Regular Governing Body Meeting - Second Wednesday Wed, Jun 10, 2026 · Governing Body https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/920 == Executive Summary == The Governing Body held a Regular Meeting where key discussions included a presentation on council support staffing models, an amendment to the security guard services contract, and the approval of a professional services agreement for an emergency homeless shelter. The council reviewed a study by Baker Tilly on council staffing, which recommended retaining the current structure but adding a centralized Council Program Manager role to improve coordination. While no immediate decisions were made on staffing, councilors expressed varied needs and concerns about workload and the effectiveness of the report's recommendations. Significant attention was given to the city's security contracts, with an amendment approved to increase compensation by $2.2 million and extend the term for security guard services. There was also extensive discussion and approval of a six-month contract with Urban Alchemy for the operation of the Agape House emergency homeless shelter, emphasizing a 24-hour model and robust oversight. Public comments touched on various topics, including support for "The Rock" project for homelessness services, concerns about plutonium pit production at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and criticism of council responsiveness. The meeting concluded with scheduling future study sessions, with the first one dedicated to "Housing," and the introduction of several new bills and resolutions, including the adoption of the Santa Fe Midtown Metropolitan Redevelopment Area Plan. == Key Decisions == - Approved an amendment to the security guard services contract with Arrowhead Security, increasing compensation by $2.2 million for a new total of $12.1 million and extending the term to June 30, 2028. - Approved a budget adjustment request for $150,000 from the General Fund to the Tourism Lodging Tax Fund for the FY26 downtown security contract. - Approved a Professional Services Agreement with Home Wise, Inc. to administer a state-funded energy efficiency program for low-income households. - Approved a six-month professional services contract with Urban Alchemy for the operation of the Agape House emergency homeless shelter. - Approved the Visual Arts Center lease agreement with the Midtown Arts and Design Alliance LLC (MA). - Adopted the Santa Fe Midtown Metropolitan Redevelopment Area Plan. - Approved the appointment of Gary Donato as Chair of the Veterans Advisory Board and Ari Jree as a member. - Approved the appointment of Eric Renard as the City of Santa Fe representative to the Santa Fe City and County Advisory Council on Food Policy. - Approved Option Two for Study Session Scheduling, which involves holding study sessions after standing committee meetings. - Designated "Housing" as the topic for the first study session on July 1st. == Motions & Votes == - Motion to approve the agenda as amended — Passed unanimously by voice vote. - Motion to approve the consent agenda as amended (with items 9N, 9O, and 9P removed) — Passed by roll call vote (all present councilors voted "Yes"). - Motion to approve an item (likely related to security contracts) — Passed unanimously (Councilor Bamante, Cass, Castro, Fagali, Garcia, Barrett voted yes). - Approval of Amendment Number Three to Item 22-0301 with Arrowhead Security — Passed unanimously (Councilor Casset, Castro, Fagali, Garcia, Bamante voted yes). - Approval of a Budget Adjustment Request for Downtown Security Contract — Passed with one "no" vote (Councilor Castro voted no; Fagali, Garcia, Barrett, Bamante, Casio voted yes). - Approval of Professional Services Agreement with Home Wise, Inc. (Community Energy Efficiency Program) — Passed unanimously (Councilor Fagali, Garcia, Barrett, Bamante, Casset, Castro voted yes). - Motion to approve an unspecified item related to the Urban Alchemy discussion — Passed unanimously via roll call vote (Councilors Garcia, Barrett, Bamante, Casset, Fagali all voted yes). - Motion to modify the agenda to go directly to petitions from the floor and then resume the usual order of business — Passed unanimously via roll call vote (Councilors Barrett, Bamante, Casset, Fagali, Garcia all voted yes). - Motion to approve Option Two for Study Session Scheduling — Passed unanimously via roll call vote. - Motion to hold the first study session on "Housing" on July 1st — Passed unanimously via roll call vote. - Motion to enter Executive Session to discuss attorney-client privilege pertaining to threatened or pending litigation — Passed unanimously via roll call vote. - Motion to reconvene in open session — Passed unanimously via roll call vote. - Motion to adopt the Metropolitan Redevelopment Plan as recommended — Passed unanimously (Councilors Barrett, Bamante, Casset, Fagali, and Garcia voted Yes). - Appointment of Gary Donato as Chair of the Veterans Advisory Board (term ending May 2028) and Ari Jree as a member (term ending May 2028) — Approved unanimously (Councilors Bamante, Casset, Begali, Garcia, and Barrett voted Yes). - Appointment of Eric Renard as City of Santa Fe representative to the Santa Fe City and County Advisory Council on Food Policy (term ending March 2028) — Approved unanimously (Councilors Casset, Vagali, Garcia, Barrett, and Bamante voted Yes). == Public Comment == Public comments covered a range of issues. Several speakers, including a 14-year-old student, advocated for "The Rock" project by Interfaith Community Services, emphasizing its readiness and alignment with the Homelessness Action Plan. Concerns were raised about the fentanyl crisis and the need for urgent action on homelessness solutions. One speaker criticized the city's contract with Urban Alchemy for emergency shelter services, questioning its effectiveness and transparency. The Los Alamos Study Group expressed concerns about plutonium pit production at LANL. A public commenter criticized the council for perceived political spectacle, lack of responsiveness, and speaking Spanish without translation. Other comments included support for a specific H-Board appointment, concerns about city banners, and skepticism regarding downtown security. == Topics == - Midtown Redevelopment Plan - Council Staffing Study - Tax Increment Financing (TIF) - Housing Development - Metropolitan Redevelopment Commission - Community Engagement - Economic Development - Infrastructure Needs - Board Appointments == Full Transcript == I'd like to call tonight's governing body meeting to order. We will start off with a Pledge of Allegiance led by Councilor Fagali, a salute to the New Mexico flag led by Councilor Barrett, and an invocation remembrances led by Councilor Garcia. Please stand as you are able. It'll be against the flag. I'd like to just take a moment to call to mind many of the issues that we have amongst us in our own communities, whether it's drug addiction, whether it's people struggling, and those that do have that are part of our society. I'd like to call to mind things that happen in our state, our nation, and around the world, that we somehow find a way to come together and agree to disagree, but always come to the table with an open mind and open heart and the ability to have discussion. Are there any new remembrances from governing body members? Seeing none, let's take a moment to keep those that are in need and in help in our thoughts tonight as we work on behalf of the community. Thank you, everybody. Madam City Clerk, can I get a roll call, please? City Clerk: Certainly, Mayor. Councilor Barrett? Councilor Barrett: Here. City Clerk: Councilor Bamante? Councilor Bamante: Here. City Clerk: Councilor Casset? Councilor Casset: Here. City Clerk: Councilor Castro? Councilor Castro: Present. City Clerk: Councilor Fagali? Councilor Fagali: Here. City Clerk: Councilor Garcia? Councilor Garcia: Here. City Clerk: Mayor Yavorm. Oh, sorry. Mayor Garcia? Mayor: Present. City Clerk: Mayor, you have a quorum. Mayor: And just for the record, Councilor Faulkner and Councilor Chavis are excused. Thank you. Next up is approval of tonight's agenda. Any changes from staff? Deputy City Manager: Yes, Mayor. Item 9R, the caption says "Approval of Amendment Two," but it should be "Approval of Amendment Number One." The memo and the packet material reflect that it's Amendment Number One. Mayor: Okay. And just a quick confirmation with the City Attorney. Is that okay, or do we need a post-mouth? City Attorney: Mr. Mayor, thank you. Members of the governing body, the City Clerk and I discussed this earlier, and I believe that's sufficient because other permission in the packet shows the change to amendments. Mayor: Okay. Thank you. Any changes from governing body members? If not, what's the will of the body? Councilor: Move to approve as amended. Councilor: Second. Mayor: We got a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, Madam City Clerk. Nope. No. Everybody's here. All in favor say aye. Councilors: Aye. Mayor: Opposed. Motion passes. Next up is approval of the consent agenda. Madam City Clerk, were there items that were pulled? City Clerk: Yes, Mayor. Items 9N, 9O, and 9P have been removed for discussion by Councilor Castro. Mayor: Okay. Are there any additional items that governing body members would like to remove? If not, what's the will of the body? Councilor: Move to approve as amended. Councilor: Second. Mayor: Okay. All those, well, this one we've got to take a roll call vote, please. City Clerk: Councilor Barrett? Councilor Barrett: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Bamante? Councilor Bamante: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Casset? Councilor Casset: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Castro? Councilor Castro: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Fagali? Councilor Fagali: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Garcia? Councilor Garcia: Yes. City Clerk: Motion passed. Mayor: Okay. First up on the agenda is our next item is presentations. Will you please read into the record what the presentation is, Madam City? City Clerk: Yes, Mayor. 8A is a Council Staffing Study results by Baker Tilly. And here to present is Deputy City Manager Andrea Phillips. Deputy City Manager: Deputy City Manager, the floor is yours. If we could get that up. It's in the packet. Or should I plug in here? Well, could you put the presentation on the screen for the council staffing study? Hey, sorry about that. Oh, it's actually okay. I appreciate your help, Michael. And while he's putting that up, I do want to introduce Annie Rose. She should be in the meeting room, and we'll go ahead and bring her in. Annie Rose is with Baker Tilly. So, just a bit of background on this. The, Michael, do you need me to do something? Annie Rose Favro: And good afternoon, good evening. I'm not sure if you can hear me yet, but this is Annie Rose Favro from Baker Tilly. I'm also happy to share my screen if that's a good option for sharing the presentation. Just let me know. Deputy City Manager: Yeah, this is actually presentation though, like this. Okay. All right. Thanks for the, thanks for the technical assistance. I appreciate you. Annie Rose, thanks for hanging in there. Maybe I can just give a little bit of background for a governing body here this evening. The council staffing study was initiated through a resolution that was approved by the governing body last year that directed the City Manager's office to engage a consultant to interview and study options for council support staffing. We sought quotes in the fall through a competitive process, and we received three proposals. We had Councilor Romero Worth at the time and Councilor Cassette help to choose who that firm would be to conduct the study, and we selected the firm of Baker Tilly, who we also work with in some other capacities. They were selected based on their experience and their comprehensiveness in the proposal. We budgeted about $60,000 for the study, and they came in around $50,000. The focus of the project was to interview both outgoing councilors and staff, as well as incoming electeds and staff. They also conducted some peer benchmarking that they'll go into and then synthesize all of that information into recommendations. We are still digesting the recommendations. We have been talking with various entities within the city that would be impacted through the recommendations, like constituent services, special events, comms, policy, and legislative office. And so there's still quite a bit of discussion, I think, we need to have internally in terms of what the recommendations mean. But we wanted to present those results and recommendations to you this evening. And just so you are aware, we did put a placeholder in the FY27 budget for $250,000 for council staffing or support. We weren't sure what exactly it was going to look like, but that is an option if you choose to move forward on this, and we can kind of discuss what that looks like. So, with that, I will turn it over to you, Annie Rose. Hopefully, you can see the screen, and if you want to go ahead, we can go ahead and present the results. Annie Rose Favro: Thank you so much. I can see, well, actually, I could see the screen, and now it has disappeared. I'm wondering if when I'm talking that that screen will not be showing. Deputy City Manager: Okay, it's showing here. So I'll just move through the slides. Annie Rose Favro: All right, sounds good. If we could go to slide two on that agenda for this afternoon. I would love to walk you through an overview of the project scope, get into that in a little bit more detail, share some commendations because some areas of this work are going very well, then talk a little bit about the different council support models that we recognized in terms of how staffing is set up and structured in other peer cities, peer jurisdictions, in order to make sure that council members have sufficient support to do their jobs. And then we'll get into some of our specific observations and recommendations for the City of Santa Fe and talk about some other considerations right at the end here. So, a good amount to cover here. I'm going to keep rolling through this information, but please, since I don't have eyes in the room, please let me know if at any moment we need to pause for questions or clarifications. If you go to slide three though, on project scope, as was mentioned, the focus of this study was really to look at the councilor support needs. What is actually needed? Where are staff currently supporting different areas and different functions, evaluate the current staffing structure, and then identify those potential staffing models and recommendations that might make sense for the City of Santa Fe. On slide four, we started this work actually way back in October, and there was a bit of a pause around the holidays for this. But this work really consisted of four major phases. We started with project planning. Then we did a lot of fact-finding, information gathering, and analysis. And now we are at the reporting phase. For the interviews, we did interview council members, the Mayor, as well as 10 members of city management and staff that intersect in various ways with this functional area. We also looked at a number of documents to understand how certain governance processes are working currently. And then finally, this was complemented by not only industry best practice research, but also peer benchmarking. So we conducted benchmarking around 10 cities where we wanted to understand especially for cities of similar sizes or cities that are larger. So this list of peers includes both kind of current peers as well as some aspirational peers or peer cities where we heard that they had an interesting governing council support model set up. We selected those 10 that you see listed here and did outreach and information gathering about what their models look like as well. On the next slide, in terms of commendations, we very much would like to thank everybody who participated in this project, council members, city leadership, city staff. It was very, very useful the feedback that we received through this process. And two things in particular. Deputy City Manager: Can you hold on one second? And I apologize. The slide on our end is upside down. Annie Rose Favro: Oh, how exciting. Deputy City Manager: Could you just read off what's on there? We don't, yeah, it's upside down. So, Annie Rose Favro: Yeah, absolutely. The two major pieces here that we wanted to highlight were that councilor and staff commitment to constituents and the community. That was a very, very clear piece that came forward through all of our interviews and conversations that there is a real shared commitment saying we want our processes to be set up in such a way that it supports the community members, it supports the constituents that we are here to serve. And also we certainly heard on the staff side and looking at some of the processes and efforts that have been made especially in the past several years there's a very clear commitment that the staff members want to make sure that council members are receiving sufficient support as well. There's a recognition that not all of those areas are all those gaps are getting filled right now and a clear commitment to making that work. So we really appreciate both of those items. If you go on to the next slide, slide six that says council support models. How are we doing in terms of whether that slide is right side up or upside down? Okay, we're good. Fantastic. All right. Well, in terms of the models, we want to ground everybody in this conversation in the primary council support models that are out there. So, model A is the one-to-one support model, and that's essentially where you would see at least one full-time dedicated staff member assigned to support each council member. So, each councilor has at least one dedicated staff member, if not more. And this structure obviously is highly responsive. There's, you can get a lot of personalized support when you're working in a model like this. Obviously though, it's the most expensive version of this model because it has the highest FTE needs to make sure that everybody has that one-to-one support. There's also less resource flexibility that happens here. So for example, if one council member's support person is out on PTO, it is much more difficult to fill that gap. We typically see this model in fairly large cities and cities where council members have a really high amount of workload and time that they are expected to commit to these processes. Model B is, I believe, the most common, or at least in my experience, is the most common model that I have interacted with, and this is shared and centralized support. So basically you have one team where you bring together a centralized group of staff members, and that team supports all of the council members. So there isn't a one-to-one relationship, but there is the sense that this team of folks is fully dedicated to supporting staff, or to supporting counselors, excuse me, and that that group would not have other priorities that they might be pulled into. The advantage of this is obviously there can be very collaborative to have that centralized staff. It can help ensure that service delivery to council members is fairly consistent and flexible. There's a lot more flexibility because you have multiple staff members included in that centralized team, but it is obviously less individualized support and does still require significant coordination across counselors to ensure that the resources are being used equitably. The last model is the decentralized support model, where there might be various staff in different departments across the city that support various aspects of work related to council member work. This can be a very, very efficient use of resources. This obviously does not require any additional FTE outside of the roles that where they sit currently and is fully integrated. It means that the staff who are supporting council members are integrated into the rest of the organization and can have a lot of collaboration there, but it can absolutely limit the amount of capacity that those staff members have to support council members and can reduce responsiveness to council priorities. So, I know that was a lot, but I wanted to make sure we were all on the same page around when I'm using the terms Model A, B, and C here. So then if you go to the next slide, I want to get into our observations and recommendations. And on slide nine, I talk about the current model. So Model C within Santa Fe, you are using this decentralized support model. And you can see on this table that there are a variety of roles that provide different levels of support that are coming from different areas within the city, different city departments and functions. The group that provides the most kind of high level of support to council members are the legislative and policy innovation manager and that policy research staff. And everybody else falls more into some version of medium or lower support. But as you can see, there are certainly staff members who dedicate their time to supporting counselor needs, but none of these roles are 100% full-time dedicated in that space. On slide 10, I talk about some of the issues with this current model. I don't think this will be a surprise to anyone here, but counselors, as part-time council members, there are sometimes very high workloads and it can be difficult to have the capacity and all of the time you need to manage those workloads. And there were very commonly reported support needs that were outstanding right now and not yet being met around legislative research and planning. There could be additional support there. Constituent communications was frequently mentioned. Meeting preparation, scheduling, and event coordination was another area. So this really ranges from some of that more administrative support to constituent services and legislative and policy support as well. We also heard quite a bit about limited staff capacity, especially when staff are supporting all of the council members as well as requests from other departments or other city leadership. That can be difficult to prioritize those requests. And right now, what we know is that there aren't enough staff resources to sufficiently address all—there are enough to address the priority requests, but not all of the requests that are coming in from council members. So that means that things are having to be prioritized and balanced. We also heard quite a bit about just role ambiguity, a lack of shared understanding about what is an appropriate level of counselor support. Which staff members can I go to for which things? Which staff members are authorized to decline requests if they come in or prioritize requests? Is that something happening at the staff level, at the council member level? How are different council members sharing these resources? And then obviously when there are formal processes set up and then folks are going around those processes, that can also create inconsistent service levels internally as well. So on slide 11, this is an overview of the peer approaches when we were looking across at those 10 peers. Two of the peers that we looked at do use the one-to-one support model, that Model A. And in general, these were larger cities with very significant resources or full-time counselor members, council members with high workloads. That's typically where we are seeing that model come into play. Four of the peers used the shared and centralized support model. And from those groups, we heard quite a bit that the strength there is a strength in that model in terms of collaboration and consistency, but that the challenge remains around competing counselor priorities and how much staff capacity can be given into that space. And then finally, Model C, four of the peer cities use a decentralized model similar to the City of Santa Fe. And there again, typically we were seeing that when you don't have enough resources to fully staff a centralized team, we end up with a decentralized support model as well. On slide 12, recommendations. So, where the city is at right now, what we're recommending is retaining your current support structure, but adding into it a centralized council program manager role. This role would sit within the city manager's office. And the primary focus of this role is improving coordination, consistency, decreasing workloads, and making sure that support is equitably distributed across the various council members. So core responsibilities here include obviously coordinating some of the administrative and operational support functions, supporting constituent engagement efforts, assisting with legislative coordination, and really helping all of the teams that currently support the council to coordinate with each other, do some of that process improvement work that will help ensure that these processes are flowing effectively and really be the person who's keeping an eye out on this question of are our council members getting the support that they need to do their jobs effectively. This is a model that we have seen in several other peers and as part of this, we've also provided from at least one of those peers a potential job description for a role like this. On slide 13, we also wanted to talk about the recommendation on roles and responsibilities. And we think especially if you're bringing in a new position like this, this is a perfect time to document some formal frameworks that clearly define the roles and responsibilities of city staff. What city staff are well-prepared and set up to provide, what roles and responsibilities really fall within what individual council members are expected to provide through their work, and the standardization of workflows around these things. One of the things that we heard is especially if you're coming in as either a new council member or a new staff member, there's very little documentation of what is expected in these spaces and that that can make it very difficult to understand what help and support is even available. So having some type of clear documentation will be useful there. And then finally, in terms of other considerations, slide 14 and then into 15, did want to flag that while this assessment was primarily looking at the staffing side of things, there were two process topics that came up really frequently during these conversations. The first was around the legislative research process. So right now that process is not as transparent as it could be. It's not clear how different requests get prioritized and there's very limited visibility into where research requests actually are. So we do think that right now because of that lack of clarity and how that process is set up, it's creating inefficiencies effectively. So formalizing a process that establishes very clear prioritization criteria so that everyone can understand how these different requests are being treated. We would encourage as much as possible shared visibility across counselor requests as well within this. We think that obviously the council program manager could really support improvements in this process. But right now, this is an area that is taking more time than we would expect to see for a process like this and is not necessarily aligned with what we're seeing in peer districts. In terms of the committee review process, this was another area that was brought up pretty frequently of noticing that oftentimes things need to be routed through multiple committee reviews and that that coordination can make things take longer than ideally they would and require more effort and workload. And so the recommendation here is to look at that committee review process to see if there's any opportunities to streamline that and improve the efficiency. We think that both of these areas are really contributing to high council member workloads. And so that's why these two are called out here. So that was a lot of me sharing information, so I will pause there and see if there are any questions. Deputy City Manager: Anything else to present? I'll go to the governing body. I don't think so. Thank you. We're looking forward to your feedback. Okay. Any questions from the governing body? Councilor Casset. Councilor Casset: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you both of you for your work and your presentation. Yeah, I mean, plenty of thoughts. I think that ideally a one-to-one would be great. I think it is interesting understanding what the workload of a counselor is. And I think it was Councilor Worth who told me once, you know, "Got to put on boundaries because this job will take as much time as you give it," which is true. So I think that that's probably unrealistic given our budget. So, one thing that I'm interested in here is that if we were to have this type of this type of model, you know, we have $250,000 dedicated, which I think could potentially get us maybe two reasonably well-paid positions. And if there was maybe a council program manager and then, you know, maybe somebody who is more specific on one of our—I mean, our primary duty, what we're supposed to do is legislation. And then we know that there's a lot of challenges with the workload that in Marcy's team. And so I think that maybe that would be an interesting conversation. The other, the question that I have though, has to do with the type of governments that the peer models were looking at, specifically those with the who did not have the one-to-one. And so one of the challenges we've been running into, and of course we have the charter review going, is this balance of powers between the legislative and the executive. And so do you have—no, I see the I see the cities, but what my question about them is, are they a council manager level of government or are they a strong mayor? Because at this point, you have with this model essentially the council support sitting in the city manager's office, which with the way that our current model works, which is a little wonky and we need to work on, is pretty tightly wound with the executive. So, it's so that was one of our one of the pieces about this is how do we make sure that the council is getting some more of the balance that we would like to see. And I could see in a, you know, model, depending on the mayor, I this mayor has been a counselor, so I don't believe that he would do this, but I could see in another model where you have a city council program manager reporting to us to a city manager in the strong mayor system, it kind of dilutes the could potentially dilute the support of the council in that scenario. So, I'm curious, in a long-winded way to say, did you look at the structure of the governments of these peer cities? Thank you so much for that question. I don't have that off the top of my head. I know that was a consideration when we were putting together the peer list, and I can certainly follow up with you specifically. But regardless of the structure, we don't tend to see a large difference regardless of the governing model in terms of council support. Usually, if it is a one-to-one measure, those, if it's Model A, staff members report directly to the council member that they're supporting. And in Model B and C, those almost exclusively fall within, or I suppose Model B, excuse me, fall within the City Manager's Office. That is by far and away the most common place for those to fall, again, regardless of governing structure. And then obviously Model C is decentralized across the different departments. Got it. Okay. Thank you so much. Yan, if you could send over that information, I think it would just be interesting to see what that looks like. Yeah, maybe if I can just chime in. On page 30 in the document that's attached, it does have a table that references all of those peer cities, the type of staffing to councilor support ratio, if it's a full-time or part-time mayor, and the type of government, so strong mayor or council manager form. Wonderful. Thank you. I appreciate you anticipating that's something that I would want. So, thank you so much. I appreciate that. Yeah, that was my one question. I will dig into this report a little bit more as well as we continue to pick through this. But when I'm really thinking about where am I struggling to keep up, I have two places, especially as for me, for a long time I was giving this job a good 60 hours a week. My life has changed, my financial needs have changed. So, I am working on a more part-time basis and a lot more empathy with my colleagues that have been working full-time jobs this entire time because I really struggle with keeping up with my legislation, both just keeping my brain there, as well as I know that Marcy and her team are just getting influx from all of us. And then keeping up with constituent communications, whether those are initial communications or simply follow-up, which we've talked about some systems ways that we might be able to assist with that. That if we are sending things over to Javier and his team, we talked about that there is now, I believe there is now a back way that we can enter into the CRM and see what we have entered in and be able to follow up and look at what's going on there. So, which wasn't the case for a while. So, when I look at my two areas, that's where I'm finding a lot of challenges and could really use some additional support. And maybe if there are two positions available, we might be able to look at how those could potentially split the difference. And maybe it's a council manager, program manager, and then putting another team member in the legislative staff because that's again, when we talk about what is our primary role, it actually is not the day-to-day operations. It's not following up to see if, you know, Parks has put the swing up. In theory, that should be something that then switches over to day-to-day operations and into the City Manager's purview. And with a lot of our systems, it just hasn't. But with legislation is absolutely, that's our bread and butter. So, those are my thoughts. Thank you so much. Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Castro. Thank you so much, Mayor. Thank you, Deputy City Manager. The presentation is very interesting. There's a lot of information. Agreed. I will get back to you. Some thoughts is that this potentially is a little bit dated. I know that we saw a lot of discussion about subcommittees and we've had extensive discussion amongst ourselves. I wonder how this could potentially be updated with some of the things like study sessions that we're thinking about. There is a lot of coordination that we needed initially coming into this new administration around events, and I think we saw with last night that we're getting a lot of that support right now. And so I wonder how some of those changes might affect the needs of the council. And I hate to say that we need to go back to the drawing board. We don't. But there are some things that potentially could be updated here. I also have a little bit of concern about the, or not concern. I think another direction we could go is that discussion of authority because some of these needs could potentially be serviced by folks we already have, but we're not sure how to interact with them or what kind of authority we have. So, I guess what I'm saying is I actually think we're in a better place than we were a few months ago. How can we use this to improve understanding that we have a limited budget? Thank you. Councilor Faggali. Thank you, Mayor. I apologize to everyone for my voice today. It's doing weird things. But yeah, I guess I'm not, I'm not sure how this is helpful really. Like, I'm not seeing any recommendations or anything new that I feel like we didn't know. So maybe I'm missing that. But yeah, and yeah, what am I missing? Thank you, Councilor, for that. I think the main recommendations are this new position, the Council Program Manager position, which would help coordinate with the various entities, constituent services, legislative office, etc., and try to help ensure that the needs and support is there for the councilor. So, this would be a dedicated individual, perhaps two potentially, who would interface with you all and provide that support. I think the other recommendations are more around systems. So, kind of the discussions you've already been having around looking at the committee structure and are there some efficiencies there, or looking at the things that are creating the need or the feeling that councilors need more support. Right? So, let's look at our legislative process. Is there duplication there? Could we make it more visible to all of you through a tracking tool so that you're not having to spend so much time, you know, interfacing with Marcy's team or she's not getting duplicate requests from three or four different councilors? So, and maybe that's where study sessions could help kind of vet those policy discussions and maybe end up creating some efficiencies and some time savings, you know, down the road. So, I think those were the kind of the main recommendations that came out of it. But, you know, frankly, I'm, I want to have more discussion with you all and with the pertinent staff that would be affected by this to really kind of digest these recommendations, think about to your point, Councilor Castro, like what, what does this mean for us if we were to implement something like this? Does it involve, you know, looking at our current systems? Is it new staffing? You know, what, how, how would we implement some of these recommendations? Yeah, my concern is that I feel like our needs are super varied. Like some of it's legislation, some of it's, can we get our parking passes? Some of it's planning events, some of it's, you know, like it's sort of all over the place. And I think it also really varies by councilor what everyone wants. And I, I, yeah, I, I feel like having one person trying to balance that would, would be like us trying to balance our own things, which like they would just get overwhelmed and run away, which we don't, would prefer not to have. Thanks. Thank you. If I may have one follow-up on that too, just to clarify, I think it's really important that the council, if you did move forward with the council support program position, that person would not be responsible for providing all of the support needed by each council member. They would provide some of that support, but really their function is on that coordination of making sure that all of the other staffing resources that are available are well aligned. Everybody understands the expectations. There are clear processes. So, they would serve as the lynchpin for these things. But we would not expect that individual to provide all support to everyone because we would absolutely agree that that is an unsustainable position and we would not recommend structuring it in that way. Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. And I, I do see the challenges of doing something like this, having a specific individual per councilor. You know, I, I come to it from a fiscally minded individual that says, "Okay, how can you put one person to each councilor?" You know, where we're already paid councilors. Yes, it's a part-time job, but it is full-time work to Councilor Cassett's point. And to Councilor Piggalli's point, I think it's different for each and every one of us. I'm not a huge proponent of increasing more individuals. I had an issue when we were introducing an assistant city manager position and why do we need that when we have a strong mayor? City managers understanding your roles a little bit more. I think it would be something to get some input from our city managers, either previous, current, and maybe future. But it does seem to be issues, you know, some, some of the major issues that I see sitting as a councilor is again that communication to the community. Our position as policymakers. How do we work with staff, you know, in the legislative branch? And a lot of times you can't communicate that through an individual because it's your own thought process. It's your own mind. When you're dealing with the general public, how do you decipher what's the need of the public? You know, when I first came on, it was, send this straight to, at that time it was Daniel Diaz. You know, I was talking to other councilors, "Oh, just send it to Daniel, they'll take care of it." How do we keep track of things? It's not getting done. Okay. Down to the city manager. What's going on here? So, I mean, there's, there's a huge, there's a lot, there's a big lift and a lot of work to do on this to see how you make it work. Just appropriating extra money and hiring people doesn't always fix the problem. It is our processes. It is how we work together and it is how we become unified in a direction. Given that we all have different ideologies, one of the things that I, that I do see that is a challenge is again keeping track of the community because we are policymakers and yet we are the ones who feel the calls directly from our constituency in each district. You're my councilor. Why aren't you taking care of it? And yet it falls on the administration in a way because we have maybe sent the message out or put in a work order or things like that. And so where is that breakdown? Finding that breakdown in people and processes is really the biggest issue. And sure I'd like to have somebody answer my calls and respond to my emails, but it also takes away that intimacy of our, of what we have with our, with the individuals that we represent. And so I think those are the major challenges. And, you know, going back to, to looking at our model, you take a look at the strong mayor format. Do we need two councilors per district? Look at the county. There's one in each district. They do have a personal assistant that helps them. And there's a lot to this. Just a few of my thought processes as we were listening to the presentation, and also bringing it in from the private business mentality. Too many chefs in the kitchen doesn't always work. So be careful how many irons you have in the fire. You can use adages over and over, but how do we get the job done at the end of the day? And how are we most efficient to the community who we represent? So, just a few thoughts. Thank you. Councilor Cassid: Thank you, Mayor. Just following up on Councilor Garcia and Councilor Castro's points, I think maybe the reason that we're all kind of sitting here is because there's this deeper recognition that the issue is structural and procedural at this point. And I think it's really hard to know what we need when we are working in structures and procedures that are inefficient. They're time sucks. I mean, we've been talking about our committee processes. If you have long agendas, it's quite a bit to actually prep for your committees. And so if you're talking about, we each serve on, or almost all of us serve on two council committees, we're serving on our advisory committees. The first time that I see a quality of life agenda, it's a good couple hours for me to prep for it. Finance is going to be about three or four hours of me reading a governing body. Normally, I've seen a lot of it, but it's still a few more hours, and I have to go back over the things that I saw and to make sure that I remember and I know what I'm voting on and that I'm prepared. And so that's been one of our big conversations. How long the legislative process takes, how long contracts take, and what that means for staff time. And I think more and more I've been getting to this place of, I think we kind of blow up our process a little bit, which is really, I think, kind of scary. But I also feel like this is another conversation where we're like, "Hey, something's just not quite working." And it's really hard to put our finger on it because I think it's a number of things that are moving. And I think to Councilor Garcia's point, aside from a direct one-to-one correlation, which is not financially feasible, I'm not certain how much more staff added to this combined model, given our current systems, would help. I think hopefully with the charter review, we will get some much better definitions around roles. To Councilor Garcia's point, it's like, "Well, that's the administration," but is it the, and how we deal with that transfer of information? I'm struggling with this because I fail to see whether or not a program manager would be very helpful. Honestly, what's more helpful, I feel like for us and for our staff, is if we're going to add on two more positions, put one in constituent services, put one in the legislative services. I mean, and that's, if we're not, I realize that it's not direct support to us at that point, but at least it helps with our two main functions that take up a lot of our time and maybe could have a counselor-focused model. So, I mean, I appreciate more conversation, but I think that it is tied to some of our really big conversations that we're having right now about our structure of government and our procedures and our legislative processes. And these are all really kind of mushed up together, and that's becoming both more clear and much more fuzzy as we have these conversations. Thank you. Councilor Castro: Sorry. Thank you so much. I would just like to hear a little bit more out of the city manager's office around the technical support that we're getting, for example, booking conferences, booking flights, and mail routes, things like that, because I know that that's coming out of the city manager's currently. Thank you, Councilor Castro, and members of the governing body. Yes. So the executive assistant and Bernice Senna, who is our administrative assistant in the city manager's office, are there to help support with some of the things like booking travel or making purchases or things like that. But I do think that's maybe an area, among others, where we could look at maybe role clarity and just ensure that everyone is aware of who's doing what, because I think there is a little bit of maybe a little bit of fuzziness around who's supporting whom and that kind of thing. And we want you all to be as successful as possible. We're all here as city staff to support all of you and to make sure that you are supported, have the tools that you need, and we certainly want to make it as easy for you as possible. So, I think, if there are opportunities for us to just further clarify those roles and responsibilities, which was another recommendation that kind of is a throughline in this, is kind of addressing the ambiguity, right? And so I think that might be something we could talk about in a study session or some kind of future conversation just to make sure we're all on the same page about that level of support and who's going to be tasked with what. Wonderful. And I imagine that this presentation and some of our concerns will be relayed to the Charter Review Commission that's currently talking about some of the separation of powers. Yes. Balance of powers. I'm sorry. If I can just be honest, I think that it's related, but also separate in a way, and that regardless of the Charter Review Commission, I think we still need to understand who's doing what. And knowing too that that might be a year or so off before those recommendations come forward, and then there may or may not be changes based on that. So I think even in the meantime, just kind of trying to develop a path forward and a common understanding about the different levels of support and things that we want to provide to the council. Thank you so very much. No further questions. Thank you, Councilor. Any other comments, questions? Okay. Is there a, I guess I got one quick question, follow-up next steps, because I know, especially speaking from the councilor's perspective, you all need some help. We want to make sure you all get the help you need, and so I guess we can work one-off with councilors to finally determine what that looks like, because we did allocate the money, and we want to make sure that folks are getting the best support possible. I didn't know after this if we could at another time soon take a deeper dive on this and, like you said, kind of flesh it out. What would it look like? What are the different options? And we could all go over together to see what would be the most helpful for a majority of us. I don't know. Just a thought. All right, sounds like more to come. Thank you, Deputy City Manager Phillips. Next item on the agenda, Madame City Clerk. Next item on the agenda is 9N. This is a request for approval of amendment number four to item 22-0303 with Condor New Age Logistics LLC for security guard services at city facilities to increase compensation by $2,200,000 for a new total amount of $8,800,000 and extend the term to June 30th, 2028. And here to present is interim Public Works Director Sam Bernett. Okay. Councilor Castro pulled this item. Did you need a presentation or just jump into questions? So I did have a short conversation with Director Barnett. I don't know if you want to address some of those things. I can ask some questions. Generally, I think the scope of what we use security for in the city of Santa Fe is maybe not, I didn't understand as well as I did after the conversation. What do we use security for? Mayor, Councilor Castro, the city uses security for a large number of things. For example, the tourism department uses security both at their facilities and in the downtown area. Our parking division uses it to help monitor parking lots and parking garages. Libraries use it for helping ensure the safety of frontline staff and patrons. The municipal court uses it for ensuring security during their operating hours. We use security at Midtown Santa Fe in the Santa Fe Railyard, and I believe there is also some security associated with both parks and open spaces and public utilities operations. So a really diverse number of areas throughout the city. Thank you so much. And part of the reason I think that we're seeing such large amounts is also that these are caps. Correct. Director Bernett. So, we may not expend all of this money. Is that true? Yeah. Mayor, Councilor Castro, that's absolutely true. These contracts are on-call contracts. There is no guarantee of payment. And then based on the needs of those various departments or divisions that I've mentioned, or any other inside of the city, based on available funding and need, those entities can use these contracts to open up purchase orders to cover specific scopes associated with what they need. So these contracts are intended to give us general bandwidth to meet our security needs throughout the city. Wonderful. I think that that gives me much better clarity of what we're using security for in the city of Santa Fe. And of course, we don't want to understaff our municipal courts or any places that we need overnight. I do have some concern based on some discussion we had at Quality of Life, the level of service that we're receiving from some of our contractors. Do you want to address a little bit of the difficulties we've had and now that we are fully staffed in the Santa Fe Police Department, how we could potentially work with PD to supplement some of the work that we need done by these security officers? Yeah, absolutely. Mr. Mayor, Councilor Castro, my experience with security firms goes back a number of years now, probably about six or seven. And in my experience, there is generally difficulties in fully staffing to meet all of the security needs that the city has. And we've tried working with different firms, like identifying a single firm and working with them. We eventually went to this new model where we have a number of contracts so we can use different vendors to try and fill those gaps. And what we've discovered is that I think just generally speaking in the field of security, there's only so many people who are working as security guards, and it doesn't matter how you try and diversify, you're always going to kind of hit a bottleneck in staffing. And so, and we definitely see that throughout our security portfolio where we have either positions that remain unfilled or missed shifts, and it is a complicating factor. And I think that absolutely there is a worthwhile conversation to be had between Santa Fe PD and, you know, maybe purchasing, Public Works would be happy to participate. I'm sure Director Randall would be happy to participate and try and figure out how we can best use our multiple resources to make sure we're adequately covering our needs and providing the best service we can to the public. What that looks like, I'm not sure, but I think it's a worthwhile conversation. Thank you so much. So just in a general sense, I really want to make known that it would be more beneficial for us to have a little bit more internal support rather than, I think in a general sense in the city, we're trying to move away from contracts and do things internally. This would be another opportunity in the last two weeks that we've had more bike officer presence on the plaza. I've heard some really good things from a lot of the folks that initially wanted the security team, so just saying that it's working. I do have a little bit of concern about some of the discussion around the downtown security in particular. And I don't know if Director Randall wants to kind of come and speak to some of the comments that we saw at the New Mexican, for example, today. Just to clarify, is this—I think the tourism bar is coming later. Sorry, and we can wait until the tourism bar. I—sure, yeah, we can wait for the next item if you'd like. Yeah, just that way we're not blending contracts because this contract's not dealing with downtown. Correct? Okay. Mr. Mayor, Counselor, actually this on-call contract does. This is the contract Randy would be using for that as well. Okay, my apologies then. Mr. Randall, it's yours. And sorry, Mr. Randall, just to the comments that the activity that we're using security guards is not criminal. That's correct. I mean, it's really a behavioral thing. The private security can't arrest people. They can detain, but they can't arrest. The comment was made to suggest that the security is not there to replace a police presence. Security is there to deal with some misbehavior that was going on that we needed to correct when the police department was not fully staffed and couldn't provide the resources needed. And that's why I'm just a little bit confused because I'm hearing that this was to supplement the police department for understaffing, but we're actually not using it for the same purposes that the police department would be. So, I'm a little confused on how we're using this service to supplement our PD. Mr. Mayor, Counselor, it really is not to supplement PD. It's to deal with misbehavior in the downtown area that private security can deal with. A couple of years ago, I went to the police department and suggested that they would really be a better group to oversee the security than I would. It's not exactly in my job description. And the police suggested that they don't deal with private security, that it was our role to deal with it. So, it's not to supplement police, it's to deal with misbehavior when police presence couldn't be there. Director Bernard, did you have something to add? Mr. Mayor, Counselor, I think a good example of how security works in juxtaposition or comparison to PD, I think a great example is the libraries. And, you know, especially when we're fully staffed and security guards aren't missing their shifts, having a guard on site throughout operating hours of those facilities has proven to be very beneficial. And I'm directly quoting Director Emory here, but in providing, you know, security and protection for frontline staff and constituents using the libraries, you have somebody there at all times. That's their dedicated, you know, location or post, as they say in the security world. And so, rather than having to call PD and wait for them to send an officer, there's somebody there who's kind of overseeing the facility throughout the duration of the day. And that's a real difference from how we would interact with PD. I don't say that to dismiss your point. I think there's absolutely a valid conversation to be had about there are going to be certain situations or scenarios or locations where perhaps PD does make more sense, and there'll be others, other situations where security proves to be more beneficial to how we're operating. And I think ultimately, what's important is that we start having a conversation about, you know, what our needs are, looking at, you know, how we best fit those needs, and trying to develop a really, you know, clear plan of how we're going to get there and making decisions about what piece best fits that, you know, that slot in the puzzle, so to speak. I think that would be greatly appreciated. City Manager, you had some comments. Mr. Mayor, Counselor Castro, yeah. I might have Chief Ben Baldez come in. Over the last two weeks, he and I have come up with a little bit of a different strategy. I don't want to speak for him, but we're approaching the PD a little differently. So, maybe in the next meeting or in the coming weeks, he can come in and do a presentation of how he's staffing a little differently to help address these concerns. Before Chief Grundler left, there was a plan in July to help with downtown already. We just moved a little differently with Chief Baldez, a little faster. So, maybe we'll just do that presentation. We have some other plans in the works. He and I, we're trying to get our feet underneath this with the new chief for the third time. But I think we have a really good plan, and I think, just what you've seen in the back, we have three police officers. They're all on the bike team. We're approaching downtown a little differently, and we're approaching, especially during the daytime, how we deal with stuff. We're, and over the last two weeks, the PD has approached it differently. So, I will leave it at that, but I'll have Chief Baldez come in. Thank you. And so, as I mentioned earlier, after the conversations with you, Director Bernett, I do feel a little bit better about how we're using this. Obviously, media has their own interpretation of what we're doing and how we're spending our money, but I would like to just make the point that if there are opportunities for us to reduce the amount that we're spending on these external companies in particular, if they're not offering us the service that we would like, if we could really work with RPD, and no further questions. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. And just to follow up on that, Counselor. So, it should be no secret to anybody because this was something I ran on as a candidate, which was to increase the number of police officers in our force. And having contracts in place such as this, they allow for security measures to be taken. Now, as Sam mentioned, there are some instances where it's never going to go away, especially in public facilities, whether it's libraries, here at City Hall, additional support is needed. We just don't have the sheer capacity within the department right now due to the level of officers we have, and that's even with us being at near capacity. So, this is where it's just, just as we're planning with parks, it's that shifting, right? Officers, you're going to start to see an increase of officer presence in our community, which will obviously have an impact on this contract and other security contracts, but there'll never be zero, unfortunately, just because there's the need to protect not only the public but our workforce. As we work to determine the need, and this is where I can't reiterate to the public enough, we need to understand where the need is. That way, we can deploy our officers to protect our community. And one of the locations we know is downtown. It's clear and simple, downtown. Whether it is with criminal nature or with folks speeding and noise, it's an issue. And so, shout out to the bike team that's back there because they're going to help us with this. They're going to be the folks that are going to actually have that authority to take on that criminal component, but the security officers are going to be in addition to support. So, because again, we don't have the capacity within the force that we truly need in the community. So, it's something we're working on. It's a change that we're ultimately going to have to implement, and I'm thankful that Interim Chief Baldez is being strategic about this because it's not just downtown. It's just not the Southside. It's everywhere in our community. We wish we had much more officer presence just to address the issues that we're having. Now, contracts aren't, they're not the factor that is going to provide the support that police, they're not going to eliminate police support. They're going to be the "and to," so to speak. It's just, it's unfortunately the society we live in. I wish it wasn't the case, but we need to ensure that city facilities, city spaces are safe, and contracts such as this are the way that government goes about protecting our residents. So, hopefully that's helpful. Definitely. Sorry. And Counselor Cass, I know you're waiting. Just one direct response. My big concern, and in particular about some of the comments that were made, is if it's not criminal activity and it's just things we don't want to see, that makes me feel a particular way about us criminalizing poverty that I really hope that we're not going down. Thank you. Officer Casset. Thank you, Mayor. Really glad to see you here, Sam. Because I, poor Travis, I kind of trapped him and I was like, "Oh, my questions aren't for you. Sorry about this," when I pulled this the other night. We've already kind of touched on it, but another piece besides how this amplifies or supports or adds to police, there's also been some conversations around infrastructure needs. So, for example, Midtown has basically been sitting empty. As Midtown starts to develop, I'm curious what our security needs look like there. Similar with parks, the one I can really think about is Herb Martinez. We're getting lights there. You know, there's this whole concept of eyes on the park. It's one of the reasons that the Railyard is such a challenge because it was built way off to the side. There's no eyes on the park. It's, you know, a very attractive place for somebody who might want to do something that is not a great thing to do. And so, I do think that there is also this deterrence factor of security. So, even if they're not arresting, their presence helps. And we know that just presence of people in general helps. So, I don't know if you can speak to this now, but one thing that I asked at, it was Quality of Life, right? Yep. Was, you know, as we're looking long-term and as we're making some of these infrastructure changes that are putting more lights or putting more people and more, you know, development at Midtown, or if we're able to put in more security systems in specific areas, what does that do for our security needs in the future and how does that maybe dovetail with some of the conversations that are having with Deputy Chief or Interim Chief, excuse me? Yeah, absolutely, Mr. Mayor. Counselor Casset, it's a great question. Thank you. So, I think a good example of what you're talking about is Midtown. And, you know, five, six years ago, when Midtown was essentially completely vacant, we had two 24-hour, 7-day a week shifts. So, two guards on patrol at all hours of every day of the week. Just due to the nature of a 64-acre, you know, 35-building campus, it's a very attractive nuisance. And as we've brought in more tenants and more businesses and Midtown started to come back alive, we have dramatically reduced that. We went from two guards to a single guard, and now not only are we down to a single guard, but during the day, we often don't have guards on duty because there's enough activity that it's no longer that attractive nuisance. And then just to, you know, as a comment on the, you know, that dynamic, I think the Railyard's a great example of it. I, you know, talking with our property manager, Mr. Tim Ferrell, about the Railyard specifically, you know, he mentioned that the security team there logs anywhere from, you know, maybe three to eight incidents every night in the Railyard. And it is that concept of, we've unintentionally created this attractive nuisance, where that creates a space that it's easy for people to feel is a place they can go to and conduct themselves in inappropriate manners. Having security there as a definite deterrent, but also as an intervention to prevent those behaviors from escalating to the point where we need to bring PD in, has been really beneficial. Both Midtown and Railyard are great examples of how the security model has worked really well to help relieve or reduce the burden on security and also protect property in the community. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. I think that that's also something for us to think about as we develop Midtown, and we have some big parks in there. Let's make sure that those are not attractive nuisances, that there are eyes on those parks, that there is appropriate lighting. Parking garages, I don't know what to do about those. That's just kind of the nature of what a parking garage is. As we're looking at these long-term goals and how we shift these things, I agree with the mayor that I don't think we're ever going to be at a place where we would not need security contracts to help supplement just the safety needs of city facilities and the city at large. That said, and thank you, Councilor Castro, for bringing up the point that all of our on-call contracts, not just this one, but all of our on-call contracts are maximums, not guarantees. How much are we typically spending of these contracts per year? Again, do we foresee that potentially decreasing as things shift, or do we not have those numbers yet? Mr. Mayor, Councilor, it's been a number of years since I've been actively involved in managing any of the purchase orders. I can tell you that between Midtown and the Railyard are what I'm most familiar with. I would assume we're probably somewhere between $350,000 and $500,000 per year throughout the whole city. I can't speak to that, but... And is that $350,000 to $500,000 per site, or is that both together? Both together. Okay. All right. My apologies. No, no problem. So, I mean, it's a significant amount. Again, as we continue to look at ways that we might be able to use different components, I know I had also asked about security systems. Is that something that is really relevant to this conversation? It's kind of sounding like maybe not, because security at the libraries is when it's open, or the park, you can't put a security system on the park. So, is that a relevant piece to this or not so much? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Cass, we have found that security systems really are not much of a deterrent. More often than not, they protect buildings. So, obviously, if there's a fire or there's some sort of break-in or incident, we can get alerted and PD can respond. If we put in camera systems, they tend to be less of a deterrent than we would like them to be. They tend to be used more for providing information about an incident after the fact than preventing the incident from happening. Got it. So, the guard is a very distinct difference between those types of systems and a human being on site. Well, at least that's at the moment not a job that AI can take. So, there's a silver lining there. Well, thank you so much. Really, really appreciate it. And thank you for helping us understand how these are used and how we're looking at this dynamic. My pleasure. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilor. Any other questions? Councilor Fagulli. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Director Burnett, for all your answers. I am wondering, I think on the same lines as Councilor Cass, if these are varying numbers every year, and this is a maximum that we can use, is there a possibility that we could make this a one-year extension and evaluate how much we're actually using and potentially have a smaller on-call for the future? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Fagali, absolutely. I think there's nothing that prevents that from happening. I think staff and purchasing, in particular in this situation, is probably looking more at the workload of staff and what it takes to get a contract amendment through the full process. But it's not an impossibility, and it's not an unreasonable burden if it was the will of the council. I think it's a reasonable request. Is it possible for you to get us, or for someone, maybe finance, to get us the amount that has been expended from these contracts? Absolutely, Mr. Mayor, Councilor Fagali. I will circle back with Mr. Dutton Lea, our procurement officer, this evening when I leave and ask them to run a report on how much has been spent on each contract to date and have that sent out to the council. Thank you. That's it for me. Any other questions? Just, I guess, one last question. This contract can be canceled at any time, even though we're extending it for a certain number of years. Correct? So, to Councilor Fagali's point, if we were to do a one-year, we ultimately have that authority built into the contract already. Mr. Mayor, absolutely. There is a clause, I think, we're required to, if I remember correctly, boilerplate for us is a 30-day notice to a vendor to cancel a contract, but we always do retain that right. Okay. So, to that point, Councilor, if as we work to get numbers and we determine, hey, we want to rethink, we still have that authority. So, okay. Any other comments, questions? Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Oh, sorry. Move to approve. Second. Now we can do a roll call vote. Yes, Mayor. Councilor Bamante. Yes. Councilor Cass. Yes. Councilor Castro. Yes. Councilor Fagali. Yes. Councilor Garcia. Yes. Councilor Barrett. Motion passed. Okay, thank you. Next item, please, Madam City Clerk. Next item is 9. This is a request for approval of amendment number three to item 22-0301 with Arrowhead Security, DBA Vet Sec Protection Hour Agency, for security guard services at city facilities to increase compensation by $2,200,000 for a new total amount of $12,100,000 and extend the term to June 30, 2028. Move to approve. Second. All right, we've got a motion and a second. Councilor Castro, you pulled this. I think I got all my questions answered earlier. Thank you so much. Okay, any other questions? Hearing none. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Yes, Mayor. Councilor Casset. Yes. Councilor Castro. Yes. Councilor Fagali. Yes. Councilor Garcia. Yes. Councilor Bamante. Yes. Motion passed. Okay. Next item, please, Madam City Clerk. Next item is item P. This is a request for approval of a budget adjustment request in the amount of $150,000 from the General Fund to the Tourism Lodging Tax Fund for fiscal year 2026 downtown security contract. Councilor Castro, you pulled this item. Yes. I will just say that this is to finish out this fiscal year. Director Randall, if you could just explain a little bit of why we're seeing this contract. Sorry, I thought it was on. The funding for this has been added as we've gone along. The last I looked up, the last addition that went into it was $350,000 from lodgers tax. This will round out the amount of funding we need for the balance of this purchase order that's placed. Wonderful. Thank you so much. I just, we had a short discussion about this at Quality of Life. It was your testimony that tourism cannot help us with this $150,000. Correct? Mr. Mayor, Councilor, that's correct. Thank you. No further questions. Okay. Any other questions from governing body members? Seeing, hearing none, Madam City Clerk, did we get a motion? Move to approve. Motion, got a motion. Move to approve. Councilor Monte made a motion. Second. And a second. Now we've got a motion and a second. Discussion, seeing none. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Yes, Mayor. Councilor Castro. No. Councilor Fagali. Yes. Councilor Garcia. Yes. Councilor Barrett. Yes. Councilor Bamante. Yes. Motion passed. Thank you, Madam. Need to vote. Oh, I'm sorry. Councilor Casio. Yes. Motion passed. Got to get that one for the record. Right. Next item, please, Madam City Clerk. Mayor, we are moving on to 10. This is action items on the discussion agenda. 10A is a request for approval of a professional services agreement with Home Wise, Inc. to administer the Community Energy Efficiency Development Seed Program for eligible low-income households in the city of Santa Fe, utilizing state of New Mexico seed grant funds awarded through the Energy Conservation and Management Division of the Energy Minerals and Natural Resources Department in the total amount of $1,254,170 through December 30, 2027. Do we have Erica Renard, Sustainability Supervisor, here? Might she be online? I do not see her online, Mayor. Okay. Turn to the governing body. Any questions or comments about this item? Move to approve. Second. I just have a quick comment for the public, just in case this is, I guess for you, Mayor. This is a pass-through. So, this is not our funding. It is state funding going through a third party going to community. Correct. Thank you. Any other questions, comments? Okay. Hearing or seeing none. I got a motion and a second. Roll call, please, Madam City Clerk. Councilor Fagali. Yes. Councilor Garcia. Yes. Councilor Barrett. Yes. Excuse me. Councilor Bamante. Yes. Councilor Casset. Yes. Councilor Castro. Yes. Motion passed. Okay. Thank you. Next item, please. Next item is 10B. This is a request for approval of a professional services contract with Urban Alchemy for operation of an emergency homeless shelter in the total amount of $1,343,93 for a six-month term. Here to answer questions is Youth and Family Services Program Manager Kristen Woods. Okay, Miss Woods comes up. I didn't know if you all had a presentation. Okay, you do. Okay. Thank you, Mayor, Council. My name is Sandy Emry. I'm the Community Services Director for the city. As we're getting started on the presentation, I wanted to thank you all for your attention to this matter, and I also really wanted to thank the community for their attention to this matter. I understand that there are a lot of questions around this particular topic, and there are a lot of really strong feelings around it, and I'm hopeful that this presentation will bring some more awareness to the operations, current and future, at 2081 Critos Road, and I really want to thank the staff for all of their work in fielding the questions and making sure that we are getting the data to council, to our community, as quickly as we can, and really holding ourselves accountable for the contracts that we execute. So, thank you. Thank you, Director Emory. All right. Good evening, Mayor, members of the governing body. My name is Leah Azul Salivi, Director of Youth and Family Services. Tonight, we're here to give the governing body a full picture of our emergency shelter at 281 Serrios Road, the work the city has done to get here, what the data tells us about the outcomes, and what we're asking you to approve tonight. First and foremost, this is a city-led program. We set the standards, we monitor performance, and we are accountable for the results. So, let me walk you through that. What we're asking tonight, we have two primary items before you. First, we want to share information and specifically provide a transparent look into the oversight systems the city has in place and the services guests are receiving at Agape House. Second, we want to share information in regards to our six-month contract for shelter operations moving forward and make you aware that the city has completed a formal competitive procurement, a full RFP process, and has entered into a six-month contract. This contract is defined with stronger metrics, accountability, and flexibility for the city moving forward. Before we get into where we are today, it's worth understanding how we got here. When the city opened Agape House, we were responding to an urgent community need. Homelessness concerns were increasing rapidly, and constituents and community members were raising concerns about public health and safety. Emergency contracts exist precisely for moments like this. They allowed us to stand up services quickly before a traditional procurement would have been possible. That emergency period gave us time to observe, collect data, and build towards a stronger contract that you'll hear about tonight. The city made a deliberate decision to move from a 16-hour to a 24-hour model. I want to explain why that is because this context is key in understanding the work that's happening today on the ground. Under the original model, about 75 guests had to leave the shelter every morning. That means people experiencing homelessness, many with serious mental illness, substance use disorders, and trauma histories, were back on the street each day. It also increased visible homelessness in the surrounding neighborhood and reduced the effectiveness of case management. The 24-hour model means a guest can stay and get respite and repair. This translates to stability. It means that the case managers on site can build deeper relationships with people in their path towards more permanent housing solutions. This is an evidence-based model and best practice for emergency shelter stabilization. Next, I want to share an overview of the services currently happening and how our team manages and supports our operator partner. On the monitoring side, our team pulls weekly calls for public safety data from the regional emergency communication center. We receive weekly outcome and demographic data from the operator as well, and we receive quarterly performance reports. City staff conduct regular site visits and maintain open communication with the operator to problem-solve as issues arise. In regards to response, when concerns do come up from neighbors, from city councilors, or from our own monitoring processes, we escalate these appropriately. We coordinate directly with our city teams between SFPD, fire, and city leadership. Contract compliance is monitored continuously, and in emergencies, operators are encouraged to work directly with 911 responders. In regards to services, Agape House provides medical care, mental health referrals, substance use support, and other wraparound services such as employment connections. Guests receive three meals a day. 90% of staff have lived experience. This model of care is key because it's rooted in trust and provides trauma-informed care in alignment with SAMHSA's six principles. Next, I'd like to share a little bit more information on the data we're receiving. Urban Alchemy has shared robust data, and as the San Francisco New Mexican reported earlier today, fire, police, and EMS calls are down 48% in the first few months of 2026 as compared to last year. Urban Alchemy does, as was previously mentioned, provide multiple data metrics on a weekly and a quarterly basis. Beyond that, we're in continuous and frequent communication with them on a daily and weekly basis around many other connection points across the community as well. So I want to share next some questions and answers in regards to the competitive process. First and foremost, I'd like to share the timeline of progress to date. As mentioned, the emergency contract was originally conceived in June of 2025. We have since issued an RFP. We received proposals back in May. We have conducted evaluation and negotiation, and we are moving forward with a contract award. What's different in the new contract? Diving deeper into some of these changes, the new contract is materially stronger than the emergency contract that preceded it. This again was intentional. We have several new changes in regards to reporting, staffing, the performance metrics, term and flexibility, and compliance and community relations. The new contract requires further specified metrics and standardized formats that are more appropriate for the data that we're receiving. It also specifies that we receive job descriptions and pay scales so that we can better understand the staff that are actually serving our clients on the ground and how that translates to success. We have standardized compliance measures that will not only apply to this new contract but actually apply to all of our homelessness contracts moving forward. This is part of a broader effort to build consistent accountability citywide framework. The six months also allow us to have two renewal options, which is again intentional. This provides the city more time and the structure needed to reassess, expand competition, or make changes if needed. On compliance and community relations, the new contract also emphasizes and helps promote some of the great work that's happening, including Urban Alchemy's hotline and some of the escalation procedures that do take place when issues occur. Of note, I'd also like to highlight some of the staffing changes, or rather not changes but considerations, in this new contract award. The new contract includes 26.5 FTE total, and those are positions and staff that are on site every week to operate the Agape House. This staffing model includes supervisors, practitioners, care coordinators, a kitchen supervisor responsible for three daily meals and food safety compliance, a project director, and a director of operations. Again, this level of staffing is quite robust, and it's important to ensure that we're providing proportionate services for clients in need. I do want to highlight some of the frequently asked questions we get and hopefully sharing some of these recurring themes. Agape is still a 24-hour emergency shelter, and as mentioned, we believe that this is a best practice to ensure public safety and client outcome success. Street outreach is covered in the city's work in a multitude of ways. We have our city teams that currently touch homelessness in a multitude of different structural elements. We have park rangers. We have constituent services that are constantly fielding community concerns, ARU, many other departments including youth and families. Then we also have our external partners, including the LifeLink and others who do this work on the ground. Staff at Urban Alchemy and at Agape House are using evidence-based de-escalation as a best practice. This is embedded in our contracts. The city is receiving robust data to evaluate success, and we've chosen to award Urban Alchemy due to again that formal RFP process and in line with our procurement standards. So next steps and looking ahead. I want to just close out by putting again some context on the table in terms of where we're headed as a division and the work that we hope to accomplish around homelessness moving forward. We will continue 24-hour operations and monitor performance against the stronger requirements in the new contract. Of note, we are also again working to standardize data and compliance across all of our contracts. We are also planning to launch a public-facing performance dashboard so that the community can see the results and the progress that we're seeing day-to-day. On the facility side, we are beginning to work on identifying a longer-term plan to replace 281 CIOS, keeping in mind that the building was never designed as a long-term shelter care facility. So, we are taking seriously this obligation to find something more suitable and sustainable moving forward. Finally, we're excited to invite community members and the public at large to our homelessness summit, which is currently scheduled for June 29th at the convention center in partnership with the Mayor's office. This will be an incredible opportunity for the community to come together and engage directly around our strategy and plans moving forward to hear from partners and help shape the work that's coming next. I hope you'll join us there. Thank you. I'm happy to take questions. Mayor: Okay. Thank you, Director Selvrey. Any questions from governing body members? Councilor Bamante: Thank you, Mayor. I just want to make sure that this new contract price accurately reflects what they see as a day-to-day operations model because there have been a lot of concerns that the previous contract, they ran through the money pretty quick, and so I just want to make sure that that has been looked at this time around. Director Selvrey: Councilor, yes, thank you for the question. So, we have done our due diligence, and we are very confident that within the budget that we've proposed, we should have again that very robust level of staffing, case management, and support at the Agape site. Councilor Bamante: Thank you. Mayor: Thank you, Mayor. Any other questions, Councilor Castro? Councilor Castro: Thank you so much. This might actually be a little bit more for Agape staff. So Mike, if you want to come up. I had a few questions about the levels of staffing that are available and potentially the housing for folks that we are welcoming into our community. Mike: Sure. Just for clarity in terms of what our staffing model is, Mr. Mayor and Councilor Castro, we have a practitioner role, a supervisor role, and then there's the management level role. So in a 24/7 facility, one of the things that we're trying to cover here is this is the micro. One of the things that we're trying to maintain is we're trying to maintain reasonable quality of life for the area right around the shelter. So during the day shift and swing shift, so that would be from 7 in the morning until 11:30 at night, we have a four practitioner, one supervisor model. For the overnight period from 11 to 7 in the morning, we go down to a 3-1 practitioner to supervisor ratio. So that's really where all the, where the primary amount of staffing comes from is that that's to keep everybody safe and the surrounding area qualified. Councilor Castro: And we had had some previous discussions about sort of regionally where you're getting some of your staff if we're having to bring in a lot of staff from other communities. How are we doing in terms of recruitment? Mike: We're doing pretty well. There's still, for this kind of work, it's very difficult work. And we're trying to identify men and women who have, who are kind of have lived experience and are ready and able to do this work. So we have currently, we have approximately across all of our programs, we have 36 active staff. That's more than what this contract is calling for because I'm also including the outreach services that are still currently running. And so most of those individuals come from the northern New Mexico area, if not the city of Santa Fe nearby, because they're drawing no more than 30, 45 minutes, less than an hour away. Thank you so much. And now there are some questions about where staff is living and potentially how recent that lived experience is. Do you have any context around how we vet folks being ready to serve the community? Sure. So, we do two things. They run through an interviewing process, of course. During that process, the second stage is the new employee orientation where our trainers and our leadership have an opportunity to see our potential employees, our new hires, in person. So, that's one of the places where people filter out. And then we have a 90-day introductory period where we're watching closely the performance of each employee. And if an employee is not performing during that period, of course, they're getting input along the way, we will terminate them before the end of that 90 days. And I would assume most of the folks have lived experience but are currently outside of the continuum of care or have permanent housing. Are we potentially employing people that are still precariously housed? So, what I would say to that, and what has happened in some cases this year for some of the employees who haven't remained employed with us, is that when they came to us originally, they were housed independently, they were living independently. Their circumstances changed, something happened, whether it's a relapse, a traumatic event in the community like a homicide of a personal friend. Those incidents can trigger relapses and then they may ultimately end up back in the continuum of care somewhere. I don't think I have too many more questions. I do want to commend you for the work that you've done. It is very difficult. I do have a little bit of a hesitation combining the emergency shelter with a work program, but I think we're doing the best that we can in our department to sort of meet the needs of both of these constituencies. So, thank you so much. Thank you. Counselor Barrett. Thank you, Mayor. I have a contract question. It says that the term of this is six months with an option to renew up to two years. Can you talk about how that is decided and who does that, and is it, I imagine, the same rate? I don't see details about that. Sorry, I just want to clarify that point. The contract is a six-month period with the option of extending beyond twice for an additional six months. So it would be a year and a half max. And who decides that? Would that come back to us? Would that be the City Manager? I'm seeing nodding, so it would come back to us. We would come back to you. Okay. Same rate? Mayor Garcia. Counselor Fidali. Yes. That's also intentional in that, like I said when I came to the podium, we really are understanding from our community that there's a lot of feedback around this issue, and we want to really honor what our community is asking for in having this shorter period so we can really review, assess, and make decisions in a way that our community voices are being heard and that council has the opportunity to also voice the needs of the constituents in their districts as well. Thank you. That's my only question. Barrett. Sorry, thanks. You know, I'm just kind of putting on my social worker hat here. As someone who's had experience and work experience in these types of jobs, I know we've had a lot of constituent concerns, mostly about the price tag. I feel like we're always hearing about that, and I know Director Emmery has brought that up too, like a lot of constituent feedback about why the price is so much higher. But I actually am a fan, from the social work perspective, of this dual model of getting people out of the system, providing employment workforce solutions, and also providing a direct service because they're doing both. I've gotten a lot of emails that people have reported, "Oh, Urban Alchemy says they're just providing jobs for formerly incarcerated persons," but they're actually doing two things. And I think that comes with a higher price tag. I think, did you say 25 employees FTE or 35? 36. So 26, right? So we're providing all of that employment, too. So I think when the public comes to us with those concerns, we also have to think about it that way. And I also think, you know, how much it costs to incarcerate a person in America. That price tag is running through my head, too. I think it's about $65,000 to incarcerate a person in America. So thinking about that and getting somebody workforce employment and stability, and having that lived experience and providing a direct service as a social worker coming from that model of ACEs and trauma, and then someone having that lived experience, and you can't put a price tag on that. And I don't think that our society can really put a price tag on that either, taking somebody out of the system and providing them stable employment in a caring, compassionate way. I think when we think of that high price tag, we also need to think of those things from the social services perspective. Thanks. Any other? Counselor Casset. Thank you, Mayor. And you know, I agree, Counselor Barrett, that there is a lot of benefit to this dual program. You know, especially when we talk about how much economic, oh, that was very nice, thank you, how much economic inequity is so intrinsically related to the increase that we are seeing in people who are experiencing homelessness. I also think it's important, you know, to Director Emory's point, maybe it was Leah's, I can't remember, but this is what it costs to do this. And one of our big challenges was that people were getting kicked out during the day. And so that was causing a lot of the concerns that we were seeing in the Seros Road corridor. And so, I think it is important that we invest in this money or invest in this program. It is a lot. To Counselor Barrett's point, this is also preventative as well. It's a lot cheaper to prevent homelessness than to treat it. And we know that a lot of individuals that are coming out of incarceration, many of them wind up homeless. And so there are a lot of positives to the combination here. I have a question that you probably don't have an answer to. It's not a fun question, which is that we have a timeline for which we have to move away from 2801 Sus Road. As I frequently tell people, if there was an easy solution to where we should move the shelter, we would have done it a very long time ago. And this has continued to be a challenge as to where can we go. I know there's been discussion around building. I've, you know, we don't seem to take capital projects on very quickly for a variety of reasons. So I am curious where we are in this challenge of, you know, we have a deadline, which is good. I think we need to put a deadline. But it is complex and it is going to cost us money. And I also think that as we look at kind of the combination of services that we have here, we have locked in already on a few key places. You know, we stood up Consuelos, that one's on our responsibility checklist. We have the pallet shelters, that's on our, or the micro community, excuse me. That's on our responsibility checklist, as is this one. And so, you know, I think that when we take a look at, I know there's a variety of different programs and things that people are talking about, and that's really wonderful. The city has already committed to these three, and we really do need to see them through. So I'm curious if there is any update on how we are going to do this previously, you know, seemingly impossible task of actually moving to a more appropriate location. Thank you, Counselor Cassid. And I do just kind of want to underscore a bit of what you said because I think it's important to name in particular that this facility at 281 Crios is just really not designed for this use case. And as a result, regardless or agnostic of whatever provider is there, they're going to have an uphill battle in doing good case management and ensuring that there's trauma-informed care in a congregate setting with individuals with very high needs, often co-occurring challenges around substance use and significant mental illness in the space that they're currently residing within. So point very well taken. I think in regards to plans moving forward, one concrete opportunity will be our homelessness summit coming up the end of the month. And through that convening, that event is intended to be a catalyst event that brings together the county, the state, philanthropic partners, city staff, right, affordable housing leaders to really develop and build some of these longer-term plans and, you know, really identify what those priorities are because we have several different models. We have micro communities, we have, you know, non-congregate adaptable reuse, right? There's lots of models that work out there, and there isn't a right or wrong answer. But being able to move forward with a clear idea of exactly what we want to accomplish by when and aligning those stakeholders so that we can meet those deadlines and be successful. So I'm very hopeful in, you know, the promise of that event that we'll be able to kind of put forward some initial plans beyond that. And because we want to make sure that we're dovetailing with an implementation portion, we are also pursuing a strategic planning process, and more to come about that in the subsequent months. But we're hoping through that process, we really want to make sure that the plan is actionable. So we will be defining, you know, roles and responsibilities, funding streams. We also know that in the past, you know, the state has been a tremendous partner in funding some of this work. So we will be, you know, definitely, no stone unturned, right, in terms of making sure that first and foremost, we're driving results for clients and folks in need. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. And Leah, can you speak a little more to, you know, to your very well-taken point that this was never designed for this use? And I know one of the challenges is that this was supposed to be just an emergency winter shelter. The nature of the problem grew, and people, you know, this grew out of people's desire to help this population. And I mean, it just, the nature of the problem has changed. So when you are talking about what an appropriate building or location looks like, what are those criteria that we are looking for? Yeah, that's a great question, Counselor. So a few things that we would be looking for specifically, you know, again, and there are different models, right? So different models will be more amenable to certain populations. Right now, we're seeing the highest need for specifically chronic individuals and again, folks with that co-occurring significant mental health and/or substance use disorder. So, for those clients in particular, often we're able to see better outcomes and get people out of encampments and off of the streets indoors when they are able to have privacy, when they're able to bring their personal belongings, their pets, their partners. We call it the three Ps. And really again, when they're able to have respite because many of these individuals have significant trauma. I've heard stories about folks who come inside and the first week that they're indoors, they're literally sleeping the entire time because they haven't had, you know, a solid night's rest in however many years, right? So, this is again just to name and really underscore that the clients that we're serving will have significant needs. So for those folks and for the 100 folks that are currently being served at Agape, ideally, I think we'd be looking at congregate, or sorry, non-congregate if we're able to find a non-congregate option. So something like micro-communities might work well, something like again, adaptive reuse of a motel, hotel building. Unfortunately, with more brick-and-mortar models, they take more time, right, and more funding investment. So again, lots of community conversations we have to have to build that plan and make sure that it's feasible. But low barrier, ideally non-congregate or a combination of semi-congregate, and again, just with these really robust services so that we can make sure that we're aiding people into getting back on their feet. Mayor: Wonderful. Thank you. I appreciate that. And then, I know that there is, this has been a challenging site for the surrounding community. We also know that shutting down beds can cause a lot of problems. We've seen this. Española experienced this quite a bit when their shelter closed and they had an encampment, and then they said no more to their sanctioned encampment, and then you started hearing from a lot of businesses. So, I mean, it really, there is about, you know, how do we make sure that people have a place to go so that they are somewhere that is safe for them to be and that is also safe for the surrounding community? So as we're talking about that longer-term plan, and I know this could be a long conversation, so short answer, but around, you know, how do we also make sure that we are creating a place and what are some of the best practices when we look at creating a place that is beneficial for both the clients inside as well as the surrounding community and surrounding neighborhoods or businesses, or the people that are going to be having these individuals welcoming them as their neighbors? Absolutely. Yeah. And I think some other sort of plans that I'd love to share that our division is working on to that end. So we are in the process of developing an encampment management policy and procedure that would help kind of lay the foundation for how again, our community-wide teams are addressing particularly street homelessness and folks living outside in arroyos and encampments, places that are not intended for human habitation. And part of that process would be setting clear criteria so that we have an equitable approach that stands up to regulatory constraints and things, and making sure that we adhere to public health and safety first and foremost, but ultimately all with the intention of getting folks into shelter and housing and back on their feet. Mayor: Wonderful. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Looking forward to the summit at the end of the month. So thank you to you and to Mayor Garcia and to everybody who's been putting in that work and our community partners for getting that planned. So this is, this is really, this is challenging, really challenging work, and I really just want to thank everybody for everything they're doing here. Thank you. Any other questions? Councilor Barrett: Just another comment. And I know when I met with Leah when I first started, we talked about this, but because this is, as Councilor Casset just said, it's bigger than Urban Alchemy, right? This whole conversation around homelessness. And I know the summit's coming up, but just so the community knows, and I think they already do, but we have to be doing all the things, right? It's not Urban Alchemy versus anybody. It's all of us together and all these service providers together. That's why this summit is going to be amazing, coming together for these long-term solutions because we need Urban Alchemy, we need Interfaith, we need Consuelos, we need safe parking lots, we need all our pallet shelters in all of our districts to solve this problem. We all have to come together as a community to work on this for our unhoused neighbors and friends. So I just think it's good to have maybe like a mentality or like a paradigm shift that nobody is working against each other. We're all working together as a community to solve this issue. Thanks. Mayor: Councilor. Any other questions? I do have one question for the Urban Alchemy team. So I don't know if Mike is best to answer this, but we've heard a lot from folks regarding the current policy where I think, and maybe you can correct me if it's wrong, folks are eligible to hold a bed for three days. And so I guess I question because it's built into the contract that there has got to be a certain percentage of bed utilization on the contract. It's 85%. So I guess twofold question. What is the current utilization percentage? I'm pretty sure, Mr. Mayor and counselors, thanks for the question. I'm pretty sure that that percentage was in the Q3 report. I think it was 93% for Q3 was the percentage there. Mayor: Okay. Given 93, that's great, but that still ultimately means seven beds that somebody could be in. And the previous operator allowed 100% capacity. So is there a way you can build it into your policy to where we don't have a vacancy at all? And I understand the philosophy why you have folks have a reserve space because it creates a much more sustainable process for somebody. But in the instance where, and I don't know if this is an extreme, where you might have a vacancy a particular night of 20 beds, 25 beds, I'd hate to have any number of beds go unoccupied. So can you tell me more about how you might be able to mitigate that as much as possible? So what I can tell you is that we're trying to do best practices as much as possible in order to keep our beds full. A typical, in a performance-based contract for 24/7 shelter, low-barrier shelter services like this, a typical bed occupancy rate, that's the kind of the bottom threshold, is 90%. So that's kind of what always to make sure that we never, we never want to reach that. The reality is, in the waiting list that we're working from, we're constantly trying to fill the beds that we have except for the medical respite beds. So we always try to do our best to keep one or two, one medical respite bed open for men and one open for women in case there's a discharge from the hospital that they're not ready to go directly out to the street and live on their own. So that's the typical thing. I will say that as the year has gone on, our occupancy rate has really increased. I think you'll see in this last quarter of the year, we're typically above, we're at 95, 97. We've had a few nights in the past week where we've been over capacity where we actually did set up a cot for somebody who came from the Hugs program that we didn't have a bed for. We opened up, we set up a cot for them in the main day room. So we're doing the best to fill up our beds. And if someone comes in a kind of a crisis circumstance and their story matches, we'll try to meet their needs if they're the ones who are showing up. We'll try to meet their needs the best we can. Mayor: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Ander. I appreciate it. No other questions for me. Thank you. Any other questions from governing body members? And if not, what's the will of the body? Move to approve. Second. Mayor: Okay, we've got a motion and a second. Any discussion? Hearing none. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Yes, Mayor. Councilor Garcia? Yes. Councilor Barrett? Yes. Councilor Bamante? Yes. Councilor Casset? Yes. Councilor Fagali? Yes. Motion passed. Mayor: Okay. With that, it is 7:00. Is there a will from governing body member to modify our agenda? I move that we go directly to petitions from the floor and then resume with our usual order of business. Second. Mayor: Okay. So we've got a motion to modify the agenda and second. Any discussion? Hearing none. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Yes, Mayor. Councilor Barrett? Yes. Councilor Bamante? Yes. Councilor Casset? Yes. Councilor Fagali? Yes. Councilor Garcia? Yes. Motion passed. Mayor: Okay. And we are going to go move to petitions from the floor. That's the same process as normal. Every individual gets two minutes. Please identify yourself with your address, if not by your council district. And you will hear some type of music, chime, or sound as your time has wrapped up. So with that, we're going to take comments here in the auditorium first. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and City Councilors. My name is Kathy Garcia, a renter in District 2 and a staff member of Chainbreaker Collective, a member-led economic and environmental justice organization with over 800 dues-paying members, the majority low-income people of color living on the front lines of the housing crisis. Chainbreaker Collective supports the approval of the MATA 50-year ground lease sponsored by Mayor Garcia and Councilors Casset and Faulkner, and we urge the governing body to provide a unanimous yes vote to approve the Midtown Art and Design Alliance's application for a 50-year ground lease with the city. For the past seven years, Chainbreaker members have been working with the city and partner organizations to create the Midtown Community Development Plan, the Midtown Master Plan, and now the Hopewell Man Neighborhood Stabilization Plan. Each of these grounded in the Residents Bill of Rights passed unanimously by this council in 2015. Starting in 2018, the Midtown Engagement Partners combined the efforts of multiple local organizations to conduct deep community engagement during the height of the pandemic to ensure the people most vulnerable to risk were centered in the development of the Midtown campus and surrounding neighborhoods. The Midtown Arts and Design Alliance, born from this community process, is based and built entirely on these two community-developed Midtown plans. Chainbreaker members will celebrate approval of this project as the first action taken by this governing body to honor the original purpose of the campus, to honor the culture of our shared history, and to honor our shared futures by minimizing the harm of gentrification and displacement. Just as we have for the past 21 years, Chainbreaker will continue to organize, educate, and activate members around the community development plan and look forward to further opportunities to celebrate true community-led processes. Vote yes tonight. Thank you. My name is Greg Melo. I'm with the Los Alamos Study Group, headquartered in Albuquerque. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and councilors, for the opportunity to speak with you this evening. I think the first thing I want to say is that some of you may know that the National Nuclear Security Administration had put in a proposal to take over the Midtown campus with the city and turn it into a national center for nuclear weapons. And fortunately, the city in its wisdom, because of the processes that the city had undertaken, did not seriously take, say yes to that proposal, even though the federal government was ready to expense out all of the environmental remediation and construction at the site without any risk of the city other than the purpose of it. I would like to say that we're very concerned about the expansion of plutonium pit production at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Last week, the House of Representatives passed a bill which would statutorily require Los Alamos's pit production to increase, essentially double, so that this would not be just a Trump administration proposal, but also a law should it pass. At the moment, we don't see a lot of barriers to that. This is this year a $2.5 billion ask for next year for the lab, and it has a lot of externalities here in Santa Fe. I want to say that I'd be happy to brief members of the council who could perhaps have this discussion on behalf of other members of the council so that people could come up to speed on this since it's not well reported in the newspaper particularly. The county has expressed itself, even faintly, in opposition to the plutonium pit mission of Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the NNSA has requested comments on its environmental impact statement about this. So the time is ripe, and I think I'm over for time. So, thank you very much for your patience and Godspeed to all of you in the decisions you're making this evening. All right, let's not have this argument, Mayor. Let's not. I'm giving you my name. Attorney, let's stop this. You're not going to get my name. So, yesterday could have been a beautiful thing. Beautiful. The Southside needed that meeting. It's needed that meeting for a long time. You guys made it a political spectacle. It did not need to be in Spanish. I'm sorry. This is America, English. Tonight, you spoke Spanish in our council meeting. Okay. Did you know that you have to have a translator to translate that to people that do not understand Spanish? What you did was so disrespectful to your constituents that do not speak Spanish. That is horrible. And I have respect for what you guys did yesterday. I may not like you guys, but I respect what you did. Let me tell you another thing. If you don't like your job, quit. If you need help, you guys took this job knowing what you signed up for. I don't work for you. You work for me. I am the people. We are the people. You don't work unless this person comes to you with a project with money in their hands. That's not the way it's supposed to work. You work for us. We don't work for you. When we call you, we expect to get a call back. When we ask for help, we expect for help. You guys are talking about homelessness. Do you understand? Have you ever lived on the streets? I want one of you guys to go out there and spend the night on the streets with a homeless person. Go a day in their shoes and see what it's like. You don't understand. They're drug addicts. They have mental issues. 90% of them don't want to be put into housing. They'd rather be on the streets because they can do what they can do. Your time is expired, sir. Good evening. Good evening, Mayor and Counselors. My name is Dave Weir, and I serve on the board of Interfaith Community Services. Tonight, I'm speaking to you on behalf of the hundreds of Santa Feans who are unhoused and thousands of our community supporters, many who sent 675 individual letters of support of The Rock to you in the last 24 hours. We're asking you to specifically list The Rock on the city's Infrastructure Capital Improvement Plan and identify Interfaith Community Services as the community partner. Santa Fe has already adopted a homeless action plan. That plan calls for expanded day services, outreach, navigation, coordination, and community partnerships. The Rock directly advances all of these priorities. At the same time, our community is facing growing pressure from homelessness, behavioral challenges, and the fentanyl crisis. The New Mexico Department of Health recently reported a 104% increase in overdose deaths and a 131% increase in overdose-related emergency department visits in Santa Fe County alone, with all of them being fentanyl linked to the majority of these fatalities. These challenges place enormous pressure on first responders, law enforcement, emergency rooms, and taxpayers. Every day that people remain disconnected from services, the costs increase. The Rock already has $1.3 million in private funding and broad public and service provider support. The question is no longer whether we need solutions. The question is whether we are willing to align our capital planning with our adopted priorities. We request that you revise the city's ICIP plan from a general homelessness allocation to include The Rock, a shovel-ready project that will meet Santa Fe's needs both today and into the future. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Counselors. My name is Hadley Fairbridge, and I am a student of one of the board members of Interfaith Community Services. I am 14 years old, and I am going into my freshman year at Mandela International Magnet School. The request before you tonight is straightforward. The city currently includes funding for homelessness initiatives within the ICIP, but there is no clear identified project tied to those dollars. At the same time, Santa Fe has an adopted homelessness plan. The provider community has submitted a unified recommendation, and The Rock stands ready as a shovel-ready infrastructure project that directly addresses documented gaps in the continuum of care. Most importantly, this project already has $1.3 million in private funding committed. Opportunities like this do not come along often. The community has done its part. Philanthropy has done its part. Service providers have done their part. Now we are asking the city to do its part by aligning its capital planning with its stated priorities in the adopted homelessness plan. It is time to take action. Listing The Rock on the ICIP with Interfaith Community Services as the community partner creates accountability, transparency, and a clear implication of a pathway for a project that is already supported, funded, and ready to move forward. Quote Nelson Mandela: "As long as poverty, injustice, and gross inequality exist in our world, none of us can truly rest." Thank you for your consideration. Good evening, Counselors, Mayor. It's good to see you all in slightly different places. Congratulations. I'm going to speak informally. I have some remarks here, but I think I can keep it shorter by just saying I'm here to speak on 2025-38, adding seniors. You can just please. Matt Johns. Yeah. Although maybe I don't have to give my name. I don't know. 2025-38, adding seniors to the micro-community shelter site there near Fire Station 7. I just want to say I think the city has good reasons for that. I tried to listen to the last meeting. I'm not sure exactly what those reasons are. It might be beneficial to add seniors to the mix of families with children and youths, but my research indicates that micro-community sites are typically very siloed in who they're serving, and there are reasons for that because it makes them successful. And I just want to say that it's important that the city be successful. And I don't, I just want to make sure that the staff and the counselors are considering, you know, are you meeting seniors' needs? Are you meeting families with youth? Are you meeting youth's needs? If you're combining these populations, it might be a perfect mix. It's just not standard. And that's per Portland State University's Homeless Research and Action Collaboration that found stakeholders consistently identified 20 to 30 residents as the ideal size and that there was a community cohesion in that group. Briefly, I just also want to say that recent experiences at public meetings have indicated that some of us in District 4 are not feeling fully represented. You're awesome representatives, each and every one of you. And I think spend a little time to share with us your insights and your victories and your goals. We want to be represented. We trust you to make decisions for us, but you're representing us, and we want to know what you're doing, please. So, thank you. Not personal, just, you know, I know the other districts are doing meetings, and I don't see the same thing going on right now. Thank you. My name is Arthur Nudek, and I serve on the board of Interfaith Community Services. Every day Santa Fe's police officers, emergency workers, security workers are being called on to deal with the issues of homelessness. The city's own homelessness action plan recognizes the need for outreach, coordination, community-based responses. The Rock will directly support these issues. When people have nowhere to go during the day, they hang out at the mall, in the medians, and in arroyos, and the burden falls on law enforcement and security people to take care of their concerns and messes. The Rock is a shovel-ready project, and we have raised $1.3 million in private funding so far. I'm asking you, the city, to please put this project on your ICIP list that we might get this built and address our homelessness issue. Thank you for your time. My name is Pelican Lee. I'm part of the volunteer Housing for All Collaborative, and I want to talk about the new contract for six months with Urban Alchemy. Even though the title is emergency shelter, currently they are not operating as an emergency shelter by their own admission to our meeting in February. How is this contract different from the current contract that enables them to not operate as an emergency shelter? We don't have an emergency shelter now, and we desperately need one. Where are homeless people supposed to go with no emergency shelter and no sanctioned camping? The process for this contract looks very much like last year's rigged process. The contract is already signed before it comes to the City Council. Big time crunch. A lot of pressure about time. No transparency. How many other entities were solicited? How much outreach was done to find other entities to put out a proposal? There should have been other proposals. Was it already decided and not competitive? I think it was a mistake, and they're beginning to push out Interfaith because it was operating at a much cheaper, it didn't cost the city that much money. This contract went to only one committee, and it was not discussed there instead of the usual three. With this much money going to a vendor with consistent cost overruns and a shady reputation, they should get more scrutiny and more review. I don't understand why the city staff is not talking about The Rock as a longer-term plan. They were saying we don't have a long-term plan, but The Rock is there, ready, shovel-ready. All it needs is funding and support from the city as well as other entities. But to not even mention it earlier tonight seems like a real travesty. Thank you. Hi. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of the council. Nice to see you. My name is Marisol Atkins. I'm a consultant with LES Soul here in Northern New Mexico. And I'm working with Interfaith Community Services and a number of other providers throughout our community. I just wanted to thank you, Counselor Barrett, for your comments earlier. I absolutely agree with your points about all of us are needed in this community. All the service providers are needed. All of the resources are needed to come forward. And I just kind of want to piggyback on what a few other folks stated. We understand that this issue of homelessness is so challenging for all of us, and we're all trying to do our part. And we understand that the city has an issue with 2801 Cerrillos Road needing to close in the near future. We have a solution that we're bringing forth. We've done our homework. We've reached out to the community. We have multiple, multiple support letters for our work. We have a trauma-informed design architect on board who's helping, and we have a lot of resources already in place. I just want to echo what Pelican said. We have a solution that's here, and we're here to help you. That's why we're here. That's why we continue to reach out to see if we can be included in the ICIP. We cannot access state funds without a local fiscal sponsor. We went to the county a few weeks ago, and they felt that this issue is in the purview of the city. So, we're here now at the city. We really need your assistance to try and gain state funds, and we're willing to do our part, and I think we've shown that we are doing our part. So thank you for your consideration of including with clear language on the ICIP request that Interfaith be a partner. I also, one last thing, want to mention Consuelos is running because Interfaith is the fiscal sponsor for that organization. That's why Consuelos is up right now. The mobile hygiene unit that the city purchased during COVID is running right now because Interfaith Community Services stepped up, applied for funding at the Department of Health, and asked to run that for the city. I think Interfaith has shown that they've been a very good partner, and we want to continue to be so. Thank you. Hi there. My name is Erica Kidd, and I don't quite know what's going to come out of my mouth, so forgive me. Councilors and Mayor, I appreciate all of you. Thank you for your service. I've been a provider in the field for too long. I don't want to give away my age here, and I'm finding myself a little bit dumbfounded at the moment. I currently work at RiseUp Santa Fe. We provide furnishings to people coming out of homelessness. I've gotten one referral from Agape or a staff person. So I really want to encourage you to all speak to the different providers that all these wraparound services that are occurring because I'm not seeing it, and I connect with all different sorts of providers because they're all coming here for the people that do get housed. Question mark there. And I think they're a wonderful work program. They've been very clear they are a work program over and over again. And this work program, the commodity is our most vulnerable, most at risk for being exploited. So I want the best damn workers out there. Is that these folks? Maybe it is. But what I know about the Interfaith people is they've been doing this predominantly through volunteers. Food wasn't a problem, and it's actually pretty good. I served there a few times, and it's clearly they have found an option. It's ready to be dug, and please consider them for the ISIP funding. I am just really so confused. We're having the same conversations over and over again two and three years later. Apologies. Seems appropriate at this time. We need the micro-communities. We need Agape. We need more beds. We need housing. You want to end homelessness, you provide houses. That does not mean affordable housing. That means housing that can be subsidized for places for people to live, to work on their issues. And now we've got more feet on the ground, more bikes on the ground. Great. Let's criminalize it more to be homeless. Erica, that time has run out. I know. Thank you for letting me go on a little extra. Absolutely. Thank you for your comments. And this is also on the citizens of Santa Fe. It's not all up to you. And that's the bigger issue here with humanity not taking care of itself. Good evening. My name is Elizabeth West, and I live at 318 Senna Street in the South Capitol, and I'm here for a slightly different issue, although I'm very interested to hear the discourse amongst all of you. Thank you for moving forward on a very important issue, and I'm tempted to say, "Rock on," you know, but I'm here for something else that's also important to me, and that is that I do like what the H board does. They are an arm of your body. The governing body chose, along with other groups of people, including the Planning Commission, to get an H board going, and I think it's great. I attend pretty often, and I'm very impressed with the work they're doing. Likewise, I come here pretty often, and I really am thrilled with some of the new vigor and the way you're all working together. So, I hope you will pay attention to the name of Stephanie Benonato, who has the chops to be excellent on the H board. There's no denying it. Everybody basically almost begrudgingly agrees. She is a historian. I'd like to see her name addressed, and I hope you all will, I hope her name will be brought up for that position, and that you will vote unanimously for her. She knows her stuff. Do I always agree with her? No. But then you know me well enough to know I'm a nice person, and I do not always agree with anybody. Thank you very much. You guys are great. Hello, my name is Marcia Emerton, and I live in District 4, and I'm back again. Yay, Rock. First of all, I won't go over things, but yay, Rock. But in the meantime, what we could do on a shorter term is have a safe place for people to camp. I know it's hard. I know it's going to get a lot of feedback, but if we had a nice place with some porta-potties, maybe some water, and get everyone maybe who wanted to in one place where they were safe and not being harassed. The other thing is there's a movement now with really good people doing it to have safe parking spaces for people because there's a lot of people living in their cars, and it's hard, and then they have to move, and then people come up and rap on their windows. If we had a space, and I know Salvation Army's working on this, but anything you guys can do to push that along in any way so they can get some rest too. A lot of these people are working, and they just can't do the rent here. It's hard. Thank you for all you do. Is there any other member of the audience that would like to provide public comment tonight? If not, Madam City Clerk, is there anybody online? Yes, Mayor. We'll start with Kevin Rap. Hello. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and City Councilors. I'm here tonight speaking in regards to item 16B, as an owner in District 2 and an honored member of the board of Interfaith Community Services. Apologies, I wasn't able to make it there in person. In January, Santa Fe's homelessness providers came together and presented a unified set of recommendations to Mayor Garcia. That coalition included shelters, outreach teams, housing providers, healthcare partners, and community organizations. Among the priorities identified was the need for a community resource center that provides coordinated services, navigation, and safe daytime engagement. The Rock answers that need. Too often we talk about homelessness as if one program will solve it. The evidence shows otherwise, as has been discussed tonight and very well said by Councilor Barrett. Effective communities invest across the entire continuum from outreach and shelter to day services, housing navigation, permanent housing. And without those connections, people cycle between encampments, emergency rooms, living in their cars, detox facilities, and the criminal justice system. Those cycles are expensive, ineffective, and hard on everyone involved. The Rock is not a new idea. It is the implementation of priorities already identified by the provider community, already supported by private donors, and already aligned with the city's own homelessness plan. As we've been continuing to discuss tonight and previously, please list the Rock on the ICIP and identify Interfaith as the community partner. Thank you very much for your time. We'll move to Beverly Kellum. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, great. I'm Beverly Kellum. I'm the interim executive director for Interfaith Community Services. I know that you all know one of the big reasons I'm here this evening, but I would also really like to support the continuation of any kind of programs for seniors falling into homelessness. Just today, we had a 79-year-old man who was living in a rental home. The owner decided to sell the home, and he is now homeless and even more tragically has nowhere to go. There is no shelter right now. We are working with him to try to get him into one of the shelters, but it's tragic. And so I absolutely support adding seniors, which is probably the highest need population of all of the groups, to the pallet shelters and any other programs that we can continue for seniors. What I'd also like to say is not only despite what happened to our beloved organization last July, but because of what happened, Interfaith Community Services has mobilized to create something that Santa Fe desperately needs: a place for people who have no home to be both day and night, a place that gives them the resources and the opportunity to stabilize their lives and return to being productive members of our community. Like one of my former colleagues mentioned in a recent letter emailed to Mayor Garcia and signed by nine different homeless service organizations in our community, a permanent, adequately sized, low-barrier homeless shelter with intensive wraparound services was mentioned time and time again as a huge gap in our community, as was a hub for coordinated care and co-located services. The Rock offers all of the above. We can tell story after story of people who say their lives were saved because of the services we and our community providers provided. We cannot give up on the people in this community who have suffered the trauma of homelessness. But we need the city to step up in as powerful a way as Interfaith has stepped up. Thank you so much. We'll move to Stephanie Benonato. Good evening, Stephanie Benonato. I have to just say that I was very surprised about what Elizabeth West just said. I didn't prompt her. I didn't know. I'm almost reluctant to say anything tonight, but I have some things I'd like to bring up. I understand you want to put banners up for the International Film Festival, but we also have Route 66 banners. We have veterans banners, and we still have La Fonda's banners from four years ago celebrating their 100th anniversary. So, I wonder if these are sort of visual pollution. Do people really see them? And is the city going to be serious about taking down banners when they're supposed to? I know the veterans banners do come down. In terms of the study about your staff or the council, I was actually surprised that it was so conservative and just said, "Hey, let's have a coordinator." And I think that's a good first step because until the Charter Review Commission comes back and recommends changes, there may be significant differences in how the city operates under a strong mayor model. And to start staffing without knowing what that is, I think is putting the cart before the horse. And just because you allocated or reserved money for more positions doesn't mean it needs to be spent. And then, security. I see security people that the city hires walking around downtown. I don't find them to be effective. They may be effective at a particular place like a library or City Hall as a deterrent, but they're not really effective in the downtown area, just walking around sort of aimlessly. And then the other thing is I was kind of offended by one city councilor who wanted to tie safe parking to her support of increased lifeguards at Fort Marcy. I think they are two very separate issues, and they should not be combined. And again, I appreciate that Fort Marcy is open a couple of afternoons, but I hope that Perez will open. I understand it's a couple hundred thousand. You're throwing around a lot of money, millions of dollars tonight, and it seems like you can come up with a couple hundred. New York time has expired. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. There are no other hands raised in the Zoom room. Okay, with that, let's resume order of business, please. Okay, we're going to move on to item 10C. This is a request for approval of dates for governing body study sessions for the remainder of the year. And if the governing body study session dates are approved, consideration of approving the amended 2026 governing body and council committee calendar to include the governing body study session dates. And here to answer questions is Deputy City Manager Andrea Phillips and Legislative and Policy Innovation Manager Marcy Ianino. Good evening, Mayor Garcia, members of governing body. In your packet are a couple of options for schedules for study sessions. We've had some of you asking about when we could hold these, and so we wanted to just bring this for you all for a discussion. So there's a couple different calendars that we had put together, and really this is for you to decide what works for you. We have a host of topics that we could talk about in a study session. We also could do something where if there are business meeting or business items that need to move through on a committee that was scheduled for whatever evening, you could go ahead and hold that short meeting and then adjourn and go into a study session or even have a study session prior to the business meeting of the committee. So just with that, I was hoping that we might get some discussion going and some direction to staff so that we can prepare and get those scheduled for you. Thank you, Deputy City Manager Phillips. I'll turn it over to the governing body, Councilor Fagulli. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Deputy City Manager Phillips, for bringing this forward. I think many of us are very appreciative. I'm just going to say for my personal life schedule, option one would work better for me, but I can do either and would be happy to do either. So, thank you. Thank you, Councilor. Any other? Councilor Burr? Thank you. I just want to say thank you to you guys, too. I know you tried this before. This is round two. I know it's going to go through this time. I know we're going to vote on it. I have faith in us to do this this time. But I think it's really important because we're talking about all these issues: housing, unhoused, all these things. We need to be able to come together as a governing body for these study sessions so that can drive our policy, that can drive our planning. So I'm really excited about this. I could go either way. I'll be flexible, but I hope we can vote on it tonight because I think it's super important, and thanks for all your work and Councilor Castro, too, for your work and giving up a meeting. Councilor Casset. Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. I'm in favor of option two. For my personal life, it helps because I have tiny humans on Monday, so I like to not give up too many Mondays. But also, I mean, when we think about it from that standpoint, I think having all three committees impacted is just more equitable in terms of all of us having additional meetings in our schedule that we would not otherwise have, as well as each committee having an impact. So, my vote would be to go with option two. I imagine I can make option one work. I just may have a little shadow with me, but thank you. Anybody else? Councilor Faggali. Thank you, Mayor. One thing. So, Deputy Director, when we had spoken, not at this meeting, the idea was that we would have it after the standing committee, like we would have a standing committee that maybe didn't have presentations or only took care of necessary business and then have that after. Is that still the plan? Yeah. Thank you for that question, Councilor Fagali, and Mayor Garcia, members of the governing body. I think the idea with this is, whatever dates you all pick is just to provide some predictability for staff so that when Marcy and her team are working on scheduling legislation and those dates at which it would appear, we can understand what that looks like and plan accordingly for it. So I think there is an opportunity if we know in advance, we could work with the chair of that committee to ensure that the business meeting, if there needs to be one, is short. Or alternatively, if you're working on something that would impact public works or quality of life, for instance, maybe if the study session is on one of those nights, then the other committee could hear the item potentially if we need to move it through. Councilor Castro, you can feel free, the floor is yours. Wonderful. So, I'm going to move based on this conversation to approve option two. Second. Okay. So, we've got a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Seeing none. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Certainly, Mayor. Councilor Bamante. Yes. Councilor Casset. Yes. Councilor Castro. Yes. Councilor Fagali. Yes. Councilor Garcia. Yes. Councilor Barrett. Yes. Motion passed. May I ask a clarifying question? I just want to make sure we're on the same page. Are we anticipating that this would be at 5:00 or 5:30, or were you looking to do an afternoon prior to a business meeting? Do you want to, Damonte? Thank you, Mayor. I mean, it seems to me like if we have a very light schedule for whatever that meeting is, because I mean, a lot of these meetings do go by very quickly. I don't see a need to have to really come in earlier if we have that light schedule and we're just there to take care of essential business. It seems like we could do that in the first 10, 15 minutes of the meeting and then move on into the study session. Just my thoughts. Thank you, Castro. I do agree that we're trying to be efficient with our time. I realize it's summer and that we could potentially do some things a little bit earlier. I hesitate to make that decision without the rest of the governing body here. And because we normally do things in the evening, I would suggest that at least for the first one, maybe we can discuss it, we do it at 5:00 or 5:30. Okay, great. So that would, if I can just, so that would be the next one coming up, the first one coming up would be on July 1st. And just to confirm that would be a Quality of Life short meeting potentially and then the study session. That would be Wednesday, July 1st. And do you know yet what topic you might want to put on there? The reason I'm asking is just so that staff can be prepared and we can help facilitate a good conversation for you. Well, we can't decide because we've, or can we take action, Marcos? Can we throw out suggestions? Can we do kind of an informal poll, or can we make it a formal recommendation? This is a discussion item. So, I think you can certainly discuss and propose things to staff that could bring it back to you. A finalized schedule based off of option two. Okay. So, I guess the question is, I'm just going to say if somebody makes a motion and says we want the first meeting to be on apples, I don't want to, yeah, I don't want to throw out any influence on any topics or any that that would be allowable. Motion can pass and we then give direction to the Deputy City Manager. Yes, Mayor. Okay. So, I'll open it up. No, sir. Casset. My vote would be housing. So, I will make a motion and see how we all feel about moving for housing on July 1st. Second. Okay. So, there's a motion to have this first study session on the topic of housing. Any discussion? All right. Hearing none, Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Yes. Mayor. Councilor Casset. Yes. Councilor Castro. Yes. Councilor Fagali. Yes. Councilor Garcia. Yes. Councilor Barrett. Yes. Councilor Bamante. Yes. Motion passed for housing as the first study session in July. Okay, great. Okay, next item, please. We are moving on to matters from the City Manager. Mr. Mayor, I just have a few things, an announcement. And I want to let the councilors know that next Thursday, thanks to Elvin and all the team in HR, we're having a city health fair. I just wanted to bring it to everybody's attention. And then Monday, June 5th, even though I'm not wearing that hat right now, we are doing a push back for Engine 3. It was one of our capital outlay projects. I'm very proud of it. We'll be doing that on Monday at 10:00 at Station 3. So another brand new fire truck going into service and helping with the community. So, with that, I have no further else for me. Thank you. City Manager, can I, you said Monday, June 5th. I'm sorry. June 15th. I just thought. Okay. Thank you. June 15th. Got it. That makes sense. Monday at 10:00. We will move on to matters from the City Attorney. Thank you, Mayor. Members of the governing body, I recommend that the governing body close the public session for an executive session, consistent with the agenda as noticed in the agenda. I would move that we enter into executive session in accordance to the Open Meetings Act and MSA 1978 Section 10-15-1 Subpart H7, discussion subject to attorney-client privilege pertaining to threatened or pending litigation in which the public body is or may become a participant. Sorry. We've got a motion and a second. Is there any discussion there? Now, Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Yes. Mayor. Councilor Castro. Councilor Faggali. Yes. Councilor Garcia. Yes. Councilor Barrett. Yes. Councilor Bamante. Yes. Councilor Casset. Yes. Motion passed. Okay, so we will stand adjourned and we will resume shortly. All right. Okay. Perfect. Fabulous. So, pursuant to the Open Meetings Act Section 10-15-1J, I move that the governing body reconvene in open session and state for the record that the matters discussed in the closed session were limited to those specified in the motion for closure. Second. There's a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Madam, somebody, Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Yes. Mayor. Councilor Fagali. Yes. Councilor Garcia. Yes. Councilor Barrett. Yes. Councilor Bamante. Yes. Sorry. Councilor Casset. Yes. Motion passed. Okay. All right. We'll move on to matters from the City Clerk. I do have an announcement. So I just wanted to let you all know and the public that, in support of our department's integrated goal of increasing outreach to non-English-speaking communities by 30%, our team, in collaboration with our contractor Langen, implemented Spanish language translation capabilities within the public dashboards report a problem feature. This enhancement allows Spanish-speaking residents to submit service requests entirely in Spanish, significantly improving accessibility and engagement with city services. Requests are routed directly to our bilingual staff, ensuring accurate communication, efficient resolution, and a more inclusive customer service experience by removing language barriers. This initiative helps build trust, increase participation, and strengthen connections with our Spanish-speaking community. Also wanted to remind you all that there is the deadline for you to fill out the survey for the county and city joint meetings. So, please remember to meet that deadline. We are hoping to be on track for a July 30th joint city and county meeting. And with that, that's all I have. Mayor, we'll move on to communications from the governing body. Mayor: Okay. I'll just start to my left. Councilor Bamonte. Councilor Bamonte: Thank you, Mayor. So, just a couple things. Just want to remind everybody there's still time to register for the Next Generation Water Summit, which kicks off tomorrow. And I recommend anybody who's interested in water, at least try to view something online. And then also this Friday, Councilor Baron and I are having our Coffee with the Councilor at Iconic, not Second Street, Iconic on Lena. And so that'll be Friday at 10:00 a.m. and look forward to seeing you. Thank you. Mayor: Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Cassid. Councilor Cassid: Thank you, Mayor. The only thing I have is that tomorrow the Santa Fe Little League will be having their closing ceremonies at Ragle Park in the evening. I unfortunately won't be there, but my kiddos will be. And I just really want to congratulate the Santa Fe Little League on another wonderful season. It's just so much fun. There's always so many kids and families there. But also, kudos to the Parks Department, to the former District 2 councilors, and all the work that has gone into Ragle Park and the upgrading of those fields. They really, they look wonderful. They're just such a benefit to the community. So, I'm really glad that those investments have been made and they're working really well. So, other than that, I don't think I have anything else. Thank you. Mayor: Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Garcia. Councilor Garcia: I don't have anything tonight. Thank you, Mayor. Councilor Baron. Councilor Baron: Yeah, just second what Councilor Bamonte said. Come join us. Have a coffee with us. Doesn't matter what district you live in. We'll come say hi. Also, there's a World Cup watch party Friday at the Railyard. I think Economic Development's also a supporter of that event. It's Northern, I think Santa Fe Economic Development. 7:00 on Friday. That's at the Railyard. And then Latiara, you're a biker on June 13th. That's a Saturday there. It's for the BMX track for Skill Park, right? So you can go pop a wheelie over there or just watch. And then I think that's it. Oh, we're also, Councilor Bamonte and I are working on a family-friendly working group. This was initiated by the community, but we are planning a meet up at Ragle Park on June 19th at 5:00. Bring your kids. It's going to be family-friendly to talk about how to make Santa Fe a more family-friendly place and we'll have some snacks for adults and kids. Thanks. Mayor: Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Fagali. Councilor Fagali: Thank you, Mayor. Councilor Barrett took two of my items. Sorry. It's okay, Liz. It's okay. So yeah, Friday night, 7:00 Railyard, there will be a soccer watch party for the first US game of the World Cup. Saturday at the Lati, there'll be a ribbon cutting for the new Skills Park. And then, happy Pride everyone. We have the flag up and the parade is on the 27th, which I will probably say again at our next meeting. Thank you. Mayor: Thank you, Councilor. One update, just folks, don't forget first spray down of the year this Saturday, 11:00 a.m. Swan Park. Lots of kids participate, but that doesn't mean adults can't go and have fun under the fire hose as well. And then just a brief historical lesson for folks. English was not the first language spoken in this area. Spanish was not the first language spoken in this area. So we need to be an embracing community and honor all languages that are spoken in our community. So with that, I hope to continue my learning lessons and I apologize to my ancestors because my Spanish speaking skills are pretty poor lately. I need to beef them up. So that next agenda item, please. Mayor: Thank you, Mayor Wood. Mayor: Hold on one second. Did Elma join us finally? Mayor: Yes, sir. Okay. Mayor: Thank you, Mayor. We're going to move on to item 16. This is introduction of legislation. 16A is consideration of Bill Number 2026-12 and adoption of an ordinance. This is sponsored by Councilor Paul Bamonte and Mayor Michael Garcia. It's a bill specifying that specific and limited fishing events on city-owned property in the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed may be approved by the governing body. Councilor Bamonte. Councilor Bamonte: Thank you, Mayor. This just kind of helps open the way for a possible fishing tournament for the kids in September. So looking forward to that hopefully. Mayor: Thank you. I think Councilor Bamonte covered it. We, I think it's no secret that we've had some challenges in ensuring that there's sufficient water flow to have a fishing derby during the month of June and this is a tradition that we want to continue and so we're just exploring options how we can continue fishing derby tradition in the absence of water in the Santa Fe River. That next item please. Next item is consideration of a resolution. This is sponsored by Mayor Michael Garcia. It's a resolution adopting the City of Santa Fe's 2028-2032 Infrastructure Capital Improvements Plan. Just a quick update on this one. This is a process that we typically would go through. We're taking a bit of a different approach this year given that there was a law changed at the state level where any nonprofit would have to come to a municipality or county government to be included on their ICIP list to potentially qualify for state funding. And as exhibited by some of our commenters tonight during the public comment portion, organizations will have to be, and the approach I'm putting forth this go-round is we as a governing body would have to include them as a governing body because again, this is a process where I believe right now we have five entities that would like to be included on our list and so it will be up to the governing body how we move forward with those five requests. We'll have to move forward with an amendment of one or five of those requests and have them included. There is going to be a presentation from team member Sean Moody on the process during a Public Utilities and Quality of Life meeting that's coming up. And so that just kind of gives you some foresight in how we're handling the ICIP process this go-round. But that's next item please. Mayor: Next item is consideration of a resolution. This is sponsored by Mayor Michael Garcia and Councilor Alma Castro. It's a resolution authorizing the annual installation of 25 banners from October 1 to November 1 commemorating the Santa Fe International Film Festival along the Guadalupe corridor. I think this one's pretty self-explanatory. It's an opportunity to promote events that are happening within our community. So next item please. Mayor: Next item is 18 public comment on bills. This is first public comment, no action. 18A is consideration of Bill Number 2026-1, adoption of an ordinance sponsored by Mayor Michael Garcia, Councilor Alma Castro, and Councilor Pad Falner. It's a bill relating to the Santa Fe Homes Program and requirements for rental units amending Section 26-1.22 to make certain technical changes to clarify the calculation of fees paid in lieu of providing on-site affordable units to amend the fee in lieu calculation to use 30% of the area median income instead of 65% when determining base fee amount. This is the first opportunity for the public to comment on this proposed bill. Is there any member of the audience that would like to speak to this matter? Seeing none, is there any online? Madame City Clerk? City Clerk: Yes, Mayor. Stephanie Benonato. Stephanie Benonato: Okay. Stephanie Benonato, I am pleased that you are considering changing the fee in lieu. I have thought for a very long time that it is so low that developers would prefer it rather than actually providing affordable units and I think it has to be much closer to what a unit would cost in order to make it less attractive as the alternative to providing actual units. Thank you. City Clerk: Are there any other public comments, Mayor? There are no other hands raised in the Zoom room. Mayor: Okay, with that being said, let's go to move on to our next order of business. Mayor: Next item is 19. This is final action on legislation. This is a public hearing. 19A is consideration of Bill Number 2026-6 and adoption of an ordinance. This is sponsored by Mayor Michael Garcia, Councilor Pilard Falner, and Councilor Jamie Casset. It's a bill approving the ground lease and development agreement of a city-owned building, the Midtown Visual Arts Center with Midtown Arts and Design Alliance LLC. And here to present is Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency Deputy Director Carly Vendetti. Okay. So, this is a public hearing and what we'll do is we'll have a presentation from staff. We will then move on to public comment and then we'll move on to comments or questions from the governing body. So, with that, Kev, the floor is yours. Carly Vendetti: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Councilors. What I will say is that this is an abridged version of a presentation you've already seen. So, I have shortened it quite a bit just to make sure that we have enough time for any technical questions that do arise. Thank you so much, ITT. I figured it out today. You're on it as always. So, I appreciate it. Moving right along, I want to recap that MA and the city share a vision. When it comes to our shared vision, we all want to build an inclusive new city center to foster creativity, culture, and economic opportunity. As we touched on earlier today, it's really important that we continue to activate Midtown to get more eyes on those streets, no matter what condition they're in currently, because we will see more people joining our site soon. I really love having more neighbors and having more people to say hi to, not just the dogs that do indeed pass by my way when I'm walking around on lunch. So, there's quite a bit of proposed programming of a value of $3.8 million annually and that includes public partners that you heard from at the prior public hearing. This includes Youthworks who's here tonight, Make Santa Fe, SFAI of course as the original organization that created MA as an LLC, just to name a couple. Moving right along, I want to really dig into the community benefits here today because we have a myriad of community benefits, economic, environmental, social equity benefits, and cultural benefits, all which were called upon by the Community Development Plan which this body adopted in 2023. So really quickly high level, we're looking at financial sustainability with sliding scale lease rates ranging from $10 to $18 per square foot. We're looking at directly funding operational costs and debt service through this operational model, shared resources, through collaborative adjacencies, right? As people collaborate in our established, whether those be organizations of fiscal sponsorship or existing nonprofits, they can share the burden, right? They can apply for grants in a joint way as well as just share those operation costs so they're not covering those same overheads. As for environmental impact, of course, it's always a greener solution to pursue an adaptive reuse. In this case, we're not only renovating the Visual Arts Center, but there will be a transformational process undertaken for the historic barracks left from the Bruns Army Hospital. Moving on to social equity, we're empowering as a city in this case those organizations that are already doing vital work here in Santa Fe. Right? The recommendation of approval tonight only supports their mission further. And finally, we have that cultural synergy. As I said, we're supporting those organizations that have an impact across our age groups here in Santa Fe. Moving on, MA understands what they're getting into with the Visual Arts Center. Not only have they done a lovely analysis on the condition that the Visual Arts Center is currently in, they have split this up into a palatable three-piece process that includes Phase One, that darker blue in the top right. Marian and Tipton, they require HVAC and some MEP updates, as well as repairs to stucco patching, making those vibrant colors pop again. Phase Two includes Tishman, which is the larger portion of the Visual Arts Center. That's the more turquoise, the bottom right. And of course, Phase Three is the barracks remediation. This includes some site work, as well as some new construction and asbestos and lead remediation. As I said, the existing conditions are known by MA. They are aware that the Visual Arts Center requires floor placement of HVAC and plumbing, re-roofing, stucco repairs, some mold remediation in the case that there were some roof repairs required over the past couple years. And then the barracks, being a historic structure, needs a bit more work than that. Looking at the total project cost broken down by phase, Phase One is just over $7 million. Phase Two is over $11 million, and Phase Three, being the barracks, is over $9.5 million. Altogether, it's about $28 million. I won't make anybody do any math tonight. This includes hard and soft costs from the renovation costs we've spoken about, solar panel installation, tenant improvements to the soft costs of due diligence, project management, legal fees to get this sort of agreement up and going. We had quite a few meetings to complete it, financing costs, capital reserves, and three-year operating reserves with soft cost contingencies. Breaking down that Phase One a little bit more for all of you. When we look at Phase One, that $7 million does include fundraising philanthropy, some of that which has already been received or promised in cases. $200,000 of that being state capital outlay, which we will be the fiscal agent that helps them work through that process. There would be a small low-interest loan, and then they're also looking at some federal solar tax credits if they are still available. So, sources committed today include $3.5 million, and then there are some that are still in progress because the critical mass that they will receive upon this potential approval tonight will also help them gain that support. So, what is remained to fundraise is $2.6 million. And we do have faith as the MRA that they can pursue this and they will go after it once we receive this critical mass. Once they do reach 100%, they may start construction on Phase One. So, looking at their operating pro forma, their tenant rate and Tipton Hall facility rentals cover their operating costs and debt service. As I said before, they're looking at $10 to $18 per square foot. These are sliding scale, meeting organizations in the community where they are at, right? Because some are in spaces that aren't at $18 a square foot. Some can afford that, and they will afford that, and that will help support those that are maybe under fiscal sponsorship at this time. In addition to these items, they have three-year startup operating reserves because they are aware that they are a young organization. So, this has been demonstrated through our agreement. In addition, 15% operating cost contingencies include marketing costs for future tenants. And our assumptions in these cases include cost of living, annual rent, and operating cost escalations. Moving right along to the GLDA terms. I know I reviewed these during the first public hearing. However, the general terms show a 10-year term with the right to get another 10 years automatically. They can renew up to three additional times for a total of 50 years. As I said, they have to have 100% financing prior to construction commencement at each applicable phase. Community benefits are to include target lease goals of 75% nonprofits. And we say 75% nonprofits because there's also that balance of other organizations and consulting groups that these nonprofits need to even exist within the ecosystem, right? So, we want to make sure that they're all adjacent as well, and that those that can't afford the, say, $18 a square foot rent are there and paying it. We have comprehensive default and remedy clauses, thanks to City Attorney Marcos Martinez, who helped me throughout this process. I'm forever grateful. Performance and maintenance standards, as well as some very specific terms about fixtures, furniture, and equipment. Anybody who's been in the Visual Arts Center knows that some of our fixtures, furniture, and equipment were specifically designed for this building. So, well, three buildings, excuse me. So, those will be a part of those buildings in perpetuity, as well as insured as necessary. Throughout the process, they have to do a significant amount of notification and reporting to myself, which I could then report to you at any time. If you would like to request an annual report, we may. In the case of reporting, they have reporting on a quarterly basis during construction, annual reporting for the terms of leases, notification of subleases to the MRA, and then the notification of donor acknowledgment. As I said, we have quite a few mutual protections. Those fall under our indemnity clauses, as well as insurance requirements. The GLDA also requires compliance with the New Mexico Tort Claims Act if that were ever to be adjusted or graduate and rate. So, the next steps, since I'm recommending approval this evening, include looking ahead at what their development schedule is. If approved this evening, there's a 45-day wait period for the effective date, and then they'll start moving through the administrative development plan approval process with land use, followed by their 100% financing and pursuit of building permits. We then hope that they will begin renovations in Phase One, Q1 of 2027. Mr. Mayor, I'm happy to stand for questions. Mayor: Are there any members of the public that would like to speak to this item? Not seeing anybody in chambers. How about online, Madam City Clerk? City Clerk: Yes, Mayor. One hand is raised. Stephanie Beninato. Mayor: Okay, Ms. Beninato, the floor is yours. Stephanie Beninato: Thank you. I'm happy to see that this lease is comprehensive, or the agreement is comprehensive, that they're not asking the city for any funding, except that obviously the lease is what the city is providing, the ground lease, and that they're not going to start construction until they're fully funded, that there's all these protections for the city, because again, when the university went in, Santa Fe University of Art and Design, suddenly the city was paying for an improved cafeteria that never was fully used. And there's still a lot of infrastructure costs, not necessarily just with these buildings, but on the campus itself. So, I am happy to see that there will be this arts center, that they will be providing space for nonprofits, but that they're realistic in terms of financial responsibility and liability, etc. And so, I hope that it will work out very well for everybody. Thank you. Mayor: Is there anybody else online, Madam City Clerk? City Clerk: Yes, there is, Mayor. Cheryl Odom, the floor is yours. Cheryl Odom: Okay. I'm sorry, I'm looking at all these. I just want to say how thrilled I am that this is finally coming to pass. Years of work have gone into this by this group, and I just want to honor them for all of their hard work and making this building usable and wonderful again, and that the whole community is going to benefit from this. Okay, I'm done. Thank you. Mayor: Thank you. Are there anybody? City Clerk: No other hands are raised in the Zoom room, Mayor. Mayor: Okay. With that being said, I'll go ahead and turn to the governing body for any questions. Councilor Faggali. Councilor Faggali: Thank you, Mayor. I had many questions, but I spoke to Deputy Director Vendetti many times over the course of the last month since we got this document, and I am pleased to say that all of my questions have been answered, and I think this is going to be a really good project. So, thank you for your work. Mayor: Any other questions? Councilor Garcia. Councilor Garcia: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You know, first go-round, there was a lot of questions over funding, and I think that's the biggest issue. It seems like many of those have been resolved. In regards to the remaining funding, you said that you have faith that they are going to be able to come up with that. What would be the, what's the pathway forward for that remaining funding that is not really being guaranteed at this point? Carly: So, Mr. Mayor, Councilor Garcia, in the case, they can pursue additional philanthropy, as well as a low-interest loan. They do have some interest, and they have approached a lender. I can't exactly speak to what sort of rates they're looking at. However, in this case, they can always pursue the gap that way, and they do have debt service considered in their pro forma. Councilor Garcia: Thank you. And they do have the wherewithal to take on that debt. Carly: Mr. Mayor, Councilor Garcia, that is correct. Councilor Garcia: Yeah. I see it as just a net positive for our community, including all the members that are, would be there. I do like the fact that we are retaining ownership of property. It is a lease. That has always been a positive and a plus on my side. I just, I like the proposal. You have done a lot of work. So, I do commend the group and you, Carly, for working this through. And so, I stand in support. Thank you. Mayor: Any other questions? I just want a quick comment. This is a great opportunity to demonstrate, you know, 3P opportunity, public-private partnership. And so, all the best should this pass. I don't want to get ahead of myself. So, we still got to vote. So, with that being, no other comments or questions. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? City Clerk: We need a motion, sir. Mayor: Approve. Councilor: Second. Mayor: Got a motion and a second now. Sorry, I was jumping way too ahead of myself now. Any final discussion? Roll call vote, please, Madam City Clerk. City Clerk: Yes, Mayor. Councilor Garcia. Councilor Garcia: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Barrett. Councilor Barrett: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Bamante. Councilor Bamante: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Cassett. Councilor Cassett: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Faggali. Yes. Motion passed. Mayor: Okay. I know you're happy. I apologize, but I got to say, no chairing or booing are allowed in the audience. Next item, please. City Clerk: Next item. 19B is on the agenda because it was originally noticed, but it is going to have the public hearing on June 24th. So, we'll move on to 19C. This is consideration of a resolution. This is sponsored by Councilor Jamie Casset, Councilor Amanda Chavez, and Mayor Michael Garcia. It's a resolution approving the adoption of the Santa Fe Midtown Metropolitan Redevelopment Area Plan. And I believe Carly, Carly, Carly, Carly, come back. You're not done. You got one more item. The Midtown Redevelopment Agency Department Deputy Director is here to present. Carly: Hey, the floor is yours. Thank you, Mayor. Apologies, I had to get my other notes. Thank you again, Mayor. Thank you, Councilors. I really appreciate the quick turnaround between my two items. So, really quickly, this has been before the Metropolitan Redevelopment Commission, which recommended approval, as well as the Economic Development Advisory Committee, which also recommended approval. It was an honor presenting to those commissions, and I'm happy to present this evening as well. So, there has been quite a concentration on the redevelopment of both the Midtown site, as well as the commercial corridor for quite some time. This is the culmination of many planning efforts dating all the way back to 2009, St. Michael's Drive Visions of the Future. I feel as though that does not get as much attention as the Remic because it has a catchier name. But I really want to make sure that we take into account 2009 as a part of this process. We're on Resolution 2 of 3, so more than halfway there this evening. Resolution 1 was the area designation to designate the Midtown Link corridor as the Metropolitan Redevelopment Area, with the exception of a few pieces which I will outline in the following slides. Right now, we're on the resolution which will hopefully adopt the Metropolitan Redevelopment Plan as recommended. And then Resolution 3 is to implement a Tax Increment Financing District. So the Metropolitan Redevelopment Area designation required us to look at criteria from the state statute. We made a distinction whether those fell on the Midtown site proper or the larger commercial corridor. In this case, we looked at criteria as in defective or inadequate street layouts, deteriorated or deteriorating structures, environmental hazards, faulty lot layouts, high crime rates or public safety concerns, obsolete or impractical planning and platting. As I said, we had to determine which were the applicable criteria. So, in this plan, we could determine how we would change or stop the spread of these conditions. So this area was amended to include the Franklin Miles Park by then-Councilor Garcia, now Mayor Garcia. And we also decided not to include the Dos Santos Apartments because that would be considering those slum or blighted in their condition, and we did not want to name any residential property in that way without proper engagement from the community. So to paraphrase the intent of the Metropolitan Redevelopment Plan, it aligns with the vision of the redevelopment plans we've already pursued. They tie in almost like a nice piece of plywood. We have quite a few chips overlapping, but ultimately they're all a piece of the same board. We want to support the existing adjacent neighborhoods in this process while creating a vibrant community with a diversity of housing types and developing in a climate-resilient manner. As part of this plan, we identified some of our national best practices that we could use as comps. In this case, Tax Increment Financing Districts are a common tool that help us not only accomplish redevelopment projects, but take on large infrastructure needs. So, in the case of this plan, we called on a couple case studies including Old Boise District, Village of Glenview in Glenview, Illinois. It was previously an old aircraft base for the Air Force that has been in redevelopment since 1995, most comparable to that of the Midtown Redevelopment site. And the key takeaways from the three case studies included in the plan is that infrastructure is difficult to finance without a special tool or district. In this case, we're looking specifically at TIF, and TIF can be used to leverage or create a higher ROI on public investment. As part of this study, we put together a market study. Of course, we had two consultants, Plan being the main consultant with a subconsultant SB Friedman. SB Friedman put together Addendum B for the market study, and their conclusions and demand projection showed that we will be able to absorb the 1,100 units that are projected for the site. Of course, this will happen in phases that we've seen some of the ENAs come forward and this governing body has approved them. In addition to these hundreds of homes, our market demonstrates an opportunity for additional research, light industrial, and lab space on the Midtown Redevelopment site. It was also proposed that the campus have a conference or continuing education facility used for future large-scale events aimed towards professional development and conferences. So, the recommendations and implementation of this plan includes seven different goals here. And across these goals, we're looking at targeted interventions both on the Midtown site as well as throughout the dynamic commercial corridor. Goal 1 being about creating convenient connections, fostering high-quality built environments. In Phase 2, improving safety across the commercial corridor, addressing environmental challenges through resilient design strategies that have already been recommended in the redevelopment plans. Establishing a better connected block layout with public spaces. Once again, just reiterating what our redevelopment plans have tasked us with accomplishing. Goal 6, including our expansion of housing variety, affordability across AMI. And then 7, of course, is about vibrancy and creative business activity. As I've kind of previewed, we are proposing the implementation of a Tax Increment Financing District. This Tax Increment Financing District could be overlaid across the entire commercial corridor or it could be a district specifically on the Midtown Redevelopment site. It ultimately depends on what sort of progress we make with our other counterparts, that being Santa Fe County and the New Mexico Tax and Revenue Department, in this pursuit of TIF enabling legislation and whether or not they'll let us in on any of their increment. Substantial revenue from this TIF would be from these listed here: property tax base, GRT base, stabilized property tax, annual growth rate, stabilized GRT, and new development. Of course, we have quite a few undeveloped parcels on the Midtown site that we are not seeing any benefit from at this time. So, not only will we see increment from the improvement, that being previously vacant land, we'll also see increment from GRT based on construction work and then continued property taxes in the long term. So, moving on to the part of the conversation that may get a little bit murky, and I may call on City Attorney Marcos Martinez. As part of this plan and as part of this area, we look to establish authorities for the Metropolitan Redevelopment Commission. The commission would only have these authorities, and I may make the note that these are only the subtitles of those authorities. They will have these authorities under the state legislation only within this area as you have designated it. So in the future, if there is a new Metropolitan Redevelopment Area designated, that new commission can propose altogether a different set of authorities as proposed under the state legislation. So, not to name every single one here, but they have gone through these in a thoughtful manner with our City Attorney, with Mayor Garcia, with myself, to identify what would be necessary to take to task these redevelopment plans as well as this Metropolitan Redevelopment Plan. So, keeping that in mind, I'd be happy to discuss any of these authorities in hypotheticals or detail, but I want to make sure that we know that these are only the subtitles and we get into deeper detail later on in the plan. With that note, our next steps include enacting Tax Increment Financing through another resolution in the future if this plan is adopted as recommended tonight. Our next steps within that include updating TIF projections with a consultant that would likely be SB Friedman. We're working through a proposal with them right now. Undergoing conversations with the Santa Fe County and New Mexico Tax and Revenue, as well as just enacting that TIF resolution with the percentage in which we want to divert GRT increment within this region or district, and then making sure that people are in compliance and they're filing under the right tax code. So, I'm happy to stand for any questions. Thank you so much, Deputy Director Bendetti. Is there any members of the public that would like to speak to this item? Not seeing anybody in chambers. How about anybody online? Madam City Clerk? City Clerk: Yes, Mayor. One hand is raised. We'll go to Stephanie Benonato. Mayor: The floor is yours, Ms. Benonato. Stephanie Benonato: Thank you. I just had some questions and some concerns. First of all, the 1,100 residences that are being proposed here, is that all on Midtown and not spread throughout the district? That's a question. I'm also concerned that surrounding residential areas would not be affected. You said you didn't include Dos Santos Apartments, so they wouldn't be considered blighted, but what about the other residential areas? And it seems like you have to have a large corporation in order to benefit from this designation. And then the other concern is whether this body will come back to you to get actual approvals or whether they have sort of unfettered discretion, because I think that was a problem with some of what happened earlier at Midtown, that the council felt that they were being left out of the decision-making process. And I think it's important for the citizens to think that the council would have some authority, some oversight on this and not just have reports given to them and it's a sort of done deal. So, those are some of my concerns that I wanted to raise. Thank you. Mayor: Are there any other members of the public online, Madam City Clerk? City Clerk: No, there are not, Mayor. Mayor: Okay. I will now turn to the governing body. Any questions from the governing body? If not, what's the will of the body? Councilor: Second. Mayor: We've got a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? City Clerk: Yes, Mayor. Councilor Barrett? Councilor Barrett: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Bamante? Councilor Bamante: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Casset? Councilor Casset: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Fagali? Councilor Fagali: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Garcia? Councilor Garcia: Yes. City Clerk: Motion passed. Mayor: Okay, thank you. Next item on the agenda, please. City Clerk: Next item on the agenda is Item 21, Appointments. Veterans Advisory Board. Gary Donato, appointment as Chair with a term ending May 2028. And Ari Jree, appointment with a term ending May 2028. Councilor: Move to approve. Councilor: Second. Mayor: We've got a motion and a second. Any discussion? Hearing none. Madam City Clerk, can I get a roll call vote, please? City Clerk: Yes, Mayor. Councilor Bamante? Councilor Bamante: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Casset? Councilor Casset: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Begali? Councilor Begali: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Garcia? Councilor Garcia: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Barrett? Councilor Barrett: Yes. Motion passed. Mayor: Next item. City Clerk: Next item is 21B, Santa Fe City and County Advisory Council on Food Policy. Eric Renard, appointment as City of Santa Fe representative with a term ending March 2028. Councilor: Move to approve. Councilor: Second. Mayor: Got a motion and a second. Any discussion? Hearing none. Madam City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? City Clerk: Yes, Mayor. Councilor Casset? Councilor Casset: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Vagali? Councilor Vagali: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Garcia? Councilor Garcia: Yes. City Clerk: Councilor Barrett? Councilor Barrett: Yes. Councilor Bamante? Councilor Bamante: Yes. City Clerk: Motion passed. Mayor: I believe that completes our agenda for tonight. So we stand adjourned.