Regular Finance Committee Meeting - Second Monday Mon, Jun 8, 2026 ยท Finance Committee https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/941 == Executive Summary == The Governing Body's Finance Committee met to discuss several key items, including the approval of their agenda and consent agenda, a significant contract for security guard services, and a comprehensive post-mortem of the recent budget process. A major point of discussion was the approval of an amendment to a security guard services contract with Condor New Age Logistics LLC, increasing its value by $2.2 million to a total of $8.8 million and extending its term. This sparked concerns among councilors regarding the high costs and long-term strategy for security, leading to a request for a strategic plan to explore alternatives and reduce reliance on such contracts. The committee also engaged in a detailed review of the recent budget process, identifying both successes and areas for improvement. Key recommendations included earlier community engagement, providing more transparent budget data upfront, integrating budget-to-actuals reviews, and moving towards performance-based budgeting. Councilors emphasized the need for a more structured and extended budget hearing schedule, as well as earlier and more formalized involvement of councilors in the budget preparation and amendment processes. The meeting also served as an introduction to Monica Mayassis, the new Finance Director, who expressed her commitment to process improvement. == Key Decisions == - Approved the agenda (4-0). - Approved the consent agenda, as amended with item 7K pulled for separate discussion (4-0). - Approved Amendment number four to item 22-0303 with Condor New Age Logistics LLC for security guard services, increasing compensation by $2.2 million (totaling $8.8 million) and extending the term to June 30, 2028 (4-0). == Motions & Votes == - Approval of the agenda โ€” Passed (4-0) - Approval of the consent agenda, as amended (with item 7K pulled) โ€” Passed (4-0) - Approval of Amendment number four to item 22-0303 with Condor New Age Logistics LLC for security guard services โ€” Passed (4-0) == Public Comment == No public comments were made during the public comment period. However, Karina Julik from the New Mexican newspaper reached out to Councilor Cassett, thanking her for requesting that budget questions be made public, as it helped her understand the context. == Topics == - Budget Process Improvement - Security Guard Contracts - Public Engagement in Budget - Departmental Spending & Needs - Library Hours/Funding - Finance Director Transition - Police Staffing vs. Security - Budget Transparency == Full Transcript == Are we ready? All right, are we live? Uh-oh, we're getting feedback. Madam Chair, Counselor Faulkner, we are live. All right, let's get this meeting going. Could we get a roll call, please? Certainly, Madam Chair. Counselor Cassett? Here. Counselor Garcia? Present. Counselor Bustamante? Here. Counselor Faulkner? Here. And Counselor Castro is excused this evening. Madam Chair, you have a quorum. Thank you. Approval of the agenda. Anything from staff? Madam Chair, there are no changes from staff this evening. Move to approve. Second. Roll call, please. Counselor Cassett? Yes. Counselor Garcia? Yes. Counselor Bustamante? Yes. Counselor Faulkner? Yes. And that motion passes. Approval of consent agenda. Anything from staff? We had two items pulled this evening: item 7K and item 7L. Madam Chair, I can just pull item 7K. We don't need to take separate votes on both of them as they're the same one. So, let's just pull K, then, I would say. Okay, so item 7K will be pulled for this evening. Can we get a motion and a second? Move to approve as amended. Second. Counselor Cassett? Yes. Counselor Garcia? Yes. Counselor Bustamante? Yes. Counselor Faulkner? Yes. And that motion passes. All right, any public comments in the chambers or online? None online this evening and seeing none in the room. All right, we have no presentations, so let's get on to our old items, which are pulled by Councilor Cassett. Okay, we have item 7K pulled this evening. Request for approval of amendment number four to item number 22-0303 with Condor New Age Logistics LLC for security guard services at city facilities to increase compensation by $2,200,000 for a new total amount of $8,800,000 and to extend the term to June 30th, 2028. And this evening we have Travis Dutton Leda, our chief procurement officer, for staff. Do we need to hear a presentation or can you dig in, Councilor Cassett? I can dig in. And I actually had the opportunity to speak with Travis just now on the phone. My issue, and I don't think at this moment Travis is the person, but we just discussed that hopefully he will become the person to talk about how high these contracts are. So, I'm looking at almost $21,000,000 in security contracts over 6 years. And that feels quite extensive. So, my questions around this had to do with, what are the long-term plans? I know some of our security needs had to do with Midtown being unoccupied. We had had some conversations around parks and them needing lighting as we were staffing up police. So, in the future, I would like to take a look at these security contracts, and as you know, as over the years as we've passed them, it's been all of these things that we have then had some fixes for. And so, I would really like to look at a strategic plan for what these are, why we're using them. Can we get off them with either one-time infrastructure purchases, whether that's better security systems? I know Chief Valdes didn't want to push our luck with our extremely low vacancy rates with police, but we have started to have those conversations as well that if we're not having as hard of a time filling those positions, that maybe it is a few more police officers that could be potentially helping us instead of these expensive contracts. So, I understand the need for them. Every time we've discussed them, it's always been kind of a unique situation, things that are being filled. I'm sure there will potentially be a need for ongoing private security contracts, but having a greater understanding of why they're here and what we can do to wean ourselves off of them would be something I'd be very interested in. So, I don't know if you have anything to add from our conversation, Travis, because that was the gist of it. Madam Chair, Councilmember Cassell. I don't have much to add. I do welcome the opportunity to discuss, and I'm always open to doing things better. So, I welcome that. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. And just for reference, you were kind of adopting this from, I know it was managed under public works, and so they were having to deal with a number of different departments that they are running this for. It sounds like it's getting transferred into finance. So, we can continue to have those conversations and look at how we change this in the future. So, that was all. Thank you. All right. Anybody else? Councilmember Bustamante. Councilmember Garcia. Yes, Madam Chair, thank you. I appreciate the conversation. I think that it is important to know the logistics of, you know, what the need is, how much of it do we need. I know that having trained security officers is a specialized deal, obviously. We don't have people unless we were to put the, I don't even think we have public safety aids that are trained to do certain security functions. And so, putting our police officers to do security guard stuff is kind of, you know, probably difficult to do and we have a lot of other things going on, but it would be really great to dig in a little bit to see what the need is in different areas, whether it's City Hall or Midtown or at the airport because these are things that are really needed. And so, how do we, how do we justify the cost, but how do we pay for something that's definitely needed? So, just comments. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I also echo the concerns of my colleagues. If there's nothing else, can I get a motion? Move to approve. Second. Roll call, please. Councilor Cassett. Yes. Counselor Garcia. Yes. Counselor Bustamante. Yes. Chair Faulkner. Yes. And that motion passes. All right, I want to discussion items. We tried to come up with a neutral way to describe what this was, but in layman's terms, the discussion item is the postmortem, kind of the lessons learned from the budget process. And I wanted to give the committee an opportunity to maybe speak to things we think we did right and things we might improve on for the next budget cycle. So, I'll just start this way. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, as a first time, it wasn't too bad. There were some things I will say staff, as always, was super on it to get us all the information that we requested in a timely manner. So, I did. The only thing I think that would have made it helpful were some of the budget breakdown sheets that we had requested or the dashboard type things. Having those up front, maybe next time instead of as part of the process, would be a little more helpful so we can kind of see what the breakdown of some of these larger dollar amount items are. Other than that, can't take too much. Thank you. Counselor Cassett. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Glad we're having this conversation. I think that there were a number of improvements, and obviously, as everybody in this room knows, in case anybody happens to be listening other than my father, the, you know, we had a new budget process for this year. And one thing that I know Deputy City Manager Phillips and City Manager Moya and I have discussed is starting the community conversations earlier, which part of it was just the nature of we didn't pass the, you know, resolution until October and then we had an administrative change. But I think starting some of those conversations a little bit earlier and seeing ways that we can expand how we gather information. I know there's been conversation around surveys and that that can be really useful for getting the information out to the public, but for the people that did attend those round tables, they came away with a much better appreciation of kind of the conundrum of city budgeting. And I thought that was really helpful because then that feedback was really, I found really valuable when they're like, "Hey, we want more library time." And it's like, "All right, great. We have to figure out, you know, what is it?" And when you're saying you want more libraries and more pools and more this, that, where do you rate these things and how high? And so, I think just the public having this understanding that we have to juggle things is really helpful. In terms of our internal processes here, I know that we're hopefully going to start moving to some more review of budget to actuals. I mean, I know that there's some systems issues. I know that there's a lot of a lot of things that we have to work through, but the budget process from my perspective is still quite opaque. And that is just inherent of the systems and the practices that have been built over, I don't know how long, but at least as long as I've been here. And so, being able to have a lot of those conversations around things like the libraries, which, you know, Councilors Ferragalli and Castro have really championed getting those Sunday hours. And something we're continuing to work on. So, I think how we continue to fold in the council's conversations here a little bit earlier would be wonderful. I appreciate that we did not do three weeks, four weeks of endless budget hearings. What we did, what I do miss, and City Manager Moya and I discussed this, is like how do we integrate those like department updates throughout the year? Because that is really helpful to get those like snapshots into like, "Hey, here's what we're doing with the money. Here's the highlights. Here's what we've achieved." That was still in the budget book, but it's, I do appreciate being able to have those conversations. So, figuring out, you know, do we move them into different committee hearings? You know, how do we continue to have those really wonderful conversations? And I think maybe as we continue to move forward with the performance-based budgeting and how that is tied in with, you know, here are the goals, here's the programs, here's where we are with our goals, here's why we're not meeting them, here's where we're exceeding our goals, so that we can really have that understanding of, as I say, what are we buying, you know, with the taxpayer dollars? What are we buying for the public with the budget that we set? I think that having, I know I said this frequently, having the process earlier would be great. It felt, you know, I think that we did, we were able to get things done, but it was still, you know, there were still some outstanding items that we were like, "Hey, we're going to figure this out later because we didn't have time." So, the libraries again is the big one that I can think of that if we were doing the budget a little bit earlier before we have to get it to the state, then we potentially would have had those times to figure things out within that budget process. I know that we'll have chances to do it later, but of course this is when we're really focused on it, and I think that that's helpful. And then the other thing I would say is that, yes, I think if we're getting the updates in throughout the year, we don't need 4 weeks of 5 hours of budget hearings every day. My brain starts to turn to mush after about 4 hours. So, spreading those out a bit more I think would have been helpful. So, maybe doing maybe 4 days of hearings in smaller chunks for me would have been beneficial in just my ability to focus and pay attention and not feel as rushed. I liked getting the questions ahead of time, but as I stated during the meetings, part of the questions aren't just for us. They're for the public to understand what's going on. I actually heard after I asked for them to be put up somewhere and given to the public, Karina Julik from the New Mexican reached out to me. She was like, "Thank you, because there's a lot of things here that I'm just not getting the context on." So, I think that we also need to remember that part of what we're doing with these hearings is not just us understanding, but how do we make sure that the public understands? So, I think a bit more space provided for the opportunity to do that as needed. I know that we could have called extra budget hearings, but that's really hard, especially the time of the year it was with the end of the school year coming. There are tons of graduations and a lot of things happening. And then as a mom, it's not always as easy for me to be like, "Oh, okay, we'll just toss in another meeting on an evening," without much time. So, those are the things that I see some really big improvements. Again, I think the community engagement, the conversations earlier were great. Sending in the questions, I think, was actually really wonderful because then I got to have some back and forth. I do like consolidating, and I think that we've made a lot of progress, and there's still much more that we've all discussed with the budget process. And I think this is a really good first step. So, I'm looking forward to building on it for the next year. Thank you. Counselor, the answer goes to you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I too appreciate the shortness of time that we had to be here for hearings because the last few years definitely was a big ask for individuals to be here almost three weeks in a row and getting similar to the same amount of information. I am intrigued to kind of dig a little deeper into how this performance-based type of stuff is working because you definitely see the need in certain departments that, coming up to the end of fiscal, they have no more money or they're just struggling to try to see what they can get. And then you have other departments who are like, "We've got what money in our budget? Let's spend it." I don't think that's the idea. But the reality is, how do we give to those departments that are truly in need where we are deficient in some of the resources that go back to our community? End of the day, it is the taxpayers' dollars that we're spending here and or budgeting for, obviously, and the budget doesn't spend, it just allows people to spend. And looking at the departments that are definitely on the forefront of services, and services is really where we're at. I go back into more detail, but then at the same time, you get more detail and it just clouds your brain sometimes. So, understanding the need in each department and how they are wisely utilizing those funds that are allocated to them, I think that's really the most important thing for us to understand, especially here, and always looking around the corner because in years to come, you don't know where you're at. We're very blessed and fortunate to have a good GRT in the city that people come to, and that just makes it all the more for us to be responsible with it. So, I appreciate all the work that staff has done and everyone here to get to that point, and Madam Chair, your leadership as well in going through this. Rod Gould, Andrea Phillips stepping in, and I think that hopefully in the future, the conversation starts a little earlier, even, and so we get a really good projection even from mid-year. I think mid-year would be a good time for us to get together again to see where we're at and have an open discussion over things because a lot of times as a full governing body, here it is coming up to two months before it's got to be submitted to the state. We're kind of all cramming it together and kind of see where we were. And I like to take those metrics, you know, here's what was our budget last year, here's where we are, here's what it was two or three years ago, and how that has changed over the years and the trends. So those are really helpful to have. Thank you so much. [clears throat] I agree with everything that was said by my colleagues. I will say that I've been working with Andrea and the new director, which we will acknowledge in just a minute. But one of the things that we're working on is getting quarterly reporting from the major departments to the finance committee, and those would be discussion items. So any counselor can attend and ask questions, and then we would make those reports available to the full council so that we would have exactly what we are asking for, which is more information throughout the year. I do like the idea of a mid-year budget review. So if any of you have anything that you would like to see in these reports, please feel free to let me know or Monica or Andrea know so that we can get those things into the reports. And I think the more educated we are, the better the budget process will run. And so we are definitely looking at everything. We all feel we would have information. I see Andy walking out. Thoughts, Andy? Oh, Madam Chair, I didn't want to interrupt your chain of thought. It was not directly related to that. I just had one recommendation for possibly an improvement to the budget process. Two or three counselors this year, as they have in the past, not the same counselors always, but have expressed frustration at how difficult and kind of rushed the amendment process can be. And I know it's not something we can just snap our fingers and fix because there are Open Meetings Act implications potentially and everything else, but I think it might be worth it to try this fall, maybe, or early winter to see if we can, maybe as part of the review hearings for next year, formalize more of an amendment process to say, "Okay, from this day to this day, counselors can work with staff either in an open meeting or however it can be done legally to say, 'Okay, well, I'm interested in maybe doing more hours for libraries. How would what are our options to fund this?'" And we're kind of related, you know, this year I was just said, "Well, can we do this?" "No, I'm afraid we can't do it that way." "Well, can we do it this way?" "No, I'm afraid that also would violate state law." And it was frustrating to me that I was like, you know, we didn't really have an opportunity to sit down and say, "Okay, well, I would like to, for the community's sake, for the council's sake, I would like to be able to get to yes, but we don't really have an opportunity to get to yes if we're not going through all the issues and saying, 'Okay, you could do it this way, you could do it that way, you could do it that way,' rather than saying, 'Can we do it this way?' 'No, I'm sorry.' 'Can we do it that way?' 'No, I'm sorry.'" Just maybe again, I don't know exactly what that would look like. I probably won't be here for it, but if there's a way to maybe plug in some time or to allow counselors to work a little bit more closely with budget to just, because we have, it's our job to figure out, how can we make this happen? The counselor wants to do XYZ, the mayor's on board with it. How do we make it happen? And it always seems like there's just not enough time at the end of the process to do all that. It takes a long time to draft an amendment, to pick out all the places in the budget book where it would affect things. And so, penciling in some time. And again, I don't know exactly what those meetings would look like, but I think we need to figure out a way of connecting budget to counselors better earlier in the process so that you all don't feel like you're just shut out of the amendment process. You're given a budget and, like it or lump it. I don't think that's the intention of this administration. And it's certainly not our intention in budget. We want to, we want to help. We want to facilitate what you want to see out of the budget. It just, it's a really difficult and opaque process right now. And I think we need to think about how we can do that better. So, that's all. Thank you, Andy. Anything else? Counselor Cassell? Thank you, Manager. Thank you, Andy. And again, thank you for all of your work. And we're going to miss you. And I really, I know I've learned so much from you over the seven budgets that we've done together. So, thank you. I really truly appreciate everything. And I think one thing that you said about, you know, kind of it being like a public meeting in this conversation on discussions and connecting it to what Counselor Faulkner, what you were saying around like, "Hey, the more we know, the better off we are." I think that that's a really helpful to have those conversations around the amendment process, but also looking at at the beginning of the process, how do we start incorporating counselors into that discussion? Because then we can also start having to, you know, think about some of these things or, you know, as the budget is being set up. So, I know by charter the budget is brought by the mayor, so that probably is something that we could work out with the mayor around like, "What do these conversations look like at that beginning?" And not just kind of like the broad, you know, I always go and I'm like, "Oh, I really want, you know, stuff for my parks in District 4." And "I really want some more child care." And so, it's like, you know, this very like broad, but really when you're getting down to brass tacks of like, "How do we open up another, you know, site for summer camp?" And that's real dollars and cents and a real conversation there. And so, I think if we can both incorporate those those concrete conversations during budget prep, but also, you know, as part of an amendment process where we get to have these discussions as a group. So, kind of like the parks contract, I think, you know, I was like, "I'm not going to bring an amendment. I'm not going to make you all do this unless there's support from the rest of the council." And there wasn't, so I'm glad I didn't make you all do work to figure that out. [clears throat] Because that doesn't sound like fun. And so, I think that that way where we can start to have these discussions around, "Hey, you know, do you want to see if we can find money for the libraries to be open on Sundays?" And you get a general consensus because it's an open meeting from the council to move forward and being able to then have those discussions of what that means, and then we actually get to vote on, yes, I want this. Yes, I support this, but I don't want it so much that it's going to cut into this other thing. So, I think those conversations both at the beginning and at the end would be really helpful for us to be able to make more educated decisions. Thank you. Anybody else? No. All right. Good conversation, guys. Thank you so much. Let's go on to matters from staff. Thank you, Andy. Madam Chair, members of the committee, I do want to introduce a very important person. Monica Mayassis is our new finance director. She just started today. We're very excited to have her on board. She's official. She's got an office. She's got her email. Next time she'll be sitting here. So, I just wanted to make sure that you had a chance to meet her, and we're just really excited to have Monica on board and her expertise. I'll be helping to transition with her over the coming weeks, and I'll turn it over to you if there's anything that you want to say, Monica. Yeah, you just press the button here. Monica: Madam Chair, members of the committee, thank you very much. I'm super excited. This is a role with a lot of responsibility that I take very seriously, and I can't imagine taking care of my city that I was born and raised. I promise I'll do you proud, and I'm open to suggestions for how we improve the process going forward. Thank you. Anything else? Okay. Matters from the committee. Councilmember Garcetti. Councilmember Garcetti: I just want to welcome Monica officially, and really excited to have you on board. I'm sure Andrea's happy to take off one of her hats and put it on your head instead. [laughter] Councilmember Garcetti: So, but really, really looking forward to working with you. I know one thing I've always loved about finance staff is, as I was saying, I've learned so much from Andy and Anita and just everybody that has been here. So, I'm really looking forward to learning from you as well. So, please do always reach out with anything. If there's something that I need to be educated on, please do reach out to me. I don't mind being told that I'm getting things wrong. So, but really very happy to have you here. So, welcome. Anybody else? Welcome aboard. Thank you for being here. [clears throat] So, in matters from the chair, all I can say is Monica and I have a very long relationship. It started when we met in the bathroom the day she was interviewing. We had a very strong moment of checking each other's fits. We both thought we both looked fabulous. But we have, I think Counselor Bustamante met with me and the new director, and all I can say is I'm really excited because she is full of energy. She's excited to get the work done. She has some awesome ideas about how to make things better with software and with a lot of the processes that we're talking about that we're trying to change right now. So, I think she's going to be an asset to the city. I'm just so excited for you to be on board. And her email is Monica@whydididothis@santafenm.gov. Well, welcome aboard. [clears throat] Our next meeting is the 22nd, and with that, we are adjourned.