Special Governing Body Meeting
Wed, Nov 19, 2025 · Governing Body
https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/887

== Executive Summary ==
The Governing Body held a Special Meeting to kick off the FY27 budget process, focusing on a new management system designed to improve accountability, transparency, and budgetary decisions. This system introduces broad goals, measurable objectives for FY26, and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track progress. Department heads presented their strategic goals, objectives, and KPIs, covering areas such as the City Attorney's Office, Community Engagement, Community Development, Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency, Community Health and Safety, Finance, Fire, Human Resources, Information Technology, Police, Public Utilities, Public Works, Risk and Safety, Santa Fe Airport, and the Municipal Court.

Council members were encouraged to submit written comments and questions regarding the presented information, and departments are tasked with providing a mid-year report on their goals and objectives by January 23rd. The Mayor and Councilors praised the extensive work by city staff in developing this new performance-based budgeting framework, acknowledging it as a significant step towards greater fiscal responsibility and strategic planning. The meeting concluded with an emphasis on ongoing collaboration and the understanding that this is an initial iteration, with future budget cycles allowing for more direct Governing Body input on goal setting.

== Key Decisions ==
- Approved the agenda for the Special Governing Body Meeting.

== Motions & Votes ==
- Motion to approve the agenda — Carried

== Public Comment ==
Mayor Weber emphasized the significance of the new management system as a foundational, ambitious undertaking for future budgeting and goal-setting, noting that written comments would be submitted due to time constraints. Deputy City Manager thanked Rod Gold and City Manager Mark Scott for their roles in developing the system. Councilors expressed appreciation for the extensive work by staff in creating measurable goals and the new performance-based budgeting framework. Concerns were raised about the need for better budgeting and integration of Spanish language accessibility across city departments, not just libraries. Councilors also stressed the importance of setting realistic yet ambitious goals, acknowledging that some current targets might be overly optimistic. The City Manager clarified that the presented goals were under his purview and that future budget processes would be more collaborative. The Mayor encouraged using the document as a roadmap for themes and synergies across departments.

== Topics ==
- Budget Process Reform
- Goals, Objectives, KPIs
- Departmental Accountability
- Technology Infrastructure
- Contract Review Efficiency
- Public Records Requests
- Civic Engagement
- Legal Program Performance
- Strategic Planning
- Inter-departmental Collaboration

== Full Transcript ==
We are live. Excellent. Thank you. I'm going to call this study session to order and welcome everybody and ask the clerk to call the roll.

**Councilor Casset:** Here.

**Councilor Castro:** Here.

**Councilor Chavez:** Is on her, had a late meeting and is coming.

**Councilor Faulkner:** Here.

**Councilor Lee Garcia:** Here.

**Councilor Michael Garcia:** Is on his way.

**Councilor Lindell:** On her way.

**Councilor Mayworth:** Similarly suited.

**Mayor Weber:** Present. You have a quorum.

**Mayor Weber:** Thank you. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda?

**Councilor:** So moved.

**Councilor:** Second.

**Mayor Weber:** Motion to approve the agenda. Is there any discussion? All in favor say aye. Opposed. Motion carries. We have a presentation before us. Before we start, Madame Deputy City Manager, let me just say a quick word of context. This is a study session. It's designed to primarily give a first public exposure to a very ambitious and significant project designed to develop goals, objectives, and key performance indicators. And it is in many ways not only about those written objectives, but also kicks off the budget process that we all voted in favor of so that there'll be a platform from which the governing body can build in the future.

This is scheduled for a two-hour effort. I know we've got a lot of ground to cover from the team that spent hours and hours working on the document that we've all been provided. What I'm hoping is we'll get an overview from each of the department heads. We actually don't even have time under our budget, time budget, to give everybody a 10-minute opportunity to ask questions. But perhaps if each member of the council or the governing body had one really important point they wanted to make or one question they wanted to make, they would do that. We also have the opportunity to submit our comments in writing. I went through and yellow stickied a bunch of pages and I'm not going to ask a bunch of questions tonight. I'm just going to write them up and send them forward as hopefully a helpful addendum to the process. So I think it's a great first step and first time in my experience we've actually done this as a way of building the building blocks for goals, objectives, key performance indicators, and then using that as a springboard to a new budgeting process. So with that, Madame Deputy City Manager, you have the floor.

**Deputy City Manager:** Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of council. I want to, hopefully this is okay. There we go. So I do want to just do a quick introduction, but before I do that, I do want to just thank my coworker and esteemed colleague Rod Gold, Senior Advisor. He has been instrumental in helping us to think through this management system. He's provided training to all of the supervisors, managers, and directors on what it looks like to have a robust management system. And I just really want to thank him and all of his efforts. I also want to thank the support of Mark Scott, our City Manager, and helping us to bring this forward. So, Mike, if you wouldn't mind just putting the presentation on the screen, we'll go ahead and get right into it. Hopefully, you all have a binder that looks like this that contains the memo that provides background as to what we're doing here, as well as department by department goals, objectives, and KPIs.

All right. So, getting right into it, I want to just make sure we're on the same page about what we're doing here and what the purpose is. So, by creating this robust document, this is part of a defined management system that's going to help us as we define our levels of service for ourselves and for our community. It's going to provide a shared understanding of what our goals are and objectives for strategic planning purposes. It creates a better system of accountability and transparency with how taxpayer dollars are being spent and the work that our departments are doing every day. It's a communication tool out to the community and it also hopefully will help us in making good budgetary decisions moving forward.

So just a few definitions. This was in the memo, but just to go over this maybe one more time, we kind of start from the top here with goals. Goals are our broad and enduring statement. It's our vision statement. It's something that we are putting out into the community as something that we are really working towards. Below that are our objectives. Those are more operational in terms of scope. And what we have done here is ask departments to give us their objectives for what they can achieve within this fiscal year, fiscal year 26. So with the resources they have, what can they accomplish? Those are measurable. Ideally, those are SMART. So they're specific, they're measurable, they're actionable, they're relevant and realistic, and time-bound. And then we have key performance indicators. So we have a set of key performance indicators throughout this document and throughout the departments, but please note that we don't necessarily have a KPI associated with every objective. So some objectives lend themselves easier to a KPI than others, and you'll see that as we go through.

This is the proposed schedule moving forward. So, as Mayor Weber had indicated, this is kind of the kickoff to a year-long budget process. It's kind of overwhelming to think about it, but we're already starting to think about what are we achieving mid-year in fiscal year 26 and what will things look like for fiscal year 27. So, tonight we're seeing the presentation on the draft goals, objectives, and KPIs. Then on January 8th, we have a civic engagement session. This was part of the budget resolution that you had adopted. Right now, it's scheduled for 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the Convention Center. January 23rd is when we are proposing to do a council goals and priority setting exercise with you. We'll also be asking the departments to bring a mid-year report on the status of their goals and objectives that you're going to see today. So that's going to really start to kick off the FY27 budget preparation. February, March, April, and May. That's where we're taking all of that information and putting it together into a budgetary document that can be introduced. So that'll include the budget priorities that council is setting, hopefully by resolution. It will include the departmental requests. And then we'll put that together into the Mayor's proposed budget in April and May. We'll have joint hearings with Finance Committee and Governing Body. And then finally we'll have hopefully a recommendation to the Governing Body and adoption in May. We'll submit it to the state and then we will present on the year-end for FY26. And so with that, I'll answer any questions that you have right now. Otherwise, we'll go ahead and just start to kick it off.

So we do have 13 departments or offices to present to you. So, as the Mayor indicated, we're going to try to roll through this pretty quickly. We're trying to hit high level and maybe not necessarily go through every single item within the document. And I'll just be sitting here with my red folder and I'll kind of flag when people are, you know, needing to move on. So, any questions before we begin? Okay. Okay. Well, with that, I'm going to go ahead and call Aaron McSherry up, who is our City Attorney, right over here. And if you want to advance the slides, you'll just do the little arrow there. Oh, do I need to do something to share?

**Staff:** It was up a second ago. Sorry.

**Deputy City Manager:** Sure. Michael, are you there? Can you put the presentation on the, yeah, and we'll just keep it up throughout. Thank you.

**City Attorney:** Thank you very much, Deputy City Manager Phillips. So you'll note that I've picked a subset to highlight from the binders you all have. The mission of the City Attorney's office is to advise, defend, and protect the city and enforce its laws in a just, timely, and just manner. We also include the Office of Legislation and Policy Innovation and the Office of Records Custodians. And so for the legal program, we set our own, whoops, goals and key performance indicators that relate to business that's ongoing and daily that we actually can set targets for. There's a lot of projects that are diverse and don't lend themselves to specific numeric goals, but there are things that we are reviewing on a daily basis such as disciplinary actions. And so we've set 75% within two business days for reviewing those types of matters. Some are very complex, a lot are very straightforward.

And then for contracts is another one I wanted to highlight. We're trying to do our intake and screening in under three business days for internal template contracts and externals including amendments. And so for those, we're trying to get 90% within five days from initial intake on template contracts. And template contracts are ones where generally we're just entering scope of work and a term and the contractor and that type of thing. So it makes them a lot more straightforward potentially. And then we're, when we're using custom contracts, that means that our contractor has provided an alternative version or we've had to negotiate something that's very specialized. And so that's why that's a lower percentage within 10 business days. And it, and that often takes a lot of back and forth with the outside contractor if we're negotiating terms. We often get things that have indemnification clauses, choice of law out of state, requirements for things that are illegal for the city to do. So that, that's why those take longer often. And then subsequent reviews within three business days. It's that initial review of the complex contracts that's sometimes challenging. So those are examples of kind of business procedures that are ongoing and and can be numerically driven in terms of responsiveness to our clients. That's why we chose those to highlight.

And then workload numbers I think are just very helpful in terms of budget just to show numbers of things coming into the office, numbers of DWIs prosecuted by the prosecutor, numbers of contracts reviewed, disciplinary actions reviewed, civil lawsuits being handled internally versus those with outside counsel which are primarily risk management driven, but some of them are paid through contracts in my office, but primarily they're for tort claim notices and lawsuits that come from those tort claims, and numbers of lawsuits closed, which would give a kind of a number, a general sense of the sunsetting of the workload as well, if it's ending as quickly as it's coming in, that kind of thing. And then for administrative matters, those are findings of fact and conclusions adopted by the governing body, which are types of things that are appealable. So those are good workload numbers as well to look year-over-year, quarter-over-quarter by the legal team. The records custodians are obviously working down a backlog. So their numbers are going to hopefully change dramatically over the next year or so as they as they decrease that backlog. So they're looking at increasing their percent of requests closed within five days. They're looking at being more efficient with reviewing videos as we get better technology and change systems there. And they're looking at reducing the time spent reviewing and converting emails and and finding more efficient ways to do that. They also are trying to minimize opportunity for litigation and that will be as the backlog decreases their ability to close requests within the first week of receipt will increase and reduce the processing time for all the more complex requests.

So right now, they're seeking, this is an initiative they've been working on, and are working up to the 50% to reach out to those folks who have longer pending requests and try to make sure that those are still desired. If not, what subset we can essentially renegotiate the request to reduce the request to. And then also for all requests that they close with no responsive records, providing an explanation of the steps that were taken and who all was reached out to in case the requester has any other suggestions, they can make them at that time. And that's something we're finding that is helpful to make sure the requester understands what has gone into a request and the search for responsive records.

And similarly with the legal team, I think there are some good workload numbers that would be very illustrative of what's going on in the office of records custodian. So the numbers they're receiving, we've been reporting on those every year for a number of years and the numbers closed. But also looking at categories such as those longer than a month, longer than three months, longer than six months, and we'll hopefully be seeing the ones that are pending for longer than a year decrease substantially with our full staff and temp, and in turn that are all working now, along with overtime as well.

The Office of Legislation and Policy Innovation has also proposed some KPIs that I have highlighted here. And they want to make sure that they're meeting with 90% of the relevant parties on prioritization meetings two to three times a year to make sure that they understand the priorities of the legislative body and making sure that they're working on those in order of priority. They also want to make sure that their clients and senior staff understand all the procedural rules that relate to legislation, and so that's why they want to make sure to offer trainings at least annually, if not more frequently. And that concludes the summary from the City Attorney. Thank you.

Hello, Mayor and Governing Body Council Members. So, City Clerk, the department is the Community Engagement Department. I think it's important to know who sits in it. It's a very people-forward department. We increased our size from 20 to 22 positions this year, so thank you. We now have a paralegal for our public defender, and we have a temporary interpreter that will be on staff coming in December.

So the divisions or the activities that fall underneath the Community Engagement Team are the City Clerk's Office, Constituent Services, Communications and Marketing, Mail and Duplication, and the Public Defender's Office. We have five goals that we have outlined which really are talking about modernizing and standardizing the city or the Community Engagement Department.

First, improve community engagement for meetings, events, and issues through the use of technology. And what we're really talking about is communication to constituents, getting surveys back to get information and touchpoints about how they want to be communicated with and what kind of events they want to be seeing from our department.

Goal two, modernize the Mail and Duplication Office to be the hub for city marketing materials, create a one-stop shop. And what we're talking about here is, when we do events, we have posters, we have flyers, we have a lot of different both printed and digital materials. We have a whole mail and duplication room up there that we don't quite utilize very much. And we utilize it for a lot of different things, but we can expand it to make sure that our communications and marketing is being best marketed to the public. So, we want to transform that into a more hub for our communications and marketing to use and deploy for our departments when they have events.

Goal three, improve constituent satisfaction through timely and respectful service by streamlining internal processes for efficient case resolution, promoting bilingual and culturally responsive communication, ensuring equitable access to city services to all residents, and increasing overall public trust in local government. The increasing local public trust is really about trying to understand how people want to be communicated with and also receiving surveys back about, "Did you get your situation resolved? Was it timely? How did we respond to it? What do you think about that?" So really deploying surveys in that manner.

Goal four, improve government transparency, public access to information, and ensure timely records management. So while there is the Office of Records Custodians, the City Clerk's does hold all the records for the city, and so ensuring that we have digitized records is really important so that when the custodians are utilizing those records, they have easy access to it. So making sure all of our ordinances, our leases, our contracts, our grants are online is a real high priority for how we want to move forward.

And goal five, modernize the public campaign financing and reporting processes. We just went through an election cycle. We saw that a lot of things weren't working in a timely, efficient manner. And so we want to make sure that it's easy both for the candidates and for our staff to upload and put things online. We learned a lot from the City of Albuquerque and the City Clerk in Albuquerque and the systems that they use. And so we want to be able to work on that over the next two years and deploy that. That is all I have for you. Thank you.

Hi, Mayor and members of City Council. I actually want to start by thanking, can you hear me? I want to start by thanking Andrea Phillips and Rod Gold for their leadership, guidance, and coaching throughout this process. I also want to thank Mark Scott for serving as our overarching sherpa, guiding and supporting all that we do. None of this work happens alone, so I also want to extend my sincere appreciation to our team. We, most, if not all, of our Community Development Department's division directors and department directors. As you know, under Community Development Department, we have two departments. I just want to thank them for continually going beyond expectations and regularly working 10 to 14-hour days and to deliver meaningful results for our community. Let's dive in.

Here is our chart. So we are committed to fostering a high quality of life through the integration of initiatives, programs, and regulations which promote the city's community and economic development. So as we work to formulate our overarching goals, we really took care in uniting all of our divisions and departments. So number one goal is to strengthen community partnerships in public engagement, advance housing affordability and stability, grow and support a resilient and diverse local economy, champion Santa Fe's creative and cultural assets, enhance our visitor economy, and also plan for the people. Use our land use office for community benefit.

So let's start at the top. Partnering with the community. All divisions and departments in the Community Development Department have committed to host quarterly community forums, also to launch an online dashboard with real-time updates on key initiatives, and then they have all committed to increase participation from underrepresented communities by 20% in our public engagement processes.

Let's shift to affordable housing. Advancing affordable housing affordability and stability. We aim to successfully advance at least five new affordable housing projects. We aim to establish and roll out a streamlined external community engagement processes and deliver efficiencies and timely responses to inquiries from the public. We aim to successfully complete our CDBG and Affordable Housing Trust Fund grant cycle, distributing over $3 million to the community, and we have shifted our priority awards toward projects that develop affordable housing, and I'm proud to say we are effectively accomplishing that. And then we launched the implementation of discrimination protections for renters who use federal funds, and we aim to reach at least 500 households in the city as our KPI.

Growing and supporting a resilient and diverse local economy. We're committed to providing business technical assistance to over 100 local businesses and entrepreneurs with a focus on underrepresented business owners and individuals through our Small Business Navigator program. We've launched Go Local by different this effort to support placemaking in local businesses, including financial support. So the project aims to collaborate with over 150 businesses and host over six public events this fiscal year. We aim to host and support over 100 community development and business support events throughout the fiscal year. We aim to finalize and roll out both an economic development strategic plan and a workforce development strategic plan. And then across the whole Office of Economic Development sphere, we aim to connect with over 300 businesses and organizations and engage over 2,000 community members.

Championing and celebrating Santa Fe's creative and cultural assets. We aim to increase citywide access to cultural programming by 20% in underserved neighborhoods. We aim to expand our public art installations to five new locations. We're modernizing our sponsorship processes to increase efficiency and transparency in our Arts and Culture shop. We're finalizing some art apps. This is really interesting. One, a heritage art app and public guide, and an app that identifies all city public art to enhance our community and visitor experience that people can just use on their phones. We're also finalizing a Santa Fe Historic District walking tour app. So, those are all very exciting. We're rolling them out this fiscal year. We finalized already, a lot of these we've already begun to accomplish as we're well into the fiscal year.

Real Scout, which is a film production location and vendor website that incorporates local businesses and resources. We've launched a film-friendly business program which provides resources and insights to businesses in town who want to work with the film industry. We continue to update our best practices for city and county productions, which as you know, are in collaboration with many different departments and divisions in the city and in the county. We're facilitating quarterly training and professional networking at film industry events. And we also are continuing to advance our robust entertainment industry educational partnerships. Cannot wait for January so we can talk about all of the accomplishments, the work we've done to hit those KPIs.

Santa Fe's tourism economy, let's continue to grow it. We aim to collect in excess of $18 million in lodgers tax, which is a $1 million increase from last year. We aim to increase the value of our earned media impressions by 500,000. That's earned media impressions, or we can go into it later when I have more time. Don't hesitate to reach out with any questions. We'd be glad to sit down with you and provide more information. We're increasing our paid media impressions. We aim to do that by 10 million people. We want to complete three visitor enhancements. So looking at signage, experiences, programming, accessibility, and we also want to launch two campaigns that target middle earners that, you know, target tourism from folks who are more at the middle level of the financial range to come and visit and experience Santa Fe. We want to keep Santa Fe in the top five reader polls. We want to go from gold to platinum and LED certification at our community convention center. We're going to complete three building upgrades.

And we also, for the first time, are going to implement customer feedback processes to track visitor satisfaction and repeat tourism planning for the people. So here at the top of the list this evening, you will be considering voting on Phase One Land Use Code updates. We aim to finalize and adopt the Santa Fe Forward General Plan by June of 2026 and launch the implementation plan. We aim to finalize this project by October 2026.

The Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency, as you know, we are aiming to secure funding for Midtown. We're finalizing our master plan amendments. We're launching the hopeful man. We've the stabilization plan advancing infrastructure deliverables to get to land exchange plaque corrections. We've already started demolition. We aim to achieve 100% design for this project by the spring. And under Planning for the People, we're launching the implementation of OpenGov, which we aim to go live by Quarter Two. This will remove most, if not all, paper processes that are currently administered through Planning and Land Use. We are going digital.

We're going to, oh, here we go, right here, next one. Launching the Planning and Land Use digital platform to provide public access to current projects and relevant data. So, our plan, our development housing development pipeline, if not live already, is getting prepared to go live. And then we also commit to review building permits in an average of two weeks after submission is accepted by the Planning and Land Use team. This would be a 50% improvement from current timelines. Thank you.

Mayor, City Council members, first off, what an honor to be up here and to be in a room with an incredible group of dedicated public servants. It's really a wonderful experience to be up here with my colleagues. Tonight, I'm going to give a very high-level overview of the department and our core mission and the unified goals and KPIs that now align all five of the divisions under the Community Health and Safety Department.

At its broadest level, the Community Health and Safety Department exists to make Santa Fe a safe, healthy, and thriving place for every resident. We do this through a mix of everyday essential services: libraries, recreation, senior services, human services, and the critical behind-the-scenes work of emergency management and public safety coordination. Across all these areas, our focus is on dignity, support, and proactive intervention, getting people the resources they need early so problems don't escalate into crisis later.

So, when it comes to budget and staffing, the work is large-scale, people-centered, and labor-intensive. The Financial Year 26 budget is just over $41 million, which includes about $17 million in salaries and benefits and $24 million in operating service costs. We have 226 positions, and around 20 of those are full-time equivalents. These employees, importantly, are the backbone of our public-facing work, from youth programs and senior meals to library services, homelessness response, and emergency preparedness.

So, while each division has its own operational priorities, all of them roll up to a unified department-wide framework, which I'm about to show, for what we will be implementing this year. So, we have five goals, and these are shared goals that guide the entire department. They ensure that no matter where someone enters our system—a library, a senior center, a recreation program, or an emergency shelter—they experience quality, safety, and support. Our five goals, as up on the slide, are to maintain safe, high-quality facilities and services, deliver excellent customer and constituent experience, expand equitable access and inclusion, strengthen our workforce, and promote community safety, resilience, and well-being. So, these are intentionally broad because every division contributes to every one of them.

On this final slide, you'll see how those five department-wide goals translate into measurable objectives and KPIs. So, a few examples: for facility quality, we're going to be targeting 85% of on-time maintenance and full ADA compliance by FY26. For customer experience, every division that is constituent-facing is working towards a 90% or greater customer satisfaction. So, people who are saying that their experience with the service is either excellent or very good. We're also tracking annual total users across libraries, recreation, and senior centers. For equitable access, we're focusing on underserved populations' participation in our programs and ensuring that 25% of new materials that we put out are in Spanish. For workforce, we're driving towards a 10% or less vacancy rate. And for community safety, we're measuring increases in non-congregate shelter beds in our system. The Office of Emergency Management will be continuing to conduct exercises and training for the city and then increases in our Alert Santa Fe enrollment.

This structure gives us a consistent set of metrics across the department that makes it easier for you and the public to understand how each division contributes to city-wide priorities. And I also want to point out that the framework that you see here is fully mirrored at the division level. So, each division has its own set of smart objectives, goals, KPIs that map directly back to these five department-wide goals. So, that means the structure is consistent across the entire portfolio, but the metrics are tailored then to the specific services each division provides. So, just to dive into this for a second, the replication allows us to go deeper where needed. For example, recreation can break the facility quality metric into pool operations, ice maintenance, youth program safety. Libraries can break equitable access into Spanish language acquisitions and digital inclusion. Human Services can tie community resilience to shelter capacity and homelessness prevention. So, the department-wide framework is the backbone, and each division then builds out its own detailed performance plan beneath it.

So, in summary, we've built a unified measurable framework for all five divisions of the Community Health and Safety Department, grounded in safety, customer experience, equity, workforce strength, and community resilience. Thank you.

Hello, Mr. Mayor and members of the governing body. It's a pleasure to be with you this afternoon. I am Emily Oster. I am your Finance Director here at the city, and it is my pleasure to present to you the Finance Department's FY26 goals, objectives, and key performance indicators. First, to set the stage, I'd like to tell you a little bit about the department. The Finance Department has 59 full-time equivalent positions. Currently, 48 of those positions are filled, and we have 11 in recruitment. That's an 18.6% vacancy rate, which is still too high, but it's better than we were a few years ago. So, we're chipping away at it. Finance is a service-driven organization. We serve primarily other departments of the city, although we do provide direct customer service to the public, the cashier's office. And the people are the backbone of what we do. So, those 48 dedicated people that are part of the finance team are really what finance is all about.

Director Oster, if you can just make sure you're speaking into the mic. You're kind of in and out.

Sorry about that. Thank you, Councilor. Okay, so our FY26 budget is $26 million, just over $26 million. Over 58% of that is transfers to other funds, which are primarily for debt service. So, the Finance Department budget looks larger because we're paying debt service payments for the whole city through finance. In terms of key projects and initiatives, like I mentioned, the people are key to who we are in finance. We are aiming to foster a human-centered environment where our team members feel heard, valued, and empowered to challenge current practices and leverage their expertise to implement positive changes, which we believe will position the team as an indispensable resource to the city. In terms of what we produce, delivering timely and accurate financial information is at the core of what we do. And we are looking for opportunities to modernize technology and business practices in order to help us do that. As I think most of you, or everyone probably, is aware, producing an annual financial statement and compliance audit is one of our core responsibilities. And then the annual operating budget is also one of our core deliverables.

In terms of our FY26 goals, objectives, and key performance indicators, I've chosen here to focus on highlighting our goals, which are the high-level piece of it. And then I will dive into a couple of the objectives if I can. But I did want to talk about where these came from and the approach that we took in finance to developing these. I really wanted to understand how we could develop goals, objectives, and key performance indicators that originated from our team who was doing the work every single day. I didn't want this to be a top-down exercise where I said, "Okay, these are the things that are important to me." So, I spoke with Rod, and I spoke with Deputy Phillips and the City Manager and some of my amazing colleagues and thought about how I wanted to go about this in terms of developing these goals, objectives, and KPIs. And we had a retreat. We spent a day together offsite at a beautiful park here in Santa Fe. And we had Rod come and speak to the finance team about what goals, objectives, and KPIs are and what our intent is with this project in terms of developing these goals, objectives, and KPIs for the city. We gathered feedback from the team at that retreat. Each of our division directors and leaders within the Finance Department developed goals, objectives, and KPIs that they felt were most relevant to the areas that they are working on on a day-to-day basis. And then we met together, and we talked about them, and we tried to zoom out a little bit at each step of the process. We zoomed out a little bit. We looked at themes that were coming up across multiple divisions, and we tried to craft goals and objectives that relate to multiple areas of the Finance Department. And I really appreciate the work that Rod and Deputy Phillips did with me to help me bring this all together. So, I'm almost out of time. The goals are here up on the screen, but I just want to dive in real quick. In terms of documentation culture, that's something that's been coming up lately. We're working on developing a culture of documentation for critical business processes, and I look forward to telling you more about that in the future. Thank you so much.

Mr. Mayor, members of Council, thank you very much for having me. I first want to thank Rod and Andrea for helping me. I had multiple stabs at this, and I think this final product is a little better. So, I appreciate that. Our mission is to preserve life and property through public education, prompt, efficient emergency response. Everybody kind of knows what the Fire Department does. Our number one priority is to respond to those 911 calls. We also have a big responsibility in the Fire Prevention Division to do prevention in the ARU community and what we do in the EMS community outreach. We also do fire code inspection and investigation and initial continuing fire EMS training in our big part of the Training Division. Our total FTE count is 209. Currently, I have nine vacancies in the whole department, and my annual budget is $34.7 million.

My first goal was to achieve and maintain high levels of community risk reduction. This is one of my top priorities. We need to do another risk assessment. I did one two and a half years ago, and that's kind of already out of date. So I would like to prioritize that as one of my number one priorities: to get another risk assessment done. The last risk assessment, I was able to complete two of those tasks. I was able to add an extra ambulance at Station 4 down by the hospital. I also added a full-time brush truck up in District 7 to help with those bigger trucks running more calls. We put a smaller unit on, so that's really been helping with those things. One thing I haven't been able to complete, even though we've been doing it without overtime, is we put a medical ambulance up in District One, and anytime we have extra staffing, we put an extra ambulance. So our goal is to spread out those people in the department and run as many calls as we can without running as many units.

The second priority is fire life safety. We want to get to all the elementary schools. We want to start with the young and prevent them from doing things. So that's something we're going to hit the goal of. And the last thing in here is we want the fire prevention division to do annual commercial inspections, hitting 95%. Those big box stores, those are our scary things if we ever had a fire there. So those are things we're trying to work on.

We want to ensure fire and emergency response. This is a lot to do with operations. We want to, we've had some issues in the past with stocking some critical equipment, and that's a lot of medical supplies, a lot of auto parts. Without those, we can't do our job. So we want to continue to improve those things. We want rapid emergency response to ensure community safety. So we want to continue to have those goals with responding within two minutes to our first arriving unit out the door. We want to be able to have a total travel time to the calls within four minutes. And on big major structure fires, we want to be able to respond there within eight minutes.

We also want to expand our community outreach to the public. We've never been able to offer this before, but we want to offer CPR classes to the public. We want to do "Stop the Bleed." So we have those issues in the community. So we want to increase that by 10% by FY26.

Cultivating an exceptional and adapting workforce. My workforce is amazing. I think they're the best in the country. The mayor has repeated that multiple times. I've been part of this department for over 23 years. I wouldn't go anywhere else. So we want to improve our training in this, and by improving our training, our ultimate goal is to be an ISL1. Our ISL1 would really improve it. There are only two big cities or three in the state. We want to hit that. We think by December of 2027, we could be re-evaluated and hit those goals.

Another thing we're trying to get done is to participate in our annual physicals. I don't have the exact numbers, but our current physicals we've had for five years. We've been able to diagnose 27 cancers within our department by doing these physicals. So it's a really good thing. We want to make sure that they understand that it's important to them and important for their futures and their retirements.

And then our last thing on here is to reduce lost time injury. I have a lot of injuries in my department. So my health and safety division, we're trying to make it so they can get back to work faster. When we have somebody that goes from a 2912 schedule to a 2080 schedule, it even takes a while just to switch them from those times with HR. And we're trying to improve that as well. We're trying to improve our replacement plan for as large as our fire trucks all the way down to even our bunker gear. We're trying to make that a better plan over the next 12 months.

Also in here is we want to expand our drone program. We've kind of gotten it off the ground, but by the end of FY26, I want to make it able to respond to emergency calls. The last thing on here is a big step for us. We want to do a bunch of home assessments. We were able to purchase a new program that will help the community engage better with the fire department. And so we would like to do that in the next six months. Hit 150 wildland home assessments in our community in the next six months.

So the strength and strategic partnerships, we want to conduct four operational exercises in FY26. We already have one scheduled, that is our triannual exercise, thanks to emergency management. We want to continue to grow that program and have better partnerships with the county. We want to coordinate better meetings with the county. We want to make sure that they understand that we're a partner and a team. And then our last thing is we want to improve data sharing. Something that Chief Outerk has really improved is I've initiated over the last eight months where closest response units. So if the county is in town, say grocery stores, and they're at that call at that Albertson's or that grocery store, they'll be able to respond to that call. So it's the closest unit dispatching is what we introduced in the last about 30 days between the city and the county.

And then the last thing that I would like to share is my key projects and initiatives that I'd like to get done in the next six months. The major one is Station 5A. So with your guys' help over the last two and a half years, we're going to get a new building there, and it'll help the training division grow. In the next six months, get a PO for Engine 3 and Ladder 7. The REIO that we got from the state, we want to take that 4.2 million and put it into station improvements, station, just improve across the board. And then the Southside Fire Station impact study. That's something major that I would like to get done. That's part of the risk assessment, and that's to see where on the Southside we should put a new fire station. And for that, thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor and members of council. My name is Sarah Bullet Gonzalez. I am the Interim Human Resources Director. Thank you for having me this afternoon. A little bit about the Human Resources team. Our mission is to provide human resources services that promote a work environment that fosters respect, accountability, and trust. We are a small but mighty team. We have 16 team members and we take care of 1,376 employees. That number varies from pay period to pay period. Some of our core services are talent acquisition, employee retention, employee engagement, employee training, benefits and wellness, and employee relations.

I'd just like to highlight a few of our key projects so far. This fiscal year, we have completed negotiations with ASME, resulting in a fully approved collective bargaining agreement. With this approval, Human Resources processed salary increases for 593 ASME employees. The benefits and wellness team successfully implemented a new medical benefits contract with Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Mexico and processed a full open enrollment for city employees. The training team developed a citywide training administrative policy. HR leadership collaborated with the management systems group and senior staff to implement performance feedback conversations with city employees, and we have initiated a project to improve our current rules, regulations, and policies.

Our first goal is to improve talent acquisition, onboarding, and retention. We plan to achieve this by reducing the average time to fill vacant positions from 37 days to 32 days. We plan to enhance the onboarding experience to achieve at least a 90% satisfaction rate among new hires. Reduce the vacancy rate citywide from 20% to 15%, and complete an audit of the recruitment process by the end of FY26.

Our second goal is to enhance employee engagement and satisfaction. We plan to achieve this by implementing a new employee of the month and years of service award administrative policy beginning January 2026. Issue a citywide employee satisfaction survey by April 30th, 2026, to gauge potential areas of improvement in training, wellness offerings, compensation, and work environment, and implement a new training administrative policy and increase the number of training sessions for employees by at least 10%.

And last but certainly not least, our final goal is to improve employee health and wellness. We plan to achieve this by increasing communications and training refreshers regarding our benefits plan monthly and provide monthly updates during fiscal year 26. Increase participation in wellness activities by at least 10%, and incorporate a minimum of three additional financial wellness and mental health wellness classes or offerings in FY26. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Governing Body. I appreciate and thanks for allowing us to come out here and discuss some of our key objectives that we have going into the new year. Excuse me. When Rod and Andrea came to us and said we were going to talk about APIs and metrics, I think my heart kind of sputtered a little bit. Coming from IT, metrics and KPIs are very strong indicators on how successful it is in our ability to help everybody. And we can, I'll talk a little bit about how we see a customer-centric focus for it as we move forward.

Starting with our mission is to provide reliable, innovative, and secure technology solutions that enhance the quality of life for our community and support the efficient operation of municipal services. Each one of our key goals, objectives, and KPIs associate to each of the great folks who stand behind me. If we don't support them correctly, they cannot support our constituents and our citizens of Santa Fe. So we work very hard to try to make things easier for them to get the essential services that they need.

Currently, our IT team consists of 45 employees. We currently have eight vacancies. Some of those are due to promotions within. We are currently working with our HR team to start a process of putting in a structured tier service or job descriptions. One thing that I want to do is retain the IT talent that we have within the City of Santa Fe by giving them career ladders, ways that they can move forward, allows us to do that. We currently serve over 1,300 city employees. Like I said, our constituents, our customer base, are the workers for the city, the employees. You guys, without access to services such as email, internet, forms, and applications, you guys cannot do the jobs that you guys need to do.

Core services for our team are infrastructure and support, cybersecurity compliance applications, data, and public services, and of course, innovation. I want to highlight a few of the key goals that we completed so far. Two of them are upgrading to our current UKG timekeeping system and UNIS ERP system. Those help us increase security as well as advance use of the applications. And one small note from the Tyler Technologies piece, we're currently on version 24.7, which is the most current version that Tyler offers, and we're one of the few select cities that are on that version. We've worked quite hard to come from 2019, just a few years ago, which was four or five versions behind, to get to the most current state.

That gives us opportunities for security improvement, new modules, and access to modules that we didn't have before. So we're excited about what's to come with that newest upgrade. One of the other things that we were able to do is expand the Wi-Fi to Swan Park. That's a pretty highly populated park that gets a lot of usage. So our goal is again, expanding those services not only for the city workers but also our constituents so they can have access to more digital material. As Swan Park grows, so will this access to Wi-Fi. Our goal is to spread that out to as many parks as we can. That allows for security systems, ways that we can adapt and make sure that those parks are safe.

Lastly, one of those key goals was expanding the airport infrastructure three times by adding better access to entrances and exits, access, and control. That was a key aspect that we wanted to do as we move forward, as we know that the airport is continually growing at a pretty exponential rate. Our goal number one is to improve all customer satisfaction across all IT services. One of the ways that we'll do that, as we talk through some of these objectives, is implementing a new information technology services management tool set, which is essentially a service desk tool. This will allow us to capture and report on metrics based on reducing repetitive tickets, closing times, how quickly we can resolve tickets, and where we see where we lack as far as supporting the city staff, the city workers, ensuring that we meet those service level agreements as part of the KPI aspect. As we implement this tool, we're putting in those SLAs, which are service level agreements, to say that we are going to meet these goals as we move forward.

The second goal is enabling digital transformation and business process improvement. You've heard from a few of the departments already how they're acquiring new software tools, ready to install or implement new software tools. What we want to do is work with those departments in a structured environment to not only capture those requirements to ensure that their business processes are being met, but are these the current business processes as we move forward? We're not going to do a lot of lift and shift. We're actually going to review each of these business processes and see how we can enhance each of these services. So, one, it's easier for the departments behind me to support our constituents, but if we do have forward-facing mechanisms, it's easier for our constituents to access that material. I think that's important as well. Part of those are looking at ways we can seamlessly increase data flow, whether from reporting mechanisms for Power BI, any of the Power Automate tools that are out there with a lot of the suites that we have. The more that we can capture data and report on data, data is the source of truth for a lot of decisions that we make. So we are going to do what we can to help in that facet.

Support citizen-facing digital services. We want to take as many new self-served portals as we can. We want to give the constituents of Santa Fe the power to do a lot of these tools and to capture the things that they need to do pretty quickly. Goal number three is to ensure high availability and reliability of core IT infrastructure. That's updating current legacy hardware, switches, routers. Also emphasizing building a better or even a more durable disaster recovery site where we're not just a passive active state. We're active active where we have no downtime. We're currently putting together a new data center in Albuquerque that will allow us to do that type of infrastructure as we move forward. Again, maintain critical system services up to 99%. It's important again for us to be able to offer these services to the workers that they can offer those to the constituents. And lastly, I just want to reiterate the fact that IT is always working hard to support the city workers that so desperately want to help our constituents as we move forward.

All right. Thank you. Hold your applause, please. So I know our 2026 fiscal year presentation is still very top of mind with all of our goals. So, I didn't want to rehash that for all of you because I know it's still forefront. So, obviously our mission and division missions that we discussed at our May meeting, going to our staffing, allotted 169 sworn. We have 12 vacancies. We're hiring eight cadets this Saturday based on the four. We have another cadet that'll be starting with us a couple of weeks after that. And we have a few laterals that are in background that we're looking to bring on by the end of December.

Chief: Can you make sure you're speaking right into that mic again? It's not coming through.

Then I start talking quieter. I don't like that either. All right. [clears throat] Non-sworn. We're at 15 vacancies. That also includes the five that were expanded that we talked about in our May meeting with the case management order, the staffing addition that we wanted to bring in to anticipate CMO put into place that goes live in January. Those five vacancies, I believe, have been posted and we'll hopefully have those filled soon.

Goal number one: fully staff a modern and professional police force. So again, as you all have seen and know over the years, our staffing percentage has fluctuated. Shortly after I took over as chief, we were at 38% vacancy, or I'm sorry, 38 vacancies. And it's been going down incrementally, up and down over the years, but now we will be at four as of Saturday, or vacancies, and hopefully zero by end of December. And so that's not just sworn but also non-sworn, building up our non-sworn staffing as well. Our recruiting team has been really proactive and aggressive in attending events and hosting testing and being very proactive in our outreach. We also increased our staffing in the PCR and recruiting teams to help speed along the backgrounds and also make sure that our events are covered throughout the state.

So once we get the staffing, what's the goal then? Well, our goal is to not just be able to respond to calls, but we want to make sure that they're making good use of their time. And of the overall call volume, we're shooting for 35% self-initiated rate, proactive rate. So, of all the calls for service that they get, what we want is 35% of those at least are self-initiated proactive calls. Right now, we're at 30%. We are at about 74,000 calls for service this year. As I know you remember, in 2024, we had 83,411 total calls for service. We are on pace to pass that. I would estimate based on the trends so far, we'll be around 89 or 90,000 calls for service by the end of this calendar year. But we're at 30% self-initiated out of the overall calls for service. Last year we were at about 24%, and the year before that we were about 25-26%. So we're trending in a good direction.

And again, related to that, with also with the staffing and the self-initiated, is making sure that our response times are under the national average for each priority level. Priority one, and what we reference, the call times are measured in two ways. One from call time to dispatch. That means that call came in and it's sitting over at dispatch. That's one measure of time. Then the second measure, the one that we are focusing on, is dispatch time to arrival time. And so the national average, depending on what you look at, is anywhere between 7 and 9 minutes for priority one calls. And so we are shooting for less than seven minutes. So far over the past couple of months, we hover between six and seven minutes. We're under six, but it's usually between six and seven minutes.

Another aspect of this, goal number four, maximizing report writing and discovery compliance. Again, this relates to the FY26 goal in May related to the CMO, but this is the part of the arrests only do so well if we can't get good cases together to prosecute these cases and hold them accountable. So we are aiming for 100% compliance with discovery requests within seven business days of the request. Again, that is in response to the CMO. That way the cases don't get dismissed. And when we talk about 90% report clearance rate without rejections through records, I don't have an issue necessarily if it's going back and forth between the sergeant. So the officer will take the report. He will then process it and send it through. The sergeant will check the report and go through and say this is good to go, or they'll kick it back and say it's not and you've been rejected. What I'm most concerned with is when it gets to records. Records shouldn't have to also do additional rejections. By the time it gets to records, they just should process it and get it off and should be good to go.

Goal number five, and this is in relation again to the May, the FY26 goals that we discussed. We were starting the accreditation process. Now we're trying to finalize the accreditation process. So we do have a planning and research sergeant who also goes through all of our policies for us and updates all of our policies. We should be by the end of this fiscal year done with the analysis and the updating of the policies. Then it's the second part of that will be bringing in the New Mexico Municipal League to do the evaluations and they'll do audits and making sure that not only are our policies up to date and good, but that we are holding ourselves to the policies that we say we do.

And number six, and this was also kind of related to one of the goals in the FY26 presentation where we were trying to finalize the Axon records project. That is done, that's in place. But goal number six, implementing technology that helps to increase community safety and officer efficiency. Again, the time that our officers are spending out there working for the community is spent, hopefully eliminating the amount of time that they're having to do reports and collect evidence, do all the other things that need to be done. The stuff that we're putting in place hopefully makes that process faster and more efficient, all around better.

Hello, Mr. Mayor, members of the governing body, and everyone listening in. My name is Jesse Roach. I am your interim Public Utilities Department Director. The mission of our department is to provide reliable and compliant water, wastewater, solid waste, and recycling services for Santa Fe. I'm showing an org chart here that shows the five divisions that make up the department. The numbers are the numbers of positions in each division. There are nearly 300 positions in the department. The three enterprise funds, which are water, wastewater, and environmental services, are funded by ratepayers for those services. The utility billing and administrative services division is funded by transfers from the enterprise funds. The newest division, which is our conservation and sustainability division, is being stood up this year and will also be supported by transfers from the enterprise funds and a water conservation fee and a bag fee.

The annual revenues for the department are greater than $80 million typically, and the operations budget is typically on the order of $60 million. The difference between these two numbers funds capital improvement needs, but that difference is not enough for the current needs of water and wastewater. We have already implemented a rate increase for wastewater that became effective in July. A bill is working its way through committees now to recommend a rate increase for water that would be effective in February.

I'm just going to go through the seven goals that we've laid out. More detailed information on objectives and KPIs is available in the binder that Deputy City Manager Phillips put together.

The first goal is really the core goal of our utilities: to meet all regulatory requirements for water, wastewater, and environmental services. That's really the focus, and that's where we have to start with the enterprise funds. Supporting that goal for the wastewater division specifically is goal number two: upgrading the wastewater treatment plant to ensure full regulatory compliance at a minimum life cycle cost.

Goal number three, which is a focus of the water division, is to turn wastewater into a drinking water resource. That will be accomplished by the San Juan Chama Return Flow Project, which is in design and permitting.

The fourth goal, focused on the environmental services division and the new conservation and sustainability division, is to reduce the solid waste flows to the landfill. The focus there right now, this is a new goal, is to begin to manage and visualize that data.

The fifth goal is specific to the utility billing and administrative services division, which is to provide accurate and timely billing for utility services.

The sixth goal is to implement the city's conservation and sustainability goals, including carbon neutrality by 2040. That is the focus of the new conservation and sustainability division.

The seventh goal, which crosses all divisions, is to recruit and retain a well-supported workforce. I appreciate your time and attention.

Mayor: Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, counselors. I'm Sam Bernett, the new interim Public Works Director. I appreciate the opportunity to present to you all today. The Public Works Department is a fairly large and operationally diverse department. We're divided up into seven divisions: Administration, Complete Streets, Parks and Open Space, Parking, Transit, Facilities, and the Metropolitan Planning Organization. Collectively, we support everything from long-range transportation planning to day-to-day operations on the street. When fully staffed, we're a 335-person department working around the clock to plan, design, deliver, operate, and maintain the city's public infrastructure.

On this slide, you can see that collectively the Public Works budget comes in just over $71 million in fiscal year 26. I've divided it up amongst the divisions so you can see how it shakes out in that regard. We are also funded from a considerable number of different funding sources. We have a number of enterprise funds and then a mix of city, state, and federal funding sources. Anywhere you stand in the city, the world you see around you is basically comprised of the public infrastructure that the Public Works Department is responsible for. Whether it's a sidewalk, a street, or a bus, that's us.

We accomplish our work in a five-part infrastructure management strategy or cycle. That starts with planning, where we identify needs, set priorities, and ground our decisions in community benefit. We move on to design, working through engineering and architectural solutions to meet code, safety, and operational standards. From there, we deliver assets. In some divisions, this looks like constructing a road, a park, or a facility, or in others, procuring and deploying buses or other assets. From there, we move on to operating this infrastructure 24/7, 365 days a year. Finally, we maintain these assets through targeted repairs and reinvestment to extend their useful life.

As a department, we identified three collective goals we're working with. The first goal is focused on operating, maintaining, and improving infrastructure for community safety and satisfaction. The second is on ensuring compliance with agreements, regulations, codes, and permits to ensure continuous operations, reduce risk, and maintain grant eligibility. Finally, third, we are focused on ensuring employee satisfaction so that we can successfully recruit and retain qualified employees.

I decided to keep this fairly high level because you have everything in the packet, so I've selected one division objective and associated KPI related to each one of these goals for you all this afternoon. Related to the operating and maintaining of infrastructure, I'm going to borrow from the Facilities Division, where one of the objectives is to develop a plan to address all critical condition buildings in the facilities portfolio through strategic system replacements by the end of the fiscal year. Our goal is to reduce the number of facilities currently in critical condition from around 10% down to 5%.

For the second goal we're working with, this one related to compliance, I've borrowed from our Transit Division, and one of their objectives is to address 100% of corrective actions identified by required federal and state reviews of their operations. Their objective, as it should be, is 100%. That's great.

Finally, for our third goal, employee satisfaction, retention, and recruitment, I borrowed from the Streets Division, and one of their objectives related to this goal is to enhance service delivery and employee satisfaction by reducing vacancy rates in streets to less than 20%, down from, I think, currently around 40% by the end of the fiscal year. With that, I'm happy to turn it over to my colleagues and stand for questions at the end of the presentation. Thank you.

How are you all doing? I know this is a lot of information, and we have just a few more presentations to go. I do want to just give you a count. So far, we have 68 goals, 292 objectives, and 151 KPIs across the city. This was no small task to put all of this together.

I'm standing in for the Risk and Safety Office. We currently have a vacancy in the director or the compliance officer position. The Risk and Safety Office is under the City Manager's Office. We currently have three staff. I do want to point out Melanie Lovato, I see sitting in the audience. She is our risk analyst and does a fantastic job of keeping everything moving. We also have an administrative assistant named Caitlyn Nurancho and our Workers' Comp Administrator or Manager, and I'm blanking on his last name right now. I apologize.

The key roles of the Risk and Safety Office are to reduce our liability and manage risk throughout the city. We are always trying to identify and mitigate those risks as much as possible. We engage in claims handling. We work with a third-party administrator to assist with that. We're doing incident investigations. We do require reporting of any kind of incidents by our staff, and we investigate those and try to determine, was this a preventable thing? Where's the maintenance record on that? And what can we do going forward to try to prevent that from happening again?

Our safety division also works to develop and implement safety programs and policies and provide training. I will say that that's an area that we really want to staff up. We currently don't have staff in the safety division within Risk and Safety, so that is a need that we're really focused on moving forward. Finally, as I mentioned, Workers' Compensation program administration.

I wasn't planning on going through all the objectives and KPIs, but these are the overarching goals that Melanie and I had come up with. First of all, we want to try to reduce the number and percentage of repeat claims and recurring claimant incidents. If there's some kind of, you know, there's a sidewalk that continues to cause trip and fall accidents, we want to fix that as soon as possible. If there's a workers' comp injury that we keep seeing in the same office or division, we want to do a root cause analysis and find out, are there job safety things that we can do to help improve that so we can reduce injuries for our employees and help get people back to work?

We're also trying to reduce both the volume and the total cost of claims that the city is paying out. We're investigating our vehicle accidents that involve city employees and trying to minimize those as much as possible, including improving timeliness and completeness of our incident reporting. As I mentioned, if we don't know about the incident, there's not a whole lot that we can do to help address the situation.

Finally, we are trying to promote an overall culture of risk and safety awareness through identification and mitigation of safety concerns citywide. You'll notice that our objectives and KPIs are pretty heavily reliant on partnership with our departments. We need their assistance and their partnership and participation in attending trainings, abiding by our safety policies, and reporting incidents as they occur. As we can, we need to ensure that we are improving safety out in the public by addressing those broken sidewalks and other types of areas where we could see incidents. With that, I'll turn it over to Jimmy Gun.

Mayor: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council, for...

Mr. Gun: My name is Jimmy Gun. I'm the interim director of the Santa Fe Airport, also the security manager and security coordinator. We have 22 employees, 23 including myself. Last year, we did 450 passengers and claimants. This year, we're on course to do over 500. I just want to throw that out there before I start going through this presentation.

Number one goal: financial strength and revenue growth. The objective is to increase non-aeronautical and non-airside revenue. I see that going up 10 to 15% next year, possibly even more after the meetings I had today with some developers. Another objective: improve budgeting and our accuracy and cost control. Basically, we have a scheduled plan now for our highly expensive equipment. Those will be serviced on a regular basis, along with our new terminal and all of its components. Another objective: to complete our master plan, explore new leases and development options, get moving on Jaguar Drive, adding more flight schools and hanger space.

Security posture and emergency preparedness is another goal for the airport, maintaining full compliance with TSA and our other regulatory partners, especially CFR 1542, which regulates our flying patterns and the terminal and the security at the airport. We're in the process right now of completing our airport security plan. This will be version two. The last one was done in 2018. I expect that to be completed the first quarter of next year.

Improve emergency response readiness. We do have an annual emergency exercise that will be completed by the first quarter of next year as well. We are looking for volunteers to participate in that if anybody's interested.

To strengthen our security posture, access control, or badge auditing, we have 500 airport badges out there right now. We're required to keep an audit. We do random audits on those badges. If the airport loses more than 5% or those are stolen or not returned, then we have to re-badge the airport, and that costs thousands of dollars. So our main goal is not to have to do this for another five years, at which point it's required.

Workforce performance and culture: just build a proactive and safety-first security culture by performing quarterly performance check-ins with the staff, all 22 of us. Improve work quality and strengthen leadership consistency through expediting hiring in critical and understaffed areas.

I threw some smart goals in here, objectives. Airfield operations: by June of 2026, we expect to, we would like to achieve 98% accuracy on our NOTAMs. NOTAMs, for those of you who don't know, are when we have to close particular runways for maintenance or for wildlife, airplane encroachments, etc. We have software now that we can actually maintain good records of that, and the FAA really loves us for that.

December of 2026, speaking of wildlife strikes, by 10%. We actually just got certified so we can do this on our own, and we don't have to contract that out to manage our wildlife. Basically, just harassing modifications, include monthly risk assessments, and just making good notes on it.

Terminal operations: December 2026, maintain terminal cleanliness scores of 95% by more staffing and increasing restroom inspections every 45 minutes with weekly housekeeping audits. I know I pointed out restrooms, but believe it or not, the most compliments I get are on our restrooms and how clean they are. So that has been a big improvement. Thank you to our custodial staff.

September 2026: complete one full-scale airport emergency exercise and improve multi-agency coordination by using new crash phones and our radio communication. That date's wrong; we'll have that done by the end of March, thanks to our partners here.

Airport security: maintain zero TSA level two or three findings. We've already achieved that. We've gone through some hard times, but we've made dramatic improvements in our security posture at the airport in just a few months. My team is very dedicated to make sure that happens and that we stay in compliance.

Administrative management: some maintenance on the airfield. We work really hard every day to take care of that. My folks at the airport have multiple roles. We do that very well, and we want to continue to do that. I would just like to say that since I have everybody out here, I don't get to see you guys all the time. Some of you might not even ever talk to me, but thank you for putting up with the airport. It's been rough, but my number one goal is to be proactive and not reactive. Thank you.

Certainly, last but not least, our Municipal Judge Chad Chidum is in the audience.

Judge Chad Chidum: Good evening, everyone. I'm Judge Chad Chidum, and I want to kind of touch base real quickly on last year's goal. It was to increase the accessibility and the efficiency of the court, and we did that through our hybrid court system and our language access specialist program. Now, this year's main goal is going to be to increase and improve our programs that are offered to the public. This is important because it helps reduce recidivism. It also improves public safety.

So, objective number one, our pre-trial services. We are adopting a more formalized assessment tool that helps us connect defendants to more meaningful resources, a more targeted approach. A second objective is our first offenders program. We have rebranded that to our ERASE program. It is a three-hour class that we currently offer in English and in Spanish.

Another objective is our, we hope to have created, we are in the process of working on, hope to have implemented by April 1st, is our Young Adult Court program. It's for 18 to 25-year-olds, and again, this would be offered in English and in Spanish. I am going to be presenting them on the agenda in a couple of weeks, so I'll get a little bit more detailed into these programs at that time.

Our outreach court program: another objective is to double the number of community partners that are participating in that program. We're currently probably about 15. We want to double that by the end of the year.

Back up to our teen program. I've been doing some things instead of fines and fees with the teens because usually parents end up paying for it anyway. It's doing things such as requiring perfect attendance in lieu of fines and fees. But we want to reach out to community partners, the schools, and maybe expand that to extra study sessions to take place of those fines and fees, or maybe a presentation, a report of some sort on accountability, something like that.

DWI Drug Court program: that is an ongoing goal of the court to maintain its certification. The standards are constantly changing. They're updating them right now. We want to make sure that we maintain that certification and still be the only municipal court in the state of New Mexico that is a certified treatment court program for them.

Lastly, we're going to keep the training up for the staff. Staff finally went to training for the first time in a long time. We've participated in treatment court training, clerk's training, and we are scheduled to have our bailiff increase his security level training. That being said, I look forward to presenting a little bit more information to you guys here in a couple of weeks at the governing body.

Okay. So that's it in a nutshell. So I just want to thank everybody here for all of their work in preparing this information and putting all of this together for you to review. Again, we're not necessarily asking for you to adopt these today. We're just presenting them. This is kind of the first stop on the budget trail for showing how we're doing with the resources that have been provided for FY26 and then going into preparation for FY27.

So I know we had said we have a stop at 6:00. There is going to be some dinner for you in this break between this session, and then you have your special governing body meeting back here at 7:00. So with that, I guess we could open it up for questions or however you want to proceed. Mr. Mayor?

Mayor: Your presentations were swift and informative and very helpful. I do want to reiterate the point you have made, which is this is just an opening introduction. If any of us have notes and yellow stickies and you want to send comments to you, I suppose you'll farm them out, and it'll be ready for another round when it comes time to consider the agenda that you put up on the screen earlier. So with that, I think we've got about a half an hour. If anybody, I'll just go down the line if folks either have a burning question or a comment or something you want to just put a little dog ear in the book next to it and call attention to it. I'll just give everybody a chance to ask one question or make a comment, and then we'll move through the line.

Several, so I'm going to pass for now so I can think about which one I'm going to.

You got it, Counselor. I just want to plant the seed for accessibility, especially around language. I know that there's been some difficulties because we haven't budgeted maybe to the extent we should to increase Spanish language and increase accessibility. So I would just, I didn't see it in goals other than under libraries, and I would think that that would exist more so under City Clerk, under one of the accessibility goals, I think goal four. I just wanted to plant that seed to get some more information on how we're addressing that.

Fabulous. Counselor, thank you, Mr. Mayor. First, I guess I'll go with comment then question. My comment to tell city staff is, let's make sure we're setting goals that are achievable because this is not an opportunity for us to say we're going to accomplish task ABC and only get halfway there through the end of the fiscal year because this is ultimately an exercise for us to demonstrate that when we set out these performance measures, that we're actually going and achieve them. So, and in that same sense, don't set them, let's not set them too low to where they get achieved next week. And so, I do see these changing in time, even over the next six months, because there are some in here that I was quite surprised that we would try to get this accomplished by the end of this fiscal year when this is, and it's been a particular issue for decades, and in particular, 100% of facilities meet ADA standards by the end of this calendar year. If we do that, kudos. But that is a heavy lift that takes a lot, a lot, a lot of money. So, let's make sure we're setting our goals appropriately.

The one question I have is, I see tabs for two of the big three. What I call the big three are the City Manager, City Clerk, City Attorney. I don't see a City Manager tab. Mr. Scott, is there a reason why there's not a City Manager tab?

With all due respect, you just heard it. That this is what I manage.

I hear you. But...

Those are my goals and objectives.

Okay, understandable. I would, we could chat offline about that. With that, thank you to all city staff that put in the time and work. This is a heavy lift, first time doing it. I see us doing it again in the future, time and time and time again. So it's going to be an exercise I hope we can get more comfortable with and grow and learn from. So good job, team. So I got Sir Lindell.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, everyone, for participating in this exercise. I'm sure it was a lot of work, and you have other things that you're committed to, particularly near the end of the year. I don't think that it's really appropriate for me to put much comment on this other than a thank you. I'm not going to be here to, I'll be watching from the gallery, but I won't be participating in how this happens, but I think it's a good exercise. Having been on the finance committee for almost 12 years, I would encourage my colleagues and each other to take note of what directors say our needs are and not to meddle in too much politicizing of what our needs are. So those are my only comments on it. Thank you, Mayor.

Counselor, I'm going to come back to you after we go down the line if that's okay, because I always hear from Counselor Faulkner that she gets stuck at the end. Counselor Faulkner?

The middle kid gets some love. I just want to thank staff. I know these reports are hard to put together, and there's a lot of information that you have to present to us, and I appreciate the fashion in which these presentations were designed, and I look forward to more presentations. Actually, getting presentations before the governing body was one of my campaign goals, and so I think we'll get used to it, and it's going to be helpful to have so that the council understands what the directorates need that will help us make, I think, wiser and better decisions as a body.

Thank you, Counselor. Counselor Mayworth.

Thank you, Mayor.

And I just want to reiterate what's already been said in thanking City Manager Scott, Deputy City Manager Phillips, and Senior Advisor Rod Gould. You all are bringing to us the knowledge that has been lacking in doing this exact exercise. When I was first elected eight years ago, the city was trying to go to performance-based budgeting, and we didn't know how to do it, and we had some other foundational issues that had to be addressed. Over the years, a lot of foundation has been built, and that has put us in a position where tonight, with your expertise, with your know-how, we are now able to have an exercise like this be presented to us. This is a critical, critical piece of work. And I know it wasn't small because I know how hard we were struggling to do it eight years ago, and we had to abandon it.

I'm also just, this is the beginning of the new budget process that we passed, I believe, unanimously with the resolution that is in this book, has a number of sponsors. It's a really important change in how we budget in this city, and I am sorry that I won't be here to see it through. But I am excited for the possibilities, the opportunity, the places that this will take us, and how it will communicate to the public the work of city government, where we are, why it is maybe we can't get to where we'd like to get, and how we efficiently use the dollars that we have in the budget to reach goals and objective perspectives and key performance indicators. So, I just can't tell you how thankful I am for the work, how important the work is, and how excited I will be to see what comes of it in the coming months. So, congratulations. Thank you. Much appreciated. That's all I have.

Mayor: Thank you, Councilor.

Councilor Cassid: Thank you, Mayor. I would echo the sentiments of Councilor Maez regarding just having this expertise and seeing this come to fruition for just this first step is really encouraging. I know one of the things that we have struggled with as a governing body is not understanding how to, well, I mean, I think just understanding in general whether or not we're moving forward. How are the dollars that we have allocated being spent? Are they getting us where we want to go? Do we even know where we want to go? And that could be a different answer for every single individual up here. So, I'm really encouraged by the conversations to come. I think how we move forward as a body is going to be really important. I think that that will help with a lot of how do we prioritize different policies? How do we understand how each component works with the whole?

I also think this is going to be really tough to go through with budget hearings because with something like this, we will have those moments of, "We really want this, and we really want this, and we only have this much money." So, this is going to be great information, and I'm really looking forward to these conversations. I'm looking forward to how we watch these throughout, you know, every single year and understanding, "Are we meeting them? If not, why not? Have we exceeded them? If so, why so?" But I do think that this is, I'm kind of steeling myself for the budget season coming up because I do think there's going to be some really tough conversations, and honestly, they're the ones that we've been wanting to have. As I frequently say, when the budget comes to us, I have no idea what was left on the cutting room floor. I don't know what was considered and then not brought forward because something else took precedence, and would I have preferred something else to take that priority? So, this is a really good start in us being able to move forward as a governing body for the City Council to have a lot more of that fiscal responsibility that in theory is ours as a legislative body. And I really am so grateful for all the work of everybody in this room. I'm sure this was not easy. I'm sure many departments were like, "We know what we're doing." But to actually have to write them down and to make them measurable and to understand really what do you think we can achieve? That's, it can be a little nerve-wracking because what if you don't get there? But I think this is going to really help the city move more efficiently and get us going to where we want to go.

Mayor: Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilor Lee Garcia. Sir, you have the floor.

Councilor Lee Garcia: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you to all the staff and all the work that was put into this. I actually feel like we went through 12 days of budget hearings in about an hour and an hour and a half, which proves we could have done it in half the time. All kidding aside, I think that what's important to me is that we do have goals and objectives and that we are looking at measurable things that are attainable. Again, we can't always, we can't afford to fund everything 100%. But thank you for this, and I know a lot of work went into it. I know, giving due respect to this administration, there will be a new administration coming in that may have different ideas, goals, and objectives. And I know that new administration and the different makeup of this governing body, because it's going to be different, that we can all wrap our heads around how to compromise and how to go ahead and roll out what's really important. I think one of the key things that was important to me that I heard was how do we actually give the constituency of the City of Santa Fe and those who visit here the best quality service and product that we can put forth as a city? And obviously, it takes money to do that, but it takes you all and it takes us, and that's the hardest part is to get everybody kind of thinking the same way. And so changes will come, but I think that if everybody here can work together to compromise, obviously that's always the biggest thing. And so, it doesn't go without a thank you to how hard people do work and the amount of time that's put into all of this. And so, questions, I really, the main question going forward will be how do we really, truly, truly make this performance, all of these reports, and put them into the budget that will work for the community? Obviously, that's the big question. Is it going to work? Will it work? I'm hopeful that it will work, but it will only work if we can work together on it. Thank you.

Mayor: Thanks, Councilor. Back to you, Councilor.

Councilor: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, staff. Thank you to everyone who presented. This was an amazing lift. And I hate to put you back on the spot, City Manager, but I do feel like my question has to do with the 10,000-foot view. Once we hear all of the recommendations, one thing that I do hear almost in every presentation is that accessibility, communication with our constituency, building on systems that we now have that we're sort of learning. So, I do have questions about technology things like Munis, forward-facing as opposed to the systems that we use internally. How can we support as a governing body and the incoming governing body one to potentially fund some of those updates and where can we best invest?

City Manager: Mr. Wh... There we go. That's a great question. What we're doing here today, I'm going to get to your specific question in a moment, but what we're doing here today is we're starting on an annual budget cycle in the middle of a cycle. And so, what you heard from the staff today are goals and objectives that they have internally created for themselves, with our discussion in order to get them created, that are their best understandings of where they believe the governing body's direction would take them. In other words, you adopted a budget that had certain amounts of money in it for certain purposes, and we heard 32 hours of hearings to discuss that. And the staff has now taken that and put it into this kind of wording to reflect that. Next time we do this with the governing body, it will be to get your input on what those goals and objectives ought to be, not just simply the staff saying this is what we're operating from. A proper budget process is going to take us through input from the governing body that helps us create goals and objectives. They then in turn help us help you and all of us decide on what the funding allocations ought to be. And it gives you the chance to look at all those alternative spendings that you might want to consider. And it also gives you something to go from in terms of service levels. You know, if you look at one certain department that says we're going to improve 10%, and you look at it and you think 10% is not enough. That's, we need more than that. So then you can talk about that, and then that needs to be translated into budgeting. So, it's a holistic process that keeps going year-round.

In that regard, technology is an issue that I think you really do need to spend some time on. We're, there's areas where we're good, and we're making good progress, and there's areas where we need a lot more. There are certain systems we got that just aren't up to the task yet, and it's going to take a while. And so, when you get around to doing the budget process, you'll actually look at that, and I hope you've all heard about my whiteboard exercise that I like to do. I like to show those tradeoffs. You know, what are the tradeoffs that you need to make? If you're going to put something above the line, what's got to come down below the line? We still got to balance the budget. And you can decide where are those things that are most critical that you want to provide money for technology. You really need to have a technology master plan that takes you down that path so that you're not making ad hoc decisions here and there along the way, but rather you're doing things that are based on a strategy that's going to take you to an endpoint that you want. And we need, we need some of those which are probably appropriate responses to a City Manager's objectives. Frankly, there are some of those big picture issues like the budget process which we've talked about all year. There are some of those big picture goals that we need, we need to really formalize and move toward. And technology is a big part of that. Some of the things we've done make sense, some of the things probably don't, and we really need to be working from strategy as opposed to today's issue. So, long answer. Sorry.

Councilor: No worries. That was a perfect answer. Thank you.

Mayor: I just, uh...

Councilor: Mayor, really quickly.

Mayor: Yes, Councilor.

Councilor: Can you speak to how, how do you know? So, you all are looking at the second half of the fiscal year and the budget that's available in the second half of the fiscal year. How do you know that you're kind of hitting the right tune, I guess, in terms of knowing what we can do in the next six months, having some sense that these are realistic?

City Manager: Yeah, I think we will keep in mind this is the first time this exercise has been done. I would agree that some of our, some of our objectives raised my eyebrows a little bit. And when we get into the actual budget cycle, we'll try to refine those a little better. But how do you know? I mean, along the, along the way, you keep track of these things. I like to put my work plan up on my wall on a whiteboard, and I like people to be able to see that which we've succeeded at and that which we haven't on an ongoing day-to-day basis, and every time you come into the office, you can look and see how you're doing.

It's my elementary version of a dashboard. So you just make those evaluations as you go during the course of the year. And of course, you have to judge that with financial issues. Because we're such a big, broad enterprise, cities are every little function in the world that didn't get picked up by any other level of government trickles down to city government. So we have a lot of things going on, and you have emergencies, you have things come up you didn't expect. Roofs fail that you have to replace. I mean, it's these things that you don't anticipate. So you have to be flexible, and you have to make adjustments along the way during the year. So yeah, there will be objectives you meet, and there'll be objectives you don't meet, and you just try to keep track of those, but you stay on top of it so the next time you sit down to do your next budget planning, you've got something to work from that tells you what your success level and what it isn't. So it's, you know, it's an art form.

Thank you. We're tiptoeing up to six o'clock. I want to say a few words, and then I want to let our deputy have the last word about thoughts that she may have as the driver of the process, next steps, takeaways, and so on. But I would just add a few things to what's already been said. One, I think it is appropriate to thank everybody for such an outstanding compilation of excellent work. On top of doing what you're doing, you found the time and the energy and the insight to compile this and then work with others in the city manager's office and the mayor's office to turn it into a really useful document that I hope everybody, not just people who are on the dais, but everybody looks at in Santa Fe. And I hope department heads look at other department heads' work to see what the synergies are. So very much a thank you to everybody for that.

I also think that we've focused a little bit on the "what happens next" piece and the process, but I also think it's worth thinking about how all of us can best use this, not waiting for the budget cycle or anything incidental, but take it as a piece of work that offers really a nice roadmap for all of us without the budget document in front of us. I think I like to read a document like this not only down but also across. And I believe that if you look at it in that frame, there are themes that emerge that are cutting across departments and where the work of different departments reinforces the larger purpose that is spelled out by how frequently a goal or an objective is recited in a different department under maybe different language but with the same objective or the same purpose. And so, I think it's useful to look at this both as a list department by department, but also as a self-reinforcing system with internal opportunities to leverage because of good teamwork and good leadership and good fellowship, to leverage the work that is reflected in all of these department goals and objectives. So I would encourage all of us to read it both ways: individual department and then coalescing the elements together into a broader story, a narrative about how the city departments work together to achieve through lines that show up in this document. And that can be a very useful subsequent purpose to which this gets put.

And lastly, I would say, just sitting here watching our team produce and describe their work is very inspiring. And it gives me a great deal of pride to hear the passion you all have for your work, the commitment you have to our city, and the experience and knowledge and great competence that is reflected in the way in which you presented to us tonight. You are a truly outstanding team of city managers, including you, Mr. City Manager. You actually are the city manager, but they are the managers of the city. And I don't know that the public gets to see you all at one event as we got to see tonight, an encapsulation of the talent that is working for the people of Santa Fe right now. And I want to thank you for that and for what is in this book that used properly, used effectively, used with good intent, can really provide a springboard to whatever the next administration and the next governing body brings to their work. This can become a base document that everybody can learn from and build on. So my great thanks to you for what you've done in this, and where it goes next, I think, is going to be very exciting. Madame Deputy, did you want to put a capstone on some of this?

Just want to thank everyone once again for your time this evening and for your patience as we go through all of the information. Please do, as you're reading through these and thinking about what was presented this evening, please do send me your comments, concerns, questions, and I can follow up with the appropriate departments. And just to reiterate that this is a first draft, if you will. We're definitely open to feedback and changes. To be honest, some of these objectives and KPIs, we're going to be developing our first baseline. And so we may, when we report it to you in January on our mid-year progress on these, we may say, you know, that target might have been a little bit too high. So something more realistic that we want to look at moving forward might be X. And so I think there is going to be some adjustment here, and we welcome your feedback on that. And we also welcome a continuing dialogue from you about your strategic priorities for the city and how they can mesh with what we've brought forward from the staff level. So, with that, I stand for any questions or, wherever you want to take it, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.

Thank you. We are at the six o'clock hour, and we have another session that starts in one hour. So, for the moment, I think we'll put a pin in this. It will be coming back around. And thank you to everybody for being here tonight. Thanks for the governing body. We're adjourned.