Regular Governing Body Meeting - Second Wednesday Wed, Aug 12, 2026 · Governing Body https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/922-governing-body-aug-12-2026 == Executive Summary == The Governing Body held a Regular Meeting on August 12, 2026, addressing several key issues including public safety, affordable housing, and upcoming bond elections. The meeting began with remembrances for community members and the unanimous approval of the consent agenda. A significant decision was the approval of a contract with Axon Enterprises Inc. for a Drone as a First Responder (DFR) program, totaling over $2.1 million, despite concerns raised by Councilors Figalli and Castro regarding privacy and potential misuse. The Governing Body also approved a resolution to place four general obligation bond questions, totaling $25 million, on the November 3, 2026, election ballot to fund various city improvements. == Key Decisions == - Approved a contract with Axon Enterprises Inc. for a Drone as a First Responder (DFR) program for $2,168,020 until June 30, 2031, with a budget adjustment of $433,604 from General Fund Reserves for FY27. - Approved a resolution to propose four ballot questions for $25,000,000 in general obligation bonds for the November 3, 2026, election, covering street improvements, Municipal Recreation Complex, Swan Park Splash Pad, and Midtown Capital Improvements. - Passed Amendment B (5 Yes, 3 No) to the Santa Fe Homes Program amendment, allowing developers to work with the Office of Affordable Housing to determine a payment due date for the fee-in-lieu, provided payment is received by the city no later than the application for a Certificate of Occupancy, unless a later date is deemed feasible and beneficial by the Office of Affordable Housing. - Postponed the vote on the housing legislation (Santa Fe Homes Program Amendment) to the Governing Body meeting on 09/09/2026 to allow for proper public noticing of the amended caption. == Motions & Votes == - Motion to approve the agenda, moving action items after public comment — Passed unanimously. - Motion to approve the consent agenda — Passed unanimously. - Motion to approve a contract with Axon Enterprises Inc. for a Drone as a First Responder (DFR) program — Passed 6-2 (Councilors Chavez, Faulkner, Garcia, Barrett, Bustamante, Cassette Yes; Councilors Figalli, Castro No). - Motion to approve a resolution to propose four ballot questions for $25,000,000 in general obligation bonds for the November 3, 2026, election — Passed 7-0 (Councilors Faulkner, Figalli, Barrett, Bustamante, Cassett, Castro, Chavez Yes). - Motion to pass Amendment B to the Santa Fe Homes Program amendment — Passed 5-3. - Motion to postpone the vote on the housing legislation (Santa Fe Homes Program Amendment) to the Governing Body meeting on 09/09/2026 — Passed 7-1. == Public Comment == Public comments included strong opposition to plutonium pit production at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and any LANL satellite campuses in Santa Fe, citing a 2008 resolution and concerns about nuclear arms expansion. Several speakers criticized proposed contracts for police surveillance technology (drones and Flock cameras), advocating for funds to be reallocated to affordable housing and public transit due to high costs and potential for abuse. One speaker expressed frustration with the Mayor's office regarding alleged inaccessibility and concerns about perceived corruption. == Topics == - Affordable Housing Policy - Ordinance Amendment Process - Housing Affordability Crisis - Community Memorials - City Manager Transition - Joint City-County Meetings - Executive Session - Charter Review Commission - School Openings == Full Transcript == Hey, Michael, can you promote me to a panelist, please? Thank you. Alright. Everybody ready? Alright. Let's go ahead and call tonight's August 12th Governing Body meeting to order. We're going to start off with a Pledge of Allegiance led by Councilor Fugali, salute to the New Mexico flags led by Councilor Bustamante, and an invocation of remembrances led by Councilor Faulkner. Please stand as you're able. So the last couple of days, my family has lost a couple of people. My nephews, actually, they're my great-nephews. I hope that doesn't date me too much, but they lost a very dear friend, Gunnar Anderson. And in this case, we lost a young person, and it was tragic, and it was meaningless. In the other case, my sister-in-law lost her aunt who she was taking care of, who was very instrumental in helping her become a woman, and her name was Willie Ann Lansing. And what struck me this week was that you have two people who passed from very different spaces in life. One was a young person from Los Alamos. The other one was an older person who passed, who was from Lexington, Kentucky originally and moved to New Mexico to be closer to her niece. So these are two human beings who've never met each other, had very different lives, and the impact they had on my very large family was profound. And I also have to recognize the impact that the passing of a young person has on their family is incredibly profound. And so it made me think about the spaces we live in and the people we touch in life, and that we are all teachers whether we intend to be or not. And Gunnar and Willie Ann had such an impact on so many people that it draws to mind for all of us to be mindful about how we touch other human beings and how our daily decisions, from getting a cup of coffee and maybe helping someone with some change, are very simple things, are spaces where we can have an impact on other human beings. And if that is the case, that these two people who never met, who are so very different in where they come from and who they are, could have such an impact, then it has to be factual that we all have an impact on other human beings. And so tonight, I would just like to recognize that we should be in a space where we celebrate the time we have because we don't know when we're going to pass, and we should also be mindful about how we treat other human beings. Are there any other board members? Councilor Casa. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you so much, Councilor Faulkner, for those words. I wanted to remember the life of Luke Johnson. Luke was the older brother of one of my dearest childhood and high school friends, who passed recently and suddenly and unexpectedly. So I, unfortunately, I haven't seen my dear friend Renee in almost a decade, but I, of course, made sure to reach out to her. And as Councilor Faulkner mentioned, the impact that we have on people, and those strings, even throughout the years when we haven't seen people, it's important to pull on them. So I really want to give my condolences to the Johnson family. Luke was an incredible brother and uncle and partner and friend. I just remember him being a super cool older kid that we were never allowed to go into his room. But I know that he is dearly, dearly, dearly missed by his family and those who have loved him. So, rest in peace, Luke. Thank you. Councilor Castro. Thank you all for the beautiful words and for putting our best foot forward as community members and helping folks grieve. I do also want to send out some condolences to the Chavez family. Freddie Chavez Junior passed away a couple weeks ago, an amazing community member, friend, mentor, amazing musician who gave of himself, and one of the most humble people that I've ever met. So thank you, Mayor. Councilor Chavez. Thank you, Mayor. I wanted, my first cousin, Crystal Martinez, lost her grandmother, Bia Martinez, and this woman took care of me as a child. She had a house, a daycare in her home. So she took care of all of the cousins and was just the place you wanted to be. She was just like that warmth. She really was the core of the Martinez family, so I really want to send my love to all of them. I also want to recognize the impact that Freddy Chavez had. Freddy Chavez was a huge light. I actually met him through his niece who was my best friend in high school, and we are not related. But he was like, "Prima!" Like, as soon as he found out I was a Chavez, we were tight. And he literally was a light of Santa Fe. He was talented through his music, through his heart, through his sense of humor. I know that loss is super significant and heavy to that family because of just all the happiness he brought to that home. So, my condolences to both families. I send my love. Any others? Being done, let's just go ahead and take a moment to remember those who have, we've lost over these past couple weeks, as well as anybody in our community that is needing help and support. Thank you, everybody. Okay. Mr. City Clerk or Interim Acting, X, as we call you, can we get a roll call, please? Yes, Mayor. Councilor Barrett? Here. Councilor Bustamante? Here. Councilor Cassette? Here. Councilor Castro? Absent. Councilor Chavez? Here. Councilor Faulkner? Here. Councilor Figali? Here. Councilor Garcia? Here. Mayor Garcia? Present. You have a quorum, Mayor. Thank you. Next up is approval of the agenda. Are there any changes from staff? Mayor, there are no changes. Changes from the Governing Body? Move to approve. Mayor, I just want to be sure that action items get considered after public comment, which usually that far in the agenda, it will. But would we potentially be doing any of these action items before public comment? And if so, I would like to move that we do public comment before then. So are you, when you say action items, are you talking about items? The public hearing. 10. Which one? Yeah. The discussion agenda. We would probably jump into these right away. So I was going to make a motion that we do move both action items in section 10 to after public comment. Okay. So I have to withdraw my motion then? Withdrawn. Second. Okay. So we've got a motion to amend the agenda to have items 10a after the petitions from the floor portion. Any other changes? 10a and b. Yeah. Right. Items under 10. Okay. Hearing none, we got a motion and a second to amend. Can we get a roll call vote, please, Mr. City Clerk? Yes. Yes, Mayor. Councilor Barrett? Yes. Councilor Bustamante? Yes. Councilor Cassette? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Figali? Yes. Councilor Garcia? Yes. The motion to approve the agenda has passed. Okay. Next up is approval of consent. Are there any items pulled off consent? Mayor, no items were removed from consent. Last call from Governing Body members. If not, what's your will? Move to approve. Second. You'll get a motion to approve and a second. Not seeing, hearing any discussion. Can we get a roll call vote on that, please? Yes, Mayor. Councilor Bustamante? Yes. Councilor Cassette? Yes. Councilor Castro? Councilor Chavez? Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Figali? Yes. Councilor Garcia? Yes. Councilor Barrett? Yes. The motion to approve the consent agenda has passed. Mayor, could we also consider moving executive session up to the next order of business? So we're, we go to City Manager, then exec session. Oh, yes. City Manager. Okay. So next up is item 11, Matters from the City Manager, and I see him online right now. So the floor is yours, sir. Mr. Mayor, thank you. Can you guys hear me? Yes, sir. Okay. I just want to start by thanking staff for everything they've done. Also, want to just remind all of you, I met with the County Manager, not on, over email today, and we discussed our four committees for our joint meetings. So if you guys could get me those, what would you like to attend? I can also put an email together this evening and send it to you, and then you guys just pick. The County Commissioners have picked their items that they would like to join. And so we'll just, once you guys get me your what you would like to do and I put it off fairly across the board, then we'll, I'll put that together and then share it with everybody. And with that, Mr. Mayor, that's all I got tonight. Okay. Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Next up, Matters from the City Attorney. City Attorney Martinez, floor is yours. Thank you, Mayor, members of the Governing Body. I recommend that the Governing Body go into an executive session for the matters as noticed in the agenda. In accordance with the Open Meetings Act, MMSA 1978, Section 10-15-1, Subpart H7, meeting subject attorney-client privilege pertaining to threatened or pending litigation in which the city is or may become participating, including but not limited to Jeffrey Hurtado versus City of Santa Fe, D-101-CB2005-00757, and Subpart H8, meetings for discussion of the pursuant acquisition or disposal of real property or water rights by the city. Second. We've got a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? There are none. Mr. City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote on that motion? Yes, Mayor. Councilor Cassette? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Figali? Yes. Councilor Garcia? Yes. Councilor Barrett? Yes. Councilor Bustamante? Yes. The motion to move into executive session has passed. Okay. We will stand in recess. We will resume once executive session is over. I move that pursuant to the Open Meetings Act, Section 10-15-1J, I move the Governing Body reconvene in open session and state for the record that matters discussed in closed session were limited to those specified in the motion for closure. Second. We've got a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? There are none. Mr. Assistant City Clerk, can you please give us a roll call vote, please? Yes, Mayor. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Chavez? Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Figali? Yes. Councilor Garcia? Yes. Councilor Barrett? Yes. Councilor Bustamante? Yes. Councilor Cassette? Yes. The motion to exit executive session has passed. Okay. Thank you so much. That moves us to our next item on the agenda, which is item 14, Matters from the City Clerk. That is you again. Thank you, Mayor, members of the Governing Body. It's an honor to be here with you tonight, and I just have to give a shout-out to our City Clerk, Charlene Cardenas. She has given me every single opportunity that she can to allow me to be successful here, and I will forever be grateful for that. So thank you. Onto business matters. We do have a Charter Review Commission public input session next week on August 20th. We're still currently working out the location, but we should have that finalized soon. So if any of you are interested in attending that, please let me know. And that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next up is Communications from the Governing Body. So this time from the right side. So Councilor Fugali. Mayor, I just, since Chief is not here in the room today, I would like to thank our Interim City Manager for doing such a great job and to ask if we might maybe get a new City Manager sometime before he retires. So that is, that was my comment for today. Thank you. Nothing from me. Councilor Chavez. I just want to congratulate most of our schools for opening their doors to all of our youth here in Santa Fe. I've been seeing all, I've been sharing, but I've also been seeing all the first day of school pics. And, yeah, thank you to all our educational partners for serving our students and giving them services and meals and educating them and keeping them safe. I don't think they hear thank you enough. So, thank you to them and congratulations to all of our youth that are starting a new year of learning. Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Garcia. Thank you, Mister Mayor. I just want to give a big shout-out and appreciation to all the staff for all that they do for every event that's been put on in the city, whether it's things that are brought forth by governing body members or just things in general. The summertime is really busy, and all the boots on the ground and people behind the scenes that are working, whether it's Spanish Market or Indian Market, which is this weekend, our Southside Dash, which had an amazing amount of help from the Fire Department, Police Department, city staff, just getting prepared. And so I just want to celebrate all of you all because it's a lot of extra work too, on top of what you're all doing day in and day out. So, with that, I also want to keep in mind our wildland unit that's out there helping with the Frijoles Fire. It's a fire that is threatening a community that I hold near and dear to my heart, whether it's Cundiyo, Cordoba, which is my descendants. It's just land grant, which I actually am a member of. I think it's burning a lot of the Cundiyo land grant as well. So, just keep in mind all the people who are actively working towards that because it's dangerous and it's very challenging for all of our communities. So thank you all for what you do. Mister Faulkner? I'd like to echo my colleague's sentiment on staff. A couple of things. I'm going to drill into a little more detail. I'd like to thank some people for the Back to School Bash. It was pretty sizable, and I think I'd like to start with thanking Barbara Lopez, who rarely gets the thanks she deserves for the amount of work she does. She makes sure these events are safe, and she has a tough job. And one of my goals for the next year is to get her more people because she definitely needs more people. Also, with the Back to School Bash, I want to thank the Fire Department. Specifically, the chiefs really pulled a lot of weight and did a lot to help us get that event going. The cadets were awesome. They made me so proud as a city councilor because they were polite and incredibly helpful. I'd like to thank Lee Garcia, my counterpart, who is always the person who catches me when I'm going crazy in these events and is like, "Just." And then I do have to thank my partners in crime on these events, Roland Jones and JP Granito. Those two are amazing in everything they do. But I also want to thank Liz Barrett and Paul Bustamante because they unwittingly agreed to be volunteers at the most difficult booth in the whole event. So I really appreciate you guys allowing me to sucker you into that. You guys did awesome. I'd like to thank the Northern New Mexico Toy Drive. Again, there are so many people to thank, but I think the positive part about the Back to School Bash is that it has now turned into something where we have to consider it being a city event because the size has grown to the point that three, four people cannot possibly manage it. And so, I think I'm really proud of our team for doing something on the Southside that now is big enough that it can possibly be a formal city event, which would be amazing for the Southside. So, again, thanks everyone for your support, and thanks for supporting the Southside. Police Department for helping us park vehicles. Lieutenant Rodriguez and all those who came to help advertise in the City Clerk's office for all the help you guys did with flyers and coordinating. I mean, you guys are amazing. Councilor Castro. Thank you so very much. Yeah. Oh, really amazing turnout. Thank you everyone for all the work that you did on that. Very excited to have kids back to school. Thank you, Councilor Garcia, for reminding us of all the folks north of us that are in need. Thank you, Nambé Pueblo, for trying to get folks respirators and masks and all the things that they need because the air quality up there is terrible. I do want to, on a lighter note, say, everybody, please go to Indian Market this weekend. It actually starts, I think, tomorrow. The events start with film screening, Lensic 360, also Indigenous Waste Festival, the show is at the Railyard, 7 PM on Friday. It's going to be a very exciting time for everybody. Lots of free shows, so please go out and check it out. Thanks. Councilor Kassett. Thank you, Mayor. I think my colleagues have said it all, but I do think just recognizing how busy summer is for staff is important to do. I've recently learned that Albuquerque actually takes the month of July off of meetings, which we don't do. And so, our staff really do work hard through the summer, both with all the events, but then just continuing the grind of city government and continuing to move things forward and to get legislation forward. We actually have had a shockingly busy summer with legislation. I feel like it's normally calm out. So thank you to you guys, and sorry. But really, really just appreciate all the hard work. I don't think everybody understands how much goes into making every single part of the city function, and it's a lot and a lot of people and a lot of time. I just want to wish my tiny human, who I've been told I don't get to call tiny human anymore, a happy birthday. He's turning eight. And I always just think about when I started, my son was, I mean, when I first campaigned, I literally strapped the baby to my chest to campaign. And when I was getting sworn in for my first term, I have pictures of me just holding this little bundle. And now he's eight, and so I just want to wish him a happy, happy birthday. He is, obviously, the light and joy of my life. He is such an interesting little human. He's already decided that he wants to go to MIT and be an engineer for NASA, and I'm like, "Dream big, baby." But I don't think I was thinking about those things when I was seven. So I just, he's just such an interesting, intelligent, quirky little dude, and I love him so much. So happy birthday, baby boy. Councilor Bustamante. Thank you, Mayor. Just want to echo what my colleagues have said and give a special shout-out to Chief Oetiker, who, during the Southside Bash when the rain and lightning started, was very quick to get the tents broken down and get people to stop holding on to the metal poles with the lightning out there. So thank you for being so quick to respond to that before we had some sort of tragic incident. I appreciate that. And thank you also for letting us hide out in the fire truck while it rained because it was crazy. So thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilor. I just want to take a quick moment to recognize the individuals that were the recipients of the July Challenge Coins. And so I'm going to read off a list of folks. They had to be nominated by a fellow community member. These were folks who demonstrated, whether it was through community service efforts, mentorship efforts, or just being a great resident. Folks put forth nominations, and then we worked to select folks. And so the recipients for July were Shaundell Lyke, Richard Lindahl, Michelle Williams, Adam John Griego, Kate Sala, Felisa Gullibert, Doctor Mark Erickson, Christy Abeyta, Natividad Cano, Michelle Lord, David Martinez, David Jaramillo, married couple Larry and Valerie Mirabal, and Kevin Bowen. So congratulations to them, and I would encourage folks to continue to send those nominations for August. We want to continue recognizing our amazing residents here in Santa Fe. And then last but not least, a quick birthday shout-out for former Mayor Larry Delgado. He is celebrating his 90th birthday this Sunday. So happy birthday, Mayor Delgado. And with that, we can, yeah. Yes, absolutely. Guys, I can't think in the moment, and then you guys start, it starts working. But the 505 Night Market, that was amazing. So many amazing vendors. So many folks came out for that, so I was very impressed. And then I heard DJ Spaghetti was really getting it going at the Railyard the other. So I heard the Railyard has never been that packed before, so shout-out to DJ Spaghetti wherever he is. And then, I was just going to say the spray down at the Back to School Bash brought so much joy. Those pictures in the New Mexican were amazing. And my kids, who usually are arguing all the time, did like five rounds when the spray down kept going. So that brought a lot of joy to children, so thanks. Thank you, Councilor. I think we've completed all we can complete until our, oh yeah, one more. Yes. Introduction, and then I think we've hit the end of stopping point. So go ahead, Mister Assistant City Clerk. May I have consideration of a resolution sponsored by Mayor Michael Garcia and Councilor Paul Bustamante, a resolution suspending the annual fishing derby in the Santa Fe River, approving a children's fishing derby event on city property in Nichols Reservoir on 09/26/2026, and directing the city manager and designated city staff to take the necessary steps to organize the event. Okay. I'll turn to Councilor Bustamante. Thank you, Mayor. I think it's pretty self-explanatory. Thank you. Thank you. And maybe I'll just add that, just want to reinforce and reaffirm for folks, we are working with community partners to understand concerns and, most importantly, hopefully, plan for an event that is working with the highest priority to protect our watershed, but also working to ensure that we're creating an opportunity for young folks to learn about the watershed and ultimately know that it is theirs to preserve and protect in the future. So, look forward to the discussion on this. And so with that, I think we've hit our stopping point. So let's go ahead and stand recess till 7 PM. Okay. We will go ahead and resume from our recess. With that, we will move to item number 17, which is petitions from the floor. If any member of the public would like to provide public comment to the governing body, please do so. Line up at the podium. You'll have two minutes, and we will take petitions from in the chambers first, and then we will move online. You're good. Go ahead. And just make sure the light is on on the microphone. So, okay. Hi. My name is Madison Figueroa. I'm a student at the University of New Mexico and work with the Los Alamos Study Group. I'm also the president of Albuquerque Students for Nuclear Disarmament. I am here asking the council to oppose all plutonium pit production at Los Alamos National Laboratory and to oppose the construction of any LANL satellite campuses in the city of Santa Fe. Santa Fe has already taken a stand on the issue. In Resolution 2008-17, the city objected to expanded nuclear weapons activities at Los Alamos, including pit production. I ask that the council reinstate its opposition. As part of a younger generation, I am concerned about the future of New Mexico's capital. Pit production is not about maintaining the status quo. It is part of a larger effort to modernize and expand the nuclear weapons complex for decades to come. This commits future generations like mine to an ongoing nuclear arms race. A LANL satellite campus in Santa Fe would tie the identity and the future of this city to the nuclear weapons complex. Santa Fe should be investing in opportunities that promote peace, sustainability, education, the arts, and technologies that improve people's lives, not becoming an extension of the nuclear weapons industry. Even if no hazardous material is handled at the satellite campus, it would still support LANL's mission. The site will also increase the city's dependence on nuclear weapons production and the nuclear weapons industry. The City of Santa Fe should prioritize projects that directly benefit its residents, students, small businesses, affordable housing, and public transportation, rather than projects that may have a negative impact on them. The largest investments in Northern New Mexico are tied to the nuclear weapons industry, and supporting this industry narrows the vision of what Santa Fe's future can be. Thank you for your time. Hi, my name is Ella Katz. I am also a student at the University of New Mexico and an intern at the Los Alamos Study Group. I am here today on behalf of the study group and on behalf of all my fellow Northern New Mexicans. I'm going to take a little time tonight to talk about why I love Northern New Mexico and why it is my belief that Santa Fe needs to actively and wholeheartedly begin to oppose the nuclear weapons industry in New Mexico. So I grew up on a small organic farm in the Peñasco Valley where I learned to grow crops that were hardy enough for cold nights and intense sun. I learned about the acequias, the history, and to love where I am from. Coming from Northern New Mexico, you are often confronted with harsh realities and see pain and suffering in your community very close-up. We see poverty, violence, drug abuse, and often a desire to escape these conditions. It's a funny paradigm of not wanting to leave but also dying to go. The most common solution that we're offered to better our futures, besides people saying "just leave," is that we should join the Los Alamos National Laboratory. We were taught that LANL was a place of science and that you can make more money there than anywhere else. What an excellent option. LANL is not a place of science. It is a place used almost exclusively to prop up a failing system of deterrence by nuclear weapons. LANL produces plutonium pits, and only 1% of their money goes to anything other than nuclear weapons manufacturing. LANL takes up housing, congests our roads, sucks labor out of other more sustainable industries that are needed in New Mexico, all for the sake of a never-ending nuclear arms race. This is not what I want for the place that I love. I want to be able to live in my hometown and know that it is safe from an industry of warfare. Santa Fe is supposed to be the City of Peace and the capital of our state. This is supposed to guide, protect, and set precedents for others to follow. This is why I and the rest of the Los Alamos Study Group are coming to the Santa Fe City Council asking you to sign a resolution opposing pit production in New Mexico so that we can all live in a state that does not depend on nuclear weapons for its future. Thank you all very much. Hello, ladies and gentlemen of the City Council, Mr. Mayor. My name is Winston Delaurier. I'm relatively new to New Mexico. I've only lived here for a couple years, but I live and work, well, I live in the South Side, and I work in Midtown. And I have family here, and I'm looking forward to a future in New Mexico and the future of Santa Fe. And I would like to, I'm also an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation. And both for myself and on behalf of our organization, we would support a resolution against further plutonium arms production at the labs. I think nuclear arms production can seem like a rather abstract and potentially a less urgent issue than some other arms production. After all, it's easy to think we made it through the Cold War. These weapons were never used. It's a weapon that ideally and very possibly, hopefully, won't be used in the future. But I think there's an urgency to this because, as was alluded to by some of the earlier speakers, this call for a 90% increase in plutonium arms production is directly connected to a change in the American defense doctrine. There was recently a conference by a high-ranking Defense Department adviser, Elbridge Colby, in which they stated that it is now American policy to essentially, they talk about it as reinforcing deterrence, but what it is in effect is making nuclear weapons more practically usable. And it is this frankly delusional idea that they could fight a limited nuclear war that would not escalate into mutually assured destruction. So I, again, strongly urge a resolution against plutonium arms production at the labs. Thank you. Alright. You guys want to talk about building bridges, building gaps, filling in the cracks. You guys don't want to do that. Or can you please state your name for the record? No. You guys don't care about your people. You care about a bottom line, a dollar. Let me put it this way: my privacy, my intimate home will not be violated by you. You guys want to send drones over people's properties to get to other properties? That's outrageous. Police are here to do a job. Go do it. Two, you guys are giving away our privacy to Flock. You know how easy that system has been abused through the whole United States, not only by officers, but by private officials. You guys do not care about us, but you want to build bridges. How can you build bridges when you won't even have a proper conversation? I may not like you. I may disagree with every single word that comes out of your mouth because it's all shit. Both sides do it. Democrats, Republicans, us independents are tired of it. We are the people. Listen to the people. Stop listening to the big tech. Stop listening to the bottom line. Take care of the people that live here, that pay your salary. You guys always forget. We don't work for you. That's the problem with government. You think we work for you. No. You guys need to start working for us and taking care of us. If you guys don't want to, let us take care of us. Hello. My name is Daniel Fisher. Mayor Garcia, I've been to your office a few times, and a curious thing happens. Angie tells me the mayor will not speak. True. Find that. It's true. We can have them. There are people in this town that are predators. They steal from. And then another curious thing happens. They count on various authorities to run interference, and then you engender intimidation on the victim. I'm helping an elderly gentleman right now with the situation. It has more details to get into in two minutes, and I have developed a rapport with Ben and with Scott talking about some of these. Ben himself has instructed some of his officers. I love if they don't. That's why there's familial relations and friendships. And so many people with authority are connecting to people who are, you know, in my case, I had a truck stolen. I care to, well, with ethanol continues. Venice's neighborhood with the drugs, stealing other cars. Many people complained this appetite is not showing up. They had spoken to them about this, about other things in detail and music, knowledge, and sometimes where I know and find them approved. But they readily engage in the innovation on the services problem. And many people are frustrated in this space. So it's odd to come in the house and will not speak. I don't know how she becomes gatekeeper. I have sent emails to Miss Wagner, Miss Kasut. No response. Sent emails to several commissioners prior. No response. After physically going to the office, it'd be great if we could use the technology relative or have to go in and be persistent. The ones that want to listen, receive me, and we develop a rapport. The ones that are entrenched in this ignorance or arrogance, whether you're on call at this little voice system, agents to family and friends versus criminal justice in this town. Sir, will you please wrap up your comments? The time has expired. Your time has expired. If you can please. Very well. We've said it. So will you be able to speak with me and address these matters? I'm happy to meet with you after the rules are. I can't have a back and forth dialogue with you. I don't mean. But I'm happy. Sir, I've never turned on a meeting in my life, so I don't know why Angie's told. I can't have a back and forth dialogue. I don't want to be in violation of our rules. Please reach out. Are there any other members of the audience that would like to provide comment? If not, is there anybody online? Yes, Mayor. We have two people with their hands raised. The first public comment will be Vasil Faust. Hey, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Alright. Let me just get. I can't see whether or not the timing, but I think this will be under two minutes. So I'll just get started if that's alright. Good evening. My name is Lisa Faust. I'm a community organizer here in Santa Fe working in mutual aid groups like Burrito Brigade. I also serve as secretary of the Santa Fe DSA. I live in District 2, and I strongly oppose the proposed Axon drone contract worth about $2,100,000 with the budget adjustment totaling over $2,600,000. The police department already receives about 19% of our city budget, which is nearly double almost every other department, and affordable housing only gets 2%. If police need new equipment, I think that they should have to find it within the budget they already have because it is quite substantial. This should not come at the expense of other programs that need to be more resourced. I am strongly opposed to giving police any additional surveillance technology. This department has already used its tools beyond their intended purpose, including surveillance of unhoused neighbors. And a department that abuses its tools should not get even more powerful ones. Voting yes on this amount of more money for police surveillance while neighbors go without enough food, affordable housing, and access to medical care tells us exactly who needs to come first. I grew up in Santa Fe. I am doing my best to care for this community, and I personally cannot find an affordable place to live to continue doing this work and, yeah, to sustain myself, and that's what 2% for affordable housing looks like. I urge you all to vote no on this. Thank you. The next public comment will be from Robert Weager. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, sir. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I am a local DSA member and active member of the Democratic Party here and a lawyer in Santa Fe. And I'm also here to speak against this contract for the drone contract. It's already been shown to be used in ways that, I think, are antithetical to the public interest. Just basically spying on the unhoused and on law-abiding citizens. Similarly, I feel that similarly about the Flock cameras as well. But, yeah, I think this is just a corporate welfare program and surveillance of our Santa Fe citizens. And we should save the money for housing, public transit. And, yeah. Yeah, that's about it. Thank you. The next public comment will be Dylan Schwagel. Good evening, City Council. I'm Dylan Schwagel. I work in Santa Fe for years with the local unhoused population. And I'm speaking tonight also as the co-chair of the Santa Fe DSA, as well as the chair of the DSA's Housing Working Group. And I would like to encourage you all to reject additional funding for drone equipment for the police department. I think the previous speakers covered much of what I could say, and they did it very well. I just want to cite back to an article written in the New Mexican back in June that investigated the use of drones in surveilling the unhoused population, which was explicitly not what this technology was intended for. And I think that that establishes for us that the police department will not be responsible with further surveillance technology, that it will be used to further police the unhoused population, which is not, I believe, the direction that this city or this government or this administration, the City Council, wants to go in. We're looking to really solve the issue of homelessness. We're looking to expand upon services. That $2 million could go towards that. It would probably be put to much better use, not to further harass and make life difficult for people who already have incredibly difficult lives living on the street. So I again encourage you to reject this proposal. Thank you. Any attendees on Zoom who would still like to speak, please raise your hand. There are no more hands raised, Mayor. Okay. Thank you so much. So I believe that takes us back to item 10a. So, Mr. City Assistant City Clerk, if you wouldn't mind please reading that into the record. Item 10a: Request for approval of a goods and services contract with Axon Enterprises Inc. for the purchase of the Drone as a First Responder program in the total amount of $2,168,020 until 06/30/2031. Accompanying that is a request for approval of a budget adjustment request in the total amount of $433,604 from the General Fund Reserves to the Inventory Exempt Equipment for FY27. Here to speak on the item is Interim Chief of Police, Ben Valdez. Okay. Interim Chief Valdez, if you would like, you're welcome to give a presentation overview. If not, we can turn to the governing body for any questions. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think we've given a lot of information both at Public Safety during our initial assessment on this program, and we're ready to move to questions. Okay. I'm going to go this way. Councilor Castro. Alright. Thank you so much, Chief Valdez. Based on some of the questions, could you just go over again the security features around our data and storing our data? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Castro, yes. So the data that we have from this program, it ties into our Axon ecosystem. So under that master service agreement, that data is ours. If we wish to share that data, it has to be given with explicit permission from the Santa Fe Police Department. Usually, that's going to be for ongoing criminal investigations. So as an example, if the New Mexico State Police is investigating a homicide, if we have body-worn camera, in-car camera, or drone video, that would be data we would share with them for the furtherance of their case. Can you give us a little context about the difference between Axon and Flock as systems? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Castro, what I can tell you is we're requesting services and equipment through Axon, and this is not Flock. So Flock is the name of a company that provides similar services? My understanding is Flock is under scrutiny for their data sharing for their ALPR systems. And again, this is not Flock. So we don't have ALPR systems? We absolutely do, but these are not Flock. So that's the name of the company is Flock. And Axon is a different company that does similar products and similar services. I don't know what services that Flock provides in-depth. I do know what Axon provides, and that's what's included in our contract is that the data that we have is our data. I'm not sure how Flock does business because we're not in contract with them. I haven't discussed anything with them. We're looking at building up our Axon ecosystem. Wonderful. Thank you so much. And your testimony at Finance was that these drones do not read license plates or are not able to identify individuals. Is that correct? So these do not have facial recognition, nor do they have an automatic license plate reading capability. They don't have the capabilities. It can't be turned on. They don't have that right now. So right now, they just give video feeds. And the video quality, if the pilot wants to obtain a license plate while they're doing an assessment of a scene, they can get into position to capture the license plate, but it's not like an automatic license plate reader. So it does have the capacity to capture a license plate if we trigger it? That's not what I said, Councilor. So please... Sorry. No. I might have misunderstood. Please explain. So we can capture what the license plate is. The way the automatic license plate reader works is it captures the plate, and it automatically does an inquiry through NCIC. This does not have that capability. So if our officers capture it with the video feed, they want to conduct an inquiry and further some of the criminal investigation, they may do so. It'd be the same if they were there on the ground or if they're looking at a plate while they're out doing the... Do we have any other Axon equipment that does read license plates? We do. We have automatic license plate readers that are provided by Axon. Do they interact, those two systems, or that data? Is it able to be paired together? Not the ALPR process. That's for our in-car cameras. Thank you so much, Mayor. Anything else? Councilor Garcia, then Councilor Faulkner. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Chief. How long do we store the data, or how long do we keep it on file? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Garcia, it's going to depend on the nature of the incident that that video captures for it. So if it is for an event that is not evidentiary, it's going to fall in line with our current retention schedule that we have for all our other digital data. So in our evidence policy for one of those situations, it would be 90 days. If it is not needed after 90 days, then it will be purged from the system. Now if it's tied to a certain level of crime, and again, we have that listed out in our evidence policy, it would fall within those guidelines. For some criminal violations, it could be 99 years for, like, a capital offense such as a murder. But if it's going to be for a petty misdemeanor, it could be six months. If it's a higher-level misdemeanor, it could be 12 months. We have somebody that is in charge of managing all of that, or is it by individual officers or what their requests are? Or how are they filed? Councilor Garcia, the way that it works is when there's a recording, it is auto-tagged based on the nature of the call, and that implements the automatic schedule for that retention period. Once it reaches that time, unless an officer steps in or we have to do administratively, for an instance that would involve, let's say, a tort, where we're given an order to retain records and automatically purge it once it comes to that scheduled date. So whatever the classification is, once it comes to that date, then it's purged. Thank you. I just, I guess, to put to rest some of the questions by public comment in regards to us utilizing this to antagonize people, that's not the intent for this. Correct? I think what it will do is make it more difficult for criminals, especially those there on Rufina Circle, to engage in drug trafficking, possibly human trafficking, and other things. So for those criminals, it is going to be harder for them to operate because when we get those calls from people that don't want to be identified, that want to identify those criminals engaged in that context, we can have a drone in three minutes or less on scene, giving information to our officers so they can make the best decision they can to make that situation better. Thank you. And I just, my own perspective on this, and I know at the price tag, I mean, we do have to invest in our tools, our public safety officers. We've already had this discussion at Finance in regards to how it's helping public safety from the PD standpoint, also from the Fire Department standpoint. And in no way, I think the intent is to move around our unhoused community in regards to more than so assist them with issues and how do we find issues that are happening in our community where there is either an encampment where there may be a potential fire or things of that nature where it's very difficult for us to get to some of these places. And it's just another tool in our tool belt. So, and that's why I'll support this. Thank you. Councilor Faulkner. Okay. I have a couple of questions. One, to the City Attorney. Is there an assumption of privacy if you are out in public? If you're on city streets, city parks, state streets? Mhm. Councilor Faulkner, members of the governing body, no. In general, there is not a presumption of privacy if what you're doing is in, basically, the full view of the public or anyone who might be passing by, and that goes back to some Supreme Court cases. So even if the drones could capture license plates, if it's happening when someone's in public spaces, there's no presumption of privacy at that point. Generally, there's no expectation of privacy in a license plate because they're highly regulated registration numbers by the state. Yeah. It's okay. Thank you. Chief, I know there's been some cases where actually using the drones has saved someone's life, who was overdosing, and the officers couldn't have found them. In Albuquerque, two kids were using a gun, and if the drones hadn't got to that scene before the police did, it could have been a very much worse scene. So I know that there's spaces where the drones are actually making our community safer. And I would just, so the public knows, I don't usually do this, but if the Fire Department could, we know where it's going to be a force multiplier for the police where it can actually help instead of a high-speed chase. The drones can follow someone who's evading a scene, and then the police can show up to where that person lands instead of cars and officers chasing that person down. Would, are those all fair assumptions, Chief? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Faulkner, yes. And again, we're trying to get better outcomes with this technology, in situations where we would otherwise have to place a first responder or even, frankly, members of the community in a situation where it may escalate. This is actually a de-escalation tool for us. We could get better information so we can have a better approach to the situation. One thing that comes to mind is what brought our drone program to the forefront. And it was an incident involving suicide by gun. That is something that I certainly want to remove from the equation. We can start communicating with someone that's in crisis, and we can also reduce the potential for traumatizing our officers who have to otherwise respond and handle a situation like that. The other question I have is when the drones are in flight, the cameras, once they get up, the cameras go to the horizon. Correct? They're not, we're not watching people's yards and flying over people's homes and spying on our community. The cameras go to the horizon. Correct? That's correct, Councilor. Alright. Thank you. And briefly, Mr. Jones, if you could please go into some of the fire uses for this. I think in the Saint Catherine's fire, there were some significant things that the drones were able to do. Just if you can go into, like, a couple of spaces where the drones are life-saving and can help the Fire Department do more things, I think it's important to note that this is a joint program. This is the police and fire. So this is a really successful program in other cities. So just briefly, so we don't hold up the whole council, but I would like the public to hear a little more about what it does for the Fire Department. Absolutely. Thank you, Councilor Faulkner and the governing body. So far, the majority of things that kind of we brought up, I know a gentleman named Dylan had mentioned using it against the unhoused. Whereas, kind of, one of the initial intentions of why I pursued this was actually to be of more service to helping the unhoused. We do programs called Code Blue in Santa Fe where we will actually identify where unhoused individuals are staying in freezing situations and serious situations. We have a lot of unhoused living in the arroyos when we have flash flooding. Anybody from New Mexico knows how quick those happen. So those will allow us to identify and find those people as quickly as possible and also find the access routes to get to them. As far as search and rescue, I've already conducted one search and rescue at the top of the ski hill where we were able to find a lady in freezing conditions just before the sun went down, and get access to her and identify exactly where she was and get her support and get her out of there. One of the biggest things I think everybody can see right now, and it's not going to go away, is we have a pretty serious wildfire and fire problem in general. And throughout the year, even in the winter months, when unhoused individuals are using those fires to stay warm, those fires can get out of control, especially in residential areas. This allows the fire department to immediately identify the areas that those fires take place in, to be able to get there before they grow and before they get out of control, and figure out where our water sources and where access points are. And then finally, that St. Catherine's fire, when we're on scene and we have aerial supervision of the staff on scene, we can monitor the ground crews from above. We had a massive roof collapse in that situation where if we'd had individuals inside, we would have been able to identify that earlier. We had a period of time where the water stream was shooting up over the roof because we couldn't—it's really hard to see where that's going to be landing on these large structures. So the drone was able to guide the fire to actually put out the fire from there. And currently, the chief has me and the fire marshal's office going to the local businesses in areas to identify the structures within the facilities within the city where we could find out better access points, hydrants, where some of these unsafe situations are ahead of time. And we'll store this footage on computers and get to the guys on the trucks ahead of time. And just working with PD, they've been exceptional. I have the utmost confidence in their integrity. They've been outstanding about how they're approaching. Thank you. I just have one more comment, and this is for anyone who's concerned about their privacy. Anyone who has a cell phone, you no longer have privacy. So if you're worried about the drones, you should be more concerned about the cell phone that you carry around with you in your hand because not only can the government access it, a lot of the private industry and marketing groups are accessing it every single day. So the drones are not the biggest threat to your personal privacy. Your cell phone is. Thank you, Mayor. Councilor Figalli: Thank you, Mayor. So a lot of these things that you talked about, the Saint Catherine's fire, the search and rescue up the mountain, these are with equipment that we already have. Correct? Yeah. So can you just explain what this program does and how it is expanding this and why we need to expand it? It sounds like the drones we have are working quite well. Mr. Mayor, Councilor Figalli, so right now with our drone program, we're currently utilizing a patrol-led model. That means our officers are maintaining the drones in the back of their police car. If they have to go and get eyes on with the drone, they have to respond to the scene. Once they get there, they do the pre-flight checklist. Once the pre-flight checklist is done, then they can get it airborne and start assessing the scene. That takes a lot of time. What we're looking at is we're looking at six docks. These docks will be tied into a real-time operation center. In that real-time operation center, they're going to be monitoring the dispatch radio logs, looking at the dispatch screen. And when they see a call that they can send a drone to, they can have it airborne and on scene in three minutes or less. That's what we're looking at is timing up those response times for emergency situations. With that assessment, both for law enforcement and the fire department, even the situation with the Saint Catherine's fire, they can get a quick size-up of it. They can find out where they can place apparatuses. That's how other large fire departments are utilizing them is before they get the first eyes on the scene, they're getting the first eyes on with the drone to find out how many engines you need, how many tankers you need, how many pumpers do you need to get this done, where's the best place to stage your personnel, what is the source of fire. For us, looking at danger, there's someone that is posing a threat to themselves or others. The first size-up that we want to have is that drone rather than having a first responder having to look and make eye contact or put themselves in jeopardy to get a size of a situation. In other cases where time is of the essence, if we're looking for, let's say, someone that is a lost person, or we've had it as well with people that leave by care facilities. Being able to put a drone up within minutes and starting that area search is going to be very helpful for us to have a better outcome. Thank you. And can you talk about how it would be split between the departments? Is it just fire and PD? Is there anyone else involved? Councilor Figalli, so our initial rollout is going to be a joint operation with the police department and fire department. They're going to be co-housed inside that real-time operation center. We've done a lot of collaboration over the years. This is going to be really big because for us, we're going to house our pilots and their pilots in the same room to communicate, and we have that unified command once we have the situation. So if it's a call that fire needs the drone, we send it there. If it's a call police needs it, we send it there. But we're collaborating, giving each other information, which is very helpful. That's one side of the coin. The contract's going to be housed within the PD, but we're going to be utilizing joint facilities with these hives. The hives are going to be where the drones are going to be launching from. So they're going to be maintained at both police and fire facilities. And again, based on the schematic on how the fire department has their fire stations throughout the city of Santa Fe, if we look at the data and the data says this is where we need a drone, those fire departments are going to be advantageous for us because they have a lot of the resources we need such as power, connectivity, internet, and a secure facility to house those devices. So the collaboration is going to be us working together, putting our folks side by side and finding ways how we can utilize this technology. It's not just going to stop there. What we anticipate is there will be other needs. There are other needs that we utilize them for public utilities. If we have, let's say, flooding conditions, and we have to do a size-up of a road structure or a bridge, we could send a drone to do a site assessment. In addition, if we have to look at infrastructure inspections, there are things we could do if we need to go and do an assessment of, let's say, the wastewater treatment center, or other facilities that need to have regular inspections. We could do that workload and have missions for those to do assessments and provide that information through surveys that we can provide to other city departments. So the initial role is going to be between our two departments, but we do anticipate partnering with the emergency management department that there will be other roles that they can be utilized to help our overall safety within our community. Okay. And then so in the memo that we have, it says that this money will be used for equipment and services. Who is—where is the staffing coming from? Is that from existing positions? Councilor Figalli, it is for this initial launch. Again, this technology is very new, so we're going to be using existing staff. Our hope with the San Antonio Police Department and our vision is we're going to figure out the tactics, techniques, and procedures. We're going to get that established. As we get this going, we're going to stand up the center, and we want to backfill with students at a high school or students out of college that have a desire to maybe be a drone pilot, but not necessarily a police officer on the street that can create a way for us to get other people into our organization otherwise when it comes to traditional. The fire department, they're going to be providing their staff from their existing staff. And for them, they may either weigh out that option too. Do they need a paramedic in that center? Can they get someone that is trained in the practice, I think, procedures, and the fire department and give that battalion commander or that person on scene the information they need to make those good calls? Just a couple points just to build on that as well. So these drones also have thermal imaging capabilities, which we would utilize, like he said, for search and rescue. But also, when we are going to these buildings and these structure fires, we're able to visually see from the perimeter the seat of the fire, where that fire is taking place. And we can even pick up signatures of humans as well, so we can be more prepared going into that situation. The great thing that the chief had expanded upon was, these have the ability to send videos to all the guys on the fire truck. You'd asked about our existing capabilities. The drone that I used to find the lady at the top of the ski hill was actually wildly unqualified to be on that mission, as you could probably say about me as well. But it's a very small drone that was kind of being tossed around by the air. I was able to get it into the general area. If we'd had a large drone with thermal imaging, it would have been a much safer possibility. And then, just kind of lastly, the great opportunity that I see in this is the integration with PD and Fire just in general. We can work hand in hand on the calls. We can talk to each other, integrate together on all of these types of things, and build a stronger public safety network. And one interesting use I found today was at Ashbaugh Park. We used the drone to identify a bear in a tree and figure out where that bear was and how far away everybody was and get everybody pushed away. So, I mean, we're constantly finding interesting things and interesting ways to integrate these and keep the public and the public safety people safe. Thank you. That's it for me. Any other questions or comments? Councilor Cassutt. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you both for being here. I think what's really relevant with this conversation and with the public comment is that technology is only as good as the people who are operating it. And we have a lot of really incredible uses for this, and I know that there's a lot of fear that it'll be misused, whether it's the data or how it's utilized. Can you speak to me a little bit about where it is established? Our data policy rules, what happens if somebody misuses this? Would you be able to see it? Is there some type of supervision going on? Where are the boundaries so we can make sure that these tools are really utilized for these really helpful and wonderful uses and not the things that people are afraid of? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Cassutt, thank you for that question and for the opportunity to share this. So, in the police department's policy, if someone utilizes a police resource, whether it's a criminal justice information system or other database or improper use, they will face corrective action. And depending on the level of violation, it may even result in the termination of their employment. That's one thing to cover to make sure that people are doing what they're supposed to do. Secondly, the reason why I'm thinking it's good for us to continue to build upon this ecosystem, Axon has a lot of guardrails in there for audits. So if we suspect that someone is looking at data or they're doing something with it they're not supposed to, there's an audit track with that. Luciano Rodriguez, he's sitting here in the back of the room. He's pretty much the guy that goes in there, finds stuff. If we have questions on those types of things, it'll show that this person logged in. Here's what they accessed, and then we can go and address that misconduct if it does arise. One point that I made earlier with some of the people is, I work as an ER nurse. And at one point, we transitioned from paper charting to medical charting, and a lot of these same discussions were happening within the medical field at that point where people were concerned that a nurse that knew a family would have access to their personal medical information, that they could get into their chart and just go wild and find whoever they wanted. And I've learned that these are actually far more secure now with this data tracking and the electronic tracking than it ever was when we had paper charting and different things like that. The accountability is actually quite a bit more now with the implementation of all these procedures, and I think people should feel very safe with them in place. Thank you so much. I appreciate that, and I do think it's important to understand what those guardrails are. Chief, is there a review every single time a drone is deployed? Will there then be either a post-operation review? I know it's coming from a command center, so there's somebody there who's saying, "Hey, this thing has to go out." So we have a check there, but then is there also a review after it's used? Councilor Casa: Yes. So every flight is logged, and it shows what the tracking was. It shows where the camera was located. And one thing that we do, like for body-worn cameras, we do supervisor reviews, which are random. They go in there. You make sure that, for one, the equipment's operating correctly. Secondly, that our personnel are within policy. So on these flights, our drone commander can go in and say, "Hey, how many missions did we have yesterday? What calls were they tied to?" And if they identify that it was misused or someone did not do an authorized flight, then that would be something they can address. But every flight's going to be tracked so they have that flight data. In order for someone to go and log in, they have to be given certain credentials. We have two-factor authentication just to log in to the system. And then once they get beyond that, let's say they don't have a credential for their license to fly the drone that is up to date. It also has that in the system. So if someone doesn't have that, they won't let them launch or fly that device. So there's a lot of protections there in place. It's going to have oversight. And with all of our calls that we have, it's going to be something that we look at. Now, if that incident involves certain times when we have to do, like, a supervisor review, such as a vehicle pursuit, a use of force incident, a show of force incident, then that's going to be another opportunity for the supervisor to look at all the video evidence to see where the equipment was being used properly. Are there things that we need to address, and how we look, or are there things we have to look at for a deployment model? But being able to look at those items, there are going to be things for them to look to where there are triggers in place, but also, there'll be random reviews that can be done to ensure that the equipment's being utilized as is intended and prepared. Okay, wonderful. Thanks. I appreciate that. And I remember when we switched over to Axon, and that was actually a big component of this is how many checks and balances there are with Axon. So with the body-worn camera, I know that there had been incidents across the US where a police officer accidentally turned off their camera. And so, with it, we made sure that we have a system, that it's a different motion. You cannot accidentally turn off your camera. It automatically turns on with, I think, if there's a gunshot, if the taser is deployed, if the sirens are on, the camera goes on for the car. I mean, just the amount of surveillance that is on PD at this point, that was purposely chosen for the Axon system. I know that that was something that you were very involved in, and we had a lot of conversation about back in, well, 2020, 2021, whatever it was. So I really appreciate that, and I know that we've had that has been successful with this company, that we have had those checks and balances and that surveillance and those pieces so that we can understand when certain tools are utilized. Of course, with use of force, this becomes a much larger conversation as opposed to with the drones, making sure that things are not being misutilized. So I really appreciate that. And one thing that has come up in inside conversations that I think is worth noting is, the accountability part is absolutely important and a great part of this. But I think more than that is the educational opportunities that we have in EDM fire. I think we're going to have a lot more chances to look at this footage and get better as public servants and learn from some of the things that we're able to see from a different perspective versus, like, I don't actually think the accountability is going to come to play as much. I think that's always an overarching concern, but I do love the idea of just being able to look at these fires, looking at PD calls, and have a sit down where it's almost like a play-by-play on a football game where we can say, "You guys went this way. We could have gone around this way. You see the sea of the fire here." We're going to have real-time tracking of emergency incidents where we can sit down and actually, like, post-tailgate it and talk about how to get better at our jobs, which I think is, I'm already seeing it become a phenomenal resource for us. Yeah, that's wonderful. And that's a great point. I haven't thought about that. And again, every time we have this conversation, there are more things that come up. So thank you. Quick question. There is a, I forget what the name is, but the agreement, the mutual aid agreement between the fire department with the county. So for example, we have, you know, the Frijoles fire going on right now that's in the county, not in the city's jurisdiction. I know that we have our wildland out there helping. Is that something that would come into play? I mean, if we are in this scenario where we're going into county jurisdiction because of the mutual aid, the city's the closest response. They're going to go ahead and respond. They want the drone. Have those conversations occurred with the county, and are there any restrictions there? Yeah, thank you, Councilor Casa and Governing Bay. Yeah, so mutual aid, mutual resources, we would be listed as the ideal potential that we would like to be as a FEMA Level 1 response unit, just like our wildland team from Santa Fe City is currently out at, you know, the fires in Utah as well as New Mexico. We would be a resource for other communities, and kind of like, our skill sets and our drones would kind of allow us to operate in different under their jurisdictions. And we're quickly learning how important it is to kind of coordinate with people like PD, with the wildland, with the tankers and the air tankers and the helicopters. There are a lot of variables that play with those, and so you want to make sure that we're as educated and as safe, and we've learned all the steps prior to, you know, not putting the cart before the horse. We want to be exceptional at what we do while we're in town. And then once we excel and are comfortable in our capabilities, then we'll start to kind of expand and become a resource for the region and, you know, all over the nation ideally. We, in my disaster work, we use drones for hurricanes, tornado responses, even some of the wars I've gone to. Drones have a far-reaching ability that I think we can become well known as a really good operating drone team in the nation. Wonderful. Thank you for that. And then, you know, my last comment is on the price tag. It is a heavy price tag. However, saving a life, I don't think we can really put a price on that. I know we've had that discussion numerous times. And also, you know, Chief Valdez, as you mentioned, some of these scenarios where officers are in a situation where we're, you know, talking either these suicide-by-cop scenarios or where force is used and potentially could have been avoided. That sometimes comes with a lot of legal costs and conversations there. And anytime, I think, that we can avoid use of force, we obviously really want to. And if this is another tool that allows us to do that, I think that it really is worth the price in terms of where we see other, you know, actual financial cost to the city. But also, I really, you know, the more lives that we can make sure that we're saving, the better. So, thank you so much, Mayor. Councilor Garcia: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and I've asked all my questions. I just wanted to give a little bit of kudos to Councilor Bustamante and Councilor Faulkner because initially, when you came on, brought this conversation, talking to, you know, our department with our public safety and how this will work. Mayor, thank you for working with them and trying to find the funding for this. And hopefully, that we make it successful, and we continue it into the future through our budgeting process. Yes, Councilor Begali. Thank you. One more question. So, in our packet, it says that, well, in the memo, it says that the cost for one year is $7,433,604 per year. And we are, you're requesting a budget adjustment request for that entire amount from the general fund reserves for this. Why is that not coming from existing budgets, and what is the plan for future years? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Begali, thank you for the question. So when we were building our budget for this current fiscal year, this was one of our priority projects that we're trying to get implemented. During the initial budget process, it was seen as something that, again, we're trying to be conservative citywide with our funding, and it wasn't something that didn't appear to be able to be budgeted for this fiscal year. So there were discussions to have this be considered through the work that we did and just looking at, again, the workload and the call volume that we're dealing with, how we can mitigate some of these situations. I'm glad Councilor Casa brought it up. Some of these lawsuits that inevitably have occurred. We're trying to avoid those things. And again, we see this as a risk management tool when it comes to that. It's the same thing we saw with the body-worn cameras where if we have one incident where we could have done something better because we had better equipment, it would have paid for the life of the entire contract, and that's been the case to some things. Looking at this amount, it is a significant investment. But the investment that we do get on that return is, coverage-wise, we're looking at seven-day coverage, 20 hours a day at the very least of having that asset for our first responders to, again, have better outcomes. And looking at it from a risk and liability standpoint, our hope is that we're going to have a reduction in those claims, that we're going to have better outcomes, because the financial cost is just one thing. The thing that costs the most, though, is trust. So if we lose trust and confidence because something doesn't go the best it could, trying to earn that trust back, it takes a long time. It really does. We're trying to get ahead of that so we can make sure that we're doing everything we can to avoid those situations, to achieve better outcomes, and not only get our first responders to a position where they're safe, but our community as well. And we understand that some people, again, the mere presence of a police officer can make someone escalate in crisis. If we can start the communication early on before it has to escalate to that, we're hoping to have better outcomes. And we've seen with communication as effective, and we can achieve those outcomes. This is one way for us to try to leverage technology to help us, one, get better information to get us on scene faster. And like I mentioned about, one area that we're focusing a lot of resources to change the criminal behavior, let them know that we do have these resources and for it to be a deterrent for them. And, overall, Town Park Community thrive. Are you planning to put this in your budget for future years? Yes, we are. So, when we come back for budget for FY28, we're going to be including this amount in future budget years. Thank you. Sure. Councilor Faulkner. Just in brief, when Councilor Bustamante and the Mayor and I were working on this, we also have contacted people at the state level, like the Office of Homeland Security for the state. They have some funding available, some Fire Marshal's Office at the state level. We're working on getting grants and getting support from the state as well. We've also talked to Senator Lujan. I believe the Mayor sent Senator Lujan a letter asking for help with funding on this. So this is a pretty popular, it's becoming very popular throughout the state, and so there's also resources that we can try to access higher up the food chain than the city. Any other comments or questions? Just quickly, Chief, just because it was brought up tonight, and I just thank folks until you repeat it at least three times. Is, does this technology utilize Flock technology? Mr. Marissa, DFR does not have automatic license plate reader. No. No Flock. It has nothing to do with Flock. This is an Axon problem. Right. Do we use Flock in general? We do not, Mayor. Okay. I think that is a big misassumption, and I think that is something we're constantly receiving information that get rid of Flock cameras while we don't use them. And my private entity might use them, but we don't. And to Councilor Fagali's point, we're utilizing a, our question, that recent question. We're utilizing this bar to ultimately, the way I look at it is, a pilot program because it can be put in the budget. We can get other funding sources. But if it's not working, similar to any contract that we have, we can always terminate the contract. Is that correct, Chief Valdez? That's correct, Mayor. That's the non-appropriations clause in every contract that's. Great. So the, and the way I look at this holistically is we're trying to build a 21st-century public safety effort. And to do that, we need to utilize 21st-century tools, which whether it's drones or lapel cameras or even tasers, we need to ensure we're utilizing modern tools to keep our public safe. And I see drone technology just as another extension of that. It's exhibited to be successful in the small program we have. But if we look at other municipalities across this country, this is used and becoming a much, much, much more common occurrence. And so we're slowly going at this to the point we want to build public trust. We need to ensure that the public is bought into this. I think the public will see the results, and I definitely would encourage the public to give feedback on this process as we're moving forward with this. So, many thanks to Edie, to Fire, Councilor Bustamante, Councilor Faulkner, everybody that's working on this because, again, I think we all just want to build a safer community. So thank you. No other questions or comments for me. So if not, can we get a roll call vote, please? Motion to approve. I've got a motion. Second. Approve. Second. Discussion on the motion? Hearing none. Now can we get a roll call vote, please, Mr. City Assistant, City Clerk? Yes, Mayor. Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Figalli? No. Councilor Garcia? Yes. Councilor Barrett? Yes. Councilor Bustamante? Yes. Councilor Cassette? Yes. Councilor Castro? No. The motion passes. Okay. Thank you. Let's go to, thank you, gentlemen. Let's go ahead and move on to our next item, please. The next item on the agenda is consideration of a resolution sponsored by Mayor Michael Garcia, Councilor Paul Bustamante, Councilor Jamie Cassette, Councilor Amanda Chavez, Councilor Lee Garcia, Councilor Elizabeth Barrett, and Councilor Pilar Faulkner. Move to approve. A resolution, like, that's okay. A resolution proposing four ballot questions to be submitted to the City of Santa Fe voters at the November 3rd, 2026, general election relating to the issuance of general obligation bonds. One, up to $11,250,000 for citywide street, sidewalk, curb ramp, and pedestrian accessibility improvements. Two, up to $4,500,000 for Municipal Recreation Complex Soccer Valley improvements. Three, up to $4,250,000 for Swan Park Splash Pad and related improvements. And four, up to $5,000,000 for Midtown Capital Improvements for a total maximum principal amount of $25,000,000 to be repaid from property taxes. Here to speak on the item is Monica Maestas, Finance Director. Move to approve. Second. Hey. We've got a motion and a second. Director Maestas, feel free to give a presentation. I don't have a presentation, Mr. Mayor, members of the governing body. I'm, I just, I'm here for any questions that I can help answer. I have tried to field some questions that I've already received. Again, grant me grace because I'm here for Mr. Burnett, but I'm here to answer any questions. We also have Peter Franklin with us, our bond counsel, and I have Clarence Romero, my Treasury Officer with me and some other folks if you have any questions for us. Okay. Questions from the governing body. Councilor Cassatt. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'd, I'd sent over a number of questions, and you've answered them, but I do think it's important. Councilor Faulkner mentioned this at Finance to make sure that we do have these conversations in the public because, obviously, this is something they will ultimately be voting on if we pass it here tonight. So, I think the big one is what will this cost the taxpayer? So how, what will it do to property tax increases? So, Ma'am, I also sent counsel over earlier this afternoon. We did get a schedule sent out for that I provided to everybody. Like, when I have it in front of me right now. Thank you very much. If the full election of the bond passes, it would be about $24.13 per impact per a $100,000 of assessed value. If it, if the first resolution got passed for street, sidewalk, and pedestrian accessibility, that would be $11.58. For the MRC, $4.34. Swan Park, $3.38, and Midtown, $4.83. So, you all have a copy of that, Ma'am. We do. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. And then in terms of we're looking at the first one with streets and sidewalks. There are a number of streets that were listed on this that were also listed on the, what was it? 2024, 2025, bond. Can you explain why there is this replication of targeted projects for this bond if we had already passed a bond that was supposed to cover them? Mr. Mayor, members of the governing body, Councilor Cassett. I actually have Marcos Esquivel here from Public Works, so I'm going to have him come and ask, answer the question. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Councilor Cassett. Yes. You are correct. So this is a continuation of the 2025 Geobond. One of the issues we faced with the Geobond was the original Geobond estimates that were put together on the list of approximately 50 roads were almost three years old at this point, and they were very high level. Between then and now, the situation we faced is not only has the contract prices, have our contract prices increased by 20%, but also the deterioration of the roadways between the initial opening up the first bond in 2024 to now has continued to escalate. Right? Also, the scope of the roads have increased. For example, on average, we're facing about a 133% increase in cost from the original bond to what we're actually seeing in construction today. That's an average. Airport Road, for example, doubled in cost. Jaguar, almost a million dollars more than the estimates. And what we're seeing is just, due to Pro Ag requirements, we are required to, anytime we do any kind of substantial structural improvements to a roadway, we have to improve all the ADA, make all the ADA improvements as well. Jaguar, for example, got so expensive because almost every ramp on that stretch of road, curb ramp needed to be replaced, those out of compliance. So that's what, that's why we are where we are. The costs have been significantly increased in the actual construction. We're trying to continue to work our way down that list as, as of the disposal. Wonderful. Thank you. That's, I really appreciate that. Two follow-up questions. Streets that were, these projects that were in the '25 bond that were not listed in this bond, they're fully funded. So nothing's falling off of the, of the project list between these two bonds. Is that correct? Well, we have the initial roads that are, that are slated for the first bond. We have had to alter the list within the complete list. Right? So we've moved roads that are higher priority to the top of the list. We utilize the original 2025 remaining funds of about $17,700,000. Even including this bond, we're still going to lose, probably about, I would say, a third of the roads that are on the list. Right now, we're looking at about $55,000,000 in current costs, with the average increase of a 133% with the roads. So even this bond will not complete that list in the current situation. Got it. And so as I'm looking at this list, I'm seeing FY '25 bond that were completed in progress and then planned roads for FY '27 or FY '25 bond planned roads, FY '27, utilizing remaining balance of FY '25 bond and then bond being considered in 2027. I'm not seeing a list of the roads that have fallen off. Do you, do you have that? Because, because I think the list, if I'm understanding this correctly, the list I see in front of me does not identify which, which roads we are no longer funding. Correct. I have, I have the list here. I can provide it to you, but, essentially, it is the same '25, the original Geobond list, less the ones we've done, the ones we have slated for this for the rest of 2025, and then the ones we have slated at this past. Okay. So between the two bonds, correct. The original list is covered? Yes. Okay. I'm sorry. I misunderstood. Okay. The original list is covered, but there's still going to be some that it's, that's, it's probably going to fall off because of the increase. $3,000,000 shy based on the current cost. Okay. Whole list completed. So that brings me to my next question. I think, Monica, this is probably for you. Knowing that we are seeing increase in construction costs across the board, not just for streets, but for everything, does this current bond, due to the best of its ability, build in that expected increase knowing that we, you know, we're not going to spend it all in a year? Have we anticipated the fact that costs are going to go up? Have we built that into these bond amounts? And what if we've overshot it? So we wind up, I mean, that'd be nice. Sounds like we're not going to, but, sounds like we have places that it could be used. But, can you explain to me how maybe we've projected knowing that this is the scenario that we've been facing in so many areas? Mr. Mayor, members of the governing council, Councilor Cassett, I think that we all, I think that we definitely need to always kind of keep our eye on where projects are at. We always would anticipate that costs would increase, and I think that those are the kind of decisions and projections and things that we need to maintain all the time. And, again, I can't speak for Public Works and that process, but I think as the Finance Director, that's something that I definitely will work with Public Works. And anytime you, Council has any kind of concerns that we can provide you that information, at any Finance Committee meeting, going forward. But I think those are things that we always kind of look at that and anticipate with not knowing. Yeah, I think that would be wonderful, because, once I would really appreciate it once we know that, hey, unfortunately, costs rose above what we have from XYZ. We're going to have to make up that difference. I think that's a really important conversation both for us but also for the public because they see these lists. They're like, great, these projects are going to get done. And then there are scenarios out of our hands, where we don't control inflation. We don't control tariffs. We don't control the increased cost from our contracts to an extent. And so, that communication would be wonderful. So I really appreciate that that will be coming. I have plenty more questions. I will yield the floor to allow other questions to occur, but, if they are not asked, then I'll have some more to ask. So thank you. Any other questions from governing body members? Councilor Castro. Thank you so much. Councilor Cassett, I will yield the floor quickly. I just have a quick question. We talked about prioritization and how some of these streets got on the list. I'm looking at my question. Is there any room for us to evaluate the condition of other roads or other priorities that the city might have now versus when these decisions were made? Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Councilor Castro. The answer to that is yes. One thing we need to keep in mind is currently, because the city does not have a current PCI, which is a pavement condition index, we're trying to use our best judgment based on experience, actual visual, visually inspecting the roads that we have on the list, kind of already knowing what condition most of these roads that are on the list are in. In the near future, hopefully, we'll be able to institute a pavement condition index, and that will allow us to utilize actual scientific data to prioritize our list. So there is room to make changes to the list as we need or as we see fit. Again, but for now, it's literally our best educated guess based on experience in the real world. We can get the technology to each and every need for it. Thank you so much. Yeah, I appreciate that. Talking about having 21st-century technology, I hope that we can get that to you. No further questions, ma'am. Any other comments or questions? Councilor Fagali. Thank you, Mayor. I think my main question that hasn't already been answered is about how this was selected. Not just the roads, but, for instance, the Midtown section of this. How did we pick that this was going to go to site preparation, demolition, construction, and not road construction or any of the other myriad of things that we could use there? Mayor, Councilor Verghelet, thank you so much for your question. So we're looking at getting a higher rate of return on any debt, disposition of property. So by demolishing existing buildings not meant for adaptive reuse, we'll get a higher price per square foot. Right now, we're at about $7 a square foot, which is in the $300,000 range per acre, but we'll go up to $10 to $12 per square foot, which gets us, of course, higher to the $405,000 to $1,000,000 per acre price point. So our big need here for all of the infrastructure is $77,000,000. We phase it to something more palatable. We look at $59,000,000 will not really put a dent in that right now, so we want to prioritize site preparation and the things that we can tackle to show our community that we're making strides. And do we have a plan for that $50 to $80,000,000? Mr. Mayor, so, we do, and that will be a presentation in the beginning of September. Thank you. Okay. Kev, I need you back up here. Thank you. To be clear, we are not going to demo Consuelo's Place. Mayor, Councilor Faulkner, that is correct. The buildings slated for demo on this list include King Hall, Mouton Hall, Luke Hall, and Kennedy. Consuelo's Place is currently housed in Saint Michael's Hall. Okay. And then to be clear, Angie Brown and I will be getting bricks from King Hall because we lived in that dormitory when we went to the College of Santa Fe. Correct? Hi, Harry, Councilor Faulkner. Anyone who has lived in any of those dorms, I will get you a brick that extends the community. They can have one. It'll be a great doorstop. They can come pick them up once we get that demo done. It will be easy for you. And you're doing an awesome job, by the way, Kev. You just impress me every single time we have to talk about Midtown. You bring me a lot of comfort and security in a project this size. So thank you for everything you do. You're amazing. Councilor Barrett. I don't know if we're talking about timelines or not, but when we get the money for the splash pad, any idea how long it will take to roll it out? Just asking for some friends. Mayor, Councilor Barrett, we're very excited to get the splash pad up and running. I think the realistic timeline, it's going to be 18 to 24 months once we get the money because we have a 100% design, which is super exciting. But we have a lot of infrastructure both at the MRC and Swan Park that we have to put in first before we can bring in the equipment. And how about for MRC? Is it along the same lines? Like, 24 months or for that phase one? I'm sorry. What was that? For MRC, is it a similar timeline? Similar, no. The MRC will be probably quicker because putting in athletic fields is much easier than putting in a splash pad and building a structure. Councilor Cassett. Thanks so much. On that note, and Councilor Fagalia had put this forward in an email. Is it possible for us to, if we have the available money, to utilize dollars in reserve? Because it takes a while for us to, so once the, once it passes, if it passes, then the election has to get certified, and then we have to sell the bonds. And then so, I mean, it takes a while to actually even get the money in hand. Is there a scenario where we have the ability to utilize existing resources in the city if they are available and then pay ourselves back with the bond? Is that a legal process, first of all? And then is it actually doable based on what we have available to us? Mr. Mayor, governing body, Councilor Cassidy. Actually, I'm going to introduce Clarence Romero. He's our Treasury Officer, and he can answer that question for us. Body, actually, this last year with $9,000,000, I think, they've spent on the roadways, we actually fronted the money for the project. I will be drawing down the money at the level. Okay. Wonderful. So that is a possibility if the dollars are there. Great. Thank you. I appreciate that. And then we have bond counsel here. Right? Yes, ma'am. Peter Franklin is online. Mr. Franklin, I would just love to hear your perspective on this proposal, what this does for our bonding capacity, all the wonderful things that you think about, and how you're feeling about this and if there's anything we need to be concerned about or watching out for or if you feel like we have the green light that we're moving in a responsible manner. Mr. Mayor, members of the Council, Councilor Cassatt, I think this is a responsible proposal. These are the types of projects that generally get voter approval. Just to elaborate a little bit on the last question, the Council would need to adopt a reimbursement resolution in order to spend available money now and reimburse it with bond proceeds, but that's, as these things go anyway, a pretty straightforward process. And, yeah, I don't, I don't have any misgivings or concerns about what the Council is considering. Wonderful. And even with this approved, we still have a pretty sizable bonding capacity left. Correct? Oh, yeah. Quite a bit. Wonderful. Well, thank you. I, I sent you a lot of questions. I really appreciate. I won't go through all of them now, but, if members of the public have questions about them, we have the answers. So thank you so much for that, and I appreciate it. Thanks, Mayor. Any other questions? Or none? Motion to. Well, we've got the motion, I believe. So, Mr. Assistant City Clerk, if you can, roll call vote, please. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Figalli? Yes. Councilor Barrett? Yes. Councilor Busamante? Yes. Councilor Cassett? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Chavez? Yes. The motion has passed. Okay. Thank you. Next item on the agenda, please. The next item on the agenda is public comment on bills, consideration of Bill Number 2026-13, adoption of Ordinance Number 2026-TBD, sponsored by Councilor Alma Castro and Councilor Paul Busamante. This is a bill amending the City of Santa Fe's Public Campaign Finance Code, Chapter 9-3, SFCC 1987, to increase the amount of funding available for publicly financed candidates for municipal office, increasing the funding amounts for City Council, Municipal Judge, and Mayoral candidates, repealing Section 9-3.12 SFCC 1987, Qualified Small Contributions, and repealing Section 9-3.13 SFCC 1987, Additional Reports of Qualified Small Contributions, Additional Matching Payments from the Fund. This is an opportunity for the public to provide comment on this proposal. Is there anybody in the chamber? Now is your opportunity to step forward. If not, we will move towards online comments. Those on Zoom who would wish to comment on the bill, please raise your hand. No hands have been raised, Mayor. Okay. With that, let's go to move on to our next item, please. Our next item is final action on legislation. This is consideration of Bill Number 2026-11, adoption of an ordinance sponsored by Mayor Michael Garcia, Councilor Alma Castro, Councilor Pilad Faulkner, and Councilor Lee Garcia. 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 of calculation to use 30% of the area median income instead of 65% when determining base fee amounts. Okay. Here to speak on the piece of legislation is Faviola Chavez, Affordable Housing Director. Okay. I think I, okay. Well, I mean, do you have a motion? What was seconded? Mr. Mayor, I believe we need to have a public hearing before we do motions. Isn't that correct? Yep. I will withdraw that if you'd like. Right. I was waiting. That's what I was waiting for. Thank you. Okay. Director Chavez, the floor is yours. Thanks, Mayor Garcia, members of the governing body. This has been a long time coming for us. I'm thrilled to have the potential of increasing our fee in lieu to the 30% AMI. So here with me today is Sherry Boucher. IT, can you include her in our conversation? She is on. I just promoted her to panelist. So again, I don't know if you guys want me to go through the presentation and talk to you about how that fee is going to increase, or if you have questions for us. We're able to respond. Okay. I'll turn to the governing body. What's the will of the body? If anybody would like a presentation, that was the thing to request. This has been well covered, I think. Okay. But then any other comments, questions from governing body members? Yep. Hold on. Hold on. Well, let's go to a public hearing first. Any members of the public would like to step up and speak to this particular item, now is the time to do so. Just step up to the podium. We'll go to in chambers first, and then we'll go to anybody participating online. Hold on one second. Let us get the little timer set up for folks. Okay. I see a timer up. My name is Pelican Lee. I live in District 1. I think the best outcome of this change would be that we would have more housing built for people who are under 30% of the AMI. A lot of people in this city think that homelessness is our top problem, and the problem we have is that we have not enough rentals for people that are ready to move out of housing, out of homelessness into housing. And it's those people, it's those housing that's under 30% of the AMI that we need more than anything in this city. So I want you to vote for this for that reason. That would be the best outcome. Of course, another outcome would be more money going into the affordable housing trust fund, which I hope the city would see fit to put into those kind of low-income, super low-income rentals for people who are super low-income because that is the problem we have with our shelters trying to move people into housing who are ready to move into housing, and there's just not enough housing for them. So that's my comment. Thank you. Let's go ahead and wait for the number to reset for you. Alright. Here we go, sir. Good evening, Mayor and City Councilors. My name is Alan Lacek, and I'm the executive director of the Apartment Association of New Mexico. We represent about 75,000 rental doors, which equates to over 150,000 New Mexicans live within our membership. We absolutely share the city's goal of creating more affordable housing. We respectfully, though, oppose the proposed increase. Simply put, you can't make housing more affordable by making it more expensive to build. Santa Fe has already experienced what happens when housing policies make development financially infeasible. Apartment construction was stalled here for nearly a decade, and the current fee in lieu structure helped unlock new construction, and that additional supply has created competition and contributed to rents finally declining from their 2024 peak. Increasing this fee also does not guarantee more money for the affordable housing program. The city only collects the fee when the projects actually get built. When the higher costs stop development, fewer homes are produced. Therefore, less revenue is generated for the program. We should also recognize that housing households under 30% of AMI really generally requires deep public subsidy. Programs such as LIHTC, Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, grants, other dedicated affordable housing resources, those services are designed to serve those households. And we really should not attempt to solve that by placing hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional costs on the production of new rental housing. Instead, we'd encourage the council to consider a more moderate AMI adjustment, phase in any increase, or tie the fees to actual housing production, so it doesn't further discourage housing production when construction starts to slow. Santa Fe needs deeply affordable housing, needs workforce housing, needs market-rate housing, but we really need those goals to complement each other and not compete with them. So we respectfully ask you to reconsider this proposal. Thank you. I don't see anybody else in the chamber. Mr. Assistant City Clerk, is there anybody online? Yes. Stephanie Benonato. Miss Benonato, the floor is yours. Thank you very much. I'm in support of changing the structure for the fee in lieu of and to make housing more affordable for people. And I agree with the first speaker. It's not just about homelessness. It's really about affordable housing for people at the low end so that when people are transitioning, there's a place for them to go. I don't think that, even though it sounds like a lot, tripling the fee, I don't think $25,000 a unit is really a lot of money. It's not even close to building a unit. And I think that, if you're going to pay rather than actually produce affordable units, that you shouldn't not get a density bonus, because again, I just, it's rewarding people for not actually producing the housing that is needed. Thank you. Is there anybody else online? Yes. The next speaker will be Russell Brunt. Mr. Brunt, the floor is yours. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, Councilors, my name is Russell Brunt. I serve the Community Development Commission. Let me start with where we agree. Santa Fe needs more affordable housing, and it needs more money, steadier revenue streams to build it. That goal is right. My concern is the method in front of you tonight. A simple principle should guide us. We get less of what we tax and more of what we subsidize. A higher fee in lieu is a larger tax on building apartments, so we should expect fewer of them. If we want more affordable housing, the sure path is to sweeten the incentive to build it and to fund the trust fund through a community-wide measure like a general obligation bond like we talked about already tonight, not a surcharge on the very renters we're trying to help. So it matters who pays this fee. A recent model by UCLA finds that the cost isn't borne by developers or the wealthy as so many people in this community like to talk about. It's passed through into the rents, paid for by renters. So in Santa Fe, those are largely our missing middle. The teachers, the firefighters, and nurses who earn too much to qualify for an affordable unit, but not enough to absorb another rent increase. So above all, I want to ask for better analysis before this policy moves forward. You're being asked to approve a 200% increase, yet the city has confirmed it has no projections, not for the affordable units that would create, not the market-rate units it might deter. Asked about the effects, the director of the affordable housing office at the recent finance committee meeting said the city does not anticipate any negative impacts at all. On a change this size, we should note, not anticipate. We can't guess. This is affecting people's lives. And today's policy is working. Before a workable fee existed, the original inclusionary zoning policy froze apartment construction here for more than a decade. Sprawl, near zero vacancy, rents outpacing the nation? The current structure reversed that. Building resumed. Rents have only lately begun easing from their 2024 peak. That's worth protecting. It advises time to get the next version right. With developers, experts, and policymakers at one table and incentives to build to produce the homes we all want to has the effect on the rents that we all know needs to happen. I'd be glad to help in the process. Thank you very much for your time. The next speaker is Jordan Young. Hi there. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Brunt. I wholeheartedly support everything that you just said. The city has produced no data on the outcomes from their original fee in lieu policy, and our development has stopped. They have expressed no goals for affordable housing units. This feels like a joke, a vanity project. Refusing to get feedback from developers, the very people that build housing, alienates the industry that's capable of building. Cost for materials are up 30 to 70% post-COVID. Our horrible land use policies coupled with slow permitting are completely unacceptable for a city who claims to want affordable housing. Reform land use now. Thank you. The next speaker is Rick Martinez. Hey, Councilors, Mayor and Councilors. I wanted to support this 30% increase because right now, we have, we used to have an inclusive community. Now we have an exclusive community with the fee in lieu of. It's happened over and over again where developers are creating these exclusive communities. Also, when I'm talking about the tenure thing that they do add affordable housing in their units and these apartment units, it's only for ten years. So after ten years, we're playing catch-up all over again, and that's something that's not right. Growing up in this community, we have been growing up in an inclusive community, not an exclusive community. And when we're doing this fee in lieu of, developers are creating exclusive communities. So that's kind of bad. And if the developers want to be part of this community, let's put fire, police, nurses, teachers, all those in these units and not walk away from it. But I really feel that, if we don't do this change, all we're doing is creating exclusive communities around our city and these apartments. I want to thank you, but I really wanted you to support this 30% increase. Thank you so much. The next speaker is Brandon Vela. Hi. Good evening, everyone. Mayor, City Council. I wanted to express my disagreement with this motion of increasing the fee in lieu in large part because we've seen how in situations such as those with the tariffs that the cost doesn't ultimately end with the developer in this case, but will be passed on to potential homebuyers. I also would like to voice the displeasure of what I've seen in the restart of the appropriation of the money from the affordable housing trust fund. It sort of seems to go against the priorities and the urgency that the city has identified in wanting to build affordable housing. So before we increase the appropriations to the affordable housing trust fund, I would like to see it functioning properly and efficiently. Thank you. There's no one else on Zoom with their hands raised, Mayor. Okay. We will go ahead and close the public hearing portion and move on to governing body comments, questions. Motion to approve. Well, she's got a motion on the floor. So is, let's, you can make, second. We got a motion and a second now. Yeah. We absolutely can have discussion. So Councilor Castro. I just wanted to address a couple comments, particularly from the CDC. So I am representing a body right now, not myself. So this piece of legislation did come before the CDC, and though I appreciate Commissioner Brunt, it did pass. So majority of the body is in favor of this. I just wanted to make sure that everybody was fully aware of that. We did get the same presentations from our director of affordable housing. And then I do also want to address one of the comments about the pulling back of the RFP. In my opinion, as chair, it's actually proving that we are committing to the things that we want. There were problems in the process that I personally didn't feel was aligning with what this governing body had suggested that they wanted an affordable housing trust fund money being spent. And so, I will just respectfully say that I think the fact that we are looking closely at how to best utilize our dollars is keeping with prioritizing 30% and below AMI. Thank you. Any other comments, questions? Councilor Chavis. This is a hard one for me. I think it's, you know, so we just discussed projects that we have coming forward and why we're requesting additional funding, how the growing cost of things is kind of hard to keep on top of. I think that it's dismissed more so than it should be that that is a real thing for developers. I also think that we keep talking about not wanting our community members to have to live in Rio Rancho and Albuquerque, and we're about to make that real appealing. And I think that there's truth with that. So, yeah, I definitely have some concerns. And I do remember having a conversation with Miles Conaway specifically a long time ago about this concern and about this reality of how hard our process makes it for developers. On top of that, we have cost right now, and then we're adding a layer of cost before we've even fixed components of land use that are still a ways away fixing for developers. I think that it's important that we are very aware and transparent with how unappealing we're making it to develop in Santa Fe if we move forward. It just, I think it's even, it's almost, it's difficult to argue against it because we just talked about how we're stalled in certain projects because we don't have enough funding, but we're adding layers of cost and already a complicated, dysfunctional being addressed. Absolutely, our staff is aware of it and doing what they can to address that system within our city. And so I think a lot of the concerns we heard this evening are real concerns and real realities that should be considered. So I just want to emphasize, I completely, I get it. I see it because I see it on our side in our spending. I think it is a huge concern, and I'm not sure it's going to keep community members in Santa Fe. I think we're just going to grow surrounding areas that are less complicated to work with. Sorry. Thank you, Mayor. First and foremost, I really do want to thank staff for the work that you all did in collecting information and collecting essentially comps of other cities, fee in lieu when they have a comparable program. I think it is helpful to see what other communities are doing. However, my concern has remained that we have not done an economic analysis, a financial feasibility analysis. And, you know, I received, in your responses, that that was not on the agenda. For me, that is the crucial component here is that there is the capability to take a look at the specifics of the Santa Fe market and how we, one, analyze actually, which we have never really done, how our inclusionary zoning in our Santa Fe Homes program has really worked. And, you know, has it actually increased cost to market rate housing? I think one of, as I've said multiple times, as I've been looking at this, and I love that this has actually started a conversation, a lot of research for me, inclusionary zoning can have some very negative unintended consequences. And we are seeing a lot of very progressive cities change course. We're going in the opposite direction. I believe I was told that Seattle just put a moratorium on their inclusionary zoning because building had been stopped. Oregon has now said you cannot have underfunded mandates. So, essentially, if you're going to require inclusionary zoning, if you're going to acquire units, if you're going to acquire fees, you have to make up the cost for developers. And this was in response to Portland. I understand that there are other communities that have larger fees. However, they also have very different programs. And you can't just look at the component of the fee and have it understand the program. What I think we're facing here is, and many people have said it, our affordable housing policies aren't working to meet the needs of the community. Our housing policies aren't working to meet the needs of the community. This is a 20-year-old policy that has been amended now four or five times. And we keep tweaking the same policy thinking maybe it's going to make a difference, and it keeps not working. And so I do think that as we take a look at where we need to go from here, we're hearing a lot from the development community, from, you know, the housing advocacy community that this is a step in the wrong direction. To be quite honest, I don't know if I can agree with them because maybe we could go higher. You know, we're seeing that all these other communities have higher fees, but there has been no economic analysis. So I don't know, I don't have the information whether or not this is the correct number. I don't know how building in Santa Fe compares to building in other communities. It is not the same. As Councilor Chavez just mentioned and as was alluded to, our land use code is a huge problem. We are already seen as an undesirable city to build in due to how difficult we are. So I think that there is the potential that this could actually deter development. I simply can't support this because I really, I understand, and I appreciate seeing what other communities have done. It's not relevant enough for me because we are not looking at Santa Fe. We are not doing an economic feasibility. We are not doing a financial feasibility analysis of what building conditions are in Santa Fe. And that is something that I know is recommended by a number of the housing economists that I've spoken to. You have to go city-specific. You have to look at your own community. You have to look at the totality of your program of what are the payoffs, the incentives. You know, what are the things that you are doing to help meet this? So I think looking at other communities is wonderful because it gives us ideas of what to look like, look at, and that's great, and I appreciate that that's there. I've had a chance to dig into some of these. I know Boulder has come up. Boulder actually terrifies me in terms of that's the wrong direction, but it would be, you know, it's going to be interesting to see as they change their program how things move. But for us, I think that there's a lot of work that, one, we could already do right away. We could work on our land use code. We know that that's a really big issue. We can do more with the light tech housing. We had a lot of light tech projects in the nineties. We had much more affordable housing being built in the nineties. We're not doing light tech. Again, I don't know the technicalities and the details around doing that. I know it is something we can pursue. And then, of course, our permitting processes, our zoning, our regulations. There's a lot of pieces that we can be working on. So I agree with, I don't know, I think it was Mr. Brot that said we can all agree that our current policy is not getting us where we need to go. We absolutely know that. I am skeptical that this policy will move us in the correct direction. And, again, I really can't say either way whether or not that is the case. So at this moment, I can't support this because I do not have the information to support something that has, can have such a dire impact on our community that, to be quite honest, we may not even pick up on for a few years. And by that point, you know, there's, there can be a lot of missed opportunities. So I ultimately won't be supporting this regardless of what happens. I do have an amendment, though, because I heard a recommendation from a constituent who actually came and spoke about, you know, looking at the financing and development and, you know, would it be more possible for, if the fee was paid later when an income stream was actually coming? So rather than at permitting, then at certificate of occupancy. So this amendment's Amendment A in the packet. It is on page five, line six, and that's in the red line. It says, "Developers who choose to pay the fee in lieu may work with the Office of Affordable Housing to develop a payment plan so long as the total payment is received by the city no later than at the point at which the developer applies for certificate of occupancy, unless it is determined by the Office of Affordable Housing that a later payment date is feasible and beneficial to the Santa Fe Homes program." The idea behind this is that it allows, I mean, and if the Office of Affordable Housing says you need to pay it all at once, but you can pay it at the end, that's fine. I understand that there's, you know, it can be challenging to track a payment. But the point is is that it's delaying the time that the fee would be due. I understand that there was conversation to do this administratively. However, I do see this as a program design change, which I see within the purview of the City Council. And so we wanted to give enough flexibility to the Office of Affordable Housing for it to, you know, to look at what the regulations would be as I know that there was, apparently, there was discussion that this would be something that you all would be pursuing in regulation, but at least putting the timeline on there of stating that they can pay at certificate of occupancy as opposed to permitting. And if the Office of Affordable Housing chooses that it will be a, you know, certificate of occupancy and not before, you know, I leave it up to what is feasible within the department. So with that, I would like to move for approval of Amendment A. Second. And I'm also a sponsor of this amendment. I don't have an amendment on the floor. Is there any discussion on the amendment? Councilor Chavez and Councilor Garcia. I want to clarify the comments that I think brought this amendment on because I believe the developer was communicating that as units are filled, it makes it more doable to pay higher fees. But this actually is an amendment that would just be at the end of the project, not necessarily once the building is occupied. So it's at certificate of occupancy, so that is at the point that they can start moving people in and getting payment. But they have to pay by that point? They have to pay in order to receive their certificate of occupancy. Yes. All right. So I think I'm not sure it fulfills the comment that was made because I think it was the occupancy itself that they wanted to assist with payment. I just, I'm trying to clarify because that's what I heard from the comment, but I'm not sure if that, you know? Yeah. I had heard him say certificate of occupancy. The other, but that is why we also put in this flexibility that if the Office of Affordable Housing, that a later payment date is feasible and beneficial, that that is allowed. So as, you know, our director's working with developers, and they're saying, "Hey, can we pay at X date?" And they say, "You know what? Yes, we can take care of that." That that was under the discretion. The reason I was looking at certificate of occupancy is one gets closer to when there's an income stream coming in, but also, it's a, it's another one of those points that they can't move forward until they receive it. So it is, you know, that check of, you know, right now, it's permitting, so they can't build until we, until they receive, until the fee in lieu is received. In this sense, it's another step that they have to take in order to actually get people in. So, yeah, I guess it's, you know, it's a check that we have there in case, in case there's, you know, delays in payment. So that was my thought around why I stuck it there, but gave some flexibility. I would also offer on this note, the developers aren't always the ones who run the apartment complexes. So they can build them, but then a lot of times, they check out and a national team comes in who runs the apartment complex. So there's, in a lot of cases, two different entities working with departments. So the developer builds it, and then they hand it off to another entity. That answers my question. Thank you. Councilor Garcia and then Councilor Castro. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to go back to, and we're talking about this amendment because the reason I joined on, I also joined on as a sponsor for this, because I wanted to know how this affects the overall decision-making process as you were going through this. And the amendment states, and it's in the red line here, it says, "Developers who choose to pay the fee in lieu may work with the Office of Affordable Housing to develop a payment plan so long as the total payment is received by the city no later than at the point at which developer applies for a certificate of occupancy, unless it is determined by the Office of Affordable Housing that a later payment date is feasible and beneficial to the Santa Fe Homes program." Is that already in your purview as the director, Director Chavez? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Chavez, it is. However, if we do payment plans, our staff is going to have to collect those payments. And if they miss a payment, they're going to have to get on the phone. They're going to have to call the developer. So it's going to increase the workload for affordable housing staff. I would like to also mention that it will increase the fee because the fees are issued on an annual basis in June from HUD. And so we have to update those fees on an annual basis. So if it comes in at the certificate of occupancy, that's two years after original permits are pulled. That's going to be a higher fee. And that's based upon, again, the calculation of the 30% AMI. And what they would, they do, so they couldn't lock it in at the beginning and pay at the end? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Garcia, they cannot. They have to pay it whenever the statute indicates. So whatever we decide here is when they're going to pay the fee. So right now, the way it's set in the ordinance is that they pay at issuance of permits. And so if we choose to do certificate of occupancy, as I mentioned, construction on multifamily housing developments usually take about two years. That fee will increase based upon the HUD's new AMI. Thank you. Can you give me any examples of past, because it's at your examples? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Lee Garcia, there's never been an instance that I'm aware of. And my tenure being here, I've only been here 11 months, so I've never had that question from a developer if they can pay later. It's never come up. Thank you. The other question I have, in collaboration with, obviously, you have another person that's above you, which is our land use director. What is the sentiment that's come down from that superior in regards to this amendment and how it's going to work towards this change with the TNU? Thank you for the question. Mr. Mayor, Councilor Garcia, I don't want to speak for Heather Lamboy, but from her discussions with me and Mayor, she has fully supported this. However, she is also concerned about staff's ability to be collecting payments should a developer choose not to pay and have to follow up and call and send letters and whatnot. And so another way, if we wanted to prevent that from happening, we could do a land use restriction on the property where they're required to pay right away. So I don't really know the best way to handle the fee in lieu coming at certificate of occupancy, because I know that it's going to require staff to really collect on that and to ensure it gets paid. So then, I guess what I'm understanding is that we don't have a plan of a schedule to follow in regards to pay now, pay in increments, pay at the end. Mr. Mayor, Councilor Garcia, we do not have a schedule incorporated at this time, but again, it's administrative. So if a developer came to the Office of Affordable Housing and asked for a payment plan, we'd be more than happy to assist them with that. However, when they pull the permits, the way we're currently doing things, they have to have that fee paid in order to pull the permits. So I guess this is where I'm having, and I obviously am a sponsor on this, but I also want to make sure that we are able to do business in the most efficient way and manner possible without complicating things even more. And it seems to me that as we are going through this process, and if it opens up and directs your office to say, "You're going to have a payment plan," we don't know how that works. Does it stop people from even trying to develop? So I think that even maybe further hinders a little bit of the development process, where we're already having some hard burn over increasing this fee and what it's going to do to building units, which we're looking for, is we're looking for units. Is that correct? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Lee Garcia, the way it currently works is when a developer comes in and they want to go ahead and pull the permits, we give them an agreement. We could include a schedule in that agreement. If this body chooses to do that, we can. However, again, it's going to be a burden on the staff. And then if they can't, if developers cannot pay this fee, they have that option to put the units into production. Well, okay. So now I'm going back to other cities, and I guess, obviously, this is in regards to Councilor Katz's point of evaluating how other cities do this. And is this something that other cities do when they're, do they have payment plan options? Is that standard in the industry? I don't know if Sherry Boucher is, Councilor Lee Garcia, if she's still on the line, but it was my understanding, is she? Okay. Sherry, do you want to address that question? Yeah. Thank you, Director Chavez. Mr. Mayor and Councilor Garcia, yes, we did find that that's pretty common. A lot of communities that do allow deferrals to CFO is the common practice for other communities. So other cities do deferrals based upon, so that would support this amendment being placed in here. Is that correct? Mr. Mayor and Councilor Garcia, that is correct. The other communities do defer to CFO. We haven't seen anybody execute a payment plan, which is a little bit different, but we do see commonly that folks will allow deferrals to CFO. Okay. So that, okay, that, I, that's where this is complicating for, complicating this for me because once you set a standard where for one individual application, they can say, "Well, I would like to pay this and pay in three payments." "Well, I'd like to pay, it's going to take us three years to build this apartment complex, and I would like to pay in equal payments over three years per month to make this happen." I think that makes it very complicated or very difficult to understand without having something set forth in our own, a schedule that's already proposed. And so that, that's kind of where I'm having some issue with, with this. And so, I'll leave it up, I'll cede the floor for now, but if there's anybody else who has questions or comments, I'd love to hear what you have to say. Councilor Castro. Sure. Sir, to the city attorney, I think there's a nuance here that may not be clearly understood. The difference between "may" and "shall" in legislation. "Shall" is a directive. Correct? And "may" is giving people an option to do a thing. Correct? In layman's terms. Councilor Buckner, yes. This, this would be discretionary. Right. So it can be very uncomplicated because staff can say, "We will accept it in two spaces. When you pull your permits or at the point of the certificate of occupancy." The belief that people can just willy-nilly come to staff and be like, "I want a personalized private payment plan," is not going to happen because it's up to staff to decide whether or not these things can happen. And clearly, staff doesn't want to do a personalized for every developer payment plan. So the fact that it's up to staff's discretion actually uncomplicates the issue because you are the one who can decide whether or not to do it. So if it's too complicated for your team to do a payment plan, it's your discretion to say no. We have two options. We can do occupancy or we can do pulling the permits. Those are the only two. It's your decision. So actually, it makes it very uncomplicated because it isn't directing staff that they have to do payment plans. It's saying you may or may not do a payment plan, and it's up to staff whether that happens. So to me, it's uncomplicated. The issue that I'm having, though, is that when this is put into the legislation, it allows them to utilize this in their favor. That's the problem I'm having with it. Well, so, even though it's at their discretion. So that's just, I don't think the devil's advocate here. Yeah. Hold on. Let's, enough of the back and forth. Let's go to Councilor Castro. Yeah. Just clarifying. The way that this reads actually says there will be a payment plan. There will be a payment plan that has to be paid. So it doesn't give, it gives you an option to not have the payment plan go past the certificate of occupancy, but the legislation, in fact, says, "housing to develop a pay so, so long, so meaning, like, so long as their the total payment is paid by the certificate of occupancy, they do have access to a payment plan." So I think your concern, Councilor Garcia, is because that does create a layer of management of creating a whole payment system per every individual developer depending on the development itself. Councilor Castro. Thank you so much. So just to be clear, Director, under our current regulations, if a developer could not pay a fee, you could enter into some kind of agreement with them to do a payment plan currently. Is that correct? Mr. Mayor, Councilor Castro. That's correct. And this is also a tough one for me. I'm on the fence because though I'm very concerned about the amount of work that would go into it, I am very interested and excited for the fact that we could potentially collect more fees if this were to pass. So I am in favor of collecting more fees. I am not in favor of putting more burden on staff. Thank you. Councilor Bustamante. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I, I kind of expressed the same sentiment, that I'm just not comfortable putting the city in the role of bank, essentially. Plus, you know, another impediment that I see is if somebody, situations can change. You know? Right now, they pay that fee upfront. They know exactly when it's due. They can allow for that. On a payment plan, something may come up, might come up. They can't make that payment. So then what is our recourse? Will we go to collections? Will we stop the project? You know, it seems to me at that point that we're putting further obstacles in the way to getting projects done. And I agree with Councilor Parcilla that, you know, opening this up to everyone and, Greg, I'm sorry if this is not what you were saying, but it seems like it's potentially an excessive burden. You know, people that will take advantage of this that are not currently, or, you know, the bigger development companies that really don't bat an eye can potentially do this somehow to do to their advantage. And whereas right now, the system works as is. They, everybody knows when it's due. So I'd, I guess, you know, the fact that we can do it administratively on a case-by-case basis already, I, I guess I don't see the need for this amendment. Thank you, Bear. Any other council? Thank you, Mayor. First, I did put forward an amendment to the amendment, and according to our rules, we can propose amendments during governing body as long as they are in writing. So what I wrote is, "Developers who choose to pay an in-lieu fee may work with the Office of Affordable Housing to determine a payment due date, so long as the payment is received by the city no later than at the point at which the developer applies for a certificate of occupancy, unless it is determined by the Office of Affordable Housing that a later payment date is feasible and beneficial to Santa Fe Homes Program." However, it looks like this is already allowed. We actually should be doing this already. I'm not sure which section we're in. We're obviously in Chapter 26-1.33, Timing, or nope, 10.4, Timing of Alternative Means of Compliance. "In developments where the governing body has approved an in-lieu contribution as an alternate means of compliance," which also is interesting because it sounds like we're supposed to be doing this, "the in-lieu contribution shall be due and deliverable after approval of the development request and before the recordation of the Santa Fe Homes Program agreement. An applicant may propose an alternative to this timing requirement as part of the request for alternate means of compliance, subject to the city's approval." So it sounds to me like that is already something that there is the allowability to do. What I'm saying is that I want them to, by right, be able to say, "We're going to defer to certificate of occupancy." I understand that payment plans can be complex, and I think that that's something that developers can have. Also, I'm a little confused about the fee going up because my understanding is that there's a contract, that there's a Santa Fe Homes Program contract that normally is signed, and I thought the fee was established at that moment when it is signed. And that is, I believe that that has to be signed prior to it going to Planning Commission. And so, therefore, if it's already signed and we're already under contract, how could we increase the fee by allowing them to pay it later? So I guess, Marcos, I would turn to you on that question. If there's already a contract for the Santa Fe Homes Program that the developer has agreed to, and they ask to defer payment to certificate of occupancy, I don't believe that we would have the right to increase their fee because we've already signed a contract with them. Am I understanding that correctly? And, Councilor Cassett, the only reason I'm hesitating is I'm thinking about whether the parties could agree to an amendment to the contract, which would alter the terms. But I think that they would have a contractual right that we couldn't alter if they were not amenable to amending it. Okay, thank you. So, I mean, it sounds like there's already a lot there. I just want to make sure that they do have the option to delay to certificate of occupancy, that that is a by-right "may" that they have. I'm happy to take out the payment plan because I understand that that can be really complex and having to track payments as opposed to one solid. It doesn't allow, it doesn't give them a right. It says that at the discretion of the city. So the city could reject it. The city could say, "No, you're going to pay now." And I would like to, you know, experiment. We'll see what happens. If they are allowed to pay a certificate of occupancy, it'd be interesting to see if that makes a difference for individuals and for projects that may occur versus may not. Councilor Faupner. I think one of the things that's getting complicated for everybody is in either case, it's a "may," not a "shall." So it's not a right. It's a "may" for the developer, not the staff. So our ordinance is saying the developer may do this, that the city will allow the developer to make this choice because we are, I mean, we are governing our laws, but we're governing what other people have to do for the fee in lieu. So we're governing and saying, "Hey, developer, this is what you have to do for the Santa Fe Homes Program. You have the option to do this." But it does say, it does give the developer an option by right as opposed to just allowing the city, you know, the city's discretion to say, "No, we're not going to allow that." I mean, I think it'd put us in a pretty funky position if we said yes to somebody and no to somebody else. But, you know, this takes away the payment plan and simply establishes a payment date and allows it to go to certificate of occupancy. I think that now that I know that it's already in an existing law that it's there, that we can do this, like, with policy, redundancy may sometimes isn't as helpful. City Attorney, maybe you could help clear this up. Does the amendment do something above and beyond what is already allowable? The attorney's like, "Oh my God, why?" I'm reading the section called 2126-1.33, Alternate Means of Compliance. I think the difference is under 20, the existing law is that the city has the discretion, and in the amendment, the developer may work with the Office of Affordable Housing. But otherwise, I think the existing law allows the city to at least consider alternate means of compliance. So this is a very nuanced situation, it sounds like. Absolutely, there it is. So it's, we've never had it. We've never had anyone since I've been the director come in and made an alternate means of payment. I would like, the only thing I can say about that is, like, perhaps they don't know their rights. Like, that's a possibility. And so, I mean, I would, I'm just saying it's a possibility. So, this is, you know, ZIP is already in the. Councilor Chavez. Thank you. I think this kind of goes back to, like, this whole thing being in front of us prior to our internal systems being addressed, to me, seems so inappropriate. I feel like we need to fix our systems internally, which we're doing. We need to show that we can be as productive as we want developers to be productive. We need to build relationships with those that will contribute to housing in a way by being really highly functional and in understanding all of our policies and procedures that are currently in place. I like, and I, you know, I know there were a lot of reasons why, but we learned just a few months ago of, like, us providing funding around housing and housing incentives or housing supports to community partners that wasn't monitored and spent well. Like, there's obvious broken systems, and we're, like, fixated on more money, but we're not functioning well to spend money appropriately. Like, we just, I'm sorry, like, everyone knows it. I think it's evident. So, like, I really feel like it would be, like, the investment of our internal organization on our internal systems and understanding how we function should be a priority prior to spending this much time on something like this that I don't think that we're in a place or prepared for. I don't think we've even had, like, we don't even have the relationships to have the conversation. But I want to be clear before I call the question because are you amending the amendment still? Because what's happening would be the different, what a new amendment, it should be in your inbox. So I would, I would withdraw my motion for Amendment A. You know, withdrawal of the second. I withdraw as well. And I would propose to move Amendment B. You guys, oh, I'm sorry. Counselors, I'm, oh, do I just have it? I don't know. I am happy. I just made a new one, and I'm happy to put it in Civic Clerk right now or have G or X, excuse me, send it around as well, whichever. That would be wonderful. Sure. Give us, can we pop it on the screen? Because I know that's what we've done in the past. Yeah, yeah. Yes, I can read it out. It says, "Now it says, 'Developers who choose to pay the fee in lieu may work with the Office of Affordable Housing to determine a payment due date, so long as the payment is received by the city no later than at the point at which the developer applies for a certificate of occupancy, unless it is determined by the Office of Affordable Housing that a later payment date is feasible and beneficial to the Santa Fe Homes Program.'" We should spell out Santa Fe Homes Program, not just put SFHP. That was my bad. Sorry. So it is, I mean, it essentially does what we already do except for it says certificate of occupancy is allowed. They, they have the right to at least go there. The Office of Affordable Housing can say you can take it later if you want to, and that that would be at the discretion of the Office of Affordable Housing, but this will at least allow to certificate of occupancy. Self, while we're working to pull this up. Given that whether it has a language payment plan or payment due date, is that something staff could do right now? Mayor Garcia, members of the governing body, yes. Okay. Oh, so I will not support this amendment. Should I vote? What was that? Yes. We would be able to do an arrangement if that's what they needed to make their payment, their full, their fee in lieu. We would allow them to do it at certificate of occupancy. Okay. And again, I appreciate that. We know that departments change, heads of departments change, we change. You know? So I appreciate that that is something that the, that the current director would, would allow. But out of the, we've now discovered, Councilor Cassett, that it's in the ordinance. I'd like to address that there would be no reason for me to dig into that section if it hasn't been asked. I don't, I don't memorize Chapter 26. It's too complex. But that is why we've never had to research that information because the question has never been asked of the Office of Affordable Housing. And then in terms of other housing initiatives that we've produced and not monitored, I am not aware of anything that we have not yet monitored. So if there's something that this governing body is aware of, it would be appropriate. It was actually presented to us that there was a bunch of money not spent down. The whole situation that was presented to us is what I'm referring to because we didn't have monitoring systems in place. That was shared to us a few months ago, I think. So that's what I was referencing. And just point of clarification. Sorry. In particular, I know that we've discussed affordable housing trust fund money that developers didn't spend down and then came back. So maybe that's some of the stuff that we're referring to. Now I have the amendment in front of us. What is, it's the will of the body. There is a motion. Is there a second? Okay. So I do not hear a second. So let's go ahead and. Wait, I'll second it. And, yes, I'll second it. I'd like to explain my vote when that time comes, though. Okay. So we now have a motion and a second for a proposed amendment on the table. Wants. So, like, I don't need a second if you're. Then explain why. Any discussion on the proposed amendment? Hearing none, Assistant City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote on the amendment, please? Yes, ma'am. Councilor Figalli? Yes. Councilor Garcia? No. Councilor Barrett? Yes. Councilor Busamante? No. Councilor Cassett? Yes. Councilor Castro? No. Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. And I'll explain my vote. The motion to pass Amendment B has passed. Okay. I have two counselors who would like to explain their votes. Councilor Chavez and then Councilor Faulkner. Thank you, Mayor. I support this because I won't be supporting the actual, the actual ordinance. So if it still passes, I think this would allow some support to developers. So that's why I'm supporting this, or I supported this. Okay. Councilor Faulkner. All I can go on is my experience with policy. There are some nuanced differences that may not seem like that different, like, seems like it's not that different from what we can already do. But in my interpretation of what this amendment does, this allows the developer to initiate the conversation, and it doesn't leave it solely in the hands of the city to initiate a conversation about paying a certificate of occupancy. I also think that it does put a nice end date for the most part, or this kind of, God, I'm so sorry, for paying fee in lieu, and it doesn't change the fact that it's still all in the discretion of staff whether or not these things can happen. So there is a nuanced difference, but that nuanced difference could be impactful in some circumstances. So that's why I voted the way I did. Great. Thank you, Councilor. Any other discussion on this proposal? Yeah. Councilor Veglia. We're back to the main. Okay. Yeah. A main. Great. Amended. Thank you. I just want to agree with some of my colleagues here that I think our system is in need of a bigger fix than this. I don't think inclusionary housing, inclusionary zoning, the way that we've been doing it, is working. I think that's pretty clear. And I think we need a much more systemic approach than this. I don't think that this will help. I think this might hurt. And I think that we need to go a lot deeper into what our issues are, how we solve them, how we create more housing, how we create deeply affordable housing, and I don't think that this is the way to do it. Thank you. Hey. Councilor Barret. Just want to second Councilor Veglia's sentiments. I mean, there's no such thing as affordable housing. There's market rate housing that we make affordable, and it's how we're going to decide to do it. I don't think this is the way to do it also. So, and, you know, many people have reached out, people who have been building here for a long time, who have experience. And I'm just trying to listen to all voices, especially those who've done it for their entire career, have studied it, and know the local market back and front. And they are giving advice on this issue, and I think that we are, you know, we have a housing summit in the works. And why not wait till we get all the experts there to give guidance? And it's bigger than this. It's about, you know, reforming land use. It's about all the things mentioned. We make it really hard for working people to live in Santa Fe, and I know that I was a working person who couldn't afford it either, you know? And so, I get it, and I feel like I have, you know, lived experience with it. And we need to, I think, personally throw a lot more money at it than we're doing now. I feel like we're throwing peanuts at it, you know, personally. I don't feel like we're funding it like a priority. And I do feel like it is connected to our issue with the unhoused population too. I feel like at the root of it, being unhoused is an affordability issue. And so I do believe in Housing First policy too. So I think it's all connected, and we're just, when we look at the pie chart, we aren't putting, you know, we are talking about how much we're giving, you know, toward drones, which I'm all about safety and detecting wildfires and protecting citizens, but we are just not putting enough money into housing, bottom line, to see the results that we want to see and to have young working families here, to have essential workers, to have firefighters. They can't live here. They live in Rio Rancho. They commute. So, like, you know, teachers too. They're all going there. We're just not building, and inclusionary zoning has led to that. It's building a couple, for me, it's like peanuts. Great. Like, those four people can live there. Like, what about everybody else? And the way that we kind of keep people out, I feel like, of certain areas too. I've had so many constituents reach out. Young families, they cannot live on the East Side. I mean, really, people kind of, you know, we're a lot that we're doing here, we're saying we're not keeping people out, but, you know, our processes are really keeping people out. So I think we need to rethink that as a group. And when we have this housing summit, you know, we can really hit this hard with all the experts to what we kind of do what we need to do to kind of undo some of the policies that have put us in this place. Thanks. Thank you, Councilor. Any other comments? Well, I mean, I think this, this comment, this topic is, we've talked about it for, sheesh, two months now. And, looks like we're probably going to be talking about it longer because I just want to confirm, Marcy, did that amendment change the caption? Mayor Garcia, this amendment did change the caption, and I was just emailing with Marcos to ask the same question, whether we could actually vote right now or if we need to wait so that we can notice a new caption. Okay. So the public has noticed about what the vote is for. Gotcha. And so, let the city attorney ponder on this for a bit while we come to a conclusion. But, Councilor Barret, you're absolutely right. We have not put enough money into affordable housing. And it's my belief it starts with this broken policy where it's an inequitable return for the residents of Santa Fe. When you have a fee as low as it is right now, we are getting taken advantage of, plain and simple. And that's not a fault to the developers. It's a fault to our broken policy. And so this is where we owe it to residents to bring about a process where it brings about more money to develop the housing. Now we look at the impact that this policy has had on the city for the last ten years. This policy has brought about, sure, it's brought about some resources to the city, probably over $3,000,000 in fees. But you know what has not been built? Probably close to 500 affordable units. To me, that's shameful in the sense. We've got 500 potential families, 500 young folks, 500 elders who have lost out on this unit opportunity. And so as mentioned, there's much, much more work to be done around our housing policies, but we cannot wait to change this inequitable policy. We cannot wait. And as demonstrated through, and for the folks that weren't at finance, when it costs over $300,000 to develop a unit and we're receiving on average about $10,000, we'll never catch up. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. But when we raise the fee to a much more equitable process, and, sure, a jump like we're proposing now seems like it's a drastic jump, but when you look at the bigger picture in regards to the cost and the cost it's going to, the city ultimately has to take on to try to fill that gap, even this proposal does not get us there. And so we, you know, we have a housing expert online right now. I mean, and the thing is we need to ensure we are building the stock. Meanwhile, we are working towards updating our policies. We can't wait years to make these changes. So this, this is why this is just this incremental change because I, one of the things, and I, and I, I had seriously considered bringing forward a resolution in parallel with this proposal, which would put forth a question to the voters. Should we eliminate this in general? Because what I'm hearing from the constituents time and time and time again is they want this to be eliminated from the process. So what I believe this proposal in front of us right now is just a very minor compromise that pulls us out of a very inequitable process we have right now. So I, I hope we can vote on this tonight so we can continue moving this forward, but I don't think we can given we've changed the caption. Mayor, members of the governing body, I believe that state law 3173, notice by publication, would require this to be published. Notice by publication, the title and subject matter of any ordinance posed for adoption by the governing body must take place at least two weeks prior to consideration of final action. So we get the joy of talking about this again and again and again and again. So, I guess, let me ask the question just because the clerk's office has to go notice this. When, how, how quick can we get this noticed? What is, what is the timeline now look like? Mayor Garcia, if the noticing is the fourteen-day requirement, which it is, the notice, if we wanted to take this to the next governing body meeting, that notice would have had to publish today. Right. So we would have to push this to at least the first meeting of September. Okay. So with that being said, you know, I, I, I, as I noted earlier, the amendment that was passed earlier was unnecessary. It's redundant. Those policies are already in place, and we're just kind of continuing this unfortunate narrative that we can't get things done. Mr. Mayor. Yes, Councilor. I'd like to make a motion to postpone this, or move this to the next governing, to the September 9 governing body, for final approval after we notice it appropriately. Okay. So we've got a motion and a second. Any discussion on the motion to postpone? Hearing none, Mr. Assistant City Clerk, can we get a roll call vote, please? Yes, Mayor. Councilor Garcia? Yes. Councilor Barret? Yes. Councilor Busamante? No. Councilor Cassett? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. Councilor Veglia? Yes. The motion to postpone this legislation to September 9 has passed. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Assistant City Clerk. So I believe we've accomplished our agenda tonight, so we stand adjourned.