Finance Committee FY26 Budget Hearing
Fri, May 2, 2025 · Finance Committee Budget Hearing
https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/757

== Executive Summary ==
The Finance Committee held a budget hearing to review various departmental budgets for the upcoming fiscal year. A significant portion of the discussion focused on the Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency's (MRA) budget and its ambitious plans for the Midtown Redevelopment Project, including infrastructure development, legacy building renovations, and community engagement. The committee also delved into the Municipal Court's innovative programs aimed at rehabilitation and accessibility, and the City Attorney's Office budget, highlighting challenges with staffing, IPRA requests, and the city's self-insured retention model. Concerns were raised about the clarity of budget presentations, particularly regarding vacancy credits and the need for more flexible contingency funds.

Key discussions revolved around the MRA's progress in securing developers for Midtown parcels, finalizing agreements for film studios and arts centers, and launching capital campaigns for the public library and theater. The Municipal Court Judge was lauded for expanding programs like the DWI Drug Court and Outreach Court, and for plans to enhance technology and language access. The City Attorney's office presented its extensive responsibilities, grappling with high volumes of public records requests and difficulties in attorney recruitment due to uncompetitive salaries. The committee approved the general government budget, but acknowledged the need for future budget process reforms and clearer communication regarding financial allocations and staffing policies.

== Key Decisions ==
- The agenda for the budget hearing was approved.
- The general government budget was approved.

== Motions & Votes ==
- Motion to approve an unspecified item (likely related to the Midtown or Neighborhood Stabilization discussion) — Passed (Councilor Cassutt: Yes, Councilor Faulkner: Yes, Chair Maestas: Yes)
- Motion to approve the Municipal Court budget item — Result not explicitly stated but implied to be approved.
- Motion to approve the general government budget (made by Councilor Lindell, seconded by Councilor Casset) — Passed (Councilor Casset: Yes, Councilor Lindell: Yes, Chair Roberworth: Yes)

== Public Comment ==
Community Services Director Alisa Montoya introduced Daniel Hernandez and highlighted the MRA's accomplishments. Daniel Hernandez expressed gratitude for Alisa Montoya's leadership. A committee member, an alum of the College of Santa Fe, expressed excitement and willingness to help with the campus redevelopment and praised the plan for retaining the Lafar's library. Councilor Lindell expressed high regard for the MRA commissioners' knowledge. Councilor Cassett expressed excitement for the MRA Director's work and the Neighborhood Stabilization Plan, and advocated for her constituents' interests regarding potential displacement and the improvement of Franklin Miles Park. The Mayor expressed strong support for the internal management of the Railyard project and the entrepreneurial approach to Midtown redevelopment. Councilor Lindell praised the Municipal Court Judge's innovative programs. Councilors expressed strong support and admiration for the Municipal Court Judge's work. Councilor Faulkner offered to bring additional resources to the Municipal Court. Councilors praised the City Attorney's office for its comprehensive work. The City Attorney expressed concern that a 12% vacancy rate would make their department unable to function. A councilor expressed strong disapproval of individuals intentionally using IPRA requests to waste city resources. Council members praised the City Attorney for her hard work and the culture she has built in her office. Rod Gould clarified his role as a city employee and elaborated on the city's approach to developing a management system. A councilor emphasized the importance of the Office of Equity and Inclusion. A councilor expressed a desire for more transparency and regular reporting on risk management activities. Councilor Casset emphasized the importance of having more information and presentations on risk liability.

== Topics ==
- Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency (MRA)
- Midtown Redevelopment
- Risk Management
- Film & Multimedia Studios
- MRA Staffing & Capacity
- Public Library Renovation
- Public Theater Renovation
- MRA Commission & Plan
- Neighborhood Stabilization
- Visual Arts Center

== Full Transcript ==
Sorry. I really am sorry about that. That's horrible. Can we go live?

Madam Chair, we are live.

Fantastic. Thank you. At 10:08, I call to order the seventh day of our budget hearings. If we could get a roll call, please. Director Oster.

Absolutely. Good morning, everyone. Councilor Casset.

Here.

Councilor Lindell.

Councilor Faulkner.

Here.

Councilor Lee Garcia.

Excused. He's excused. Sorry. Trying to find the agenda. Chair Marroworth.

I am here.

Madam Chair, you have a quorum.

Thank you. And good morning, everyone. I think hopefully this will be a half-day effort, and I think we can get through these budgets this morning. So, and then we'll do our little lunch thing that we're going to do. So, with that, do we have any changes to the agenda?

No changes from staff, Madam Chair.

We have a motion from Councilor Faulkner, a second from Councilor Casset to approve the agenda. All those in favor? Aye. Anybody opposed? That motion passes. Yeah, Scott. Yeah, I think we can. We're all here, so, yeah. No, you're fine. Okay. So, we have Daniel Hernandez here with us via Zoom. Thank you for being here. He is heading up the Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency, and he is here to present that budget. So, welcome, Daniel. And I guess, well, we also have, sorry, didn't mean to, Alisa Montoya. Yeah. No, sorry. We have the Community Services Director here as well. And I guess I'll let you start and then you kick it over to Daniel. That would be the correct protocol.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the Finance Committee. I would like to ask Daniel Hernandez, the Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency Director, to present on behalf of his division. Daniel brings over 33 years of real estate development experience, serving as a developer, planner, and project manager on a broad range of project types in urban places from San Francisco to New York City. He's also experienced working in the private, public, and nonprofit sector. Since late 2024, he has served as Director of the MRA. During the fiscal year 24-25 budget cycle, the MRA accomplished a variety of benchmarks. The most prominent is finalizing negotiations for a development and disposition agreement to create Aspect Studios Village, which will be a cornerstone in creating jobs in the largest studios in Northern New Mexico. They also completed the first phase of housing at the Midtown site.

In addition, the MRA commissioners were appointed, which established the skills for a community-based approach to the redevelopment of the Midtown district. As promised in the community development plan, the process for establishing a metropolitan redevelopment area and plan is in progress, as well as efforts around the neighborhood stabilization plan that's focused on the Hopewell Mann neighborhood, which will also advise future outreach to additional surrounding neighborhoods in the city. Daniel will further elaborate on additional details around their accomplishments and fiscal year 26 goals in his presentation. The MRA has been hard at work and focused on implementing a Midtown master plan and community development plan that is grounded in the community voices of Santa Fe. Thank you, Daniel.

Thank you, Alyssa. First, I want to say how honored and happy, excited I am to be working with the new Director of Community Development. She brings an amazing perspective and experience, and making the work fun. So, I'm really glad that she's on board and working with us, and her leadership is going to be invaluable to us as we move forward. So, thanks, Alyssa, for being here and accepting this position. And I apologize to the councilors. I'm actually in California right now, visiting my 95-year-old mom, and as most of you have heard before, one of the things I wanted to do was to make sure that I stayed connected to my family and to her. And she's doing well. But anyway, I made these plans long ago, and was, and so anyway, here I am. So, thank you for allowing me to present via Zoom. I appreciate it.

So, we'll start with the slides. Slide one. The Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency, of which I am the director. This slide really is about, you know, Madam Chair.

Yes, I'm sorry. Daniel, is there anybody else on your team here in the council chambers you'd like to introduce?

Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate that. And Carly and I have been texting. Carly Vendetti is in the room there with you all, and so she can also supply information and help me out here. And again, I'm really grateful for Carly to come on board. She was in the land use office before, and now she's working with me and is showing great leadership and potential as a redevelopment manager. So, we're increasing her skill set to be a leader in this field, I believe. So, thanks, Carly, for being there, and thanks, Mayor, for mentioning that. I appreciate it.

So, one of the first things that when I started working on this project is conversations that I had with the Mayor about establishing an entrepreneurial agency within the city that can actually focus on redevelopment and bring the real estate acumen that's necessary to negotiate deals, to incentivize development, and development that actually met a variety of objectives. And so, in the second piece, we approach all of our work, and the mission of this agency will be now and in the future, really looking at projects that approach dealmaking from a triple bottom line approach, meaning that we're going to look at the social effects, the economic impacts, as well as the environmental impacts on any development that we do, and analyze those on everything from the types of development we want to see, as well as the pricing for transactions in development. And we'll be evaluating that to make sure that we're thinking about these assets that the city owns as treasures, and how they can actually create places where people want to live, work, play, and learn in Santa Fe. So, that is the commitment that I make, and that's how I started with this project, with the Midtown project in 2018, and what I bring now as the director to the Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency. Next slide.

But as you know, when I arrived in November of last year, of 2024, there was zero staff on board. We had lost our predecessor, the previous director, and the staff person, a planner, that was there as well. So, my objective initially was to one, write a work plan, which included increasing the capacity from zero to what we now have, four people in our office, to work on the metro, for the Metropolitan Development Agency, and specifically now our biggest project, the Midtown site. So, now we have a full-time director, me. We have a full-time asset development manager, which is Carly. We have a part-time redevelopment manager, who is Jack Kelly, who brings a ton of real estate finance experience. And we have a part-time communications and marketing manager, meaning that she's actually a full-time employee, but she also works for other departments within the Community Development Division, and more recently on the immigration committee. Next slide.

So, when I came back, again, one of the first things I did in the work plan was to onboard the commissioners who had been appointed in 2024. As part of onboarding them, we went through, walked through the MRA work plan, as well as the plans for the Midtown redevelopment. And one of the big pieces in that was to establish the MRA, the redevelopment agency. The first step in that is, as most of you know, because you participated in this, and we'll be going back to you at the end of May, is to designate the Metropolitan Redevelopment Area, and Carly is leading that effort and doing an amazing job. The second step in that process, which will establish the agency in its full capacity, is to develop a plan for that area. It will focus on economic development strategies and particularly focus financial resources and identify potential new financial resources, including tax increment finance analysis. Next slide.

The work plan also included the completion of negotiating terms for the disposition development agreement of the redevelopment expansion of the film and multimedia studios with Aspect Studio Village. Phase one is underway, and he's anticipating that first phase will be completed in time for the Santa Fe International Film Festival, which is in October. So, he's planning on finishing phase one in October, on October 1st. And that will include the redevelopment of the screen, improvements in the existing sound stages, the redevelopment of Driscoll Hall into a new restaurant. There will be a new restaurant there, as well as an additional sound stage and an additional commercial space and lots of landscaping and wayfinding. So, it creates a place, it begins to create a place there at the film studios.

This second quarter of 2025, we want to finish the negotiations for the redevelopment of the Visual Arts Center with the Midtown Arts and Design Alliance for consideration by the governing body and a vote, which we want to bring to you within the next two months. And that's our schedule for that. We also anticipate, and we would like to set up 2025, going out the door with the announcement of the sale and purchase and/or lease of parcels at Midtown. So, we want to set up this year so that next year the governing body can begin considering additional DDAs, disposition development agreements, for other parcels at Midtown. Next slide.

So, again, back to this, the disposition, the DDAs. Thank you for agreeing, voting for an approval to for us to announce the availability of parcels at Midtown. And just as a quick review, there are a total of 22 parcels at Midtown, 14 of which are in pre-development. And so that means there's eight available for sale or lease. And since you approved us going out for public offering and entering into direct negotiations and issuing an upcoming RFP competition for affordable housing, we're getting lots of responses from developers and have begun very preliminary discussions and negotiations and proposals for various parcels at Midtown. So, it's been an exciting few months leading up to this point, and hearing from developers and their ideas, which are all consistent with the Midtown redevelopment plans. The goal, and again, this is a goal, is that we want to have 100% of the parcels engaged with developers or in pre-development by the end of this year. That's a goal, and you know there's a lot of influences in achieving that goal. And we can talk more about that during a Q&A if you'd like. But we, and that's why we hope that we can get those 100% parcels engaged and then in 2026 be negotiating disposition development agreements. Next slide.

Part of what's happening this year, and what I want to continue leading, is the redevelopment of what the Midtown plans call the legacy buildings. Garson Studios was one of those legacy buildings that's in phase one of Aspect Studios. The others are the public library, which we want to commence a capital campaign for phase renovation. I've met with the Library Advisory Board, as well as the Friends of the Library, and they're very excited about coordinating with my office to establish that capital campaign and think about the future of that library. Similarly, the public theater is in the Midtown redevelopment, in the purview of the MRA, and we're about to complete the contracts process for securing a consultant to help us develop operating models.

They bring nationwide experience as well as local experience for us to begin assessing the building and developing scenarios for operating the building and also commencing a capital campaign for a phased renovation of that building as well. The exciting part about that project is that it brought the many alumni to the table. So, we're in lots of discussions about early activation of the public theater as well as their willingness to participate and lead with us a capital campaign.

Next slide. Infrastructure is a huge question at Midtown and continues to be one of the big problem-solving within our office every day. But our goal is to complete 100% of the master plan infrastructure design plans. We think that is critical in order for us to be able to move forward to identify financing sources. If we say we have shovel-ready projects that are ready to be financed and moved ahead. So, it's a critical, critical element and it's always in discussion with all of the developers that we've been engaging. They want to know what the strategy is and what the timelines are that the city. So, it creates both opportunity and risk for us to have to resolve these infrastructure questions. We want to commence initial construction phases of infrastructure in 2026. That's why I think it's extremely important for us to finish these plans by the end of this year.

Next slide. On a sort of broader planning effort, which is also part of the community development plan objectives and strategies, was that we committed to creating a neighborhood stabilization plan that focuses on the Hopewell Man area. But as we're developing strategies and identifying issues within the neighborhood, we want to also make them applicable to other adjacent neighborhoods and possibly for other neighborhoods in the city who are experiencing the effects of the constant economic changes and immigration changes into our city that affect our housing costs and our business stability. So, we'll be looking at different issues and strategies and using Hopewell Man or working with the Hopewell Man community to establish a stabilization plan. Also, we'll be looking at all of the adjacent properties within the Midtown district, particularly as we started outreach with them during the MRA planning and design and area designation efforts, to identify ways that we can begin seeing within the future the application of the link, which everyone wants to see applied in the Mission District, Midtown District, particularly around the implementation of housing within some of those huge parking lots that front both Serios and St. Mike's.

Next slide. Again, part of establishing the MRA is that we have an opportunity to engage directly communities. We want to improve our efforts in the way that we provide updates and information to the communities as well as the elected officials regarding the redevelopment plans. What we're hearing from people is we don't want to plan anymore. We've done all that. We've given you all the information. What we want to hear is how you're doing and how you're implementing the plans that we created with you. So, we think that's a really important message that we want to get out. And we want to give people regular updates. So, we're working on creating a newsletter as well as updating our website so it's user-friendly and accessible for information. The other thing is the mayor had said early on that we need to think about this site and how we might bring people back before redevelopment happens or while redevelopment is happening. So, we called it the site activation. We immediately started in on figuring out what would be the most exciting and fun way of activating the site. We work with our consultant and Carly is leading this effort as well. We found some old t-shirts in the Venildas Hall that said Quadstock. So, they used to have concerts at Midtown called Quadstock in the where the brand B band shell is located. So, we're planning in October, at the very beginning of October, I think we're looking at October 3rd or 4th or 5th, two days, probably that Friday or Saturday, of having a summer concert. We're working with a great consultant who's also an alum who used to work, who now her profession is actually coordinating and program managing concerts around the country and she lives in Santa Fe and we're also working with Linds 360 in establishing a concert for the fall. So, this is a really exciting event that we're leading up to. And we're going to do some cleaning up of that area so that it'll be fun for families and young people to come to the concert that weekend. And we're also coordinating with Santa Fe Art Institute as well as with Aspect Villages, Aspect Village. So, there'll be a lot of stuff going on around the campus.

Next slide. And that concludes my presentation. So, I'm here now to hear your questions and hopefully be able to answer them. Thank you.

Wow. That's a lot of activities and energy and things to be working on. So, thank you for that big, big picture overview. Again, we don't get these things very often. So, happy to hear all the things that you're planning and working on. Questions from the committee? All right. I'll start, or I could start in the middle. I'll start in the middle and go out. There's a new idea.

Chair: Chairwoman, I have to thank you a lot. I'm a middle child and often bored and so this feels like an incredible moment for me. I'm so happy now.

Wow. Sleep and you got to go first. I know. New day seller 24. I did. You should try it sometime. It's amazing. Okay. So, I just have a couple of questions. I want to start off with that. I'm an alum from the College of Santa Fe and I'm going to date myself, so please don't repeat this outside of this room. I was a freshman at the College of Santa Fe when the Garson studios were completed and I worked on some movies there. I loved going to the College of Santa Fe and I always felt kind of homeless a little bit when the college went away and so I'm super excited to see what's happening on the campus and I'm more than happy to help however I can because that campus is, I don't want to say sacred to me, but it's in my heart for sure. I'd like to talk about the infrastructure. I worked with one of the developers who put in a proposal when we did the proposals in 2019, 2020 and I know that the infrastructure there is a nightmare and so are we, if when we sell the lots or lease the lots, who's responsible for the infrastructure getting that up to date?

That's a great question, Madame Chair and Councilor Faulkner. The Public Works Department is leading that effort right now. And what I understand is that there will be a mainline trunk line going down the center of the site. That we will be responsible, or we are planning to be responsible for financing and constructing off of which developers will be able to tap. So, they will be able to tap into that main trunk line and then bring the utilities to their site that way. There are some existing trunk lines as you know because it was existing buildings. So, some of the legacy buildings I was talking to you about earlier, they may go on a different strategy and hook into the existing trunk lines so that we can get them up and running earlier.

Okay, great. Thank you. And then this leads me to my next question about the legacy buildings. The Lafar's library is actually a pretty cool building and I'm excited to hear that you guys are going to be keeping it. We're keeping it as a library that I'm super excited. When I started my career as a lobbyist, the first project I did was the Southside Library and I always felt that a Midtown library that has like a sizable would be great for the city and for everyone who lives in the middle of the city. So, I'm happy to hear about that. And then the last question I have is just going into the linkage. Again, when I worked on with that developer, there were some really cool ideas around how to how to build housing and kind of build a pathway to the hospital and kind of the linkage would recreate St. Michaels to make it more walkable and a more vibrant, people-friendly. Not that it isn't people-friendly, but it just make it a more vibrant corridor. And so could you go into that just a little bit? You don't have to go into a big, I can catch you offline, but I do want to hear just a little bit about it.

Sure. Councilor and Chair. It's actually the link zoning overlay, I think, is incredibly innovative, creative, and thoughtful. And so part of recreating the Metropolitan Redevelopment Area plan, we're really prioritizing discussions with adjacent property owners on what the hurdles are and obstacles have been in incorporating and using the link on their sites. So, I think, you know, there'll be a variety of what we've heard so far is that a lot of the property owners either have some issues around easements on their property. There's some stuff about existing leases that they have on their properties that once they terminate that there may be able to opportunities to relook at their properties. So, we just want to make sure that we're setting them up and setting those properties up for success in implementing the link in the future. But it is about, you know, downsizing the craziness around St. Mike's as far as traffic so that it's much more pedestrian and bike friendly. That it's mixed-use and not single sort of car-oriented uses so that there's housing that can be built on those properties. The adjacent property owners are excited about it. It's just that there's other hurdles and constraints that they have to actually implementing link on their sites. So, it may not happen tomorrow, but I also think that the catalytic moment for us as a city, which often government does play, is to redevelop sites that are not performing like the Midtown site and begin to set the momentum and example of the kinds of development that we want to see on adjacent parcels. So, that's why I think the Midtown site itself is a really catalytic project for the rest of the Midtown District. But I'd be happy again to talk with you offline about this or anytime you want.

Perfect. I'm a huge fan of long-term strategic planning and I feel like in some cases we haven't been doing the best at that as a city. And so I'm really excited. This is the kind of stuff that just makes me feel alive when we're doing long-term planning and we're being strategic and mindful in our decision-making. So, I commend you on that. But I also would like, when we're done with Midtown, could we do this on Airport Road?

Yes. That would be incredible. I agree. But yes, and that's up to the governing body to initiate those kinds of conversations and I think the MRA is set up exactly to do the kind of work that you're suggesting and that's why I'm excited too. I think, you know, there are so many people working on so much stuff in City Hall and they there's such amazing levels of commitment among staff in City Hall. But it's also exciting that the governing body and the mayor, including the mayor, was really had the foresight to think that we needed an agency like this that was specifically focused on these long-term plannings on a specific area, neighborhood, and community that's there. And that's what a redevelopment agency can do.

So, thank you for mentioning those things. I think there's a lot of potential along Airport Road if we could just get it right. I mean, it's part of the original corridor. What is that trail called? Yes, you got it, Emmer. So, there's so much we could do that would make it a nice corridor when you come into Santa Fe. You don't have to necessarily take 599. We could do art, we could do refurb. There are so many people in my district along that corridor. So, I really would like to try something like this for Airport Road. Thank you. Let's talk.

Councilor Lindell: Thank you, Chair. Hello, Daniel. I'm glad that you're tending to your mom. Thank you. She is too. I'll tell her you said so. Yeah, for sure, for sure. That's terrific. I just have a couple of general questions. When will we see results or scoring or applications that have applied, that have submitted on the RFPs?

So, we are in discussion mode right now, but I would like to have some initial proposals to you during the summer. A lot of them are just around the corner from actually submitting a formal offer. So, their first step is to submit a formal offer. We have an offer template for them to fill out, which kind of gives us their purchase or lease pricing or terms, as well as some initial development plan, conceptual development plans. And so we're trying to get them to consolidate all the discussions into a package so that we can then begin massaging them and then introducing them to you. So, I anticipate that this summer will be when we'll be able to go to you with a few projects to consider.

Councilor Lindell: Terrific. We have appointed MRA commissioners at this point. Yes. What's the governance structure of that commission? Are they strictly advisory? Do they have decision-making abilities? How is, tell us how the governance of that happens?

I'll tell you my initial understanding, and then within the next 24 hours, I'll get to you something more formal so I can work with the city assistant city attorney Marcus Martinez on this. He's the attorney for the commission. But right now, there are five members. There's a president or chair and a co-chair. The chair is Dion Silva and the co-chair is Jenny Parks. And the commission itself brings a broad range of perspectives, experiences, expertise to the MRA, which I am really honored and proud to serve them. They currently are still onboarding in many ways. You know that they're internalizing the Metropolitan Development Agency work plan for 2025 and 2026. But they make recommendations to me, on which I follow up. They will make recommendations of approval to the governing body on issues around disposition, as well as currently the MRA designation area and the redevelopment and the MRA plan. So, their role right now is more as stewards of the Midtown redevelopment plan and of the MRA mission. And so I'll again, I'll ask Marcus Martinez to give us a very clear understanding of what their regulatory provisions are as to provide governance, because it's pursuant to state statute.

Councilor Lindell: Thank you. I think that that's really important. I think the people that are on that commission have an astounding amount of knowledge and expertise, and I don't know if it was you or the mayor that got them to agree to serve, but nicely done. It's a terrific commission, and if they would bring something here that my initial thought is, "Well, I don't agree with that," I would have to step back and say, "I think they know a lot more about it than I do." And I think it's incumbent upon me to put my own opinion aside and agree with the experts because I think they have a tremendous, I mean, they're an amazing group. I'd like to sit and listen to them. So anyway, Mayor, nicely done. Appreciate that. I'm sure you did some arm twisting. So that's all, those were the things I was really interested in knowing. I think that establishing the duties and the powers of that commission are really, really important. So, thank you, Daniel, and that's all I have.

Chair: Thank you, Councilor.

Councilor Cassett: Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Daniel, for being here, and Carly for being here. I'm very excited to have you here. As you know, I was very excited when you took this position. Really, really pleased to see all the work that you've done in the past and being able to continue that. So, thank you for taking this. I know it's a big decision. It's a big job, as has been demonstrated by all the goals for this year. A couple questions. So, I see in the budget it's about $122,000 for various contracted services, and it includes the project management, which we've discussed recently, and urban planning. What else is in that contract line item for next year?

Those actually are the two big ones. Oh, I'm sorry, Chair and Councilor Cassett. Those are the two big initiatives that we have going on right now. The other one is the consulting and some of the performance payments that we'll be doing for the Quadstock in the fall. Yeah, so those are really where they're lying right now. And again, there's a lot of work to be done this year. So, I'm nervous about staff capacity, to be transparent, but you know, we're all really committed and working hard on what we have to do in that work plan this year.

Councilor Cassett: Okay, wonderful. Thanks for clarifying that. A couple other things. So, you guys are trying to raise a lot of money for three big projects: Fogelson, Visual Arts Center, and Greer. I'm concerned about one, I mean, the philanthropic communities that would be most interested in these are going to have a lot of overlap, and so stretching them very thin, knowing that they are also doing IAIA and Girls Inc. and all the others. So, I am curious about, and I know some of it's independent. I know, you know, Midtown Arts Design Alliance, they're really, they're taking the lead there. But for Fogelson and Greer, that's, we're heading that up, or at least we're really giving some heavy, heavy, heavy assistance to the groups that are heading that up. What is this going to look like? Because first of all, how much money are we trying to raise for each of these? And I'm pretty sure it's a lot. And then how are we, I mean, what is the strategy to potentially be able to raise the dollars for these two items aside from legislative appropriations? We'll keep asking them, obviously.

So, I'll tell you what I know today, and I anticipate that by the end of summer, we'll be able to give you a clearer picture. So, it may happen in increments as far as how we might inform the governing body how financing for these Midtown projects will occur. And the reason I say that is because part of creating the Metropolitan Media Development Area Plan is a huge focus on financing instruments for infrastructure and for these legacy buildings. The cost, one of the questions you had, the cost could range anywhere between $35 and $45 million. And so is that for total? Total. Okay, for those. Yeah. And so we're working with the finance department, so Emily's here with us as well, and if she wants to chime in, please do. But we're starting initial conversations about different finance instruments that we can pursue so that we are leveraging our government dollars with private dollars, either private equity and or debt that we can secure to build out the legacy buildings. But we're going to really rely a lot on leveraging with those capital campaign efforts. We know that they're not going to be able to cover the full amount of all those things because most of that, around $35 million of that, is infrastructure, is public infrastructure, which that's not something we're going to go out the door for a capital campaign with. So, we know that we're going to have to finance that ourselves, the big trunk line that I was describing in the streets that I was describing earlier. So again, we'll begin to, we're looking at that as the main piece of the Metropolitan Redevelopment Area Plan financing instruments. So, we'll bring information to you as that unfolds over the course of the next few months.

Councilor Cassett: Okay. Thank you. And as this picture comes into focus a bit more, I'm beginning to feel that we got lucky with Aspect Studios. I mean, we just simply lightning in a bottle in that one. Happened to have somebody who had the capital and wanted to be here. So that's good. At least that one got taken care of. But yeah, I look forward to hearing more about that. I know it's a heavy lift, and I know it's really important. You know, as Councilor Faulkner was saying, there's a lot of nostalgia attached to this campus. There's a lot of, there's a lot of potential, you know, to continue with those buildings. So, I think it's worth the time and the effort, but I know it's not going to be easy.

Councilor, yeah, Chair and Councilor, I just, all I want to say is that, you know, it is the main focus of our office right now in figuring out these finance, these financing instruments, and there's a lot of integrated information that's needed around infrastructure and these buildings. And so as we move forward over the next few months, it's really important that the office, my office, focuses in on strategies for incremental financing, incremental renovations, incremental implementation of the infrastructure so that we can begin rolling it out over time. And so those are the fine-tunings that we really need to focus in on, and then looking at the long-term picture about how much does this cost and how do those funds come in over a period of time too. So those are the big questions, and you know, I started thinking about them when I first arrived in this position. They become extremely relevant now that we're engaging developers, and they need a solid answer in order for them to assume risk in developing at Midtown. So you're correct, Jezaye, the developer for the Aspect Studios, did take that risk and was willing to work with us, and he works with us almost every day as he implements phase one.

Councilor Cassett: Yeah, I'm happy to hear that, and I know that the success of that project is going to be crucial. So, glad that you are still in very close contact because that's going to be very important. I think I have just some comments that you have heard a thousand times, but I never miss the opportunity to say them. As I have said multiple times, Neighborhood Stabilization Plan, very excited for it. And I will never let you forget the Camino Carlos Rey corridor and the neighborhoods along Siringo. Obviously, my constituents are going to be highly impacted, both positively and potentially negatively, by the Midtown redevelopment, and so planning ahead for that is incredibly crucial. This is already a neighborhood that is seeing displacement. I, it is, I think the, well, when I was running for office, the average median housing price in my district was $450,000, and remember, like District 4, this is the, this is the core of the working class of Santa Fe, you know, and well, now District 3 as well. So, really want to make sure that that, that focus continues. The Midtown engagement partner model, I will never stop singing its praises. I know it was hard. I know we learned a lot. I think it is so important, and I really, you know, I guess this is maybe more comments for the city manager and city leadership of how we leverage those lessons, put in that investment when we are doing projects.

I know already the general plan is taking those lessons learned from there. So, thank you for that work. Franklin Miles Park, which is one of the flagship parks of District 4, has seen brighter days. You and I have spoken about this, but I would like to hear more about how Franklin Miles Park can benefit from the Midtown redevelopment, from some of the dollars that will be coming in here, and advocate for that park to really get the attention that it needs. I know that there's going to be a central plaza, there's open space in the development, but when it comes to parks, Franklin Miles is going to be the one that's really serving the, what now we're up to, 50 potential housing units on this site.

Chair and Counselor: Yes. So, Franklin Miles Park has always been a very important element of the Midtown District itself, the broader Midtown District, not only the Midtown site. And as you may recall, during the planning of the Midtown site, we talked a lot about the connections between the site and the surrounding assets, meaning neighborhoods, public assets, such as the park, Franklin Miles Park. We're excited that it's now going to be included in the Metropolitan Redevelopment Area for a variety of reasons. One is the main purpose of a Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency is to advocate for resources to be dedicated to the assets within their purview. And since now the park will be within our purview, we'll be able to advocate for that.

We also think, though, that the priorities for any initial funding streams that come in that we can secure, again, in collaboration with the finance department, should be dedicated to the infrastructure and legacy buildings at Midtown. But the park is really critical to the broader neighborhood. So again, one of our roles is to work with the governing body, as well as city departments like the Parks Department, to prioritize improvements in public improvements that we want to see. That means the park. So, we'll be working closely once we finish our designation area with the Parks Department to identify ways that we could begin dedicating resources to the improvements at Franklin Miles Park. In the future, as we continue to identify resources for development areas like the Midtown District, we'll continue to prioritize Franklin Miles Park. But again, I think the initial priorities, we should stay focused on getting Midtown, the Midtown infrastructure and legacy buildings done, because I hope you agree that the redevelopment of Midtown site is a catalytic project that will then begin having ripple effects on the surrounding district, on the surrounding neighborhoods, which comes to my second thing, which you started out with your conversation, is all of the adjacent neighborhoods are really important. Everything exists within a context, including Hopewell Mann. So, we won't just, again, thinking about that context, we won't just be looking at Hopewell Mann. We'll be looking at the other neighborhoods that surround the Midtown, that are adjacent to the Midtown site within the Midtown District itself, because we want to make sure that whatever strategies we're creating considers the impacts, the potential impacts on these other neighborhoods as well. So, the market is strong. It works in various ways, and we want to try to understand how it's affecting all the neighborhoods that surround the Midtown site. So, whatever strategies we develop will be applicable to these other neighborhoods in the area. So, I totally respect, I want to say that I'm totally committed to looking at all these other neighborhoods as well, that no neighborhood that surrounds the Midtown site sits in isolation of each other, and so we'll be looking at all of them.

Wonderful. Thank you. And I know that you have been committed, and I will just keep saying it every single time. So, you have been forewarned. I'm out of time, so I will yield the floor for now. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Welcome, Daniel and your team. Oops, sorry. I'm using my Google Maps to look at things. I appreciate your last comments, and I want to just make sure we remind everybody that this Midtown, it is Midtown, and it touches Districts 1, Districts 2, Districts 4. So, and I think sometimes, you know, there's, people think that District 2 is the East Side, and we don't care about the rest of the city. And that is just so far from the truth, because District 2 reaches across, this may start in the East, but it moves across town towards the South. So, you know, this is, this is an important area for most of the counselors, and not only because it's such a major opportunity for the city, but because our districts all are touch or are incorporated in that area. So, I just want to take the opportunity to say that and emphasize your last comments about caring about all those neighborhoods.

I am too concerned about this capital campaign idea. I think it's innovative, it's interesting. Having chaired a capital campaign, I understand what's involved, what the lift is, and what's required. And so, I'm, while I think this is novel and interesting, I do, I guess, have some concerns about how much money we're trying to raise, who we're competing with, how this works for a government to be doing this. Yeah, what we're trying to raise money for. I mean, you have to be very clear about that. You can't just, you know, say, "Hey, we want to redo these buildings." You have to be really clear about what you want to do with these buildings. So, yeah, I don't know, maybe speak a little bit more to that. I mean, the capital campaign I chaired, we had their consultants out there who put together campaigns. I don't know if that's what we're envisioning. I've never heard really of a local government doing a capital campaign. So, this is, this is new. I again, we need at Midtown, our needs are so great. I think we need to be looking at all the tools that we have, and I don't know that I'm familiar with all of them. So, this is one interesting aspect that you brought up this morning. So, maybe you could touch on that again.

Yes. So, thank you, Madam Chair, for the question. And it is still in its nascent stages. But what has given me confidence about calling it a capital campaign right now is the level of commitment that I've heard from both the Friends of the Library and the Library Advisory Board, and on the other side, the alumni that have come together and have actually created a 501c3 for the redevelopment of the Garson Studios, and continuing conversations with Live Arts, who responded to the RFP initially, to the initial RFP that was sent out in 2023, 2022. So, we will not be running the capital campaign. We'll be helping to leverage dollars within a capital campaign. And so, whether it's $1 or $10 million that they're able to leverage, is still to be determined. But I think what's important is that we continue to build, which I feel like Midtown is about, is building the momentum and building the community momentum around the redevelopment of these legacy buildings. So, for me, the capital campaign is also socializing the project so that people understand that it's moving forward. Again, we'll be looking at the resources, financial resources that we can secure through the tax increment finance, potentially through bond financing or other things that we may be looking at. But we want to leverage those dollars with community dollars through their capital campaign as well. So, it's not us necessarily leading the capital campaign, but participating, encouraging it, supporting it in any way we can. But it's trying to create a groundswell with the communities who are really interested in seeing those buildings come back to life.

Okay, that's helpful and gives me like how that fits in the broader, broader perspective. And I know with the Metropolitan Redevelopment group, there are some financing tools which we have not used in this community. Albuquerque certainly has and has seen great success in a variety of developments. So, we're going to become familiar with those tools and the capacity that they give us. I guess I'm also curious about you mentioned private equity, which my antenna went up. How do you see that role? I mean, obviously private equity has been an important financial driver in a lot of industries and a lot of areas across the country, and so to hear you mention it in this context piqued my interest.

Yes. So, again, and I just mentioned, sorry, good and bad. Yeah. No, I know, similar experiences here. So, thanks for the question again, Madam Chair. So, again, it's, we're initiating all of these strategies right now. And that's why I wanted to bring them in this, in this presentation, that, you know, we're planning on working this, starting this year and continuing them moving forward. But that's to say that this month, it's May now, we're hosting a round table, similar to the one we did with the developers. We're doing a similar one with financial institutions. We have two financial institutions on the MRA commission, both a foundation, as well as a bank. They're introducing us to other potential investors who either provide private debt, private equity to development deals, as well as a discussion around the legacy buildings, which we've had a few conversations already. But we want to have a similar round table that we did with the developers last month, but with financial institutions. And so again, we'll be presenting this idea about private equity coming into these types of projects and their commitment to social investments like this. So, we'll be researching and discovering that over the course of the next few months too. But we're hosting that round table later this month, I think on the 21st.

Great. I mean, and I think, you know, the nature of Midtown and the needs there are going to require us turning over every rock and, you know, pursuing all, all of these things. No, no one thing is going to fund all the need that's there, right? Just one last comment about that. Thank you for saying that, Madam Chair, that, you know, we're asking them a lot of these kinds of questions, and as well. And so, again, part of that capital campaign strategy is just to begin socializing ideas among investors. We know that private, you know, the developers we're talking to, they bring their own financial capacity and investment instruments, but we want to begin having our own as well. So again, we can actually do some matchmaking with developers who may want some good financing for their projects, for especially on affordable housing deals, but we actually want to have those conversations and direct relationships as well with them.

Great. And you and I have talked offline about this, and I'll just emphasize it again. As long as you're doing these round tables and these tours and things are starting to happen and come alive, I just want to make sure that you take the time to loop in the legislative delegation. I'm not sure that we've done enough there. And it's going to take a continual effort with them as well as with all these other things. So, I just want to make sure that that's also on your to-do list as you think about, you know, socializing this.

So, thank you, Madam Chair. Great comment because I just sent emails this week to them at the state. So, thank you for mentioning that. It's so true, and it's probably not been the best in the past, but I want to make it part of one of my agenda items for this coming year. Yeah. And I think it's going to take multiple, you know, getting them all together. They don't probably come together in a round table as easily as some of these other constituencies. So, you're probably going to have to bird dog them.

Okay. Other questions from this committee? Oh, Mayor, I'm sorry. You need to come up here.

No, no, I'm in the peanut gallery. I think you've made it pretty clear. I was trying to move away from that. Thanks for giving me a chance to just say a few things. First, I'm so grateful to Daniel for coming back to work for the city and taking this on. It's evident in all of his conversations and the team he's assembling that he really brings an enormous amount of professionalism, experience, and just raw talent to this project. And it is a critically important project for us. So, having the right person in the chair makes all the difference in the world.

Second, I want to just say a couple things about the context because Daniel mentioned it, and it's worth leaning into a little bit. My reading of the history of development in Santa Fe—and I confess this is colored, this is not, there's no official history, this is just my history—is that traditionally what the city has done in the past is to outsource the development responsibility to an external group, whether it's at the Railyard or at Tierra Contenta. We'd never built our own internal capability to operate as a developmental entity overseeing critically important projects. So, we do the land use, we do the permitting, we do the planning, we do the engineering, but we never said we need to go build up the muscle to do the implementation. And I have long felt that that was a missing part of the city's competency and responsibility. When you outsource it, you lose control over it. And I remember several meetings we've had as a governing body, workshops around the history of the Railyard project and where our oversight ends and where we lose the ability to influence things that we care deeply about. And it seems to me that while there are benefits from that outsourcing, the cost, the loss of oversight, is just too high a price to pay. So, keeping this group going, whether it's at Airport Road or another part of the community, as we demonstrate the competency to build this capability internally, I think is a huge part of the city's future. And I would encourage everybody to take a hard look at ways in which it can be supported and encouraged to do more as we get more under our belt. This is obviously a big project on its own, and you don't want to expand the reach of this group until they've gotten this one fully marshaled. But it is a really important thing to keep doing.

I also want to just say a word about the entrepreneurial mindset that Daniel has been bringing to bear and his team. I was whispering in the city manager's ear when the subject of a capital campaign came up and whether it's within our scope or not. I was reading the sports page the other day, as I do from time to time, and the University of Kentucky just spun out its athletic department as an LLC on the thinking that in the world in which we live today, where the college athletes are now getting NIL deals and recruitment is based on portals, it is not a far-fetched idea to think that an athletic department—it was a far-fetched idea until I read it two days ago—that you could entrepreneurial-ize an athletic department of a university in order to find new ways to finance sports in your college. And I think what Daniel's doing is applying that same kind of creative thinking to ways to monetize or project-ize individual parts of the Midtown redevelopment effort so that we don't simply think that we have to play within the existing confines of traditional financed-by-city capabilities or state support. And we'll see whether it pans out or not. I think it's pretty creative, and more of that creativity is what having this group, this new entity internally with a great board, as Councilor Lindell mentioned, the talent on that board is substantial with lots of experience in a variety of ways. I just look forward to the continued acceleration of the work at Midtown. We've really seen the "go" button get hit, and it's impressive, and the more we're able to hit "go," the better.

The last thing I just wanted to comment on is on the neighborhood stabilization contract. I think you've all probably gotten tired of me, although I will continue to do it anyway, talk about the opportunity I had to go back to the Harvard Graduate School of Design and be introduced to the Just City program. And I really do think that's a frame for much of the work that we do, not just at Midtown or at Hopewell-Mann, but across the city. It is really important to us. It plays into so many of our strengths as a community and is more relevant today than ever before. So, the fact that we've now had that RFP developed—Daniel, I think you wrote it yourself. You took it as a personal task that you wanted to champion, and I greatly appreciate that. Getting it out the door, getting responses back in the door, hopefully we'll have some really talented people who could be tapped to do this work. And your comment that it's not only applicable in this specific geographic area but as a pilot across the community once we actually activate it and live into it, I think is going to be something that we could all take a great deal of pride in and a great deal of satisfaction that we're doing the right thing as an outgrowth of the opportunity at Midtown. So, so much good stuff happening here. I can't tell you how exciting it is, and we just need to continue to support it and find ways to communicate the real progress that's going on at Midtown. So, thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mayor. Okay. Did we have a motion?

Motion to approve.

Second.

We have a motion and a second to approve this item. Can we get a roll call, please?

Certainly, Madam Chair. Councilor Cassutt?

Yes.

Councilor Lindell? Councilor Faulkner?

Yes.

Chair Maestas?

Yes.

Motion passed.

Thank you. Thank you for being here. Appreciate it.

Thank you so much. Have a good rest of the day, and thanks for all your work this past week and into next week. I'm looking forward to the weekend.

Thank you.

All right. See you all.

Okay. Next up, we have the General Government. And I want to, I'm not going to take these in the order they're listed. I want to take the Municipal Court and the City Attorney's Office. And I'm hoping to get both of those done before we break for lunch. And then we'll come back and do the other pieces. So, if that's okay. I don't know if the City Attorney and the Municipal Court want to flip a coin or arm wrestle or what, but one of you please come forward. Good morning, Judge. How are you?

Morning, Madam Chair. I'm fine. And members of the Finance Committee, good morning.

Good morning. I guess you can dive right in. So, thank you.

I'd like to start off first with, you know, one of the major goals as the Municipal Court Judge that I wanted to do and bring to the court was to increase the services and programs that we offer the public. In addition, I wanted to increase the accessibility of the court to members of the public, and I think that's kind of the big theme of our budget this year for 25-26. But I think if we, I would like to go back to some of the major accomplishments for the 24-25 to kind of fill in and show you how that relates to the 25-26 budget.

So, number one, the Municipal Court's DWI Drug Court Program, our treatment court program, I'm happy to report, just received its certification from the Administrative Offices of the Court. What that means is we are now, all program participants, such as the Santa Fe Police Department, the City Public Defender's Office, the City Prosecutor, we're all trained. We've all followed best practices, and we are the only municipal court in the state of New Mexico to receive that certification. There are other treatment courts in magistrates and district courts, but not all of them are certified. So, to be a certified municipal court treatment court, the only one in the state of New Mexico, I'm very happy and proud of, and I think the other partners that I mentioned for that part of the 25-26 budget allows us to continue with that program and the certification. We partner with Medista Vista Wellness, contract with them to provide counseling and therapy for those participants, and that is a major component in keeping that certification.

The other thing I want to reach out is another major accomplishment in 24-25 that I'd like to continue with the 25-26 budget is our outreach court program, which is designed to assist with the precariously housed individuals, recognizing what they're already doing as far as treatment to meet the requirements that they may have in the Municipal Court. We expanded that to include our veterans this past year. We want to continue that. I recently, the court recently hired a Court's Program Director. She will start on May 12th. She is a licensed therapist with a master's degree in counseling. And part of her role will be to help me implement additional programs, such as an 18 to 25-year-old court program for those offenders at that young age group to try to make sure that we keep them out of the system, keep things off their record, so things that they've done at a young age do not affect them for the rest of their lives. In addition, I'd have the Court's Program Director help me implement a first offenders class. First offenders, we have that first offenders class right now, but we'd like to keep implementing and improving and moving forward with those different programs.

In addition, this, our budget includes keeping the electronic monitoring program in place. That is an alternative sentencing program in lieu of incarceration at the county jail. Members of the public can be held in house arrest with the option of allowing them to still work. It doesn't interfere with, you know, the cost of losing a job, et cetera. Couple other things to point out with this budget is we need to regularly update the court's room technology, including audio, video, our telephone systems, and our computers. A couple of years ago, the New Mexico Supreme Court required all courts to have the ability to have members of the public attend virtual hearings, whether that's telephone, video, whatnot. We need to make sure that we are up to date, allowing that accessibility.

Going back to accessibility, the court currently has nine court clerks. We have a staff of 15, but we have nine court clerks. Five of those court clerks are language access specialists currently. That means is they get a $1.25 extra an hour incentive pay to take the Administrative Offices of the Courts Language Access Specialist program so they can interpret in court. But we have five out of nine. Two are signed up now for future trainings. And so in six months, we should have seven out of the nine clerks able to interpret in court.

Lastly, I want to kind of touch base on a couple of things. I heard Councilor Faulkner talk about future planning, looking forward, upcoming funding, possibly thinking from the court is more funding for programs based on the best practices that the Court's Program Director and I find throughout implementing these other programs in case we need more money to implement different things.

also our bailiff and security at the court. As you all have known, you've seen the clips on the news and stuff, courts are having some issues with security and stuff. Moving forward, we'd really like to look and dive into those types of things with a different security and different bailiff system. That being said, I'll take some questions.

Chair: Great. I'll start with Councilor Lindell.

Councilor Lindell: Thank you, Chair. Thank you for being here, Judge. So, how do you find out about all these new programs that you're initiating? Do you go to conferences or how do you find out about that?

Judge: A lot of it is conferences, and in our budget, we included education for court staff and judges. A lot of it is going around, listening to see what other courts are doing, being a part of different events, etc.

Councilor Lindell: So, absolutely. I applaud you for doing that. I think that these programs are innovative. I think they're in the best interest of the community. Budget-wise, I don't really have any questions. I know that one of the things here is to continue improving courthouse security. Do you have constant issues around that?

Judge: I wouldn't say constant issues, but there is always the concern, and you always want to try to think ahead. You don't want to be reactive in these types of situations. It does happen. I've heard some talk with some people, it's like, "Well, it's speeding tickets." Very aggressive people that commit violent crimes also pick up speeding tickets. So, we have a system. We got recently, last budget, we got a new walkthrough metal detector. With this current budget, the 25-26, we're asking for money so we can have an X-ray machine, like you would see at the airport or at the district court, where people would have to pass bags through. So, I feel that we're okay at the moment, but it's something that should always be looked at.

Councilor Lindell: I understand, and I agree with you on that. Thank you for being willing to do this job. I think that it doesn't get a lot of attention from us because it doesn't demand a lot of attention from us, which is indicative that it's going well. So, thank you very much, Judge.

Judge: Thank you.

Chair: Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Faulkner.

Councilor Faulkner: What you're doing is inspiring. I'm so excited about it. So incredible. Again, anything I can do to help. I don't have a lot to say. I mean, you're doing a great job, and I like that you're taking the courts and making it more accessible to people. I know people are breaking laws, but I think we can sometimes be punitive with compassion. And so I feel like that's something you're doing, and I'm just really impressed, and I want to meet with you at some point and get more details about this because I'm working with some other organizations, and I think I can bring some more resources to you to help. So, anyway, you're doing a great job.

Judge: Thank you so much, Councilor.

Councilor Cassid: Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Thank you, Judge Chidum, for being here. And again, I echo my colleagues in all of the work that you've done to find these different programs. We talk so much about how we want to make sure that the justice system is really looking at rehabilitation and not just punitive. And so those circumstances where we are able to take advantage of that, and the partnership with Mesa Vista Wellness is incredible. We know that that is another key component of this, and that when we get an individual and they're coming in for DWI or something else where we get mental health services, that it is going to impact other potential public safety hazards that that individual may perpetrate later in life. So, thank you, thank you for all that work.

Councilor Cassid: Couple questions. You mentioned security. And I imagine our budgets for general government weren't really popped out through or in the budget book. But it's been a question that I've been curious about since our conversations yesterday around contracts. And I imagine security is probably a contract. And I know that we've done some different adjustments. How much are you getting for contracting this year, and what would it include besides security?

Judge: The, and I'll get you that number here in just a second. The other contracts that we have is, as I mentioned, the BI. Those are our electronic monitoring devices, which again, it's an alternative to incarceration. The Mesa Vista Wellness security, our interpreters. We do still need to have interpreters for different languages besides Spanish. We also have sign language interpreters that we contract out for things like that. DO is our drug testing. It's part of the DWI Drug Court program and our court services. If I, as a judge, feel that someone pre-adjudication would benefit from frequent drug testing or alcohol testing, we pay for that to send them over there. Lastly, a couple other things would be, or one of the things would be Westlaw. Westlaw is a database. It's basically where all the laws, all the case law research that I can go and find. So that's the majority of our contracts. The budgeted amount for contract is about $180,000 currently. I know there is some other monies that is going to be coming in for that.

Councilor Cassid: Okay. And was this part of the dollars that disappeared and now they're coming back and there was a mistake? Okay. So $180,000 right now, and I think it's another $100,000. So $280,000 then in contracts, or is that $100,000 going to other things too?

Judge: A little of both, but mostly contracts.

Councilor Cassid: Okay. And given the accounting method, you've been our judge for how long?

Judge: Two years now.

Councilor Cassid: Is this your, a little over two or a little over a year? Okay. So, obviously there's been a change in judgeship. Is that what we would call it? I'm going to go with it. I like that word. Leadership at the Municipal Court. Would you think that the contracted amount is going to be sufficient given you have expanded all of these programs? They are contracts for them.

Judge: Absolutely. I believe we are moving forward this budget with the extra money coming in that was originally requested. Yes, I believe it's okay.

Councilor Cassid: Wonderful. Glad to hear that. Because again, you know, we are all very much in favor. And then I saw you did get an uptick in your, well, 4.9% increase in the budget. Is that salary adjustments?

Judge: Most of that is salary adjustments.

Councilor Cassid: Okay. All right. And then you had gotten money right for landscaping last year, correct? Was that last year that we did that or was that a couple years ago?

Judge: Couple of years ago.

Councilor Cassid: My budget books are blending together. Okay. So, I guess what we did with that landscaping budget, just since you brought it up, may as well.

Judge: One of the things that I did is there was a good amount that we received. I was able to move some of that money around. We didn't need, it turns out, we didn't need all that money. So, I used some of that money and moved it in other areas so that we didn't have to keep asking for more money. We just moved it to better use.

Councilor Cassid: Okay. Well, glad to hear that. So, I have no further questions, but again, really, really grateful for the work you're doing and for the innovations that you are making at the Municipal Court. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Chair: Thank you, Councilor. I'd just echo, really impressive to see the work you're doing to professionalize the Municipal Court, the innovation you're bringing. I think it's long overdue and much appreciated. So, thank you for that work. If there are no further questions, is there a motion?

Councilor: Motion to approve.

Councilor: Second.

Chair: We have a motion and a second to approve this item. If we get a roll call, please.

Councilor: Madam Chair, in the past on general government, oh, we've done it all at once. All at once. Okay. We can do it as each component if you'd like. They are. Yeah. All right. We'll wait. Thank you very much. Oh, you want to approve? Why not? Thank you. Yes, you are. You're a little honory today. It's because it's Friday. Okay. I think we're, whoa. Oh, everybody. Okay. Welcome. Good morning. It's still morning. Welcome, City Attorney McSherry. What we've been doing, I noticed you brought your team with you. We have, you can of course introduce them upfront, but I have been asking if you are asked questions if you wouldn't mind. Of course, we all know you and work with you regularly, but if you're brought up to answer a question, it'd be great if you just introduce yourself again, because not everybody who's watching or listening now or later may be familiar with who you are. So, welcome, and I'll let you dive in.

City Attorney McSherry: Thank you, Chair Omeorth, members of the Finance Committee. I would like to introduce them right away. Marcy does have to leave for a personal appointment that she's had on her calendar for a while. But I do have Marcy Eanorino, who's our Director of Legislation and Policy Innovation. We've got Julie Kenny, who's been filling in. Very thankful she's been able to do so. She's our lead paralegal, who's been with us for about eight years, and she's been covering for the office administrator while we fill that position. We do have a candidate who hopefully, anyway, their packet is in the hiring process right now. We're hoping they get to start very soon. And then I have Katherine Garcia Gyos, who recently presented to the council on behalf of the IRA team. Those are the three folks who are leads of the teams other than the legal group. So, thank you for being here, and if there are questions, Julie's been helping me with the financial side of the shop in the absence of an office administrator. So, thank you for having me today, and thanks for all the work you've been doing on the budget hearings. I know it's been a lot of work, including with governing body this week. We can go to the next slide. This is a photo of almost all the team in the fall. It was missing one person who was sick. But this includes folks, next slide, from all three of our program areas. I include the administrative and legal support and the legal team as well. But in terms of management, we do have a manager that oversees the paralegals. I directly supervise the attorneys, and we have the Office of Records Custodians, which Katherine manages, and the Office of Legislation and Policy Innovation, which Marcy manages. Next slide. So, in terms of what's included in the budget, it's pretty bare bones for the City Attorney this year. Primarily, you're funding salaries. It would be 87% of our budget if there were no vacancy. So, primarily, you're paying for people. And the people are your in-house counsel. That's what we do on the day-to-day basis for the municipal corporation. That means we advise the elected officials, the departments, employees, committees, and appointees of the city. And that's representation in a variety of ways: day-to-day advice about interpretation of laws, representation in city negotiations, prosecution of municipal citations, representation in administrative appeals and land use appeals to certain, a huge variety of administrative appeals. Everything from land use appeals to certain employment-related matters, and those go in front of hearing officers typically first and then to district court or in front of committees in the case of land use matters. And then defense of any other actions that come up. It could be declaratory actions. It could be injunctions seeking to stop enforcement of a city ordinance.

It could be contract disputes, all the above. We also provide oversight of risk litigation counsel. Risk litigation counsel budget is not in the city attorney's budget, so those contracts are through the risk management budget. That's something the city might want to look at in the future, particularly given our increased self-insured retention, because we are essentially directly paying city funds for most of that outside counsel representation, which did not used to be the case. Over the last eight years, we've gone from a $50,000 self-insured retention to a $1.5 million self-insured retention. So almost 100% of any cases that we've had while I've been at the city have been under $1.5 million total for both legal representation and settlement. So with that history, right now we are basically directly paying for any of those costs anyway. So we really might want to look at a future model that changes that.

We also do the discovery collection and production for risk litigation out of the city attorney's office. So that's primarily with our paralegals. Julie Kenny and Kandra Payne, who are both based here out of City Hall, provide that type of collection and production working with outside counsel on those cases. We have a paralegal at Municipal Court who works with the prosecutor on the discovery of criminal cases, working with the police department. We also do the nuisance abatement, foreclosure action, legal actions, legislative review, legal research, contract review. And there are over 700 contracts a year that we do legal review on. And that's anything from procurements to JPAs, leases, licenses, and real estate contracts. We also review personnel matters, and that's in the hundreds as well. And policy review and trainings. So that's your general counsel type of function from the city attorney's office. And that includes both the legal support staff and the attorneys. And there are 12 of us total: eight attorneys, including the prosecutor, three paralegals, and the office administrator, who is also the contracts administrator for the whole city, really, for the legal review of all contracts for the city.

We can go to the next slide. The other two programs are the legislative staff with three employees and the records custodians with five. The biggest changes to our department have been the increase for records custodians in the last few years. So this is the first fiscal year we had the two new positions for records specialists. We went from one employee about three years ago in the city attorney's office and part of an employee in the police department covering IRA to consolidating those two into the city attorney's office, adding the manager position, and now Katherine's been in that about three years, and then adding two more employees to that office. That's the biggest change that's happened in the office. The other change is the policy analyst that was added a couple years ago. And so we're still within the first couple years of that position. Everything else has been relatively flat since I arrived at the city. So for the last seven years, for the salary and benefits of the legislation and policy staff, the city is getting coordination of legislative and policy requests, drafting of bills, resolutions, and amendments, working with staff on the FIRs and memos that accompany those legislative packages, tracking and supporting committee review of the legislation, agenda management for legislation and policy research, evaluation and presentation, and trainings. And so trainings is one of the things we're hoping to roll out. I think we did one last year for the orientation for the counselors. We're hoping to train staff in the near future on how to facilitate and make that process more streamlined for staff and so they understand how to best work with our team and with counselors when we're drafting legislation and how to best be experts on that and how to help with the memos and FIRs. We're also looking at updating FIR guidance and format. So that's something probably that folks will be hearing about over the next year.

In the records custodians office, the city, through the payment of salaries and benefits for the records custodians, is getting facilitation of the records requests, tracking of the requests, communications with requesters and staff, coordination of the city response to requests. There are a lot of people involved in that process, responding to complaints and trainings on IRA. You can go to the next slide.

So after we get through the personnel and benefits, the majority of our budget then goes to services of other departments in the general liability. That's 61% of our non-personnel costs. There's 5% for legal contracts in this year's budget. That's a reduction from this year, but this year's legal contract budget is not really representative of what we're spending. The Economic Development Department is contributing towards the Midtown contract for outside counsel services on real estate. We've already done that. We're about to do that again. We're going to be bringing an amendment to that contract to the next governing body meeting to add some from FY26 from the city attorney's budget and from FY25, this year's fiscal year budget, from the Economic Development's budget for this year with Midtown. And that's the firm that helped us quite a bit with the disposition agreement with Garson Studios and also recently with the closing engagement with the New Mexico Finance Administration or Authority and the loans that the Aspect Studio was getting for their down payment to the city, which has now been paid, and their financing of $1 million of investment in that property. So there were a lot of closing documents involved in that, and it was very helpful to have expert real estate counsel as we negotiated those documents with the NMFA and with Aspect Studios. So we were benefiting quite a bit from that service, and we'd like to continue working with that firm as we enter additional dispositions with other developers. So this fits in well with what Director Hernandez was talking about earlier in terms of the next negotiations and dispositions that we're going to have. So it is very helpful to have experienced real estate counsel. And it doesn't necessarily make sense for that to be a forever role on the city attorney's team. We have folks that work with those folks, but this is such a one-time opportunity for the city to use that type of expert real estate knowledge in this disposition. I think it's worthwhile.

The other contracts are for specialized legal advice, including HIPAA. Sometimes we have some complicated things that happen with the fire department. It's a very small contract. We typically only use a couple thousand a year from that. Conflict counsel for the city prosecutors. That's like when we had an intern, for an example, that had a matter. So we used our conflict counsel to deal with that Municipal Court situation, or if there's another city employee, which also happens, that type of situation. So we do have backup counsel for that. Again, just a couple thousand dollars a year for that. And then special projects counsel, which includes the Midtown disposition situation. Other costs are primarily general liability assessment services to other departments and software. Software includes things like Westlaw. The next request software is up a little bit this year compared to last year because we are overlapping the next request software with the onboarding of what's called Gov Q&A, which is going to be the service we'll be using starting in FY26, but there's a little bit of an overlap between the two services, which is good. That way we can onboard with the new service, train folks in using the new service while we still have a service that we're able to use. It also includes dues and licensure, training and travel. We can go to the next slide.

In terms of what's not in the city attorney's budget, the 12% vacancy is a pretty significant amount of our personnel budget. This year we had a 2.5% vacancy thus far, which means positions being open for five months total across all 20 positions. If we were to actually impose the 12% on my staff, that would be two people not being filled all year and another person not being filled for half of a year. So significantly different. That would be 31 months of vacancy rather than five. That would be a huge problem. But I understand that we're looking at fixing it in the future. And because otherwise we just wouldn't be able to function if we actually kept that vacancy rate. Are those attorneys or it was just an average of two positions, whatever they would be, but it would have to be at least one more expensive position. Okay. But that basically concludes my presentation. I put some scenarios of if I actually had to cover this vacancy rate of what we would have to do, which are none of them are really feasible for the city, which is why we do need to find another option.

Okay. And when you say it's being worked on, I assume that's being worked on in the city manager's office. Could we fill that in a little bit? Counselors, the concept of the vacancy credit is just that, the recognition that over the course of a year, there's X number of dollars worth of vacancy that the city will benefit from in terms of having extra money to use. It gets allocated in the initial budget by department. Actually, in many cities, you don't put it by department. You put it into a general government kind of category, and you don't spread it to the departments. But these got spread to departments. It looks like we're asking each department to provide that amount of vacancy. We're just saying that historically we have that much vacancy, and so we're recognizing that savings as part of the balancing. But you don't do that. Sometimes you'll see cities that think they have to lay people off in order to balance their budgets, and that's not true because you always have a certain amount of vacancy. So what we've said to all the departments, just like we said yesterday, is that as this year progresses, we find out what our real situation is with GRT and other issues. We will come back with recommendations on how to deal with all this. We have 300 vacant positions right now. The 12% vacancy credit is less than that. So we're not overreaching that we'll be able to balance.

Okay. It sounds though that there needs to be some clarity with how people actually operate their workload and their departments and their staffing needs. I agree, and that's why this week I sent an email to all the department heads saying, "Just operate as normal." Cities, this city and other cities, use vacancy credits all the time. You just operate like normal, and through the end of the year, it all balances out. The credits don't have to happen within each department. They have to happen across the general fund or the various funds, and it will, again, it will certainly work out. But I've asked each of the department heads to not fail to move forward with trying to fill their positions, and we will be able to come back and explain how we cover all that during the course of the year.

This is not going to be a problem. And I get what you're saying, but again, this is the second time it's come up from the people who are actually running the offices. So I think the question yesterday, if it was yesterday, I can't remember, it might have been two days ago, around land use, and could they go out and advertise for those positions? And what I hear you saying is yes. I put out an email yesterday after that discussion. It's actually come up to me with every department. We've only seen it in this chamber twice. And I put out an email and I said everyone should process vacancies as normal, and it will balance out over the course. So when anybody, yeah, so it's really an accounting budgeting method. Virtually every city in the, yeah, no, I get it. I mean, I think we all could name lots of places, lots of departments or familiarity with positions that people come, they go, it's a fluid situation. So I think the mistake we may have made, if it's a mistake, is allocating it by department. I think if we had just put it into a lump sum, a lump sum in a non-departmental category, that would have made it less stressful. The other thing that we did, that we did at the last minute, we did freeze those positions, and that exacerbates vacancy credit. But we're even allowing people to move forward on those positions.

And again, going back to land use, that seems to be the, I think there's an understanding issue, right? You freeze it and people think they can't fill it, they can't move on it. And yet, and I'm sorry it's been so confusing to people, the phrase is that it's not removed from the budget. It's left in the budget. So it's assumed in the budget that it's not being spent, but it's not going away. They don't have to come back next year and reauthorize the positions. So that's the part that's frozen, but people will be allowed to fill them, and we will find our vacancy credits from the normal historic vacancies that we always have and everyone always has.

And do other cities use the term it's frozen or it's freezed or it's unchill? We had all kinds of gradations yesterday.

It's not a term I've used before. No. But the concept isn't that they won't be able to move forward with recruiting if they can. So maybe we shouldn't be using the word freeze. I think that was maybe, yeah.

I can see the city attorneys wanting to jump in here. Mayor, counselors, I'm sorry, I'm so used to Mayor Weber, counselors. Chair Romero Worth, counselors. It works. I think City Manager Scott's been very clear. I agree. I think what this does when you impose it across the board, and some departments have had a higher historic rate than others, is that it kind of distorts the other categories though, is the problem, because then there's less funding in the other categories because of the shortage in salaries and benefits. So in order to pay for things, I'm having to move things that aren't really there. And it also makes it look like it's more flat than it is. And then we've had cuts and other things to make. So I just don't think it's a realistic perspective of each department's budget the way it, and I understand we're going to be working on it throughout the year and that, but it just, the change over years is less clear. And how the budget will actually look this year is less clear because we're holding that vacancy on each department regardless of what their historic vacancy was. So in order for mine to be flat, more things have to be cut. Because I actually am, I was fully, I was the only department in the city for quite a while that had all, I had 100% of the positions filled for eight months of the year. So that was zero vacancy during those times. So, and in order to fund those people, I was moving funds out of other places. And then we're borrowing from other departments for contracts and utilities covers their contracts because they can, that for legal work, and they're also covering training and the airport's covering training for some of my team because we ran out of funding. I don't have training funding, and then my training budget got cut because I didn't have training two years ago, but I am training people this year. But I don't have a historic expenditure of training because I just got funding this year. So I would like to send people to more training, but basically I'm having to beg for money from other departments right now.

So, yeah, so your budget is unique in this situation, it sounds like. And I do remember having the conversation about you being fully staffed, which is why when I looked at this, I was like, "Wait a minute, how can you have a vacancy rate? I thought you were fully staffed." So, yeah. So I hear you. And I see city manager wants to jump in again.

I agree entirely with what Aaron just said. We need to do our budget different, and I think we will find a good approach very shortly to moving forward with next year.

Manager, apparently they can't hear you, or is your mic on? And maybe bring it closer to you. You have a kind of soft voice anyway.

Yeah, the mic's on. There are a lot of things that we do here that lead to those kinds of impacts. For instance, and I don't want to belabor it because this is, this is future, not budget, but the way that we move money between different budget lines and different budgets is entirely different than any place I've ever seen. And we make work, and there are things that we need to do, the kinds of things the city attorneys had to do to pay for, what did you say, training? And it shouldn't be that difficult. Contracts. It shouldn't be that difficult. And we need to fix a number of things going forward, and it'll be, I look forward to it. I think it'll be fun to see what we can do to make these things more efficient. So, but I think those are really well-stated examples of the kinds of problems we've had, and we look forward to working on them.

Okay. And I, I mean, I do think it's good to flag these things so we have a better understanding of what the problem is, what we've done that's created the problem, how that's impacting your ability to do your work, and then, you know, the future promises to make this different and to resolve some of these things. Okay. Aaron, I think you said you were done, so I'll start in the middle again. Counselor Falconer. Okay. Counselor Lindell, I don't really have any comments on the budget. I think that the amount of work that that office puts out is unbelievable. I'm sorry that we have to put so much of our time and effort into, I think that we have people that intentionally bog us down with IRA requests, and I think that that's a shameful act on their part to be wasting the resources of the city. I think it's intentional. I think it's with a motive, and I'm very, very sorry that that's happening. I think staff has stood up to it well. I think you, Aaron, have stood up to it well, and it's improper, and we all know that. But I think our hands are tied to continue to deal with people that have very, very poor motivation and are not community-minded whatsoever. So we just carry on with it. But I think that, I think it's right to call it out and to let people know that we do have people in this community that just continuously use city resources as a way to deal with their own inability to deal with their situation. So that's all I have to say.

Thank you, Counselor. Counselor Casset.

I will be speedy, but thank you for being here. We see you all the time, so I don't, I don't have too much in the way of questions. I don't know if this was covered when I was out of the room, but we did a presentation on IRA the other day. I think that it is important to reiterate in case somebody new is watching, what you have done, what your team has done in order to deal with the influx of IPAs and some of the liability that we've, we've had with the fact that laws are not conducive to city functioning. So can you speak a little bit more to the work that's been happening there? I know you brushed over quickly with some of the new positions, but there's a lot more happening.

Thank you, Council, for the question, and I'll invite Catherine Garcia Gigos to join me on that question as well. And I would say that we, despite increasing staffing by essentially 150% in the last couple years, we're still proportionally outstaffed by Albuquerque by many times. But only, we're about 66% of their requests. I think they get in the, Catherine, do you remember the number Albuquerque is getting?

They have 13, between 11 and 13,000 requests.

Okay, so that's, I mean, we're already at 10,000. Although we are, we are hoping that the number may go down with the crash reports all posted. But so they're, they are not even one order of magnitude greater than us. Some portion, you know, thereof, some minority proportion greater thereof, more than us. But we, but they have in the 20s in terms of numbers of staff, like 20, 25, right? We have five. They might, they, the amount of video I know that they're having requested is substantial as well, but that's been one of our main areas of time and effort where that's gone, and is reviewing the police body cam videos and the dash cam videos when that's applicable. So, so things we have done is increased staffing by over 150%. We've created a cohesive team that Catherine leads that is cross-trained in acquiring all the types of records, which includes pretty extensive training for police records in particular. Catherine, do you want to talk about that, like the different databases you look at?

Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair and counselors. So my team, we cross-train as Aaron mentioned, through all of the different departments. When it comes to the police records, our team is required to first be background checked before they can access any of the databases within the police department. Once we receive a background check, they have several different databases, which requires training. So they have the Axon database, which is currently used by the police department for their police reports, body cam, dash cam. So they utilize that system to pull reports, redact videos, pull videos, and provide those to the requesters. They also have the older systems, which are still maintained by the police department, which is the AS400 system, RMS system, and then the Track system, which is used for all of the crash reports throughout the state of New Mexico. And then they also use a fourth system, which is the CAD system to help research some of the events that they receive requests for. So pretty complex.

Yes. So, so I mean, as you presented to us the other day, there's been, we've increased staffing as well as putting the crash reports online so that those are publicly accessible. And then you had mentioned a few other things that you're looking at to assist with this in terms of some other things that we might be able to get online. Land use actually mentioned that as well, that they're trying to put some, some things online. Anything else that I forgot?

That pretty much just anything that we can have online. GovQA is really going to be one of the systems that we're implementing that will help. One of the reasons that we've chosen this system to work with is because it does have the capability to alert requesters that a request for similar material has been previously made, and they can search our publicly available records before submitting a request.

It also allows them to still submit a request while alerting internal staff that the same request has been made so we don't need to duplicate the efforts in redacting and reviewing the information. Wonderful. Great. Well, glad to hear that and thank you for all your work there and thank you for presenting to us the other night and being willing to give us a brief synopsis here. Thank you.

So we kind of already covered the my contracts question, which sounds like no. The answer is that there's not enough, or that this is going to be something we're going to have to keep a close eye on throughout the year. We are hoping that we've threaded the needle, but something in terms of the contracts to support your office is going to be, we should keep a tight focus on it.

Chair Morworth: Counselor Kazit.

It's possible. So we, it just, we're going to try to get as much done as possible this fiscal year with the additional funds from economic development, which will be a part of the amendment to the contract with Brownstein that's coming your way. And then we do have budgeted $60,000 for next fiscal year for that contract. And then I have a little bit of, we don't know what happens. We don't know what's going to happen on certain things, right? That's the hard thing with your department is, right? We don't know when we're going to be sued or whether or not we need to file suit with an outside counsel as well. So there's a little bit there for that. But so right now it's plenty based on the things I know, depending on how complex the real estate transactions are. But exactly, it's hard to know for sure. And then the high-end real estate tax is fully briefed now. We don't know if there'll be an oral argument or not, but it's looking, there's not. So if there was an appeal to the Supreme Court, for example, there's funding in there for that. If we don't need that, then I have a little bit more flexibility.

Okay, got it. Thank you. And then last question, you've done a really good job staffing up, which is great. Has that been a result of, have we been more competitive with salaries post class and comp or just from some of the increases? What tricks have you done to recruit? Good job. How'd you do it?

Well, I think we have a really close team and people really care about what they're doing. We actually are not competitive at all with the state and county. As of now, we are 25% behind. I did not get any responses to my most recent posting. I did have two offers initially with the attorney posting. One attorney who was a great candidate decided to stay with the federal government. Initially, she thought she was going to be riffed. We were her top choice public choice because of the work, even though probably we were not going to have the highest offer. And then another candidate is actually moving here, but can't be licensed till the end of the summer and so was not eligible to be hired. So we have reposted that position but had zero candidates after the reposting. So actually, I have alerted HR and management of the salary challenge, which is that the county and the state increased salaries for attorneys significantly after the studies happened. I think they were doing studies at the same time perhaps. So we are now significantly behind, which might have resulted in the low applicant rate initially here. It does look like our assistant city attorney who recently went on sabbatical is going to come back for the summer, a part-time basis to help us out. So we hadn't lost anybody in two years when she left, but she'll be here part-time while she'll be traveling again in the fall. But it's great that she'll be coming back around the time that Ms. Minook Herman goes on maternity leave, which we're anticipating, you know, within the next few weeks to a month at the latest, at the latest really. So, and I am looking at also bringing another former assistant city attorney back as a contract, but again, the contract budget right now is extremely limited. I'm seeing what we can scrape together to bring her back to help out during Ms. McCurman's maternity leave as well. But we are, we're tight right now. And really the study didn't move much for the attorneys. It's because the competitors increased their salaries. They moved, they moved more than we did.

Okay. Well, good to know. Well, in that case, congratulations even more on being able to, you know, I know we know that it's not just salary. We know that it's work. We know that it is, you know, feeling, yeah, the culture of the office and so, glad we've been able to keep people. Thank you for that. I don't believe I have any other questions, but I know how to call you. Thank you. Thank you, city attorney, for all your hard work and the culture and the team you have built and continue to improve on. I notice it. I think other counselors notice it. I think the work that your office produces demonstrates it. So, I think you should be recognized for what you've built over time and this is one opportunity to do that. I am curious about the self-insured retention and you suggesting we might want to rethink that because the level of what we're insuring has gone up is the way I understand it. What are you thinking that needs to be moved to your office? Are you thinking it needs to be moved out of your office? I can't really see it moving away from you, but does it need more staff? What needs to be rethought?

Thank you for that question. So, I have been talking to other offices about how they handle their involvement with risk management. An example is Albuquerque where they have some litigators on the city attorney's office team and then they bill the risk management office and then they alert the risk management when they don't have capacity and then they contract out. Like that's one option. Right now we have, it's entirely part of through our third-party administrators basically. And I think when the insurers were the ones making more of a decision of whether to settle, that makes sense because then they're administering it with the third-party administrator and they're making those choices to an extent externally but as contractors to the city. But now we're overseeing outside counsel and we're paying for most everything anyway. So I can see taking more control of that perhaps and taking some in-house perhaps to see like maybe we have a couple full-time litigators and don't do all the contracts, but I think we need to do a study about how many in-house versus contracts we would want to have and what that would look like. So, right now, I don't have enough information to make a specific recommendation, but I think those are some of the options the city might want to consider.

And is your budget going to allow you to look into that or is that just something you do like on Saturdays or, you know, is the, and is the city manager also interested in this? I see him reaching for his mic.

All of the above, including Saturdays. I was at the International Municipal Legal Law Association conference over the last weekend with Marcus Martinez and yes, we did, we did hang out with some of the Albuquerque attorneys on Saturday, literally. So, and did talk to them about some of the things they're doing and shared ideas, and attorneys from across the country. Not on that subject specifically, but yes, we were talking about other models with other attorneys and yes, we've raised it. We're talking about it actively with city manager Scott, but I think he's got maybe some more to say about that.

Yeah, and and I, I made the Saturday comment as a, as a joke, of course, my dry humor, but I know you work very hard pretty much round the clock because I've spoken to you almost round the clock in the last in my term of of service here. So, anyway, I was being silly. Over to you, city manager.

I'll be silly too. I was going to ask when Saturday quit being a work day. I agree. We, we are, we need to figure out how best to do this. There's lots of different ways that it's done. There's no way to do it without being very closely involved with the city attorney's office. We're recruiting a risk and safety director. We need to get clear on what the job duties are, but all of that needs to come together. It's way too big an issue, cost issue for us not to very intentionally structure this. It's coming.

Okay. Well, I think I'm, I'm glad you flagged it as an issue and and something that, you know, everybody up here can be aware of as as you start to look at at how best to to meet the need. I think that's important.

I guess I should clarify the one thing you mentioned that isn't accurate is there's not money in my budget to do a study about that.

Right. Yeah. Well, and it didn't sound like you, it was a, I mean, do you need a formal study or you're, this is sort of a, you all need to put your heads together and make some calls and talk to some people is is what it sort of sounded like. I don't know that it didn't sound to me like it rises to the level of a formal study. I don't have an answer for that, but it sounds like city manager doesn't think so. So, that's great. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like, you know, you need to have some conversations and and figure out what it is we're going to do. And it's this is the kind of thing too that it probably evolves over time, right? You, you, you look at what you think is the right match for the city and the city's needs and you try some things and and you, you know, see if they work and continue to build on them. It's a, it's in my mind it's sort of a fluid thing. So, okay. All right. I don't think we have any more questions and I really would like to get through the rest of these budgets by 12:30. As I think we can do it and I'm hoping, but maybe what, but let's take care of this one thing first. Oh, we're not going to vote on these. We're not voting on this one. All right. I was going to ask for a motion, but so we're not going to do that. So we'll go to, so essentially we have left the mayor's office, the city council, the city manager, internal audit, risk management and safety. All right. Thank you for everyone's time. Yes. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Maybe we can't. So what do you want to do here? I don't know that we can postpone till Monday because can we? Well, this is an Armenia question because of the when we post the agendas. Have we posted the Monday agenda yet? And Director Oster had to step out. So, Armenia is filling in. Thank you for being here.

Madam Chair, we have not posted the Monday agenda yet. That will be posted later this afternoon. So, I will leave that up to you and the mayor and city manager on how to decide on the rest of the schedule.

Okay. So, I guess the other thing, Monday, you told me earlier we have affordable housing, economic development, and airport. That's quite a bit. So, I'm just concerned that, yeah, we probably need to get through these budgets today. They're short. Yeah, I do think they're short, even though there's like five of them. But I have, I think it's also a committee question. I know you all have things you're trying to do with what you thought would be a lunch break. So, do you want to go till 12:30 and then do a break for lunch and then we'll come back for whatever we have to do or know you do rather break now and come back?

And we're going to be losing Councilor Falner after lunch, so it'll be the three of us. She'll try to zoom in, but it's unclear whether she'll be able to. We'll be back at 1:15. All right, why don't we then just break, and we'll be back at 1:15, and we'll finish all these budgets today, and then we won't. We'll keep the workload manageable. I think we've got some lunch for everybody, so stick around if you can.

Are we live?

**Speaker:** Yes, Madam Chair, we are live.

**Speaker:** Terrific. All right, we will resume our afternoon session. I don't think we'll be here very long. We do have a handful of budgets, but they're small, and I think they'll be quick. So, I don't know where to go here. Do you want to—are you going to present the ones that are remaining? Did you draw the short straw?

**Speaker:** Madam Chair, I will start by doing a real quick overview of the Mayor's Office, City Council, City Manager, and Internal Audit.

**Speaker:** Okay, that'd be great.

**Speaker:** And then we'll do Risk and Safety separately.

**Speaker:** Perfect.

**Speaker:** So, if we can put up that one single little nothing slide. There it is. I told you, I'm known for very basic presentation materials. When my daughter was young, she was asked, "What's your daddy do?" And she said, "He attends meetings." And this week has validated that. But I bring that up because in terms of presenting general government, the Mayor's Office, City Council, City Manager, I think you all know what we do. And certainly, it's a longer story than we need to present, but the three budgets that we have under general government are flat, except for one, I think we could agree, would be a mistake in how we budgeted.

The Mayor's Office is virtually flat. I could literally list everything in there in 60 seconds, practically. Mostly salaries. It's two positions. There's a little bit of consulting money, like $37,000 worth. There's about $50,000 for dues for different organizations that get charged to the Mayor's budget, city organizations like National League of Cities. And that's just about it. There are charges for services, there are allocations for liability insurance, there are all those kinds of issues, but it's a very small, flat budget.

I'm going to skip City Council for a second. The City Manager's budget, we have within the manager's budget, the City Manager, a vacant Deputy City Manager, a vacant Director of Equity and Inclusion. We can talk about that. And the Communications Director, Regina Ruiz, is budgeted there, I believe. That constitutes the biggest portion of the manager's budget. The Internal Audit, the whole Internal Audit budget is just $150,000 that is embedded in the general government area. But there's nothing in that budget except for the one line for the contract with Moss Adams for $150,000.

There's also legislative support, $72,000, that is included in the City Manager's budget. I'm assuming that's Mr. Bullington's budget line for that. Maybe other things, but I'm assuming that's it. And that pretty much defines what the City Manager's budget is.

The City Council budget would be flat, or pretty close to flat, had we not scrubbed out the funding in there that was set aside a year ago for council staffing. We shouldn't have done that, given that the study is now—I think there's $60,000 set aside for that study. I'm guessing it won't cost anywhere near that much. And then we will come back, and when we know what the council decides to do, then my recommendation would be to replace these funds. We didn't spend the money. The money just rolled over into the general fund reserve. I would just take that money back and put it back into the council budget at that time. And that's pretty much the description of those three, those four budgets. There's really not a whole lot more detail than that, but I'd be happy to talk about any of the programmatic issues that we're addressing.

**Speaker:** Okay, thank you. That's helpful. I'm going to take Councilor Lindell because she's in the chamber, and then I'll go to Councilor Casset, who is on Zoom here.

**Speaker:** I don't have anything. Thank you.

**Speaker:** Thank you, Mr. Scott. Councilor Casset.

**Speaker:** Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Scott. The mayor is not in here, so that might—I'm not sure who to have this conversation with, but I did see $48,500 for the city strategic plan. So, I was hoping to learn more about that. We don't have one of those now. I'm not aware that we're working on one. That's—I was confused by that as well. And I'm looking to see if anybody from the budget team has any knowledge of the detail on what is listed as a strategic plan contract. Is that a yes? Pardon me. Alexis is approaching the podium.

**Speaker:** There's been some conversation about doing a strategic plan, and part of it has been around budgeting and some of the other planning issues. So, I believe that's what—why we kept money in there for the strategic plan.

**Speaker:** Okay. So, right now there is $48,500 hanging out there for a strategic plan, and we're not entirely sure whether or not that's going to be utilized. So, when did it go? Was it in there last fiscal year?

**Speaker:** I believe it was. I believe it's something we've been carrying that we just haven't formalized and gotten it. There's been a lot of transition in the last year and a half in the Mayor's Office. So, that's part of it. I think initially the former Deputy City Manager was going to work on that, and it didn't get off the ground, so it was left in there for another year.

**Speaker:** Okay. Well, that'll be something that I'll be wanting to hear more about. I think maybe we know when we have the mayor if it's not money that we're going to utilize. And I think this is part of this broader conversation that we've frequently been having about the budget process. How do we budget to our priorities if we're not setting overall priorities and voting on them? And I know there's been talk of whether or not a strategic plan would be worthwhile. So, I'm okay with that for the moment, obviously, because we're not getting much of an answer, but I don't really like the idea of money that we're not using, unless we decide this is something to move forward with. So, thank you for that explanation.

Then I also saw $60,000 for development and disposition of Midtown property. Why is that over here and not in the MRA or Economic Development or City Attorney's Office for that matter?

**Speaker:** Depending on what—I'm guessing that rolled as well. I believe that was—that's another thing that would—you know, it was something that was discussed, and something that was left in the budget, and I'll be honest, I've been doing this budget since I've been with the city, and although, you know, it's kind of there—there's, we want to do a strategic plan, we want to do this around Midtown. Sometimes what happens mid-year, and this isn't just in the Mayor's Office or the City Manager's Office, this is all throughout the city, right? We not—there's something else. We had a fire about something, and because this is such a small budget, the money gets spent on something else. We do what we call T-bars, where we move money around within the budget, and there was just something else came up that we felt we had to address. That happens very frequently, but you see it more easily in a small budget like this.

**Speaker:** I see. Okay. So, right now, so I'm seeing about just over $100,000 of kind of rollover money. So, I think—I think this—I do want to look at this more. Again, I think this is a conversation with the mayor if things for Midtown need to be T-barred over to the MRA or if that's where they're going to stay. But it is interesting to me, kind of these dollars that are called out that aren't—that aren't doing anything, apparently, which is a concern to me.

**Speaker:** Madam Chair, Mr. City Manager, thank you, Councilor. I think it's a good practice in a—either in a City Manager's budget or a Mayor's budget, even a City Council budget, to have some funds that are actually contingency funds. Because, you know, over the course of a year, I mean, we're going to have elections. There may be a desire to do some kind of priorities exercise that might call for bringing in consultants. You never know what is going to come up during the course of 12 months. It's not a bad idea to have a certain amount. I don't believe in putting contingency funds all through a budget. I would definitely not do that. But within the central budget of a mayor, a city council, a city manager, to have a certain amount of funding available like that, I think is a good idea. Probably we should have gone through and relabeled these if that was our intention.

**Speaker:** Yeah, I think that would be helpful. If these are contingency funds that potentially are available for other things, then having them labeled is a very—you know, it gives a very different impression. I understand the need for some of these flexibility pieces if it needs to come out of the City Manager's Office. Obviously, there's a lot of responsibility. But, you know, the way that it's presented in this—in the budget book makes me believe one, that we're about to undertake a strategic planning process, which again, I'm actually very interested in having that discussion. But sounds like that's not a foregone conclusion that we're going to undertake this. Or that there's, you know, Midtown dollars there. So, I understand, you know, some of the flexibility, and I'm curious if that's also that $37,000 for consulting. Is that also kind of part of this? We might need to bring in some additional assistance for some things, or is there actual consulting that contracts that have already been identified?

**Speaker:** Well, we, Councilor—I'm so bad at this. Rod Gould is doing some work for the city right now on a very low-budget consulting contract. We need to give him credit for that. And that—and that's getting paid out of the Mayor's Office. So, I think that those funds are being used very effectively right now.

**Speaker:** Okay, thank you. I didn't realize that Rod was on a contract and wasn't an actual city staff member. So, that—that's news, and thank you. And that's—so that's at $37,000.

**Speaker:** Let—I'm going to let Rod explain. Rod is here. He's coming to the podium. He is. Thank you.

**Speaker:** Welcome.

**Speaker:** Make sure that mic's on. Thank you.

**Speaker:** Is that my—can you hear him?

**Speaker:** Madam Chair, Councilor, I am actually a city employee. The position is Senior Advisor to the Mayor, and it's in the budget somewhere, I believe. And I—I can rely on the staff on that, but I'd like to respond to your suggestion that at some point, maybe the city undertakes a strategic plan, which some cities call long-range priority setting. And one of the things that Mark has committed to do as your City Manager, with this support of the mayor, is to in short order to begin to develop a management system for the city that will help us plan, program, monitor, and do course correction on the work that is done by the entire organization. And it starts and ends with you, the elected leaders of the community. And it will begin the budget process with you setting broad priorities that will last year after year, and then being a little more specific about where you'd like to see additional emphasis in the coming year, which will then be reflected in the budget that you'll consider. So, that is the framework that we're using to begin to better organize and manage our work, and it may at some point lead to a full-blown strategic plan.

A lot of cities use that term very widely, but they aren't actually doing strategic planning. They're really doing long-term goal setting, and we can talk about that more at another time. But I actually would love to dive into that because that's been, and also a fun story, when I was getting my master's at UCLA, we were talking about cities that were prioritizing health and wellness, and it was the city of Santa Monica's strategic plan that was pulled up, and I believe it was when you were there. So, yes, indeed, I'm slightly familiar with your work in this area. Thank you. Appreciate that.

So, but I'm sorry, thank you for addressing that, but that also still, that $37,000 in consulting, I again, I'm just trying to understand, is that something that's already, or is this again, we have some of these dollars that have been categorized that actually aren't really earmarked at this point? I'm sorry, I'm looking, I'm reading the budget book here.

Mr. City Manager, I saw Rod get up and I thought he was coming to the microphone, and he was walking to the back of the room. Yeah, I think you put your finger on it. The dollars and cents for the contracts aren't even in the budget book. The council asked on day one to see the list of the contracts, and we brought that in. So, this level of definition we didn't even have when we reviewed the budgets. But I look at these numbers, and they're not huge budgets to have as a citywide contingency. We have, there are a lot of places during the course of a year that a city might want to pull some dollars, and having $180,000 or $150,000 set aside for this, I think, is not a bad budgeting strategy.

Yeah, and I'm definitely not concerned about that. It really has to do again, more with what are we calling it. And it did give me an impression that there were certain activities that were occurring and that were assigned to these dollars, which is not the case. So, I just want to clarify that this, looks like $60,000 plus $485,000 plus $37,000, whatever that math is, is kind of this contingency, is available for some city priorities that may come up that we may need assistance with. Is that my understanding?

Yeah, I think that needs to be renamed into something like contract support or something. But I think we may have an answer for you. Rod's at the podium again for the $37,000.

Yes, I got clarification on that. Evidently, that was a legacy project where at some point the council wanted to experiment with participatory budgeting. They set aside a lump sum, and they were going to involve youth groups to decide how to spend that money for the greatest benefit of the young people of Santa Fe. Evidently, that never happened, but it has remained in the budget. So, it's a legacy line item.

Interesting. Yeah, I can actually give the history there, is that the pandemic happened. I was the councilor liaison for the Mayor's Youth Advisory Board. So, I was there when that funding got yanked during the pandemic. So, good to know that's where it is. Okay, well, I'm glad to get some clarity here. As Councilor Maez stated, I think that how we title that is important, and given that it is in the general government budget, who makes the decisions around where these flexible contingency dollars are utilized? Is that something that is through the governing body? Is this part of the City Council budget, the City Manager's office? I think this is, I'll refer to the City Manager, but I think from what the nature of them, this is in the Mayor's budget, and for the Mayor and the City Manager in doing their work to have some ability to contract for some things as need demands, given these huge roles that they play, is my understanding. I don't know if I'm not understanding that right. I'll refer to the City Manager for any correction.

That's correct. Normally, unless it exceeded a City Manager's signature authority. As you have learned, I'm very open about things that we're doing, and I would very likely inform the entire governing body what we were doing with the money if the day came that we wanted to use it.

Okay. Yeah, I would obviously very much appreciate that. And, you know, thank you for helping me understand what this is. And I do think let's get some attention, especially before the entire governing body sees this, around what this actually is and what is actually in the budget here. So, got it. And with that, I have no further questions. Thank you.

Great. I just have a couple. You mentioned the Office of Equity and Inclusion, which, of course, I'm very interested in. I think I know what's happening there, but it'd probably be good just to tell the community what's happening, and I think you're actively trying to fill the director's slot, which is what we need to do in order to move forward. Correct?

That's correct. We actually did a recruitment to fill the position and came down with a couple of very promising candidates who were seeking much higher compensation than we could pay. And so it didn't work out. We got a little bit sidetracked after that in trying to fill the Deputy City Manager position, since this position will report directly to the Deputy City Manager. And we were hoping we were filling that one. That hasn't happened yet, but we're out very actively recruiting it. And we probably sequentially will build the Deputy and then immediately begin again looking for another top candidate for the Equity and Inclusion position. We're entirely committed to that, as we would have been a year ago. We're every bit as committed as we were before.

Yeah, and thank you. I think that's a really important office that we're creating. Of course, the chart work and report, that's in my mind, that's the office where all of where that report and that work will launch from. And so having a director there to begin to look at that report and see, there's a lot in that report, and it'll be the role of that director to start to look at the recommendations that were made through that chart process and how we start to go about as a city implementing some of those things and which things are kind of first on deck to be worked on. So, I'm very interested in seeing that person and begin to see that work and that report being utilized. So, that's great.

Let's see. I just want to touch on the council staffing. We did pass the resolution on Wednesday night that I believe directs your office to find a consultant to begin to look at how staff for the council would be implemented. I think the resolution says up to $60,000. And to your point, I also agree. I don't think we're going to spend $60,000. The resolution outlines the kinds of things we're looking for. First and foremost is to interview the councilors. Since we can't, none of us on the dais interact with everybody outside of a meeting, it just seemed like it would be helpful to have somebody who could interview all the councilors and ask them for the kinds of support they think they need. And then the state legislature did a staffing study. They have a new staffing model. Of course, the county commissioners have had staff for a long time, I believe. And I think we ought to look at what their model looks like, who they hire. The kinds of people, what their job description looks like, what kind of support they get, how much do they pay them, what is that all look like? I think they have one per county commissioner. And see, just to look at some of the staffing models that are out there and then of other cities. And of course, we have yourself and Rod, who was just at the podium, to help us look at maybe some of the cities you've seen and maybe staff support that you've seen in other cities to help the councilors with the work that they do. So, I'm excited that we're, that that resolution did pass, and we can begin to figure out what the model is that most appropriately fits the needs of this council. But I just want to be clear that I agree with you. I don't think it's going to take that much money. And so we're on the same page there, and I think that's a good thing. Just, was there anything else? Okay, I think so. We're going to talk about risk next. Okay.

And so, in your office, Mr. City Manager, you have a deputy slot, and you have a risk management is under you. Do you have another slot beyond that?

The Communications Director is budgeted in that budget.

Okay. So, Regina Ruiz is budgeted from. Okay. And I didn't realize that, I guess. Okay, I think I'm pretty clear about what this budget does and doesn't do. So, that's all I have. Anything else from the councilors? Okay. All right. So, then let's move on to the risk portion. Okay. I'm going to ask Melanie. Right. Yeah. So, go ahead. I would just make sure that you, the noise from the hallway is, I'm going to shut the door here in a minute, but if you could just make sure you're talking right into that mic and that it's on, that'd be great.

Yeah, I'm not hearing anything. So, if there's talking happening, I haven't heard a word.

We're about to start talking.

Got it. Okay. Testing. Thank you, Madam Chair, councilors. I'm joined by Melanie Lovato, who has been overseeing this function. She's certainly not being compensated to be the director of this function, and yet she does a very good job trying to keep us in this very important game. The risk management function in a city this size, with the condition of the various insurance markets as volatile as they are, it's such an important role, just as the City Attorney addressed earlier today, so I won't try to rediscuss those issues. But we do need to very badly, we need to figure out how we want to structure this going forward. We are right now, we're recruiting for the top position in the function. I'm a little unclear as to what the title will end up, but the position, the top position in the function, we actually have an executive search firm doing that search as we speak. Can you go to the next slide?

This very simply, the function is divided into two sides: the risk management side and the safety side. The safety part being the educational training aspect of the program and the efforts to try to make the city as free of risk as we can afford to make it, is all a very important function and something that Melanie has spent many, many hours, years, doing for the city and continues to. Next slide. Description of services. I think you're familiar with what this function does. Melanie's able to go into great detail if you'd like, but it's, when people talk about risk management, it's not only the safety side, it's also managing all the claims and the insurance procurement. That's a big part of this function, is just trying to keep us in the market. The City Attorney talked about the self-insured retention having climbed as high as it has, and I think that's something that we very, very urgently need to take a better look at. Lots and lots of cities operate out of risk pools. We choose here to be self-insured, and there's both good sides and bad sides of that, but frankly, finding a risk pool that we would fit in would be a bit of a challenge.

You really don't want to just join any risk pool. If you join a risk pool, you want to join one where you are very similar in respects to the other agencies. And that's hard to do in this market. So there are just a lot of things that the risk staff performs right now. I'm going to let Melanie jump in. Why don't you describe the number of staff we have at this point?

There are currently three of us in the Risk and Safety office.

And how many vacancies?

We currently have three vacancies. One of them being the director position, one of them being the head of the safety function, the safety specialist. Andy's behind me, and my neck doesn't turn that easily. You can let me know if there is a sixth position that's in the budget. I'm not sure if there is. Is he saying yes? Yeah. I don't know. Andy, will you come on down and help us understand? This is interesting. I never thought this was a one-woman show. I didn't realize there was this much vacancy. In terms of capacity, that's kind of significant.

Madam Chair, councilors, there are currently in the risk management function itself, two positions right now. There's Melanie's position, the Risk Analyst, and then a vacant Risk Manager. Then on the other positions would be on the safety side, where we have an Administrative Assistant Confidential that's filled, a Workers' Comp Manager that is filled, and a vacant Safety Specialist Senior, totaling five across all our risk and safety.

Okay, hold on. I want to write this down. So we've got two in risk. That's Melanie, and then we have the manager position, which is like the lead, right? And that's for risk.

Yes. Although there is actually a position above that. There is a Risk and Safety, it's called a Health and Safety Compliance Officer. Last year, that was actually moved into the general fund under the City Manager's office. But that is the position that is my understanding that is supposed to be overseeing all of risk and safety. And then on the safety side, we have three positions: the Administrative Assistant Confidential, Workers' Comp Manager, and a Safety Specialist Senior.

And none of those are filled?

Madam Chair, two of them are filled. The Administrative Assistant Confidential and the Workers' Comp Manager are currently filled. The Safety Specialist Senior is vacant.

Okay. Interesting. Thank you. So there's one vacancy on both sides. Yeah. Okay. That's helpful. I didn't realize it was so big. Or so small.

Well, the task is big.

Yeah. And that's why we need to completely reassess this function and build it in the fashion that we need in order to operate this as well as we can. And as the City Attorney said, there's a legal side as well. Yeah. And we need to make sure that we've adequately staffed that. I completely agree with her. We need to evaluate the use of contract versus in-house attorneys, and that's the task for this coming year. Okay. And yeah, so I'm preempting my co-councilors here, but so this is in terms of shaping this, this is the work that we were talking with the City Attorney earlier about the two of you kind of putting your heads together with others to figure out whether this is the right number of staff and the right types of staff. And so this office and what she was talking about, these are the things that you'll be molding.

Yes.

Okay.

And there are numerous models that even in my career that I've seen in different places. And I think we know that I would say that on the safety side, what we've done has actually been more aggressive than many of the places where I've worked. And on the risk side, we really need to assess it very carefully, bottom to top and top down. And we will do that. And I don't think we need to have an expensive study. I think we just need to sit down, go through the options, and report back to the governing body.

Yeah. This is an area I'd like to see us make some headway in, and I'd like to know more about. It's always been sort of a mystery to me. And I didn't really, and I know at one point we did hear a kind of a risk report about the claims that we'd been paying out and the kinds of things that we'd been seeing. And I feel like we've only, in the time I've been here, I think we've only seen that once that I remember. And it was a very interesting, I learned how dangerous weed whackers are. It was one of my takeaways, right? And so now every time I see a weed whacker, I stop my car until they stop, or I take the other street or whatever. But I guess I had underappreciated how dangerous those things are. So, but this is an area I think I would love to know more and see us do some things in. And the fact that it's to me kind of an unknown suggests that there's a lot of room for bringing this up to the surface some more.

Yeah. Madam Chair, there's a couple other things I would mention. One is that, you know, there's so many different kinds of risk liability that, yeah, workers' comp is another entire arena. Yep. We have been pleased this year that on our going out and getting quotes, that we've been getting rates that we've been getting. I mean, a year ago, I think Andy would confirm this, we may have budgeted higher than we needed to in response to the market being so volatile. And in fact, when you see some of the reduction in the budget, it's driven more by the fact we may have overbudgeted a year ago than that we're performing better or that we're somehow lowering our risk liability levels. We actually have gotten good quotes, feel good about going forward. What we're not doing is we're not building up the liability reserve. It's still, it's about $2 million, I think right now, which is good, but I think in this market you'd want to build that maybe in some of the other areas as well. And so there are a number of very important issues that we need to address. That's why it's such a high priority.

Yeah, that's good to know. All right. Did you have anything else? And then I'll go to the councilors. Councilor Lindell, do you have anything on this matter? Okay. Councilor Cassid.

No, but I agree that this is definitely something that we should probably have some more information about it, maybe presentations or something along those lines because it is important. And I am glad that we are not wanting to undertake a study for this, that this is just going to be a conversation around how do we really do this work as efficiently and as financially efficiently, as fiscally responsibly, I guess would be the word, as possible. So thank you.

Yeah, that's a good point, too. All right. Thank you. I think have we done all of the pieces of general government? I think that's all of general government. I think it is too, but let me just consult my book here. It is. Okay. All right. So if we've covered everything, I think we are ready for a motion. Right. On the general government budget approve.

And Councilor Cassid, I will second with the caveat of wanting to get that line item clarified somewhere, the one for the mayor's budget.

Yes. Yeah. And I think we can talk about that on Monday, kind of when we, and if not Monday, Tuesday, when we do the, you know, kind of last minute conversation before we vote on the overall budget. So I think there'll be a couple of opportunities to get a little bit more information.

Wonderful. Okay. So we have a motion and a second, and because we have a councilor on Zoom, we, well, anyway, we've been doing roll call votes. So we'll do a roll call vote.

Certainly, Madam Chair. So I have a motion from Councilor Lindell and a second from Councilor Casset. Yes. Roll call. Councilor Casset.

Yes.

Councilor Lindell. Councilor Falner is excused. Yes, she is. Chair Roberworth, yes. And that motion passes.

All right. Terrific. So we got through these two budgets. Armenia, if you, I think you know the answer to this question. So we're coming back Monday, May 5th, and we're going to hear the Affordable Housing Office, the Airport, and the Economic Development Office.

Correct, Madam Chair. That is correct.

Okay. So, and we're, we'll start at 10, and I'm not sure how long we'll go until we get those two, those three budgets done. So, okay. I think unless there's anything else from the councilors, I think we've completed our work for the day. All right. We're adjourned. Thank you all.