Planning Commission Meeting Thu, Sep 18, 2025 · Planning Commission https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/642 == Executive Summary == The Santa Fe Planning Commission held a meeting on September 4, 2025, centered on the launch of 'Santa Fe Forward,' the city's first major general plan update since 1999. Consultants from WSP presented a comprehensive 500+ page assessment report covering existing conditions across housing, transportation, water, climate, demographics, and more. The report marks the completion of Stage Gate One and the transition into Phase Two — the visioning phase — which will establish community priorities for a 25+ year planning horizon. Six of seven commissioners were present, with Commissioner McGee excused. Key findings from the assessment report highlighted significant challenges facing Santa Fe: one-third of households are cost-burdened by housing expenses, school enrollment is declining due to affordability issues, transportation networks have major gaps in sidewalks and transit frequency, and the city faces growing climate risks including drought, wildfire, and flash flooding. On the opportunity side, over 5,000 acres of vacant land and 1,000 acres of underutilized land were identified as potential redevelopment sites. Eleven census tracts were flagged as equity communities requiring focused attention. The meeting also included a visioning charrette with breakout group activities where commissioners and community members provided input on values and future priorities. Public engagement has been extensive, including an open house with 80+ attendees, tabling at 13+ community events, and bilingual outreach. Looking ahead, the commission will meet twice monthly through year-end to accommodate both the general plan update and land development code work, with a particularly demanding session scheduled for October 2nd. A synthesized vision statement is expected in late fall or early winter. == Key Decisions == - Meeting agenda approved unanimously - September 4, 2025 study session minutes approved (one abstention) - September 4, 2025 formal meeting minutes approved (one abstention) - Findings and conclusions deferred to the October 2nd meeting - Study sessions will regularly be held at 5:00 PM; the 6:00 PM start time for this meeting was a one-time exception - Commission committed to scheduling two meetings per month through year-end to handle both the general plan update and land development code updates - Commission confirmed commitment to synthesizing all public input from the visioning session into a comprehensive analysis == Motions & Votes == - Motion to approve meeting agenda — Passed unanimously - Motion to approve September 4, 2025 study session minutes — Passed (one abstention) - Motion to approve September 4, 2025 formal meeting minutes — Passed (one abstention) == Public Comment == Public comments touched on several themes. A real estate perspective was offered noting that Santa Fe maintains good quality of life and relative affordability despite its older population demographic. Questions were raised about the effectiveness of the public involvement process and whether outreach is successfully reaching diverse and underrepresented communities. Attendees also asked for specifics on where community tabling events have been held and what future engagement opportunities will look like. During the visioning session, participants emphasized the importance of 'thinking differently' about regulation and innovation, and one commenter raised the need to clearly define desired outcomes and understand the consequences of compromises in planning decisions. == Topics == - General Plan Update Purpose - Santa Fe Forward Assessment Report - Visioning Session Workshop - Technical Working Group - Public Outreach and Engagement - Land Development Code Update - Community Equity and Inclusion - Next Steps and Timeline - Implementation and Action Planning - Population and Community Sustainability - Meeting Schedule and Study Sessions - Minutes Approval - Agenda and Procedural Items == Full Transcript == I know. But it's okay now. I can just go in there. Can we call the meeting to order? Are we in shape to call the meeting to order? Yes. Okay. Please rise. I'm going to ask Mr. Miranda to say the pledge of allegiance. Thank you very much. In case some of you are going to wonder about the next three to five minutes, this is a formal meeting. It's open. It's obviously open to the public, but there's a bunch of stuff we have to go through because it is a formal meeting. So could we hear a call of the roll, please? Commissioner Barber? Here. Commissioner McReynolds? Here. Commissioner Reeland? Here. Commissioner Smith? Here. Commissioner Miranda? Here. Commissioner Capen? Here. Commissioner McGee? Excused. Chair, we have a quorum. I hear a motion to approve the agenda. Motion to approve as submitted. Second. All in favor, by roll. Commissioner Barber? I approve. Commissioner McReynolds? I approve. Commissioner Reeland? Yes. Commissioner Smith? Yes. Commissioner Miranda? Yep. Commissioner Capen? Yes. Mr. Chair, the motion passed. And now we need approval of the consent agenda. I hear a motion. If there's not a consent agenda, we don't have to approve it. Well, that doesn't sound like Santa Fe to me, but that's okay. Approval of minutes of the last meeting. I hear a motion. September 4, 2025 study session. Move to approve minutes from September 4th, 2025 study session. Call roll, please. Commissioner Barber? Yes. Commissioner McReynolds? I was absent, so I will abstain. Commissioner Reeland? Yes. Commissioner Smith? Yes. Commissioner Miranda? Yes. Commissioner Capen? I abstained from Commissioner Capen. Yes. Thank you. Approval of the minutes of the formal commission meeting of September 4th. Let me see if I have a motion. That was a yes. This abstain. Yes. Yes. Yes. You abstained. Right. I yes. So it passed, but be thinking about the fact that Commissioner Miranda was here for the entire meeting, but he had to step out for one general item. I remember. Okay. For this item, Mr. Chair, the motion is passed. Yes. May I hear a motion to approve the minutes of the official meeting of September 4th? I move to approve minutes of September 4th, 2025. Please call a roll. Commissioner Barber? Yes. Commissioner McReynolds? Abstain. Commissioner Reeland? Yes. Commissioner Smith? Yes. Commissioner Miranda? Abstain. Commissioner Capen? Yes. The motion has passed. Is he allowed to approve the minutes other than the section for which he was absent? Thank you, Chair Smith. He can approve all of them if he's reviewed them. He just needs to check it for accuracy. So it's not substantive. He can approve for all of it. A friendly amendment then. Yes, Mr. Chair, the motion passed. Good. Okay. Approval of findings. Do we need to approve findings and conclusions at this point? I don't believe we put any findings on. We pushed them off to October 2nd. That's right. And the consent agenda? There's no consent agenda. Old business, new business. For this meeting, the new business. I would defer. I was going to come next, so I will turn it over to Jessica. Please. Janice Bletnikov with the planning and land use department. I'll just give a brief introduction this evening before we head into the evening's events for today's study session. In front of you, each of you has received a copy of the final assessment report, which was the stage gate one closing item for the Santa Fe Forward general plan update planning process. I thank you for your input previously on the formation of this document. This is a major milestone to be celebrated that we are closing out stage gate one and entering into phase two of this process, which is the visioning phase of the general plan update. Tonight, before we enter into the study session workshop events in which we'll have two breakout group activities to ascertain your vision and your ideas for the general plan as it moves forward, we will be receiving a presentation from our consultants at WSP. They will give you the highlights of the very large document that is in front of you and the key findings as it informs this next phase of the planning process. So with that, I'll turn the microphone over to Mr. Nick Fasio of WSP and Miss Amy DeCarr Antonio of WSP also. Thank you, Janice. Can you guys hear me? Okay. Is that working for everyone? Okay, great. Thank you, Janice again, and thank you Chair Smith and the rest of the planning commission. We're excited to be here with you tonight. We've got a presentation that we're going to share. Yes, and my colleague Amy from WSP are excited to present the assessment report, which is a really significant milestone and achievement for the Santa Fe Forward Project. So lots to get into, but as a quick review of the agenda: welcome and introductions. I'll go ahead and introduce myself, and then when Amy comes on to speak, Amy will introduce herself. My name is Nick Fasio. I am a planner as well as the regional practice lead for the communications advisory services practice for a company called WSP. We're one of the world's largest engineering firms, but we do have local operations here in New Mexico. I personally sit in the Albuquerque office, born and raised, so glad to be working on a local project. We're supporting the city of Santa Fe on this really iconic and exciting project. We're going to go through a quick background. We're going to talk a little bit about the purpose and the process of the general plan update. I know you're all well aware of the purpose of a general plan, but for the benefit of the public that may be watching, we want them to have those details available to them. We'll talk a little bit about what our process was in working with the city to develop the assessment report, including some of the initial stages that we went through as well as a highlight summary of the public involvement that was conducted. And then at that point I'll go ahead and turn it over to Amy. Amy will present a really highlight overview of the key findings. Of course, you can see how large the document is in front of you, so we're just going to barely skim the surface here tonight. But we remain available and happy to talk to you one-on-one and answer questions if you have those at any time. Then we'll talk a little bit about next steps after you've had a chance to ask us a few questions. And then, as Janice mentioned, we also have an exciting visioning charrette that we're going to be conducting here this evening. That is primarily for you, the planning commissioners, as well as our special invitees, the technical working group members. I will provide more details about how that visioning charrette will work for the rest of the evening once we get to the close of our presentation. But real quickly, why update the general plan? As you all are well aware, a general plan is often called a comprehensive plan. Many communities in the United States have a general plan, and the purpose is really to establish that collective vision for a given community—in this case, the city of Santa Fe. Oftentimes they're required by law, but really they're a good idea to have even when they're not required by law because they establish a long-term road map or a guide that sets priorities and values for the community moving forward. In the general plan, typically it includes vision statements, policy goals and objectives. In that way, it really lays out what does the community want for itself over a given future time horizon and, more importantly, what are those implementation steps that are going to be necessary to achieve that collective vision. So the need: Santa Fe does have a general plan. It was adopted in 1999 and it has been updated since, though not substantively. So this is the first really substantive update for the general plan in more than a quarter of a century. Of course, the landscape in the world that we live in today has changed significantly. Now, one of the things that we did when we started talking with the city and reviewing the 1999 general plan is that a lot of those core values that were developed by the community that appear in that 1999 general plan are still relevant. Santa Fe is still well loved by its residents. The residents here value diversity, they value equity, they value quality of life, they want it to be a family-friendly community. So I think many of those things probably have not changed. But the context in which Santa Fe sits today in 2025 is very different than it was in 1999—namely technology. I myself am often a remote worker. That's completely different. Climate change, one of the biggest challenges of our time, is now much more forward-facing and has a lot more public awareness around it. So the context in which the world of Santa Fe today sits is quite different. And so as a result, we need to update the general plan to better reflect the current state of the world. It allows us to better capitalize on opportunities. We want a prosperous community. And so with that, we need an updated general plan that understands how our economy works today and how we can best leverage our assets here. And ultimately, a modern and updated general plan will help us address the challenges of today and also challenges that might be coming down the path that we don't know exactly what they are right now. Lastly, benefits: a vision and a general plan can really go a long way in streamlining operations as well as policy and decision-making at the city level. So that's one of the top benefits. It's a north star in many ways for decision makers such as yourself or such as the governing body or such as administrative staff to understand how the city should lay out implementation plans to achieve that collective vision. Again, it helps guide private and public investments. Both the public sector and private developers thrive in a world where there is certainty, where they know what to expect of the governance structure that they're operating with. And Santa Fe is a community with a high quality of life, and there's also this recognition that maybe not everybody benefits from that quality of life equally or equitably. And so updating the general plan allows us the opportunity as a community to acknowledge that and take steps to making corrections in that way. So comprehensive plans, or in this case the general plan, often have a standard suite of items that are included in them. As I mentioned earlier, there's a vision and goals and policy objectives that the plan includes. Generally, there is a physical form and function nexus to the general plan. So it's about our built environment broadly and all of the different policy areas that influence our built environment. That also includes things like how do we achieve economic growth and what type of economic development are we looking for? What type of social services and policies does the city want to support? How do we make sure that our air and our water and our landscapes are clean and healthy moving forward? It also often covers policies related to public services. # Santa Fe Forward General Plan Assessment Report In other words, do we have enough fire stations? Do we need to increase police service in certain areas? What's the health care system like? Parks, right? Everybody loves parks and wants more of them. And along with that, facilities. Where are our libraries? Where are our schools? Are they sufficient? Are they high quality? If not, what can we do to address that? And in a city like Santa Fe especially, where culture drips from us in a way that is so easily recognizable, making sure that the plan really is centered on Santa Fe, our sense of place, our history, and what it means to be Santa Feans is a key component of Santa Fe Forward, which is the name of our general plan effort right now. Ultimately the goal is to prepare a plan that's resilient, it's sustainable, it's equitable. But it also speaks to and acknowledges and respects our heritage. It's ready to go now. It supports our needs now, but it also is forward. This plan needs to do a lot of things, but that's okay. General plans can do a lot of things. As a first step in the process, the first key milestone is the development of an assessment report. An assessment report is essentially an existing conditions analysis. We evaluated housing, demographics, and transportation. We evaluated current and existing subsector plans, economic development plans, facilities plans, and capital improvements plans. We have been collecting community input, and earlier this year in January, we provided a presentation to you that talked about what our public involvement process was going to be. That's what we've been doing a lot of in 2025—going out to the public and collecting their input and feedback. Through this assessment report lens, we will be looking at what policy recommendations might start to make sense. One of the things that we did is we looked at the 1999 general plan and we did a policy crosswalk. We looked at which of those 400 plus policies the city was successful in implementing, which ones the city did not have success in implementing or implementing fully, and what that means for our current context. We're also going to be using the assessment report as a springboard to take us through scenario planning, which is one of the upcoming steps. We're going to be looking at a variety of growth scenarios, a variety of economic scenarios, and then gaming out what future conditions might look like under those various scenarios. As part of the initial stages of this plan, we started collecting information and we analyzed all of this existing conditions information and we prepared a draft report. That report was made public on June 13th and was made available on our website, SantaFeForward.org. We also held an open house on Saturday, June 14th. At that open house, the project team was available for more than four hours, and we had more than 80 members of the public attend to learn more and provide their input. At that time we also opened up a comment period, and then we are releasing a final assessment report. We took a lot of input and guidance from both the public and city staff. There's a really robust team at the city that reviewed it in depth. Governing body members reviewed it, and our technical working group members reviewed it and provided hundreds of comments and technical corrections on the assessment report. All of that has been incorporated into the assessment report that you see in front of you. That final version will go live sometime this fall. On the screen you can see a brief snapshot of a lot of the resources that we used. One of the key objectives of this assessment report was using publicly available data where we could. We wanted to be sure that if we were getting the data, others could get the data too. Of course we had to assess the level of data and make sure it was accurate and sound. One of the ways that we did that was by using trustworthy sources—information from the Census Bureau, the National Register of Historic Places, and so forth. You see a variety of the data sources that we used on screen. I also want to highlight this is not an exhaustive list. There are many hundreds of resources that were used and a lot of coordination directly with the city to get that information. We also engaged civic leaders from the city of Santa Fe. The planning and land use department staff such as Janice, Heather, Maggie, and Dan and others did a lot of heavy lifting and provided us with guidance and direction. Mayor Weber also was very involved in reviewing the draft assessment report, and staff leads for more than 24 city departments also reviewed it. Our technical working group, a body of 16 technical experts with lived or professional experience in planning-related topics, was extremely helpful and provided a lot of robust assistance in developing the assessment report. We had a public comment period that ran from June 14th to July 20th. It is a big body of work. As you can see in front of you, it's more than 500 pages. Hard to imagine that many members of the public read all 500 pages. I would not expect them to. But one of the things that we did do is prepare a series of key findings up front at the beginning of each chapter or section to give people the highlights. Then if they really wanted to dig in the data, the data was available for them to do so. Over the public comment period, we received 52 comments from an online forum and survey that we prepared. We also had several dozen comments that were received in person at our open house on June 14th. All of the information and key highlights from the assessment report were prepared into one-page fact sheets. They were also prepared as boards at the open house, but they were posted online so members of the public could find those easily. At our open house, we spread the word far and wide. We posted it across social media, but we also ran several dozen bilingual radio ads. We prepared bilingual newspaper ads in both the Santa Fe Reporter and the New Mexican. We posted physical flyers at more than 20 public facilities and passed out hundreds of postcards, including giving a stack to the city so that people could be aware. We also have a newsletter that is linked to our Santa Fe Forward website and that went out to over a thousand subscribers. I want to be clear, the open house is not the only community participation that we conducted over the summer. Starting on June 28th, coincidentally Santa Fe Pride, the project team has been tabling around town. So far this summer, since June 28th, we have spent more than 30 hours of tabling at more than 13 separate community events. We received more than 196 comments in person from those events and had 70 additional project distribution signups. I think the real value in that tabling and the reason why it's a key component of our engagement strategy is because it allows us to have face-to-face discussions with folks that may not ordinarily be closely following planning work. Going into the community, spending time with these folks in places they already planned to be or already spending time, we think is giving us more visibility and also more authentic experiences rather than always asking folks to come to us. It's just one of the many strategies we're doing to switch that dynamic. Here you can see a handful of photos from six different tabling events that we've been at. Hopefully we've seen you guys around town sometime this summer. If we haven't, we look forward to seeing you sometime this fall because the tabling will continue. At this point, I'm going to hand it over to Amy who will talk about key findings. **Amy Darl Antonio:** Good evening everyone. My name is Amy Darl Antonio. I work closely with part of our national planning team. I've been the task lead for this phase of the project for developing the assessment report. I'm really excited to be here today. I'm going to quickly go through these next few slides as highlights for some of the key findings. As Nick mentioned, you can see it's over 500 pages, but we did have key findings within each section right up front in each chapter summarizing the trends, opportunities, and challenges that we're really seeing as we were working through our analysis. Nick also mentioned we had fact sheets up on the website and we have several boards that were prepared for the outreach as well. Through that we were able to synthesize and summarize some of these key findings into themes. That's what I'm going to go through right now. We have eight themes. As you can see on the screen, it goes from nature, climate, sustainability, and resiliency. We kind of group the key findings together all the way through the built city. And then of course we have more of a community characteristics, demographics summary with people, population, and income. The first theme is nature, climate, sustainability, and resilience. There are several key themes here, but overall we're looking at thinking about co-benefits with not only conserving and preserving natural areas like the Santa Fe River, but really understanding the importance of stewardship and that also supports recreation, safety, and habitat. We're looking at it from several different perspectives—hillside protections, tree preservation, water quality improvements, all things that are continuing but again are essential to Santa Fe's future. Air and water quality are overall okay and good in the city, but again placing emphasis for that to be maintained and enhanced moving forward into the future. And as Nick mentioned, in terms of trends and forward thinking about climate change and what the trends mean for more localized trends for Santa Fe, looking at risks such as drought, wildfire, flash flooding, and extreme heat in the area. Community services and governance was the second theme. Although the city is well covered by police and fire stations within about a one mile to a five mile radius, there is a concern with public safety that was brought up. Declining school enrollment is something that was discussed and definitely highlighted as a key metric that reflects demographic shifts but also is exacerbated by affordability challenges and other reasons. We looked at health care in this theme. Though health care access tends to be centralized within Santa Fe, it is further needed in south and west areas of Santa Fe. And then again emphasis on thinking about coordination from a regional perspective going forward and what could be enhanced in terms of those relationships. Basic utilities—this is anywhere from water through electricity, natural gas, communications, and storm water management. Overall water is of course a key topic for Santa Fe, and so this was definitely a deep dive as part of the assessment report. Water management was found to be in a good place in terms of being well managed. However, thinking through long-term risks for the city—because this is a forward-thinking document—there are some significant investments needed for basic utilities. Some improvements with consolidation and potential responsibilities within the city for stormwater management present an opportunity as well. Additionally, continued waste reduction includes potential incentives and regulations for the future. Regarding housing and socioeconomic opportunity, one key finding is that one-third of Santa Fe households spend more than 30% of their income on housing. This includes both renters and homeowners. Overall, there have been steps towards more housing supply, but more housing supply could be needed. The key is thinking about the variety of housing types when considering housing supply as part of the next steps in being forward-thinking. Other areas within this theme include the economic sector—are wages keeping up with the cost of living? There's also thinking about economic diversification in the future. Regarding transportation and access to opportunity, there is a need for additional multimodal streets that provide access for pedestrians, cyclists, transit, and automobiles. Key corridors were examined. The goal is to close gaps in active transportation. There are many sidewalks and trail networks for pedestrians, but they are not always continuous. We're looking at where those gaps are and where they can be closed. Additionally, systemwide updates for the bus system in terms of frequency, especially on key routes, was a major topic area. Transportation investments need to be aligned with other topics like housing, economic development, public spaces, history, culture, and the arts—a very key theme for Santa Fe. Regarding cultural identity and architectural character, these are definitely community assets. We're thinking through historic preservation efforts in the future. Obviously, there has been a lot done within the city, but we're thinking about a balance that could potentially slow new development or restrict development. We're also thinking through how creativity and innovation present opportunity going forward in terms of investment in Santa Fe. The built city has a variety of architecture and urban design. The story expands beyond the Santa Fe style, and there is auto-oriented development and different types of development when looking at the south and west areas. This is also tied to services, amenities, and infrastructure that are further needed on the south and west sides. Additionally, green space contributes to quality of life and ties into other themes we discussed earlier. Ending with community characteristics—the people, population, and income—we documented where Santa Fe stands now and looked at projections going forward. Santa Fe residents are older on average compared to some other peer cities. The ethnic diversity in Santa Fe is definitely longstanding. Looking at the population now and where it is heading, it is projected to grow through 2040 but then plateau and decline. Taking that into account as we develop policies will be important. There is also a displacement discussion and analysis within the report that goes into detail about where there is potential pressure for displacement. A few other chapters from the 17 chapters in the assessment report include additional analysis around development capacity, equity, and the policy crosswalk that Nick already mentioned. Regarding development capacity analysis, we identified over 5,000 acres of vacant land plus another 1,000 acres of underutilized land. There are definitely redevelopment opportunities distributed across the city. Our equity analysis initially identified 11 census tracts as equity communities. We looked at three main areas from our equity analysis: household transportation and environmental health burdens. Those were some of the key factors of the analysis. The last chapter is the policy implications. We looked at the previous plan—the 1999 general plan—to see what was implemented, what was partially implemented, and what remains ongoing. We then crosswalked that to the key themes we were seeing through our findings in the assessment report. That is all documented in the final chapter. Fact sheets are available on the website, and the full list—about one to two pages for each chapter—is available if you want to dive in and go into specific detail for some of the topics. --- Thank you for that, Amy. We definitely want to give you time to ask us questions. If you have anything you'd like to clarify, we are available—the entire project team. I should also mention that we have a handful of other task leads in the room. We have four team members from two of our subconsultant partners, Leland Consulting Group and Design Workshop. We also have our public involvement task lead, Christian, who the technical working group members will recognize. And we have a WSP videographer in the room, Manny, in the back. Manny might be taking some video to document it for the record and shooting some still photographs. If you have any concerns about being in any shots, please let Manny know. Before we get into questions, here's a quick overview of what we'll do after. We're going to go into a visioning charrette—really more of a mini visioning charrette with two modules. For module one, if you are a planning commission member or technical working group member, select one of the four tables. You'll have facilitators at each table, and we'll ask you to give us some of your values. Scribble on some post-it notes and hand those to us. Then we'll go through a future headlines exercise, and your facilitators will walk you through that prompt. When that session is done, we'll take a stretch break. You can synthesize and walk around the room to look at the headlines that have been generated. We also have light refreshments in the back. Then we'll come back together for module two. Again, we'll be at the breakout tables. At that point, we'll ask about implementable actions to make those headlines a reality. We'll spend the last half of our working session getting into the details about what the city or community can do to bring those headlines to life. We'll wrap up with next steps. I also ask that if there are any members of the public in the room, you are certainly welcome to observe. This is a working session for planning commission and technical working group members. In the back, we have survey forms that we invite members of the public to use and participate in. Please connect with us on the project website. For tonight, let's keep it focused on the planning commission members and the technical working group. Shall we go into questions? --- I have one, but it's more procedural. Could we have the deck that was just shown to us shared with us electronically? Yes, we can send that out following tonight. Thank you for the presentation. In your analysis, what gave you the conclusion that we're going to see a population decline in 2040 and beyond? Yes, great question. The folks who did the population analysis are in the room, so I'll invite one of them to come down and add additional thoughts. There are a couple things at play. One is that birth rates generally are declining across the nation, even though people are living longer. There's also an outstanding question about what the long-term impacts of immigration will look like, which is somewhat unknown. There is some good speculation needed to arrive at that population forecast, but it is done with significant number crunching. Andrew, is there anything you'd like to add? Yeah. Andrew Oliver with Leland Consulting Group. Yes, it was mostly based initially on the state forecast for Santa Fe County as a starting point. We then did an analysis looking at birth and death rates and migration in the county and the city and generated three forecast ranges: low, medium, and high. The high forecast does have a continued increase—a slower rate of increase, but still an increase of population over the planning period. However, the general trend of household formation and birth versus death rates in the city has been pretty consistently moving negative over the past 10 years, especially the past 5 years. That was the main basis for the forecast. Additionally, there is uncertainty about migration both internally within the country and internationally. All those factors are outlined in chapter three, where you can see the graphs separately. That's the main points. It seems like you guys did a very thorough analysis. From my perspective in real estate, we do still have a very good quality of life. One of your slides showed that our population base is older, which we do find. But as long as Santa Fe maintains its quality of life, and our actual living expenses—although everybody will disagree with me—we are still considered a very affordable city. So I'm just making sure that was taken into consideration in your analysis. Yes. And I think also to that point, there is a considerably less decline in population here in the city compared to the county and state. So that's one way that it factors in. But I also think that we talked to the mayor a lot during the workshop and other times about the fact that just because the population is forecast to increase more slowly and peak during this planning period doesn't mean that there's not a need for a wider variety of housing types and things for various segments of the population. First of all, thank you for all the work you all did. This is amazing and very exciting work. I have a question about the community or the public involvement process. Maybe more of the detail is in here, but I'm curious about the 13 events you went to, the open house. Where were they? How do they match up to other places where you've done this process? And as far as involvement, 52 comments and the data would seem a little small. What makes Santa Fe a unique spot, and how have you approached that uniqueness? Yeah, really great questions, and a message that we've heard loud and clear from city staff, from the governing body, and from the planning commission back in January. It's really important to reach folks broad and wide. The tabling events are just one of many methods that we are using to reach folks. In terms of the tabling events, we have a summary of all the locations that we visited available on Santa Fe Forward dot org. We are always happy to provide additional details. Those events are coordinated and planned with input and guidance from the city. It starts with us doing some desktop research to see what type of events are out there and then making decisions in conjunction with the city on which ones are going to be most valuable to reach audiences that we know we need to do a better job connecting with, or opportunities for us to go out and share. For example, some of the events in addition to Pride that we were at were Feria Southside, the teen block party and back to school event over at the teen center on the southside, and a low rider event as well. We're really trying for a variety of multicultural events. It's not just us showing up to, for example, the Railyard Farmers Market every week, where that draws a certain crowd. We're trying to get into the types of events where different folks go—folks that traditionally are not at the planning table or involved in the same way. But it is true that we can only do so much in conducting face-to-face conversations with folks at these types of events, especially around really dense technical material. So one of the things that we are also doing is working hand in hand with our community partners program. That is a program modeled after some work that has been done in the city of Santa Fe already, but also other models around the country where we are compensating and partnering with community-based organizations that have a much closer, authentic relationship with audiences that are particularly difficult for the city and planning processes like these to reach. We're asking that they essentially carry the message for us, and we're supporting them through compensation of mini-grants and preparing them with talking points and outreach toolkits. We're also not asking them to conduct their conversations with their community members or constituents in specific ways. They are empowered to talk about the general plan update process and its benefits and why it may be useful for their constituents to be involved in a way that will make sense for them, their language, their methods. And then of course we have a really robust online presence as well through social media and the use of Santa Fe Forward. We've had over 10,000 website visits to Santa Fe Forward dot org. The website is widely known across the country as being one of the most engaging comp plan websites out there right now, certainly in the country. It's getting a lot of visibility outside of New Mexico for that reason, in addition to all the good substantive work that is being done. We've received well over 800 comments by now, maybe more than a thousand comments by now on the website alone. So we are finding that this multi-pronged method of reaching folks is one way that we're mitigating any shortcomings in any one specific method. Hopefully that helps. Yeah, that is really helpful and kind of paints a bigger picture. Is there more public engagement moving forward? And are there going to be new avenues to try to reach other groups? I think since COVID, Santa Fe got more online in ways, and groups have formed where people are home and available, or at workplaces. It sounds like you're doing a lot of that, so thank you for explaining more. Yeah, short answer is yes and yes. The public involvement process is nowhere near complete. It will continue over the entire life cycle of the process. We are reaching a zenith in public involvement right now because as we're about to see here with our work session, we're headed into visioning, and that's really where we find people are most engaged and interested. The data is the data, right? But what they really want is to provide their input and guidance to us on what they want to see. We're reaching a zenith now. We are doing a lot of public engagement digitally as well as in person right now through November. It will taper off after that as we get closer to implementation, but there will still be public involvement opportunities. So yeah. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. I have one more question. You were talking about using community groups to communicate out to people. We're also all aware of a number of studies and sets of recommendations that are being made by individual and collective community groups as to what should be considered when it comes to density, housing, and all sorts of things about which this commission is aware. Are you paying attention to those studies and recommendations of groups of professionals or other advocates who are representing populations who are less likely—frankly, historically, regardless of all the things we try to do—to show up in public and have an opinion? Yes. Short answer is yes. We are considering that and we certainly are open to including that throughout the entire project life cycle, including in both visioning, which is the phase that we're about to go through now, as well as scenario planning, the development of the plan itself, and then of course implementation. The key is that we need to receive those recommendations. Our hope is that through our robust public outreach opportunity, we are making the request well known that we want people to participate. We want their input. We want them to send us their suggestions so that we as the project team can carefully consider them. There's the website, of course, the community-based organizations through our community partner program, and through our technical working group as well, who are bringing a lot of these community concerns that maybe they're aware of and different ways to apply technical aspects of the plan, especially though not exclusively related to zoning, housing, land use, and transportation. They are bringing that to this work through the use of the technical working group as well. So I think there's a variety of ways that can occur, and the answer is yes. Amy, what? Hey, boss. How are you? You knew I was not going to be able to speak. So I'm really grateful for Dan and Janice to taking the mantle. I just got back into town, but the preparation for all of this has been phenomenal. The one thing that I would also say is that we're really trying to reach out to our partners at Tusk PBLO, and they have been active with the technical working group. In a minute we're going to go around and introduce the group so you know who is part of the technical working team, which has been fabulous. Unfortunately, our Tusk partners had a religious event tonight, so they couldn't be here. But we are consistently reaching out to them as part of this. Thank you, Amy. And Mr. Chair. Yes. This is Dan. Before we get started, could we have the technical working group come up to the podium and introduce themselves to the planning commission, one at a time? You can shout it out that way they know who you are before you break up. Thank you. We'll start on this side. Hey. Well, with that, we don't want to rush you any more questions, but we definitely want to get to our visioning session as well. I'm Kelly McReynolds. TJ Relander Smith. Hey. Great. Okay. Are we ready to go ahead and break out? Okay. Thanks everyone. So everybody get up. We will have you guys go to tables. This is a really informal session, so please take care of yourself. Excuse yourself at any time to go to the bathroom, step out, take a call, grab some refreshments. We have water, lemonade, and snacks up at the back. What we'd like to do is have four stations—two down here and two up there. If we can have everybody kind of mix and mingle and maybe not all cluster at one table if you're part of the same organization. So maybe a planning commissioner here, there. Okay, folks. Sorry to interrupt all of you. Let's take a stretch break and then we'll come back and do a gallery walk. Okay, everyone. Okay, so for those of you that may have missed it, grab a sheet of dots and walk around the room, take a look at all of the boards, and place a dot next to anything that resonates with you—headlines, values, et cetera. We'll do this for about 10 minutes and we'll come back together in breakout groups at 7:50. The colors do not mean anything. All the colors here mean nothing. Okay, folks. Hopefully you've had a chance to get some refreshments. Hopefully you've all walked around. We're going to go into our second module now. So go ahead and if you want to stay at your same table, you can, but you are certainly encouraged to pick a different table. Can they not hear me up there? Okay. Hey, are we all reconvened? Okay. Well, great. Well, thank you everyone. First off, I want to offer my appreciation to everybody in the room for all of the good work and the good thinking that you all did this evening. It's really instructive and useful to the project team, and we really appreciate your time. We know it's a long evening, so we'll go ahead and get wrapped up here. I want to cover a few next steps, but I think what we could do to help get us towards closing before we cover next steps is quickly go around the room if you guys agree and share one takeaway from this evening—something that you really appreciated, something that you're going to take with you out of this room tonight. # Santa Fe Forward Visioning Session - Closing Remarks Chair Smith, thank you for directing us. Okay, and then we're going to go right down the line. The deeper we got into it, the more I kept hearing "think differently about everything. Think differently about local. Think differently about what it means to regulate. Don't not do it, but think differently. Innovate. Create community." To me, that was pretty cool. I think there's a lot of great minds in here and a lot of spirited individuals, and that's great to see so many caring hearts and minds in here. My biggest takeaway was that we have a lot of work to do, and if we stay the course, we can get it done. Yeah, I agree. I think there was a lot of like minds and a lot of differing opinions simultaneously, but all working towards the same goal—to think about Santa Fe's future community sustainability and how we can hopefully avoid population decline. It felt like we were working towards building a bigger and better city. So that's nice. I would say just the community involvement, having you guys here participating, taking the time out of your days to help out with this process that's much overdue. Thanks. Yeah, I was just really impressed with the quality of the working group and that we weren't necessarily of like minds on any one issue at all, but that there was this idea of trying to innovate and find new and effective ways to solve the problems Santa Fe has in front of us. I'm tired. Yeah, my words are pretty done too. My brain's not doing the thing. But I really appreciated this. I think we do have a big amount of work to do ahead of us, but it's exciting work and it feels really timely. There's just a ton of opportunity to do really interesting, amazing things here, and I'm really grateful to be a part of it. Great. Thank you all. And now from our TWWG members. So Kent, maybe we can start with you in the back and then we can cascade down. Great. Herbert, Dan. Perfect, Frank. Mori. Thanks, Nathan and Donna in the back. Great. Thank you. Well, I want to be sure that we hear from the city as well, so I'll hand it over to them for closing remarks here momentarily. But just for a quick update on next steps: the project team is going to take every note, every scribble, every post-it note and dot next to a word or phrase on all of these flip charts. We're going to synthesize it together and prepare an analysis of that synthesis, which will be available to you sometime in late October. So we look forward to sharing that with you. By the way, we are also doing this process with the public. We're asking the public what their vision is, what their priorities are, what things keep them up at night, what they imagine for the future of Santa Fe. We're going through that synthesis process with the public input we're receiving as well. All of this will get pulled together into what will eventually be Santa Fe's vision for Santa Fe Forward, which we hope will be available sometime later this fall or in early winter. So those are the next steps, and with that I'm happy to take any questions. If not, I'll turn it back over to Heather for closing statements. Thank you, Nick. We're really excited that we were able to connect and meet and discuss all of these things. There's a lot of homework there, and I imagine that once it gets distilled, we'll be reporting back to the group. Correct? So do you know if in the next month or so there should be some sort of minutes of the session? Yeah, so we'll prepare a high-level summary of what's occurred here tonight relatively soon. Heather, we can get that to you as soon as next week if that's useful. And then, like I said, the actual synthesis of all of the information that's been prepared here will take a little bit more time. We expect that to be available in late October. Okay. Yes. So that's really a great sign of things to come. You know, there's a lot of activity with the general plan update as well as with the land development code update. So this commission is going to be busy in the coming months. Not only have we added study sessions before the commission hearings, but we also anticipate and schedule for the second meeting of the month to be happening regularly. So if the land development code or some form thereof comes, we will probably do an extra study session on the LDC. The last time you guys picked up the book, it's been a while. So I think what we need to do is also maybe provide a presentation on what is in the code, what's been updated, what the affordable housing incentives are, and the like. So we will be using all of the time through the end of the year—two meetings a month. Thank you for your time, and I know that this commission really wants to be very active. That's why we're having a commission meeting for our TWWG visioning session. The commission will probably want to remain active because of quorum issues. So you might have several meetings in the near future that would involve the commission as well. Which is really exciting to have a commission so involved. We're missing two commission members, but I'm sure you'll meet them next time. Great. And just one thing—listening to you made me think that with all of this information, you probably have your own language, and I'm sure you would do this, but to make sure we have desired outcomes. As Dan Pava was saying and several other people, how are we going to get there? Because if we don't know what the final destination is and we can't reverse engineer it to today and understand what are the kinds of recommended changes—which may be controversial—but if we don't get aggressive with our solutions being the ones we think will get us there, then as we compromise, which we will, we need to know the consequences of the compromises we're making. So often in my experience in politics in a much less complicated place, we lose our way because we never had the map of what would be desirable. Does that make any sense? It does, and thank you for the note and the flag. We're excited to also note that the general plan update process includes the development of an implementation and action strategic plan towards the end of the process. So it's forthcoming. Thank you, sir. Any other questions from members of the commission? Can I hear a motion? Is it appropriate? Dr. Escoel? I just want to remember that the October 2nd meeting is going to be rough. I'm hoping that all of you are going to be here in attendance so that I have a quorum. You know, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you to bring your sleeping bags. Yes, sir. Yes. A question? The new study sessions we're doing ahead of meetings—how will we know which meetings have that at 5 and which are going to be at 6 like tonight? Will we get that in a separate email or agenda about that hour? Commissioner Capen? Okay. Regularly it will be at 5:00. This is just a unique situation. Yeah, no. So unless the commission prefers otherwise, on the study session days that there are no cases, if you prefer the 6 o'clock hour, we can talk about it. So I just want to make sure I— Let's talk about it with Chair Claw. I know she's very interested in both. There a motion to adjourn? Oh, that's right. We're doing—oh, God. I love it.