Public Works and Utilities Committee Mon, Mar 16, 2026 · Public Works and Utilities Committee https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/963 == Executive Summary == The Public Works and Utilities Committee meeting covered a range of topics, including the city's digital infrastructure for facilities management, water resource indicators, and a proposed city department reorganization. The Facilities Management Division presented on their use of 'The Brain,' Asana, and Asset Planner to manage city assets, track utility usage, and coordinate projects, highlighting significant energy savings and emission reductions. Councilors expressed strong support for these systems but raised concerns about software interoperability and the need for a centralized portal for Councilors to access project information. Key decisions included the unanimous approval of the agenda and consent agenda, and the approval of Bill Number 2026-03 for city department reorganization. The committee also discussed a new Water Resources Indicator tool designed to inform seasonal water conservation policies and approved an amendment to correct an outdated clause in a city ordinance. Staff were commended for their achievements, including securing significant funding for water treatment. == Key Decisions == - Approved the agenda unanimously. - Approved the consent agenda (with item D pulled) unanimously. - Approved Bill Number 2026-03 for City Department Reorganization. - Approved an amendment to remove an outdated clause from a city ordinance (Passed 4-0 by roll call vote). == Motions & Votes == - Motion to approve the agenda — Passed unanimously. - Motion to approve the consent agenda (with item D pulled) — Passed unanimously. - Motion to approve Bill Number 2026-03 (City Department Reorganization) — Motion and second made, vote not explicitly stated in provided text. - Motion to approve an amendment to remove an outdated clause from the city ordinance — Passed 4-0 (Chair Chavez: Yes, Councilor Barrett: Yes, Councilor Bamante: Yes, Councilor Fagali: Yes). - Motion to approve the main motion (related to the ordinance change) — Passed 4-0 (Chair Chavez: Yes, Councilor Barrett: Yes, Councilor Bamante: Yes, Councilor Fagali: Yes). == Public Comment == No public comments were made during the designated public comment period. However, Councilors provided significant input and feedback throughout the meeting. Councilor Faulkner expressed strong support for the digital management systems but raised concerns about interoperability between departmental software and the city's financial ERP, advocating for a Councilor portal. Other Councilors emphasized the need for easy access to project updates, suggesting a 'snapshot link' or a dedicated portal to reduce staff workload. Staff members provided positive feedback on the project management system's effectiveness. Councilor Bamonte requested clarification on the city's water assessment and conservation policies. == Topics == - City Department Reorganization - Facilities Management Digital Infrastructure - Water Resources Indicator (WRI) - Employee of the Month Recognition - Approval of Agenda - Approval of Consent Agenda - Emergency Management Department Amendment - Water Conservation Policy - Public Comment - Area 1B Public Input - Water Treatment Funding - Roll Call and Quorum - Meeting Adjournment == Full Transcript == Madame Chair, Councilor Travis, we are live. Thank you. I call to order the Public Works and Utilities Committee. It is March 16th, 2026. It's 5:02. Could I get a roll call, please? Yes. Chair Chavez? Here. And Councilor Barrett? Here. Councilor Bamante? Here. Councilor Fagali? Here. And Councilor Faulkner. Councilor Faulkner is present. She just stepped out. All right. Chair, you have a quorum. Thank you. Can I get, oh, so next is approval of the agenda. Are there changes from staff? No changes from staff. Is there a motion? Motion to approve. Second. I have a motion to approve and a second. All those in favor signify by saying, "Aye." Any opposed? See none. Motion passes. Next is approval of the consent agenda. We had one item pulled off of consent, and I was the one that pulled that item. That is going to be item D, and it was for the purpose of introducing an amendment. Is there anything else that needs to be pulled? If not, can I get a motion? Motion to approve. Second. I have a motion and I have a second. All those in favor signify by saying, "Aye." Any opposed? See none. Motion passes. Next is public comment. Do we have anybody in chambers that would like to come up and speak to us today? No. All right. So then we will move on to presentations. And we have a fun presentation to start with. Public Works Department Employee of the Month for March 2026. Orlando Valdez, CDL Driver Level Three, Transit Division. And Sam Bernett, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you very much. Unfortunately, our employee is sick today and unable to join us, and this is also his last week at the City of Santa Fe, so I don't think we'll ever get to thank him in person. But I did want to all the same take the time to recognize him and, you know, appreciate you all taking a moment to do so with me. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Maybe if we, if you all can find time in your busy schedules, you could send Orlando an email wishing him your best. Yes, please send us his email address. Absolutely. I will, I will get that and email it out this evening or tomorrow morning. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Moving on to our second presentation. City of Santa Fe Facilities Management Division, Digital Infrastructure Management for Integrated Facilities Management. Sam, you're listed here, but are you doing the presentation? I am not doing the presentation. So, actually joining us today are several members of the Facilities Management Division. We have Tim Ferrell, our Interim Director. Sean Montoya is our Maintenance Manager. Karen Gross at the podium is our Senior Project Manager. And Lisa Kahana behind Karen is our Contract Administrator. They put together a presentation for you all introducing the three primary platforms we use for managing our assets and projects. I'm actually going to, or Tim, could you pull the big screen around so they can see it? And, with that, I'll turn it over to these guys. The presentation is pretty automated. So they're here primarily so you can see their lovely faces and in case you have any questions once the presentation's over. Great. Thank you all for being here. I'll turn it over to you. I appreciate your time. Outlines the City of Santa Fe Facilities Management Division's approach to integrated facilities management. We will explore how digital infrastructure enhances strategic management of assets, performance, and projects. Today, we will delve into the City of Santa Fe Facilities Management Division and its innovative use of digital infrastructure. We'll cover how Asset Planner, The Brain, and Asana are integrated to strategically manage infrastructure condition, operational maintenance, energy performance, and capital projects. The Facilities Management Division, FMD, employs a layered resource management strategy integrating three key systems: Asset Planner, Brain, and Asana. Asset Planner focuses on facility inventory, asset life cycle tracking, service requests, preventative maintenance, and capital planning. Brain handles utility monitoring, energy consumption, solar production, building performance, and alerts. Asana is utilized for capital projects, renovations, task management, team coordination, and project reporting. Together, these systems enable FMD to effectively manage infrastructure condition, resource performance, capital projects, and maintenance operations. Let's explore the capabilities of Asset Planner, our maintenance operations control center. Asset Planner is a comprehensive asset management software which tracks every element of every building that the Facilities Management Division manages. It assesses the expected life cycle and condition and suggests predictive rather than reactive maintenance with a goal to maximize the return on investment for every dollar spent. Asset Planner operational dashboard provides high-level insights into facility operations and maintenance conditions across the city. This customizable central dashboard offers real-time visibility into key indicators like preventative maintenance workload, service request volume, and work completion tracking. It allows facilities leadership to quickly understand the portfolio's condition, maintenance activity, and team workload distribution. This dashboard serves as the operational control center for managing city facilities, enhancing strategic decision-making. Asset Planner maintains a detailed inventory of all city facilities and their constituent systems. The left panel displays a hierarchy of facilities, including City Hall, fire stations, and community centers. Each facility can be expanded to reveal building elements like roofing, HVAC, lighting, and electrical systems. For each element, critical data such as overall condition, priority score, urgency, life cycle information, and estimated replacement cost are tracked. This detailed data provides a foundational understanding of each facility's condition, supporting both maintenance, management, and long-term capital planning. Asset Planner enables detailed analysis of individual facilities as demonstrated here with City Hall. The left chart projects capital costs by building system highlighting areas like mechanical systems or roofing that drive capital needs. The center chart illustrates cumulative deferred maintenance liability over time, showing how costs increase if investments are delayed. The right chart displays the projected facility condition index or FCI for the building guiding future investment decisions to maintain the facility's condition. This comprehensive view supports informed decision-making for facility upkeep. This view presents a portfolio level facility condition index or FCI across all city facilities. Each row represents a facility such as City Hall or a fire station with the current year FCI column indicating its present condition. Color coding quickly identifies building health from green for good condition to red for critical. Columns to the right are projections of future conditions without major investments, revealing where buildings are headed. This analysis is crucial for prioritizing capital investments, identifying facilities needing attention, and developing long-term maintenance strategies for the entire portfolio. Asset Planner also supports day-to-day maintenance through its service request portal accessible to all city staff. This portal allows employees to report facility issues directly to the Facilities Management Division. Staff can submit requests by detailing the issues location, providing a description, and attaching photos. This centralized intake system routes requests directly to the facilities team for review, prioritization, and assignment to maintenance staff. It streamlines the process for reporting and addressing facility concerns efficiently. Facility staff manage service requests directly within Asset Planner. Utilizing a centralized view of all active requests. This includes the facility location, reported issue, priority level, and assigned staff member. Each request can be open to view full details, including original information, attachments, assignment data, and progress updates. As work is completed, the request is updated and closed, creating a comprehensive record of maintenance activity. This system allows the facilities team to track workload, monitor response times, and maintain a detailed history of maintenance across all city facilities. Beyond service requests, Asset Planner supports preventative maintenance programs by scheduling tasks based on asset type and life cycle. Systems like HVAC, roofing, electrical, and fire safety equipment require routine inspections and maintenance. The system automatically generates work orders for the scheduled activities, enabling the facilities team to perform proactive maintenance before problems arise. This approach extends the life of building systems and reduces costly emergency repairs. Asset Planner integrates facility condition analysis, maintenance operations, and capital planning, shifting the city from reactive to a strategic proactive facilities management approach. Now, let's explore The Brain and its capabilities. The Brain offers a comprehensive overview of resource management and utility information across all city buildings including Buckman Direct Diversion as shown on the map. Development of The Brain started with gathering utility bills. PNM and New Mexico Gas/Symmetry Energy provided bills back to the beginning of 2023. The water division did not provide bills. However, they have provided usage data back to January 2025. The Brain receives daily data updates from all utilities, allowing for robust comparison of building performance over time and facilitating informed resource management decisions. The Brain allows for the creation of groupings by department, which authorized administrators on the facilities team can manage and edit. This feature enables focused monitoring and management of resources as seen with facilities grouped by fire stations, libraries, parks, and other departments. For campuses like Siler Yard or Seringo Complex where multiple departments are co-located, administrators have opted to group by location rather than by department, ensuring logical organization and efficient oversight. A key feature of The Brain is its ability to compare buildings, which helps identify inefficiencies and optimize resource allocation. Users can select various comparison options, including buildings, utility types, and date ranges, as well as spending or usage data. For fire stations, the charts show selected options for electric usage in gold and solar production in green over a 2-year period. As you can see, fire station 8 has solar arrays, which fire station 7 lacks. For libraries, the data includes usage and spending for electricity in gold, spending for natural gas in purple, solar production in green, and water usage in blue, providing a comprehensive resource overview. As previously noted, The Brain only has historical water data from the beginning of 2025, while the other utilities go back to 2023. The Brain provides critical alerts about various issues sourced from API connections for street lights and electric vehicle charging stations and through comparisons of daily data against historical patterns. These alerts enable quick response and resolution of problems. For instance, this image shows alerts indicating a series of street lights were affected by a power outage on February 19th, 2026. We are actively working on developing additional connections between The Brain and Asset Planner along with specifications for HVAC controls, elevators, and other equipment to provide even faster responses and minimize downtime. Comprehensive reporting on consumption within the brain provides valuable insights into resource usage patterns, supporting informed decision-making for resource management. The summary report allows for selection by group and time period, while the detailed report offers more granular data by group and building. This summary displays the monthly trend of global data, including electricity and gas consumption and solar production from January 2024 through December 2025 for all buildings, offering a clear picture of overall resource utilization. The brain offers detailed reporting on emissions, crucial for tracking and reducing environmental impact, thereby supporting sustainability efforts and regulatory compliance. This chart specifically illustrates emissions from all buildings between March 2024 and February 2026. The graph indicates a nearly 9% reduction in emissions from the previous year, alongside an approximate 6% decrease in energy costs. In summary, the brain provides a comprehensive solution for resource management, encompassing grouping, comparison, alerting, and detailed reporting on consumption and emissions, facilitating efficient resource allocation and informed decision-making. Next, we will examine Asana's role in our layered resource management strategy for delivering capital projects, including new construction, renovations, task management, team coordination, and project reporting. Asana serves as a strategic platform centralizing tasks, workflows, and resources to provide full visibility into all ongoing projects for the Facilities Division. The Facilities Division portfolio acts as a centralized registry for all FMD projects, capturing essential details. This includes the project owner, typically the assigned project manager, along with priority, status reports, task progress, due dates, vendors, funding information, contracts, and budget details. This comprehensive overview enhances accountability and schedule management across the team. Each project manager within the Facilities Management Division maintains their own portfolio in Asana, which contains all the projects they are responsible for at any given time. This personalized view allows project managers to efficiently track and manage their specific workload, ensuring that all their assigned projects are organized and progressing according to schedule. It provides a clear, individualized overview of their responsibilities within the larger Facilities Division portfolio. The Facilities Management Division has developed a comprehensive template in Asana for typical projects, outlining each phase, potential tasks, and subtasks. This template serves as a flexible starting point, designed to be modified by adding or deleting tasks to suit the specific requirements of each unique project. This structured approach ensures consistency in project initiation while allowing for necessary customization, streamlining the planning process, and improving project efficiency. Each project in Asana features a detailed workflow, including assigned tasks, due dates, and dependencies, where progress is meticulously recorded. This structured approach fosters streamlined collaboration among team members by consolidating communication files and project updates in one central location. Asana eliminates the need for scattered emails and spreadsheets. Teams can easily tag stakeholders, assign responsibilities with clear deadlines, and track progress in real time, ensuring accountability and efficient project execution across departments. The Asana dashboard is highly customizable within both portfolios and individual projects, offering both high-level data and granular details. With robust reporting capabilities, managers can generate actionable insights, track project and asset life cycles, and enhance transparency. This data-driven approach supports informed decision-making. The dashboard provides a comprehensive overview of total tasks, completed tasks, incomplete tasks, and overdue tasks, along with breakdowns by project status and owner, ensuring a clear understanding of the division's overall project health. The Facilities Management Division is building a robust digital operating model for integrated facilities management. We utilize Asset Planner to manage our assets, the brain to monitor performance, and Asana to oversee project delivery. This layered strategy enables comprehensive asset management, real-time resource monitoring, and efficient project delivery, fostering a proactive and data-driven approach to facilities management. Mayor: Great. Thank you. Do you want to add anything before we do questions? Speaker: Nope. Mayor: All right. Are there any questions? Councilor Faulkner. Councilor Faulkner: Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple of questions. I love programs like these. I love using AI where we can. What I'm starting to see throughout the departments is each department is getting what works for them. They're choosing the platforms and the AI that works for their department. I totally support this, but my only concern is that these are proprietary systems, and so they often don't communicate with each other and also do not share information because they want us to buy the whole city to use this program. Whereas I love this, I think this is amazing. One of my only concerns is I know that Land Use has picked a kind of AI software mechanism or platform that does what's good for Land Use, and then I'm seeing Fire is using, picking something different. Different departments are picking different platforms. The only problem is I'm not sure they can all talk to each other. So, is this the case with this? Is this proprietary in the sense that it does all this for you guys, but then it can't share it with the rest of the city? There's no portal that the city councilors can go in to track these projects as well. Maybe those two questions in there. Speaker: Chair and Councilor Faulkner, thank you very much. They're very good questions. In the case of both Asset Planner and the brain, both of the owners of those programs are completely open to the development of APIs and integrating them into other platforms. Both, well, I was going to say both programs were pre-approved, but actually, the Asset Planner has been in use for about 15 years and kind of predates that process. Both the brain and Asana went through a review with the IT department to make sure they were compatible in the future with city systems and approved by IT. I think Asana represents something that's important for us to understand. I think as we talk about ERP, especially financial ERP, it's really important for the city to focus, it's my opinion, it's important for the city to focus on having a single backbone program that all of the financial information is contained inside of. So, for example, right now it's Tyler Munis. I think it's also important to recognize the distinction between financial ERP and operational systems because these operational systems often have a different type of data set that isn't necessarily critical or really that important at all to have inside of that financial ERP system. So, I absolutely agree with the point you're making about the ability to connect and share information, but also want to make sure we're always cognizant that that's not always necessary in every case. I think Asana is a great example of that. I don't think Asana is, it's my understanding it wouldn't be capable of communicating with Tyler Munis, probably not that important. At the same time, Asana has been selected by IT and leadership to be kind of a city-wide project management, task management platform. So, while it can't communicate with Tyler Munis, the intention is for anybody inside of the city interested in using such a platform would use Asana, and then inside of that, we can all collaborate and communicate. So, I support the intention of your questions, and in some cases, our programs do that, and in others where they don't, we feel like their standalone nature is justified, at least in our minds, if that makes sense. I sometimes talk too much and may have missed part of your question. Let me know if you have any more. Councilor Faulkner: I agree with you. There are some parts that can be housed within a department that are only particular to that department, right? But it's where the departments have to communicate with one another. And you are correct, especially around finances. I'm learning all this as Finance Chair that departments are using different kinds of software. And where we run into the hiccup is when we're trying to get what could be housed appropriately in this department because it's very specific for what this department does. It's getting that information into Munis. That's been the challenge that I'm starting to see. These are great for Land Use, great for Public Works, great for all these departments, but we need a liaison sort of because Munis is proprietary and doesn't seem to play well with others, just my initial understanding. I appreciate your answer. That is exactly what I was looking for. The other question I have is, in developing these platforms, it would be, I guess it's more of a comment. It would be good if the city councilors could access this information through a portal of some kind because then if we had a question about something that's happening in Public Works or something that's happening in Land Use, we don't have to call five people and meet with five people to get a singular answer, right? So, is this something that councilors could access so we could track the status? Because we do get a lot of comments and emails and phone calls about what's happening with this and what's happening with that. But if we could access it, that would shortcut things because then we wouldn't have to bother you guys when you're super busy. We could just go into a portal and we could find the information. Speaker: Chair Chavez, Councilor Faulkner, another great question, and the answer is yes. Especially the brain has both an outward-facing and an internal-facing aspect, which makes it very easy for councilors or even the public to get in and see what's happening. We can also do the same with Asana, well, at least internally, not with the public. We can do the same with Asana and Asset Planner, but these are more technical platforms that would probably require some training on how they work, how they're laid out to make it useful for you to get inside of it and be able to see what's going on. In both cases, it definitely leaves the impression that it's something we need to work on with our service providers and see if some sort of portal that's useful to leadership isn't something that can be developed. Barring that, anybody who is interested in having access, we'd be happy to provide it, and we'd be happy to provide tutorials on how to navigate it and understand the information inside of it. Councilor Faulkner: I'm going to be a little bit salty here. Speaker: Please do. Yeah. Councilor Faulkner: Not with you, Sam. I think you're doing a fabulous job, and I'm 100% this is not targeted at your department, but it is something that I'm looking at as Finance Chair, and I would hope that any of our providers would realize that the City Council and the governing body is the entity that decides whether or not that contract goes forward. And I would hope that they would be willing to set up a portal so that the leadership of the city can tap into that system easily so that then that system is fully useful for all the stakeholders in the city. And I just, I love this. I think this is amazing. I will support it always. This is great. But I do think I want to offer that if you ever have a meeting with the providers and they don't want to build a portal for this governing body, I'll be happy to come to that meeting with you. Duly noted. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes. Each project manager on a weekly basis does an update and an action item, which would provide a quick snapshot of each project we're working on. And that would maybe be a quick snapshot link that we could show very quickly if, hey, what's happening at Warehouse 21? What's happening at ITT to Market Station? And it's just four or five bullet points on each side that would give you a quick snapshot into what. Yeah. So, thanks, Tim. That's a great point. And so what Tim's talking about is the facilities division director has a weekly meeting with each of the project managers, gets a weekly update on the status of the project. And so there's a small weekly snapshot of what's happened in the last week on that project. And they also do a weekly summary of the entire project, which is a little more in-depth. It's, you know, it'd be five minutes of reading for each project to kind of understand a little more in-depth where the project's at in its process, what's been accomplished, what's coming next. And absolutely, great point, something we can look at how we can quickly turn that information over to counselors or give you access to it easily. And one of the things that I'm interested in is I know how hard our staff works, right? So if our provider could build a portal that we can go into, then our staff, who's doing, especially in Public Works, who's doing so many things, doesn't have to generate that email, cut and paste, do all the stuff. I do like this idea in the short term, but in the long term, it would be nice if the provider could help us figure out a workaround so that we can, like the Teen Center, for example, we've been working on getting them a bigger pantry and a larger industrial refrigerator because one of the things we want to do at the Teen Center is provide food and cooking lessons for the teenagers in our district whose family, they don't have food. And so we wanted to prep meals for those families. We started that idea two years ago. This is not about you, Sam, for real. Yeah. No, no, I'm not taking, but it's just like if I could check in and see where progress is happening, then I could prioritize things in my district and be like, okay, this one's almost done, so let's get this one off the table. Let's prioritize this one because it's, you know, hunger. You know what I'm saying? And then your team wouldn't have to generate these emails, right? Like I love that idea. Great idea, but that's a short-term fix because your team is super busy and has a lot going on. So the provider should provide a portal so that counselors can pick their favorite or their most prioritized projects and lean into them so that we can track them and we don't have to take up time of staff. I don't think people understand staff has so much on their plate, especially when we have flat budgets where we can't expand departments. So again, would love to be at a meeting with the provider about how to make a portal. Duly noted. Thank you very much. Right. Any other questions? Yes. Just had a quick question about sustainability stuff. So the brain reports on emissions. That's really cool. Is that new or has that been doing that for a long time? Last year, we secured a grant from the state of New Mexico for grid modernization to build out the brain. We are actually just about ready to finalize it. We got our last ERAM uploaded on Friday. Cool. So, I was just wondering, because I know the city has sustainability goals. So then that will feed in there and we could see how close we are to probably our goals with water conservation and solar and all of those things that will be there in the brain. What can generate some of that information for us? Yes, Chair and Councilor Barrett, the brain is intended to be able to generate a lot of that information. It actually has a public interface that we can place on the city website. And we've already done training with the conservation and sustainability folks on how to use the brain to help them more easily do all their tasks related to monitoring emissions and energy usage, water savings, all of that. That's awesome. Thanks. Any other questions? All right. I have a few. So, I just want to make sure I'm clear because I know what project management looks like because I'm a government employee as well. We're a different government. But, you know, we do project management and I think it's really important to emphasize, like, this is a tool for staff, right? So, this is an organizational tool that, and it requires human interaction with the organizational tool. So it's the staff going in, updating their projects so that they have a tracking on, so they could be organized. It's an organizational tool and it's happening a lot in a lot of governments because, yes, we want to make sure that we are progressing in projects because we're using taxpayer money and so on and so forth. It's a big thing, but I just want to then direct it to the staff because I know depending on the platform, sometimes it can be counterproductive. It could be difficult to interact with. So, I'd love to just hear, like, how is this management system working for you? Because ultimately, it's for you all to track your projects, track your staff's progress on those projects, know where there's hiccups, know where there's delays, where contracts aren't going. Like, it's your platform for your success. How is this platform working for you? If anyone, all of you, you're all, come on, we'll just all chat. It worked very well. It's what's great is it creates a demand on yourself for self-reporting and doing it on a weekly basis with a mindset towards, hey, what if somebody else is looking at this? How would somebody else see this as progress on this status? And that's how we sort of all discipline ourselves. And Sam will do it for me. I'll do it for Karen. And it's a very collaborative process that works well sort of on the project management. Yeah. And I, or Karen, did you want to say something before I, I don't want to. Everyone wants to. I was inviting Lisa and Sean to come up and speak a little bit about Asset Planner and ASA. Yeah. Good evening. I'm going to speak about Asset Planner, I mean, ASA. And since I'm the contract administrator, I work with all of the peers. And so this is, ASA is a really great way for me to go in, find the information I need, track what I do, which updates the PM on where we are with the project and or specific tasks. So, I found it extremely useful and I'm hoping that other teams will as well. Thank you so much. Well, no, and I, it's very similar. So, we don't have something this fancy or actually playing with our own developed project management, but like from my point of view as a person that's inputting information in weekly, I find that it's just really helpful in being organized and staying on top of things and revisiting items, right? Because like, you know, I work with 15 projects at once in a week that are just active. And so to be able, like sometimes one just drops off because, you know, if there's a fire in one place, that's where you put attention. And so like just having that routine, I do it every Monday, I revisit it and then I'm like, oh yeah, I needed to send that email or that meeting's coming up. It's just like, there's just like a level of organization and like I said, mine's not as detailed as this, but also what's really neat is what you just said is like it allows the collaboration because everyone knows what everyone is doing and where everything's at. So like it gives information about capacity. It gives information. And but I do, I just wanted to make sure that you all enjoyed working with it and it was working with you because ultimately like this should be a tool for information for you and your progress towards your work. That's where their most success comes from because some project management, when it becomes outside of that, there's a level of resentment that happens with employees because then, you know, they're doing it for others rather than for themselves and it could be, and we had a team where half of our team felt that way and there was some resistance and because it is, it's an extra layer of work and if you don't see the benefit in that work, there's some resistance. So I just wanted to check in on that because that's the most important thing is that we support a tool that's beneficial to you all. So, yeah, that's all my comments and questions. Anyone else before? Yes. Go ahead. Yeah, of course. I need the 10-minute rule for myself tonight. Oh, you're fine. Is this at risk of being lost in the budgetary process as we move forward, or is this like it's? Chair Chavez, Councilor Faulkner, no, none of these are at risk of being lost. Certainly not in this fiscal year. And in following fiscal years, if they ever were under threat, we would, we would probably escalate through the city manager's office because they are really fundamental to how we operate as a department and a division. Yeah, I just was checking because we're going through the budget process in the near future. So I'm just trying to flag things that we need to protect. One other note, so facilities has been using ASA for three years now. This is the first year where it has assumed responsibility for ASA and elevated it to the enterprise level. And so the funding and coordination around that platform is a little outside of our wheelhouse at this point. And so if anybody does hear any rumors of threats, please let us know so we can, we can rally. And do you know if we're planning to, what other departments are using it? Do you know? I know that's like a question that I shouldn't be asking you, but in case you know. Thank you for putting me on the spot. I should know. I've seen, I know Economic Development uses it. I don't know if the current iteration of the MRA is using it, but in the past, the MRA, Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority and Agency, thank you, at Midtown has been using it. I've seen other users. I've seen Melanie Moore in the Convention Center. I've seen Fire inside. I'm not sure they're actively using it, but certainly a half dozen that come to mind and I'm sure since it's become more something being promoted citywide, I'm sure that's expanding. Yeah, I think it's, and it's conversations that we could have and expanding it, especially because in city government, well, in government, you have so much internal movement and so to change an expectation, especially with something like this, can be burdensome to our staff. So like having a, you know, having it be uniform across the city, I think would be really helpful. So that's something we could bug about. All right, any other questions or comments? Okay, thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you, team. All right, we had one item pulled off of consent by myself. And, oh, yes. Oh, we have, I'm so sorry. It's Jesse. I apologize. All right, next presentation. The Water Resource. See, you guys just were in, you just interested me so much, I skipped over that. Great conversation. Thanks for sharing. The Water Resources Indicator, a database tool to inform seasonal conservation policy. Walker Williamson, Water Resources Coordinator. And the floor is yours. I don't know, Jesse, if you want to say anything prior. Mayor: Madam Chair, thank you. No, I'll turn it over to Walker, but I will also be available to answer questions associated with this presentation. Hey, thank you. Sorry about that, Walker. Yeah, lean in more closely to the mic. I think it's off. Oh, it's obviously on now. There you go. Thank you, Madam Chair, and council members for inviting me here today. And just real quick, following up on the heels of the conversation from before, we in the water division are actually working with Karen right now for some of the energy data from our transmission and distribution system pumps, and we're actually sharing some of our water division data with the brain as well. So there is some data crossover going on right now. So, yeah, today I'm going to be talking about the Water Resources Indicator, which is a tool that we've been using in the water division on a roughly annual basis, although we come back to it from time to time. It's a tool that Acting Director Dr. Roach actually built, I think, a few years ago, but we've been improving the representation of this tool since then. And so that's, I'll just give an update on that today. So, the Water Resources Indicator is a quantitative tool that summarizes seasonal water availability for the city and is used to support conservation restrictions and management policy. It incorporates hydrologic information related to our four sources of supply, along with regional drought conditions, to produce a final WRI score. The score is calculated each spring and informs us of what the demand constraints might be for the upcoming year for city and county customers. And so this is the tool that we use to help us implement those policies. The WRI uses a weighted calculation to score this year's overall water availability for the city on a scale from zero, which is termed driest, although really we should probably use the word availability here in terms of drought language, but zero is considered driest, and 10 is the wettest. So it's from 0 to 10. The calculation considers the average volume of groundwater that is pumped over the previous 10 years for the city wellfield and the previous three years for the Buckman wellfield. And together, these groundwater sources make up 40% of the score. The volume of surface water that is stored in our reservoirs, counting both SJC and our native Santa Fe River water, that makes up 30% of the WRI score. And then the remaining 30% of the WRI score consists of regional drought data from the US Drought Monitor. I should also add that because of this scoring from 0 to 10 and the 40-30-30 weighting, that means that groundwater is capped, best possible situation, a value of four. So its subscore highest value of four. And similarly, 30% components, which is the drought monitor surface water reservoirs, are capped at three for the best values possible. So this stacked area chart helps to determine how each of the three components that I just described affect the score over time. So for instance, you can see that the surface water and the groundwater components have become relatively stable since the early 2000s. Although this picture is kind of unfortunate because the window for the values popped up on the screen. I didn't take a good screenshot there. So actually, this picture shows a better trend for groundwater and surface water becoming more stable since the early 2000s. And the reason for that could be because of the BDD coming online and getting us greater access to our surface water supplies on the San Juan Chama. And so what you can see here is that with the stabilizing of groundwater and surface water supplies, the variability in the score is driven largely by the variability in the US Drought Monitor. So that's the component that really goes up and down the most, affects our score most heavily in recent years. Also, I should just mention that our current monthly score is 7.13, and so this is in the normal range between six and eight. That might seem counterintuitive because of the current kind of stark conditions that we're looking at, but again, that's, it's sort of bolstered by the drought monitor score in this case, which is surprisingly high from based off of what you might expect right now through the regional conditions. And there are a lot of factors that go into the drought monitor score. So it's a pretty holistic and also complex score, but we suspect that maybe it is residual soil moisture conditions that are keeping it afloat right now. But that's why we're sitting in this normal range for the WRI score at the moment. And then furthermore, I should also just point out that that 7.13 score right there actually is an underestimate. In July of last year, we drained our Nichols Reservoir for repairs, and the measurement instruments for that have not been fully put in place yet. And so our calculations are not capturing the most recent data, the fact that the reservoir is now at around 530 acre-feet. And so that would bump up the score by about another point. Then finally, we've also been dabbling in the world of dashboards. The Water Resources Indicator has its own dashboard page that we've created last year. It's part of our overall Water Resources page, which represents a vast amount of our water system information and water division data. And so the Water, the WRI has its own page. This helps us to keep our data current, allows us to do real-time analysis and facilitates better comparisons. Gives us the ability to look across different time scales and compare different periods of time as well. And then it also foregoes the hassle of having to open up ancient spreadsheets and figure out who did what and what kinds of calculations there were and do the whole data error QAQC for those processes as well. And so this dashboard is very helpful in allowing us to be able to open up, look at it quickly, make our assessments, our spring assessments, and then make a more efficient conservation and management based. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much. Questions? Councilor Bamonte. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Walker. So I asked for this presentation because Director Roach kind of touched on it a couple weeks ago, I guess. And there were just questions from members of the committee that I knew I couldn't answer, but one of the things I did want to highlight is that, you know, we do hear a lot of things in the newspaper, news, whatever, that talk about how dire it is, but that this does help us look at a glance to see where the city is. I was wondering if you could just go over, because I know I saw a chart somewhere, what the city response is during the season. So like, when we're telling people, "Oh, you can't water between these hours," or, you know, how does this affect what the city's response is going to be during those times? Chair Chavis and Councilor Bamonte, I'll go ahead and take that. So I appreciate Walker coming and presenting the sort of technical indicator. But I agree that I would take any questions related to how we transfer that technical number to a policy response. And we're sort of in a transition phase now, I would say, in, in we've developed an indicator and then deciding what the policy response is. Our code is a little bit out of date in terms of the way drought is defined and the specific responses. And so Christine Chavez and the Water Conservation Committee, who you are working closely with now over the last couple of years, has gone through the code and worked with experts in the field on sort of policy responses to drought conditions to develop a framework, a proposed framework for what the policy responses would be to each of these. And in this case, it's a monitor from 0 to 10. And so we've binned it into five different portions of that indicator, what the policy responses would be to each of those, to those ranges. So I don't have a specific answer for you. But in terms of one of the things we wanted with this indicator was for it to be relatively stable so that in the spring we could tell people, "This is what it's going to look like," and it would look like that for the entire irrigation season. So, it's not like we have big farmers making, you know, million-dollar decisions on what they plant, but we still want to be consistent and say, "This is where we, this is where we stand and this is why. This is our very quantitative indicator of where we stand and this will hold all the way through the season." If we started out with something dire and then we had great monsoons, maybe we would choose to relax it, but we wouldn't go the other way around of halfway through the season saying, "Oh, sorry, now you're under these big restrictions and you, you know, planted a big rose," whatever, whatever the case might be. We want to be stable on those policy responses. So, I hope that that helps sort of explain how we go from this very quantitative indicator. This is that number. You can't fudge it. It's very, it's very specific to our groundwater conditions, our surface water conditions, and then this regional drought score, which we don't create, that that's created by a different group. And one thing I would mention is that it's specific to the value for Santa Fe County. So even though it's a US Drought Monitor score, that varies across by county. And so we're just looking at the Santa Fe County piece of that. So... All right. Thank you, Director Roach. I just wanted to make sure that that information got out for everyone. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Councilor. Any other questions or comments? Yeah. So since we are at like 7.13, it's kind of like business as usual. It's the spring. That's our score. We're sticking with it and it's in the average range. That's right. And it's right in the middle of that bin. So almost no matter what happens in the next six months, it'd be, I would think it'd be pretty unlikely that we'd come out of that 6 to 8 bin. Although, as Walker mentioned, the volatility does come from that drought monitor score. And so if conditions continue the way they appear to be continuing, we would expect to see it drop down. But we do have the water resources available now to for the business as usual this year, and then we'll re-evaluate next spring. All right. Any other questions, comments? All right. Thank you so much for being here, Walker. Okay. So I will be reading. We are moving to the consent agenda. Let's see if I can do this. All right. I am the one that pulled this because we do have an amendment to introduce. So consideration of Bill Number 2026-03, adoption of Ordinance Number 2026, to be determined. This has been brought forward by Mayor Garcia. A bill relating to city administration, amending Section 2-8 SFCC 1987 to reorganize certain city departments, creating new sections of code to include 2-8.10, 2-8.11, 2-8.12, 2-8.13 through 15. We're going to say amending Section 2-8.1 SFCC 1987 to include a general provision section and Exhibit A, amending Section 2-8.2 to rename Community Health and Safety Department to Community Services Department and to include Youth and Family Services and Recreation and to remove the Office of Emergency Management, amending Section 2-8.3 SFCC 1987 to eliminate the Community Development Department, amending 2-8.4 to establish the Office of Emergency Management and changing the name from Office of Emergency Management to Emergency Management Department. Amending 2-8.5, creating a new department, the Economic Development Department, to include the Art and Culture Division and the Film Division. Amending 2-8.6, creating a department, the Land Use Department, to include the Affordable Housing Division. Amending Section 2-8.7, creating the Tourism Santa Fe Department. Creating Section 2-8.14 to include a new Regional Airport Department. Creating Section 2-8.15 to include the Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency and renaming it Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency Department, repealing 1987. Rebuilding Exhibit C of SFCC 1987 City Organization. We do not need staff here because this is just a correction that we're making with an amendment. But first, I would like to see if we have a motion for the main. **Speaker:** A motion to approve. **Speaker:** Second. I have a motion. I have a second. And now we will talk about the amendment. So, Amendment A is in your packet. Amendment A was brought forward by Kyle Morgan, our Interim Director of Emergency Management. On page 12, number four, you will see a clause there. This clause is a holdover from when safety was briefly under OEM, which should be removed. The city's centralized safety function has been placed back into the Risk and Safety Office Division as of 2023 in the ordinance. This just appears to be a remnant that was missed in that ordinance change and requires a quick administrative change. The change does not impact what OEM does or how they do any of their duties. It just corrects a piece of the code that is a duplicate in another section. All right. So, basically, safety actually should exist and only exist—well, safety exists everywhere in the city. Kyle wanted me to emphasize that because he's Kyle and he's thorough and absolutely correct. But safety as it exists in this clause exists under risk management, and it is no longer coordinated by OEM. So, that is what the amendment does. It just crosses that duplicate section that exists somewhere else where it should be. So, with that very long explanation, is there a motion? **Speaker:** Move to approve. **Speaker:** Second. No, we're just going to approve the amendment. **Speaker:** Approve the amendment. So, could I get a roll call vote on this one, please? **Speaker:** Yes, Madam Chair. Chair Chavez. **Speaker:** Yes. Great. **Speaker:** I thought you were asking me a question. Well, you were, but— **Speaker:** Yes, I was. Councilor Barrett. **Speaker:** Yes. **Speaker:** Councilor Bamante. **Speaker:** Yes. **Speaker:** Councilor Fagali. **Speaker:** Yes. **Speaker:** And Councilor Falner stepped out. All right. So, now for the main motion. Could I get a roll call on that one? **Speaker:** Yes. One second. Chair Chavez. **Speaker:** Yes. **Speaker:** Councilor Barrett. **Speaker:** Yes. **Speaker:** Councilor Bamante. **Speaker:** Yes. **Speaker:** And Councilor Fagali and Councilor Falner. **Speaker:** Yes. All right. So, the amendment and the item passes. Thank you. Next is matters from staff. Are there matters from staff? **Speaker:** Jesse's like, "Absolutely not." No matters from staff. All right. **Speaker:** Oh, that for you too, Sam. Oh, okay. **Speaker:** Yeah. Thank you. We are holding our breath. Yes. Anticipation. Matters from the committee. **Speaker:** Yes. Come, Councilor. There is—this is a general announcement. It's not particularly Public Works related, but there is a public input session about Area 1B this Thursday, March 19th, at 6:00 p.m. at the Food Depot, if you would like to give your opinion, if you have not yet. There will be more options, but—or more opportunities, but this is one. Thank you. Great. Great. Anyone else? Yes. Come. I just wanted to give you guys a shout-out. You guys were famous in the paper getting the money for the water treatment. Super shout-out. Like $2.5 million or something? 2.345. That's amazing. So, great job. And we had a constituent that was really happy. She lives in District 2, but she had a property in District 1, and something about her bill. She wasn't able to pay it online, but then Director Roach checked in with her on a Saturday, and she was very happy about it. So, double shout-out. That's very awesome. Thank you. Matters from Chair. Always a shout-out to you guys. You are a great team. Our city staff is what makes the city work. So, and with that, we will—oh, next meeting, Monday, March 30th, 2026. And with that, we're adjourned. Thank you.