Regular Finance Committee Meeting - Last Monday
Mon, Jun 22, 2026 · Finance Committee
https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/953

== Executive Summary ==
The Finance Committee met to discuss a range of financial matters, including contract amendments, the city's Infrastructure Capital Improvement Plan (ICIP), and significant homelessness initiatives. A key discussion revolved around a contract amendment for the 4th of July celebration, which saw an increase in funding due to the city's 250th anniversary and a change in venue. The committee also grappled with the proposed termination of a $7.9 million contract with Urban Alchemy for street outreach services, raising concerns about the lack of a clear replacement plan and the potential impact on the city's homeless population. While no immediate decision was made on the Urban Alchemy contract, councilors expressed strong support for its services and requested more detailed transition plans.

The committee also dedicated substantial time to the city's five-year ICIP, which now includes projects from external entities due to new state law. Discussions focused on streamlining the document, vetting project readiness, and the city's role as a grant administrator for external projects. Several infrastructure amendments were approved, including for District 3 and 4 projects, and funding for fire department technology and a new ladder truck. A contentious debate emerged around the proposed 'The Rock' project, a new low-barrier shelter, with councilors expressing significant reservations based on past issues with a similar facility and concerns about the organization's readiness and community engagement. Ultimately, the committee decided to send 'The Rock' project to the governing body without a recommendation, highlighting the deep divisions and unresolved questions surrounding it.

== Key Decisions ==
- Approved an amendment to the professional services contract with Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe for the 4th of July celebrations, increasing compensation by $51,179.80.
- Approved a budget adjustment request of $7,641,910 to move funds from the Community Development Fund to a segregated Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
- Approved District 3 ICIP amendments for Tierra Real infrastructure improvements and Tierra Contenta Phase 3 spine infrastructure.
- Approved District 4 ICIP amendment for Las Aletas bridge and road extension.
- Approved funding for Fire Department Technology (5 Yes, 1 No).
- Approved Fire Truck Purchases and Life Safety Equipment (5 Yes, 0 No).
- Approved New Mexico Innovation Hub Site Work (5 Yes, 0 No).
- Approved Casa de Todos Affordable Housing (5 Yes, 0 No).
- Approved Corrales Resource and Opportunity Center (5 Yes, 0 No).
- Approved San Ignacio Flats Affordable Housing Amendment (5 Yes, 0 No).
- Moved the low-barrier shelter project ('The Rock') forward to the governing body without a recommendation (4 Yes, 1 No).

== Motions & Votes ==
- Approval of Agenda (as amended) — Passed (5-0 roll call vote).
- Approval of Consent Calendar (as amended, excluding pulled items) — Passed (voice vote).
- Motion to Recess for 10 minutes — Passed (voice vote).
- Motion to Reconvene — Passed (voice vote).
- Motion to go to Public Comment — Passed (voice vote).
- Motion to approve the Kiwanis contract amendment — Passed (4-1 roll call vote: Cassatt-Yes, Castro-No, Garcia-Yes, Bustamante-Yes, Faulkner-Yes).
- Motion to deny an unnamed contract (likely related to homelessness services) — Passed unanimously (5-0).
- Motion to approve a budget adjustment request of $7,641,910 for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund — Passed unanimously (5-0).
- Motion to approve the resolution as a whole (ICIP) — Motion made and seconded, but discussion moved to amendments.
- Motion to approve an amendment for "Salvador Perez Pool swimming pool deferred maintenance" — Motion made and seconded.
- District 3 Amendment (Tierra Real infrastructure improvements) — Approved (5-0 roll call vote).
- District 3 Amendment (Tierra Contenta Phase 3 spine infrastructure) — Approved (5-0 roll call vote).
- District 4 (Las Aletas bridge and road extension) — Approved (5-0 roll call vote).
- Motion to approve Department Request (Drone equipment for public safety response) — Motion made and seconded, no final vote recorded in this segment.
- Fire Department Technology Funding — Approved (5 Yes, 1 No).
- Fire Truck Purchases and Life Safety Equipment — Approved (5 Yes, 0 No).
- New Mexico Innovation Hub Site Work — Approved (5 Yes, 0 No).
- Casa de Todos Affordable Housing — Approved (5 Yes, 0 No).
- Corrales Resource and Opportunity Center — Approved (5 Yes, 0 No).
- Initial motion to recommend the low-barrier shelter project — Withdrawn.
- Motion to move the low-barrier shelter project forward to the governing body without recommendation — Passed (4 Yes, 1 No: Cassatt-Yes, Castro-Yes, Garcia-Yes, Bustamante-Yes, Faulkner-No).
- Motion to approve the San Ignacio Flats Affordable Housing Amendment — Passed unanimously (5 Yes: Cassatt-Yes, Castro-Yes, Garcia-Yes, Bustamante-Yes, Faulkner-Yes).
- Motion for an amendment (unspecified item) — Passed unanimously (4 Yes: Castro-Yes, Garcia-Yes, Bustamante-Yes, Faulkner-Yes).

== Public Comment ==
Kent Grubbs (Board Chair, Interfaith Community Services) and Marisol Atkins (Consultant, Luz del Sol) spoke regarding "The Lock" project, advocating for its inclusion on the ICIP list for state funding and emphasizing equitable access and community engagement. They clarified they were not seeking city funding or approval, but rather eligibility for state funds. During discussions on the Urban Alchemy contract, a constituent watching the meeting informed a council member about an open grant for homelessness from the Department of Workforce Solutions. Councilors also relayed community sentiment regarding "The Rock" project, noting that previous meetings focused on the community's responsibility rather than the project's accountability. Councilor Chavez provided a detailed account of witnessing drug deals at Pete's Place, highlighting deep-seated concerns about the organization's past and readiness for a new project.

== Full Transcript ==
We're going to go live.

Madam Chair, Councilor Faulkner, we are live.

All right, just for the public, we are going to start the meeting about 10 minutes late. Stay tuned. Thank you. Michael, my internet went down again.

All right, are we live?

We are live.

All right, let's call this meeting to order. Can we get a roll call, please? You just need to say our names and we'll vote.

Councilor, can you hear me?

Councilor Jamie Cassett.

Here.

Councilor Alma Castro.

Present.

Councilor Lee Garcia.

I'm here.

Councilor Paul Bustamante.

Here.

Chair Pilar Faulkner.

Here.

Can we get approval of the agenda? Any changes from staff?

Two changes from staff this evening. We will be removing item 7M from the agenda, as well as making a change to item 7L for the amount. And that is going to be the amount will be revised to $4,177,106.12. And those are the only changes from staff.

So moved, please.

Move to approve as amended.

Roll call. Councilor Cassett.

Yes.

Councilor Castro.

Yes.

Councilor Garcia.

Yes.

Councilor Bustamante.

Yes.

Chair Faulkner.

Yes.

That motion passes.

On to the consent calendar. Any changes from staff?

Chair, did we need to take a recess or we're good?

Let's get through this. Then we'll take a recess. Changes from staff?

No changes from staff on the consent agenda. Any items pulled? There is item 7I pulled by Councilor Castro, item 7N pulled by Councilor Bustamante and Councilor Cassett, item 7Q pulled by Councilor Castro, and item 7S pulled by Councilor Faulkner and Councilor Cassett this evening. Okay, any changes from the committee? Move to approve as amended. Second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Okay, great. Can we get a motion to recess for 10 minutes? So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All right, thank you.

Has it been? Are we going to get in trouble? Okay. Okay, everybody, we're going to get started. Got it? So moved. A motion to reconvene.

So moved.

Second.

Second.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Okay, so let's move on to the consent calendar. Yes. So this evening.

Oh, yeah.

This evening we have item 7I, which is a request for approval of amendment number one to professional services contract number 26-0125 with Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe to increase the compensation by $51,179.80 for event management services for the city of city's 4th of July celebrations. And this evening we have Parks and Recreation Director Melissa McDonald.

Okay, Councilor Castro, you pulled this.

Yes, just really quickly. I, if I recall, I had a few questions about the original contract for this event and I'm a little concerned seeing the extra $51,000. I know that, and correct me if I'm wrong, Director, we are doing a little bit of a larger celebration this year because of the 250th. Can you just give me an overview of what we're getting with these additional funds?

Madam Chair, Councilors, yes, this is, wow.

Try this one. See if this one's, see, does that work? I'm not sure why that's so loud. Yeah.

Just real quickly, a matter of order. We did not do public comment. After this item, we'll need to make a motion to go to public comment and then move on to the rest of the agenda. What's the will of the committee?

Testing.

I move that we move to public comment. We can have folks line up while we're figuring out the tech stuff. So, anyone, yeah, anyone who wants to speak in the chambers. Oh, first. Okay.

Hello. Hello.

I would need a second for that.

Maybe if I stand at a distance.

I, I retract my motion.

Yeah, so we'll do public comment. Anyone who would like to speak in the chambers on any matter that is not on the agenda. If you.

We apologize, we skipped a part of the agenda. I apologize. The comment.

It's been one of those days.

Madam Chair, we have a motion to go to public comment from Councilor Castro. Do we have a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Motion passes. All right, on to public comment. Anyone in the chambers?

Should we try this one? Madam Chair, Councilors, thank you for the time you're affording us tonight. I'll keep my comments brief. My name is Kent Grubbs. I'm the board chair of Interfaith Community Services, and our project is The Lock. We are seeking inclusion of our project on the ICIP list to be submitted to the state on the 1st of July. And what we are particularly concerned about tonight is equitable access to state funding. We believe that our project has met all the DFA capital outlay criteria that's been published for projects of this nature. And our understanding is that if we are not on an ICIP list either in the city or the county on the 1st of July, we will effectively be shut out for access of state funding for the next legislative session. So, we are not asking for city approval of the project. We're not asking for city funding of the project. We are simply asking to be eligible for state funding in due course, competing with other projects. And, you know, this is about putting Santa Fe in the best position to seek state funding for its capital needs. Our project meets the criteria that have been laid out by the DFA, and if we are not included, we would like to understand specifically where we have failed to meet the criteria for inclusion. Thank you for your time.

Anyone else?

Oh, good evening. One.

Hi, my name is Marisol Atkins. I'm a consultant with Luz del Sol here in Northern New Mexico, and I'm supporting Interfaith Shelter Community Services in to establish and develop the Rock Resource and Opportunity Center. I just wanted to speak. I want to ditto everything that Mr. Grubbs previously said. We are simply looking for equitable access to state funds. We don't want to compete with the city. We want to compete with other communities in New Mexico so that we can help support our community here. And I just want to speak a little bit to the community engagement process we've been involved in. This project started forming about four years ago. And the initial community engagement effort that took place was with an organization out of Colorado called Shopworks. Nearly 75 individuals in Santa Fe, from individuals experiencing homelessness, provider professional partners, former mayor, and various others were interviewed well before the Rock, we started talking in more detail about the Rock. In addition, last summer and last fall, we met with over 30 community organizations to talk about our plans and to hear their feedback. Those engagements resulted with over 25 letters of support and five formal MOUs with partners who want to be part of the Rock along with us. In addition, we've continued doing more individual and civic engagement. We've met with the Santa Fe Chamber, with the Association of Realtors. We're meeting with Rotary. We'll be meeting, you, you, we're doing serious engagement with civic organizations. We do have a letter of support from the Lodgers Association, as well as the chamber. And just today, a survey has been issued to business members of the Santa Fe Chamber to get some input and information from them. In addition, we hosted an over 200 participant community engagement forum on April 9th. Thank you, Councilor Bustamante, for being present and Mayor Garcia as well. A lot of information was shared at that engagement, and we did follow up with a thorough report sharing what information we gained, what we learned, and to respond to the community. So, we will continue forward in our community engagement, and we really are here in service to this community. The issue of homelessness is challenging for everybody, and we're trying to be one part of the solution. Thank you for including us on the ICIP.

Thank you. Is anyone online?

Madam Chair, there is no one present online.

Okay, so let's proceed with the rest of the consent calendar.

So, we will go back to item 7I, and Melissa McDonald will be presenting this evening.

Hear me?

Hello.

This is perfect. Lean in.

Madam Chair, Councilors, yeah, I can give you a brief overview of what the differences are. This is the 250th anniversary, so we are enhancing the show. We're going to have drone, drones and pyrotech lighting that's going to be accompanied with our normal fireworks show. Additional costs are going to be associated with our move. So, when we did the RFP, the, it was bid out on the idea that we're doing at the mall, and when we had to move to Franklin Miles, there were some additional costs, which this packet mainly addresses, which is the porta-potties, the light powers, the additional staging, things like that. But, it's going to be a great show. We're very excited, and we're going to be looking at this for maybe potentially doing drones in the future. I don't anticipate it will, that this type of will be every year. So, I think there maybe has been some concern about that. Right now, we're just getting through this year and enjoying this really beautiful show, we hope.

Thank you so much, Director. Thank you, Chair. So, I just want to make a couple comments. I have a much better understanding. I think that I had concern about additional costs of the move, so we're seeing some of those here. Also, the large crowds and some additional sanitation, so that's wonderful. I also think that we had some discussion in the original contract about potentially doing a mix of pyrotechnics and drones or doing just drones, which was a little bit more costly. And so, though I do feel that we're probably not going to see this level in the future, we might see some additional costs as well if we choose to go with just drones. Is that correct?

Madam Chair, Councilors, yes, that is correct.

No further questions, Chair.

Anybody else?

Councilor Cassett.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Director McDonald. I really appreciate that background as to what this funding is. I will say, I, I do feel better about the increase knowing that there's security, porta-potties, and the things that actually really are important to make sure that this is a fun event. So, I know that there's a variety of funding sources from the city, lodgers tax and general fund. I'm trying to see if I can quickly find the breakdown of how much is lodgers tax and how much is, is general fund dollars. Do you happen to have that information? Does anybody here happen to have that information?

I don't actually have that information. Maybe Director.

No. Okay.

Get back to you with that information.

That would be, that would be wonderful. Yes, yeah. Because I mean, for my recollection, I think we normally do lodgers and I'm just curious if it's the move to the park that is now pulling general fund in, or if I am misremembering prior years.

Well, on page six, we have a breakdown of costs and in that we show the parks, which is general fund, and I think that the, the tourism may be all lodgers tax, but I don't know.

Well, tourism is all lodgers tax. So, yeah, so if it's coming from the tourism department, it would be lodgers. So, but I'm, I'm curious. I just remember in the past that I thought it was all coming from the tourism department and just, you know, as, as Council Cashwell was pointing out that there were some more changes and some, you know, things that we had to adjust for moving it to Franklin Miles, that, you know, would have been great to have that conversation, but I sounds like I should ask other people that question. So, I will not put you on the spot anymore with that.

So, I will be sure to find out. I don't believe that I have any additional questions for you, Director McDonald. This might be a question for maybe Deputy City Manager. Are we, do we have a bar attached to this at all? Because from my understanding, this is under the City Manager's signing authority. So, I'm curious why it's coming here if there's no bar attached.

Thank you for the question, Council Cassett. Yes, under $60,000 is not required to come forward for governing body approval, but City Manager Moya did want to bring it just for transparency's sake since this is an expansion and increase of our cost in putting on this event through Kiwanis at this new location. So, he just wanted to be transparent and bring it forward. So, even though he's not required to, he did want to bring it forward.

Got it. Got it. Well, thank you.

I'll follow up and get the breakdown between tourism monies and general fund. I just don't have it. I was looking and I don't have it in front of me.

Hope it's not to me. I found it. I will, oh, I'm too far in. No wonder. Wonderful. I will take a look at that and I was more, I'm more interested in how it compares to previous years, but I'll follow up with you guys offline on that one just to get more information. So, thank you.

I think Counselor Castro may have some clarification.

Yeah, just one point of clarification for the public. Also in our packet as part of the memo, we're including the county contribution and the state contribution. I don't know if we want to, Director McDonald, but it's $50,000 and $3,750 that we're getting from the state and the, sorry, the county and the state respectively.

Thank you, Counselor Castro. Those contributions are actually going direct to Kiwanis and they are not going to the city. So, we're not handling those and they're not being added as part of the contract. So, this is only a contract amendment, $51,000 to increase the city's contribution.

So, the city's contribution, which we're seeing in that same sort of breakdown of $300,000, is being also supplemented by these other entities? Do we know the amount of the entire event?

Yes, sir. Yeah, it's this $332,469.

$332.

The $50,000 from the county and $3,750 from the state is not actually part of the city's con, it's just a direct contribution to the event organizer.

Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Anybody else? I need a motion.

Move to approve.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Do we have to call?

Roll call.

Do a roll call.

Councilor Cassatt?

Yes.

Councilor Castro?

No.

Councilor Garcia?

Yes.

Councilor Bustamante?

Yes.

Councilor Faulkner?

Yes.

And that motion passes. On to the next item. Our next item is item 7N, request for approval of termination of professional services contract item number 25-0216 with Urban Alchemy in the total amount of $7,948,133.59 to provide street outreach for homelessness services. And this evening we should have Kristen Woods, Youth and Family Services Program Manager. I think Bustamante pulled this.

Yeah, hi. So, I guess I'm just a little confused what this is about because didn't we just sign, I know it was for shelter operations. Why are we canceling the street outreach operation?

Thank you. Good afternoon or good evening. Excuse me. Right. So, to clarify your question. So, maybe just to take a bit of a step back. So, I wanted to walk through the decision that the city has made to end this contract with Urban Alchemy and specifically this is for the Love Street Outreach and the Oasis Day Shelter, not for the Agape Shelter program. That's two separate contracts. So, this contract did very important and life-saving work in terms of bringing street outreach services specifically to the Cerrillos corridor and downtown. And in addition to that, standing up the Oasis Day Shelter that is currently located at 2001 Cerrillos. And it connected individuals to employment referrals, recovery services, and shelter waitlist. The short answer for you is that this contract specifically was a $7.9 million contract over four years and it was built initially on the $1.6 million DWS state grant that we received in 2025. And so, moving forward, we are, you know, we have an ongoing commitment to these services, but due to the current funding realities, we've made the decision to cancel the Love contract and the Oasis Shelter. Our team is actively pursuing grant opportunities with the state and federal government. However, we are, you know, that's an ongoing process that has taken a bit of time and will take continuous time for us to, you know, see the fruits of those labors. So, in the interim and sort of what our team is working on moving forward is a more coordinated citywide encampment response strategy and we hope to come back to you all in the near future to present in more, more of a comprehensive fashion what our plans are to date. But just did want to make that key distinction between the Love Oasis contract and the Agape Shelter contract.

Okay, and I thank you for clarifying that or adding additional information. I guess I'm concerned about this because that seems to be an effective program at least in and around the shelter, especially on Harrison Road. So, is there something that's going to take care of those services in the meantime as a stopgap measure, I guess, is what I?

Sure. Sorry, sound issues. So, in the meantime, we do have our ongoing city teams, right? So, we have police, fire, EMS, park rangers, ARU, who are actively again sort of supporting with like citywide encampment response and outreach services. We also have separate contracts for outreach that we also, you know, have available. And we're looking at some of those contracts with Life Link and with others to see if there's areas of overlap where we can actually deploy teams to these specific areas that Love and Urban Alchemy was previously, you know, really targeting.

Okay, so there is a, there are plans to, oh, go ahead, Kirk.

Sorry, just, just to add to that piece, Madam Chair, Counselor. Mr. Monte, the current shelter contract with Urban Alchemy supports outreach in around a perimeter. Right. This is not working very well. There is a perimeter outreach being done with the current contract. Also, for that 24/7 shelter operation, that, that, um, Oasis is, is built into that. So, so, what this contract is, this, the cancellation of this contract is essentially canceling the broader street outreach, but what will happen in the Harrison area will remain the same.

Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. I believe Counselor Cassell also.

Counselor Cassell?

Thank you. So, in terms of that broader perimeter, can you remind me what the boundaries of that is that's included in the shelter contract?

Yeah, so the two areas in the contract were the downtown area and the Cerrillos corridor sort of more broadly speaking.

Mhm. But the, but the street outreach that is, or the, the that is still included in the Agape shelter, Agape House contract includes taking care of the perimeter. How far out does that perimeter go? Where is the, where's the line?

Yeah, my understanding is it's really the perimeter of the facility itself. So, 2801 Cerrillos.

Okay. So, what, what I'm hearing is going back to an old system that did not work, which is why we brought Urban Alchemy in in the first place. And, you know, District 4 is right across the street. And the amount of calls I was getting prior to Urban Alchemy coming in and emails was astronomical around encampments, around people wandering around. And then once Urban Alchemy came in and we started getting that broader street outreach, my calls went away. So, until there is a more concrete plan that is not going back to the old thing that failed, I can't support this. Find the money. I mean, I, and I said this when we passed Urban Alchemy that if, like, there's a difference and my constituents have seen a difference. Businesses have seen a difference. And so, if that's the case, I mean, I, I, like, I just, there's, I understand it's an expensive contract. I understand wanting to find something else, but a makeshift, we're going to go back to what didn't work before until we figure something else out when we weren't able to figure something else out for, you know, God knows how many years before we finally were like, great, bringing in Urban Alchemy and we're going to spend all this money. That just doesn't seem like a very good plan and something that I just, I can't put my constituency through that again. I just, I, I really can't. So, the perimeter I'm curious about. I believe that it was larger than just the surrounding streets for the contract, but again, I don't know if it goes as far as I would like to see it based on the difference of the experiences of the people who've been living close, close to that area and, and the difference of it being cleaned up. So, I understand it's a four-year contract. I understand it's a lot of money. I don't know where we find it, but at this point, like, just based on the challenges that, that my constituents were experiencing, I, I, there's no way I can support canceling the contract without another very concrete idea in place that is not simply relying on the police, the park rangers, which this was not their original purpose in the first place. We kind of had to borrow them because we were, you know, dealing with this crisis and not sure what to do. So, you know, park rangers came in as like this little band-aid operation and they've done a phenomenal job figuring out how to do this work really well. The ARU, which we just got all these presentations around the challenges the ARU is in. It's in a weakened state. And so, this just seems like a, like a really bad idea. So, if we could get confirmation one on the perimeter, I think it's a little bit bigger. But at this time, without a much more detailed plan, we brought in extra work because city staff could not take care of the need. And I don't believe the need has changed. I just believe that the impact has changed because the program we brought in is, is being successful in this arena. I always say this is the biggest problem with successful public health programs is that when they work, they're invisible. And so, people are like, "Well, we don't need this." And then they cut the funding. They're like, "Oh my gosh, why is this terrible thing happening?" It's, well, because we got rid of the thing that was actually really helping the problem. So, I get it. I know this is expensive. But I, I really, you know, I really think that it is worth it to keep funding this until we actually have another, another plan in place. So, I will not be supporting this tonight. Thank you.

Mr. Castro.

Thank you so much, Chair. Thank you, Directors. Thank you, Ms. Halvary. I have similar concerns. In particular because we have seen such a big improvement, but also I'm surprised because of the conversations that many of us have been having around the ARU and the reduction of those services and the need for emergency care rather than long-term case management. We don't have an off-boarding plan, and we've actually been actively in those meetings talking about how we need more service providers and more services, not just in the Cerrillos Road corridor. I mean, I can ask for the LOVES program to set up at DeVargas Park if we're talking about places that people are congregating. I think that we need to be supporting these services in a real way in particular because in that recent meeting with the ARU, there were not a lot of other service providers that we were able to rely on.

I don't want to seem like we're in any way adverse to your suggestions. I understand that this is very expensive and that we don't know where the funding is coming from. I would love to support this if we had someone else to provide these services. Ms. Halvary, do you have anything to add?

Yeah, so thank you for those points. And I do just want to acknowledge and name that this is a very challenging situation to be in, and I think first and foremost, we are not cutting this program because it doesn't work. We're cutting it due to a fiscal restraint and a reality, and at the same time trying to build towards more sustainable, more robust city-wide efforts that can address not only these acute crises, but really put us in a position where we're building out more proactive plans moving forward that we feel we have the capacity to really see in a long-term effort and yield results year over year.

So as part of that, and maybe just to clarify a couple points, we will get back to you to make sure that we are getting really specific about what that transition period looks like with Urban Alchemy and the exact area of support in terms of the Cerrillos Corridor. What we're trying to paint a picture of moving forward is an effort to figure out between those city internal teams and service provider contractors what that city-wide street outreach encampment program will look like.

At the same time, and obviously we don't want to put the cart before the horse, but we do have active conversations happening with the state and with some of our federal partners about ongoing multi-year funding. So all that to say, we're hopeful that we'll be able to come back with a much more concrete plan in the coming weeks. We're just not there yet. So please be patient with us, and we do acknowledge that this is a crucial need and a top priority.

Thank you so much, Enzo. I'm going to, I know there's other colleagues that want to have their questions answered, but I would suggest that we hold this at finance for one more meeting, Chair. I have no further questions.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the information. I'm along the lines of agreement with my colleagues in regards to the impact that this program has had. Now I understand you don't feel like we have the money. We don't have the money. How do we, where do we get it from? I guess I'm understanding that a lot of this money was grant money you said that is being cut. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

The funds that we received previously were from the Department of Workforce Solutions at the tune of 1.6 million, and it's not that those funds are being cut, it's that they've been fully expended.

Okay, so where do we get the money for this?

Yeah, so we have a couple of strategies, and in terms of again, the previous approach towards these bodies of work, including Agape Shelter and Love, is that these were made possible initially from the state grant funds, right? So we want to go back to our state partners and continue to have conversations, again, looking towards multi-year funding and ongoing funding. How can we make these plans sustainable? Because if we're always coming back every six months or a year, that doesn't put anybody in a good position. So really trying to have a much broader conversation about what that looks like with the state.

In addition to that, and again, this is a long-term process, but we also put in some funds, congressional directed spending funds with Senator Heinrich's office. We asked for 1.8 million dollars that would be over a two-year period. So that funding you will not hear back for about another year, but that funding process we're hoping also to pursue with our federal partners as well.

Okay. You know, I'm along the lines of seeing when you put pressure in areas, it tends to seem better in one place and then disperses throughout a wider area. I do see some of that in District 3 on the south side where people have gone out, and I have seen Urban Alchemy out there doing their thing. And so I do realize Council Cassell's point is that that is real. Constituents are calling and calling and calling, and all of a sudden those results, what kind of data do we have that backs up what the Love Outreach program and that Oasis program would, what kind of data do we have to back up that it was bringing forth some results to the city?

Sure. Thank you, Counselor, for the question. In terms of data, and again, maybe just to emphasize once more, this contract was not canceled for any performance issues. The most recent data that we received as of May 2026, the Oasis shelter saw 343 unique visitors and 1,026 services provided by way of water, coffee, meals, showers, other referrals, and supportive services to clients with that street outreach and Oasis work happening on the ground.

I do want to say as well that Urban Alchemy folks have shared a breadth of data with us that I think they're most capable to kind of speak to on the ground what has been working, what the trends are, and what they've been seeing. But we're happy to relay all of the data that we've received. We get monthly reports from them. We get weekly reports as well. So we do have very comprehensive, very robust data just showing the breadth of support services that they have been employing on the ground. Thank you. I still see that it doesn't seem like this has support as far as wanting to support the termination of the contract. And so, if it doesn't have the support, what are we going to do?

What are we going to do in terms of a contingency plan?

Yes.

Yeah, so I think what our team can do and what we're in a position to realistically do right now would be to again, just very actively continue to pursue those conversations with the state first and foremost. I think to the extent that we can align as a city and just be very clear about exactly the amount that's needed over exactly what timeframe and build that very compelling case. We have been sharing and we continue to share weekly data with the state so they're very bought in in terms of the success of the program, the need for it. I know that state representatives are also making some of those calls themselves to Urban Alchemy to deploy their street outreach teams on different occasions. So there is a lot of synergy happening there. I think we just need to really make sure that we are setting some very clear timeframes and deadlines so that we can get those funds in hand as soon as possible to be able to bring this work back in earnest.

Thank you. No further questions, Madam Chair.

All right, thank you. I visit the Agape House once to twice a week, in part because the city has invested in this program and I do my due diligence. So if I'm going to champion something, I want to make sure that we're getting what we have agreed that we would get. Also, because the homeless issue is very important to me, and I visit that facility to see if there's anything else we can do to assist in what they're doing.

I know I don't have the exact numbers, but I know that crime has dropped significantly on the Cerrillos Corridor. And I think in some cases we can use data to tell us what's going on. There is data that shows that there's been a significant drop in crime. There's been a couple of peaks around overdoses, but that's common in a low-barrier shelter. There's been some challenges at that location, but in general, I think common sense would tell us that what they are doing is working, at least for what our needs are around this issue until we can figure out a larger strategy around how to solve this problem on a long-term basis.

I do have concerns around dumping a contract that's providing services without a plan for how to replace them. And I understand that you guys have a broader plan, like a strategy, but we don't have any definite that can fill the gap between now and when October's when the federal government funds. The state government won't give us any funding if it's executive branch, we can access that funding within maybe 90 days if we're lucky. So, in 90 days till October, we'll get granted the money by the federal government in October through our legislators at the federal level, then it'll be a while before we process it. So, we're looking at six months to a year where no services will be provided in this context.

And I'm not being hard on the organizations that have done a lot of work around this issue, but the organizations you listed were working on the problem before Urban Alchemy got involved, and the problem wasn't getting solved. And so, it seems like a high risk for the community and for the city of Santa Fe and for the homeless population for us to forego a contract that is doing a service we desperately need and that we cannot provide, and our partners who are doing other services in this spectrum of homelessness cannot provide. It seems like it is bad stewardship on our part to say, "Before we know we have the money, let's just cut the contract."

Homelessness is the number one problem in the city of Santa Fe. And yet we fund it like it is a lower level problem. It is the number one problem. All of our challenges are coming from the fact that we do not have a long-term strategy and a plan for dealing with homelessness. So, if it is the number one problem, which we all recognize it is, then we need to fund it like it's the number one problem. And so, I will make a motion that we, you want more conversation? Okay. Okay, more conversation before Counselor Fossel. Okay, Counselor Bustamante.

Thank you, Chair. I just had a question. Is there a way to tie further services from this contract to the six-month contract? So, rather than terminating immediately, you're shaking your head, no. Right. Okay. No, no. I guess I'm not trying to tie, excuse me, I misspoke. I wasn't trying to tie this to contract. Can we extend this to a six-month period rather than immediate termination? So, rather than, yeah, that's my question.

Yeah. Thank you, Chair. Chair Wagner and Counselor Bustamante. This contract, this is a four-year contract. This contract is valid for the next three years. We completed one year of it. So, what will have to happen,

Can you lean in just a little bit, Leah? Thank you. Is it, is it, sorry, it's the, it's the mic's problem. It's not you.

To put my mouth like this? No, it's really good.

Testing, testing. Maybe it's me.

Okay.

Okay. Here. What will have to happen if this contract is not terminated at this time is that we will have to bring forward funding from the general fund or some other place to fund this year of the contract. So when this contract was written, four years of funding was not identified at that time. And so this is the position that we're in now in that we have a contract, we have a four-year contract. We can choose to terminate it at this time, identify more funding. We recognize that it's not ideal, or we can, the next step if this termination is not approved is that we will bar funding from the general fund if it's the wish of the council.

Okay, thank you, Director. That's all I have for now. Councilor Cassett.

Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple things. I did receive a message from a constituent who's watching that apparently there is an open grant for homelessness from the Department of Workforce Solutions open right now. So, are we pursuing that? Great. And as Liam mentioned, it sounds like a lot of our legislators are interested in this continuing as well. So, legislators, not legislators. They're too close together. So, that is good. I hope that we can find funding. My vote would be to find the money right now if we need to float it for a little bit because, as Councilor Faulkner mentioned, this is the biggest issue, especially in this part of the city, that we're discussing. And so, yeah, we have to fund it. I mean, really, the experiences of my constituents were untenable, and it's not perfect now either. I mean, that's the other thing. It's not like it's perfect.

The other piece that I'll mention, to Councilor Faulkner's point, is that we already had a lot of these organizations working on it. That's not their model. I mean, it's like, let's let them do their model. Let's let them do their model very well. And I think that's also the other piece. We're about to have this homelessness summit, and one of these components is that we're trying to have everybody do everything. And that was one of the things that I had mentioned about Interfaith. One of the challenges they had when it was PIE D is that the nature of the problem exploded and changed. We really needed the street outreach. We needed the street teams. We had ARU. Again, there's a lot of conversations as to what happened there.

The other thing with the funding, this is what the city does. The city, we cannot commit future governing bodies to future funding years. And so, I think that's just an important piece of knowledge. We sign every multi-year contract without knowing where future funding comes from. This is not unique in that sense. We do single-year budgeting. There's been a lot of conversation, "Could we do further year budgeting? Could we maybe do two years before a governing body changes over?" Those are conversations for the budget conversations that we're having. So, it's not necessarily surprising that we're like, "Hey, we have to figure out funding again for a contract," as it's usually not taken from recurring funds. So, just so the public is aware, that's not like, "Oh my gosh, what a shock! We signed a contract where we don't have the funds." We never have the funding for all of the years that a contract is approved. That's not how the City of Santa Fe does budgeting. Again, that's a great question mark as to whether or not we need to change that, but this is not the contract to do it on. So, are we ready for a motion, Madam Chair? Then I would move to deny.

Second. Can we get a roll call, please? Councilor Cassutt?

Yes.

Councilor Castro?

Yes.

Councilor Garcia?

Yes.

Councilor Bustamante?

Yes.

Councilor Faulkner?

Yes.

The motion to deny passes.

Thank you. And I would just say we really do have to take homelessness a little more seriously in our budgeting. It is not, we can't as a city depend wholly on nonprofits that we're paying. We can't depend on the state, we can't depend on the federal government, we can't depend on the county. This is an all-hands-on-deck problem, and Santa Fe's not unique. But if we approach this problem like we can piecemeal it in little segments and have an unorganized, reactionary response to homelessness, we will fail at every turn. And that's why you will see me always fighting for the continuum of care campus because that is the only thing that works in cities around the country. And so, I really hope that as a city we start taking this seriously. We have to put our money where our mouth is because money is what's going to solve this problem, and we are not doing that right now, and we haven't been doing it since 2020. And so, I think we've had enough time to see what we need to do and what we don't need to do, and we need to start taking action on this issue. But I am grateful that the mayor is doing a summit because I think it's important to bring all the players to the table, but I also think we need new voices at the table because we've been handling this problem in a certain way that has not been effective to date. And so, we need new voices at the table, we need new ideas, and we need to seriously prioritize funding homelessness. Any other counselors? Bustamante.

Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to add that this isn't on you. This is on us because, and we have heard a lot, we're taking fire quite recently for giving Urban Alchemy more money and more money. And I am hesitant in that regard to do this. But the reality is, if we cancel this now, what do we have to replace it with? And the reason I voted with this now to deny it is because I would have preferred to see a plan to replace this today so that we say, "Okay, we are canceling this, and we're moving effective immediately into this other plan." And as Councilor Faulkner said, if we're waiting on other funding to do that, it could be a while. And I don't really like kicking the can down the road, so to speak. So, but again, this isn't on you. This is on us to kind of push this topic to the forefront, get the funding that we need, and get the services that we need. Because we have had those talks at ARU. We have had those talks about too many organizations trying to do everything and trying to figure out what does each organization do best and then trying to coordinate those efforts with them. And in this case, Urban Alchemy, I mean, I can't... The shelter is a separate issue and what's going on there, but their street outreach program, at least in and around the area of the shelter itself, has been very effective. And I'd hate to see that get canceled at this moment. Thank you, Chair. And thank you for your hard work and comments.

Ms. Cassell.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Point of inquiry. I believe I've actually never seen this happen since we wrote the procedural rules that we just killed this item. I believe if an entire committee that's entirely present, that it dies. So, I'm looking at Erminia, who knows everything. And just, and also for the meeting that I know you guys inevitably have around committees, but is that, and for the public? That's my understanding. This item just got killed.

Councilor, that is also my understanding.

Okay, wonderful. Thank you.

Sorry, I just, point of clarification, Councilor Cassett, because we are a majority of the governing body at this point, if we deny it, it would have been denied at governing body as well.

Councilor Garcia. You're the wise sage one of the group. What say you?

[laughter]

I think I concur.

Okay, again, staff, thank you so much, and I agree with Councilor Bustamante. It is on the council and the governing body's back, this lift. But I hope that tonight shows that there, and it's not just this five, the rest of the councilors and the administration are taking this seriously. And so, I hope this sends a message to the community, we will not be making decisions anymore that are not based in what provides the best services. Find a plan, then cancel the contract. That's, we can't mess around with this issue. It's too, it's too important. Okay, anyway, enough said. Thank you everyone for your indulgence. Next item.

Our next item of the evening is item 7Q. It is a request for approval of a budget adjustment request in the amount of $7,641,910 from the Community Development Fund to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. And this evening we have Fabiola Chavez, Affordable Housing Director.

And who pulled this one?

I did.

Oh, Councilor Castro.

And sorry, thank you so much, Director Chavez. Welcome home. We're so excited to see you. This is just a very large amount, and I think that lots of folks have questions. We actually requested this several months ago, and it is only coming to fruition now. Do you want to tell us a little bit about this item?

Yeah, so if, thank you, Councilor Castro, and members of the, I was going to say committee. Yeah, Finance Committee. Okay, I'm at the right place. I'm sorry, I was ill, and so give me your grace. But yes, if you recall back in December when Emily Oster was still here, we had discussions about segregating the Affordable Housing Trust Fund into its own accounting line item. So, we have done that with this BAR. This BAR is moving the money from the Community Development Fund into its own segregated Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

And does this, thank you so much, Director, does this reflect the money that we're holding from the potential excise tax money?

It does. It does.

You don't happen to know the breakout of how much we have that we are holding and not spending from potential excise tax money, do you?

It's, yeah, it's about approximately $1.5 million.

Thank you so much. No further questions, Chair.

Anybody else?

Move to approve.

Second.

Can we get a roll call?

Councilor Cassutt.

Yes.

Councilor Castro.

Yes.

Councilor Garcia.

Yes.

Councilor Bustamante.

Yes.

Councilor Faulkner.

Yes.

That motion passes.

Thank you, Director.

On to the next item.

Our next item is item 7S, consideration of Resolution Number 2026-TBD, sponsored by Mayor Michael Garcia, a resolution adopting the City of Santa Fe's 2028 through 2032 Infrastructure Capital Improvements Plan. And this evening we have Shawn Moody, Capital Projects Manager.

Great. I'm just going to give the committee and the public a little rundown on how there's at least, there's 10 amendments, correct? There is 10 amendments. So, there's 10 amendments. So, what we're going to do to make this easy to digest for staff and the community and the council is we are going to run the amendments by district first. So, Districts 1, 2, 3, and 4. Then we're going to go to department amendments, and then we're going to go to the nonprofit discussion. And so, to start with, I think Moody, you have some information. I believe the mayor's here, and he has some things he'd like to say. So, let's start with that.

I don't see the mayor here.

Mayor was here.

I'm not sure how the committee would like to hear this framed.

I have some suggestions. Sure. Mr. Moody, you had given us a great presentation at a couple other committee meetings, but it was not on our agenda. Would you give us a short rundown of why we're seeing some of these new things?

Great. Thank you, Chair, from Queen City Life. So, broad context, where this comes from is the city does not budget its capital year to year. Rather, it produces a Capital Improvement Plan. This is that plan. It's typically a five-year plan updated annually. Can everybody hear me okay? Good. And it, and we undertake it. Public Works tends to shepherd the thing first by asking all of the departments across the city what their capital needs are, and understanding them, also reaching out to councilors and to our legislative delegation about what they would like to see in our capital planning, and compiling up a plan and taking it into a resolution for the governing body to consider. In the context, the projects that the city itself developed from its departments are fairly well understood.

Typically, we have not included in our ICIP plan projects initiated by external entities. This year, the legislature passed a law that prohibited the legislature from considering appropriations for any project not included in someone's ICIP (city, county, or another county or city), unless it was under $100,000. So, we have received a total of six applications from external entities that we would not have been considering in the past. The Public Works and Utilities Committee heard five, and we now have six. So, there are six to consider.

In addition to that, very late in the process, typically originating from councilors, we've got a number of other ICIP projects to consider in the context of adopting this resolution. The structure that Legislative Services has set up, as Chair Faulkner mentioned, would be to introduce them one by one.

Any questions from the committee? Thank you. You're on, Councilor Cassell.

Right. Thank you so much. I had asked earlier, we used to have project descriptions. Whatever you sent me still didn't have them. There were tabs, maybe I didn't look at the tabs enough, but of project descriptions. But where I'm trying to really get some insight is, for example, it'll say "upgrades to park citywide," and where those lie, because some of my parks are listed on there separately, but I also do have other parks that I have particular focus on. So, where can we find some of this information on like this general street citywide, park citywide, those types?

Yeah, good question. Thank you. What we have put in as an exhibit to the resolution was a bare-bones project title and its total cost and its funded to date, basically, hoping to help present a very simple, long list of everything we would do. The detailed project details are actually already entered in the state system awaiting adoption of the resolution, and they are fairly detailed with the scope of work, legislative language, what the project will do in the community, and so on. Those are all available in the state's CAPS system, and they're available to any of you. I didn't want to impose on you, but I will make that available to each of you.

You're exactly right. ICIPs in the past, not in the last few years, but in the past, would be about 90 pages long, and they include several pages, six pages for each project, times what has now become 90 or 100 projects. I didn't want to give you all a 600-page document. That was hopefully helpful, but what I'd like to do is, if everyone thinks it's a good idea, is share the access to this so-called CAPS site. Projects are all drafted there awaiting the consideration of this by the governing body. As the governing body approves the resolution and perhaps amendments to the resolution, at that point, that would be on the 24th, so it would be on this Wednesday. We have a deadline with the state of July 1st to then, they use the word "verb," the verb they use is "submit," then submit those 90 projects or so into their system, and that becomes the stable platform on which both the governing body and our legislative delegation will, by some magical process, have prioritized and created a request list for the legislature.

Okay, wonderful. Yeah, yeah, thank you. And I agree, not getting that giant document is helpful. And I think most of these, the title for all of us, is pretty much enough. It was more of those kind of like general catch-all. So, and I will say, I apologize. I did try to get something on today. I completely understand that there was a big push at the end. I had thought that the Camino Carlos Race Safety Courts Quarter Safety Study results had been on the ICIP. I thought it was on there last year. And so I didn't notice it coming off, or maybe it came off a couple years ago. But I am curious, I know things went on. Did other things come off? And in the future, what I would really love to see is a break, because again, it's a long list. And for the most part, all of my projects have stayed stable, so I've never really noticed things coming off. This year, I caught just today that, you know, that's a really, I've brought it up multiple times. It was part of my argument for why the state should give us Herb Martinez a park funding, and our delegation was actually very supportive that there was, you know, this whole collaboration going on and how it connected to Midtown and the increase in traffic. So I'm not too happy to see it gone. And it would have been really lovely if I'd been flagged that that had come off, because then I would have, you know, been triggered to be like, "Oh, okay, you know, this thing that I have assumed it was on there," and that's my fault. Should have looked a little bit closer on the things that are on my list. The other ones are there. Thank you.

Yeah.

That did, in fact, come off. So in the future, I would really love to see when this is being presented, "Hey, here's the new projects that are on there. Here's the projects coming off." And again, it may have come off two years ago. I might have missed out on...

It would have. And I appreciate that, because we'll make that a priority for next year. Among the other things that have happened this year that are different is the state maintains the system that hosts our capital project list and everybody else's. And last September, they switched to a new system. And it actually became easier to bring projects from last year's list onto this year's list, and it's exactly what we did. My only criterion for filtering them was, did it complete or did it get enough funding to complete? Otherwise, we just brought it over. So...

Got it. Okay, so it probably came off a couple years ago.

Exactly right. It didn't appear in last year's, and I didn't go to the trouble, mainly because the old system was no longer available, of reaching into the hard thing. So that I will apologize to the...

No, I, no, and I appreciate that. And again, this is, you know, not something that has happened in the past either. So just as we're like, I would really love to see just like, "Hey, here's the new stuff. Here's the old stuff." And again, you know, my top projects are still on there, which is wonderful.

And I will say, you all get, I'll make sure you all get CAPS access.

Great.

Albeit late, but...

That's okay.

Easy to do. And you can go to any depth. It's very easy to use. I will say that the projects that were brought over from last year are numbered differently, and that makes it convenient for you to see what was in last year's list. We can make it more explicit for next...

Okay, that'd be wonderful. And then, yeah, I know that we can edit this thing, although obviously right now we're on the deadline for this next come up. So when actually is the window for amendments to the ICIP? Is it actually kind of annually or not so much? We get a window in the late spring, early summer.

What I noticed of our previous administration is they would begin developing it around April for about the same exact time. It would come out just about close to the deadline. We moved it forward this year to start in March.

Uh-huh.

First solicitation out to the council. We solicit departments early. Turned around and solicited councilors and the delegation on April 14th for a May. My feeling is even then, it's, we didn't do it well. So, I'm sorry to say that, but I think if we begin understanding capital planning as a 12-month year process, for example, if projects don't make it on this list, well, we've got a starting point for next year.

Right.

And get them more fully understood and hopefully be more actively engaging not just councilors, but our departments themselves so that we have a much better position. What I would suggest for a kickoff where we're at right now, I'd suggest it start, actually, I've not even floated this with my department head, so...

Madam Chair, Councilor Cassell, to answer your question, DFA has confirmed that we can add new projects up until the end of July. Right now, because of the major changes that are happening, new projects. Now, updating the rankings and whatnot can be updated all the way up until November.

Right. As we'll have that come through with our legislative priorities legislation, right? And that's when we set, I set those in our district priorities. Correct?

Correct.

Okay. Wonderful. Well, that's good to hear. So maybe we can sneak this in.

Yeah, so you, we got, we got a...

It'd be great. Thanks.

Gift from the DDA, but I will make a suggestion to our department that we really shouldn't begin building our ICIP until we understand our legislative appropriations in February. So, I would suggest that we had the best of intentions this year. We wouldn't be beginning to finalize the list at the earliest until mid-February, early March at best. Okay. And hopefully create a little bit more grace period of finalizing the list.

Okay, wonderful. And, you know, I'll just, I'll put, because I can't help but throw this out every single time. Again, we've been talking about this giant capital plan, and congratulations again, Director Burnett. Very excited to have you at the helm, especially since I've been speaking with you off and on about this for a couple years. So, that is something that please, you know, I think that that will really help this process as well as we understand our overall capital needs, the different areas, and the different list that they have to show up on for the variety of funding sources that we need to try to get in order to actually complete these things. So, please, please, please let us know how we can support in really getting the city to a place where we are doing proactive capital planning and not just reacting to whatever is in front of our face, because I feel like that's been a bit of the MO for as long as I've been here. So, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Nothing? Okay. Councilor Castro.

Well, actually, my question was answered in terms of our prioritization and how long we have to sort of figure out what our priorities are, and I think we're going to have a much more robust process. Anything else, Mr. Moody, that you want to, or yeah, Director, about our priorities?

Just a real quick addendum to the mayor's comments. I want to make sure you, we're crystal clear. These extended deadlines, I think, until August 1st for submitting new projects and the ability to modify projects that we've submitted up till November. It sounds like it's the first time we've been able to do these things and will probably also be the last time we're able to do it. So, we can take advantage of it this year, but don't get too used to it, because that will probably go away next year.

Wonderful. And to that point, Director, I didn't, I was very lucky in District 1. We have no less than 25 projects in our district that are on our list. Thank you so much for heeding many of the calls for Frenchy's Field, for bike infrastructure, for La Familia. Thank you. Amazing. I want to sort of look at pavement and rehabilitation and preservation of residential roads. Is there a way that we could add residential roads and sidewalks?

What I would recommend is submitting a request directly to Mr.

Moody and myself, and we can go through the process of gathering the required information and seeing if we're able to put something together and get it onto the list, but it seems like a reasonable request.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. No further question.

Anybody else? Bustamante.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So, Director, just to be clear on the process then, if we had something that perhaps we submitted that didn't make it into review for tonight or for the governing body, what's the process if we want to add something before that July deadline?

So again, please submit through Mr. Moody and myself. We can work with you to make sure that we have all the required information, put a packet together. It's especially important when it's a request that benefits an external entity that we go through our due diligence process to make sure that it is in fact eligible and appropriate for this year's ICIP list. But get us that request, we'll ask for the information we need, we'll put together a packet, and if it's successful, we'll do our best to get it added to the official ICIP.

Okay, thank you, Director. Thank you, managers. Counselor Garcia.

I'm good, thank you.

Hey, then let's move on to District 1 amendments.

Madam Chair, correct me if I'm wrong, because it's been a very long afternoon. Do we need a motion and a second to approve the resolution as a whole and then move into amendments? Oh, yes, we do. It's been one of those days.

Can we get a motion?

Move to approve.

Second.

We need a roll call.

No, no, no. We have to move with the amendments. Okay, you guys, sorry. We're good. It's been like things have changed by the hour around here. No, I think we have it set up to go by district because no, there's none for District 1, so then let's move on to District.

Or the evening will go by district, we'll go by department, and then we'll go by nonprofits. And we will start this evening with District 2. And this item is for the Salvador Perez Pool swimming pool deferred maintenance sponsored by Counselor Bustamante and Counselor Barratt.

Move to approve.

Can we get a second?

Second.

Okay, one second here.

Now, discussion? Want to say anything, Counselor Bustamante?

It's pretty self-explanatory. This is mainly to cover the, I know there's some money going to the filter replacement, but there's been a lot of deferred maintenance on this pool over the years, and it keeps it in need of some work.

Okay. Anyone want to hear from staff on this item?

I'd like to respond actually. You had expressed a concern for public bathrooms at Sal Perez and other places. We feel that this is sufficient to include in the discussion.

Thank you. That's good to know.

Right. So, no further discussion. Can we get a roll call?

Currently, Madam Chair, Council Cassett.

Yes.

Council Castro.

Yes.

Council Garcia.

Yes.

Council Bustamante.

Yes.

Council Faulkner.

Yes.

And that amendment passes. Right. So, let's move on to District 3. Can we get a motion?

District 3 amendment will actually be for the Tierra Real infrastructure improvements sponsored by Council Garcia and Council Faulkner.

Okay. Can we get a motion on this one?

To approve.

Second. Can we roll call? Council Cassett.

Yes.

Council Castro.

Yes.

Council Garcia.

Yes.

Council Bustamante.

Yes.

Council Faulkner.

Yes.

And that passes. Right. Our next one is for also for District 3. It is the Tierra Contenta Phase 3 spine infrastructure. No sponsors on this one.

No, it's Council.

Oh, sponsored by Council Garcia and Council Faulkner.

All right.

Move to approve.

Second. Any discussion? Can we get a roll call? Council Cassett.

Yes.

It's the first one that we did.

Tierra Real already passed.

Council Castro.

Yes.

Council Garcia.

Yes.

Council Bustamante.

Yes.

Council Faulkner.

Yes.

And if we could hold for just a moment. Our next item, that motion passes. Our next item is for District 4. And that is Las Aletas bridge and road extension sponsored by Council Faulkner and Council Chavez.

Move to approve.

Second.

Any discussion? Roll call, please.

Council Cassatt.

Yes.

Council Castro.

Yes.

Council Garcia.

Yes.

Council Bustamante.

Yes.

Council Faulkner.

Yes.

That motion passes. We will now move into department requests. We have two this evening. We have the drone equipment for public safety response. That is sponsored by Council Faulkner, Council Garcia, and Council Bustamante.

Motion to approve.

Second.

Any discussion?

I'd just like to hear more about this, please.

Okay.

I think we have discovered that the drones have actually, in the PD space and in the fire department space, drones have become very effective tools for.

Give me a second, Council Castro. Give me one second.

Or helping to prevent crime, helping to solve crime. That's on the police side. But on the fire side, they've saved, it has saved lives. It has, it can protect our teams on both sides of police and fire. It protects the community and the teams. And I think there's been some concerns around where the data is going to go and who's going to mine it and who's going to own it. In the contracts that we are entering into, the city owns the data. Nobody else owns the data. It belongs to the city. It does not get sold. It doesn't get disseminated. It has to go through the HIPPA process. So, I know there are concerns around the drone program. This is just to buy more drones while we do a pilot project, and I think that's what we're trying to fund right now is the pilot project. And we've already seen some big wins in Santa Fe around both for the police department and the fire department around the use of drones. We helped rescue a hiker who was lost. We caught a person who fled a DWI scene in Albuquerque. The drones actually protected two children who were playing with a gun. The drones got out ahead of the police vehicles and were able to communicate to the officers responding that these were children, and the officers testified, not testified formally, but in their statements they said if we had not had the drone that situation could have ended very badly. And also we saved someone's life who was overdosing at Swan Park, and the drones found the person where our personnel could not. Drones are also a force multiplier. So where we would normally have to send out 10 people, we can send out a drone and five people. And so it's a really good program, and there's successes all over the country. I think we do need to be mindful of the program we set up and how we use the drones to serve the community. Cities that are very mindful about how drones are used are very successful, and I do believe that the leaders we have now who will be investing in the drone program, especially acting Chief Valdez and acting Chief Autokirk, they really have a very community-forward mindedness about how these programs work. And so it's just a way of giving our city more resources to solve problems faster and safer. Counselor Bustamante, anything?

Yeah, just to further help allay fears. So the reason this is called drone as a first responder program is that these drones will only be dispatched to calls where we have an active call for service. So, the police won't be flying around at random looking at things. There won't be random patrol. They're not there for patrol. They're strictly to go to calls for service. And the way that they work is that once the drone is launched, the drone camera stays on the horizon until it gets to the scene, and then manual intervention has to be used to turn the camera down toward the ground. All of the recordings, as Council Fogle mentioned, are available through IPR requests. And so essentially, at least in our view, once the drone is on scene, it is no different than the Axon body cameras that we are already using. So, just to have that information as well.

I have some follow-up questions. Thank you for that. My questions are, well, I have three. One, you mentioned that we're doing a pilot. Do we have information on, one, how many drones do we already have? How many are needed for a pilot? So, is this part of a pilot or is this just adding to this? Two, interested in how this falls into a capital. I, you know, because this is usually with capital, we're dealing with bricks and mortar and whatnot. These are, this feels more like equipment. And then three, my understanding is one of our challenges, our biggest challenge for funding was actually ongoing subscription costs, and I'm assuming that this would not cover that because again, from my understanding, capital is more like tangible items that are usually on the ground.

Can I respond to that question?

Yes.

Yeah. So, the capital is well defined in state law as a capital project and would include equipment, software, and software licensing. So, I think anticipated as part of this program is training, too. And that can be considered in state law, I believe, as also eligible if it's part of that purchase.

Okay, you want to answer every one of the questions?

In terms of the pilot program, so what we've identified is six drones to be included as part of this pilot program. They're going to be deployed. PD and fire, again, this is a joint operation with PD and fire. And so they are going to get together. There were initial zones identified by the police department, but because fire has been added into this, they're going to be added into, they're basically they're going to redraw those zones so that they can cover further areas. Of particular concern are going to be areas that are near the urban wildland interface. So that, you know, we can ensure that we have adequate coverage for those. So, there's going to be six drones, they're going to be deployed from fire stations, at least at the moment. There was talk of potentially deploying one of them from the police station, but.

So, we're asking for six or we currently have.

This would ask for six. We currently have on top of what we have because the fire department, and correct me if I'm wrong, Councilmember, currently has two. Is that right? In addition to smaller mobile drones, which they would be using as well. So, all of the drones that they have currently have been purchased. They are ours. There are no further subscription fees with those because they've dropped that contract that they were using for their test program. So this is this is the new joint test program through Skydio. And so, yeah, and if you need the number, I think I have that somewhere.

So police started a drone program and fire started a drone program. When we sat down and talked, Council Buscaino and I talked to both of them, and we kind of came with the idea that it makes, why fund 4 million here and 4 million here when 4 million can get both? And police and fire are very excited about it. They're working well together. Our state supporters and our federal supporters are really excited that it's a joint program. Cities that do joint programs actually have better drone programs than the cities who do separate programs. And so police and fire went to different providers and got drones. So to do the joint program, we need six drones. We actually need like 10, but we're going to seek that from the state, and that's why it's on the ICIP list.

So the city's going to pay for six drones, and then we've been working with legislators in the State Fire Marshal's office and the State Homeland Security office, and Senator Lujan, to secure funding to get the four other drones we need to have a robust program. But right now, we can start a really good program with the purchase of the six drones, which we're going to be doing already.

So if I'm understanding, police bought drones, fire bought drones, and we're like, "You guys can do this together." So now we're ditching those drones, going for some new drones. What are we doing with the—

We're not ditching all the drones. Yeah, we're not ditching them.

No, they're being ditched.

Yeah, the only thing is that the existing drones are not going to be tied into the same system. So the drones that we are purchasing from Skydio are tied in with the Axon ecosystem that PD currently uses. The ones that we had previously are still going to be able to be used. They just won't have the benefit, some of the benefits, that the new ones will have. But—

Can we still use those off?

Well, no, because especially with fire, what they're planning on doing is having those available as mobile units. So if we see smoke out in a certain area, our city drones, depending on placement, well, it doesn't matter, regardless, they only have a limited area of coverage. So the way the fire department plans on using them is actually driving a vehicle out as close to the scene as they can and then launch the mobile drone from there. So, and so, that would be using the existing drones that they have, but it doesn't, it won't tie in to the new drones that they're planning on getting, if that—

Yeah, no, that's helpful. I would love at some point to hear more about this from police and fire. At this moment, I can, I can see the purpose, especially when it comes to fire, especially with the wild urban interface, or WUI, which is so much more—

Well, and it's, it's actually surprising, Council Castaneda, we are learning how drones can be used for all sorts of things. The Fire Marshal's office has to inspect the vents for restaurants. They'd have to climb up on the roof of a restaurant and look down the vent because the fires start at the top of the vent. But with the drones, they can take the drone up and no person is in danger while climbing up a roof. And they also, there was the fire at Estancia's, and the drone was, the fire department put their drone out there. They caught some things that they wouldn't have caught otherwise. There was, there's so many uses. It can actually be used to grid the city so that you can get responders to places faster in emergency evacuations. They can be used to help, actually, I experienced this. I was at the Knicks parade and the crowd, there was like a population of twice the size of the state of New Mexico in a four-square-block area. And I was paying attention, police and fire and their drones were telling them where the crowd was moving in a space that they couldn't be in because it was just endless bodies. And so, there's so many spaces, not just fire and police. We're going to find out that public works could use the drones, that land use could use the drones. There's a million, it's incredible. We're going to see, once you get the drone program going, cities expand it to a citywide thing because it, it saves spaces and it does so much for so many things.

But yeah, I think, I think that would be helpful to get these presentations. You know, because I, because again, I see, I see a lot of, and I agree, there's a lot of utilization. I mean, again, I really see it with fire, especially with where we are and where our danger is, and that fire that popped up over the mountain the other day. I believe our cameras caught it and that's, that's why they were able to contain it so quickly. So that, that is crucial. So I would love to get a presentation. I think that'd be wonderful somewhere. I, you're, you're not in charge of them.

[laughter]

I can have the city manager who's going to be here.

Finance, if you like him.

That'd be great. There's no project cost on here. So I'm not saying how much we're asking, and so when we're looking at, you know, how our dollars get allocated, how much are we looking at for this request?

Give me just a minute.

I think it's around $500,000.

Okay.

It's—

Is it in—

It's pretty, oh, I don't know.

I know from the discussions we've had, the city's putting $450,000 in, and then in talks with our legislators, we need another $500,000, but that's a combination of the State Fire Marshal's office, Senator Lujan's office, and the state legislature. So there's going to be a little bit of space where we're, we're going to have to figure out like—

$407,000 apparently. It is lower.

We got, we got the math over here, so all right. Okay, those were my questions. Thank you.

Okay, any other questions? Oh. Okay, can we do a roll call?

Councilor Cassutt?

Okay.

We don't have a motion.

We have a motion by Councilor Garcia and a second by Councilor Faulkner. Councilor Cassutt?

Yes.

Councilor Castro?

No.

Councilor Garcia?

Yes.

Councilor Bustamante?

Yes.

Councilor Faulkner?

Yes.

And that motion passes.

Okay, on to the next item.

Our next item this evening is going to be fire truck purchases and life safety equipment for ambulances, and this is sponsored by Mayor Garcia, Councilor Faulkner, Councilor Lee Garcia, and Councilor Bustamante.

Move to approve.

Second.

Councilor Cassutt?

Thank you so much. Now, I know that we also, with the budget, we put aside some of these funds to replace vehicles. Were fire vehicles included in that? I'm not sure. I don't know if you know. Deputy City Manager, you may know if, it was just vehicles in general. Okay, so we have potentially a few different sources. And how many, I'm sorry, these have all come in, so let me take a look. How many are we talking? How much are we asking? I will find the amendment.

I believe it's one ladder truck with a tank.

Mhm.

And it's, I think it's 2 million, 2.2.

Okay.

Okay. And not to say that things aren't important, but I know that they've done a number of studies around demand, and are these, are these needs supported by some of the most recent reports that have come out from fire regarding demand operations and, you know—

Their response times, etcetera, etcetera.

So we have a list somewhere that, that we can—

Yeah, one of the things that's important to understand about fire trucks is they take two to four years to build. So whereas in this space, this moment right now, we don't necessarily need them, we know that we will need it in two to four years. And we will need it in two to four years. So we have to fund it now in order to get it built by the time we need it. If you wait until we need it, it will be two to four years after that before we get it. Answer Cassel. I mean Castro.

Yeah, just a clarifying point, Council Cassel. In my discussions with fire, it really has to do with the level of development and also some of the calls that we're getting in response to some of the county areas where we're doing some of the supplemental work. And, you know, I don't want to sort of dive into how we're working with our county partners and trying to supplement some of these costs, but I think that the need really has been seen in our new development and also up in Hyde Park Road.

Yeah, that's a good point, Council Castro. The reality is our population is growing faster than we can provide services, and those services include vehicles. We'll, okay, any other questions, concerns? Can we get a roll call?

Certainly, Madam Chair, Council Cassel.

Yes.

Council Castro.

Yes.

Council Garcia.

Yes.

Council Bustamante.

Yes.

Council Faulkner? Yes. And that motion passes. Our next item is outside organizations. This item is New Mexico Innovation Hub site work, and that is sponsored by Councilor Cassutt. Move to approve. Second. Any discussion? I will just comment that this is going to be one of the most amazing things to happen to our city. If you track technology, quantum physics, anything that you would want to be as a city that has green or environmental, I guess it's called green economy, where it's like, it's clean economy, this is definitely something we want to support. So I just want to put that out there. Councilor Castro. I will just add, I was surprised in reference to Midtown in general, not seeing Aspect Studios and the need for that road. So if we do have a little bit of time, I think that there are a couple more things at Midtown that could be potentially put on this list. Councilor Cassutt. On that note, I know that Mr. Jaswa was working with Mr. Pedas, and there's a lot of interconnection between Aspect and Innovation. I believe that this is connected. I would have to, I would have to confirm that with, with those two individuals, but they are working in very close partnership, and they were coming at this one together. So I think that Aspect may actually be somehow impacted by this. Do you happen to have that information, either of you? I, I think you're, what you said is exactly right. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. Hey, can we get a roll call? Ernie? Councilor Cassutt? Yes. Councilor Castro? Yes. Councilor Garcia? Yes. Councilor Bustamante? Yes. Councilor Faulkner? Yes. That motion passes. Okay, next item. Our next item this evening is Casa de Todos affordable housing, sponsored by Council Faulkner and Council Chavis.

Move to approve.

Second.

Discussion.

Can I have Castro?

Also just surprised, and if we want to get Alto Street on this list, then let me know, but I am in favor of this project.

Council Castro went from no amendments to now adding—

[laughter]

Hey, I'm trying to not put in any, but I know that there's more projects, but this project in particular, it, wonderful. This is a really worthy project. Yeah, and for those of you who watching us online who can't hear, we do have a couple projects from Habitat. This is one of them. The other one is potentially fully funded. That one is in District 1, which is why I'm giving them a hard time, but I really support this project.

Okay, any other discussion? Vocal. Council Cassatt.

Yes.

Council Castro.

Yes.

Council Garcia.

Yes.

Council Vistamonte.

Yes.

Council Faulkner.

Yes.

That motion passes.

Next item.

Our next item this evening is Corrales Resource and Opportunity Center, sponsored by Council Faulkner and Council Chavis.

Move to approve.

I'll second.

Second.

Any conversation?

Clerk.

Thank you.

Council Cassatt.

Thanks so much. And I, I do want to point out, you know, Interfaith, you guys, you know, I think that it was a very, we need to figure out how we do this, but to your point around meeting DFA requirements. This is a new rule from the state, and this is going to be, I think, an interesting conversation for us to have of, you know, are we supposed to be gatekeepers in conversation? You know, and, and I know that this one has been a hotly debated topic, especially in my district. What I will say, and I've had this conversation with, you know, some of you, individually, with some of your representatives around, around the need for what this community engagement needs to look like. And I think one of the challenges, and as I mentioned before, the model, the model that had been operating at, at the Interface shelter, formerly Pete's, now Agape, was not working for the neighborhood.

And I think that there were a lot of conversations that can happen, and I've heard a lot of different sides, from whether it was the city's fault, or it was Interface's fault, or whoever. At this point, I don't care, because what I do care about for my constituents, if this moves forward, is that the acknowledgement of the fears of what this looks like, of how it would impact the neighborhood, are seen as valid, because I think that the message a lot of my constituents have got is that they feel like they're being kind of brushed off. That Interface is like, "Oh, it was the city's fault, we didn't do anything wrong." Pete's was not working. The impact on the constituency was intense.

I have to say, Marisol, seeing you here, working with Interface, brings me a lot of hope for a very successful model, because I know you, and I know your work, and I've seen the way that you spearheaded bringing in the micro communities. But what I would really like to see, and the conversations that I will need to have with you all, with my constituency, is around what are the concerns that they see? What was learned from the Interfaith model? How will that be addressed? And then, assuming that if this does get funded and moves forward, what the contingency plan is.

I think what becomes really interesting with this is that Interface was our property, the Rock would not be. And so, one thing that my constituency was frequently calling for is, "Why aren't you taking them through the nuisance process?" And I just want to state from my perspective as a representative of that district, if I'm seeing similar situations and if we're not able to find this agreement and find this compromise and not figure out how that's going to be addressed, and again, we did just fund this contract because street outreach works. So, we have to figure that out. I think you all need to figure that out. I don't know how you're funding operations. These are some really big conversations, but I do think that the nuisance process at the city would have absolutely applied times 10 to Pete's, and we didn't do it because it was ours. We canceled the contract instead, or canceled the lease instead.

So, this has been a hotly debated topic. I want to continue to work with you all, and I especially want to help be the bridge to my constituency. I would love to see this work because I know the vision is exactly what we need. I think that there have been lessons learned from what went wrong, but also what has been going right in the city. I think that there really is incredible work to be done. I want to see this successful, but not at the expense of my constituency that I represent there. So, I think it is important that, first of all, just in terms of this decision for the ICIP, in terms of equity, I don't, in terms of what's going on with the state, you have met the requirements for DFA. I think us putting people through other hoops is not fair at this point. It's conversations with the state, but as it moves through the process, I know I'm being a little on the harsh and strict side, but I will be because that is my job, but I do really want to work with you all and in discussions with the constituency around this because those fears are real and they're valid. They really, I mean, this is the big thing is that it's valid because it was an untenable situation. And I think a lot has been learned on both sides. I really would love to see this as successful, and we'll be having those conversations. So, thank you.

Mr. Castro: Yes, just to echo Councilor Cassutt's points. We don't want to see a repeat of the situation that we had on the Serios Corridor, definitely. But also, I have some concerns for service providers. So, we've seen empty buildings as close as Albuquerque, right? I do have some concern, and I think we need to continue in conversation about how we're going to attract the providers for this space. I know that we've heard that the partners are on board. We're all at capacity. And so, we're really going to, to all of our credit, we are invested in making sure the resources are there for these services, but we're going to need to work together. And just really quickly, Mr. Moody, can you please address what our actual role is in terms of not necessarily being a fiscal agent, but putting this on our list?

Yes, thank you. So again, just revisiting the function of the ICIP list, the resolution that you'll be considering on Wednesday is to, it's on the one hand to represent to the state what we're planning to do. On the other hand, the list becomes a prerequisite for many of the funding streams, not only from the legislature, but from the DOT, from other funding agencies who would have other streams into the city. Order of magnitude is 15 or 20 million dollars a year all told from legislative outlay alone. And a prerequisite now for that, for any project that would be funded from capital outlay, would be that it'd be on someone's ICIP. This project and the four other, five other, four other projects that are originating from external entities will only be eligible for capital outlay if they're on the list. The process of creating the city's priorities is in the hands of the governing body in the months of July, August. The governing body will be asked to develop its priorities and to make its request to the legislature. At that point, the legislature then considers what it would like to do, and it takes into account that.

Thank you so much, Mr. Mundy. And my concern is what is our role in managing the project and managing the money?

Oh, thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. The grant requirements are pretty boilerplate. So we would approach it like we would any other project. We wouldn't be making a subgrant. We wouldn't be a fiscal agent. We'd be the grant administrator. Because this is considered under state law indigent services, it's absolutely eligible under the anti-donation clause of the Constitution. We would still have to consider the ownership of the improvements is a separate issue, and we would be able to build and own the improvements and then grant them to the agency. So it's a tricky contract we would have to have with the nonprofit.

And I just, I want to add something to this from my professional background. When they're on our ICIP list, we are the fiscal agent. They may do, they may do the like, keep records and all that stuff, but we have an administrative responsibility. That I can tell you that what we use at the Roundhouse is if you're on someone's ICIP list, they're your fiscal agent.

Chair and counselor, thank you. It's a great question, and I think what's the important thing to understand, or I think as I'm understanding the question, the role the city plays is exactly as you're stating, Chair. We become the administrator of the grant. So, as the grantee, if they are successful in obtaining funding, as they go through the process of spending that funding, we would manage the process of they obtain a quote, they submit that quote to us, goes through our process to obtain an NLO from the state. We're essentially, we become the administrators managing the process as it unfolds. And so, it's a great question because what this does, as this process unfolds, it does add administrative burden to the city, definitely the Public Works Department, Legislative Services. There's a lot of work that goes into making this possible for all the grantees, and I think it's important we don't lose sight of that.

Definitely. And as a follow-up question, Director, what happens if the goals of this project are not met? Is the city held responsible for that not being expended properly?

Well, and Chair, Counselor, another great question, and part of how that process works is as an entity, even for us, as we go through the process spending an appropriation for the state, there's a very much a due diligence that we go through on our own and with the state to ensure the work that's supposed to be done is in alignment with the appropriation itself, and that really starts with that notice of obligation or NOO process. Somebody obtains a quote for the work in alignment with the appropriation, it's vetted by staff, deemed appropriate and in alignment. It's submitted to the state, state reviews it, if they agree, issue that notice of obligation. Work then proceeds. Once it's done, it's inspected, make sure it matches what was quoted, and then invoices are received. Those go through a similar process internally inside of the city and then on part of the state before the reimbursement is made. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of vetting and due diligence.

In my experience, at least in the private sector with not-for-profits, when someone is a fiscal agent, there is an administrative fee that is charged. Is the city charged an administrative fee for being a fiscal agent?

So this is, I think it's, Chair, Counselor, another great question, and it's something definitely that we're exploring. I do not believe that the appropriations themselves, I could be wrong, but my understanding is that we cannot, we cannot charge fees directly from the ICIP appropriations, but if we do act as an agent in, I assume, any capacity with an external entity, we can request administrative fees for processing the paperwork and managing those appropriations on their behalf.

As we know, we are at capacity at the City of Santa Fe, and so I would highly recommend that we investigate if we can potentially recover some of those fees for our staff time and resources. No further questions.

Yeah, and I do believe, Counselor Castro, that is a conversation I've had with Andrea Phillips and with Monica, and I think that is something we're contemplating, I think, because there, it is, it can be considerable work. And I do, I would also say the past eight years, the City of Santa Fe has put itself in a very precarious position with the state legislature, and I think we should be mindful about what projects we choose to support because the legislature has no patience for the City of Santa Fe right now. They're hopeful, but I can tell you in conversations I've had with the legislators that I've worked with for 20-plus years, the city should be mindful about what projects we put on our list because if we can't, if those projects can't deliver, and some of them were our own projects. I'm not speaking about just the nonprofits, I'm speaking about the total package, right? And so I do think we need to be mindful about some things, and also be mindful about the political appetite for some organizations.

Chair and counselor, I would just like to follow up on that. I think this concept of paying attention to our collective ICIP is something very important for the city, both for the governing body and for staff. As we assemble the package, being very clear about everything we're adding, implications of everything we add to it, how one project, the impacts, one group of projects may have on another, and making sure that we're being very thoughtful and strategic as we go through this process so that we're not inadvertently, you know, kind of tipping the scales in one direction or another without putting in the appropriate consideration to the decisions we're making.

Yeah, I do again, I just have to reiterate as a lobbyist and as a city councilor, I got you, counselor.

I do have to say we do have to be cautious. We are working on borrowed patience from the legislature, and we definitely have to be careful about who is on this list as nonprofits. The legislature has its own opinion about some of the nonprofits that are asking to be on this list. And if we're not mindful that we concur that there may have been discretions in the past that we have not remedied, then we are sending a signal to the legislature, based on my discussions, that we haven't learned anything from what has happened over the last eight years. So I would just put that out as a cautionary, just as a professional talking to them and also as a city councilor.

Councilor Cassett: Yeah, thank you. So to enlighten this conversation, I think that I'm less concerned about organizations and more concerned about projects. And I know there's been this big focus on shovel-ready projects. So in terms of the projects that are coming forward, and then I'll give some feedback of what I think we could do better next year. So have staff vetted these projects that we have for coming forward as amendments to be like, "Hey, these are shovel-ready. We're ready to go."

Can I make a suggestion really quick? We're holding up a vote on an amendment. If we do a catch-and-cleanup at the end of the amendments where we can ask general questions about the process, can you hold that question until we get through the amendments?

Well, the problem is now I'm thinking about the amendments in terms of, you know, if we haven't vetted these amendments to be that they are actually shovel-ready projects that, you know, is going that the legislator has been very clear. I had assumed that that process had happened, but if it hasn't, then that actually may I have to have projects that happen.

Yes, for these community projects.

Fair, and Councilor, actually this is a great question, and I appreciate you raising it. And I'll be very candid. The city's list has been well vetted. We're very confident in that. These recent amendments, because of how quickly they came forward, we have not had the chance to vet them to ensure that they're shovel-ready. We haven't fully vetted them to make sure they'll make it all the way through the process, and I believe or I would just say that between now and Wednesday, we will be doing a lot of work to check on each of the projects, and if there's anything that comes up that's of concern to us, we would raise that on Wednesday.

Got it.

If we found a particular project group of projects that we didn't feel like was ready to move forward, we would actually make a motion to pull those off of the list.

Okay.

And do more work to see if it's possible to get them ready and ensure they are ready to move forward by that August 1st deadline.

Got it.

And if that situation were to arise and we weren't able to get a project ready by that August 1st or ensure that it was ready to move forward, our recommendation would be to hold it until the next ICIP cycle when we all to give it another chance to come back before the city and governing body in a fashion that we felt was the appropriate time and the project, sorry.

No, no, no. That's itself so that it was we were confident that it was an appropriate and shovel-ready project.

So but between now and Wednesday, you're going to be able to do that due diligence on these projects and if something comes up, you will come and recommend and be like, "Hey guys, this one's not going to be ready. This could compromise."

Absolutely. And we may not have by Wednesday, Wednesday's fast for us to do the level of due diligence we need. So it's possible that something may be deemed unsuitable to move forward with the hope that we could address it in the following 30 days. But again, no guarantees that any of these unvetted projects will all make it through the process.

Okay. So to the, I mean since I, and I apologize that we did not think about this earlier. So I don't want you all to feel like you're getting some unfair treatment here. But to that question to the organization, we have you in the room. If I could, can I get you to say it into the mic because that's how people hear you. And if I could also have InnerFaith to come on up and just if you can give us some information about where you are in this project. If you were to receive funding with the next legislative session, would you be ready to expend it by the time you received it given August 2027-ish?

Yes. Casa de Todos subdivision has been recorded as of last Tuesday. It is shovel-ready. We will begin this fall.

Wonderful. Thank you.

Yes, thank you for the question. With respect to the resource and opportunity center, the land has been purchased and is owned by Interfaith. We have commissioned architectural and engineering studies that are leading to the application of a building permit, which we anticipate submitting within the next month or two. The land is already zoned for the intended use, so there's no public process. And depending on how long the city takes to approve a building permit, we could be in a position of having a building permit in hand, let's say by October, that kind of time frame.

So do you guys not even need to go to planning commission when you say there's no public process? That's a, that's a question for another time. But yes, so you would foresee this and from where you are right now that you would be able to expend those dollars.

Yes, I think.

Okay, thank you. And then from my understanding regarding the Innovation Hub,

I think yes, they are because we're moving quickly on that one. We need that money. We need to move Midtown. Regarding obviously all of these that are ours. Regarding Tio Contenta, I believe they're ready.

They've been waiting on us actually or waiting on not us, waiting on money. What's the other one? Las Aleras Bridge and Road Extension? Do we have, are they unfortunately are no longer in the room? Do we happen to have any on that?

Yeah.

Mhm.

So I think Chair Councilor, I think staff still need any project that has been submitted in the last week does still need to go through a review by staff to make sure that it's ready to proceed. We'll do our best to move everything forward, but I do want to be really candid that when we're doing these amendments at the last minute, it does make it difficult for us to do all of our due diligence. And you know, shovel-ready is only one aspect of what makes a project.

It's action-ready because sometimes we use this for design, which that's you don't have a shovel at design.

Yeah, and exactly, yeah.

Ready to be ready to expend dollars.

There are a plethora of variables that need to be considered before we advance a project.

Yes, I guess shovel-ready is a particular action. Basically, can money be spent quickly?

Yes.

Okay. I'm good for now. I do have some general and we'll get to that after the amendment. So, thank you.

Thank you. Could I get the rock folks back up here? Just while they come down, point of clarification, Chair. So, we are voting in this moment for an amendment that would move this forward onto governing body, and there's still another vote this coming Wednesday. Is that correct?

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

I'm sorry, was there a question?

Yes, there's a couple of questions. One, have you asked for fiscal agency from any other governing entities?

We've had conversations with the county and in a conversation between the county commissioner and the mayor, the recommendation was made to seek fiscal agency through the city.

Did the county?

Hi, good evening, Chair. Yes, we presented to the BCC in May requesting fiscal sponsorship. We understood they had agreed in January to be our fiscal sponsor for this previous session. In the at the May presentation, they indicated that they felt two things. What was discussed was that they didn't want to overstep the new mayor, and that they saw this more as a city function. They also referenced the long-standing agreement that the city or their understanding, I don't know if it's an agreement, but their understanding that the city's responsibility is around emergency shelter type processes, whereas the county is focusing more on housing, permanent housing. So, at that time Commissioner Coccaro Stone offered to convene a meeting with the mayor and myself, and we sat and had this conversation. You know, one of the comments she made was that it's challenging because we are trying to do something good in the community and we're getting bounced back and forth. We also understand how the state law reform is impacting both the city and the county and putting you all in a situation that's very challenging. The other thing I want to add to this, and it was mentioned earlier, is the DWS application that's out right now. Currently, there are funds for this capital year that we would like to apply for. We don't have a mechanism to get to them without sponsorship from the city or the county. So, we're both dealing with the, we have an application completed. We're willing to reduce the amount we're asking for, but we don't have a way to get to the state to apply for this year's capital funding. And then secondly, we're in this process so that we can even be considered for next year's capital funding. So, it's a really challenging situation for all of us, and we recognize the predicament you're in.

Do you have any other funding sources from the private sector? Like has Ancora stepped up to help or Santa Fe Foundation, the State Community Foundation, Thornburg, same like there's many, many nonprofits who are very focused on this issue. Have they agreed to provide any funding for this project?

So, yes. Whoa. Sorry. So, part of our model in bringing in existing providers and providing them space is they already have, so let's take the Life Link. They are able to bill Medicaid for the services they provide. So, we are, our agreement is to offer them space at our, at the Rock. And then they will have their own ability to bill for the services they're providing. Same with Santa Fe Recovery Center, same with La Familia Healthcare for the Homeless. SHARP, who's one of our fifth partner, they have private funding that funds all of their street homeless animal projects. So, we are strategic in bringing in these providers who are already Medicaid providers and can bill for service. And we will simply be working with them in collaboration and providing them office space where we hope the people will be during the day and during the night.

So, will you be leasing the space to these organizations?

We have, you want to talk to?

No, the idea is not to rent them out office space. The idea is to provide them office space. If you look at other models, for example, Haven for Hope in San Antonio, they've got dozens and dozens of providers that are co-located on their campus. They've got a formula for, you know, if you have so many, you're occupying so many square feet, you get allocated a charge for common expenses like utilities and security and that kind of thing. In our case, I think the number of providers is so small and out of an 18,000 square foot facility if we're providing the Life Link with a 10 by 10 office, you know, you're getting to a point where it's pretty de minimis to charge them $75 a month for rent.

This is not intended to be a money maker for us. It is intended to provide our service provider partners with an opportunity to generate revenue by offering services to the people that will be coming to our facility in any event for other services.

So my question was specifically around The Rock, not the people you'll be partnering with. Has Anchorum S3 Community Foundation, City of Santa Fe Community Foundation, the Chamber of Commerce, endless numbers of private sector funding, have they offered to help build The Rock?

We've had conversations, for example, with Anchorum, and Anchorum has expressed support, but they have not made recommendation or made an offer to give us $2 million or $3 million or $1 million or whatever it is. Our model is that we would end up with a capital stack of a certain amount of funding from governmental sources, a certain amount from foundations, a certain amount from private individuals, the way you would run a normal capital campaign. And that process is in the early stages of being developed, but we have not secured yet funding from say, foundations or from private individuals. But we haven't asked yet.

I just want to clarify. We have provided to what was formerly called the S3 Funders Group. That includes city, county, that includes Anchorum, Santa Fe Community Foundation, and Thornburg. We did not ask at that point and we have not yet asked, but we have presented to share ideas, get people's feedback, work through some of the tensions that are real based on past history. So we have not formally asked, and one of the debates, I'll just be candid, a lot of folks see this response to homelessness as a responsibility of government. We might say that too, but we also want to help government, which is why we're doing what we're doing.

And the model that we're building is to maximize and use most efficient existing funding streams in the community such as Medicaid, such as the Linkages program. So, the thought of having LifeLink on site, they have the Linkages vouchers, they can have a person there who's working with the guests. Same thing. LifeLink is a behavioral health provider that has access, they can provide psychiatry, medication management, housing navigation, therapy. We've had these discussions and say, "We're going to offer you the space. You already have the funding mechanism for a lot of these pieces of the operation." So, we're trying to again, not duplicate anything that's happening, but bring together in one location similar to Haven for Hope in San Antonio, where we're utilizing our existing providers and the existing resources they currently have. And yes, will we need to build more as we go? Yes. But right now, we are simply trying to get access so that we can build this facility that our community needs.

There's no doubt our community needs a facility like this one. Is this going to be a low-barrier shelter?

Yes, the plan is such. So, currently, and we've said this multiple times, we do not have a place in Santa Fe right now where if I were to become homeless tonight, I can walk up and get a bed that night. We don't have it. So, we want to provide that. And regrettably, because of the lack of housing stock, emergency shelters become de facto transitional living programs, and that's what's happened here. So, we've got to do multiple things as a community with the city and the county and the state and the feds to build the entire continuum up. We're trying to address one piece of it. And we're hoping to do that in good faith. Over the weekend, I heard this term that said, you know, an entity is only as good as its last mistake. Mistakes were made, but we have learned. And we are really putting a good team together and really taking strategic action with existing resources in the community to learn and do differently from what was in the past.

So, could you give me the top three lessons you learned from what happened in the past when Interfaith ran a low-barrier shelter?

Sure. Number one is design matters. So, having a facility that is purpose-built and is designed for the intended use is important. Everyone knows the deficiencies of Pete's as a physical plant. It was crowded, it was old, it was not intended for the use that it found itself in. Having an architect-designed, trauma-informed design facility that is sufficient of sufficient size and space to accommodate the purpose for which it's being asked to serve is important. So, that's why very early in our process, for example, we discarded the idea of let's just find a vacant building and convert it again because we came to the view that that's just repeating the Pete's mistake. So, that's one thing I would say.

The second thing is program matters. The old Pete's model was intended to be an emergency overnight shelter, but not a day center. So, people were turned out in the morning, people had to come back and queue up in the evening, and that contributed to the congestion around Harrison Road. The model that we are proposing for The Rock addresses that by having it available for day services during regular business hours. People won't be turned out into the streets because they'll have a place to be during the day to do laundry, to get meals, to take showers, to charge their electronic devices, to kennel their dogs, to store their belongings, to do any number of things that were not available to them at Pete's. So, the program that we are proposing will also address part of the problems that we encountered on Harrison Road and at Pete's.

And then the third thing I would say is operations matter. And the operational procedures that we will use to operate the facility will matter. And in that regard, street outreach is something that is paramount. And frankly, that's something that we missed at running Pete's. If you look especially at other service providers in, say, in Fort Collins, there's an outfit known as Outreach Fort Collins that does nothing but street outreach. And they are the buffer between the service providers, the homeless community, and first responders. So, if I boil it down to the lessons that we learned from Pete's, so we're going to have to do differently, a very major one is street outreach. And we've got to either build that capability internally or we've got to partner with another organization that can provide that facility or that capability for us, but it's got to be an important part of the operation of the proposed facility.

I believe I have more questions, but Councilor Castro has a follow-up question to my last question.

I do. I'm a little disappointed in the answer. The first answer seemed to be, in terms of the facility, sort of put back on the city, right? It was a city facility. My concern with The Rock and the Resource Opportunity Project is that that was always the case from day one. And so, looking for a facility, I don't feel was the city's responsibility. So, I will be more direct in my question, maybe not Councilor Faulkner's. What did the board learn in terms of its leadership of this organization?

I'm sorry, could you repeat the question? I just want to make sure I understand.

What did the board of directors learn in terms of leadership of this organization?

Well, we are going to have to build a completely new organization. There's no question about that. Something that Marisol has heard me say a dozen times is that this isn't about getting the old band together in the garage again, you know. We are going to have to build a completely new organization, new executive leadership, and the board is going to have to develop much more effective governance mechanisms with respect to oversight of operations.

Thank you, and I would just close in saying I recommend that that executive leadership live in the city that we're providing services in.

Yeah, I'm going to speak plainly. I do not think that The Rock Project is ready to be supported by the city at this point. I do organizational development for a living as a kind of a side hustle, and I'll tell you I've seen organizations in this predicament, and God, I love a comeback kid every day of the week, do I love a comeback kid, because that shows that someone has learned some valuable lessons, and they have retooled, and their leadership has recognized differences, they've let go people who should be let go, they've retrained, they've changed their culture.

My concern is [clears throat] we're being asked to support something that backfired. And I'm not basing it backfired on the entire community and on Interfaith. In fairness, everyone went down with the ship, basically. My concern is from my personal experience, because the minute I became a councilor, I started visiting the shelter, and I personally saw two drug deals. To put this in perspective, I'm legally blind. So, for it to happen, it's like right here. I saw two drug deals go down in the parking lot at that location in front of their leadership staff. Not the board, but the people who were in charge of that facility. And when I said, and we were with the governor's team, just so you know, when I said to the director, what's happening here? She said, that's the city's problem. And I was like, no, it's on your property and it's happening in front of you in the middle of the day. That's the kind of culture that I'm not sure you can change in a year. Like that's my biggest concern.

And it's I have a ton of respect for the team that you've assembled. I really, really do. It is going to be an uphill battle because what happened at Pete's Place will have a rippling effect for years. And I feel so sorry for your organization and I will say this in all earnest, if there's anything I can do to help that does not put the community or the governing body or the city at risk, I'm willing to do it. I will consult for free. I will help find private funding for you guys, but I don't feel comfortable given what happened in the past, I'm not sure you're there yet. And I've had conversations with the nonprofits that I've talked to. I'm not sure you're there with the legislature, you're not there with the county. County's number one job is social services. This is in their wheelhouse. And so those are some of the red flags for me is you can't say yes and quorum's on board. You can't say the county's on board. You can't say, you can say we've had conversations with them, but you cannot say that you have their support. And as a lobbyist, I would not even ask to be on the ICIP list unless I had those things in place. And I mean this in all honesty, I will do anything to help you other than put the community at risk again.

And my biggest concern around this is the mall. It's the number one place for the children of Santa Fe to go, the of Santa Fe to go to. There's no other space really. There's a teen center and then there's the mall. And you're going to put a low barrier shelter and you're we're being asked to take an organization that is getting better but may not be there yet, but we saw what happened in the past. You're asking all of us to have faith that we're going to put that smack dab in the middle of the number one draw for all the teenagers in the community and the south side has the largest population of young people in the entire city. And that's my biggest concern is I don't like the location and it's I have a lot of caution about this and I'm not someone who's not going to be direct.

I'm not going to pretend that I'm going to support something when I'm not. There are so many red flags for me right now, and I just want you to know it's going to be, you'll probably get the votes, but it's going to be a hard sell for me. But again, though, I'll help however I can. Councilor Bustamante.

Thank you, Chair. My only hesitation with this is you did have the public meeting, but many people approached me afterwards and they felt that the questions that you were asking were not designed to say anything about lessons you've learned or to say about how the Rock is going to be a good neighbor. They felt that all the questions being asked were putting the onus on the community and asking them, "How are you going to be a good neighbor to the Rock?" So, that's where my hesitation at the moment lies.

Are you wanting comment? Response? Or are you wanting, yeah. We really saw, and I'll say this, and I'll be very candid. Number one, I do believe this is a community issue that we all have to come together for. And I think one of the things that came out of that community engagement forum is our need to have, and we're planning to have, two specific advisory boards. One's a business advisory board, and we've reached out to some neighboring businesses to be part of that. And the other is a health and safety task force. And so we want people outside of the organization to lay eyes on our existing operations plans and be able to provide input and see, we all have blind spots. And so we need to come together and we welcome your participation.

In terms of those questions, I saw that event as one of many to come. And so a lot of what we were there, and I heard Board Chair Kent say very candidly at the beginning, you know, he's been apologizing for the errors that happened in the past. And I really respect that, that he's come forward in a humble and accountable way to say, "Yeah, we didn't do things perfectly before, but we're still here." And they could have left. And I know it's going to take not just faith to move us forward, but then we're going to have to prove through our actions that we mean what we say now. And I believe the team that is on board now is committed to that. And we can say a million and ten times what we're willing to do until we actually act in that way and the community sees that things are different. We're not going to have the trust, but we need to start with all of you building a trusting relationship.

How do we repair the rupture that happened last year? How can we move forward together? We've all said there have been issues on both the city side and interfaith side. And I think we've all learned a lot from that. And I can just stand here humbly and respectfully saying, "I am willing and we are willing to have communications and conversations so that we can repair what was ruptured last summer." And also recognizing that we are, we are the answer we've been waiting for. We're always looking for someone outside to come and save us and help us. We all have to step up in our respective roles and figure out how do we do this together. It's not easy. And it's not going to be easy for anyone new or anyone existing or whatever the site may be, there will always be issues. So how do we, we together as leaders in this community, step forward and move this project forward because we all know it's needed. So how do we repair? And we're open to that. Absolutely open.

And we've also had conversations with neighbors, and I have to say this, Councilor, there were some comments in the newspaper about that neighbors quoted saying they had not been reached out to by us, and I personally had conversations with people that stated we had never reached out. And so we have to be discerning in these conversations and the stuff that we hear. And when we have trust, we can come to one another and say, "Hey, I heard this. Do you trust me that I'm going to tell you the truth?" I will. So, but in the newspaper someone says, "Oh, they never called me." I'm like, "Sir, I went to the table that evening and I said, 'Sir, we've had multiple conversations.'" So I think the key really for me in this is number one, our community needs it. Number two, how do we work transparently in a way and take the first step in rebuilding that trust? And it will take time. And it will take faith. That's who we are, the city of Holy Faith. And our community deserves it, and we're willing to walk the hard road with you. And we hope you're willing to do that with us.

To be honest, I would feel a thousand times more comfortable with this situation if you came to, and I sponsored this piece of this amendment because I felt it needed to be heard on finance, and Council Chavez was not, is not on finance. I would feel a thousand times more comfortable if you asked to be on the ICIP list when you already had your audit kind of boards in place, when your organization was already organized in a way that then it was prepared to do the things that you're talking about doing. You're asking to put the cart before the horse in a sense, because I promise you, I do this for a living. I would never put anything on an ICIP list that I didn't have the board in alignment, I didn't have the finances in alignment, I didn't have, there's like several things you need to have in place in order to effectively spend the money that you get because the other thing that's happening at the legislature is you don't get to reauthorize. They've cut back on reauthorizations. So, if you don't spend that money in a year, are you going to be able to build the building in a year? I don't think so.

14 months.

Yeah, they, I think you have four years actually to do a building, maybe two. But the point being, I think your organization needs more work in order to be in a position where I would trust that you're in a position culturally, because I do still pick up on a defensive tone when you're being asked questions. And I understand why that would be the case. I would be in the same position. But it does concern me that this issue has divided the community. The fact that you have constituents that you've talked to telling their counselor that you didn't talk to them, that is not, that's not a red flag about the constituent, that's a red flag about the situation. And those, I still think the temperature is too hot on this situation. And I will do anything to help cool the temperature, but I will not agree to put the city in a fiscal agency position for an organization that still needs to continue working on itself to be, I believe you will get there. Under the leadership that you have in play now, I am confident you'll get there. But you're not going to get there in time for me to feel comfortable taking on fiscal agency for a project that's going to be a low barrier shelter, which is the highest risk shelter. All the craziness in homelessness and unfortunate things happen around low barrier shelters. And I don't feel comfortable putting that on an ICIP list that then we're fiscally responsible for. We're all, the city's already in a precarious position with the legislatures. I would be shocked if you get funding from the legislature. It's almost like a moot point. Like from where I sit as a professional, there's not enough goodwill around your organization right now. And I, we can all pretend and we can have conversations that are touchy-feely and politically correct. I'm not that person. And so, it's not that I don't support you in your endeavors. I do, and I promise I will help you get there. I don't think you're there yet. I just don't. All the things you're telling us that you're going to do that make you safe, you don't have in place. And those are not capital outlay things, those are programmatic things. And like you said, program matters is one of the most important things. You don't have your programs set up. You don't have the key components from your lessons learned, you don't have those in place. And so then how can I, I'm not quite sure how I can feel comfortable putting you on the ICIP list when the city's already in a precarious position with the state legislature. But again, I will help you get there. I just can't, I can't, I can't vote for putting you on the list this year.

Well, sorry. Chair, I think I might be able to relieve that. I'm going to go ahead and withdraw my motion. Council Casady, would you withdraw your second?

I will.

I feel that we could move this forward without recommendation, have more information at the governing body, and potentially still put it on the ICAP list if we pass it here without recommendation. So, I will make the motion to pass without recommendation.

Second.

Move forward without recommendation. Sorry. To move forward without, not to pass it. To move it forward onto the governing body so that we will have the opportunity to hear everyone. So, I, yeah, I make a motion to move forward without recommendation, and I think we got a second.

Second.

Councilor Cassatt.

Yes.

Councilor Castro.

Yes.

Councilor Garcia.

Yes.

Councilor Bustamante.

Yes.

Councilor Faulkner.

No.

And that motion to move forward without recommendation passes. We'll see you on Wednesday.

Okay, next item.

Our final amendment for this evening is the San Ignacio Flats affordable housing.

Move to approve.

Second.

Any discussion?

And just for clarification, that was a motion by Councilor Castro, seconded by Councilor Faulkner.

Anything to add, Mr. Moody?

Roll call, Madam Clerk.

Are you sure you don't want to add something, Mr. Moody? You are going to be retiring.

I am.

I know. Okay. Can we get a roll call?

Councilor Cassatt.

Yes.

Councilor Castro.

Yes.

Councilor Garcia.

Yes.

Councilor Bustamante.

Yes.

Councilor Faulkner.

Yes.

And that motion passes.

So, we have a motion on the floor as amended now, right? Oh, yeah. We have a motion on the floor as amended for the whole thing.

We have a Vice Chair, Castro.

That's motion for amendment is was motioned by Councilor Bustamante and seconded by Councilwoman Garcia. Councilwoman Castro. Yes. Councilwoman Castro.

Yes.

Councilwoman Garcia.

Yes.

Councilwoman Bustamante.

Yes.

Councilwoman Faulkner.

Yes.

And that motion passes. Okay. I have my iPad open. What's next? Matters from.

Matters from staff. There are no matters from staff this evening, Madam Chair.

I expected Mr. Moody to apologize for retiring, but I guess I will be disappointed. Okay, matters from the committee. Oh, we have.

We do. So, I would just like to invite Ms. Christine Spears to the podium. We have a special gift for all of the hard work that all of our legislative team, but this is her last finance meeting. So, here you go. Sorry we made you work extra hard for your last finance meeting. Send you out with a bang.

You've earned every minute of it.

We're going to miss you.

But, as our city attorney, we hope.

Okay, matters from the chair. I think we should do a standing ovation for staff for today because it was hell for you. Okay, next meeting. July 6th.

Yay.

And.