know where you need to go and how to move that forward. And so Jung has been really leading the effort from our team in engaging in a lot of data analysis, looking at a wide variety of factors. And also, we've been conducting a number of interviews with different stakeholders. Jung will share some more about that to get some really on-the-ground information to complement the data findings. We know data doesn't tell the whole story. It's part of helping understand the overall story here. And so we've really completed an overall review of recent plans and studies, I mean, going back as far as 21 years, the last economic development strategy that was developed for the City of Santa Fe, digging into that data and the interviews, and now working with Joanna and the team, the city, to really review these materials and refine those target industries and other areas on which you want to focus to grow locally, attract others, and support on the innovation side of things. So this meeting is really to share some of the details on what we've been looking at, but the key findings that particularly relate to quality of life, which we know is, you know, an incredibly important asset and part of the City of Santa Fe, and to gain some of your perspectives. So we're here to answer questions as we go through, and yeah, hopefully this will be interesting for everybody involved. But I will pass to Jung to start sharing. Yeah, thank you, Tony, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for your time. I will present some slides focused on findings from our community assessment and the interviews, especially comments related to quality of life. As it was said, we presented to EDAC earlier today, and they got a different slice of the analysis that we've done so far, more focused on economic development and potential target industries. So as you look at this data, you may have questions, but also please understand that you're also seeing some piece of the highlights rather than the whole thing currently. We had a limit of 10 slides, and we wanted to stick to that in respect to your time, so I'll dive in. So here we have a few findings from our community assessment focused on certain population characteristics, age characteristics. One of the things we looked at was growth in recent years, from 2018 to 2023. And the city's population growth was outpacing the county, the state, and the country, so that's a good sign for the city there. As we dug into that topic and looked at other data, I think we understood that it was based on the housing construction that was happening in the area. Another data point we looked at was age. On the lower left, you have median age in each of these areas. The city is at 46.2 years. The county is a little bit older, and then you have the state and the US around 39, 40 years old, quite a few years younger. This probably is not a surprise from your own local knowledge, from what we've heard from other stakeholders. I think more interesting is when you look at the slide on the bottom right. This breaks down for each of the geographies that the population under 18 in light green, 18 to 24 in green, light brown, 25 to 54, the prime working age, and then 55 to 64 in brown, and then 65 and older in gray. It probably not surprised that you do have a larger senior population, those gray bars. City of Santa Fe, that segment is 27%. The county is 29%. And those figures are lower in New Mexico and the US at 20 and 18%, respectively. What's really interesting is that that prime working age, the 25 to 54 in the lighter brown, that group is 38% of the city's population, and that's not all that different from the state at 37 or the country at 39%. So even though people have this perception that Santa Fe, the city population is older, and it's true in some ways in terms of the workforce, it's a bit more nuanced than that, and that's something to understand and find opportunities in. At the same time, even though there is this concentration in the prime working age segment, there aren't as many kids. You have only 15% of the population under 18. The same is true in the county. Those figures are higher in the state at 21% and US at 22%. So it does lead to questions about, you know, what sort of young professionals and older professionals are active in the city, moving into the city versus moving out. Next, we look at income and education characteristics. One thing that we found in recent trends was that the median household income in the city, in the dark brown line on the left, hasn't risen as fast in recent years compared to the other geographies. So you see the county trending with the US. The state, while much lower, has also had a similar trajectory in terms of its increase, so that's something that's notable there. Educational attainment, the city and the county have a higher concentration of adults with graduate or professional degrees. It probably reflects the composition of jobs in the city in terms of state government, as well as the fact that places like Los Alamos and other areas with employers that demand higher education are within commuting distance. We know that housing is a big topic in the area, so we wanted to look at that. It certainly lends itself to economic development in terms of its effect on the workforce and the ability of people to live closer to jobs, ideally living and working in the city. So when we look at home values, the difference between the city and the US was around $100,000 as recently as 2007. So you see how those lines sort of move together, even though the city and county of Santa Fe are more expensive from throughout most of the 2010s. But starting in the end of that decade, the gap has been increasing. And at the end of last year, the gap stood at $215,000 between the city and the US. Part of that may be due to the pent-up demand relative to supply. The chart on the right shows housing permits per 1,000 existing units in different levels of geography. This data isn't available at the city level, but we did look at the county compared to the state in the US. The county in the brown line, those permit numbers were relatively low throughout much of the 2010s before finally picking up in 2018 and has moved above the US rates since then. So I noted that population growth between 2018 and 2023, so this in part reflects that. But it also relates to perhaps a backlog in terms of needed supply in the market. Well, I was just going to note as well, it's interesting, you know, that spike you see 2022, that is a common trend in many locations during the pandemic with an increase in remote workers. Yeah, I live in Austin, we saw an even greater spike that has since gone down. But it is nice to see that following that, the increase in value seems has slowed somewhat since that initial spike. And that probably is reflective of what Jung noted, the increased supply coming in over the last five years has probably helped slow down some of that increase relative to what you saw in that 2018 to 2022 trend there. Okay, thanks, Tony. So those are some of the data highlights in terms of the community assessment. To add more context and nuance to the quantitative data, we also have interviewed various stakeholders. You see the organizations, employers, and other entities listed here on this slide. We wanted to capture a variety of perspectives from economic development to workforce and education, startups, small business, and other perspectives. So we'll start with the community strengths. We presented a more capitalized version of the SWOT to the EDAC group, but here you're getting a bit more color, including some of the quotes. I won't read all the quotes myself, but perhaps you're following along as I talk through this and can see how it ties to some of these main themes. One of the key strengths that people talked about was the Santa Fe brand and identity. You know, I noted in our previous meeting with EDAC that, you know, even someone like me based in Ohio has some conception of what Santa Fe is, what it's like, and certainly interest in visiting and so forth. So it does have a strong cache there. Kind of related to that is quality of life. People have talked about how livable it is, access to outdoor. the restaurants and everything that the tourism industry supports. And in part, that may be related to what Tony mentioned, that spike that happened in the pandemic in terms of people seeking other places, and people like digital nomads moving to places like Santa Fe. Another strength is the access to the state capital and agencies. Just being there, obviously, provides great opportunities for coordination with the state for economic development and other purposes. Some of the interviewees noted community collaboration. Others thought there might have been some gaps there. But these are a couple examples of interviewee quotes on this topic where they thought there was good collaboration. Here we have some of the weaknesses that rose to the top. A big challenge was workforce. It has really impacted Santa Fe across industries, whether you talk about restaurants, or construction, or healthcare. It is certainly a problem in Santa Fe, but not unique to your city. We're used to hearing about this with other clients, but there is, I think, based on the industry composition in the city, a different perspective on this, besides the particular industry needs. Other people noted that Santa Fe maybe didn't appeal as much to young professionals or young families, that it's difficult to retain them, although some do come back perhaps later on in life. So that may be another area to look at in terms of workforce, the ability to retain people who either grew up in Santa Fe or were interested in moving into the city in the first place. Another area of weakness was opposition to development and change. I think a lot of the interviewees we spoke with are, I'm sure as you all are, trying to find that right balance, right, between Santa Fe's identity and history, but also not being stuck in time, being able to adapt with things that are going on. So people did talk about some of the opposition to zoning changes, to more dense development, and other things that might help with some of the issues. But also recognizing that there are perhaps optimal ways to do that that maintain Santa Fe's identity while helping to grow opportunities for its residents. And on the opportunity side, people saw room to grow in the Southside and other outlying areas beyond historic core. The other thing that interviewees talked about was staying focused on the human and social capital, not being just about creating jobs for growth's sake, but really thinking about how does this translate into improved quality of life for people. Interviewees also noted Santa Fe's competitive advantages, like quality of life, and being able to broadcast that message, understand how Santa Fe does have advantages in context, in comparison to other communities. And then the last theme listed here are the assets and partnerships that could be better leveraged. A lot of people noted different initiatives and programs in workforce and in small business supports and other things that maybe not everyone is aware of. So it could certainly be more utilized, and then at the same time, probably could benefit from more resources and scale. And this is going to be our final slide, and we can get into any questions and discussions after this. Sorry to end on a negative note, but these are some of the threats that people talked about in terms of community quality of life in Santa Fe. People had quite a list of challenges, even though quality of life was noted as a strength. We talked about the housing cost going up, cost of living overall. Interviewees noted crime, schools, parks, their conditions. And then also, interestingly, retail and services for residents, right, not just for tourists or for visitors, but for segments like young families, being able to have more in the way of daycare or family entertainment or other amenities. And then the last theme here is around potential federal policy impacts. Interviewees thought perhaps Santa Fe is relatively safe in terms of its concentration of research and activity in energy and security, not just in the city, but obviously Los Alamos and the surrounding region. But there still may be impacts. One interviewee noted that anecdotally, they had heard of hiring being frozen. Another talked about the fact that there is a significant immigrant workforce in Santa Fe and throughout New Mexico, including undocumented workers in industries like construction or hospitality. So those industries could be affected depending on federal policies. So with that, I'll conclude our presentation, and Tony and I can take any questions or discuss with you in greater depth any of these topics. Mayor: Wonderful, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And just for members of the committee or even members of the public that are listening, I do recommend going into the Economic Development Advisory Committee's agenda and seeing the slide deck that EDAC saw, because it really does complement each other very nicely and does give a more well-rounded picture of everything you looked at. So thank you for that. Thank you for preparing these two different slide decks and and allowing a deep dive into those two topics. I feel very grateful that I got to be in both of them. I will now turn it over to the committee. Councilor Castro. Councilor Castro: Sure, thank you so much, and thank you for the presentation. I have tons of questions, and I'm sure I'll have more, so I'll be emailing you. But in particular, I'm thinking about some of the big decisions that we're making at the city, like the land code redevelopment. How can we use some of this data and incorporate it in a broader scale? Might be a question for City staff. Director Nelson: Madam Chair, Councilor, great question. We are in talks with the land use team, and they have another contractor that has reached out to understand what plans and data are already in place. And so we're in the process of connecting the two so we can leverage it, and to your point, not duplicate efforts or have some unalignment there. Councilor Castro: Wonderful. And I also want to thank the interest in what Santa Fe is going to look like in the future. We traditionally do want to keep our historic nature, but we do have to serve folks in the future. One concern I have is the median income, and how significantly lower the city is relative to the country and the county. Is there any reason that you saw that disparity? J: I don't want to speak how deep Jong dove into the research, but some things that we could see around this is, one, you know, there is a large retired community in Santa Fe. I think the story is more complex than that, and rightfully so, there's, you know, large working age population. You are a city with people of all ages, but sometimes while there can be a perception that, you know, retirees, particularly retirees in Santa Fe, might be wealthy, there are likely many that are on fixed incomes. So there could be some of that where the rise in median income was not as high, potentially having to do with some of that. And then additionally, there is, you know, high poverty in the community that affects the other side of it, so could bring down overall the median value there. But Jong, I know you were digging into some of those a little bit more. Jong: Yeah, I think the other thing to add is the industry composition of employment in the city. You know, we know that there is a higher concentration in hospitality, which includes things like accommodations, retail, restaurants, and so forth. And many of those jobs do not pay as well as other industries. So even though they may be important to the city economy as perhaps steps in the ladder towards another career or within that career, they do pay lower wages, and that may have an effect as well. And it's something for, I guess, you all and others to think about. This question came up in EDAC about, well, you know, how do we create well-paying jobs while at the same time recognizing key existing industries like hospitality and the opportunities that are there? Councilor Castro: Yeah, thank you. So I guess the ball is in our court, and we have to figure out how to promote some of these higher-paying jobs. So one of the ideas that sort of came up when I was looking at data is a gap a little bit with associates programs and some of this professional work that we might be able to maybe elevate some of the folks in those areas. But also, one of the concerns being the cost of living. So if our median income is lower and our cost of living is higher, we are putting people in a more difficult position and sort of pushing folks. So I don't have a solution, I just sort of wanted to flag that. But thank you so much, Chair, for the opportunity. Mayor: Of course. Thank you, Councilor Garcia. Councilor Garcia: Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Mr. Delai, or am I pronouncing that correctly? Deli and Mr. Kim. Regarding some of the information on the report, I'm going to start just in chronological order on page, slide five. You're talking about, in particular, the housing permits issued for 1,000 units. I'm surprised we couldn't get data for the city, because we do have that information. So did, I mean, how come you, you had mentioned that is that it was not available, but it is available? Jong: So we access data from the HUD Department, Housing and Urban Development, and they didn't have that data down to the city. If it is of interest, we could certainly incorporate the city's data into this and try to do a comparison. It may not be quite apples to apples, mixing data sources, but that's a, that's a good idea to actually, if possible, get that administrative data from the city. Councilor Garcia: Okay, thank you. No, I, I think it would be a good idea. And, you know, as we're peeling the onion, I'm a little concerned why HUD doesn't have that data as well. So we can continue to have that conversation offline, because that is important information to have, be able to compare that. J: That is just universally. HUD releases data only at the county level and higher. So there is no city, I believe, right, Jong? Or is it just for Santa Fe that was unavailable? Jong: No, it's for cities in general. Yeah, it's, it's county business patterns. They, they, they only collect and share at the county level. It's always the fun limitations with data sources. Councilor Garcia: Okay. Now, in the second part of your report, you got more into the stakeholder section. Is there a reason why we didn't interview tourism and hospitality industry at all? That's a big makeup of our, our economy. Jong: Yes, we reached out to some of those organizations and didn't receive responses. We could certainly coordinate with Joanna and her team to reach out again, try to get their involvement. J: And we were additionally noting in some of the discussion with EDAC earlier, too, that this being just an initial phase with the data assessment, I think as we go through this, it is exactly the intent to identify where we need to dig in deeper as strategic planning goes on in the next phase. Again, the data only tells a portion of the story. There's, I think, many more conversations to have to illuminate where the issues are and opportunities and develop the strategies more effectively with greater input. Councilor Garcia: Okay, thank you. I appreciate it, because they are a major stakeholder for us. Even though, unfortunately, a lot of our tourism folks and hospitality industry workers can no longer afford to work here, which is even more critical to get that information from folks that, that do work here and do want to live here, because it's information that is going to help us. plan and how to accommodate their needs in the future. So as we get into that stakeholder interview, I'm assuming the community strengths, community weaknesses, community opportunities, community threats section was taken from those stakeholder interviews. A lot of that or all of it is qualitative data, which is very hard to roll up and quantify and make data-driven decisions off of, because when we have comments that are basically saying, "Well, we're not like Silicon Valley," and that's a weakness, well, we're not trying to be like Silicon Valley. And I think we need to have some quantitative data that will allow us to make these decisions to meet the needs of the stakeholders. So was there any quantitative data conducted during this research, during the stakeholder engagement? The quantitative data you saw was focused on the community assessment, looking at the city relative to the county, the state, and the US. We also had other data that we presented to EDAC that was more about the industries and their performance in the city. That was what we had scoped out for this project from the outset. I believe that I know we had a comment in there about Silicon Valley, and I thought it was sort of a positive context about how Santa Fe might have certain advantages, whether it's cost or quality of life. I think some of the things you're talking about, if we were to derive quantitative information based on the stakeholder input, it would involve a wider net of engagement, perhaps a survey. And that's something that we could think about in terms of a strategy down the road. This was an initial analysis, and we had scoped and budgeted for approximately around 10 interviews. So I know it's not much, it was just to add context around some of the data findings and perspectives on industries. So certainly, down the road, there's opportunity to expand on that. And we'll add to that, there's more data than just what was presented in these two decks. The research is fairly extensive, and we're trying to boil down some of the quick summary findings for the meetings today. Okay, I appreciate that. And just for the record, it is under community weaknesses, under the workforce section. The comment is, "It's hard to keep younger people in Santa Fe. We don't have the Google-type startup environment." And so, yeah, and that's one where there is some data behind that. And so this is, we've worked in many communities that have strong information technology clusters. But this common story, for example, we've done a number of strategies for Chattanooga, Tennessee, and they've done really amazing things since they put in gigabit fiber, the first fastest internet in the country, I think in the world, building a startup community around that. But a common story is you can go there for a job, but there isn't that second job waiting if that one doesn't continue, if there's issues. And we can see that in the data just showing where there is a strong software cluster in Santa Fe today. There's, I think it was 750 jobs or so. However, that is about 60% of the average concentration in the US, and it isn't quite as large as you see average, let alone in Silicon Valley, where it's, you know, 8% eight times the US concentration. Just to show that you can get jobs, the jobs are there, there's companies growing, but it's not as large a cluster where there's two, three, four other companies you could go work if your current opportunity falls through and so forth. So there are some data we can show that that does kind of qualify comments like that. Okay, I appreciate that follow-up. But as I mentioned earlier, it's just really hard to move forward with qualitative data responses sometimes that might not even been verified, because there's, you know, another example is community weaknesses, workforce. The comment is, "Every year they're cutting funding for youth education programs." I don't know if that lies true with the city of Santa Fe. We've actually been increasing funding from my perspective. I mean, we'd probably have to ask Director Rooster that. But I don't want us to rely on commentary such as this to make critical decisions. And that's where having qualitative data is critical to help us inform common themes and trends that can ultimately be verified. And so, is there going to be a phase two of this, Director Nelson? Because I would highly request that it be quantitative, not qualitative driven, because I appreciate the feedback and commentary. It's, and this is, I see this as kind of a comment box feedback. It doesn't allow me to really see out of the number of respondents. You said 10 interviews were conducted. Out of those 10, how many gave the same response? How many didn't? Because then we can start to see, is this an outlier issue? Is it a common trend that we really need to keep our eye on? And having the comments, because that's what I'll take it as, because it hasn't been validated and verified as fact, is, so it's comments at this moment. It's hard to look at this and how to figure out how to move forward. So one last question, because you did mention you did 10 interviews, but there's 14 stakeholders here. Did, yeah, we did more than 10. 10 was the number that was in the scope. Okay. But as we went along, we wanted to be able to talk to certain organizations. Obviously, couldn't capture everyone still. But, yeah, talk to, I was just going to agree 100% with you, Council Member. I think, you know, this being primarily a data exercise to start, we wanted to gain a few additional perspectives at this phase around some of the industries and what could support them. And we should have phrased some of those comments as, you know, some perception of these things, because this is a very common thing that we hear with strategies. We're doing one will be around school districts. We'll hear regularly in communities, "The school district isn't strong. It's not performing well." But we know from data that actually the school district's doing much better. But that perception is important to note when we hear this, if it's a common perception, and to say we need to be telling the better story of what's occurring in a school district. This is, I mention that topic because this is one that comes up a lot in communities. And I think again, this is where in the overall strategic planning phase, which, you know, we are not currently contracted for, but if available, we'd bid on opportunity. But it, you know, we usually do a much more robust, more extended stakeholder engagement portion in that, as well as surveys and others, where you can have more data to back up both the perception if it's there, and then dig into the data side on topics that come up that we wouldn't normally jump into until we see if people are mentioning things as we're hearing here. So it is a good thing to flag for that next phase to gain more perspective and qualify it with data. Director Nelson, I think it might be helpful. We did, we did not do this of putting this into context of what the process looks like for the strategic plan, because, you know, this is very preliminary. So if you could provide more information about where this lies and how you see that as part of the overall process, I think that would be helpful for understanding what we're looking at here and why this is what your team decided you wanted to start with. Madam Chair, thank you for the opportunity to expand. And Councilor Garcia, you're right on track to point us in the direction and give feedback of where we want to go with our plan. I want to echo what Chair Cassett mentioned, that this is the beginning of the comprehensive economic development plan. We're trying to get a sense of where we want to go and how we want to strategically write that RFP to look for the contractor that will take the data that has been collected and really dive into it quantitatively and qualitatively. So an example, if we look at how the state economic development plan rolled out, there was a significant data portion, phase one, and then interviewing hundreds of people and to get the qualitative information as well as diving into those certain areas that we're seeing our weaknesses or places that we want to understand the perceptions and the background. So I would love to encourage you all to keep thinking about it as we have these contractors on board and give us feedback exactly to what you're doing around so we can write that RFP specifically to address those ideas. And if I recall our conversation correctly, that there will be some type of interviews with the members of the governing body. So this is, we're getting kind of our first bite, but we will have an opportunity to be speaking with, if you are the contractors, to really be doing in-depth interviews on this. Am I remembering that correctly? Correct, Madam Chair. Thank you. Back to you, Councilor Garcia. Okay, thank you. And that was touching based on the last question of what city leadership governing body members were part or why were we not part of the stakeholder engagement group? Because we hear a lot of feedback as representatives of our constituencies, and we can be that conveyor of information. So Madam Chair, Councilor, exactly enhancing the statement that was just said, where they are in the process, they're about halfway in collecting the information. They'll tweak their direction, and we'll be reaching out to city councilors as well as some key leadership staff too. And again, this is just the beginning. When we launch into the significant phase, that the actual phase of community engagement, that's where we'll really get a lot more information too. Okay. One last piece of feedback is as additional stakeholders, let's not forget the south side of Santa businesses, because they're usually forgotten, and they're a critical component of our economy. We want to make sure that their voice is heard as well. With that, I appreciate the presentation, this initial first step that we're taking in this direction. Thank you to the presenters. I really appreciate the feedback and comments. That's all, Madam Chair. Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Faulkner. I think my colleagues have covered all the concerns or questions I had. Thank you so much. Councilor, I just have a couple of things to add. I'm curious about our demographics and in terms of how our median age and even the breakdown, the percentages of the age blocks, age groups have changed. COVID did interesting things to us. So I don't know if you've had the opportunity to compare pre-COVID numbers to what our median age was to now. I know that the, it was mentioned in here, but the increase of the digital nomads have, have, have made some changes to our demographics. And so I'd be curious what that looks like and how that compares to again, the county and the state and the country. Is that anything you've looked at yet? We have that data pulled somewhere in an Excel file, so we can take a look at that and do the comparison. Okay, that, that would be wonderful. I would appreciate that. And then also when we were talking about our income, I know it's, it's so hard to like pinpoint a number, but I'm, I'm curious about both our range, you know, what, what that starts to look like and then how we break down. I don't believe we had this in this slide deck. We, we had a little bit more of this information in EDAC, and it was looking at the average income per industry sector, which was really interesting. So I'd be curious to look at what those income ranges are and how those break down within the city. I believe that's, that's data you could get from the census, correct? Yeah, so the median household income is focused on the residents, the resident households, while the data we're referring to that you saw in EDAC were based on jobs. Oh, okay. So it may not necessarily be the people who are living here. Interesting. Right, so I mean, there is some relationship, right, in terms of people who live and work in the city, but it's not totally connected. But we can look at more detailed breakdowns of the household income data if that's what you're getting at. Yeah, that would be interesting to see. And I know that we had this conversation a little bit more in EAC of trying to understand individuals who are commuting into the city and what the driving force of that is. For the most part, we know cost is a factor, but there was a lot of conversation this morning around there are more things to do in Rio Rancho and the schools are better. So understanding a bit of that. But then on the flip side, we also had this conversation around, especially for those of us who are in that younger working group, why do we decide to stay here or come back here or move here when it is such an uphill battle? And a lot of people report struggling here and yet stay. So again, it does go back to some of the conversations around the perception of Santa Fe, the brand of Santa Fe. But as we are looking at attracting people, what are the things that we should be highlighting to make sure that people consider us and then, of course, have to be balancing that out with the ability for them to actually be here? But I thought that was a really interesting conversation that we had earlier that I wanted to just bring up because it had that way of how we look at both of our strengths and our weaknesses in different manners. Because in some ways, some of our strengths are part of what creates our weaknesses. The fact that we do have this incredible brand and there's people that want to live here and move here, and we have such a high quality of life that it does, and we have such a unique character that it brings in a lot of people, which then causes a lot of the increase in the cost of living and challenges that we see with people actually being able to stay here. So I'm not sure if I'm making sense, but I really enjoyed how we kind of looked at both sides of the coin for both those strengths and weaknesses. I'll get to you in just one sec. Let me make sure I covered everything where we talked about looking at who lives here versus who works here. And then with the housing permits, as we do a deep dive into that, I would also be really interested in the analysis of rentals versus homes for purchase. I know that that has been a large conversation in the city. And again, I'm not quite sure how this is done, but potentially looking at how that compares to workers that are commuting in and are they renting or do they own in a lot of our quote-unquote bedroom communities? I don't know if that's how easy it is to get that data, but I do think it would be interesting as we do look at the way that economic development and housing and cost of living are inevitably tied together that we've discussed and we've seen so many times. And to Councilor Castro's point, as we move forward with the general plan update and with the code update, the really impacts our housing supply. Tying those two things together would be really interesting. Councilor Castro, back to you. One more data point that might be interesting: how many folks live here full-time versus how many folks live here part-time? That would be interesting and probably a little concerning. Any other questions or comments or did you all have anything to say to wrap up before we move on? I'll just say thank you. This is always part of the process and what we love, which is, you know, initial data only shows so much, and it's through these conversations that we can find where we can dig in, fine-tune a couple things, or possibly unavailable. I was just thinking, sadly, the commute data is not as robust as that. It is much more limited than we'd like. But part-time residence, things like that, housing that is seasonal, information like that can be pulled out from the census and can help illuminate the story a bit more, among other things. Wonderful, thank you. I appreciate that. And in terms of internal city data resources, Mo might be one to be looking at commuter data. I know that we've had a lot of conversations there, but I'm sure Director Nelson can assist with that. And then especially as you talk to us more, we can discuss our different experiences with different city departments and committees. Thank you again so much. Really appreciate you spending so much time with the city of Santa Fe today, both between economic development and quality of life, and looking forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you. It's always a pleasure, and hope we can spend more. I always love coming to Santa Fe. Wish we could be in person. It's one of our pros, one of our strengths. Thank you. All right, let's move on to that consent agenda. So our first one is a request for approval of a budget amendment resolution, BAR, to allocate $794,000. Wait, wait, wait. $700. Why can't I say numbers today? Thank you. $794,000.25 budget for ongoing arts and culture initiatives and Greer Garson Theater feasibility study. We have Chelsea Johnson, our Arts and Culture Director, here. Thank you, Councilor Castro. You may have to say all numbers for me today because apparently that is no longer a skill set I have on this day. I went ahead and pulled this simply because I wanted to get a bit more information about what this process looks like. And from the memo, I wasn't seeing very much. I saw, you know, conversation around some of the other things that the Arts and Culture Department has done that is a little bit out of the scope of what we normally see from the department. But I think understanding this process, especially since we started to go a different route with Greer Garson Theater, and it looks as though we are changing course potentially or providing some more support for the community. So I am curious what the updated strategic plan is for Greer Garson and what this feasibility study is going to be looking like. Is this working? Okay, so Madam Chair, thank you. So is your question primarily about the feasibility study for the Greer Garson Theater? I think both the feasibility study and then also what does this say about the direction in which we are, which the proposal is to move with renovating and reinvigorating Greer Garson? Because initially, we were similar to what had done with the studios with visual arts, is, you know, the plan was to go out to RFP. We were going to go into the exclusive negotiation agreement process. Sounds like that might be a little bit different here. That may still happen. So what we've done is we've rewound a little bit. Unfortunately, Director Hernandez is also in the audience and can answer questions, and I do have a copy of the RFP that we sent out, which I can leave with you as well. So in January, we accepted in partnership with the MRA. I believe Director Hernandez initiated and ran the process, and Arts and Culture has been collaborating and is funding the feasibility study. There was a request for proposal sent out. We had several respondents. There were two finalists that we interviewed, and we selected one pending, of course, this funding coming through to do a really detailed and comprehensive feasibility study that takes into account what the building itself needs to come back into operable condition and also what sort of organization and management scenarios might be that will make it operational. So once, and that is expected to be completed within four months of being issued. So by fall, we'll have a better sense of what the next steps are so that when we do move forward with the next exclusive negotiating agreement, people are coming in fully informed, and we have a much more solid sense of how best to move forward. Okay, thank you. That is helpful. So I might understand that previously there was just so much unknown that when we were getting proposals or a proposal for Garson, there were too many questions that had to be answered that we didn't feel comfortable moving forward with the group at that time. To be honest, it predated my time here. It sure did. But from what I understand, there was an agreement entered into that then fell apart. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so this, I think, is to try to address some of the learning, the lessons that were learned from that process and move forward with a really solid understanding of what we're getting into and what any operators we engage with are getting into. Okay, all right, wonderful. Thank you. I appreciate that additional information of understanding what the work would be here and also how it fits into the larger picture. So thanks for taking the time to be here. Any other questions, comments? Councilor Garcia. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just going through the numbers here for the expenditure section. Yes, it's a total of $854,000, but we're only bringing in $434,400. No, we're bringing in $794,000, and that's unanticipated lodgers tax revenue and unspent budget funds from last from FY24. So of that, we have several line items that you see listed here, and then the remainder we're just transferring from lodgers tax funds into the Arts and Culture Fund so that we can spend it or put it towards future use, but it's not on the FI. So it's again, when I calculated all of these totals, I got $854,000 for sponsored expense, $150,000 for other consulting, $90,000 for advertising, $60,000 for Arts CIP, $434,400 lodgers tax, and that's adding up to $854,000. That it's adding $854,164. And then when we dip down lower into the FI for revenues, you're seeing the withdrawal of $434,164 from lodgers tax. We have Director Oster here in the audience if you want to come take a look at this to make sure we don't have a mistake somewhere. Thank you, counselors. In the bottom right, just above Andy's signature, there are some additional pieces of information. So there is some money coming in from the fund balance and fund 350, $374,164. So we're seeing the decrease of $794,000, which is being proposed here, but an increase to fund 350 for $374,164, which leaves a negative, the decrease balance of $420,000. Councilor Garcia, could you go through that again? I'm sorry. So you're saying there's a net $420,000 decrease over, that's the, that's the impact. So funds two and three, that's a, that's that big withdrawal that looks like it's being proposed for $794,164. But when that should be reflected up in the revenue section, right then? So, counselor, the revenues are negative. Is that what you're seeing? So a normal balance for a revenue account is a credit in accounting, so it shows up on this form as a negative number. Right, so shouldn't that be instead of $434,000, that should be the $794,000 number? I will just say that these forms are very, this is not perhaps helpful, but these forms are very counterintuitive. This is the first BAR that we've done in Arts and Culture and with a great deal of assistance from Andy Hopkins. So I apologize that I'm not able to explain the way that all of the numbers are working here, but I will go back and check and make sure that we have the accurate amount that's being transferred from the fund. Okay, just because I want to make sure that you all are getting the expenses. You are requesting money that the source where it's coming from, we get that corrected. Yeah, and that way there's the appropriate documented paper trail for everything. So, okay. I definitely understand these are, it's just again, we want to make sure we're crossing our T's, dotting our I's on something like this. Yeah, thank you, counselor, for attention to that. No other questions, Madam Chair. Thank you. Director Oster, did you have something else to add here at this time? No. Okay. All right. Anything else? If not, can I get a motion? Councilor: Move to approve. Councilor: Second. Motion and a second. May I please have a roll call? Councilor Castro: Yes. Councilor Garcia: Yes. Councilor Faulkner: Yes. Councilor Cassett: Yes. Motion passes. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chelsea. Moving on to item C, this is a request for approval of an administrative services contract with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico for health benefits administration services in the amount of $23,54,885. I can read numbers again for the first year, excluding NMGRT, and a total amount of $92,29,548 as a representative. We do have a presentation, and Alvin can go ahead through that. It is in the packet. However, you have to get very far into the packet to find it. Bern, do you remember what page I said it was on? Like 90, 93? Nope, a little bit further up. It starts on page 88 of the packet if you all want to follow along. Alvin, over to you. Alvin Valdez: Thank you. Excellent. Well, good evening, everyone. For those of you who don't know, I'm Alvin Valdez, the Benefits and Wellness Manager for the City of Santa Fe. You've already mentioned everyone in the audience: our Aon Health Benefits Consultants, our Blue Cross Blue Shield team, and of course, our HR Director. So this evening, we are here to respectfully request the approval of an administrative services contract with Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Mexico for FY26 and beyond. Of course, we will discuss contracts and documents and some policies, but at its core, it is much bigger. This is about taking care of the people who take care of our city by providing them with the most comprehensive health plan at the most competitive price for both the employees and for the city. To get started, I'm just going to give a quick summary on our current City of Santa Fe health benefits. So the city is a self-funded plan, which means the city and its employees pay claims directly on a weekly basis. This allows us flexibility in plan design and allows for greater cost savings. It also means we use a third-party administrator to administrate our plan. Our current contract provider, which is the incumbent third-party administrator called Cigna Healthcare, is set to expire as of June 30th, 2025. This prompted our RFP for this year. So in alignment with Resolution 2005-02, the resolution requires that a Benefits Advisory Committee made up of all union leaders, including AFSCME, Fire, Police, and non-union, must be part of the evaluation and part of the RFP. So this year was quite unique. For the first time, the city adapted a, or the Procurement Department adapted a new best value approach. This approach was a method that focuses on metrics and data to select the best vendor out of this procurement. After evaluation, the post-evaluation showed that Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Mexico emerged as a top vendor, and this was recommended for the upcoming contract based on superior service and cost-effectiveness. So Blue Cross Blue Shield demonstrated that they have the expertise in administrating comprehensive health insurance benefits that will have an anticipated better or enhanced member experience and generate cost efficiency. So what do we get? We're going to get a smart and stable plan that's going to save the employees and the city money. The plan design remains the exact same. There will be no change to our plan design whatsoever. But we're also going to see a notable 3% cost reduction. This 3% cost reduction or savings will be implemented via a benefits deduction holiday during a December pay period, where no employee benefit deductions or medical, dental, or vision will be taken from the paychecks, nor will it be taken from the city. So this allows for a greater savings than the 3% premium deduction that we would have seen over a 26-pay period time. We'll also, it's going to be a broad city employee savings. So the city has about 1,398 employees. Of those employees, 1,146 employees carry our medical coverage, meaning that 83% of our employee base will see a holiday savings. We'll also see minimal provider disruption. Most of the network matches were about 97%, so there will be a 3% disruption. But we have strategic initiatives lined up. We're going to have educational trainings throughout open enrollment. We'll have one-on-one sessions. We'll have live in-person assistance at multiple locations with our vendors. We'll also have in-network care providers on-site so that we can make sure an easiest transition for those who will be impacted. And we'll also see a valuable guarantee of almost 98.3% of in-network utilization guaranteed on our medical claims. So with that being said, I'm going to introduce our Aon Health Benefit Consultant, who's going to give us a deeper dive, a more in-depth look on our past performance, on our upcoming predictions, our cost scenarios, and saving comparisons. Trey Sarsfield: Thank you very much, Mr. Valdez, and thank you as well, Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is Trey Sarsfield. I am an actuary with Aon Consulting. I am in that role. I am an underwriter and financial manager. For continuity's sake, if any of you are familiar with Todd Burley, I have taken over many of his responsibilities with respect to the city and will love to walk you through the statements that Mr. Valdez insinuated. Much of this will be reiterating some points that he made, but I believe I will be able to go into a bit more detail so that you can see both macro and micro on each individual person's impact for the plans. First, to reiterate the idea that this plan is self-funded and that the plan pays for the claims that are actually incurred as opposed to a fixed premium, which is the arrangement that is under fully insured contracts. Because this is self-funded, you have more flexibility around the plan designs you offer, around the allowed benefits, and especially around the funding, the amount of funding that you put forth with your budget and that which you put toward your employee contributions as well. A six-year rate history that we have here will show the variability of total costs. I'm not going to read every single number here, but just for the sake of summary, what you will see starting at the bottom and going to the top, the overall plan increase costs on a year-by-year basis were 11%, 9.2%, 11.1%, 18.5% a couple years ago, and then we've entered into a much steadier period over the last two years with a 0.5% increase to medical insurance rates for fiscal 24 and a 6.8% increase to medical insurance rates for fiscal 25. What we will shed considerably more light on tonight will be the proposed numbers for fiscal year 26. In order to determine what the amount to be budgeted is, the best source of that is your own claims experience and of course, the changes that will be known to be made or at least very prominently assumed to be made for the coming year. Again, I will not read every number of this rather busy slide, but the two that make the statement that we want to make with this slide will be the far right column, the loss ratio. What we are talking about here is if, according to your budget, you bring in $1 and you spend exactly $1 on claims and expenses, your loss ratio is 100%. You have met budget precisely. If your loss ratio is below 100%, that means that the budget you have set is better than or a little higher than your actual expenses over the course of the year. Of course, if your loss ratio is considerably higher than 100%, that means that the budgeting was insufficient and claims and expenses have come in above that number. What we are seeing over the past full fiscal year ending in June 30th of 2024 and the current seven months ending January of 2025 of the current fiscal year, both of those are very close to 99%. So the budget that was set actually took basically 1% more than the actual results that have come in. That is a terrific result. That is excellent for budgeting. But as you can see here, each month the loss ratio can be considerably above or below. That is again a facet of self-funding. The actual claims that come in are the claims that you will pay on a weekly basis, as Mr. Valdez pointed out. We have summarized it into monthly here, but the point to be made here is when you are at budget for your overall costs, your next year is very likely to be a trend increase. How much are overall claims going to increase over the course of a year? And for the purposes of the last few years, that has been for medical and RX, that has been in the 7 to 9% per year range. That means that were we to go through with an exact, with an exact budget for this year of 99, you know, the 99.2% and assume somewhere in the 7% increase range, your total costs for the following fiscal year would be approximately 7% higher. That being said, there was, as Mr. Valdez mentioned, there was an RFP to see if there was a better way to go than simply stay status quo and absorb a 7% budget increase. To level set on our slide, the total budget for the existing plan year is $23.3 million. The city's portion of that is just below $17.84 million, and the remaining $5.5 million comes from those bi-weekly employee contributions. If we were to look at prevailing healthcare cost increases, a status quo renewal for this upcoming fiscal year would be, I'm going to say approximately, I'm going to say at least about a 5% increase. That's what we've put in for comparison here. If these costs were to increase 5%, that would be a $1.16 million increase to budget. The total would be about $24.5 million. However, the City of Santa Fe received several responses to your RFP for your medical and RX coverage, and in doing so, each proposed bidder put forth three different numbers. They put forth their fixed costs. They put forth their expected, which is not guaranteed, but their expected projected claims for the coming fiscal year, and they put forward their RX rebates. Those three numbers, the most, the most competitive of those, which as we have mentioned, is Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Mexico. Their estimation was $2.65 million quoted for the fixed costs, and their estimation when you net out the claims minus the RX rebates was about $19.5 million. That equates to $22.15 million, or about a 3.7% decrease. To reiterate something that Mr. Valdez brought up, this reflects no plan design changes of any kind. The three plans that are in existence today will remain in existence. All the co-pays, deductibles, co-insurance percentages, all of the plan designs will stay exactly as they are. There is no need to alter those for any sort of plan savings, as is a frequent occurrence in the self-funded employer world. And as an earlier slide showed a couple of times in the past, there have been some plan design changes. This, this not just assumes, this, this contract assures no plan design changes for the upcoming fiscal year. When we at Aon, as actuaries and underwriters, projected the overall plans, if we look at the, if we look at the Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Mexico numbers and make sure that we project those out into, you know, using the, using the experience that we've seen and the assumptions that were provided, we believe that their claimed cost estimates are reasonable. We feel as though they may be just slightly on the aggressive side, and as a result, we are presenting two scenarios. One of which is an overall 3% decrease to total budgets and rates, and the other is a moderate scenario, which makes, which makes the employees even better off and yet protects the plan with no rate changes to the, to the, to the city budgets. So in order to put some numbers to that, if If we were to go with the 3% decrease for both the city and employees, then total city costs would be $17.3 million. Employee costs would be $5.3 million. The overall total budget would be $22.6 million, reflecting a decrease in total of $710,000. The scenario that has gained quite a bit of traction and has appeal on several levels would be to not change the city budgets and to not change the printed, posted, communicated bi-weekly rates for the employee contributions. However, as Mr. Valdez mentioned, the consideration of a December premium, a contribution holiday, so one bi-weekly contribution during fiscal year 2026 would be removed from the employee's burden. That would mean that the city cost would remain at the same $18.74 million. Employee costs would move down to $5.25 million. The total budget would be $23.1 million, which not coincidentally is the amount, the $23.05 million, that is in the agenda and that is in the request. We would now like to dig in just a bit into each individual employee's potential costs over the course of the next year. What we are showing on this slide would be the Premium Plan only. We do understand that there are three plans. We do know that all of those would behave in tandem, but with showing two separate years and a difference, and knowing that more than 90% of your employees are enrolled in the Premium Plan, we figured that this is indicative enough to show you what the impact of this particular scenario would be. What we see here on this slide would be looking at the second column of numbers, which is titled "Rate Employee." You see for fiscal year 2025 a bi-weekly premium of $111.30 for an employee who covers only him or herself, down to $266.25 for an individual that covers his or her family as well. If we look at a 3% reduction to those costs, then each bi-weekly premium would be 3% lower, or $107.99 down to $258.11 on a bi-weekly basis. At the very bottom, that would reflect a savings to the employee of $3.39 for the employee only, and $8.14 for the employee plus family. This left side that we have addressed so far applies to the AFSCME, POA, and the non-union plan. However, the same principle would apply for those in the Fire Union Plan. Their rates would move down. I will just summarize the employee only from $122.98 down to $119.23, or a savings of $3.75 per pay period. Now we will move to compare the two different scenarios and explain what they would mean for the full year for each employee. What we are showing here, instead of just the Premium Plan, we are looking at the Premium Plan, the Core Plan, and the HRA Plan. You can see the overall total difference for each and every individual that would apply to each of these tiers. What we are seeing, in very, very short, I will move to the Premium Plan on the Fire Union side. If you were to reduce their contributions by 3%, that would be a savings for the year of $95.62 for an employee only. It would be a savings of $228.54 for the employee who covers the family as well. However, this premium holiday is more generous than that. What we are seeing here would be $122.10 savings. That is the amount of one bi-weekly contribution, and you would not be paying it, all the way down to $293.93 for employee plus family. What we would like to make sure and point out here is that for every individual that is enrolled, there would be a savings under either of these scenarios. However, you would be providing your employees a great savings, and you would be better protecting the plan in terms of your self-funded status by keeping your city premiums where they are, moving the employee premiums down by a premium holiday. This is the conclusion of the presentation that we wanted to provide you with today. With that, I thank you very much and I'm certainly happy to field any questions. Mayor: Wonderful, thank you so much. And then we also have, I know, representatives from Blue Cross Blue Shield here for questions for them as well. So we have our own Human Resources, Aon, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. So you all know the menu of organizations you have to ask questions of. To the committee, Councilor Faulkner, we know that some of our employees are on Presbyterian or go to Presbyterian facilities, and I know that there's some conflict where Presbyterian won't cover our employees in the Albuquerque area. We just go in, I've talked to staff about this before, but I think it's good to just get it on the record, like what are we doing to mitigate? Because what I've found, I lost my primary care doctor, and I work for a medical school, and it is very difficult to find primary care physicians in New Mexico. So I just briefly, let us know what we're doing to mitigate that. Chair: Madam Chair, Councilor Faulkner, thank you for the question. During the RFP process and our meetings with our Benefits Advisory Committee, which as Alvin Valdez mentioned, includes all of our union leadership, and where our employees live and how they might be impacted with this change. So we have communicated with Blue Cross Blue Shield to provide several on-site sessions about any potential disruptions with medical providers and trying to minimize those disruptions. I think Mr. Valdez pointed out that there's a 98.6, I don't remember the exact number, but a high rate for matching with medical providers. We also, as Madam Chair mentioned, we have Blue Cross Blue Shield here who, if they would like to address this additionally, we would welcome them to do so. Marlene Baka: Good evening, Madam Chair and all of the council members. My name is Marlene Baka, and I am the Vice President with Blue Cross Blue Shield. It's our pleasure being here this evening, and we have many individuals in the audience. We just wanted to make sure that we do address all of your questions that you may have. For Councilor Fulmer's question, I do want to let everybody know that we do have contracts with Presbyterian. So if you are living in any of the outside four-county areas, you are able to receive care from any of the Presbyterian hospital clinics, all of their specialty care. Now, if you happen to live in the four-county area, which includes Bernalillo, Sandoval, Valencia, and Torrance County, you are not able to see the Albuquerque Central hospitals. However, there are some exceptions to that, as we are well aware of access concerns, and as we continue to address some of those access concerns here in New Mexico, we have an agreement with Presbyterian for many specialties that are available in the Albuquerque area, whether it is at their hospital or at specific specialty clinics. And I'll use some perfect examples. So if a person, and I'll use myself as an example, I live in Bernalillo County, if I happen to need a transplant, I'm able to get that service from Presbyterian. Pediatric hematology oncology, that is very important for any child that may be battling with cancer. Neonatal intensive care, behavioral health, another area that is very concerning, and we have a number of specialties. I can name them all this evening. We also have it on our website where you can refer to it, but it includes neurology, neurosurgery, pediatric endocrinology, pediatric heart surgery, pediatric pulmonology. So there are some extensive specialties that we definitely contract with Presbyterian. When Alvin and Bernadette talked about the employees that are going to be impacted, when we looked at the numbers, it is 191 employees that live in the four-county, mainly it is in Bernalillo, as well as in and of all, very little in Torrance and Valencia. So as we approach the City of Santa Fe, we will do everything and anything to make sure that the transition of care for those 191 employees and any family members, that we will handhold them to make sure that they understand what the network is, the primary care physician we can introduce them to, what's available. And then lastly, we will make sure that the hospital systems, the providers that are in network in those particular counties, will be next to us at any open enrollment meetings that we have. Our main point is always transparency and making sure that we communicate and make sure that our members always understand the plan that they have. One last point, the good news is that the City of Santa Fe does offer a very comprehensive plan. So with the POP plan, which allows you to stay in network, and of course, by doing so, you're going to pay a lot less out of pocket, but you always have the opportunity of going out of network. You're just going to be paying a little bit more. So I just wanted to add that because I do understand and respect the concern with Presbyterian not being available to those 191 members. So I will pause for any questions. Chair: Madam Chair and council members, I just, I did want to clarify that you mentioned 191 employees in the four-county area. Do we know that these are 191 employees that we understand to currently be utilizing Presbyterian or could potentially? Do we know if that's the number that is actually going to be impacted by Presbyterian? And I am going to be looking at my subject matter expert. So with that 191, it is not an exact. So when we received data information, when we run what is called disruption reports, and we did not get specific information to confirm the 191, and I'm looking at Don for that confirmation. Don Mont: Madam Chair, counselors, my name is Don Mont. I'm with Aon. So we were assisting the team that was together on working with the RFP. And when we looked at the disruption, what we were able to do is get from your incumbent carrier, Cigna, a listing of all the providers where they access care. We are not able to look down to the level to identify what employee accessed that actual provider. So what we did is we provided that list of the doctors that have been accessed in the past 18 months, and we gave that to Blue Cross Blue Shield. They aligned it to their network, and we were able to identify there. So in response to your question, we don't know in fact how many of those 191 individuals are truly accessing Presbyterian providers. Some, all, none, we're not able to get to that level of data. Chair: Okay, so if I'm understanding correctly, 191 individuals that are in the four-county area that would not be in network for primarily primary care with Presbyterian, although it sounds like specialty care they still would have access. However, we are not, we are not certain that those 191 all use Presbyterian, and honestly, the likelihood is probably not 100% use Presbyterian. Don Mont: Chair, you are absolutely correct. Chair: Okay, statement. Thank you for helping clarify those numbers. I appreciate it. I apologize, Councilor Faulkner, did you have anything else? Other members of the committee? Councilor Chiare. Councilor Chiare: Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to follow up on that question, the number of 191 individuals, that's employees, correct? So many of those folks might have family members as well that is going to boost up that number. So we have members to that follow that. How many overall individuals receiving the insurance coverage would be affected? Don Mont: Madam Chair and Councilor Garcia, how we identified the employees impacted is we were able to get a census from your team, and that census will list out every single employee that works for the City of Santa Fe, and it includes their zip code. And so we were able to reference based on that to identify the individuals who live in those four counties. The census does not identify if they cover any dependents, but we could try to see and work with your HR team to see if they are able to pull that from your data systems to identify how many dependents they're covered. Councilor Chiare: Okay, because that would be helpful because that, yeah, I would have to turn times that number of individuals that are whose healthcare could be. Yeah, I would have to turn to Alvin and Bern to see if that data would be able to be pulled. Madam Chair, Councilor Michael Garcia: Yes, we can absolutely pull that data. I want to just make sure that we, based on the information provided by Blue Cross Blue Shield, a lot of the dependent care, primarily care for children, a lot of that is covered. I think that was mentioned, so that's good news. I think that we want to make sure that that's very clear, that those types of services would be covered. Thank you. Ms. Salazar: What was that? Only specialties and primary care is where the issue is going to lie with Presbyterian. I'm not saying this is a huge problem, I'm just saying we should be aware of it as council members, and then we should also encourage staff and Blue Cross and everyone to do the best they can because it is brutal out there when it comes to primary healthcare, right? So, I don't know if it's obviously a question for staff because I've got some questions around the review process. So first, let me ask, what is the current makeup of the benefits committee? How many folks are on that committee? Because you list in the packet there were so many that were listed, but in the resolution, there's many more folks identified to be appointed to that committee. Madam Chair, Councilor Michael Garcia: We have currently, we have the AFSCME member, Lois Della, we have Isaiah Gonzalez from the Fire Union, we have Eric Sanchez from the POA, the Police Union, we have Alexis Lero, who often sits on the Benefits Advisory Committee meetings. Sometimes Andy Hopkins will attend, and sometimes Chris Ryan from our City Attorney's office will attend. Myself, I'm on the committee and I'm a voting member for the RFP process. And sometimes we have other HR team members to assist depending on what we're talking about. So we typically meet with that group at least quarterly, and when we're gearing up for the new fiscal year, we meet several times before the budget is presented to the governing body. Okay, so the reason I'm asking is because I don't see any non-union folks that were part of the review process. Am I, I'm just going to go through the list that was provided to us, just want to confirm. We've got Lois Della, which is representing AFSCME, so Union. Eric Sanchez representing Police Union. Isaiah Gonzalez representing Fire Union. And then yourself, which is management, so you wouldn't be Union. Was that just confirming there was no non-union individuals in the Review Committee? It was just myself. Councilor Garcia, how come we didn't have any non-union representation as the review part of this Review Committee for this RFP? Madam Chair, Councilor Michael Garcia: We worked closely with the procurement team, and we felt that the committee that we put in place to include representation of all units, to include the non-union, was sufficient. There's no non-union voice on that Review Committee, and that's where I've got some concern, just because as outlined in the resolution, it clearly states that non-union has to have a voice as part of this membership committee. It states the committee shall include one representative of each bargaining union, which we did, one non-union employee, and others designated by the City Manager's office. So, from the folks you mentioned, Ms. Lero, Mr. Ryan, Mr. Hopkins, are they Union? Madam Chair, Councilor Michael Garcia: They are all non-union, and they are part of the Benefits Advisory Committee. The RFP members were not necessarily all the Benefits Advisory Committee members, but there are non-union members on the Benefits Advisory Committee. Right, and so I guess that goes to the point of we had folks on the committee, we should have had at least one there. I just want to make sure we're giving a holistic perspective of the review process. This is a very important contract that we're considering, and I want to make sure that all voices are heard. We don't have any of the review members here. I would definitely like to have a conversation with them just to ensure that any concerns that folks may have are at least brought to our attention. So I don't know if we can't really get into the RFP process right now, that's the sticky thing. I know we have to have those conversations offline. I guess how do you recommend we go about this just because I want to make sure that union and non-union representation, and so we can get outside, so we can bring in folks outside of the folks that participated in the RFP. So for example, you can bring in the AFSCME Union president, or others that are part of the Union to give the perspective of the Union, to give commentary if this is a fair proposal or not, because at the end of the day, I want to make sure that we're moving forward with a healthcare plan that protects our employees. As said in the past, I don't know who to attribute the comment to, but the city has had the Cadillac version of healthcare plans, and when we're trying to recruit and retain employees, having a high-quality healthcare plan is critical. If we do not have such a plan in place, my concern is we're going to see folks leave, and we are not in a situation where we want employees to leave. We have plenty of vacancies, we don't need any more, and we don't need folks leaving to work, leaving from working in the City of Santa Fe because of healthcare. We actually want the flip side, we want to bring folks in because we've got the best time possible. And so I guess, Ms. Salazar, how can we go about getting feedback to ensure that that is the case outside of not violating any of the RFP process? Madam Chair, Councilor Michael Garcia: I would say that we had another Benefits Advisory Committee meeting yesterday to remind everyone of the time frame and the timeline of how we would be requesting approval of this contract. And everybody who participated was in favor of the presentation, and certainly they were aware that we were presenting. I know it's difficult for some people to come after hours to these meetings, but certainly we can invite them at the next, I believe our next presentation will be to the Finance Committee on Monday and then to the governing body on Wednesday. Certainly we can invite them to attend, but I think that would be my recommendation, and hopefully they can come. We did get feedback. Again, I am a non-union employee. We did receive feedback from our non-union Finance employees. Although they weren't voting members on the RFP, we did request that we had, that we have one other non-union person beyond the voting committee for the RFP. But due to, you know, being short-staffed in certain areas, and other projects that people were working on, they weren't able to do so. But I would like to assure you that we did receive a lot of feedback from the non-union side in this process. But I feel really confident that we had a good process, and the union representation and their assistance in this process was really helpful, getting their perspectives, knowing where their membership, where they, where they live, how any disruption would affect them. We had great discussions about that, and their feedback was very helpful in this process. Okay, thank you, Ms. Salazar. So I guess I would like to request that we have union representation at the governing body meeting next week. Just for efficiency, I'd hate to bring them to Finance, hate to bring them to the governing body, might as well just invite them to the meeting where we're all going to be here. It's more efficient for them. Now, we were talking about specialty care, and how does this coverage work for out-of-care network providers, in particular any specialty care? You know, and when I'm looking at, for instance, let's use the example of cancer. We have a lot of folks that seek cancer specialty support services outside of New Mexico, and I'd hate for an individual to have to face the increased costs of healthcare because they are now going to be out of network. Is that going to be the case? No, so Madam Chair and members of the Council, when you think about Blue Cross Blue Shield, we are well known across the US, and that is one of, in fact, around the world. By you carrying a Blue Cross Blue Shield ID card, those providers recognize and they know how they will automatically file their claims. But when you take into account, we contract with 97% of US hospitals, 83% of physicians in the United States. So not only are you getting the network that we have here in New Mexico, you're also able to get providers outside. So when a person is unfortunately dealing with cancer, we do refer people to MD Anderson, sometimes to the Mayo Clinic, and we hear of those stories. There are times that some of our members, they are able to stay in New Mexico and receive just as great care, right? So that is an option for all Blue Cross Blue Shield members. And again, because we're part of a larger association, that Blue Cross is immediately recognized. And again, when you really think about the numbers, it's pretty significant. I do want to just share with you, here in New Mexico, we do contract with about 22,000 providers. Thank you for confirming that, just because I know that could be a concern for folks. Now, as far as the process, and I don't want to say a disruption in service, but it could be a disruption in service. Every single employee that is currently under Cigna is going to have to sign up under Blue Cross Blue Shield, and I'm understanding the process correct, which could lead to disruption in service if somebody doesn't follow the process. And I mean, I guess that's the plan. I know Alvin mentioned that, or somebody mentioned there's going to be workshops, et cetera, but I mean, I want to make sure that we have as minimal impact due to somebody having to do that sometimes technical and sometimes very intimidating process of switching insurance. Madam Chair, Councilor Michael Garcia: We absolutely agree with you, and we're really thankful that Blue Cross Blue Shield is going to be helping us with this active open enrollment, which will require all employees to basically sign up for insurance again. One thing that we're going to be working on in HR, it's going to be all hands on deck with our entire team, monitoring who has insurance right now. If someone missed, you know, the enrollment period, we're going to continue to review that report and reach out to employees to ensure that it wasn't just, you know, maybe they forgot or they didn't know how to get into the system to enroll. If we know that they have insurance now, we'll be doing lots of sessions in person at whatever hours we need to. I know that there are some employees who are 24/7 operations, so we'll be accommodating those schedules. We'll do some online or Zoom options, and we really want to make sure that all employees have the access and the assistance when they're enrolling online. Okay, and that also will hold true for any individual that might want to now opt into insurance, right? Because now this is a disruption in service, and they will have, is it a 60-day period? What is the, what is the time frame going to be? Madam Chair, Councilor Michael Garcia: As soon as we, as soon as we have a confirmed contract after next week, we will start the ball rolling to start the open enrollment process. It's a short window because our, our new fiscal year starts July 1st, so it'll be a few weeks. But again, every single day we'll be monitoring reports on what's coming in, who has insurance, who hasn't signed up, but they have, they currently have it now, and we'll be reaching out to employees. What is the time frame if you don't mind me asking? Sorry about that. I would say about three and a half weeks would be the open enrollment period. We've got nearly 90 days before the end of the fiscal year. I mean, we should, 60 days is three and a half weeks. That's going to be a hectic time frame for you, a hectic time for everyone. Everybody involved, I would like to extend that to a minimum of 30 days. Minimum, it should be 60 days. I think when, at least I'm, and I'm putting myself into perspective, when I've begun employment, you have that 60-day period to enroll. I see this as the same type of disruption in service, and we've got the time to do it. Why? Madam Chair, Councilor Michael Garcia: Because we are going with a new, if the contract is approved, we're going with a new vendor. There's a lot of work on the back end to build out what our plan looks like and to make sure that employees are covered. So there's a lot of work that's being done behind the scenes to make sure that the platform is ready come July 1st. So we need time. We need to be able to give the vendor time with all the employees and their enrollment information to get them in the system and make sure that everything's going to be smooth from July 1st. We've struggled with our insurances being on a fiscal year. A lot of entities use a calendar year, and the reason why I say we struggle is because our budget is usually approved at the end of, sometime in April, end of April, sometimes in May, and that leaves us a very short window to allow people for open enrollment aside from this RFP process and to get everything ready to make sure that all those changes happen by July 1st. Typically, you see an open enrollment on a calendar year side where people have maybe from September to November to enroll or October to the end of November, and then they start January 1st. But because we have a lot of things going on at the beginning of a fiscal year to prep for the beginning of a fiscal year, we have a very short window to get all that information loaded into the system and making sure that everything's ready to go come July 1st. Okay, just doing some quick math. I'd say 1,200 employees, 25 days to do this. That's saying 25 calendar days, not workdays. If three weeks, that's, let's say 15 days, that's roughly 80 employees that you all got to get signed up per day. Do you honestly, do you have the capacity to get that done? That's why I want to make sure, now is the time, let's build this out because I don't want to make sure that there are any reasons where somebody's healthcare coverage would lapse. You could be talking life and death situation. You can be talking hundreds and thousands of dollars in healthcare coverage if somebody has a lapse in service, where somebody, their service expires, their healthcare coverage expires, the next day they have a heart attack. You know, you can't predict healthcare needs in those emergency situations, and we need to ensure that there is not a lapse. And if, and Miss Elazar, I don't want to put this on you, Mr. Scott, since you're here, can we push that date out further to help Miss Elazar and her team have sufficient time to get employees enrolled? Mr. Scott: I'm not sure the mic is either on or picking up your voice. We need to get you a lapel pin. Hold this off yet. It's a good question, and I don't know the answer to it, but we'll, I think it's a very valid question, and we're going to sit down and see what we can hammer out. Yeah, we have to take care of people. There's no question we have to take care of people. There are people, it's a very good plan. You know, we're the Cadillac plan. We've had, that's, I'm using your words, is the same plan that we're going to be having. There may be some complications. There always are whenever you change plans. There's always complications. I read you entirely in terms of making sure that not only the employees have the time to make the informed decisions that they deserve to have a right to make, but we also have to have the time to do it right on our end so that we don't have mistakes later on. So I will definitely work with the staff, with the consultants, and we'll report back exactly what we can work out to maximize the opportunity for the employees. We owe it to them to do it right, and I agree with that. Okay, thank you, Mr. Scott. I appreciate all the time, energy, and effort that went into this big lift. I know because healthcare costs have been increasing, it's been more of a cost and burden on the city, but again, I look at it as an investment in our employees. It's not take-home pay for them, but it's healthcare coverage, and many of our employees, their life requires it. So I want to make sure we're doing everything we can to support them, whether that is providing the best plan, providing sufficient time to sign up for a new plan, providing for the supports to determine what are the next steps. So thank you, Miss Elazar. Thank you to the team that was involved in this. And again, please, I'll ask that if we have some union representation at the governing body meeting. No other questions, Madam Chair. Councilor Cass: Do you have anything to say? I think all the questions have been asked, and I'm looking forward to some of the other presentations at governing body. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I do have some questions. I will say that I am excited about this change. There has been some issues with our previous provider. Blue Cross Blue Shield does have a very good reputation in terms of coverage, of actually approving claims. There is one area that always is my pet area that I do want to ask about, and that is our alternative care. Over the years, a lot of providers, including Cigna, have started to use a third-party provider to pay for the claims for chiro, acupuncture, massage. Unfortunately, this third-party provider requires a lot of paperwork, and they don't pay out. They are very restrictive on what they will cover within these, and that has led to us losing a number of providers within the alternative care network, which is highly utilized. And, you know, especially, I know fire has had this conversation, especially for a group that is that, and police as well, you know, they have such physical jobs that take a physical toll, and they can't always be using pain meds because of, well, one, we've seen the risk of utilizing pain meds, but also their jobs don't allow them to. So I would like to hear more about how these areas are covered, and I hope that we're not going to be running into the same issue as we have been with Cigna. Madam Chair, I will let Blue Cross Blue Shield take that question. I will say generally, you know, we, I know sometimes these, these entities that vendors use to assist with the claims might feel restrictive, but it has also helped the city make sure that our plan is administered according to the way that it was approved. So I would just like to preface that, Madam Chair and members of the Council. So with Blue Cross Blue Shield, we, of course, will administer the benefits that you have been accustomed to. There's not going to be any changes. So for alternative medicine, that will continue to take place. The way we administer our claim processing, we do it internally. So we are very proud that all of our claim processors do work and process all of those particular claims. So we don't send it out to any type of outside vendors or anything. Wonderful. I'm very excited to hear that. I've actually recently had a conversation with an acupuncturist in town who does not take Cigna and went on a little bit of a rant about, but one thing that they mentioned is they've had good luck with a number of providers, Blue Cross Blue Shield being one of them. So I'm very happy to hear that that is kept in-house. If that changes, I think that that would be a really important conversation because unfortunately, what it has meant is that we have these benefits without actually having these benefits because, you know, of course, providers are charging us, you know, charging people a larger copay in order to make up for the fact that this network provider, this third party, does not actually reimburse in the way that you all do. So I'm very happy to hear that. The other thing that I have heard in terms of claims, you know, I've heard a number of complaints from various employees that they've had things rejected. They've had, you know, recommendations for MRIs rejected. Our out-of-network providers, where there's only one specialist in the area who does that work, they've had that rejected. Again, this has been an issue that I know Blue Cross does have a much better reputation from providers that I have spoken to and from individuals within the health arena. Can you speak a little bit more to that process? I know that there are very costly medical procedures, and of course, we are self-funded, so we do want to be, you know, we want to be careful, and we want to be pragmatic, I suppose, in what we are, what people are getting. But at the same time, you know, we want to make sure that people are getting the care that they need without having to jump through a lot of hoops, especially as everybody's mentioned, we know access is a huge issue. So telling somebody they have to get one more provider appointment could mean a six to eight-month wait for something else that they would, they'd be wanting to get. So can you talk a little bit more to how Blue Cross approaches some of those more extensive tests or, you did touch on it, but out-of-network providers that are, there is no other option that is in-network? Chair and members of the Council, so we have many different processes and, so when it comes to self-funded, which City of Santa Fe is, yes, you definitely want to be great stewards of your employee funds, and so on. We as administrators, we also want to make sure that we're being good stewards in that we are truly going to be approving what is medically necessary, right? So when it comes to the higher MRIs, we will always be asking for prior authorization when a member sees an in-network provider. Now, this is going to be the difference between in-network and out-of-network, but when you are seeing an in-network provider, we educate our providers and let them know what services do need to be prior authorized, what do not have to be prior authorized, and they're immediately able to, we no longer require referrals to specialists. Every once in a while, you'll see providers requesting for referrals, but it really depends on that provider that you're receiving service from. For the in-network, if a provider did not get a prior authorization, they performed the procedure, that provider cannot hold a member accountable. So we are very clear with our contracts with our providers that we have in place. We're very clear with when we educate them, and we try to educate them on a very regular basis. So some of the dissatisfaction could be the non-contracted providers because they don't know the rules of engagement because they don't have that contract. But what we have been seeing over the years, and this is a trend in insurance, is that we're starting to look at, because we know the dollars that employer groups are spending towards health insurance, we're starting to look at what really makes sense. So if we're giving or we're asking providers to get a prior authorization, but we approve 99% of the time, why are we asking for it? So we're starting to eliminate a lot of those prior authorizations. In addition, we just introduced what is called recommended clinical review, where the provider, for many procedures, they don't need the prior authorization, and what we do is we will review the medical records at the back end. And again, if they're contracted, they know if they're doing something that they shouldn't be, we are going to be asking for those dollars back. As the self-funded account, we would reimburse it back to you as the client. That's really wonderful to hear. I do appreciate that, and also, I think important for our employees to understand some of the, some of those benefits of going in-network may not just be a cheaper price. upfront, but also if there is something that occurs, they are protected there. I know that we've all heard the story of surprise medical bills because all of a sudden, "Hey, guess what? You weren't covered after we already did this procedure on you. Give us 20 grand." So, I am very happy to hear that, and I do think that'll be important to communicate. I also really appreciate the process of understanding that if you are already approving what doctors are saying is needed, that they are the experts, and taking insurance companies out of the decisions around what is necessary and really trusting your doctors that are in-network. I'm happy to hear that. I know that that is a trend that has gone the other way. I have worked for two insurance companies in my life, and I'm in the public health field, so I've seen a lot of it not in that direction. So, thank you for that. The other thing that I want to ask about that I know we've gone through Cigna, this might be Alvin, you may be the one to answer these questions, or I'm not sure, there might be a combination of people. Some of the wellness programs that have come through Cigna. So, I know that I get a lot of emails about, I believe, Omada. I have not experienced it myself, but I believe that is through Cigna. Am I correct in that understanding? Madam Chair: Omada is a program that is used by various insurance companies, and it is part of our Blue Cross Blue Shield offering. Okay. So, individuals that are utilizing that will still be able to. The other one is mail prescriptions. I know I get mine every 90 days, and that's wonderful because I forget to fill them all the time. So, is that something that will still be available through Blue Cross? Madam Chair: That is. We just had a pharmacy meeting, and everything will remain the same. Okay. And what we have to, will individuals have to, you know, resign themselves up for that, change their, you know, favorite or their preferred pharmacy with their doctors, et cetera? Madam Chair: We are, once this contract is approved, we will work with Cigna to ask them for file information for in-place prior authorizations, in-place mail order scripts. There's a laundry list of items that we're going to try and request from them, and then that information will be shared with Blue Cross so they can upload into their system to try and minimize some of the disruption that would come with changing over insurance carriers. Employees will still need to remember that when they go to fill their insurance, their prescriptions, at first time after July 1st, they will need to present a new ID card. And if they don't present that new ID card, they could be told by the pharmacist, "You don't have insurance," and that'll freak them out. But, you know, this will be part of the communication that we will help Alvin be sure that is covered during the open enrollment meetings so that way employees know to be sure that they present their new ID cards after July 1st. We also recommend that employees try and do a fill before the end of the year just so that way it gives them a little bit more time before to get through the transition. Okay, wonderful. Thank you. I appreciate that. And you also mentioned another one that I wanted to make sure, which is that if there had been an authorization, there's been a referral to a specialist that had occurred under Cigna. Now, if that doctor that gave the referral is no longer in-network with Blue Cross Blue Shield, will that referral still be honored? Madam Chair: What we will do in that situation is we will work with Blue Cross Blue Shield through their transition of care program. And what will happen is that employee will work with some team members at Blue Cross Blue Shield. They will review the situation, and they will make individual decisions pertaining to that individual's care based on what's needed. So, there is the opportunity that they may make one-off decisions to go ahead and approve and continue that care under that provider even though they would be out of network, and there may be a time limit on it. But those would be individual situations that, you know, Blue Cross Blue Shield's customer service and their teams would be working with your individual employees in that situation. Okay. All right. Thank you. I appreciate that. I know that there's a lot that goes into transitioning health plans, so it sounds like you guys are very thorough in this, and I really do appreciate that. I don't believe I have any other questions at this time for the individuals here. I also would appreciate having the union here and the individuals that serve on the Benefits Advisory Committee or have been part of this discussion process. I do think it's important getting their feedback. I know that each group has their own specific issues that are really important to them, and I would love to have that opportunity to speak with them as well. Other than that, if there are no other comments or questions, can I please have a motion to approve? Second. We have a motion and a second. May I please get a roll call? Councilor Castro: Yes. Councilor Garcia: Yes. Councilor Faulkner: Yes. Madam Chair: Yes. Motion passes. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, everybody, for being here. Appreciate the company and chambers tonight. All right, last item. This is consideration of Resolution Number 2025, to be numbered later. It is sponsored by Mayor Alan Weber, myself, Councilor Jamie C, and Councilor Amanda Chavez. It is a resolution making a finding of necessity and designating an area comprised of a majority of the Midtown Local Innovation Corridor Overlay District as a Metropolitan Redevelopment Area. We have Daniel Hernandez, the Director of the Metropolitan Development Agency, and Carly Vendetti, Asset Development Manager of the Metropolitan Development Agency. I read that much smoother this time. I'm glad I had a practice earlier. So, I did go ahead and pull this item, mostly because Carly has a presentation she gave to EDAC today. I wanted to make sure that that presentation also came to Quality of Life. Obviously, this is a big step in the Midtown development process, so I wanted to make sure that we had the opportunity to see this information as well as if you all had any questions. So, Carly, over to you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good evening, Councilors. I appreciate this all in attendance and asking those thoughtful questions about our healthcare previously, as I know they were on my mind, and I feel fortunate to be here after that just so I can report back to my household. So, thank you. Really quickly, I just want to introduce this and our purpose for this evening. We're seeking the approval of this designation report that hopefully you had the chance to look over. I will be giving a brief overview. By approving this report and doing so, we will make a finding of necessity later on with governing body, designating the area. This is the first part of this process. There is a resolution for this designation area that is required under the state statute. The Metropolitan Redevelopment Area Plan occurs under a separate resolution, of course, if this first area is designated and approved. So, as I said, this will be a brief presentation this evening. I will be introducing, of course, the Redevelopment Agency staff, our consulting team, Metropolitan Redevelopment Act, the state statute, the Redevelopment Area we are proposing, the geographic boundaries of that, and the criteria that are required that it meets, along with the schedule for creating the MRA. Oh my. Then I apologize. Did we, did we ever do the process of emailing this presentation to Marcel so she could email it to the committee? No, that's my fault. I should have asked for that. I apologize. If we could, is that a quick process or not so much? If we could do that, that would be wonderful. Thank you. And then, of course, we will get this put up onto Civic Clerk when we are able to access the file again. If we could have a little help bringing the presentation up on the screens. I believe Carly is plugged into her laptop at the podium. There we go. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to apologize again for not sending that previously. That's my fault. I did not remind you. That's all on me. You do not have to apologize. I take the blame. Well, there's always a good lesson, right? So, as I said, this will be a brief presentation. We'll be running through this fairly quickly. I have presented this to some of you before. Really quickly, who is the planning team? You know, myself, Carly Vendetti, Daniel Hernandez as our director, our Redevelopment Manager, Jack Kelly is not with us this evening. He has other, other things to attend to. We have a small department, but we are spread thin, and we are working hard. So, our backgrounds range from real estate development to urban planning and even real estate development in finance. We, of course, are not working alone. We have a consulting team on as Plan Collaborative and their sub-consultant, SP Friedman, for this initiative. Planned is based out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. They are a planning firm as well as a landscape architecture firm. They have quite a few planners on staff, and they brought on the expert firm, SP Friedman, out of Chicago, Illinois, to help with the economics, of course, and redevelopment strategies later on. These firms both have experience across New Mexico working with communities, including Las Cruces, Albuquerque, and quite a few others. So, they're familiar with the state statute and what makes New Mexico great. So, that's who we are working with. Really quickly, I say that they have familiarity with the state statute. The Metropolitan Redevelopment Act is the statute that allows municipalities to create redevelopment areas to access tools designed to facilitate economic development. For an area to qualify under this act, it must meet proposed, must meet criteria as identified in the statute. These are including but not limited to deteriorated or deteriorating structures, defective or inadequate street layouts, outmoded or impractical planning and platting, deterioration of site or other improvements, defective or unusual conditions of title, just to name a few. That is also often referred to as clouded title. Globally, of course, these are not the only criteria under the state statute. You can see how these directly apply to the area defined on pages 28 and 29 of the report. So, to identify how New Mexico City's establish a Metropolitan Redevelopment Area, we are already past this first step, excuse me, appointing a Metropolitan Redevelopment Commission. The mayor appointed individuals to our commission. We have five, and the governing body approved those. The commission makes a recommendation for designation and plan approvals. This morning at our Metropolitan Redevelopment Commission, our commission did approve the plan and makes that recommendation to governing body. We are currently in step two, designating a Metropolitan Redevelopment Area. We have, of course, compiled this report identifying the characteristics of an area in need of redevelopment. In order to move forward with this Redevelopment Area, the governing body must make a finding of necessity that this area meets the criteria and that it's in the best interest of public health, safety, and welfare. So, that is the step and stage we are in currently. And as I said at the beginning, third step of this is adopting a Metropolitan Redevelopment Plan. This, of course, hinges on step two being approved. This planning effort identifies and deploys methods to eliminate or prevent challenges to economic development and align redevelopment goals with community needs and objectives. So, the Metropolitan Redevelopment Area we are proposing this evening, and we have introduced to the governing body as of March 26th, is identified here with this green line. I'm able to zoom in a little bit if you need to. I can exit this view, and we can zoom in further. The proposed area encompasses the commercial areas of the existing Midtown Local Innovation Corridor, with the exception of the one property in the yellow ellipse, where St. Michael's and St. Francis meet. It's the Tres Santos apartment multi-family development. Just to identify why establishing a Redevelopment Area is essential, this was identified in previous planning engagements as a critical path forward. That being in the Community Development Plan, put out in 2023 after the Midtown Master Plan of 2022. This area is no stranger to planning efforts, of course, dating back to 2012. There was the Remic Plan. As I said, in 2016, the Local Innovation Corridor was adopted, and then when the university was assumed by the city, it became the focal point, of course, in the Midtown Master Plan efforts with a lot of engagement. So this plan is not reinventing the wheel. It is using a lot of the community engagement and feedback we have already received and helping us move forward with how to pay for a lot of these great ideas and later implement them. That will come with some of the economic levers and benefits that are made possible by first designating this area and then later approving a plan. So I got ahead of myself a little bit there, but the city-owned site, 64 acres, is where we began with our analysis as the MRA, and we realize that it's not a standalone area. Of course, there is a context that it exists within, and the intent of these previous plans all hinge on this larger corridor and making it more resilient for our community. Having an area that is this Redevelopment Area unlocks a lot of funding and a lot of funding opportunities, and as I said, economic levers to move forward and helps the community see direct change from possibly their taxation dollars. If a TIF is adopted, it goes straight into their community through just direct action. As I said, the direct benefits include a variety of impacts. There's an increase to funding resources, funding sources. It establishes a governance structure through the Metropolitan Redevelopment Commission, prioritizes resources, drives financial investment decisions, engages the public further just beyond what we've already done in 2012, 2016, 2022, 2023. We're building on those as we have already. We've reached out to adjacent property owners and sent out mailers to all property owners and management within 300 feet. It recognizes a flexibility in city-owned property valuation moving forward, and then it also, of course, maintains governing body approvals for any city-owned property going for disposition. Looking ahead at the timeline, today has been quite the day for this designation area of plan. We had governing body on the 26th where it was introduced. Today we had the Metropolitan Redevelopment Commission. We had Economic Development Advisory Committee here, this same presentation. Now, of course, we're with Quality of Life, and in the coming weeks, we will be with Finance Committee and Public Works. If all goes according to plan with our schedule, we will hopefully be before governing body on April 30th for this resolution. And that third step that I talked about for a possible plan, hinging on this approval and finding of necessity, would in our hopes be in October or November of 2025, or Q3. So that concludes my presentation. I want to invite our director, Daniel Hernandez, up to help me answer any and all questions you may have. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much, Carly. Really appreciate it. Questions, comments from members of the committee? Councilor Garcia. Councilor Garcia: Thank you, Madam Chair. Carly, for the presentation, the second time you and Daniel had presented to me previously. Can you tell me why we're not including the Tres Santos apartments, given that it is the only housing that is in the overlay district, and more importantly, it provides affordable housing for folks in our community? We wanted to concentrate this first effort in establishing the Metropolitan Redevelopment Area with commercial properties only because in the Community Development Plan, we talked about residential areas surrounding the Link District and the Midtown site as sort of a separate effort so that we can engage residents in a really different conversation around why they might want to consider being in the Redevelopment Area, what the advantage is to residential residents, what their advantages would be versus what the commercial corridors would be. So we just wanted to separate that out, and we sort of outlined that in the Community Development Plan. But we will be asking that question when we start our Neighborhood Stabilization Plan, and we just finished the RFP and hope to get it out within the next few days, actually. So we'll be starting that effort talking about Redevelopment Areas beyond the commercial zones. Councilor Garcia: Okay. And when do we plan to have those conversations? Because, oh, with the residents? Yeah. Well, you tell them what the timelines are. You know that better. So actually, the Stabilization Plan RFP has gone live as of the 28th. So March 28th, it went live. It will be open until the end of this month, and then we hope to have a firm in place by July 1. So with those hopes, the scope of this work is actually guided by the community. So we, of course, have asked for vendors or potential vendors to give us their scope and what they're looking for to drive, which includes research background and best practices for engagement. And then they will turn to the community and say, what sort of methodology are you really looking forward to? These are your options. These have been successful in Santa Fe, New Mexico, nationwide, and then help them navigate their own path in that way. Just one quick add-on to that. So we're going to use a very similar process that we did with the Midtown Master Plan. So the kind of the coined phrase that came out of that was this co-creation process, and we articulated that as part of the scope of work. So when we bring on a firm, we want to start working with community organizations, particularly in co-creating that engagement process with them and how we ask questions, what type of questions, what forms are best to ask those questions in. That'll be part of the scoping, the initial scoping that we do with the planning firm that's selected. Councilor Garcia: Okay. And so with, I know that the Hopo Man neighborhood has been identified for the Neighborhood Stabilization. What other areas surrounding Midtown campus? I anticipate, well, we focused on that, but we also opened up the question up to other neighborhoods that surround the Midtown site that may be affected by Redevelopment of the Midtown site. So we'll be talking to those neighbors as well. But again, part of that co-creation process is who should we be including in this discussion? So I think that all of that will unfold, and we'll keep, we'll keep the governing body, and I know that you're interested in that, and we'll keep you updated on that too. Councilor Garcia: Okay. Thank you so much. And given that we're somewhat navigating away from the corridor plan, I guess I got a question for you. Have we, did we consider including Franklin Miles Park in this designation? Because, by golly, that park needs some work. And if we designate that park within this area, we can begin to really polish up what was once, once probably the most flourishing park in the city, has become some would call an eyesore. And this is an opportunity for us to include it. I mean, so I think the question is with, with the, the not including the housing, that could be done through an amendment to the resolution. If I wanted to include Franklin Miles as part of these boundaries, how do I do that? Because I, I mean, I can request that you update the map, but there's not a formal process for me to do it because I honestly, I'm not joking, I would like the park to be included in, in the area. I think it provides a perfect opportunity for us. Can we get back to you on that? Because I don't have a clear answer how we can amend the plan right now or the map right now, but let, let me ask that how we do that. Councilor Garcia: Okay. Before we get to the governing body by the end of the month. Okay. Perfect. Yes. Carly mentioned TIFs. What about TIDs? So folks that aren't familiar with Carly, learning opportunity for the community, TIFs and TIDs. So Tax Increment Districts versus Tax Increment Financing. So a district, it depends on the sort of governing status of who controls that district, and then the Tax Increment Financing is appropriating a certain percentage of taxes as they currently exist. I don't want to let anyone think that this would be increasing taxes. That percentage then goes back into the community for prioritized projects. So that, that would be the difference, the governing structure there. To answer your question, Madam Chair, Councilor Michael Garcia, S.P. Freedman, their sub-consultant, is going to be looking at different approaches and methodologies that is best applied here in Santa Fe. So it's, it's going to be up to them, their analysis that will be thoroughly explained in the plan that hinges on this area approval. But we don't currently know at this time. Of course, TIFs, TIDs, BIDs, Business Improvement Districts, my apologies, another governing structure, are all up for debate here. So, of course, this resolution allows us to look even further into those economic levers and programs. Councilor Garcia: Perfect. I just wanted to make sure we're not leaving any options off the table. It sounds like they still are. Perfect. Well, thank you for the presentation. I appreciate it. Thank you again, Mr. Hernandez. No other questions. Councilor Castro: Yeah, just thank you again. I know that we've taken up a ton of your time, and I take up lots of time in going over and seeing the space. We heard a lot about what's happening at the rear Garson. I think that these are moving in great directions. Congratulations on a wonderful outreach event with different developers that might be interested. I continue to sort of push and poke and prod to get affordable housing in any place that we can in this space, and I know that you're looking into it. So thank you so much, and no further questions. All right. Wonderful. Well, I don't have any other questions. We did have a really wonderful conversation with Economic Development today. Again, that conversation around the residential areas, conversations around if there was any downside, to which we discussed something that the governing body had discussed a long time ago, and we passed our MRA ordinance around perception of an area being called blighted, which again speaks to why this will be a really important conversation to have with neighborhoods specifically and let them have that decision. So Economic Development was definitely in favor and excited about this. I don't know if you guys have anything to report from speaking with the MRA this morning and presenting this. Did they have any comments that we should be aware of? Well, they were highly supportive of it, making the recommendation for approval of the Redevelopment Area and moving forward with establishing the area there. I think that the, the most interesting comment that they all coalesced around was this idea that it is an area that, you know, the link had been created. It hasn't really been used, and that there, that through this process, an agency is established in order to facilitate the kind of development in a particular area of town that people want to see. Mixed use, they want to see compact development, they want to see walkable areas. And often times, when a developer wants to build that kind of development, they go through sort of a roundabout process within City Hall. But through this process, there's an agency now that is facilitating, creating certainty for developers, facilitating processes for them to actually get the type of development that the city wants to see at that part of town. So I think that was what, you know, they were most excited about and being stewards of Redevelopment. in that particular area of town. Wonderful. Thank you. And thank you again so much for this presentation, for all this work, and for getting us to this place. It's always really exciting whenever we hit any type of milestone or next step with Midtown. So thank you. If that is all, can I please get a motion to approve? Second. We have a motion and a second. And Councilor Faulkner did have to leave at about, I think it was 7:23, that she exited. And so she is now excused. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Garcia? Yes. Madam Chair? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you so much. And thank you guys again so much for being here tonight. All right, we are close to the end. Matters from staff. I will send it over to you, Madam Chair. Councilors, thank you. Caught me a little off guard. Let me pull up my notes. Johanna will go first. I'm going to wing it. Madam Chair, councilors, thank you so much. I first want to kick it off by saying thank you to Councilor Garcia for coming to our housing event today. For those of you unable to attend, Madam Chair, I know you had EAC. It was double-booked. So thanks for being there. I apologize to miss EAC today, but well-attended, oversubscribed. We had over 60 folks there and had a wealth of information presented regarding resources and updates for affordable housing. As mentioned previously, we're really trying to focus on developing organized communications network so we can get information out to our housing development community. So moving forward there, I would just encourage you to read our newsletters. And we've got a lot coming up. And let me know if you have specific questions. April is a really busy month. A lot of our community partners are working on things. And again, I want to thank you for your feedback on the strategic plan. Very first baby step on this, and it'll take all of us to make sure that that gets all the input we want in there to guide economic development. So thank you. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Director Hammond Paul. Madam Chair, councilors, thanks. And it was a fascinating discussion tonight. So thank you all for the questions, especially regarding the health plans. A few updates, mostly from the Community Services Department. We have a community math festival at the Teen Center in partnership with STEM Santa Fe coming up this Saturday from 12:00 to 2:00. And then we also have a community fair from 2:00 to 3:30, also at the Teen Center. Registration is coming soon for the open registration for the Teen Summer Program at the Teen Center. And then a few other things. We have a generative poetry art, generative poetry workshop on April 12th from 1:00 to 3:00 at the Santa Fe Main Public Library in partnership with Arts and Culture, who was here earlier. I'm going to mispronounce this. On Friday, April 5th, we have a Zioni workshop for families with children. And it is a traditional folk Eastern European folk tradition in which a wax resistant process is used to dye eggs, mostly using motifs from nature. My family's Czech, and I didn't know it was called this, and we actually did this as I grew up. Those are most of the updates. We are going to be in May doing a potential closure for one day of the pools while we train new lifeguards. It's a difficult thing that we have to do, but it's going to be on a weekend because most of the new lifeguards are going to be students for the summer. And the only time we can't, we can't ask them not to be in school while we train them. So we're going to have to do it on a weekend. But we'll provide information early and often on that because I know that the pool schedule is of great interest to the public. So with that, no more updates. Thank you so much. Marcel, did you have anything for us this evening? Any matters for members of the committee? Councilor Castro, I just want to point out that we got an email today. Friday, April 3rd, at 2:00 p.m., our Emergency Services Manager will be on Richard Eeds. So I'm very excited to hear about that. Wonderful. I'm getting a little confused with our dates. So wait, you said Friday, April 5th, but I April 3rd. I apologize. So you're Thursday, April 3rd, and then Friday, April 4th, or is it Saturday, April 5th for the dates at the library? Right? Am I looking at the right calendar? No, you probably are. I'm reading the email. So sorry. EEDC, we might need to update that. It's Friday is the 4th, Saturday is the 5th. So I guess he will be on the radio Thursday the 3rd, I would assume. Thursday the 3rd. And the event at the library is on Friday or Saturday? It is Friday, April 4th. Friday, April. Sorry, that was a typo. Yeah, no problem. Just wanted to make sure that we had the correct date. What year is it? I'm, you know, I'm not really sure anymore. And especially like, what fiscal year is it? I get very confused. My only matter is I did want to make sure that Director Hammond Paul heard about the wonderful job that the recreation department did with sign up for summer programs for kiddos. This was my first time experiencing it for employees. And we will get to open it up to the public. But I would actually really love to have Melissa Bustos here to talk about what they have done. I think that it is an incredible resource in this city that I know that we worked to expand. And I just would love the rest of the committee to hear all about it because I know that it's quite a lift. They do an incredible job. And I'm really excited to actually get to participate in it as a parent this year. So kudos to your team. And with that, our next meeting will be Wednesday, April 23rd. And at 7:37 p.m., we are adjourned. Thank you.