Regular Finance Committee Meeting - Last Monday Tue, May 26, 2026 · Finance Committee https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/952 == Executive Summary == The Finance Committee held a meeting to discuss several key financial matters, with a significant portion of the meeting dedicated to Bill Number 2026-9, which proposes amendments to traffic ordinances. This bill aims to eliminate minimum penalties for reckless driving, raise maximum penalties, and introduce new definitions and penalties for aggressive driving. A major point of contention was whether the revenue generated from these new penalties should be directed to a dedicated fund for law enforcement and fire services or to the city's general fund. Councilors debated the implications of each approach, considering budgetary flexibility, the perception of "policing for profit," and the direct support for public safety departments. The committee also addressed the city's Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Operating Budget, including an amendment to correct budgeting oversights related to debt service for LED streetlights and citywide solarization projects, and to clarify positions in the Affordable Housing Division. Discussions highlighted improvements in communication between the administration and the council during the budget process. Other items approved included a Memorandum of Agreement for the Henry Lynch Road Reconstruction and Roundabout Project and an amendment to the General Plan Update contract. == Key Decisions == - Approved Bill Number 2026-9, which amends traffic ordinances to address reckless and aggressive driving, including new penalties and mandatory court appearances for aggressive driving violations. - Approved Amendment B to Bill Number 2026-9, directing revenue from new traffic penalties to the general fund instead of dedicated public safety funds. - Approved a Memorandum of Agreement with Santa Fe County for the Henry Lynch Road Reconstruction and Roundabout Project, designating the city as the lead agency. - Approved an amendment to the General Plan Update contract with WSPUSA, Inc., increasing compensation to expedite the project and enhance public engagement. - Approved Amendment A to the Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Operating Budget, which included technical corrections for debt service payments and clarification of Affordable Housing Division positions. - Approved the main motion for the Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Operating Budget. == Motions & Votes == - Approval of Agenda — Passed 5-0 - Approval of Consent Agenda (as amended) — Passed 5-0 - Motion to Approve Amendment B (regarding revenue allocation for Bill Number 2026-9) — Passed 3-2 - Motion to Approve Bill Number 2026-9 (main motion) — Passed 5-0 - Approval of Item 8A (Henry Lynch Road Project) — Passed 5-0 - Approval of Item 8B (General Plan Update Contract Amendment) — Passed 5-0 - Approval of Amendment A (to FY 2026-2027 Operating Budget) — Passed unanimously (5-0) - Approval of Main Motion (for FY 2026-2027 Operating Budget) — Passed unanimously (5-0) == Public Comment == No public comments were received during the public comment period or on specific agenda items. == Topics == - FY26-27 Operating Budget - Traffic Ordinance Amendments - Public Safety Funding - Police Department Leadership - General Plan Update - Affordable Housing Positions - Debt Service Payments - Budget Process Improvements - Library Funding == Full Transcript == Are we live yet? We are live. Thank you. All right. I will call this meeting to order. Could we get a roll call, please? Certainly. Madam Chair, Councilor Cassutt? Here. Councilor Castro? Present. Councilor Garcia? Here. Councilor Bamonte? Here. Councilor Faulkner? Here. And we do have Councilor Falgali observing. Welcome, Councilor Falgali. I'm glad your social life is alive and well. Thank you. Just kidding. On a Tuesday, the Finance Committee approval agenda. Any changes from staff? Madam Chair, there are no changes from staff this evening. Approve. Second. Okay. Roll call on that, please. Councilor Cassutt? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Garcia? Yes. Councilor Bamonte? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. And that motion passes. Okay. On to the approval of the consent agenda. Any changes from staff? Madam Chair, there was one item pulled this evening, which was item 7J, pulled by Councilor Cassutt and Councilor Castro. Move to approve as amended. Second. We get a roll call. Councilor Cassutt? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Garcia? Yes. Councilor Bamonte? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. And that motion passes. All right. Anybody from the public who'd like to make some comments? Doesn't look like it. Anyone in Zoom? Madam Chair, there are no members of the public on Zoom. Okay. So, we have no presentations. You want to take us to the next order of business? The next item we have is item 7J, consideration of Bill Number 2026-9, adoption of Ordinance Number 2026-TVD, sponsored by Councilor Polar Faulkner, Councilor Lee Garcia, Councilor Amanda Chavez, a bill amending Subsection 12-6-12.3 of Article 6 of the Uniform Traffic Ordinance, UTO, to eliminate minimum penalties for reckless driving and raising maximum penalties from $25 to $250 for first convictions and from $300 to $500 for second or subsequent convictions. Creating a new Subsection 12-6-12.4A of Article 6 of the UTO, Exhibit 8 to Chapter 24 SFCC197, to define, criminalize, and penalize aggressive driving. Amending the UTO's Schedule A Traffic Violation Penalty Assessment Schedule to increase certain penalties, to specify that all reckless driving fines, aggressive driving fines, as well as all Schedule A penalties, except for those dedicated to traffic calming, shall be split equally between the Law Enforcement Fund and the Fire Support Services Fund, and to require a mandatory court appearance for violations related to aggressive driving. Creating a new Subsection 12-6-12.25 of Article 6, engaging in prolonged, deliberate, and/or excessive tailing of another vehicle, and establishing a penalty in Santa Fe's UTO Schedule A Traffic Violation Penalty Assessment Schedule for the same. Creating a new Subsection 12-6-12.26 of Article 6, unsafe sudden stops, and establishing a penalty in Santa Fe's UTO Schedule A Traffic Violation Penalty Assessment Schedule for the same. Creating a new Subsection 12-6-12.27 of Article 6, throwing items outside of a vehicle at another vehicle or at a pedestrian, and establishing a penalty in Santa Fe's UTO Schedule A Traffic Violation Penalty Assessment Schedule for the same. And this evening we have Deputy Chief, and I believe Interim Chief possibly, I'm not sure on the title, Ben Valdez from Public, from the Police Department. I believe Councilor Cassutt and Councilor Castro pulled this. Well, I mostly pulled for amendment and vote. I don't know if we want to make a motion before we have Interim Chief Valdez give a presentation. What's the will of the committee on this? Move to approve. Second. Second. And Chief, is there anything you would like to add? I know that we've spoken about this at length. Sorry about that, Madam Chair. Councilor Castro, I think we've discussed it quite a bit, so I could just ask for any questions that may still exist. All right. Thank you so much. Congratulations, by the way. I must say I'm very excited to see you step into this new role. So, a little non-sequitur there, but I guess not quite, but a little side note. So, congratulations on you moving into the Interim Chief position. I think it is very well deserved. I've always really appreciated your work as a DC. So, congrats. That's really exciting. Yes, sir. Really appreciate that. Of course. So, we did have a discussion at length at Quality of Life. And during the course of that discussion, I had brought up the dedication of the revenue and had indicated, and then now following through on it, is in the packet, right? Yep. On wanting to, rather than have this be a dedicated revenue stream, have it be going into the general fund. I have a couple reasons for this. One is simply just a budgeting philosophy of having undedicated revenue is beneficial as priorities change from year to year. But a couple other reasons: one, when we are talking about public safety, I think that there are a lot of other components to public safety than strictly, you know, what is specifically happening within police and fire. So, for example, speeding. One thing that we have frequently talked about, or at least I know I have spoken about frequently over the last six years, is that the built environment has a really big impact on the safety of pedestrians, of cyclists, and also on how fast people drive. We know a lot of people will drive as fast as they feel comfortable, not necessarily as fast as the speed limit is. The one that I bring up ad nauseam is Zia, which is 35, but man, I don't go 35 unless I'm really paying attention. Sorry. I try my best. Those flashing lights really help on Camino Pinto. You're welcome. So, I think that as, you know, keeping this revenue source open, and we've talked a lot about public safety being a variety of things. We've talked about youth programs being related to public safety. We've talked about, you know, library services and public works, et cetera, et cetera, investing in our parks. So, I think that having this as a flexible revenue source that may very well go towards, you know, things that are needed for police and fire is a better policy. So, that's one of the reasons. Another reason is that there is, in many communities, there has been a perception that if citations go directly to public safety, that police are then more, more likely to cite aggressively and sometimes unfairly. Whether or not this is actually the case, I know that that perception has been brought up in other communities around this sometimes being a concern and people not wanting to feel like police have a financial incentive for citations, but strictly a public safety incentive. And then the last reason that, whoops, I just, it just slipped my brain. Hold on. See if it'll come back. Flexible revenue source citation. It's gone. It'll come back at some point. Maybe tomorrow. But so for those reasons, I would like to recommend that this revenue source go into the, oh, there it was. In theory, hopefully this isn't going to be a revenue source that continues to grow. And if this actually is successful, it'll be a revenue source that goes down. So again, having those flexible funds not necessarily going, we're not sure what it's going to look like every single year. But I know that there's a lot of conversation around wanting to reduce some of the dependence of police and fire on general fund. This is also not a very, you know, this is not a, hopefully, hopefully not a stable or growing source of revenue. In theory, we'd like this to be actually a decreasing source of revenue. Some studies show that citations, you know, an increase in fines and fees don't necessarily get us the deterrent behavior that we would like for those individuals that are purposely doing it as opposed to individuals who are accidentally doing it like I do on Zia. But still again, I do agree that looking for, you know, how we diversify our revenue streams is going to be important. But in terms of something that could be reliable, I, you know, I understand that that desire and, you know, on the one hand, it's really not going to be that much money that it would be able to really float a lot of the changes in police and fire. And again, could potentially go to police and fire every single year if we so choose, or could go somewhere else that we deem as needed or contributing to public safety. So, with all that, I would like to move Amendment B. Second. Let's have some discussion on this. I'll start on this side. Bamonte. Thank you. All right, Councilor Castro. Yeah, thank you so much. We had a very interesting discussion. You know, I've had some comments with folks. I think that two things are really important: that there are still funds that are available for PT out of the general fund. That is not excluded in any way. One thing that was interesting while I was looking through the budget was sort of thinking ideologically on how we allocate certain funds, for example, long-term contracts, technology, things like that that we really don't have any agency over. And so I do want to have a little bit more thoughtful discussion around the money that we're spending and the ways that we're spending. Thank you so much. Councilor Garcia. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I appreciate bringing forth, bringing this forth as a conversation. I think the work that we've been doing over the 20th month that we've been discussing and going through this whole process of bringing this ordinance from inception, which actually came from a traffic officer, and, you know, with our conversations, it's never been the intent from their perspective to utilize this in any way, fashion, or form to create money. I mean, that's the, it's, it's, it's the, it was the furthest from their thought process from the inception, and I think it still is. Reading an email from Deputy Chief, now to be Interim Chief, Valdez, DC Valdez, to a constituent, and I think that it's really important that having good leadership in the department really does, you know, again, the whole intent of this is to make our streets safer in the city of Santa Fe. And we all know that we've had such a huge issue with people driving very aggressively, whether driving aggressively, having loud mufflers. I mean, we've been on this, on what seems like this Ferris wheel for a while. And what's the best way to do this? Going back to the funding, you know, as we were developing this legislation with staff, we had very extensive conversation over where does the money go? You know, obviously it goes to the city no matter what. It's just who do we earmark it towards? And, you know, in collaboration with the sponsors, we felt that developing this fund that would go into a public safety, not just police, but fire, and it's not going towards salaries. It's not going to stuff like that. It would, our intent would be to have it go into a fund that would allow the department to be able to modernize, whether it's training or equipment or vehicles, things of that nature. And so, from that perspective, it made most sense because when we have to look at budgets, and I know we're doing a budget now, where do you cut, where do you not cut? When you make hard decisions, how do you pull back on public safety? And I think having something like this where it would help having a little bit of padding for certain things that are needed in the PD is very important. And so, that's where we came to this agreement. And don't get me wrong, I had my hard conversations with Councilor Faulkner over this. I said that wasn't the initial intent to give it to public safety. It was to give officers the ability and another tool on their tool belt to address these hard issues. But then coming full circle with, well, this is an opportunity to give the departments that work in public safety a little bit of ability to utilize those funds for their departments. And so I, like I said, we went back and forth over this, and I wasn't in full agreement at the beginning, but I did, because it wasn't the initial intent. However, I do feel strongly that it should stay in that realm of public safety, whether it's fire or police. And we had our conversations over splitting it up equally, and then what happens to the courts because they obviously have fees that they keep a certain percentage of it, and so then the rest of it was split. So I feel that from my perspective, there was a lot of conversation over this, and it kind of, we had our little back and forth over it. Councilor Faulkner, you may chime in on that. I think, just a point of clarification, I want to know a little bit more about the allocation to modernization and technology versus personnel. Can you just elaborate a little more on that? I'll let Councilor Faulkner elaborate on that. So, what we discovered is if the money goes into the general fund, it could go into the operations of these departments because that's where their operation budget sits. And the cities where you have punitive, kind of the police going in and just giving ridiculous number of tickets to generate money for their operations. One of the considerations we took in deliberating about this was if it goes into a fund that's only for one-time purchases or one-time trainings, it does not go into the operating budget, and that's where cities get in trouble. And so if it goes into the general fund, it could be used for operations. But if it goes into these two funds, it can only be used for one-time emergency expenses, community events, a training that came up that they need that they didn't know they needed. We're not talking about a ton of money. And the thought process was we do stand the risk of it going into operations if it goes in the general fund. These two funds are specifically for one-time purchases. And I guess just to make my intent a little bit more clear, and I know I'm stepping on some toes, can I speak to her? Oh, yes. Wonderful. Sorry, I just want to make sure I'm acknowledged. Like conversation. My concern is I'm hearing a lot from constituents, in particular in the downtown business area, that they would like to see more of the bus team, more actual personnel. And so if I were to be allocating more funds to PD, I would actually want it to come through the operating budget as opposed to short-term contracts or one-time expenses, though we do need that. I also know that we are allocating certain emergency funds to the city manager's office for these one-time expenses. Thank you. All right, Councilor Garcia. Thank you. And I think that being said, it goes back to every budget cycle where you have that risk of where do they put it and how much leeway does the governing body actually have to say in that and where it goes. And so, I again feel confident that this would work in the way that we thought it would work, thought it out, and that in the future, if we feel at any point that the fund is, we're using it in a way that is excessive just to create revenue, then I think that it would be up to the governing body in the future that could bring back and say, you know what, we got to stop. It's the same thing as having red light cameras, speed cameras, all of these things. Still are in control of that. But I think from this perspective, it sets the tone for, you know, these officers are out there on the street every day trying to make our streets safe. And if we can utilize this in a way that it will benefit our public safety officers, whether it's fire or police, to help in their everyday safety, whether it's safety vests or cameras or whatever it may be, I think that's where it personally, where it should lie at this point. Thank you. Let me give some other councilors a shot. Councilor Bamonte, you still thinking? Well, kind of just, I mean, I haven't had the time that you've had, Councilor Garcia, to think these things, various permutations over. I mean, on the one hand, I see a benefit to having it go into a specific fund for public safety. They are the ones out there doing the work, getting yelled at by people because they're holding the traffic up, et cetera. But on the other hand, I am, I guess, leery of giving an impression of policing for profit. And as you say, that's something that could potentially be addressed in the future, but, you know, just because we have a good council now or a good administration now doesn't mean we're going to have that in the future. And I don't feel comfortable kicking that can at the moment down the road, so to speak. I'll give Councilor Fagali just a moment to weigh in. She's here. Sure. Thank you. I'm, I think on the same wavelength as Councilor Bamonte, that I don't want this to be seen as policing for profit. And I also agree with Councilor Castro in that operations, you know, if it can go to operations or it can go to anything else. And Councilor Cassid as well brought this up that I think having more flexible funds is an advantage instead of this possibly perceived policing for profit, which I think we want to avoid, even if it might result in, you know, safer driving. I don't think it's the way to get there. Thanks. Sorry, I just wanted to finish. I think really the important thing is that we're addressing a public safety issue. And I'd hate to see that falter over where money is going to go. Because I think this is something that citizens have been asking for for a long time, that the city take measures to address. We've all seen it throughout the city. We've all witnessed aggressive driving at various levels and just how, and we've seen the outcomes of some of those incidents. So I think that focusing on that issue should be the important thing right now. Thank you, Chair. Casset. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to be very clear, just in case this got muddled. I do not feel at, well, I mean, again, to this point, I've been very fortunate to work with former Chief Joy and interim Chief Grenler and now interim Chief Valdez. And so some very, very trustworthy and really wonderful leaders in our police department. To be perfectly, perfectly honest with the public, I think that we've been very, very lucky in our leadership in the Santa Fe Police Department for the majority of the time that I've been here. My, I don't think that that is something that we are actually at risk for. I just know that that has been a challenge that other communities have seen. And so it's really about that public trust, you know, that that component of wanting to make sure that that perception isn't there. And the fact that with the general fund, we're not prevented from, I mean, and I think that that's a really big thing is that if there are things that are these, you know, one-time funds that we would like for PD or and or fire or somewhere else, that that is still available to us through the general fund. Now, to Councilor Garcia's point, one of the challenges we've really been running into as a council is our voice in the budget process. But my thoughts there is that rather than, you know, dedicate funding streams, we need to continue to fix the budgeting process. I think that we made some good steps this year. I think that we still have things to do, but I think that it is important that, you know, we as a council in an FY28 budget would be able to say, hey, how much revenue came in from this and what do we want to do with it? And so I think that that's going to be a really, you know, there's, there's a lot of work that has to happen. And I'm hoping with our, our charter review that we have going on right now, we know that we've, we've told them power and especially power and budget is really big. But again, I just want to be very clear. I don't think that we're actually at risk for our police department, especially with the leadership we have now, to be in a policing for profit scenario. My, my intent more has to do with that revenue flexibility. And I think that that revenue flexibility is important and handy to have. As we talked about at Quality of Life, we are currently looking for about $200,000 to get a library branch open on a Sunday. So, you know, how we're able to, to make these adjustments to the budget, having those more flexible revenue sources where we can, there are scenarios where we, you know, by law have to allocate funds or there, you know, things have been allocated for us in the past. I think it's probably more challenging to pull away a dedicated revenue source than to give it in the future. So, I just want to be very clear about my, my primary intent, although that is helpful. And I will say this as well, the police department through emergency management has actually been quite adept at getting grants for, for equipment. I have, that's been something that, that they have shown success with in the past. And as I mentioned during budget hearings, I've been working with CM and Deputy CM to look at how we can get more grant writing capabilities at the city. So that is something that, you know, our police department as well as our other departments can continue to go after these, you know, one-time special funded needs so that we actually don't have to use our regular revenue sources. So thank you. Anybody else? I would just say that I would remind the councilors that we cannot do bars. We can only approve or deny them. The council has no ability to direct where funding goes. And I have yet to see the council say no to a bar. And so this is one place where we can say money should go to these two spaces because these two spaces are risking their lives on a daily basis. I, those of you who are on council when there was a big hoopla because I fought for fire trucks where the fire department had asked for those fire trucks for three years and the administration ignored it. It didn't even make it up to the city manager level. It didn't even make it up to the, the community services person. This, we had to go beg at the state for money that the city should have been able to figure out. Fire trucks get built every four, it takes four years to build a fire truck. And so whereas this fund may not yield a lot of money, hopefully it won't. There will be a fund, a decent amount of money built up in the beginning and then hopefully it'll slow down, but it's putting a savings account away for police and fire for things they need that are very dependent on what an administration thinks. Because I don't see in the near future the council being able to generate or promulgate bars. And so to me, I look at it like this is an opportunity for the council to say to our first responders that we see that they have needs. We see that they risk their lives every day and we want to protect them in one-time purchases that they may need which may or may not make it through the administrative process. And so that was my thinking on it, was to give them a little bit of security in spaces where they've had to fight to get things in order to do their job. And it's not little things. It's gurneys to carry people. It's BearCats to protect the SWAT unit and the community. There's a litany of things that first responders need that they don't get because it gets lost in the budget process. And because as a council, we have no say in the budget process other than to protest or to approve or deny. There's not a space legally right now. There's no legal channel where the council can protect first responders. It doesn't exist. We can't do bars. So if you put the money in the general fund, then it's up to the administration what happens with it. And we can all say, "Well, we can say no to that bar." We haven't done it yet. Just a point of clarification, we are also able to make amendments to the budget, correct? We can, we can, no, we can't after we approve this budget. I'm just saying before we approve a budget, we are able to make amendments through the process. And with the gluttony of information we're given as counselors, right? And I'm hoping that the Finance Committee, through quarterly reporting from the departments, can glean more out of the budget than we have in the past. But there's nothing legally in place to, if we put it in the general fund, the council is out of the discussion as it stands right now. And so my hope was by putting this into funds where it's protected a little bit, and we can change it later. These aren't permanent things. If the charter amendment comes through and they change it and they say this is the balance of power around the budget, then I agree to go in and amend this and put it back in the general fund. But until the council has a say in what happens with the general fund outside of denying or approving what the administration does, I'm going to protect my first responders. Any other thoughts? Okay, Councilor Cassett, thank you so much. Deputy City Manager Phillips, we've had this conversation around counselors and bars actually recently. And I know that that was, you know, we essentially had the conversations whether or not counselors have the ability to make amendments to the budget. And at this time, it has not been a practice. It has not been something that has been available to us. But I know it's something you were going to look into, and I don't know if you have any more information yet. I apologize for putting you on the spot for something that I know we had a conversation about and you were going to look into. So, No problem. Hey, Andy. Always great to have Andy here. Yeah, and maybe I can just kind of start it off. I'm sure Andy Hopkins, our budget officer, can help fill in the blanks. But my understanding and reading of the charter and the municipal code is that it takes a majority of the governing body to implement a bar. So, you would need to identify where you want that funding to come from. It would need to be done in the form of a budget adjustment request or amendment, and you would need to identify where those funds would come from. You can take it from existing budget authority from elsewhere in the budget after it's been approved, or you can remove, take it from fund balance from the fund. So, that is my understanding and interpretation of your authority as the legislative body. It would take a majority, so five of the governing body members. So, if I'm understanding correctly, and Andy, fill in the blanks, it's not that we don't have the power, it's that we have not really executed it. And that, you know, in the past, I feel like we've been told that we did not have the power, but from what I'm hearing, we do. We just haven't used it. That is, that is correct. And Madam Chair, counselors, I, I, I came up to the dais more to speak in general terms. This is a very small amount of money, as you know, so in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter. So when I'm speaking here, understand I'm speaking conceptually, not about necessarily this particular thing. But there have been several times in the past, there's kind of a related thing. We have people, not only in the council, but in departments say, "What's the funding source for this?" The funding source is general fund. Well, the general fund is not a funding source. The general fund is a fund that among other things contains funding sources, but it is not itself a funding source. I always liken it to people consider, call hydrogen a fuel. Hydrogen is not a fuel. Hydrogen is a transmission device from a solar panel or whatever you use to generate hydrogen to convert it into a thing that can be used as fuel. It's the same kind of thing. General fund is not a funding source. So now speaking more specifically, again, this is a small amount of money, so it's, it's not a huge deal. But even if you talk in terms of, "Well, we want to, we want to make sure the police gets to use this funding," that's fine. But if you say they can only use it for one-time funding, you're tying their hands more than they were before. Before, you could theoretically take this funding and hire a police officer or maybe increase overtime costs. Now you're saying, "No, you can only use it for one-time costs," like supplies or for a motorcycle or for a car. So you're basically tying the hands of the police department. And the more these things happen, they tend to snowball. The more these restrictions on funding, especially in the general fund, happen, the more it ties not only the hands of the administration and the budget office and finance in trying to put together a complex, ever more complex picture of a budget. It also ties your hands on the council. Two amendments were brought to our attention this year. Potential amendments that were brought to our attention this year. Could we do this? Could we do that? The answer to both of them was no. We cannot do that because of restrictions on this funding that have been placed on this funding by council. Now, sometimes there's very good reasons for that. There are statutory reasons. I'm not saying that's always a bad thing. I'm just saying, you know, you can't, you can't only think about it in terms of, "Well, then the administration can do whatever they want with this money, and that might be a bad thing." It's like, "Well, the opposite effect can happen in many cities where, 'Oh, you can't do that. Our hands are tied. You can't do that. Our hands are tied. We have no way of responding to this situation because every, every bit of revenue that we have that could potentially respond to this situation is earmarked for something else by ordinance or by law.'" So I would again, not speaking specifically to this item because it's a very, very small amount of money, and as you say, hopefully diminishing over time. But I just wanted the counselors to keep in mind that the more you restrict revenue sources, you not only tie, the more you tie not only the administration's hands, the budget office's hands, you tie your own hands too, and the hands of future legislative bodies. So, I, I, I'm not saying don't do it. I'm not saying there's never a good reason to do it. Absolutely. I'm just saying it's really good that some of you are talking, really thinking seriously about, is this ultimately a good or bad thing to do? Because it really, it really needs that consideration. Particularly when you're talking about an open revenue source like the general fund that can be used to respond to a variety of emergencies. It, it may not, it may be a situation where it's like, "Well, yeah, we'd like to hire a couple of more planning people this year, but, you know, we just had a, you know, a sinkhole open on Guadalupe or something like that happened, and gee, we have no way of responding to that now because we've spent down all our balances on other stuff, and, and the money we have left is, is not, you know, able to be used for this purpose." So I, I would just encourage you to all counselors to always please keep that in mind that, you know, there's always a negative side to making sure that revenue only goes to one place because when you know that you tie the hands of government, yes, government can't do bad things, but it also means government can't do good things either. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you very much. You, Andy, wise words. Anybody else? All right, let's have a vote on the amendment. The motion on the floor we have is Amendment B approval. Councilor Cassett, first. Oh, that was Cassett, first motion. Councilor Castro, second motion. And I'm going to do a roll call. Councilor Cassett, Yes. Councilor Castro, Yes. Councilor Garcia, No. Councilor Bamante, Yes. Councilor Falner, No. And the motion to approve Amendment B passes. We have the main motion on the floor. Right. And we forgot which meeting we were in. Thanks for helping out though. It takes a team. And we have a motion to approve the bill as well. Motioned by Councilor Garcia and seconded by Councilor Falner. And we will do a roll call for the main motion for approving the bill. Councilor Cassett, Yes. Councilor Castro, Yes. Councilor Garcia, Yes. Councilor Bamante, Yes. Councilor Falner, Yes. And that motion passes as well. Next item then. Next item we have is Item 8A, request for approval of a memorandum of agreement with Santa Fe County designating the city as lead agency for funding applications, project administration, and construction of the Henry Lynch Road reconstruction and roundabout project, including portions within county jurisdiction. And this evening we have Romela Glorioso Moss with us as staff. Okay. So, do we have any questions from counselors on this issue? No questions. I get a motion, move to approve. Second. Oh, yeah. Councilor Cassett. Sorry. I just, I really want to thank Romela every time that this project comes up for your, I don't know how many years we've been talking about this, but every time I see it move another step forward, I know how much hard work you have put in to get it there. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This part of town is very excited for it. I know the county is also excited for it. So, thank you so much for all of your work and really, really excited to watch this continue to move. All right, we had a motion and a second. Motion and a second. Councilor Cassett, Yes. Councilor Castro, I believe, stepped away for a moment. Councilor Garcia, Yes. Councilor Bamante, Yes. Councilor Faulner, Yes. I believe I saw Councilor Castro. There she is. In the hallway. Thumbs up or thumbs down. Councilor Castro, we have a motion to approve Item 8A. Would you like to vote? Yes. And that motion passes. All right. Great. Next item on the agenda, Item 8B, request for approval of Amendment Number Two to General Plan Update Contract Item Number 24-0352 with WSPUSA, Inc. to increase the compensation by $649,125 for a new total amount of $2,691,225.56 to expedite the project schedule, provide additional public engagement, and enhance functionality of the digital user platform. And this evening we have Maggie Moore, and we also have two members from the company online with us present as well. Okay, great. Any questions or comments from the committee? Move to approve. Second. Roll call, please. Councilor Cassett, Yes. Councilor Castro, Yes. Councilor Garcia, Yes. Councilor Bamante, Yes. Councilor Faulner, Yes. And that motion passes. Okay, great. We're moving really good tonight, everyone. Proud of all of us. Okay, next item on the agenda. Item 8C is a consideration of Resolution Number 2026-TVD, sponsored by Mayor Michael Garcia. A resolution adopting the City of Santa Fe's Fiscal Year 2026-2027 operating budget for the City of Santa Fe. And I believe we have Andy Hopkins as well. We have several amendments, so could just quickly, before we get into it, could we just briefly run through the amendments? Not voting on them, just giving us a brief understanding of what we're looking at. Yes. Move to approve. Second. Yeah. Is that the Okay. Okay. So, there's only one amendment. One amendment. Could we get a motion to approve that amendment then? Councilor Faulkner, if I could just clarify, are we doing a motion by Councilor Castro to approve the resolution or the resolution first? It was actually Councilor Garcia, and I seconded to pass the main motion. Yes, the main motion. And now we're on to the amendment. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, good. All right, we have Amendment A. It's a catch and cleanup standard. Move to approve. Second. Paul, got a second. Can we get a roll call? Wait, wait. Can I actually, I would love to hear just, I mean, I read it, but if Andy, if you could just, a little overview of this would be wonderful. I think for us and the public, it would be great. Certainly, Madam Chair, councilors. I hope it's okay that I address you from my spot here where I can see my computer. The main part of the amendment was due to some confusion. Excuse me for a second. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't causing a bunch of feedback. There was, there were several additions to the budget made by request of departments. Those were the new employees, the new positions that you saw in the executive summary. One of those requests came from the Affordable Housing now division. There was quite a bit of confusion there, and it was caused by the, I think it's all, I don't know. See if that's, I think that's a little bit better. The confusion was led by the Affordable Housing Division put in the subject requests for two project manager positions or project specialist positions, but the body of the, a strict reading of the body of the memo actually seemed to be calling for one position. So some of our staff were thinking, okay, it's two positions. It was presented to the City Manager and Mayor as two positions, but because of a strict reading of the memo, we initially only budgeted one position because the body of the memo again only really specified one position. Upon further research, we discovered that the intent was actually for two positions. It tended to hit various parts of the budget because part of the request for all of the new positions, one of the things that we try, we try to approve a little bit every year. One of the things that we tried to get out ahead of this year was when we've added new positions in the past, we've had to subsequently go in and modify the budget to add equipment for them, a cell phone, a computer, and software. And this year we were trying to get out ahead of that. The way we do that is through the services of other departments charge. We actually budget those things in ITT. ITT charges the initiating department for them with the services of other departments line. So because of that kind of, you know, necessary hocus pocus in the budget, it tends to affect a lot of different places. That's why you see so many lines in the budget being affected. The other issue was just, was a strict oversight on our part. The budget for the debt service payments for the LED streetlights and citywide solarization project. It was discovered too late in the process, very late in the process, that that was not budgeted correctly. So we updated that, and that also, that causes the change in the changes in the Public Utilities and Public Works departments. So that's just kind of a brief overview of the changes in Amendment A. They were pretty much technical in nature. That's not really a change in any policy or anything like that. So, Great. Any other questions or comments from committee? Councilor Fagali. Anything? Okay. So let's get a roll call on that. On the amendment. Correct. Amendment A motioned by Councilor Faulkner and seconded by Councilor Bamante and Councilor Casset to vote. Yes. Councilor Castro, yes. Councilor Garcia, yes. Councilor Bamante, yes. Councilor Faulkner, yes. And Amendment A passes. Okay, now on to the main motion. You had a second to the. We have a main motion by Councilor Garcia and a second by Councilor Castro. Councilor Casset, yes. Councilor Castro, yes. And I'd like to explain my vote. Councilor Garcia, yes. Councilor Bamante, yes. Councilor Faulkner, yes. And very briefly, Chair, yes. There were several amendments that we were working with Andy on. As we mentioned earlier, when we have dedicated funds, sometimes it's harder to get some of these done. But, Deputy City Manager, the funds that we were looking for the library were actually in your purview or in City Manager's purview. Correct. And so, anything under $200,000, we actually don't have to approve. Is that right? Chair Faulkner and Councilor Castro, members of the Finance Committee. So if it's under $200,000, the City Manager could execute a contract. We would require governing body to approve a BAR because right now the City Manager's authority would be $60,000. So depending on the total amount there, we would want to look at for operating, say one of the libraries on Sunday hours, that's something that we could bring forward to you as a BAR. Wonderful. And so we, I think we're going to work on doing that BAR in the future. Thank you very much. No further comments. Thank you. And I think in general, I think some of us had some ideas and the City Manager, Deputy City Manager, and the Mayor worked with us to resolve these issues outside of the budget process, which was awesome. And I'd like to thank everyone who helped us figure this stuff out. I do feel like related to this budget, there was definitely a lot more communication between the administration and the council. And I'd like to thank staff for really leaning into all of our requests because we had a litany of things we wanted to see that we hadn't seen before. And again, I'd like to thank staff for all the work you guys put in. I know it was like a hurricane sometimes, but I really appreciate the work you guys put in and your willingness to help us navigate kind of a hybrid of what we're used to and what we're headed towards. And I also want to thank all my colleagues on the council. I think some amazing questions came forward. The process we use to ask questions ahead of time and get them back in writing. I think that streamlined a lot of what could have been a repeat, rinse and repeat from the, counselors Castro and counselors Casset did a lot of heavy lifting. I think we all had similar questions, but you guys really dug in and as Chair, I want to thank you for that because you guys are detailed people and that's your wheelhouse and you nailed it with a lot of the questions that you guys had and I think the rest of us were really glad. I think it was a team effort, but I want to recognize both of you for being so detail-oriented. Like I was looking at big ideas and 30,000-foot view because that's kind of my wheelhouse, but I think we all did our share of the lift and I think for our first go-around of new administration, I think the council and the administration worked well together in this transitional space. So I want to thank everybody. We need a round of applause for everybody. Good job everyone. All right. So, Madam Chair, if I could just add one thing to your comments. I think one of probably the single biggest improvement in this year's budget process, bar none, was the, was the fact that we got a lot of the questions in advance. Every year, of course, we try to answer every question, but when we're getting the questions in rapid fire succession during committees, it's really easy to lose some things. It's really easy for some things to go by the wayside and it's also really easy for us to abbreviate more than we would like just because we have to get the answer right away. You know, we don't have time to really dig into something. So, I think more than any other improvement in the budget process, that was the most meaningful one. Well, thank you, Andy, because that was something that as Finance Chair, I thought was important is that the council and the administration work well together. And so Andrea and I leaned in early on and the City Manager to like build a bridge between the council and the administration to allow for this space where we can get our questions answered in a, in a manner that we can get the answers we need to get and most importantly to me was that staff would have the time, exactly like you said, the time to answer the questions because one of the things I don't care for as a City Councilor is when even if we don't intend to, it looks like a gotcha moment from the, and I really wanted to make sure that wasn't happening from the council even accidentally. And so I just appreciate the opportunity we had to all work together to make this a better process for all of us. So thank you so much, Andy. And if I could just add one more thing, Madam Chair, special thanks to Councilor Casset, who was the one who actually caught the error in the debt service. Yes, By asking, why did resource conservation and public utilities or public works go from something, something to zero this year? And that was my, oh, shoot, you know what moment in this budget. There's one every budget year that like, oh, that's why that should be there. So I appreciate you catching that for. Very happy to be part of your very last one of those moments that you will be doing as a budget. So, Thank you, Andy. All right, guys. Thank you, everybody. I'm glad we got the budget through Finance and it goes on to council tomorrow and this is a moment to be celebrated, I feel like. So the next item is matters from staff. Thank you, Councilor. And members of the committee, I do just want to thank Andy Hopkins once again for all of his work on this budget. And of course, the rest of the budget team members who put in a lot of hours. So, thank you all for all of your effort on this. I know it's a heavy lift every year. So, I just wanted to thank everyone for their time and that's all I have this evening. Thank you. Great. Any matters from the members? Councilor Castro. I just want to echo the sentiments of everyone. This was my first year on the Finance Committee, but it was really interesting. I learned a lot. I continue to learn from all of you. So, thank you. Anybody else? Councilor Fagali, anything? Nope. All right. Matters from the Chair. Our next meeting is June 8th. And at that.