Quality of Life Committee Wed, Jun 4, 2025 · Quality of Life Committee https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/318 == Executive Summary == The Quality of Life Committee discussed several key initiatives, including the Age-Friendly Santa Fe program and a proposed micro-community for homeless families at 2395 Richards Avenue. The Age-Friendly Santa Fe initiative, a collaboration with AARP, aims to improve livability for older adults by focusing on transportation, housing, and communication of resources. Preliminary findings from community engagement highlighted these three areas as top concerns, and staff will continue to develop an action plan. The committee also extensively debated a resolution to establish a micro-community for homeless families at 2395 Richards Avenue. This project, which has been under discussion since 2020, aims to provide shelter and supportive services. Discussions included the site's suitability, community engagement strategies, and proposed amendments to ensure accountability, such as a drug-free zone, biannual reports, and a three-year term limit for the facility. Concerns were raised about contractor oversight and the city's ability to terminate contracts, prompting requests for more information on these processes. == Key Decisions == - Approved the agenda. - Approved the consent agenda as amended (Item F was pulled). == Motions & Votes == - Motion to approve an unspecified item (likely previous meeting minutes or general agenda item) — Passed (3 Yes, 1 Abstain, 1 Yes from Chair). == Public Comment == Councilor Chavez expressed gratitude for the responsiveness and accessibility efforts, particularly for Spanish speakers and individuals with diverse needs, regarding the Age-Friendly Santa Fe initiative. Councilor Castro echoed these sentiments and suggested exploring intergenerational work and leveraging Transit for senior services. The Chair emphasized the "build for the young and old, capture all" philosophy for age-friendly initiatives. Councilor Garcia proposed amendments for the micro-community site, including a drug-free zone, biannual reports, and a three-year term limit. Councilor Castro emphasized the need for accountability and oversight regarding contractor operations and costs. Councilor Faulkner highlighted the need to educate the community that micro-communities are not "another Pete's Place" and are successful models for transitional housing, particularly for families. Director Henry stressed the importance of the city being a reliable partner for providers while also acknowledging the need for robust complaints and response mechanisms in contracts for vulnerable populations. Director Henry also highlighted that many homeless families are working families and essential workers. Councilor Castro advocated for the reinvigoration of the Homelessness Task Force. Councilor Chavez encouraged attendance at the Gun Violence Awareness Event and shared a personal anecdote. == Topics == - Age-Friendly Santa Fe - Community Engagement - Housing Affordability - Transportation & Walkability - Communication & Information Access - Youth & Family Services Data - Gun Violence Awareness - Homelessness Task Force - Pride Month Events - Arts & Culture Events == Full Transcript == Can we please go ahead and take ourselves live? Madam Chair, Councilor Casada, we are live. Wonderful. All right, it is 5:02 p.m. I'm going to call the Wednesday, June 4th Quality of Life Committee meeting to order. May I please have a roll call? Councilor Castro, same thing. Councilor Casset, I'm sorry. Councilor Chavis, here. Councilor Garcia, present. Councilor Faulkner, here. Madam Chair, I'm here. Madam Chair, you have a quorum. Thank you so much. Moving on to approval of the agenda. Any changes from staff or the committee? If not, can I get a motion? Move to approve. Second. Motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Moving on to approval of consent. From my understanding, only item F was pulled off. Anything else to be pulled off at this moment in time? If not, can I get a motion to approve as amended? Motion to approve as amended. Second. Motion and a second. Roll call, please. Councilor Castro, yes. Councilor Chavez, yes. Councilor Garcia, yes. Councilor Faulkner, yes. Madam Chair, yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Okay. Moving on to our presentation, Santa Fe Age-Friendly Presentation. We have Maria Sanchez Tucker, Community Services Director, and Andrew West, who is our, who contractor with, what do you mean by contractor? We have a city email, like you're our contract. Please explain to you. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee. Thank you for having me tonight to give an update on Age-Friendly Santa Fe. We're really excited to be working on this project that is going to improve Santa Fe for people of all ages. We have, as you know, we were approved to be a part of the AARP Age-Friendly Communities last fall, and we have started working on building our action plan and community engagement. With that, I'm really pleased to introduce Andrew West, who we have hired as our project manager on contract to help us run our project. He is going to provide the presentation tonight, and I will also be here for questions. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Mr. West, thank you for being here. Thank you so much. It's not letting me share my video, but I'm okay if you do not have to see my face. Oh, here we go. There we go. I just got permission. There we go. Good evening. Thank you so much. My name is Andrew West, and I'm a local researcher here in New Mexico. I research healthy aging strategies, and I specialize in these age-friendly action plans. In fact, when I was pulled in with all of you with the City of Santa Fe, this will be my fifth action plan that I've worked on in the United States for cities, with populations ranging anywhere from about 40,000 to about a metro size of a million. What I'm here to talk about today is just a brief overview of what the age-friendly initiative is in general, talk a little specifically at how it applies here to Santa Fe, and then give you an update on what Maria and I and the team have done currently with residents and other community leaders when it comes to getting this initiative launched, and also how we've engaged the community, which is all going to lead to development of our age-friendly action plan. We can move on to the next slide. So, age-friendly communities, even though it is sponsored by AARP, was actually an initiative that began by the World Health Organization in 2007. It was created for the specific purpose of getting communities and governments prepared for population aging. The reason why this was so important to them is research was looking at population aging kind of as a problem, meaning that the way that we live our lives, the way we design our communities, and the way we, let's say for example, even organize our healthcare, if we don't address the fact that older adults as the largest growing segment of the population on the planet, if we don't start to change how we live our lives this way, it can actually become a problem when it comes to preventing people from access to services and just decreasing the quality of life. But the age-friendly initiative was a way, how do we get ahead of that? So how do we use population aging as an asset to then really just grow the livability of our communities for all ages? What they did was, with the World Health Organization, they came up with these domains of livability. These are eight quality of life metrics ranging from accessible buildings and outdoor spaces to things about building strong communities, about inclusion of people of all ages and different abilities. What they did was they came up with these domains, and they came up with strategies to get governments and communities to assess what do you do well along these domains, and then talk to your community and see how you can improve and do a gap analysis to set you up some own strategies and goals for your own community to then be better along these domains of livability. One thing that's interesting about the age-friendly is even though it says it's for all ages, because it's focusing on older adults specifically, a nice way to frame this is we talk about older adults as the conversation starter. If we could start thinking about something as simple as the design of a sidewalk, our transportation infrastructure, and how we include diverse populations within our communities, if we think about just older adults as, let's say, like the conversation starter, the first population, then we start to see how we can open up access for people of different ages and different abilities. From research, we know that when you program for older adult needs, you actually are programming for the needs of most facets of your community and population. AARP is the US delegate. So they're the ones that are responsible for age-friendly initiatives here in the United States for the World Health Organization. So for example, when the City of Santa Fe was in, earned partnership in the age-friendly network, AARP then collects that information and then puts that into the information for the World Health Organization. We can move on to the next slide. So here's a nice little visual about these different domains. What we're doing here in Santa Fe right now is, so we've put together, and we'll talk a little bit about that in the next slide, but we talk about the team of community leaders that we've organized to help guide this initiative, and then talk about the different ways that we've interacted with Santa Fe residents and getting to know two things: what Santa Fe does well for older adults, and how Santa Fe can improve the quality of life for older adults, looking at these domains of livability. You can see here in this wheel that AARP has designed here, there's kind of two areas or buckets, you could say, that these domains of livability are categorized. One is around the built environment, like housing and transportation and outdoor spaces, and the other domains are around the social environment, meaning how well do your residents engage with civic activities? How included do they feel? How many opportunities does your community have to engage and encourage people to participate more in their community and in society? So what we do is we look at these domains and we kind of form our needs assessment, or we kind of, these are the domains that we use to ask the community where we, what do we do well, how can we do better? We can move on to the next slide. So, the initiative, as far as when I was pulled in, started around February of 2025. What we did is we came up with a community engagement strategy of what were some of the best ways to engage residents of Santa Fe so we can ask them, what do we do well? What can we do better? We also formed an advisory committee of different community leaders and community representatives across sectors. So we have people from the City of Santa Fe government on our advisory committee. We also have partners from hospital organizations, nonprofits, and private businesses. We formed this advisory committee, and we actually will have our first formal meeting in two weeks. Another thing that we designed to engage the input of the community was we put together an age-friendly survey. This is a survey that there's a template that was designed by AARP and the World Health Organization, and we adapted that specifically to the Santa Fe community. We distributed that through email blasts. We also did paper survey distributions at all the City of Santa Fe libraries and senior centers and other city-sponsored housing facilities. We have over 500 survey responses already, and that is just a month and a half of promoting this survey. Two other in-person types of events that we hosted through the Santa Fe library system: we hosted four healthy aging workshops at different library locations over the course of the month of May and early June. We just wrapped our last one actually this Monday, and that was actually a really fun workshop where we engaged participants and just talked about, from my background researching healthy aging, what are some of the individual skills that we can create for ourselves to help us age better? Then we opened it up to a really great conversation from the residents to say what the City of Santa Fe could do to then support these skills for us to age better. We also hosted three listening sessions at the three City of Santa Fe senior centers. Through all those conversations, we engaged over 200 residents. We are just now starting to look at the survey responses. Where we are right now is we're going to be looking at the data from the survey. We're going to be looking at the themes from the listening sessions. Then we'll perform a gap analysis from there. We're going to look at A, what do we do well, and B, what could we do better? Then from there, we're going to draft goals and strategies based on what we learned from the community about that would inform the age-friendly action plan, which then we will submit to not just the City Council, but then submit to AARP and the World Health Organization for official age-friendly designation. We can move on to the last slide. Maria and I just wanted to close with some notes on what some of the themes or trends that we've noticed in just preliminary glances at the survey results, but some very strong themes that came up from our listening sessions on our workshops. One thing to note, one thing I've learned from AARP is they recommend that your first action plan or the first phase of your age-friendly initiative, instead of focusing on all of the domains of livability and try to come up with strategies and goals for all of them, they suggest maybe picking one or two that are the, or excuse me, one to three that are the most important to your residents, to the community. Just in our conversations and the focus groups and the listening sessions and the workshops, we note three very important themes from the residents, and these surround housing, and communication and information. Specifically, there was a lot of conversation on how hard it is to, let's say, navigate the transit system of Santa Fe, particularly around the Santa Fe, excuse me, the St. Francis corridor, when it comes to it's not a very walkable place, particularly for older adults who have recently given up their driver's license and pretty much do a lot of their transporting in Santa Fe on foot. Other issues around parking and affordable parking came up a lot in that conversation. The other major theme was concerns around housing: how affordable housing is and also the availability of safe housing for older adults. The last theme that came up was around communication and information. One thing that we've learned in the conversations is Santa Fe has a lot of really great resources, both offered by the city and non-city partners or community organizations, resources and services that really support a good quality of life. What's interesting is there's just not a lot of awareness around who to go to for what, to even find those resources. So we see some issues around having a better-informed community and having better communication and promotion of different resources and services. So at this point, we think that the action plan that we're going to tease out, that we're going to develop, we're going to tease out these three themes, and we think that these might be a good focus for the Age-Friendly Santa Fe initiative. The next steps are over the summer we'll do our data analysis and we will craft an action plan. Then the next set of community engagement events that we have planned is we're going to present preliminary goals and strategies to more listening sessions and workshops for Santa Fe residents to give more input on. If they like the ideas, maybe there's something they want to enhance or maybe not like, they can let us know. As long as we can show that we've really engaged the community to create these goals and strategies, it really just enhances the sustainability and the positive impact of this Age-Friendly Action Plan and Age-Friendly Santa Fe initiative. I will go and stop there. Thank you very much. Wonderful. Thank you so much for being here and thank you so much for your presentation. Director Sanchez Tucker, did you have anything to add at this time? Madam Chair, members of the committee, I just wanted to also mention that we did have Spanish interpretation at all of our listening sessions. We will be hosting a Spanish-speaking listening session on the 16th, on Monday, at the Teen Center at 6 PM. We're trying to get the word out to our community partners so we can make sure that we have voices from every segment of our community. That's what we're working on. I think we had some really fruitful conversations with our community members who participated. I look forward to seeing the data and how we move the plan forward so that we can actually take this plan and proceed with some meaningful goals and objectives that we can actually act upon. I think the transportation issue, we've already started talking with Transit, started talking with our Senior Services Division to see about some of these recommendations that I've heard in our listening sessions, to see how we can start slowly improving some of these issues. So, I think this is going to be a really positive plan for the city and one that just won't sit on the shelf, but one that we can actually enact actionable goals that will help us serve everyone of all ages in Santa Fe. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Really, really appreciate it and looking forward to all of that data and information as well as that gets accumulated and put together. Councilor Chavez, did you want to start this off as you were the sponsor of the resolution that really kicked off this project? Thank you. First of all, I've been sad I haven't been able to go to any of them because I have a new job. But I do want to say that you have been incredibly responsive in making sure that we're starting age-friendly, right? Increasing accessibility. And I feel like with our process, we've already started that, which is really, I don't know, a good start and leads to a lot of hopefulness and really listening to the community and making sure that everyone is included and everyone has access. I know I bugged a lot about making sure that it was accessible to all community members. I really pushed for Spanish. I really wanted to make sure we captured voices of all, and you were the one that actually did the work to make sure that happened. So, I thank you for that. I think that this is a very small step to many other steps to come to make Santa Fe age-friendly. This is also important to me because of my work around special education. I keep mentioning that because that was a huge component when I first met with AARP when they presented this to me. That really was important to me is inclusivity. That's not just for individuals of all ages, but individuals of all needs. Because we are different, or we are diverse, that should not interfere with how we interact with the city that we live in. We should all have equal access to the city that we live in. We should have equal engagement, equal beautiful moments. I think that this will give us the data we need to make sure as city officials we can make that happen. So, I just want to thank you for your work. I want to apologize for not being present. I know I already explained why, but it's been hard missing those conversations. But thank you for allowing me to bug you either way. So, thank you, Maria. Thank you so much, Councilor. Councilor Castro? Yeah, just to echo my colleague's sentiment. Thank you so very much for making things accessible and making sure that everybody is included. I know it is not an easy task. Andrew, thank you as well. I do have a few comments. I don't know if really questions, but we've been talking a lot about intergenerational work and how we can sort of bring this advisory committee into collaboration with some of our youth. So I just want to put a peg in that as well and mention some of the work we've been doing with Transit. We did have a presentation from the Transit Advisory Board at the Metropolitan Planning Organization recently, and there was some discussion of Transit possibly taking on some of those senior services. I think that we could leverage some of our funding in better ways if we did take on some of that through Transit as opposed to Senior Services. I think we do need to talk to Director Wheeler, probably most likely, to make that happen, and I'd like to facilitate that in any way. Yeah, just thank you so much for your work, and I'm impressed with the 500-plus responses from our community. That's amazing. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor. Any other questions, comments from members of the committee? Thank you so much. Definitely looking forward to this as well. I know that we have talked a lot about looking at age-friendly both in all spectrums. I think it was the Reggio Emilia city in Italy, which is what the educational philosophy is based off of, that if you build for the really young and for the really old, you happen to capture the entire population. So, I think it's a really exciting endeavor that we're taking and one that we've heard from all sorts of individuals. I do really want to recognize Councilor Chavez and her spearheading this work and bringing this forward. And of course, you and all the work that you do. Thank you, Councilor Chavez, for bringing this to our attention and all of your support for making this happen. I think it's going to be really fruitful. Shameless plug to take the survey if you haven't and share with your networks because if you Google Age-Friendly Santa Fe, the website will come up. It'll give you all the information. English and Spanish survey is available, so please make sure that all your friends of all ages are taking the survey. Thank you so much. Thank you. So, Age-Friendly Santa Fe, just for anyone who didn't hear. All right, moving on to item F. It's consideration of Resolution Number 2025, to be numbered later, sponsored by Mayor Alan Weber, myself, Councilor Jamie Cassett, Councilor Alma Castro, and Councilor Amanda Chavez. It is a resolution identifying city property at 2395 Richards Avenue as a location for a micro-community to provide shelter and supportive services for individuals experiencing homelessness in Santa Fe. Henry Hammond Paul, our Community Health and Safety Director, is here. Henry, would you go ahead and I know we've had a number of questions. Yeah, if you can just go ahead and provide the basic information about this, and then we'll jump into questions from the committee. Whichever, if you would like to stay there or go to the podium, whatever makes you more comfortable. I'm perfectly fine with that. A second home up there, so I might as well. A place where you had enough time at the podium if you want. He's created a little, you know, a little home there for himself. Start like keeping snacks here. Okay. So, just to, I don't have slides prepared for tonight, and then I can have some slides prepared for next Wednesday. Just to kind of help set the stage, there is a resolution in front of this committee. What it does is it directs the city manager, if approved, it directs the city manager to take all necessary steps required to establish a micro-community on city property, such as land use permitting, site preparation, and community engagement, and any other administrative steps necessary to operate the city property as a micro-community. This has been a conversation that we have been having for quite some time. I believe I have my colleague Kristen Woods, who's a program manager in the Youth and Family Services Division, to correct me on this, but since 2020-ish, so nearly, you know, three and a half years or so, about this being a meaningful and endorsed way to address the challenge we have with lack of beds in our city. Specific to the resolution and the site at hand, this site is intended to be for families with children. Very importantly, this directs the city manager to have staff, my team, and project managers that we're working on, to pursue the whole process. That includes, importantly, community engagement, and that is a precondition for any of the next steps that we actually take towards meaningful development at a site. So, let's see, in addition, given the why, the location, and there's a handful of reasons this location is being identified in this resolution. I will say first and foremost, sorry, one second. First and foremost, the population that is intended to serve is families and children. Having it next to city resources is crucial. You just heard from Director Sanchez Tucker, who oversees the rec centers, senior services, and the libraries, and that is inclusive of the GICC. We have a lot of programs that children and families access at the GICC. Having this proximate to that location where these, they won't be unhoused because they'll be housed, kids and families can access those programs is really important. We just gave 44 passes to city recreation facilities to the families living at Consuelo's Place. This would be a similar process where we would want to support those individuals to access city services and resources. It's, you know, the city needs to be held accountable for this type of work. So having it next to the fire station where we have, you know, a level of public safety functions as well as critical public health functions operating out of is great. In my mind, I believe, you know, the site on a road at Christ Lutheran is also next to a fire station. I believe that these sites do very well when they're next to city services and public safety services. I think that this site also warrants, given that it is serving family populations, it warrants being not a low-barrier site and having that be documented. I believe there's a resolution, I think that makes a lot of, or sorry, there's an amendment. I personally think that makes a lot of sense because given the population that this is intended to serve, having this be not a low-barrier site is appropriate. And let me, I think there's a complicated piece here too, which is proximity to neighborhoods. I think we're trying to walk a line understanding the concerns that communities and neighborhoods have about having these types of services in them. At the same time, these are families and children who are members of our community. So this site, while it's not as proximate to neighborhoods as perhaps another site that was previously identified, it still can access certain resources in that community as we want all members of our community to be able to access, but at the same time there is a buffer. One other aspect of this is that just the geographical layout of the property is very conducive to development. There are utilities already there that are approximate to the fire station. It's flat. Again, it's relatively removed from direct neighbors, which is a good and a bad thing. So, just with regard to community engagement, there are going to be a couple aspects to that. But first and foremost, what does it mean to, as we all know, representative engagement is important. And there are motivated people who want to engage and there are unmotivated people who maybe we want to engage as well. So, how do we get a full representation of people in that neighborhood? So part of what we'll be doing is sending out mailers, and I believe we're currently scheduled to do a 0.5-mile radius of the site, but I'm going to double-check on that and I think that's a fungible number that we can discuss as an organization. And then in addition to sending out mailers and trying to reach addresses within a given radius, there's also going to be stakeholder identification. So looking at key, whether they're neighborhood groups, business groups, businesses, other types of entities that have a kind of representative interest, and making sure that they're at the table too. So I will pause there and happy to answer any questions. Wonderful. Thank you so much. So we do have actually three of the sponsors sitting at the table this evening. I would just state that I think Henry, you've laid out the outline for why I really wanted to move forward with this. I do agree that some of the specifications that are not currently in the resolution do need to be added, such as the focus on families and what that means in terms of what type of design this is going to be. But I'm really looking forward to moving forward, having this conversation with the community. I'm very excited about a site like this that is really meant to, as you stated, it's not as proximal to other residential areas, but it is still rather close. But really looking at how we bring in a lot of these families that haven't really been able to settle in this community and give them that opportunity to do so. And I am more than happy to welcome them as residents of District 4. So, Councilor Castro Chavitz, would you like to say anything at this time before we jump into questions? Councilor Castro: I will, I do have some questions and I'll reserve those for later, but I want to thank Director Hem and Paul, and I want to also acknowledge one of the reasons that I jumped onto this legislation is that we are looking at families. These are some really interesting populations that we have considered, veterans, families, and folks need to remember that these services are not readily available. So thank you so much. Thank you. I think this is a start of something that we need to have in taking action, which will initiate important conversations and proving success to neighborhoods. I think every one of our districts needs to experience the fact that we can collaborate in this process and we can show results and the positive impact that has come across the nation from some of these micro-communities. And I keep saying this, I know that there has been a lot of mention of why have town halls not been held to discuss the different sites. I think that we've had a lot of comment that represented how those conversations would go. And I think what's more meaningful is for us to initiate action and then collaborate with community to build something that's successful. And I hope that this process will initiate that and be an example of more micro-communities that we could initiate across the city and how the interactions with these neighbors can be a model of success and other initiatives that may come out of it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Council Garcia, you did pull this, so I will go ahead and send it over to you. Councilor Garcia: Thank you, Madam Chair. And I apologize. I did pull because I had an amendment that unfortunately was not ready for tonight, but the amendment, just a quick synopsis, it would establish the site as a drug-free zone, which would prohibit drugs and alcohol use at the site. It would request that a city manager or the city manager designate provide biannual reports to the governing body. That way it allows for not only the governing body to get critical updates but the public as well. And then it establishes that the pallet shelter current term would be for three years and then it would have to come back before the governing body for renewal. So I'm assuming, well not I'm assuming, that this will be before the governing body should this pass, well it's already passed one committee, so it'll be before the governing body next week. Regarding questions, some initial questions that we've gotten is service providers. I know we're providing contract service providers, but are they going to be in the same instance that the Christ Lutheran site is where there is 24/7 support? Madam Chair, Councilor Michael Garcia: Yeah, absolutely. 24/7, that is a condition that the city is adamant on, that there is 24/7 services and presence on the facility. In addition, I would also point out that this will be a gated community in that it will have very nice fencing around it to protect the residents inside from any outside bad actors. Councilor Garcia: Okay. Thank you, Director. You mentioned fire and how the proximity to fire and yeah, there's pallet shelter. Has there been any conversations with Chief Moya or anybody from his team regarding any expectations, any supports they're going to provide, anything like that? Madam Chair, Council Garcia, thank you. Thank you again for that question. Actually, and I don't say this to throw our chiefs under the bus by any means, but the, and they have said I can say this, but the current micro-community across from Fire Station 4, which is a low-barrier micro-community, it has had so few, I believe there have been 17 calls for service total. And that's compared to 1,993 at, for instance, not apples to oranges, but the many people in both the police department and fire department, they didn't even know that that location was a micro-community. It is such a non-issue from a public health and public safety perspective. So they will be, I mean, I think there is the same expectation for any residents in the city that if there is a need, public safety and public health and those types of resources are deployed. I think I'll be hopeful if little kids can climb on fire trucks and things like that, but there's not any kind of special requirements there. It's more that proximity is good for everybody there. Councilor Garcia: Gotcha. Thank you, Director. You mentioned 17 calls. I don't know if you have this data off the top of your head, but if you can maybe get it for the governing body meeting, we can identify what those 17 calls entailed because, for example, if all 17 are dealing with drug use response, that might not be a challenge this site given the prohibited use at these sites. So, just if we can get some clarification on what those 17 calls were for. Absolutely. And I know for a fact that they were proactive. They weren't police calls. There had been zero police calls to that location as of the last time I got the data from Chief Joy, which I believe was through February. With regard to the EMS calls or the fire department calls, I believe, and I will get the specific data on that as long as it's not identifiable, but I believe they were for things like chest pains or falls. Councilor Garcia: Okay. But I want to make sure that I can speak to that with the accurate data. And just on a data piece, if I may take a moment, last night, I don't, I'm not going to assume everybody had the pleasure of, I mean, I know we all did, of the full conversation. But we talked a lot about accountability and data. I believe that one of the major concerns right now is public health and public safety and how unhoused populations are affecting those kind of quality of life issues in our city. And I believe that we should be using the public safety data that we have, which is very good and clean data, to hold ourselves accountable to show that if we're saying that these types of interventions have minimal, if any, impacts on communities, often positive impacts, we should be able to point to things like reduction in crime or decrease in calls for service. So I would welcome, as I mentioned, I believe last night, I'll be preparing monthly reports to the governing body on the suite of initiatives that we're pushing forward, and at the very least those kind of data pulls could be included. I think it takes, there's a moment where the data becomes valuable. Like we need to let the lag kind of catch up. So it's, we're actually looking at true impacts. But that to me is a very fair addition into this reporting request. Councilor Garcia: And just off of my recollection, we can from those 17 calls you mentioned, I know we can make it 16 calls that we, that are unknown because one of them you and I were at a meeting where one of the meeting participants needed medical service and was not drug-related. It was other medical issues. That's correct. I think that was age and heat related. Councilor Garcia: And last question, and it's more so maybe a request for an update on next steps. So last night, as we were approving the contract for the Urban Alchemy outreach team, it was communicated to us that some of the funding that we had allocated for pallet shelters was going to be used to support the Urban Alchemy contract. So if we can on next Wednesday get an update in regards to, you know, the number of units we've purchased, et cetera. Just kind of an inventory, so to speak. I know we had the inventory of the already purchased units. Just more so what is the plan given the reduction in resources there, if we had purchased any with that money. Just a kind of a quick rundown with that. That way it gives the governing body an idea of what any potential resources might be available for an additional pallet shelter site. With that, thank you, Director Hempole. That's all the questions I have tonight. Appreciate it. Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Castro: Thank you, Director. I just have a few more questions on that accountability topic regarding the contractor. We have established in the resolution it will be the Lifelink. Is that correct, Madam Chair? Councilor Alma Castro: There are a couple types of contractors that will be involved in this. There's a service provider who will manage the services and security and oversight of the site. That is the Lifelink. There's also, we have a project manager group, and then we will be hiring a more common understanding of what a contractor is, someone to actually do the development. So the service provision will be by the Lifelink. Perfect. And so I'm looking at the professional services for three years. We're looking at $900,000. Is that correct? I will have to, if you'll allow me, that's something I can report back to the governing body. Definitely. I'm just looking at as part of our packet. One thing I don't see is the actual contract, and I'm wondering how much control we have as an entity and oversight over some of those operations. Councilor, real fast, looking at the FIR, but that is only the expenditure is for fiscal year 25 is what the FIR is speaking to, which is over in, sorry. And then so there's nothing on the three-year total cost. So yeah, could you explain a little bit of that FIR to me, please? I can speak, yes, to that, but also just to clarify on the operator contract. It's a two-year, $1.9 million contract with the Lifelink to operate two sites. So it's about $9, it's about $450,000 a year per site. Understood. Thank you so much. And that is for part of the services that we will be providing at this particular site. That is for all of the services that will be provided at that particular site. So maybe I'm not understanding the question. So well, maybe I'm not understanding the answer. I apologize. And so I initially that was my understanding, but now you've said that there's another management entity. Oh, yeah, sorry. So maybe breaking the project up into the phases. So we have a project management support function that is helping with community engagement, the architecture designs, things like that. And then we shift into having a contractor who's going to be actually moving earth and building any kind of infrastructure, putting in the utility lines as needed, things like that. And then once every, all of the brick and mortar, some of the pallet units are installed, we'll move residents in, and then the facility will be, so that third phase, once people are actually living there, is the Lifelink, and those other two entities fall off the map. Perfect. So when we're talking about providing services to the folks who are living at these safe outdoor spaces, they are going to be exclusively the Lifelink providing services there. Is that correct? It will be the Lifelink managing the services. They may bring in, for instance, specific services for children who have learning needs or, you know, so they partner with other organizations, but in terms of who's accountable, it's the Lifelink and the city. Okay, perfect. The Lifelink and the city. What is the relationship between the Lifelink and the city, and what oversight do we have over the Lifelink? So, the relationship is they're a contracted entity with the city. And the contract that was approved for this, I believe a couple months ago, articulates the kinds of metrics of accountability that are expected, as well as very similar kind of oversight capabilities and termination capabilities that the city has if services aren't rendered in the quality or the, let's just say quality, if the outcomes aren't what we want them to be. The only reason I bring this up is that last night I did hear from our legal counsel that there's been some changes around the termination of contracts, and it might be important for us to look at what those relationships are and how easily we can terminate those contracts. So if you could give us a little bit of an update on Wednesday on what it would look like in terms of terminating some of these service contracts if we were to have to do that. And in particular, my concern is with accountability for contractors if there are complaints from guests. Madam Chair, Councilor Castro, I'll kind of say two things here, which is one, I think in this line of work, and I know this more from the humanitarian sector, having a complaints and response mechanism built into contracts is something that should be standard, so that there's not undue abuse or any issues related to things that can happen when power dynamics affect vulnerable populations. I think that, and to be honest, that's something that my team and I can look at whenever we make contracts with organizations that serve vulnerable populations. On the flip side, I'd also just like to flag a risk, which is the city needs to be a reliable partner for our providers. And while we definitely need to be able to ensure oversight, we also need people to see us as someone who is accountable, reliable, so that if they do want to enter a contract with us, they know that unless the terms are broken, we're not going to, you know, we'll be there because if we want to have a healthy and thriving provider network in this community, they need to feel like they can count on the city as well. 100% agreed, and I think I, along with many service providers, are probably happy to hear you say that. No further questions. Thank you so much. Councilor Faulkner, I do feel like the community, given the situation at Pete's Place, actually has a, the word "shelters" is putting an emotional charge to what are micro-communities. And I feel like we have to really focus on the fact that if we could expose the community to what these micro-communities really are about, it is not another Pete's Place. It's a different thing. And I do feel like it's appropriate on Richards to put a family micro-community there. And I know that I'm working with other councilors to identify some other locations that we could put micro-communities on. These are successful in a given formula. And I think as Director Henry and Paul, you have a good sense about what is successful and what is not successful. So, I do feel like there's an opportunity here to help people get into transitional housing. And so, I appreciate all your work. Yeah, thank you, Council. Just going off that point, I think it's, when I've been having these conversations with constituents about these, what's hard is that Pete's is the most salient, visible version of a shelter that we have in our community right now. And then we bring up Christ Lutheran. There's kind of this feeling of like, yeah, that's a fluke. It's a one-off. So I think that it is going to be really important as we continue to build these is to, you know, continue to show them and have these conversations. Because, you know, to your point, Councilor Faulkner, I think that it is a very, it's a very different model. And to what I think both you and City Manager Scott frequently say is, you know, once these individuals are in these communities, they're no longer homeless, they're now housed. So they're neighbors who are housed in a different housing model than, you know, we may be used to seeing, but at that moment in time, they are then housed individuals. So, I do think it, you know, it is going to be important to continue to have these conversations and highlight how these are going. Be honest with ourselves and then with the community about what these are looking like. I think, Madam Chair, if I can also point out one thing. And this is something that I think the city in general can do a better job at, and there's complications of how you tell stories, and because these are human beings, don't want to be in a fishbowl. But by and large, when we talk about families who are homeless, these are working families. And, you know, in a different time, four years ago, these are what we called essential workers. So these are people who support our economy, who support the services that we all enjoy here. So, you know, they are critical members of our community. And, you know, again, sensitivity about you don't want to exploit people for storytelling, but how we can better communicate that these are members of our community that may be, you know, washing dishes in a restaurant that you're eating at, or whose kids are in class with your kids. Important. Yeah. Thank you so much, Henry. Councilor Travis, did you have any questions at this time? I had a couple to follow up on. So, from my understanding, we do not have any of the community engagement for this specific site scheduled. I see something on July 1st that looks like it's a broader conversation at large about not just micro-communities, but kind of encampments, homelessness in general, kind of a follow-up to what we did, I don't know, two years ago or so. So, what is the timeline looking like, both for community engagement, for when we are actually, you know, hoping to be getting that good neighbor agreement established so that we can move forward with the moving of dirt, the popping up of pallets, and then, of course, moving in of individuals? Madam Chair, excellent question. And I think I'll be very happy to put up a slide on that on Wednesday, or I'm not sure, is this going to finance on Monday? I don't believe so. I think that we have it going to governing body next. So, I'll have a slide that kind of can show a Gantt chart there. Basically, my team has been, and this is probably the wrong phrase to be quoted on, but chomping at the bit to get started on this, right? You know, because there's this, I think chicken and the egg was a reference. You don't want to send out notification emails unless you know that there's meaningful intention to move forward, otherwise you just kind of stir up a bunch of, you know, feelings in the community without really having anything meaningful to engage on. It's all hypothetical at this point. So, I believe so, assuming if the governing body approves this resolution, my team will the very next day start. We have project management team already working on this, has, you know, protocols drafted on the types of community engagement that's going to be conducted. They're prepared to send out mailers. So we can expect that to be occurring throughout June and July. But again, I'll have that full Gantt chart up that kind of shows these different phases on Wednesday. Okay, wonderful. And I don't know if you're aware, this has been something I've actually been trying to get a better handle on, have better definitions of, but there is a neighborhood association and HOA list that I believe is now sitting in the city clerk's office. I have an old copy of it, but it does, you know, show who those contacts are for District 4. So, I would definitely recommend utilizing that because that will get a number of the neighborhoods that are in the surrounding area. Madam Chair, thank you for that, and we will definitely do that. I also know that many neighborhoods don't have HOAs, so that's where we'll need to go with the direct engagement route. But where possible, having kind of amplifiers, if you will. business groups or HOAs is a great way to get people information, but we can't let other people who aren't part of those associations fall through the cracks. Okay, thank you. I have also been, I've had constituents say, "Wait, wait, wait. You're putting something on Monica Lucero Park." This is not Monica Lucero Park, correct? That is correct. On the way from Monica, they will have walking access to Monica Lucero Park, which is actually wonderful considering that we are once again talking about kiddos. I think for the most part, we've covered the questions. I was just curious about that timeline. Council Garcia, it does not sound like the amendments specify families. So I will be going ahead and putting an amendment in there as well to talk about the fact that this is really going to be a site that is designed for families. I would argue that there may very well be other individuals that would fit very well within a family site, such as, if there are, I know that I have very much benefited from a lot of the retired individuals in my neighborhood who wanted to watch my son a lot. It was really wonderful. So, but I think that is the focus, is that we are designed for families and therefore that it'll be, we'll be creating an environment that is going to be for children, or are we really looking at we only want families in this unit or in this community? Madam Chair, thank you for the question. I would just say that the recommendation from staff is for families with children. I think we have to be very careful about being too prescriptive. So, and I say this having worked on some issues when I was with the New Jersey Department of Health, when we were doing work with the public schools and the Department of Education, the difference between families, caregivers, parents, these terms actually make quite a bit of difference in terms of creating barriers. So if someone has a caregiver or their legal guardian, we just have to be careful and use broad encompassing terms like a family or something so that we're not excluding people who perhaps don't have, they're not with their biological parents or things like that, right? But who would otherwise be an appropriate and beneficial part of this community. And I think you can control for maybe some of the risks that many people are concerned about, like bad behavior, by combining both having some designation of the population that you want to serve, combined with certain types of criteria about it being not a low barrier facility. Okay, wonderful. Okay, great. Thank you. Oh, I remember the other thing I was going to talk about. We keep talking about these different, we talked about it last night and some other areas of, okay, well, update us on this, the street outreach and every month and every, I think that it may be worth our time to think about how to best report on all of these projects in both ways that assess the specific pieces of the puzzle, but also start looking at the puzzle as a whole. So I think that that's something that we should take some time to think about and address because yes, we want to understand how the street outreach from Urban Alchemy on Cerillos is working, and we want to understand individually how the community at Fire Station 7 is working, but also what does, what is this looking like as a, as a complete package? Because that's how we have been really discussing this. So, I just think that that's something for us to think about and maybe put together a plan of what that reporting is going to look like, so that we know what to expect. We can discuss what are some of the metrics that we know, or they may not be metrics, but the data could be qualitative data as well, that we want to see, that the community wants to see, to really be assessing how each of these components are working, as well as how it is working towards that broader strategy. Madam Chair, council members, with great gratitude for you all, we have a new position in the Youth and Family Services Division that's going to be a data and policy position program manager, and the intention very much with that is to have a single individual accountable and responsible for exactly what you spoke, not only making sure that we're getting the specific intervention data that we are looking at, but someone who can pull that across the different interventions. So we have a whole picture. So I, you know, thank you. And that position, and the fact that it's now part of the budget, is incredibly exciting. Wonderful. Well, it's definitely going to be helpful for us because we keep asking you all for this information. So, thank you for putting it forward and bringing that to our attention. If there are no other questions, do we have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. Motion and a second. May I please have a roll call? Councilor Castro, yes. Councilor Travis, yes. Councilor Garcia, abstain. Councilor Faulkner, yes. Madam Chair, yes. Motion passes. Thank you so much. All right, moving along to matters from staff. Dr. Montoya. Madam Chair and counselors, it is Pride Month. As many of you know, because you were there, but today the mayor read the proclamation and we had a Pride Flag Raising Ceremony. Later this month, on Saturday, June 28th, we're going to have our Santa Fe Pride Parade and events down on the Plaza. This Thursday, June 5th, an exhibition at our community gallery, it's going to open. It's called "Revision: The Future of Santa Fe Style." So it's going to run through Thursday, June 19th. I think it will be really interesting to check out. I cannot wait to see it. I will be there tomorrow evening. We have an event this Saturday, June 7th. It's a Gun Violence Awareness Event at the Santa Fe Teen Center. This community gathering is an opportunity to honor lives impacted by gun violence, to raise awareness, and to stand together and call for change. Again, it is this Saturday between 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. at the Santa Fe Teen Center. Excuse me. Current launches Friday, June 13th. It's a Current Art and Technology Festival. It's going to run through Sunday, June 22nd at El Museo Cultural in the Railyard District. And then I have two calls for artists that I want to share with y'all. The first call for artist is entitled "Queer Magnetism." Submissions will be due Monday, June 30th. So, we have all month to think about it. Queer Magnetism invites trans and queer artists of all mediums to support new and recent work for a collective show at our community gallery here downtown. And the second call for artists is for the UNESCO Creative City Artists Exhibition. The deadline for submission of a portfolio is July 1st, and this is intended to celebrate Santa Fe's identity as a UNESCO Creative City of Crafts and Folk Art. It will showcase original and existing works by New Mexican artists working in the heritage traditions. So those are pottery, the fiber arts, which includes weaving, culture, straw work and apparel design, wood carving, metal, performing arts, jewelry, murals, lowrider arts, and bicycles. So the deadline to submit is July 1st. For additional information, anyone please reach out to arts and culture at santafem.gov. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Director Ho. Madam Chair, counselors, quick, first, just want to give a huge shout out to staff. You heard from Director Sanchez Tucker earlier, an absolute rock. And really the work of the Community Services Department couldn't happen without her. Also, Marcela Apodaca to my left. In the past week, I've been deeply absent from some of my other duties, and she has been incredibly graceful in reminding me what I need to sign and approve. And then also Kristen Woods has been deeply, deeply essential in getting a lot of this work done that we're all talking about these days. So, you know, there's one person talking sometimes, but there's a lot more behind how things happen. In terms of updates, Teen Night, there's going to be a pool party at Bicentennial Pool on June 13th at 5:30. Beat the Heat movies at Lafarge Branch Library on June 18th at 2:00 p.m. That will be indoors. The Recreation Division has revived the annual triathlon in partnership with Santa Fe Community College and the Santa Fe Triathlon organization and will take place on June 21st and 22nd. A less, well, I don't know, I won't editorialize this. End of Life Operations New Mexico is presenting information on advanced healthcare planning, and I'll be at the MEG June 9th at 10:30. They will be also presenting at Santa Fe Public Library at the main library on June 9th as well at 2:00 p.m., and then at the Louisa Senior Center on June 10th at 10:30 in the morning. Wonderful. Thank you so much. And Marcela, do you have anything? And I will echo Henry's gratitude towards Marcela. This committee does not happen without you. Sometimes quite literally. So, thank you for everything that you do. Moving on to matters from the committee. Any matters from the committee today? Councilor Castro, then Councilor Chavis. Sure. Just really quickly, as is this time of year, we had a couple members of my graduate. So, we have a couple openings. It is posted on the website, and we would love to have more members, especially because we're ready to do the biannual, every two years, Youth Summit. So we're going to start the planning for that coming up shortly, and I do want to just put in everyone's ear here at Quality of Life. I would love to see a reinvigorating of the Homelessness Task Force that was started so long ago to start Pete's Place. I was reading the article today in the New Mexican, 2007 was when that task force was enacted and has been since disbanded. It might be time to reinvigorate that task force. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Chavez. Thank you. I just wanted to echo about the event on Saturday, the Gun Violence Awareness Event. We will have individuals there who I have deep appreciation for that will be sharing some of their stories about how they've lost loved ones to gun violence. This really is going to be an event that we try to make more meaningful to not only remember those that are lost, but to advocate for change. So I invite all those that can to attend. I also want to wish my parents a happy anniversary. Tomorrow is their anniversary. 54 years. 54 years, and I have yet to meet a couple more in love than they are. So, not only is it impressive that they're married 54 years, but inseparable, literally. Like, I can't get my mom to go to dinner with me alone without my father coming. So, it's a different kind of love, and it has been a gift to myself and my brother and sister, because it's just made our lives and our family unit and our world that much stronger. So, happy anniversary, Mom and Dad. Thank you. That's really sweet. Matters from the chair. Along the same lines as Councilor Castro, with my EDAC, currently Economic Development Advisory Committee, currently has, I believe, one opening. So if anybody is interested, please do reach out to, well, Casey Dalbor, but if you can't find that email, mine's, mine's pretty easy to find. So, please do reach out if somebody is interested in applying for that. Other than that, our next meeting will be Wednesday, June 18th, and at 6:09 p.m., we are adjourned. Thank you.