Governing Body - Study Session
Wed, Aug 20, 2025 · Governing Body
https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/857

== Executive Summary ==
The Santa Fe City Council held a study session to discuss a proposed update to the city's Living Wage Ordinance, aiming to increase the living wage from $15 to $17.50 per hour. The primary goal is to help residents afford to live in Santa Fe, especially given rising housing costs. While no formal decisions or votes were taken on the ordinance itself, the council engaged in extensive discussion about the economic impact on businesses, the adequacy of the proposed increase, and the need for comprehensive community input.

Key concerns raised included the potential burden on small businesses, the timing of implementation (with some advocating for immediate action and others for a delay), and the need for more data on the workforce and economic ripple effects. Councilors also discussed improving the wage complaint process and ensuring city employees earn a living wage. The meeting concluded with a commitment to further research, community engagement, and additional work sessions to gather diverse perspectives before moving forward with any changes.

== Motions & Votes ==
- Motion to approve the agenda — Passed unanimously

== Public Comment ==
No public comments were recorded during the initial presentation and council discussion. However, councilors frequently referenced the anticipated input from future community forums and emphasized the critical need for broader community input, particularly from working families and business owners, before making a decision. Councilor Castro shared a personal experience of difficulty in filing a wage complaint, highlighting a systemic issue.

== Topics ==
- Living Wage Ordinance Update
- Housing Costs and Affordability
- Community Engagement and Town Halls
- Living Wage Calculation Formula
- Impact on Businesses
- Workforce Protections and Complaints
- Benefits and Wage Calculation
- Historical Context of Living Wage
- Housing Supply Policies
- Economic Scenarios and Projections
- Procedural Items
- Fee-in-Lieu Elimination
- Tipped Wages and Exemptions

== Full Transcript ==
a time for everybody to weigh in on the study session.

You got it.

Well, they don't. It's pretty good. Yeah, thank you. And the deck was in, I believe, in the packet. So,

We are live. Terrific. Madam Clerk, are we in a position to gavel ourselves into order?

Yes, Mayor. And I'm just waiting to be promoted and then I can share my screen with a presentation.

Fabulous. In the meantime, we'll do the preliminaries. I'm going to call this special meeting study session to order. I believe it's a quarter to 7. I appreciate everybody sticking with us and piggybacking on what was a really in-depth meeting of the committee. So, thanks for doing your best to accommodate many different demands all in the same evening. Thank you for everybody to participate. Madam Clerk, can you call the roll, please?

Certainly, Mayor. Councilor Cassett.

Here.

Councilor Castro. Councilor Travis here.

Councilor Lee Garcia,

I'm here.

Councilor Michael Garcia.

Present.

Councilor Lindell here.

Councilor Romero.

Here.

Mayor Weber.

Present.

And I will note that Councilor Faulkner is excused.

Councilor Faulkner is excused. She's out of town at the moment. I, she gave me the information yesterday. She wasn't likely to be able to join us. There's a hand up. Maybe that's her. That's you. Okay. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda, please?

So moved.

Is there any discussion? All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed say nay. Motion carries. Madam Clerk, I believe the only item we have is presentation A, if you'd read it and then cue up the presentation.

Certainly, Mayor. The presentation is a proposed update to Santa Fe's Living Wage Ordinance, and we have the Senior Advisor and Public Engagement Coordinator Rod Gold here for presenting, and I will share my screen for the presentation.

If you would do that, I'd appreciate it. I really want to express my gratitude to everybody on the governing body for being here tonight. I know you're stretched thin with meetings all the time. This one we tried to squeeze it in, and we intentionally built it as a study session because of our rolling quorum and open meetings issues. It's impossible to do this in any other way and probably shouldn't be done in any other way than to have a work session in public where people can speak up and ask questions or raise their own ideas. Mr. Gold will be available to answer questions. I'll be doing this presentation as rapidly as possible to leave as much time for people to have a chance to talk. Mostly what I'm looking for is input. We're not voting tonight. I'm really looking to take notes on things that people have ideas, concerns, suggestions around, and take those down and then prepare for another meeting that will be a public town hall session at the Teen Center on the 9th of September. That work is going on right now to schedule how that meeting will be put on, but it's a citywide engagement to get public input on this proposal and other ideas that may be advanced tonight or in between now and the 9th of September. So, with that, Madam Clerk, if you could go to the next slide, and I'll just give a quick overview and then we'll open the floor and we'll do the 10-minute process where everybody gets a 10-minute opportunity and then move on and go around. Try and keep it to about an hour or an hour and a half since we started so late. The basic theory of this proposal is that the city's future is really determined by who lives here and that we want, if we want to keep Santa Fe Santa Fe, we need to keep Santa Feans in Santa Fe. Two factors that weigh into this have to do with housing costs and workforce wages. If you look at the data, we are making some progress in affordable housing, workforce housing, but we need to do more. There's additional tools in our toolkit. But if you looked at the two factors, we've made real progress on housing, but the living wage hasn't kept pace. And so the proposal is if we're making, if we're trying to bring these pieces together into a strategy that addresses the population, the diversity of people who live and work in Santa Fe. It's incumbent upon us to take a hard look at what we can do to address what people make and whether the living wage is getting the job done. The next slide, please.

So what is in an overview? What is the proposal that we're going to be talking about? The idea is a one vote on proposal is to vote on an upgrade to $17.50 an hour up from $15 an hour where we are now, but to leave that in abeyance for one year while we assess what happens with the economy both in the country and in Santa Fe. That would give everybody a chance to adjust to this proposal. Would also mean that if there are things that happen in the national economy around tariffs or other unpredicted economic events, there'd be a chance to adjust this proposal. The proposal retains things that are existing in our living wage. Tipped wages are still handled the way they are now. Specific categories of employers like those that are Medicaid related are also continue the standing they have right now. No change there. There is a change in how to calculate how the living wage would increase year-over-year or not increase year-over-year. Right now the only factor is the Western region consumer price index, the rate of inflation. This proposal says 50% CPI but also 50% HUD fair market rent for a two-bedroom unit in Santa Fe. That's because of what I said in the first slide, which is we're really focusing on the extent to which housing is a major determinant of who can live here. By linking any increase to the fair market rent for a two-bedroom rental, we are acknowledging the significance of rents in achieving our policy goal. We would propose capping the increase for any given year at 5%. And the floor would be zero. So if there were a deep recession or some kind of a national economic change that brought the economy to a halt, the living wage would not go down. If it's heated up, it wouldn't go above 5%. The next slide gives a brief overview of our living wage and how where we have been. 2002, 2003, we and the then City Council, then governing body, put Santa Fe on the map, reportedly the second city in the United States to adopt a living wage. And the ordinance at the time was absolutely clear that the purpose of doing this was that workers and their families should be able to have healthy, decent lives in Santa Fe and have a wage rate that would support that. At the time, as the slide says, wages in Santa Fe County were 23% below the US average cost of living. The wages were low, but the cost of living was 18% higher than the national average. So this gap already existed and next slide, please.

What's happened since then is the gap has increased. The living wage has gone up tied to the Western Region CPI, and these other items are handled as exemptions, carve-outs, or special cases. And as of this year, our living wage has gone up to $15 an hour. Next slide, please.

What we know from the data that is at our fingertips is that housing is the largest burden for low-wage workers in Santa Fe. We're taking data from the Santa Fe Forward project. The assessment document lays out units that have been built and what's happened with rents in Santa Fe, whether they've kept going up, at what rate, what's happened with our rate of wages and income. We know that one-third of the households in Santa Fe are rent-burdened and that while our population is essentially flat, slight uptick, what we're seeing is a replacement of long-term Santa Fe families moving to lower-cost communities, commuting into work but being displaced from Santa Fe, and higher income, wealthier people replacing them almost on a one-to-one basis. Next slide, please.

On the housing supply side, this issue came up a lot in conversations I had with different stakeholders. They said, "Okay, we acknowledge that the living wage hasn't kept pace with demand or with needs. What are we doing on the supply side?" The Santa Fe Forward study says that we will need more than 3,000 new units by 2050, but that doesn't include the current unmet demand. We know that our housing supply has increased over the last 10 years. Between 400 and 800 units have been permitted every year. And we currently have over 2,000 units under construction, 4,000 more in the pipeline in various forms of approval or consideration. And to some extent, the supply side is working. As of 2025 compared to 2024, rents rose by less than 1.5%. That's progress, but it doesn't speak to the gap that still exists with what people are making. Next slide, please.

So the other supply-side policies that have been approved by the governing body over the last few years: the excise tax on homes, the inclusionary zoning adaptations and improvements, $3 million annual allocation to the housing, the affordable housing trust fund, CDBG grants that have come in, and then repurposing city land are just some of the tools that the governing body has used to try to make sure that supply side is working. Next slide, please.

So, that leaves us with the other side of the equation. If we're making progress on the supply side and we want Santa Feans to stay in Santa Fe, what can we do with the living wage? This proposal attempts to thread the needle by having a step change, a significant increase from $15 to $17.50 per hour after one year to assess how the economy is doing broadly and what our employers are saying about their preparation. It retains current provisions on tips and other special users. It changes the annual formula as I suggested so that 50% of it has to do with the CPI, but the other 50% is specifically pegged to the HUD housing index. And as far as we know, this would be the first, we would be the first city in the United States to have a specific escalator that does go directly to housing costs, and it would cap it at 5% and keep the floor at 0%. So that would never go down, but it could also not spike at a rate that would be too high for employers to be able to manage it. Next slide, please.

With the help of Dr. Riley White from UNM, who's familiar to all of us, I think, from his work in advising on budget forecasts, he projected three different scenarios of how this proposal would play out. The one in the far left corner, left column, is a 0% increase. If there's no, if the two indicators are together represent a zero increase, that obviously would stay flat. If it were a high rate of change, the 5% cap would set in. That's the column on the right. The one in the middle is the one that Dr. White suggests is the most likely scenario. It's the middle half and has the rate increasing at about 2.6% annually and would take the $17.50 up over the next few years into the $21 range. Next slide, please.

This proposal is something that we've been working on for some time, and a number of different groups have been asked for their input. I won't characterize any of their input other than to say they really came prepared to sit down and talk about the significance of this issue for all of them. How much it affects their not just their business or their interest group, but also their interest in keeping Santa Fe a place where the diversity of the population continues to be to the benefit of our entire community.

The two things we heard over and over again was that raising this above the current level of $15 an hour really only reflects what the market is in many instances already doing. A lot of the pay that is being, where the market is requiring people to pay, already is above the $15 an hour. And we also heard that given the economic policies in Washington right now, they supported the idea of a one-year period to evaluate not how this proposal would directly affect them, but how macroeconomic and national policies would sort themselves out so that there's less uncertainty and then go forward with implementing. Next slide, please.

So, go back to where we started. The whole point of this exercise is to help people who work in Santa Fe to live in Santa Fe, to keep Santa Feans in our community, and to do it by combining housing with increased wages. There's still a gap. I don't think there is a silver bullet that is going to close that gap entirely, but we want to continue to make progress by addressing both housing supply and in this case, the wages that people are making so that they can afford to live here. And so this proposal is on the table for discussion to see if we can add to our toolkit not only housing supply but also an updated living wage that would aid workers, not be overly burdensome to employees, and really put the city of Santa Fe on record as taking steps continually to maintain the diversity of our population and the character of our community. That is the proposal in a nutshell, and I will at this point yield the floor. We'll do the 10-minute process, and I'll be taking notes and trying to be a good listener, as will Mr. Gould, as we hear what people think about not just this proposal but any other ideas you have to address what I think is a major policy that everybody on the governing body agrees we need to address, which is who and how do we keep people living, who do we keep living in Santa Fe, and how do we do that constructively?

So, let me start. Councilor Lindell, I know this is new to you as well, but you've been on the governing body for years and on the planning commission. Do you want to kick us off, and somebody will give us a 10-minute wave of the hand if and when you reach that level?

Councilor Lindell: Yeah, I don't usually need the full 10 minutes. I think one of the things that I would, first of all, congratulations to whoever put fingerprints on this. I think it's well presented. I think it takes into consideration things that we haven't done before. I particularly like that. It's been vetted through Chamber of Commerce, hospitality, hospital, nonprofits, unions. I don't know, Rod, maybe you can answer this. I don't know if anyone can answer it, but it doesn't seem like at this moment in time that going from $15 per hour to $17.50 per hour. I don't know the impact of that because I think most places are already paying over $15 an hour. Do we have any evidence of that? Do we have information on that? I don't think that, for example, hospitality, hospitals, I don't think that they're hiring people at $15 an hour.

Mayor: Mr. Mayor, Councilor Lindell, you're quite right. Even though the living wage was a novelty when it was adopted in 2003, it has little force in effect today for the reasons the mayor indicated. Market requires that service providers, the hospitality industry, healthcare, all have to pay north of $15 in order to get people. We received some information from the restaurant association about what the hospitality industry was paying two years ago for various types of work, and they were all significantly higher than the $15 that is currently our living wage. Hence, we recommend this bump, but as the mayor indicated, postponed for a year because of the economic uncertainty that is gripping the nation at this time.

Councilor Lindell: Well, Councilor, can I take a bite at that? Sure.

Mayor: So, I think the challenge in this is always to try to arrive at something that makes a difference but doesn't unduly penalize small, medium-sized businesses that aren't the larger companies that are already competing at a higher rate and to try to accommodate the broad base of Santa Fe businesses that we know make up the character of our economy. So, we're trying to strike a middle ground, and we'll see whether when we go to the public meeting on the 9th of September what the feedback is, whether there's feedback that we've overbid our hands or underbid our hand, but trying to make a proposal, identify a level, a starting level, a new step change that isn't so onerous that people are penalized by it, but that will help people with their needs to pay rent.

Councilor Lindell: Well, the other thing that I might comment on is, I don't know, it was some a few years ago, and I think that it was maybe Councilor Romero Worth and the mayor, maybe I don't know if you did, were you at the Food Depot when we went, we the three of us went down to the Food Depot, and there were some other people from the community there also, and we multiplied out the minimum wage, $15 an hour, and had both people in the family working, and in fact, maybe one person had two jobs, and then we did a budget for that family, and you couldn't do a budget for that family because there's not enough money, and you can't have a car. I mean, it's not possible. So, if I would have a comment on this, and what you just said, Mayor, yeah, I mean, maybe in the next year things will get worse, but you know what? If they get worse for everyone in this room, they're going to get exponentially worse for someone that is working at the minimum wage. And I would be inclined not to wait a year to do this. I think that working families need that help right now. I think that within the next month or two, things that they purchase, whether it's here at Walmart, online with Amazon, having the smiling truck show up at their house, I don't care where it is, but these tariffs are going to start to change people's lives, particularly people that are struggling now. And if we're going to do this, let's do it and give people some relief sooner rather than later. So, you know, I haven't had an opportunity to study this and think a lot about it, but that's my knee-jerk reaction to it is that if things in my life feel more expensive, there's people in this town that things in their life, they don't feel just more expensive. They feel a little more desperate, and I don't want that for people. So, that's where I'm at with it at just with this quick overview. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you. Councilor Garcia.

Councilor Garcia: Okay, Council John. I really wish that this was scheduled after town halls because I think it's really hard to have this discussion without getting everyone's voice involved. And that's a key piece of data that I feel would is absolutely necessary to make this a productive conversation this evening. In fact, I would propose delaying it potentially until after town halls and having more than one, which I don't know if that's pun or not, and I missed that, but there's just, and it's due to the fact that it is a balance. As much as we have families struggling, we also have families that own businesses that right now are already closing them because of how difficult things are already, right? So, we have multiple populations of individuals, those in our community in need. And the gap we're trying to close is urgent because this is not, this is far from closing the gap, this proposed increase. So, there's, it's just so complicated, and it's so real the difficulty that people are living with that their voice is probably the most important data that we need to have this discussion this evening. So, I too don't have a lot to say because I think all of us are knowledgeable on how complex that this is. We know the impact on both sides. We know how far we are from closing the gap even with this proposal. So then that's really insulting to a lot of people because they're like, this is not a living wage. In fact, this is not helpful to help me live in Santa Fe at all. And it's because it's a reality. So, it's just, I think the minds here alone, I don't think, and I'm, I guess I should speak for myself. I apologize. I don't think I need that lived experience and to hear from those individuals right now how they feel about this, what ideas they have. The amazing things that come from those town hall discussions are so beneficial, like what they bring forward, what suggestions they have, how people collaborate, how people start working together. It's just really amazing, and I really think that is a tool we are missing right now to have as productive of a conversation as we could. So, this would be great to have again after we have that very essential piece of data, which is the voice of the community. Thank you.

Mayor: Absolutely doable. Thank you, Castro.

Councilor: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, members of the committee for being here and taking the time. I also will try to be brief. I think that we should most definitely, echoing the sentiment of my colleagues, put working families in the forefront of this discussion. I too think that this does not go nearly far enough. And if we want to look at protecting small businesses, I think there's more that we can do. In the past, we've looked at the size of businesses and done a different sort of tiered system, which we can do. I would most definitely look at the Food Depot's report, which is suggesting that we go much higher than what is suggested in this report. Yeah, it's a difficult conversation to have knowing that a lot of us have put in effort and energy in this work and not necessarily been at the table for these discussions, and primarily that many of us, as have been mentioned before, are not working class necessarily, and so we are making decisions for folks without them being at the table. Thank you.

Mayor: Thank you. Go this way. Councilor Garcia.

Councilor Garcia: Mayor, yeah, I, when you, when we're talking about this, the discussion over this topic, I think there's a lot of stakeholders that need to be part of the conversation. Working families for sure. Business owners, small business owners. I heard that. I apologize. I had to take a phone call during your brief presentation. But, you know, when it comes to, I mean, I can just start jotting down a whole lot of things of cause and effect. And, you know, I think everybody tonight could have a knee-jerk reaction to this one way or the other, whether it's for or against or need more information or things of that nature. And, and, you know, I can speak from the perspective of a business owner, who runs a payroll, who understands tax structure, who has to figure out how to employ someone that you desperately need, and pay them a very fair and reasonable pay scale because not everybody works 40 hours. That's a fantasy world. There's many people who choose to work more. How does an increase to the minimum wage affect overtime? How does it work for tipped-based workers? Do restaurants who don't have a dining area have to post whether they're paying the living wage or not? So can that people who are their patrons know what to pay, what to tip? It, it, it's still their prerogative to do so whether they want to or not. You know, talk about the payroll taxes, that's an increase to the business and the employee without any conversation over all of that stuff. When wages increase, businesses increase what they charge. Housing costs go up. Los Alamos pays X amount of dollars to an individual.

All of a sudden, housing costs rise because of that. There's so much, Dr. Riley White, not just on the economy side of things, but what does an actual wage like this do to cities? It's a real thing. The cost of living is high, very high. We all feel it. A gallon of milk, depending on what you're buying, a dozen eggs, you name it. There are so many things that affect this from an economic standpoint. Supply, demand, price, you can really dig deep into it. When you do this type of thing, how does it affect what businesses charge for something? That's an increase in gross sales tax. We get a raise, too. So again, how do we work out the problem? Which is real because I see it from a private perspective.

Yeah, I think there's just a checklist of things: tip wages, overtime, the youth market. We kill the youth market because many times businesses will not hire a young person at a higher wage because they don't have the experience and they have to train them. They're not trained. What kind of qualifications does a person have to have to earn that amount of money? I mean, I can go on and on, and I think that the discussion has to happen through exact data, vetted by not just a study. If the time is now, a study doesn't happen right now in a month or two months or six months. I think that's, I'll leave it at that. Those are just some of the first things that come to my mind because it's important, and I think that understanding and knowing that competition in the job market has already brought it either to that level or higher.

Use the McDonald's test thermometer. When McDonald's is paying a certain amount, nobody follows suit. But it also takes the Big Mac meal to about the same price. $16 an hour. Guess what you're paying for a Big Mac? Take it to $18 and go to El Dorado, you go to McDonald's and you pay $12. So again, just real things to think about. And how does that competition in the market even affect what we pay from a municipality standpoint, and how did that affect our bottom line in regards to pay structures, compensation, benefits? All of that just comes into it. You can take a number of hours that an employee works and divide that by their total pay, and you can get an actual what they earn. Even though some might work more than 40 or choose to do that. I'll cede the floor. Those are my comments, and I look forward to the discussion. Thank you.

Mayor: Thanks, Counselor. I really appreciate your weighing in with the perspective of somebody who's running his own business, and I'd encourage you if you have the time and energy. You said there's a real checklist that you could bring to the table. I'd love to see that checklist, not tonight necessarily, but as a way of getting deeper into the issues you're raising, to have the perspective that you're bringing to it because of your private sector experience.

Councilor Cassid: Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, thank you everybody. I also am looking forward to and think it's going to be really crucial to have those community conversations. On first blush, I have a number of questions, and Councilor Lee Garcia spoke to many of them. And then I imagine that the public will also present us with more things that we need to understand as this is a very, it's a very complex issue. It is kind of a teeter-totter of figuring out how we support workers, what is the impact to the overall economy, to businesses, how this looks for small businesses versus large box stores. Obviously, Santa Fe has some experience with this. I think understanding what occurred with the living wage previously, and I mean, I think on both sides, what happened with businesses, what happened with employment numbers. Now, that was 2003, and then obviously 2008 was an interesting time for everybody and would have had an impact there. But understanding what that looked like, I know that there was a lot of fear at that time that it was going to completely shut down everything in Santa Fe. Obviously, it didn't do that. I am curious, did it shut down some businesses that were smaller that weren't able to make it? So I think understanding what that looked like.

And then also taking a look at other communities, other cities that have higher wages than we do, and or around this, and what that has looked like when they've made those increases and really understanding the macroeconomics there. I'm also curious about any demographic information. I don't know if we could get down to this level of how many people would actually be impacted. You know, what percentage of the workforce is making minimum wage? How many are, because of how competitive the workforce is, they would be making, this would really lead to an increase. As Councilor Garcia mentioned, that gets a little challenging because not everybody works a 40-hour work week. So looking at that data can be hard. I don't know what type of data we might be able to get there, but I think that would be interesting to at least get a rough estimate as we look at chunks of income.

In terms of the benefits, this may be something that can be answered now. When benefits are included, is that just healthcare? Is that, you know, like we have a very robust benefits package, you know, with life insurance and a very generous healthcare package. How does, what goes into that calculation now? Do we know that?

Mayor: Mr. Mayor, Councilor Cassid, the current ordinance counts childcare and healthcare benefits toward the calculation of the living wage.

Councilor Cassid: Does that include vision and dental or just healthcare?

Mayor: It's healthcare generally.

Councilor Cassid: Okay, okay. So probably, that's interesting. I didn't know that about our current living wage, and I don't, how does that impact us here at the city? I'm curious about that as well. I don't think I've ever, we talk about our wages.

Mayor: Yes, we've been above that, but that's just never thought about that in terms of how we look at our living wage. I'm sorry, I have a little information there. We asked our finance director to tell us how many of our current 1350 employees are currently making less than $17.50 an hour. We have about 18 that are making slightly less, the lowest being at $17. However, they do enjoy the benefits package that you described.

Councilor Cassid: Is that not including our benefit package or does that include that in there?

Mayor: I'm talking about straight wages.

Councilor Cassid: Okay, okay.

Mayor: But then you add the benefits package and they would be well above the $17.50.

Councilor Cassid: Well, I'm actually really glad to hear that when we're calculating our wages that we are not incorporating those in as we've discussed that. I'm also, when I'm looking at the scale of how this potentially could increase, what those percentage increases would be again, what has this looked like in the past since 2003, right? That was when we enacted. You know, what have those percentage increases been? Is there, has there been a tipping point in other communities? Is there a place where, as we're looking at projections, is there a tipping point where we are going to find that that might actually have a negative impact on the community and decrease jobs? And if that's so, you know, what is there something that we need to build into that in order to assess that? How often do these assessments happen? And then, you know, in looking again at other communities, at our communities, if negative impacts to businesses were found, I think Councilor Castro mentioned this, you know, what strategies are there to mitigate negative impacts? You know, what are the ways that supports can come in? So again, I'd really appreciate a lot of information and examples and how has this been explored and done both in our community as well as in others.

I also would ask that as part of the conversations, to bring this to EDAC, as that is a group that is, you know, really focused on economic development and a very, we have a very experienced, very thoughtful group in there right now. So I would really love to hear their input as we are developing the various questions and information and as we are ultimately considering what a policy would look like. So those are my main, my main questions. I think understanding what this looks like at the individual level is extremely important, and then what do those wider impacts? I think that we hear a lot, and data doesn't always support some of the thoughts that come in. But again, data, data is one data point. You know, we may, I think that there probably is a difference in how these types of things impact different types of businesses. So how we can really look at what we have in Santa Fe. I feel like back when I started, there was a statistic that 50% of our businesses would be considered small businesses. Is that looking at Johanna, in case you know?

Mayor: You want to come up to the mic?

Speaker: Mayor, Councilors, thank you, Councilor Cassid, for that question. There's a lot of different ways of how we can classify a small business, but usually there's a rough estimate that says over, well over 80% have less than 50 employees, and that's usually a standard.

Councilor Cassid: Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. So yeah, I think looking at our specific workforce and our specific economy and our business mix would be really interesting to understand what this looks like and how this impacts, and again, what have we learned from the last time? What could we have done differently last time? I know that there's already a change in how the percentage increase is calculated, but were there other areas of this that after it was enacted that we said, "Hey, we could have done that a little bit better." So I'm sure I will have more questions as I, you know, think about this over the next few days. I'm happy to send them over. And then, of course, I think that the real pile of information that we're going to need is going to come from those community forums. And I think that we'll be able to get a lot of input about what we need to be considering in addition to what we've already considered tonight. So thank you.

Mayor: That's great. Very helpful to get that list of questions and specifics because we can as a body and as individuals dig into them and supplement them. So thank you for going through that, Councilor Mayworth.

Councilor Mayworth: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the work that's been put into this. I think it's, I think tonight is intended to be a conversation starter with a solid proposal of here's something to vet. And so I too am interested in what the community will say at the town hall. Interested to hear different voices come forward with their thoughts as this proposal is floated out to the community. I think that will be really important. I'm wondering, can you help me understand, and I don't know if you're prepared to do this or not, but exactly what it is in the current law that we're preserving? You know, you said that this proposal would keep the provisions that, that it would retain the provisions that we already have. You're not proposing changing, and clearly those provisions were important when the law was passed originally.

But it's been some time since I've thought about this. So, besides tipped wages not being included, what other pieces are there? Another provision that we would suggest be kept is that nonprofits that are highly dependent on Medicaid reimbursement be exempt from the living wage ordinance. And we think that that is particularly important given the cuts to Medicaid that have been recently approved by Congress. Another one would be that tipped wages would be continued at $4.50, but the tips themselves would be counted toward the living wage. We would retain the provisions that describe enforcement that allow the city manager or his or her designee to enforce the ordinance based on complaints and also the other remedies that would be available to those who are aggrieved by failure to adhere to the new living wage ordinance. There is one other provision that is not coming to my mind right now, but I'll come back.

Did we have anything around youth employment or business size, or there none of that that didn't end up making there were no exceptions for that?

Those questions, as I understand it, Counselor, were debated at the time, but they did not make it into the final ordinance. Right.

There is no limitation here on youth employment. There is no limitation on the size of business that would be affected.

Yeah. I think a couple things that, so I thank you, Councilor Lindell, for reminding me of that exercise we did. I think it was in my first term with the Food Depot, and it's actually an exercise out of MIT that helps to kind of role-play what it's like to be a family making a living wage, quote unquote, living wage, and what that exactly means and how far it doesn't really go. And so that I remember being very instructive. And so I also remember the subsequent report that the Food Depot did, and I would love to take a look at that again. If you have that at your fingertips, I know I have it somewhere. So I was just scrolling through to see if I could find it, but it's been a while.

I think another important source, I know the state legislature has talked about this issue, and I'd be curious what reports have come out of the, maybe the legislative finance committee or an interim committee that's spent time with this. I think there's probably good research out there that we could add to the mix, and I'd be interested in. And of course, the state wage is considerably lower than this proposal and what we pay.

Currently.

Currently in Santa Fe. So, pretty interesting that that hasn't increased, but I think those things could be really helpful to us as we move into this conversation. Trying to think what else I had. I think Councilor Cassett's list of questions is a good one to get some answers to. On that page, I'm also always interested in other cities and how they handle these things and what other cities we'd be joining with this level. What has their experience been? And then I guess I too am very interested in this delay. Can you speak more to why you think a delay? It seems to me that we're likely to be in far worse circumstance in a year, is my pessimistic view. Why would we wait for that moment? I don't think that's going to be easier to do this.

Mayor, Councilor Marroworth, one of the things that we heard from some of the employer groups that we spoke to was that we need time to prepare. We need some advanced warning. If you're going to bump the living wage in Santa Fe significantly, we need a chance to plan for this and think through how we are going to react. So it was a request from the employers that there be some delay here on top of the concern about what was going on in the macroeconomic sense in America, which will certainly affect us here in Santa Fe.

Right. Okay. So that makes more sense to me, just that, you know, having some warning and trying to figure out how to make ends meet when something is changed makes sense to me. I don't know why, I don't think we're going to necessarily be more stable in a year, because as we know, the impacts of these tariffs, the cuts at the federal level to really important services that many people rely on. I don't think we're going to be in a better place, and in fact, I think we can be more unstable. So, I guess I would emphasize the other end of this is that we need, and I don't know if we need to do this, maybe we need to be doing it now, but I do hear the importance of having some sort of time to think about it. And I, you know, I don't know what the timing is on bringing forward a proposal that we would actually vote on. So I don't know what the thinking was there, but, and I guess, yeah, I think I'll just, I think those were kind of some thoughts. So, thank you.

Thanks. Thank you very much, Councilor Garcia. You had put a defer on your time, so why don't you take the floor now?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I guess first I'll go with some comments. I would only be in favor of delay just based off the feedback, but what I'm hearing you said business owners had said, and I think that's honestly, it's a quiet concern for me in the onset is I want to hear directly from business owners. I appreciate there was some vetting done, but I want to do the vetting myself as well. But I also understand the flip side where residents in our community are struggling at this moment. So, with that being said, there's nothing that's prohibiting the city from implementing its own living wage. Let's do it. Let's get it done. There's nothing that prohibits us from starting to pay every single city worker a minimum of $17.50 right now. Am I understanding that correctly, City Manager Scott? Let's get it done. We're way past that. Let's begin to talk the talk while we begin to walk the walk and actually do the research needed to really understand the ramifications as expressed by some of my colleagues, because this does have an impact on the outside world, but we can look internally on the impact it has on the city. So, let's bring an ordinance for it. I'll co-sponsor it with somebody. Let's bring that wage up. Due date now. Go ahead.

I'm sorry, Counselor. Maybe I wasn't clear in my response. We have 18 out of 1350 employees that are making between $17 and $17.50 straight wage, but they also benefit from the benefits package, including health care and vision, dental insurance. On top of that though, they are actually in compliance with the current living wage. I was obviously not clear.

Right. No, no, I understand. But I'm talking about a minimum wage.

Completely different.

I see. I see.

Yeah. Because when we get into the complexities, and I think that's where my challenge is, especially when we look at private business and taking into all those additional factors, it's quite challenging. And I'm going to look at it from the minimum wage perspective of, we, there should not be an individual working for the city that cannot afford to live in this city. And unfortunately, that's the case right now. That is the case at this moment where we have city workers struggling to live here in this community. We have city workers who are struggling to maintain their current housing. So, I'm all for looking at how we can support folks outside of our workforce, but let's, let's begin to look internally as well in parallel. Now, sounds like there's a timeline. It sounds like there's a proposal, a plan in place because we've got a proposed town hall for September 9th. And just a heads up, there's a community event happening on that same night hosted by the League of Women Voters. So, I could talk with you offline about that, but just, just a heads up on that. Thank you. What I want to do is I want to work collaboratively with whether it's our small businesses or all the way up to major franchisee businesses such as McDonald's that Counselor mentioned. We need to ensure that as we are moving forward with the intention to support the workforce, that there is not the negative impact that is ultimately going to hurt business, because that can have a deeper effect. Honestly, I, I, I understand the well intentions, but when you start shutting down mom and pops, you really hurt community, and it has the facade of, well, we want to help workers, but comes at the detriment of small business owners, then what happens to the small business owners? They're the ones who actually end up probably leaving town. So I think this is where I'm, I'm, I'm completely open to this, but, but one, so one thing I'd like to request is it sounds like there was a study done by Dr. Riley White. I would like to receive a copy of that study because he's not going to just give a couple of examples here or there. This is a true professional who's going to give a thorough analysis and a report and feedback. So, one request is I'd like to see that full report that Dr. Riley White provided. Then I'd like to know who paid for it. I mean, obviously the city paid for it, but where did it come from? We didn't approve it, but who, who ultimately approved the research to be conducted in the first place? May I respond to that?

Sure.

Mayor, Councilor Michael Garcia, Mr. Riley White did not conduct a full-blown study of what a living wage increase would mean in Santa Fe. What he did do was engage in a series of discussions with us and through different iterations offer his opinions about the actual effects on employment and working people in Santa Fe on various iterations, whether you were tying it strictly to the cost of living, to the cost of increased housing, to a blend, having a cap, having different ways of looking at this. He has not completed a thorough study, but he is willing to come to the public event, which is currently scheduled for the 9th, and I'm happy to consider rescheduling that to avoid a conflict with the league. And he's willing to come to additional council meetings to give his expert opinion on what the research is showing across the nation and what it would show in Santa Fe with any of these options that we are discussing this evening.

Okay. I truly, truly welcome that because, and I apologize, Mr. Gould, but I'm just going off of what this memo says that research performed by economist Riley S. White. So, I'm basing my comments off what it says is research was conducted. What I heard from you is it sounds like it was conversations, two completely different scenarios, in my opinion.

It's short of a full-blown report, but he did conduct research and happy to share with you and the rest of the council what we've heard from Dr. White to date.

Okay. I truly would appreciate that because especially on a proposal of this magnitude.

Certainly, it, it, it absolutely warrants it. And I, I would encourage that this proposal move forward as a governing body proposal, and I, I appreciate the initial work, Mr. Mayor, that you did on this, but I, I think, you know, given, as I mentioned, I would like to hear from business owners as well. It, it said stakeholders from, who are the stakeholders listed in the presentation? The chamber, I think it said hospitality industry, the restaurant association, Chain Breakers, the Food Depot, Christa St. Vincent's Hospital. Mayor, help me. Who else did we speak with?

We spoke with people in the construction industry. We spoke with Somos in the community.

Okay. I, I think the idea of this, you've, you've nailed the purpose of tonight, which is to just open the conversation and then pursue it broadly.

both at whatever we end up scheduling with this event, or more than one has been suggested, and then bringing it back into another work session. So as a group, we can try to craft something that does exactly what you also said, which I tried to say in my opening, which is we're trying to thread the needle here. We don't want to put people out of business. We do want to enable people to live and work in Santa Fe. Finding that blend, that balance, that was the word you used, I think is really going to be the basis of the dialogues that go forward from starting tonight amongst all of us.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you for the clarification on the attendees.

Councilor, you're almost at 10 minutes.

Okay. Thank you. I again, I think there's still a lot of more information I would like to receive. This is what I would call the appetizer of a 10-course meal because we want to get this done right. We want to ensure that we are working to protect residents and ensure that residents can continue to live in their community. But again, it's not at the detriment of business. And so I guess the last question I have at the moment, Mr. Gold, is around protections, right? Because one thing I get immediately concerned when something like this comes up is how is the workforce going to be protected? How can we ensure that whatever we raise this proposed living wage to, that workers are at the end of the day going to be protected and they receive due compensation? Who is going to conduct the enforcement? Because again, at the end of the day, we will have workers who will not feel comfortable to report an employer because that could be their only job. They can fear retaliation. There can be many reasons. Who is ultimately going to work to ensure that the workforce is protected and that there is a true living wage that is truly enforced?

Councilor, I can only answer based on the history. And since 2003, the current living wage ordinance has been enforced on a complaints basis. There is no city employee that is charged with going out and determining what is being paid throughout the community and ascertaining that it is consistent with the living wage. That said, there have been relatively few complaints, and the few that we have received have been resolved very easily. So, so far, enforcement has not been a significant issue. But if we bump it, as has been discussed, or go further, as some are indicating, it may become more of an issue, and we would have to address that at that time.

Let me weigh in just a little bit, and then Councilor Castro, I know your hand is up. My experience with the enforcement has been that many of the people who are potentially at risk by being mistreated by their employers do outreach to existing community organizations. And with the support of the community organizations, they then file a wage theft or other kind of an action with the city attorney's office. And we've had incidents in the past where that led to very direct impact on the employer for not living up to their commitment, and they were required to make compensation and live up to that responsibility. I think, I guess my point is this, Councilor, I think it often is true that an individual doesn't know how to be their own best advocate because it's a big world and they don't know how to access the city attorney's office, say. But the conversations with some of the community-based organizations has had them playing the role of the advocate and intermediary, and then that becomes not an individual cause of action, but a more diverse group of people all working collaboratively, and that has had positive effects.

Councilor Castro, your hand was up.

Just a point of information. You know, in my previous role, it was my job to file these complaints at New Mexico Workforce Solutions. And most recently, I had a complaint come to my office from somebody who was not paid at all. And we attempted to file a wage complaint here at the city. Unfortunately, not constituent services. We didn't know how to file a complaint. There was not an intake form. That person did try to go to these organizations, and they didn't get a response. So, I think it would behoove us, it would be a good thing for us to do as a city to really beef up that process and make it clearer because I as a councilor was not able to find a way for us to file that at the city, and we are in communication with the city attorney. But yeah, this was something that was difficult and still has yet to be filed.

Thank you.

Mayor Weber: Counselors, I have not heard of this yet, and we do have an intake form that we've used while I've been here.

Sorry, point of information. I do understand, city attorney, you were not here that day or were not available at the moment, and it was constituent services that was not able to find the complaint form.

Well, it's a good example, and obviously if we're going to be serious in our work to try to make sure that we protect both sides of this equation, which I think is fundamentally what we're all saying in different ways. We want to improve the capacity of individuals who work in Santa Fe to live in Santa Fe by increasing the living wage by whatever amount the governing body deems appropriate. At the same time, we don't want to overburden and put out of business the mom-and-pop stores, the small businesses that are the backbone of the city's economy. And finding that middle ground, threading that needle, is going to be the work of all of us collaboratively with community input, with more direct conversations, and then with another study session or two, whatever it takes to try to hammer out something that this group of governing body members feels is the best approach, the best way to phase it, either immediately or with a pause or not. But I really am open to everybody's with this work session. We can actually have this conversation publicly among ourselves without violating a rolling quorum issue or open meetings violation. And now I think suggestions, ideas, additional proposals, research is exactly what we want to get done. And I do think, Councilor Garcia, to your point, if there are the conflict in the timing on that one date is severe, let's make a new accommodation. Let's have more than one. Let's give more opportunities for people to come in front of us. We could have a work session that is a listening session as opposed to a work session among ourselves. The kickoff tonight was designed to have this dialogue among ourselves, not with immediate response from the broad community, but there's absolutely nothing to prevent that from being another work session where we simply open the floor to this topic and this topic only. We may hear about it now that the subject has been broached at petitions from the floor, which I'd certainly welcome. And then we'll go, we'll go back to the, if need be, we'll go back to the drawing boards on scheduling a community town hall or more than one and get into the intake, the listening part of this process. I think Councilor Garcia is first, Councilor, and then I'll come over to you.

Yes, sir.

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to ask clarifying, Mr. Gold, you said something to the effect of a $17 an hour employee, but then you add in the benefits because the benefits are a cost, but don't calculate that into what the minimum wage would be. Correct.

Excuse me. Council Lee Garcia, could you repeat the question?

So, I just, just to clarify on the dialogue when Councilor Michael Garcia stated, we have some individuals in the city who make $17 an hour. And I think what I heard was your response is that, well, when you add in their benefits package. And I just want clarification on that because certainly a benefits package isn't going to be calculated into what an individual earns.

The current living wage ordinance allows the calculation of the cost of health insurance and childcare provided by the employer to be added to the wage to determine compliance with the current living wage ordinance. So currently we're at $15. You could be paying less than that. But if you're providing healthcare and or childcare, the cost of that per person would be added to your wage to determine whether or not the employer is compliant with our current law.

I think that's an important thing to understand because I mean again, you can take in the overall cost of the hourly. And so we're, we're saying, okay, we need an hourly wage. And to be honest with you, what a person takes home and what they earn on an hourly wage is completely different.

Yes.

Because there's gross earnings and then there's net earnings. And all the other things have, they have to be vetted throughout that process. And if you just take the basic formula of how many hours worked divided by how much they actually made, whether it's hourly, tip-based, commission, a business could have a commission-based performance salary to that employee, which definitely usually be higher anyway. So again, I think that back to, there's a lot of conversation that has to go into this and how it really does affect what, what are the, the groups that it's really truly going to affect either not being able to attain employment because of qualifications, and really truly how it affects the overall economy of the city. You know, does it make it more costly to live here than the uptick in the cost of the minimum wage really didn't mean anything. So again, that's, that's just more things. I, I, we could go out on a night, and tonight's not that night.

But it is good to get these issues out on the table. And I do think Dr. For White and others can opine on how this has worked elsewhere and how it worked with the first go-around with the living wage when it was first implemented because many of these same questions were raised back then and were discussed and debated. And I, I, I, I think my, my understanding from talking to people who were instrumental back then in the first living wage effort was very much they were doing what we're talking about right now. How do you thread the needle? How do you balance the benefits of this kind of a living wage against the impact on small businesses so they are not unduly penalized? And how do you provide these exceptions or these specific carve-outs, if you will, so that employers get credit for things they're doing that productively assist their employees to have a better workplace and a better quality of life for themselves and their families? What's your job? I didn't mean to cut you off, ma'am.

No, you're fine. You didn't cut me off. I was just wanting to mention when we talk about employee or work, like the workforce protections or employee protections, it's also the impact of how these employers will potentially cut employment, like cut employees from their, their jobs. I think that's another place that we have to look at protecting the workforce. But what I really, I just thought of that when we were talking about workforce protections. But what I wanted to mention, a big issue around this is a lack of understanding. I feel like for town halls or community discussion, the round table model that we've done in the past for other topics is almost essential because it's not even, it's not only about coming up with ideas or getting feedback, but it's also the two sides educating one another of how this impact looks. And they will, that education is better coming from them than our presentations or from us in general because it's a lived experience and how that balance has impact.

So, I hope that when we have these events, they are discussions like we've had in the past with other topics, so that we're getting the information we need, the feedback we need, that'll be beneficial to moving in one direction or the other. But also, it gives everyone involved education and perspective of all those that will be impacted. So the model that we've had for around homelessness and micro-communities, all of those things, I think that model is essential for this topic.

Mayor: You're absolutely spot on, Counselor. That's the design that we've been implicitly going toward with what we saw at the micro-community event with a bit of a front-end educational opportunity or some data.

Yeah, and then roundtables where people can engage each other around specific questions and share their ideas and cross-fertilize, cross-educate each other. And I think that's it, maybe more than one time to get everybody comfortable with this and feeling like they've had a chance.

And including both sides of town because the impact on the south side is significant for all involved, I would say, in a very different way than on this side of town.

And the intent of having it at the Teen Center was exactly that: ease of access and putting it right where folks live.

Awesome. Thank you.

Councilor Garcia: Yes, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And one further recommendation, should these town halls be hosted, I would highly, highly, highly recommend there be childcare. You are talking about a population that we're trying to support. If we don't have childcare to support them, we're not going to get feedback.

That's a good design idea as well. We welcome, please, more input, not just tonight, but how to get the best involvement would be helpful.

Translation: Have more than one. Do it at a time where one session in the evening, one session in the day, one session on the weekend. I mean, you've got to be able to provide opportunity for people to participate. We've got to remember, we're trying to raise the living wage. We've got folks that are working more than one job most of the time. And so, we want to ensure we're providing ample opportunity for folks to participate.

And on the other side, we need employers to show up as well, so it's a balanced conversation and everybody can dialogue with each other. One question, Mr. Gold. Am I understanding this two-prong approach being addressing the living wage as well as addressing housing costs? Is that the two-prong?

Yes, it's looking at housing supply, which obviously affects housing expense, the largest expense that all of our residents face. And then looking at the living wage and trying to get closer.

Gotcha. And so one thing I would request we begin to incorporate into further analysis is the elimination of fee-in-lieu. And the reason I say that is when a fee is paid, an affordable unit is not developed. That means a unit that person that is making a lower wage could have lived in is not created. So what happens in the instance where the fee-in-lieu is eliminated, we raise the living wage, is that a broader benefit for our community? I think that deserves a thorough analysis. Thank you.

With that, good luck on the research. This is a very heavy topic. Lots, lots more to come.

Thank you. It's 8 o'clock. I know we've already lost one of our members because she was banking on an 8 o'clock end of the meeting, and Councilor Lindell is also on her way out. Are there any, thank you everybody for a really candid and constructive conversation, first of all. Any, Mr. Gold, any last thoughts from you at this time?

No, sir.

I really appreciate it. We'll keep talking about it. We still have to observe our open meetings requirements and rolling quorum issues, but I've got four or five pages of notes and work to do. We'll look at the structure and timing of community engagement activities and then more work sessions to try to get further progress on this. But thank you everybody. I really appreciate it. Thank you everybody for being here. We are adjourned.