Quality of Life Committee Wed, Jul 22, 2026 · Quality of Life Committee https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/992-quality-of-life-jul-22-2026 == Executive Summary == The Quality of Life Committee met on 07/22/2026, approving their agenda and consent agenda. A significant portion of the meeting was dedicated to recognizing outgoing members of the Mayor's Youth Advisory Board (MYAB), Jack Elling and Elise Guttenes, for their contributions and leadership. The committee also discussed the ongoing recruitment for new MYAB members, emphasizing the importance of youth involvement in civic life. A major topic of discussion was Phase Two of the Land Development Code (LDC) update. Consultants presented a new "installment-based drafting strategy" to break down the complex update into three manageable phases, focusing on process modernization, design standards, and land use mapping, respectively. This approach aims to re-establish momentum and allow for earlier adoption of specific issues. The committee also discussed the need for a comprehensive review of the Historic Preservation Ordinance and the role of the Architectural Review Committee. Concerns were raised about the efficiency of the code update process and the need for diverse community input, with one resident expressing strong opposition to new residential housing permits until a general plan is adopted and a water study is conducted. Additionally, the committee received updates on successful city programs and initiatives, including summer recreation programs serving over 500 children, the hiring of a new Cell Site Business Coordinator, and the overwhelming response to the Spur Business Grant program. Upcoming events and community initiatives were also highlighted, such as the traditional Spanish Market and plans for Native American Heritage Month. The meeting concluded with a brief discussion on public safety, including a review of ShotSpotter data and the need for clear policies on outdoor public space capacity. == Key Decisions == - Approved the amended agenda, moving Item B before Item A. - Approved the consent agenda. == Motions & Votes == - Motion to approve the amended agenda — Passed 4-0 - Motion to approve the consent agenda — Passed 4-0 == Public Comment == Public comments included gratitude from outgoing MYAB members Jack Elling and Elise Guttenes for their service and the impact of the board. Councilors praised the youth's contributions and emphasized the importance of youth voice. A long-time resident, Jim Heath, expressed strong opposition to new residential housing permits (excluding low-cost housing) until a general plan is adopted and a thorough water study is conducted, stating Santa Fe does not have a housing shortage. Other comments included appreciation for civic engagement, a call for more youth members in the "Maya" program, and a suggestion for the code to be more constructive in encouraging desired outcomes rather than just preventing undesired ones. Councilors also praised the city's recreation division and staff for successful summer programs and community events. == Topics == - Youth Advisory Board (MYAB) - Summer Youth Programs - Economic Development Initiatives - Community Events & Engagement - Youth Violence Prevention - Outdoor Public Space Policy - Regenerative Agriculture - Native American Heritage Month - City Vendor Opportunities - Downtown Plaza Issues == Full Transcript == I was asked to. Hello. We're going to try to promote you. Give us one second. We have not yet convened the meeting, Council. I apologize. Mike, are we live? We are live. Alright. So I'm going to go ahead and call to order this meeting of the Quality of Life Standing Committee. Marzella, can I please have a roll call? Councilor Fagali? Here. Councilor Barrett? Here. Councilor Cassett? Here. Councilor Castro? Presente. Madam Chair, you have a quorum. Thank you so much. And I am just going to take a minute to remind us all to silence our devices. No worries. Yeah. And I do think that the next item on our agenda is the approval of the agenda, which has some changes. Is that right, Steph? Oh, okay. I wasn't aware. We are going to change the order of the presentations. Item B is going to go first, and Item A will follow. Move to approve as amended. Second. And if I could get a roll call myself, please. Councilor Fagali? Yes. Councilor Barrett? Yes. Councilor Cassett? Yes. Madam Chair? Yes. Motion passes. Wonderful. And so nothing was pulled off the consent agenda as far as I know. Do any councilors want to pull anything off the consent agenda at this time? Entertain a motion. Move to approve. Second. Can we get a roll call, please? Councilor Fagali? Yes. Councilor Barrett? Yes. Councilor Cassett? Yes. Madam Chair? Yes. Motion passes. Wonderful. Thank you so much. And that means we are on to presentation. Thank you, Chair Castro. I'm going to let the big guy take over here. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee. It is my honor to recognize two of the outgoing members of the Mayor's Youth and Advisory Board. We have two young folks that have bright futures ahead of them, and it is definitely sad to see them go, but it's exciting to see the future. Yep. Yep. So, just a small token of appreciation for everything you've done for our community over the past couple years. I hope that through your work supporting the community, it's been fulfilling to you, and I'll just ask that as you continue on, whether it's with education, career, whatever, please continue to come back with that. I just did it. So, first up, we've got Jack Elling, and I'll read it for you. In grateful recognition of your dedicated service, leadership, and commitment as a valued member and co-chair of the Mayor's Youth Advisory Board, your contributions, guidance, and commitment to empowering youth have made a meaningful difference to our community with sincere appreciation for your outstanding service and leadership. So thank you, and I'll turn it over to the chair of the community and as you have the words. You. Hey. I almost went to Starbucks. I want to say that because I know the kids love Starbucks, but then I went to Java Joe's because go local, go different. So I was like, hey. They have delicious mocha there too, and I wanted to support local. But I just want to say thank you to Elise and Jack for teaching me, showing me the way. I'm new to MYAB. Councilor Castro passed it off to me, which I was very excited about it because you guys know I work in public education. I work in the schools. So I just want to say thanks for sticking with it. I'm so proud of you guys. You're setting such a good example for the youth of Santa Fe. You're going off to college and hopefully, maybe even coming back full circle coming into politics. I was just talking to Elise saying we need more young people getting involved in civics and in government. So I can't wait to see you guys back here after college getting involved. So, anyways, you can present this to Elise. And then I said after, I hope they say a few words about MYAB, what they've learned, their biggest accomplishments, and then what's, how to get some more youth on board here and get involved in politics. So I'll let you give that to Elise, and then they can speak. Thanks. Then this one is for Elise Guttenes. In grateful recognition of your dedicated service, leadership, and commitment as a valued member and co-chair of the Mayor's Youth Advisory Board, your contributions, guidance, and commitment to empowering youth have made a meaningful difference to our community. A sincere appreciation for your outstanding service in leadership. Thank you. Now time for y'all to get fired. Fired. Thank you all so much. It's been an honor to serve on MYAB for the past three years, four years. I'm not sure how long I've been on this board. I remember joining MYAB at the end of freshman year when my dad recommended me, and I wasn't sure what it was about. I knew I wanted to be engaged in politics, and I wanted more youth voice, but I didn't know much further. And then we were tossed into our first youth symposium since or after COVID. And I was really inspired by the amount of young people I saw that wanted to make a difference but couldn't in Santa Fe. And I really wanted to be that change and make that difference. I feel that MYAB is an amazing place to do that. I feel that MYAB can make a difference and should be making a difference in the city. We've given the Teen Center more recognition. We've done SAT tutoring in the Teen Center, and we've done a lot more. Oh, yes. Teens riding the bus. We did a summer program that we funded scholarships for. And MYAB is just such a good way for youth to give back to the community. I highly recommend anyone to join it, and I've just had such an amazing experience. It's inspired me to pursue politics and to work in community engagement. Thank you guys so much. Well, tough act to follow. But, first of all, thank you so much, councilors, for all your work on MYAB. I know three of you have been the chairs or helped out with MYAB in the past, and it has been wonderful working with every single one of you. So thank you so much. I have not been on MYAB as long as Jack, but I was lucky enough to go to the Youth Symposium when I was in sophomore year, and that's where I got my start with MYAB. I was like, oh my gosh. Those kids are so cool. They're just like me. They talk. So I decided I was going to join, and it was the best decision I've made in my entire life, I can say. I've always loved Santa Fe, and this truly deepened my love for Santa Fe. We got to do so much that I think is a little unrecognized at the time. So I hope as we move forward with MYAB, the future generation can continue to showcase all the amazing things that they are doing. Jack talked a little bit about what we have done, and I would like to say I'm very proud of the SAT tutoring that is going on at the Teen Center and will continue because that was, like, my passion project on MYAB. And, like, it just makes me so happy to see all the 30 kids that got to go and will continue to go in the future. So thank you so much for the opportunity, and I look forward to seeing the next group of MYAB members and hopefully helping out in the future, maybe after college, maybe sooner. Thank you. Just one last plug from staff. Thank you, Jack and Elise, so much. Really, Councilor Barrett and I came on to MYAB at the beginning of the year, and, really, we've taken a lot of direction from Jack and Elise. And, really, I just so appreciate their willingness to show up, to keep showing up, telling all of their friends to come and join and really, you know, it's, you know, when I was younger, I didn't have this kind of opportunity, and I'm just so grateful that they have participated in it and really been such a driving force behind making sure that the Mayor's Youth Advisory Board, which we're calling MYAB in the room as an acronym, just a little reminder for everyone, making sure the Mayor's Youth Advisory Board stays going and stays strong. And we are recruiting right now for the Mayor's Youth Advisory Board. So what happens is we get our awesome youth for a very short period of time, and then they move on. And just like Jack and Elise are moving on now, we're looking for more youth to come take up that mantle and really keep moving this work forward. It's super important. So if anyone's interested, mhm. Mhm. Yep. And how many openings do you have? We have eight openings because these guys are going off to college, and we're proud of them. But so trying to fill those spots, we have five applications so far. So put those applications in. Looking also for bilingual students. So keep them coming, everybody. Thanks. We do want representation from all high schools, all districts in the city so that we really have a very rounded out advisory board. And don't go anywhere. I'm going to put you guys on the spot for you to come back down to the podium. I'm going to defer to Councilor Travis who started us off as the chair of MYAB to see if there's any questions. Okay. Councilor Cassett, do you have an, sorry. That was before my tenure. I apologize. Councilor Cassett, would you like to say any words? Well, I mean, I loved MYAB. I was the chair back in, well, oof. I was a chair in 2020, which was a bit of a rough year for MYAB, of course, where we lost all of our funding and all the kids were home from school, and we were conducting things over Zoom. But it really was such an incredible opportunity to hear about the different ideas that our youth have for how they improve our community. I remember one idea that we, we had $50,000 initially, then everything, everything disappeared with the pandemic, but they were talking about how they could create urban gardens to deal with hunger in the city. So how could we have, you know, fruit trees all over the city recognizing that there were a lot of people that were hungry? And so I, I think it's just such a wonderful opportunity for individuals. Thank you to both of you for serving, and I'm sure that there was a lot of lessons that you all learned. I think it's a, it's a really, you know, great introduction to the complications, the joys, and the pitfalls of government, looking at where bureaucracy sometimes gets in the way of good ideas. And we do look forward to you guys coming back and continuing to serve Santa Fe and wish you the very best of luck, and thank you again for your service. Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Travis. Thank you. Yes. Councilor Cassett passed the opportunity to work with MYAB to me after she was done. I was part of the group when they planned the symposium, and it built really fast because we had a lot of vacancies during that time. We had a lot of new members come forward. They're the ones that put in the work with symposiums. That's the group that also started, like, the youth nights at the GCC. They were the themed events because that was a huge concern is, like, a lot of the youth violence, a lot of the issues that we were seeing in the community was because our youth had nothing productive to do with that time. So they started creating those opportunities. There was collaboration with youth group, the youth group at the Boys and Girls Club, and that name's not coming to me. But, yeah, it was just, you could feel the momentum going. All the kids, I just had the honor of watching. So, it was really incredible. It's fun. It's inspiring to see that we have youth leaders that are really advocating for the future of Santa Fe, because your voices are the ones that matter. We can act like we know what we're talking about in regards to your need, but we don't know. You're the ones that are living it. You're the ones that know what you need to be successful and fulfilled. So the fact that there's advocacy coming from youth voice is really powerful. Keep advocating. Keep being loud. Say what's in your heart. Don't let anyone quiet that down. I think both of you are pretty solid in that regard, so that's great. But, you know, thanks for everything you do, and, yeah, let's keep MYAB going. Thank you. And I will just say that, thank you, Councilor Cassette. They were able to deploy $50,000. They were able to fund projects that they were interested in, including seeding, not necessarily fruit trees, but gardens, and doing a lot of the work that we are continuing to hear around some of the symposium that is going to be coming up. So thank you, Councilor Barrett, for being able to help foster in the next symposium for the youth. And I agree. I think that one thing that I really wanted to see during my tenure was more civic engagement, and I thank both of you for being part of the conversations around how we lead the city, how we're spending our money, for being at, I think, every inauguration. I've seen both of you. So thank you so much for your service. Councilor Figalli, would you like to say anything? I guess I'm the only one who hasn't been the chair of Maya. I feel really left out, but I'm glad that you all had such a great experience and tell your younger friends who are not going off to college yet that we still need members. So thank you so much. Any final thoughts from either of you? Alright. Thank you so much. We appreciate you, and good luck. Thank you. And with that, our next presentation is from Land Use. Very, very excited for this presentation. Yes. My name is Hoyle Cruz Haber. Our land consultant, Matt Goble, is on virtually, who will be presenting where we're at with the Land Development Code update. So I'll let you go ahead and take it from here, Matt. Might be a little, give us a sec. We're going to have to share panelist and get that all going. Sounds good. Can you guys hear me? Yes. It was a little choppy when I was listening to that presentation, so hopefully my internet connection is okay. But it's good to see you all. Good day. I'm happy to be here. The presentation tonight is going to be about, I want to share in the front, you're on my front page, right? You see my title slide? Yes. Great. The presentation is designed as kind of a summary of the visioning workshops that we've been doing with various boards and commissions, getting ready for Phase Two of the current update. Well, are we sharing my screen, or are we sharing one there? We are. So we're seeing it in your window, not in presentation mode. Okay. Let me, I'm showing it in presentation mode, so I'm not sure why it is. Is he a panelist? Okay. Sorry. Well, it doesn't. It's because I've got a double screen, and you're grabbing one of them. Why don't we have our staff share, and then you'll tell us when to go to the next slide. Does that work? Sure. That works fine. You got on the, on the title slide? Perfect. We are on the purpose slide. Purpose slide. Alright. I can, let's just start right in. The purpose of the workshop is to summarize these visioning workshops that we've had with the ARC, the HTRB, the HBOR, and the Planning Commission. These were really helpful in helping us kind of conceptualize what Phase Two of the code update should look like. We got a lot of work done in Phase One. We left a lot of things on the table. The idea in Phase One was to be pretty conservative in terms of substantive changes to the Land Use Code. And the visioning workshops are designed to help us think about how to move forward with Phase Two. I'm going to summarize those workshops for you tonight, and then I'm going to spend the balance of my time talking about what I'm calling the Phase Two path forward. We have designed an installment-based drafting strategy that we think has a lot of benefits, and we can talk about that moving forward. I'm also going to talk about committee structure, which we'd really like to get you all's feedback on. I think public outreach is an essential part of Phase Two of the code update, and I think we've, we've designed a committee structure that is hopefully going to touch all the different bases that we need to moving forward. So next slide. Where are you having, Jenna? Say again? I think we went a little too far. You might have control of those slides. What are you guys seeing right now? We're seeing the Visioning Workshop Summary, but what are you seeing now? We're seeing the May to July 2026 Visioning Workshop. So I do have some, I do have control. Good. The workshops, like I said, were with the Planning Commission, the H Board, and ARS team. In addition to those individual workshops we had with those boards, we've had some important working groups at City Hall. We've formed a working group with the City Attorney's Office and Planning and Land Use, and City Manager's Office has been invited to those as well. The intent there is for that to be an ongoing interdepartmental working group that will oversee all aspects of the code update. We think it's really important that City Attorney's Office and Planning and Land Use have really had frequent conversations about the code update. So that's, that's started to happen, and we've had multiple meetings there. We've also just had ongoing coordination with the General Plan team, which is being supervised by Planning and Land Use, and also just a lot of communication between my team and Planning and Land Use staff. So there's been a lot of input going into this presentation that you see. All the workshops that we did had a common structure. We, first of all, just made sure a common background, a common base of understanding about what's been done so far with the code update and what remains to be done. We talked about the overall, you know, LDC project update goals. We talked about the Phase One work, and we reminded them of the accomplishments that have been done in terms of how much more user-friendly code, a much more streamlined code that eliminated a lot of obsolete material, a lot of redundancy, et cetera. We also talked in the workshops about the new external guidance that has been developed since the Phase One work was started. You all as the governing body have adopted new goals that will guide your time in office, and those have been an important, kind of, organizing tool for us as we've had these conversations. We also summarized where the General Plan is, where that project stands in terms of its, its, its scope and how much remains to be done and how the code project can interplay with that. So that was the background that we did for all the groups. We also then had structured conversation about key topics, and you can see the topics listed there. They generally overlap pretty well with the governing body goals. We chose housing and neighborhood compatibility, process and administration, sustainability and infrastructure, and preservation and design. Now, the three meetings had different levels of emphasis on those four topics. For H Board and for ARC, we focused more on preservation and design for H Board and just on archaeology issues for the ARC. Whereas we focused on all four of these with the, with the governing body, with the Planning Commission. Those were really helpful. You can see a couple of slides there on the right that give you a flavor of the conversation. For each of those topics, we could flag issues that we knew had been popping up in the community about various topics, housing flexibility, what code changes could better support housing diversity, et cetera. And then we identified potential drafting topics, ADUs, missing middle housing, et cetera. And you can see at the bottom, we did the same thing for process and administration. We, we did the same thing for all four topics with Planning Commission. The idea was not to direct their conversation, but it was to provide an organizing framework to make sure that any comments they had about zoning and land use issues that they wanted to be addressed in Phase Two had a place to go, had a place to be slotted into this overall scope. So that was the way we organized these. We also, at the meetings, gave them an introduction to the proposed installment-based drafting strategy, which I will be talking about later in the presentation. So takeaways. What do we, people are very excited moving forward. We heard a lot of enthusiasm, but let's just get going. There was a lot of pent-up demand during the Phase One project. That was frustration, frankly, that Phase One took so long. We had to go back in and clean up a lot of thick cross-references, things like that, after late edits. So I think people are excited to move forward. I think they realize that we need to move forward quickly to reestablish momentum. I think they realize that the installment approach is going to allow for early adoption of early issues. And again, I'll talk to her, but a preview is that, you know, we're proposing three installments, kind of three large buckets of code issues, each of which will be adopted individually. So we're not going to have to wait till the end to get through all the updates to the code. There's going to be three sequential buckets of updates that, that we proceed with. The question for you all, and the question for the city is, is kind of how we organize those installments, and I'll come back to that later. I think people also like the installment approach because it was a good marriage with the General Plan project. You know, the General Plan has a ways to go. It's done a lot so far, but it has a ways to go, and it ultimately will have a new future land use map and future land use categories. And we need to let that process play out so that we can then circle back in the code update and actually provide the zoning tools to implement the, the new General Plan. So I think people recognize when we talked about it, the, the sequencing of the General Plan and the code and, and how that, that worked well. Another takeaway is that, you know, we have a lot of discussions internally. I really, how to address ongoing legislative actions and their interplay with longer-term code updates. There's a, there's a, there's a process in Santa Fe by which legislative updates and proposals are considered regularly. They pop up all the time as issues arise in the community. And the code project needs to recognize that and try to work with that existing process of, of considering new legislative actions. So, we just had conversations about that. We haven't solved it yet. But the idea was that maybe we can think of a way to kind of slow down the fire hose a little bit of all the ongoing legislative updates and funnel those into a regularized system of updates in, in the overall code project so that each one of those, you know, individual policy issues can be considered holistically with the full code. So I think that'll be more clear when I talk about what the installments consist of, but I just want to give you a heads up that we, we have been having a lot of conversations about that issue. Another takeaway. Governing body, we talked with some of you all, the Planning Commission. You offered refinements to the installment-based drafting approach, and you provided targeted input. We got, we had some good conversations there. You know, people talked about, you know, Santa Fe does a good job of preventing what you don't like, but you don't always do a good job of encouraging what you do like, and how can we design a code that, that does that? How can we think about dancing or creatively or productively, constructively? So those were very good conversations, and they touched all of those four topics. With the H Board and ARC, they were more targeted. Those were good conversations as well. We, we pressed the H Board. We know that there's a lot of discussion in the community about their role and the role of preservation in the color. And we really raised some big questions about, you know, how to balance preservation, compatibility, and architectural evolution. Right now, you've got a preservation ordinance that some people refer to as a styles ordinance because it's really focused on ensuring that new development meets certain architectural styles as opposed to really being organized around protecting historic integrity, which a lot of other communities have as the focus of their ordinances. So you've got a real design focus in Santa Fe. You've got a real preservation focus in Santa Fe. There are a lot of questions about how to marry the historic districts' focus with the larger design focus in the city. We tried to engage the H-Board in that conversation. We got a lot of enthusiastic discussion. They're going to talk more. They have a lot of conversations about how much change is really needed here. Are we talking about tweaking what we have in the preservation ordinance? Are we talking about a full overhaul? There might be some minor tweaks in terms of new definitions, things like that. But we have talked about some bigger changes. Maybe there's been a long-time thought that the Downtown and East Side Historic District really could be two historic districts. They've got two different character areas. They've got two different types of standards, one more commercial, one more residential. Maybe there's an opportunity here to think big and think about a little bit more structural improvement: how to modify the district standards. Many of you looked in the Phase One update at potential new historic district standards that were drafted 20-plus years ago. Ultimately, those were not included in the Phase One code. But there does need to be improvement in those standards, and that now can proceed on a more, I think, methodical, measured approach, along with the rest of the code. And like I mentioned, the relationship with preservation to general design. H-Board, there's a lot of work to do there. This Phase Two project is probably going to take 18 months or so. The idea is that they need to form a subcommittee. The subcommittee could be all of the H-Board. It could be a subset of the H-Board. But we are encouraging that that subcommittee also include external members. You've got the authority to do that in Santa Fe. You've got precedent for doing that. We think there should be, for example, at least one Planning Commission member and one governing body member, and we've already talked with Councilor Cassett about serving in that capacity as the governing body member. We also think potentially there could be some additional outside design support as well. So to be determined is what that subcommittee looks like. I've got a slide later on that talks just about committees, and we'll come back to that there. I just want to be a little bit mindful of time, so we might want to run through the next few slides a little bit. I'll go fast. ARC, interest in meaningful rethink of ARC role and architectural clearance permit process. I've got "clearance" in quotes. There's a lot of discussion about whether or not the process is really resulting in a meaningful review. They'd like to do some big thinking as well. So Phase Two path forward. I talked about this three-installment drafting strategy. Basically, you do it sequentially. You adopt each one. You avoid one massive draft. You allow more focused engagement. You coordinate better with the general plan. I think you can build momentum as well. What do those look like? We have conceived these as how the code works and how development is designed and where development occurs. How the code works is the early action stuff. This is process modernization. These are things that we think you all can jump in and make some real improvements on in terms of streamlining the customer experience, without really having to wait for the general plan update. But what does that mean? I've got some examples on the right-hand part of the slide. Administrative reforms. Look at E and M. Look at permit coordination. Look at the appeals process. There are a lot of things that can be done there to streamline and improve the customer experience. You're already doing some of those, like with the adoption of e-permit reviews. There's more that could be done. You need to make some quick wins on housing and affordability. That is a big focus of the city's officials at all levels. We heard that quite a bit. And enforcement and code cleanup could be done as well. So that's installment one. Installment two is how development is designed. This is really where we get into the meat of the code. How do you think about site design? How do you think about building design? This is where preservation would be. There's some dependency on the new general plan, but for the most part, these can move forward while that still continues. This is going to require more thought, though. This requires more public engagement. These are big topics. Residential compatibility, thinking through maybe some calibration of residential districts, sustainability would be slotted in here, parking modernization, landscaping, and all the preservation work that I talked about would be slotted into installment two. The H-Board liked this idea. They initially thought some of their stuff was pressing enough that it should be in installment one, but they actually came around to the idea that it all should be looked at together, and they like the installment two approach. Installment three. This is the pieces about where development occurs. This is what's based on the new future land use map from the general plan. And this is stuff about district structure. This is where the mapping is done. This is where the new zoning map is looked at. And this is the piece I've said several times: this is a piece that has to coordinate with the general plan. This is where you might have new zoning districts. This is where we might be able to talk about broader simplification of the zoning districts in Santa Fe. So those are the big drafting buckets. We've had good conversations with the City Attorney's Office. I think they appreciate the thematic approach that I laid out. They would really like to see a sequential approach. However, that really focuses more on putting all the edits for one article together. We've tried to do that here. You see that summarized. This is just to show how the pieces of the code will be affected by those installments that I listed. My final slide here, proposed committee structure. I will spend a minute here. We've got four committees down the left-hand column. First of all is a technical working group. This would be the new equivalent of the old COG and Talk, the Citizens Working Group and the Technical Working Group. We don't think we need two moving forward. This would be the external stakeholders, people that work in the community, work in doing business in Santa Fe. This is the group that would really be a testing ground for all the ideas that we put out. There's some discussion about how this group will be formed. I think the idea is that a competitive application process will be used. Second column, second row, interdepartmental work group. This is the group I mentioned that has been formed so far with the City Attorney's Office and Planning and Land Use. This would be kind of providing leadership for the code. They would be at all the meetings. The City Manager's Office ideally would be at all of them as well. Other departments could join on an as-needed basis. If it needs to be water, if it needs to be public works, they could join. This is a group that would internally coordinate to make sure all the work that Santa Fe is doing is being considered as part of the code update. Third row, Planning Commission subcommittee. This is the group that really has the overall policy oversight for the code update. Policy direction, sequencing, issue resolution. If we start to hear different results from some of the other committees, the Planning Commission subcommittee is the one that's intended to really help reconcile this. This will be a subset of the Planning Commission. It's already identified. We think maybe there's a role for one H-Board member to be on there as well. It's already established, but there is not an H-Board member out there right now. And then the final row here is that HDRP working group that I mentioned. This is the group that looks at preservation policy. This is the only substantive topic that we've proposed getting its own committee. It's a working group. We think it's meaty enough and significant enough to the city that it deserves this individual treatment. With that, I just have final slides. We're moving forward with an assessment report that summarizes everything we know that needs to be done in Phase Two. We're codifying this installment-based traffic strategy, but we'd like to get your all's feedback. Great. Thank you so much. And I don't know if we have any additional comments from the Land Use Department. Counselors, are we ready for questions? All of them are going to go pretty fast. Originally, we've kind of thrown out the end of 2026 as that date. There's been a little bit of pushback on that. Maybe it needs to be the first quarter of 2027. But for the most part, we're going to move fast on that. Then 2027, the balance of it will be installment three. Sorry, could you say that one more time? I think we lost you for a second. 2026 or 2027? Installment one would be the balance of 2026, maybe in the first quarter of 2027. Installment two would be the balance of 2027. And then installment three would be the first half of 2028. All to be determined, but that's a plan. Okay, thank you so much. And since we have Councilor Cassett online, I'm going to start with her on questions. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. I'm actually good with questions. I did have a very recent meeting with Matt and the Land Use team regarding this process. We talked a lot about, obviously, architectural design and the challenges with the H-Board came up a bit, as was referenced. But also the discussion around how do we get a diversity of voices on some of these different topics. And so, I would just reiterate that now, as we're looking at these working groups, how do we make sure, especially when it gets to some of these really complex policy issues that are going to have a lot of very strong opinions? When we get to density, when we get to height, how do we really have those conversations and understand the impact of making those changes versus not making those changes? And I think that's going to be a really challenging topic. I also feel like we might be able to utilize some of the recent development approvals that people are unhappy about as a way to get people involved, because I feel like there's a lot of focus and an opportunity to understand the complexities around land use. So, I had the opportunity to really dig in and chat. I think we went over the meeting by a good 15, 20 minutes, and we were longer than we were supposed to. So, yeah, I'm just looking forward to really getting started and moving forward. So thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Chavez. Thank you. I just have a comment on the subcommittees. I just want to make sure that if we're doing work as an extension of the committees that already exist, the makeup of those subcommittees look different. Because if they don't, all we're doing is taking the same understanding, voice, expertise, and opinion and just extending meeting time. I think subcommittees should bring other people to the table. For instance, if I thought I saw in there how Santa Fe has evolved, that subcommittee should pull someone in to be part of it that can talk about the need based on how Santa Fe has evolved. So I would recommend that as subcommittees, there should be maybe a representation from the original committees, but I don't think they should be the majority from those committees. I think that voice has been captured. They spend lots of time together, and they've been doing lots of work together. What needs to happen is a representative needs to take that work, take it to a subcommittee with different opinions, thoughts, and experts to really get to the bottom of concerns and come to solutions. So I just want to highlight that. I think our community would be pretty disappointed if they see that we're creating more committees that are exactly the same as the committees that already exist. And so I just want us to be very mindful of that. It's not productive in my opinion, and I think a lot of community members would agree with me. But that's all I wanted to say. Thank you. And thank you so much, Councilor. Councilor Barrett. Yeah, not too much to say here. Thanks. It's very informative. I'm just excited. I know you say there's a lot of community pressure. Let's see it. Let's, you know, let's see it unfold. We're all excited. So, you know, the flexibility in zoning, right, because of our housing shortage. I know we're going to have this housing summit and talk about it and kind of the lack thereof of all kinds of housing in Santa Fe. So I'm just excited to see how it all unfolds. I'm excited to see some more possible flexibility in how we build in Santa Fe and thinking about it in a creative and different way. And, yeah, thank you. Councilor, Councilor Falgali. Thank you. I've also spoken with Matt and with Landis about some of this. But my question is, so installment two is on here as the targeted policy and development standards updates. Does that—that's going to take a really long time. Are we starting that now? Is that part of the working groups that are being formed now for installment one? Or just explain that for us. That's a great question, Councilor. Yes, we would be starting really all three of the installments immediately. We would just make more forward progress on installment one first. Installment one would—two would kind of percolate in the background. It would really get going and take more public focus after installment one gets adopted. But there's a lot of stuff we can do on the installment two work immediately, you know, laying out the topics, you know, for the preservation group, helping them kind of get through those initial, you know, policy debates. That's going to happen during the same time that installment one is being worked on. Okay, thank you. Yeah, because I think those discussions about, like Councilor Cassel was saying, or all the councilors, about the housing, about, you know, density and historic, and those are going to take a while. And I think if we start now, maybe we will have ideas next year about what we should be doing. So thank you. Thank you, Councilor. And as usual, when you go last, everybody takes your comments and your diversity of voices comments. I am a little concerned about the process and efficiency. So there was a discussion about the city attorney's office suggesting that we go through in a more linear way through the code. Could you please just give us a little more context about that conversation? Sure. You know, I've tried to characterize what I think is their goal. They just want to make sure that the document is updated one time, and we don't have to kind of touch multiple parts of the document multiple times. I think that's where they're going. The idea is that, you know, we do all the article one edits first, all the article two edits later. They also have made some really good comments about minimizing the nesting in the document. So bringing topics up and having fewer, you know, really detailed cross-references, bringing things up and having more high-level topics, high-level headings. I think it makes sense in some ways, but I think there needs to be a compromise here. We, you know, article three is the zone districts, and we can't wait to do article—we can't do the article three immediately before four and five because we're not going to have the substance to write the new chapter until the general plan is done. So we can't really wait on general on article three. And so I'm—we're trying to reconcile that. Thank you. And I appreciate that. I think part of, at least from where I'm sitting, my concern would be efficiency and how we're rolling some of these things out. And if there is low-hanging fruit that we could move forward more quickly, if there is a way to maybe not work directly article one, article two, article three, but work on some things that we all fairly agree on and we feel we can move quickly. The other piece, and so I'll leave that there. I think it's important that we have that discussion with legal, and I would be happy to continue that conversation. Sure. The other piece is community input. So this process is a little different than we saw when dealing with community partners, similar to how you have the technical working group, but we had community partners at the table. I don't see a really built-out way to get community input except for at large. Is there a way to, and I apologize to Councilor Travis's point, how do we include more voices in this process? Subcommittees seem like a good way. I don't know if historic is the only subtopic that would be very interesting to people. I think that, you know, the way that we have accessibility to services like the Genoveva Center and making sure that we have enough community centers and amenities for our residents is going to be a huge topic as well. So how are we sort of deciding these buckets of experts? Great question. I'll talk specifically about community partners first. There's been a lot of conversations about community partners with the general plan, and should we replicate that approach in the code update? I think that's still a live conversation. You know, I mentioned our stakeholder, our technical working group. Some people said, well, let's just put some of the community partners on there. Other people have said, no, we need to have more opportunity for open input and not just force people to kind of come in through established organizations. So I think, you know, that is still a live conversation. That's why that group hasn't been formed yet. But we're trying to think through how to thread that needle about open input on that committee structure versus those community partners. Your other point about making sure that we're not just getting feedback through the committees is great. We're probably going to have a lot of focus groups or a lot of just individual topic meetings where we convene meetings maybe just about lighting or just meetings about open space, or it could be residential neighborhoods. I think those are often done in code projects. We can supplement the committee structure as we need to with individual workshops or open houses about specific topics, and we're going to do that. It's going to—that's going to happen throughout the course of the project. Thank you so much. And I just want to caution us. I mean, this sounds like it's a very lengthy process. I don't think that we're going to get everything we want in the first version of this. And I do see as part of the drafting strategies that we don't want to see one massive draft like we saw the first time. It was very difficult for the legislative team. So thank you. I appreciate the presentation, and we hope to see you again soon. Great. Thank you. Any final thoughts that you have for us? No, I'm happy to be here. Looking forward to it. Thank you so much. Great. With that, Marcela, I think those are all our presentations. We do have public comment if you would like to come up to the podium. No worries. We'll get your time wrapped if possible, two minutes. And just noting that I did put on everyone's day as your written statement. I'm not sure that your mic is on. Make sure that green light is lit up. I'm green. Hey, can you hear me? My name is Jim Heath. I'm a long-time member of the Santa Fe community. I've lived here for 35 years. For the last, oh, 15 years, I've been in this room many, many times protesting residential housing development. To me, it has gotten way out of hand. I fought the last 10 years against the former council members about residential housing permits, specifically related to the fact that Santa Fe has not, for many, many years, updated its general plan, which it should have done and was promised it never had. More importantly, there was supposed to have been a water supply analysis conducted by an outside analytical process over the years, which has not happened. So until a general plan is adopted, vetted, brought before the public, discussed by this governing body, and approved, and until a thorough water study has been done, I will continue to protest any new permits for residences, either housing other than low cost. I accept low cost. But normal residential, and I'm also not—I'm not in favor of this affordable housing BS as far as I'm concerned. Okay? So if it's residential housing, I am opposed, and I will continue to stand up here until my final days and do this for Santa Fe. Santa Fe has no housing shortage, contrary to popular opinion. As a matter of fact, I think there's an overabundance of housing that's been done in the last few years because of, I think, mismanagement by the former. So that's one thing I had on my mind. I have— And I'm so sorry. Your time is up, but we do have your written statements. Go ahead and finish your thought. Right. One other thing, specifically, I will come back next week because I came this week thinking there was a council meeting. But I'm going to come back, and I will have this to all the members. You'll have a chance to read it, and I will deal with the rest of what I had to say at that time. Thank you very much. Thank you so very much. We appreciate your time. I don't see anyone else in chambers. We generally don't do online. Is anyone online? All right. So we will move on to matters from staff. Thank you, Chair Castro. My matters from staff tonight is actually a shout-out. I really wanted to take a moment this evening to send just an immense amount of gratitude to our staff in our recreation division at the city. This past weekend, we hosted at multiple city facilities the JB White tournament, which was an amazing success. I hope Jude has napped ever since Sunday. But one of the things that kind of goes unseen is the amount of work that our recreation staff put into making sure events like that can happen. Hopefully, council and community were able to go out to the event even if they weren't participating. And I can tell you, Sunday morning, I walked into the Genoveva Chavez Community Center, and there was an ice rink completely full of people doing a hockey goalie camp and, actually, figure skating as well. There were hundreds of people in the basketball gym. There were over 100 people in the leisure pool. There were people using the gym. And that is just, in community services, we talk about how we are serving our community really from birth all the way through the golden years. And we talk a lot in this community about prevention and social health and social determinants of health. And opportunities like the GCCC and our community centers and our recreation centers really make a huge impact in our community and the wellness there. The unsung heroes of that are our recreation staff. There are staff, our frontline staff, who are working tirelessly to make sure that the facility is clean, to make sure that people are welcome, to make sure that there's adequate parking. So just a huge shout-out to our recreation staff, and not just at the GCCC, also at all of our facilities. In addition to that, I really wanted to thank our facilities maintenance crew, our custodial staff, because they too, with probably a thousand people at one time in the GCCC just this weekend alone, the floors were clean, trash was taken care of, there's toilet paper, there's paper towels. There are things that you don't notice until they're a problem, and our staff do a remarkable job of making sure that these things are taken care of. So I wanted just tonight a really big shout-out to everyone who's working hard to get things done. We also this summer are wrapping up our summer programs. We served over 500 kids this summer, and every summer. But that type of work, that type of collaboration, what it takes to not only serve 500 kids but staff the youth who are often charged with caring for those kids is no easy feat, and our recreation division does a phenomenal job. So just a shout-out. Thank you, guys, all. Thank you, Director Emery. Director Nelson: Great. Thank you. Good evening, Madam Chair and members of the council. Great to be here this evening and hear the wonderful presentation from Land Use. We had a couple of updates. First of all, I want to welcome a new staff member. I think I've been pumping this position up for quite a time, but we finally have our Cell Site Business Coordinator on staff. This has been, my goodness, a work in progress for a very long time. Thanks to the leadership from our council for really advocating for this position. Her name is Bernadette Gomez, finishing up her second week and already just hitting community organizations and meeting people. In fact, I think she's at the Southwest College celebration that they're having right now. They're a great partner of ours out on Airport Road, and I'm going to try to get over there after this meeting. So I encourage you if you want to reach out, setting up meetings and getting to know her and her initiatives, all for it. A couple more updates. As you know, we have the Spur Business Grant application period end, and we had our evaluation Monday. And that evaluation committee was made up of EDAC members as well as EDD staff. And I want to let you and let the public know we had $1,600,000 of requests. About 100 applications came in from businesses. Unfortunately, we only had a pot of about $200,000. So if you can imagine, as we start making these announcements, we're really going to be working with our businesses that apply to point them in other directions of additional funding and really look to the need that we're wanting to solve within our community. But thanks to EDAC, thanks to EDD staff for putting in the time. That was a phenomenal amount of work. As you know, evaluating applications is very complicated, complex, and we had about a five-hour meeting on Monday. We will be presenting this list of recommendations to the Mayor and Councilor Cassatt as well as myself to be that final review of those businesses, but I'm happy and eager to chat with you all if you want to ask questions or explore that process as we look to the next round. If we want to do this again, what tweaks and improvements do you want to make? I will mention, put this seed in your brain to think about. Currently, our application was very broad and covered pretty much any industry, including those outside of our targeted industries. We did have our priority areas of really looking to make sure this money made some impact. I might look at and consider regarding improvements. Can we make this more specific? Maybe it's industry-specific. Maybe it's just for equipment, et cetera. So think about that if you've got ideas of how the next round could be even more impactful to our community to meet that need. A couple of events that are coming up, I just want to make sure they're on your radar. I'm really excited about a few of them. These are happening next week. On Tuesday, we have the Beyond Profit event. It's actually a double-header for us on Tuesday, but Beyond Profit is our initiative that we help support with Creative Santa Fe. The topic is regenerative agriculture. So we have some of our leaders in this field supporting food systems, urban agriculture, SFCC with their controlled environment ag, Desert Verde, which is a big leader. So I'm really excited to continue this conversation that's really important to our community, seeing where innovation is impacting some challenges like water that was just brought up. The other event that I want to make sure is on your consciousness for that night is our Books Behind Business. The other one was Beyond Profit. This is not Books Beyond. This is Books Behind Profit. Lots of B's. Books Behind the Business. This is our book club, supporting local entrepreneur leaders, and we're featuring Jamie Schulz with SWIA. And my goodness, what a local hero and leader, and she's going to be talking about The Art of War, one of the classics. And this will be at the Community Gallery down the road, a joint effort with Arts and Culture. Such a fun event. I really encourage you, after the nonprofit, split yourselves and your assistants and your family somehow. Get to both of these events. It's a hard lineup, but we're really excited to kick off August, which is Native American Heritage Month. So we're really looking to help promote some of our native supporting initiatives, entrepreneurs, and organizations, and really getting excited for Indian Market. Books or Bikes for Business, another B. Triple B is coming up also next week, and we'll be biking to Hotel Glorietta. Really excited about that one. I really appreciate the leadership again from coming from the councilors, to get the word out about this event. And the last one, also, I think this is next week on the 30th. We are hosting a really great information session for our businesses that are interested in becoming vendors, not only with the city but with other governmental or institutional entities. We've got the county, city, Apex Accelerator, trying to get a few more lined up, but this is a great opportunity for businesses that are interested in growing to understand what it takes to become a vendor, how to catch those RFPs and RFQs and all of the opportunities for contracting. These can be really great growth tools for our businesses that are interested in growing. And that concludes my updates. Thanks to you. Thank you so much. Of course. Thank you so much, Director. And I just wanted to give you the shout-out. As usual, when you do your job well, you sometimes don't get the credit. So you're doing so much. Thank you for being in all the events. Economic Development is doing amazing work. Matters from the committee. I will start this way. Councilor Vergale, you want to start? There's a little switch up there. Yeah, we had some really great events. The Plaza Concerts have been amazing. The Railyard Concerts have been amazing. The World Cup final at the Railyard was hundreds of people. I don't know how many, but a lot, and we did not get poured on. There was not lightning on us. That was great. And, yeah, I think we're doing a good job. So thanks. Councilor Barrett: I just wanted to kind of piggyback on the shout-out from Director Emery for the summer program. It was the first time my daughter has participated. She really looked forward to it. It's so fun. It's so affordable. As everybody knows, I really want to expand it. We're in conversations maybe to make that happen for next year, talking to the school board, right? Talking to all parties involved. So I'd love to expand that. So important for working families because we've heard from working families that there's not enough childcare in the summer. What are you supposed to do? And affordable because the camps are really expensive. So I wanted to shout that out too. And the Teen Center that now that my son's a member, he really enjoys going. He loves the free food. He's made some new friends. So it's just an amazing, you know, that you can just go there and meet people, and he's gone there. He's a shy guy. If he's watching, he'd be really embarrassed that he knew that I was talking about him, but that you could just go there, even if your friends aren't there and meet people, and it's just a really amazing opportunity, so I wanted to shout that out too. Councilor Travis: Thank you. I also wanted to shout out staff for the JB White Foundation basketball tournament. Gray, who wanted to go, my 14-year-old was actually sick this weekend, so we were stuck at home with him. But I got updates from Jude and some fire. They were sending me pictures. The posts were amazing. Yeah, it was just really wonderful to see that all that all happened. It was the first time that the city was heavily involved in this event, and we, Jude and I proposed it, and they really ran with it. And so shout out also to Councilor Faulkner. I believe it was Councilor Faulkner. She helped me with sponsoring so that we could lower cost for that, which is a great thing because they give scholarships. They support with athletic equipment. They, you know, are sending that message about gun violence and trying to create opportunities for youth to engage in extracurricular activities so that they're not caught in kind of what's out there right now in regards to youth violence, which I think we see is a huge issue. So shout out to Jude and the city for just really supporting her. She's needed the support for this event, and I think that she felt it. Since she's not here, I can't say it. The Back to School Bash, 12 to 4 next Saturday. Thank you to all city members that are assisting with that as well. There's more vendors than I think there was last year is what I'm hearing. More supply donations, more all of the good stuff. So I would check it out. And I think that's it for now. So thank you. Thank you for your leadership always. Thank you. Councilor Kessett. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. I think pretty much everything's been well covered, but I, Councilor Chavez also deserves a lot of recognition for these cities' involvement in the JB White tournament. Her advocacy was extremely important. Staff was very supportive, but they're also very busy. And so she did a wonderful job of making sure that people continue to move forward with it and creating those connections. So she deserves a lot of that recognition for bringing the city along. And, of course, you know, the incredible work that Jude does. It's hard not to want to get involved when you speak with her, and she's just a really inspiring hard worker. So very, very happy that the city was there and supportive this year, that we were able to make it more affordable and that they didn't have to spend as much money putting on the tournament. So more of those dollars could be going towards helping our youth and, of course, the recreation staff. I also want to echo Councilor Barrett's sentiments around the summer program. It is really, really quite a godsend, honestly. Summer is challenging. Summer is expensive, and the city program being there for so many individuals is really wonderful, and my family has benefited as well. And Councilor Barrett, I'm with you that we really need to figure out how to expand this program. And at the end of the day, a lot of it's money, staff, and location. And between us and the schools, we should be able to figure that out. So we have, I don't know, what, seven months to get that taken care of. So let's make sure that we really focus on that for the rest of the year. And that's all. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councilor. Thank you, Councilors, for your plugs. Matters from the Chair. I am surprised that nobody talked about the traditional Spanish Market that is this weekend, July 25 and 26. So we hope to see you there, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM every day. I also want to thank staff for some of the amazing work that they've been doing. I know we've all been struggling with committees and subcommittees, and we're trying to figure that out. You put in some really long hours and do some hard work. Sandy was able to meet with some of us, especially the new councilors, to update us on the Connect network and some of the great work that you're doing through that. We're getting a lot more reports and information from a lot of our divisions that we're going to be hearing at, I guess, matters from staff in particular. So I just, so everyone's aware, I requested. I know we're going to be getting some ShotSpotter data. We're going to be getting some more feedback from some of the meetings that we had. We had a meeting recently with downtown vendors that Maciek was able to present at. And also, thank you so much, Councilor Chavez, for allowing us to present at Public Safety yesterday around some of the stuff that we're doing, some of the events and changes we're making to the plaza. So if anybody has concerns, continue to reach out to us. We are currently working on some amendments and trying to hear everyone's voices with all of the uses that we have in our public spaces. That being said, this is sort of the first time I'm publicly saying that we don't seem to have a very clear internal policy about capacity in our outdoor spaces. And this came up in a meeting at Fort Marcy recently, so I am working with Geronimo to see if we can get a more solid policy. If anybody has concerns around outdoor events, please reach out to me. And with that, we are adjourned until August 5. Thank you.