Quality of Life Committee Wed, Sep 2, 2026 · Quality of Life Committee https://santafeminutes.space/meeting/995-quality-of-life-sep-2-2026 == Executive Summary == The Quality of Life Committee met on 09/02/2026, approving its agenda and a consent agenda with one item pulled for separate discussion. A significant portion of the meeting focused on the critical work of immigration services providers, Las Cumbres and the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center (NMILC). Both organizations presented their achievements in providing legal aid, community education, and family preparedness resources to Santa Fe's immigrant population, highlighting the high demand for their services and the importance of client anonymity and data protection. The committee also discussed the effectiveness of direct cash assistance programs and small business grants, noting their positive impact on the community. A key decision made by the committee was the unanimous approval of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. This MOU, supporting Executive Order 2025-358, aims to combat drug trafficking, violent crimes, and public safety threats in Northern New Mexico, including Santa Fe. The initiative will provide $750,000 in state funds for overtime reimbursement and equipment for participating agencies, with the Santa Fe Police Department focusing on disrupting drug trafficking within the city while connecting individuals struggling with addiction to services. The meeting concluded with updates on various city programs, including economic development initiatives, library programs, senior services, and the reopening of the GCCC. == Key Decisions == - Approved the meeting agenda. - Approved the consent agenda, with Item H pulled for separate discussion. - Approved the Memorandum of Understanding with the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management to address drug trafficking and public safety threats. == Motions & Votes == - Motion to approve the agenda — Passed unanimously. - Motion to approve the consent agenda as amended, with Item H pulled — Passed unanimously. - Motion to approve the Memorandum of Understanding with the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management — Passed unanimously (Councilor Feghali: Yes, Councilor Barrett: Yes, Councilor Chavez: Yes, Councilor Cassette: Yes, Madam Chair: Yes). == Public Comment == Representatives from Las Cumbres (Stacy Frymire and Allegra Love) and the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center (Ali Calsadilla Sandujo) provided detailed overviews of their immigration services, impact, and client demographics, emphasizing positive outcomes and community needs. Councilor Cassett expressed appreciation for the presentations and stressed the importance of client anonymity and data protection. Chair Castro highlighted the availability of created toolkits on the city website. Ms. Woods described the rapid response to recent arrests, providing legal assistance to affected families. Another speaker emphasized the ongoing need for funding to combat increasing enforcement actions and scams. Councilor Barrett inquired about directing individuals to legitimate information and services. == Topics == - Immigrant Services Funding - Drug Trafficking & Violent Crime - Immigrant Legal Aid - Community Education & Workshops - Economic Development Initiatives - Senior Services & Programs - Recreation Center Improvements - Lifeguard Hiring & Pool Hours - Homelessness Strategic Plan - Teen Center Anniversary == Full Transcript == Are we live, Mike? Madam Chair, Councilor Castro, we are live. Wonderful. Thank you so much. So at 5:01, I would like to call to order the Quality of Life Committee. If I could please get a roll call, Marcella. Councilor Feghali? Here. Councilor Barrett? Here. Councilor Cassutt? Here. Madam Chair? Presente. Madam Chair, you have a quorum. Quorum. Wonderful. We also have a forum where we can talk about stuff, which is wonderful. We haven't been here in this space for a little bit. We're a little rusty. No worries. Next on our agenda, I would entertain some motions if folks like the agenda. Motion to approve? Second. All in favor? And I'm so sorry, Steph. Do we have Councilor Chavez online? Okay. So all in favor? Aye. All opposed? That motion passes. We do have one thing that was pulled off the consent agenda, at least one item, Item H. If you could read the captioning. I'm so sorry. I'm just That's okay. Request for approval of a Memorandum of Understanding with the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management to support Executive Order 2025-358 with police personnel and resources to address crimes related to drug trafficking, violent crimes, and public safety threats. Do we have anything else that needs to be pulled off the consent agenda? If not, I would entertain a motion. Move to approve as amended. Second. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion passes. Staff, with Marcella or Sandy, if we could just watch for Councilor Chavez when she does, please. Also, I think, Director Nelson. Wonderful. Thank you for joining us, Director Nelson. We appreciate you doing double duty being at a conference and being here with us. The next thing on our agenda is a wonderful presentation, which we've been waiting for for a while. So Kristen, I will turn it over to you. Good evening, Chair Castro, Quality of Life Committee. My name is Kristen Woods. I'm a Program Manager in the Youth and Family Services Division here at the City of Santa Fe. I'm here today to talk to you about some contracts that we have with some amazing immigration organizations here in Santa Fe. So, we were awarded in the division one-time funds, in the total of $250,000. I do have a presentation. I do have it plugged in. Sorry. We'll get some IT help. No. Okay. While IT helps out, I am going to just keep telling you a little bit more. So we received a total allocation of $250,000 in one-time funds. And we have two contracts with Las Cumbres that were a result, or we had all of these contracts have actually been completed, just to be clear. So we had two contracts with Las Cumbres. Can I go to the next slide, Lydia? Oh, no. Okay. Thank you. So one of them, oops, sorry. One of them was for community education and workshops for immigrants, and that was for a total of $50,000. And the second one was for direct services to immigrants, and that was for a total of $60,000. We also have some contracts with New Mexico Immigrant Law Center. That was for immigrant-related education workshops and service provider trainings for a total of $50,000, legal aid to immigrant children and their parents for $60,000. Yay. And finally, development of a comprehensive Santa Fe-specific immigration toolkit for $30,000, and that has been a huge All of these have made a huge difference in our community. And with that, I'm going to stop talking because we're here to hear from our amazing providers about their work in the community. So I'll pass it first to Las Cumbres. And Quality of Life Committee, I really appreciate this opportunity to quickly share an overview with you. Our organization has been a nonprofit since 1971. So for 55 years, we've been doing a wide range of programming for adults with developmental disabilities, children, and families across Northern New Mexico. Here in Santa Fe, we've developed some really special immigration-related services, and that's what I'll be highlighting for you today. And I know we need to move quickly through these slides, but I'll just provide an overview. In addition to the Santuario del Corazon program that's Santa Fe-based, we also have two federally funded awards to support trauma-affected refugees and survivors of torture. Some of those clients are here in Santa Fe, and many are in Albuquerque. Here in town, the toolkits that Kristen referenced were really located within our dedicated Welcome Center, which is a space that we have created specifically for this population. And it is a zero-barrier hub to provide direct services to immigrants and offer supports for our community partners. So Kristen already overviewed the two toolkits we received, again, for direct services. These really were about providing comprehensive navigation for families, limited mental health supports, legal services through our contractor Allegra Love, and emergency financial assistance for clients. We also provided a wide range of community education and workshops that had a lot of focus around know your rights, family protections, trauma-informed practices for providers working with this population, and self-care for practitioners. I will move ahead just to highlight some of the numbers that we were delighted actually to be able to produce through this city funding as well as some other blended resources. We aim to serve 36 family members and 24 people, around 60 people, with this funding and ended up providing enrolled services to over almost 170 people. And because our Welcome Center became known as a space for people to access for really immediate, direct assistance, ended up providing services through walk-in opportunities for 335. So there's some additional numbers here. We just had a lot of success helping people access resources, emergency funding, and basic needs assistance related to housing and employment. The other track with our community education and workshops, again, had a lot of focus on know your rights, social services navigation, wellness and mental health supports, and community and safety preparedness. Through our Welcome Center, this funding also supported a dedicated wellness coordinator who developed specialized culturally attuned program for our families. So you can see we developed and delivered quite a few workshops. Some of those were smaller opportunities through the Welcome Center, others larger through the community. 412 people received training through this funding, and we had a lot of success in our outcomes in terms of participants reporting improved understanding and knowledge, really feeling satisfied with the training, and even improved access to services. So I'd love for Allegra to just briefly maybe join me and highlight some of your success specifically in the legal sphere. Sphere. Oh, okay. Sorry. I'm such a just a mess at these things. So we part of what I'm trying to offer in Santa Fe through this program is an answer to the question of when someone a family is facing deportation proceeding specifically or family members detained by ICE, how can they get immediate services and consult and representation for that? That's been a gap that we have in our community. We have a lot of really robust, you're about to hear, like, nonprofit service partners, but it's really, really hard to find someone who can accompany you in the actual, like, court cases for removal defense and someone who can be there, like, in the event of an arrest to help triage all the things that need to happen when someone's detained by ICE. So when I came back from my job on the border last year, I called Las Cumbres and said, like, here's what I want to be. I want to provide this this immediate service, and Las Cumbres is like, let's do it. So as part of that, just the numbers we pulled Well, also, one other thing we're doing is we're creating a very, very We have this program we started called, which is to create emergency plans in the event of an ICE arrest where people come in before the crisis and create a relationship and give their information and sort of connect with the law office ahead of time. So if there is a crisis with the family, we're 10 steps ahead of where we need to be rather than 10 steps behind. And, like, already, I've been finding things and connecting people, and people are coming through the office because we had that initial contact. And we're doing all the follow-up, and we're starting to get their family more defense around the idea of detention and deportation. That if we it happened in the middle of a crisis, we wouldn't have been able to do anything. So with numbers for that in the last year, I've done 160 individual consultations, and that's just the first one. I have not been tracking all the follow-ups as well, but 160 individual consultations. And that represents 380 people in those households. Great. And now we are going to pass it over to, so we have Julia's email here. That was Stacy Frymire and Allegra Love. Thank you so much. And now we're going to pass it over for real this time to Holly from NMILC. Thank you. Hi. Chair Castro, Quality of Life Committee. My name is Ali Calsadilla Sandujo. I'm here from New Mexico Immigrant Law Center. I'm the Training and Grant Partnerships Manager. So NMILC was founded in 2010. We provide free legal assistance and resources for immigrants in New Mexico. Our mission is to advance justice and equity by empowering low-income immigrant communities, and we do this through collaborative legal services, advocacy, education, and community resources. So as Kristen mentioned, these were the priorities for fiscal year 2026, immigration legal services, developing a family preparedness toolkit, running community education workshops and trainings in the community. And we also are being funded through the city to do navigation support services through the Human Services Commission. So for immigration legal services, we know that this, immigration legal services help Santa Fe families remain together, secure work authorization and immigration status, and this builds safer, more stable futures for families. The types of cases that we are working with are visas and green cards for victims of abuse and violence, visas and green cards for abandoned, abused, and neglected children, asylum applications, work permit applications, some immigration court cases. And so we, the grant deliverables for YFSD was 30 people, and the one for HSC was 42. But we have served 430 clients in Santa Fe. And we know that Santa Fe is very diverse. You know, the majority of the people that we serve are ages 19 to 65. The majority of clients we served are Hispanic and Latino and with the, you know, small percentages of also Black and Asian. And we know that there are primarily Spanish speakers in the community, but also there was a variety of other languages like Mandarin and Dari. What I want to say is that this community is very diverse and so the community needs accessible and culturally responsive services tailored to each family and their unique needs. And for what our clients are saying, they're reporting that they're being treated with dignity and respect, you know, that they have better job educational opportunities, that they feel safer and secure because of the services that NMILC provides. For the toolkit, we created a two-part toolkit that is a guide in a workbook. It can be accessed online. The guide comes with detailed explanations, a know your rights section, charts explaining the difference between a caregiver's affidavit, power of attorney, kinship, guardianship for families. And then it also includes guided templates. So a filled-out example of how one is supposed to fill that out. And then the workbook has a document list for families of how to prepare make copies of those documents and keep with them. And then also blank templates that families can easily access and fill out on their own. They would just need to go and notarize certain documents for them to take effect. The toolkit is in English and Spanish. For community and education, we did a variety of topics: Know Your Rights, Family Preparedness, Immigration 101, and how to refer to NMILC. We have worked with many organizations in the community, like Communities in Schools, the Santa Fe Community College, Sky Center, Solace, and Growing Up New Mexico. We trained around 750 people on a variety of these topics. Some of those highlights for the toolkit were that we worked really closely with Pegasus, since they provided the family law side of the toolkit, and also Communities in Schools, because that was a way in which we were able to run that training in connection with the schools, since at the time, I believe that the Santa Fe Public Schools would not allow Know Your Rights family preparedness content during school hours. The resource has been downloaded over 400 times. We have trained around 328 case managers, advocates, home visitors, and early childhood educators. We also have provided support through other funds through the city as well. We provided 40 clients with navigation services. What that navigation service looks like is we had a young man who lives here in Santa Fe. He reached out to NMILC for help with his legal case after graduating high school, but we realized that he had many intersecting needs. So our navigators helped him obtain his driver's license, enroll him in Medicaid, and help him find community resources like food boxes and hygiene supplies. Now he has the support he needs while his legal case is processed. The result is that we are building safer and more stable futures for families here in Santa Fe. We also have begun a partnership with Growing Up New Mexico, in which we are supporting the early childhood workforce through immigration legal services. Thank you all so much for coming here today and sharing your work with us, and thank you for all you do. Thank you so much to the Quality of Life Committee and the governing body at large for supporting these contracts. I am so grateful that we were able to accomplish this work in our community, and I'm so grateful that you had me here today to share it with you. This is just really incredible work happening. So thank you so much. We now stand for questions. Thank you so much, Program Manager. Are there any questions from the committee? Councilor Cassett. Thank you so much. Thank you all for being here, and I really, really appreciate the presentations. I know one of the challenges that we have run into is concerns around anonymity. I am assuming any data that the city gets is aggregate and not individual, so that we just don't have names or personal information. We just have numbers? Chair Castro, Councilor Cassett, that is correct. We're not collecting personal data of any of the clients through any of these partners, and all the data we collect through the Connect network is depersonalized and private. Okay, wonderful. And then I am curious for the organizations around how you protect anonymity, especially in this moment in time. It's not, I mean, and that's, of course, we know people can be afraid to come and get these really necessary services because they're concerned about basically flagging themselves. So, can you give us more information around that? Chair Castro, Councilor Cassett, thank you for that question. One of the more sustaining resources that our welcome center utilizes in order to support clients is through our work with the Connect network. We have been, we've requested to be identified as a sensitive organization so that when we enroll families or clients within that Unite Us system, we don't actually have the same kind of public-facing presence. Those clients are not available for other providers to see, and they can actually elect to not be enrolled at all, and we can still provide the services that we need. For longer-term care, we certainly utilize a HIPAA-protected, privacy-protected electronic medical record. And we've located our welcome center in a space that's pretty private. Most people can't find it when they try. And we've done that intentionally as well to help create some privacy for people who are coming to access care. Thanks for the question. I will also add, because we're also part of the Unite Us and Connect, and so we're also following some of those. And also, we have certain procedures for how we access information online through our database. Our IT person is running phishing scams constantly, and if you fall for one, you have to take a training. So we have a system in place to make sure we're protecting folks' privacy. Wonderful. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. And I also wanted to make sure, because our records are public, I really wanted to make sure that we just don't have that information for anybody to air for us. So very, very happy to hear that. So thank you all again for your work. Really appreciate all of the efforts in the community. I know this is always an under-resourced and complex issue. And right now, it's especially, there's just not enough money flowing in this direction. And so, I know that that can be a huge challenge. So thank you for the work that you do with what we are able to provide. So thank you. Thank you so much, Councilor. Other councilors? No questions? Okay. I just have a few, sort of in the same vein. These resources are really important. And as you mentioned, Ms. Woods, these contracts have already been completed. Do we have, and I've heard, thank you so much, Hailey, for some of the other relationships that we have and how we might continue this work. What are some thoughts on how we might provide these services in the future, being that we need them so much? And also, how did this work help us prepare for the crisis that we just experienced? Chair Castro, thank you so much. I'm going to let you all address most of those questions. But you reminded me of something I meant to say, which is that the toolkits that were created are available on the city website now. So those resources are available to the community through the city website, in addition to the NMILC website. They're on the Immigration Committee page. We do have an Immigration Committee that meets every month. So that's also a great resource for the community to get plugged in, learn more, be part of all the different trainings and activities happening in the community. So that's kind of from the City of Santa Fe side, just some things that you reminded me I had wanted to share, but I'll let you all answer this question from the deeper. Well, thanks, Chair Castro. I just want to address your second question, the crisis you're referring to being the fact that two weeks ago, we had 15 of our community members arrested in Santa Fe County. And through this work with Las Cumbres, I do want to say we were able to reach the family of 14 of those arrested people and triage the case and provide legal orientation and as much legal service as we could within 24 hours of the arrest in all the cases. And so having that resource available, because you cannot believe how scared people are when this happens. And so having my time compensated to be available to quickly do those cases. And, you know, just to highlight the partnership, New Mexico Immigrant Law Center ended up taking, I called them, and they ended up taking on some of that legal work. But just to be present to say, no one was without legal care. I mean, some people had a consult within an hour, but we were able to do it all within 24 hours of every single arrest. So that is, once someone's arrested and in the deportation pipeline, it's very, very difficult to stop. But part of what I know Ali's describing the family preparedness plan, and part of the work that we're trying to build with our thing, Lared, is that when the bad thing happens, we actually do have the safety net that's ready to catch people so that if there's anything that can be done, it can start then. And then if they're afraid, then they actually have some institutional support to bring that fear to. Also, because people are being scammed left and right. People are paying enormous amounts of money to unscrupulous criminals who promise to help their loved ones and take wired money, thousands and thousands of dollars. I just talked to a family that paid $16,000 over a wire transfer to a criminal who never called them again. If we can disrupt that transaction from happening because we move fast enough to talk about reality and what they need to do, then we can help families who need that money to stabilize their future, keep it from giving it to criminals. To Chair Castro, Quality of Life Committee, I would say that for both of our orgs, I think funding is always really helpful to continue doing the work that we are doing. Adding to some of what Allegra was saying, there are also people being scammed when they're in the immigration court process. They're getting fake notices to appear online, and they're paying people to have all of this done for them. The need will continue to increase because the enforcement actions are going to continue to increase. It's very unlikely that they are going to stop. And so having support to be able to provide consultations, to continue to make edits to the toolkit, because one of the things that keeps happening is that immigration law, immigration itself, keeps changing. And so making sure that our materials stay updated, that we are providing the best information for families in the community, and providing the best possible services that we can provide. And thank you so much. I mean, we can talk about this forever, and so I would be happy for any of us to be able to speak offline with providers. Councilor Barrett. That's what I was going to ask. How do people, how are they directed to, like, how are they directed to the good information? How is it they come to you, like, mostly through social media, word-of-mouth? Like, how do you guys get, because we know there's all this bad information out there, and people are being taken advantage of through other avenues. So how do they, or I don't know if you have the data on that, like, get to you guys. Chair Castro, Quality of Life Committee. We have done several campaigns online through social media or website where we're informing people of what is legit and what is not. It's also a part of the trainings that I'm running in the communities of, like, notarios are not a safe person for you to be able to, and include part of the information that scammers are using. So that's being incorporated into the trainings. And social media is a big tool for people right now, so we definitely do some of that social media. And word-of-mouth is also very powerful. So when people in the community know you and trust you, they will tell their Theo. They will tell their family. They will tell their cousin. They will tell people around that they're trustworthy. I also want to point out, it's not just, and it's also some of our most trusted community service organizations that might not be directly aimed at helping immigrant rights, but like, Gerard's House, Communities in Schools, La Familia. And part of the work, which I saw on Ali's training slide, is how to make a referral to these organizations. And it's a constant battle to try to get your name and your referral information out there to do it correctly. But I find that going into these agencies and training staff about how to recognize when someone could need legal services and go make a secure referral is a really, really important thing. And that's what this funding helps do is create the workshops and the trainings and stuff. Make sure that people who are out there in the streets helping the folks who need this information are giving them the correct information. And we're not relying on social media and advertisements for things on Facebook that could just be frauds. I have another question. I mean, I know a lot of this is grant funded, but if there is a way to create a permanent civil rights slush fund, I don't know what you would call it, but how to make sure that something like that is funded, especially in these times, just for the group to think about. Go ahead, Councilor. I mean, on that note, in the past, we have had, basically, direct cash assistance. So this was part of the COVID years, and some of the COVID recovery is we had, essentially, the slush fund. But people who were in a financial crisis and who needed support could essentially just ask. We weren't looking at, "Oh, this can only be used for XYZ." And so people didn't have to go through the rigmarole of proving, "I can't pay my rent." But if people were applying, and then we went through, I forgot which program, but essentially, they could just apply for straight cash assistance. So we do have a precedent set, especially when we're looking at emergency times, for this type of assistance into the community. So we could possibly replicate that somehow since we did it during, like, that was federal, a lot of federal funds, right, that were coming down for that. But we could think about mechanisms to enable that function, maybe for a different purpose like this. I don't know. We might still have that running right now, actually. And I know that we have a couple different organizations that, I think, Kristen, you probably know. You're sitting there with that look on your face, like, "I have the answer, Councilor. You guys just let us. Shut your mouth and let me answer the question." Go ahead. Thank you so much, Chair Castro, Councilor Cassette. Yes, the Youth and Family Services Division, we have done a number of different cash assistance programs. I don't have it in front of me, unfortunately, but we have a lot of great data on the impacts of cash assistance. People in need know what they need, and they know how to use those funds to address their needs, right? And so, we have done a lot of that during COVID. We're also working towards releasing some eviction prevention cash assistance. So we're really excited about that program as part of our continuum of housing and homelessness, of keeping people stable and housed. But yeah, so it would be lovely to have a longer conversation about the power of cash assistance and the ways that we have used that here in this community in a really meaningful and powerful way. And I don't know if Director Emery, if you have anything to add, or Director Nielsen. I know that we've been actually granting some small businesses, which many folks in the immigrant community actually are very entrepreneurial. I don't know if you want to share with us some of those grant programs. Councilor Castro, in Quality of Life Committee, you're correct. Utilizing ARPA as seed funding, we did implement and deploy some small business grant funds. And we did that a variety of ways. We went through a contract, utilizing our partnership with New Mexico State University's Arrowhead Center to administer grants. We also invested directly into the Regional Development Corporation, a local nonprofit. And we, ourselves, as a team, have been experimenting with deploying capital via grants as well. And we've learned a lot about dealing with procurement, the administrative energy and effort that each one of those approaches takes, and are still analyzing what works and what doesn't. And I would just preface that, you know, anti-donation is always something that limits how we can give things out. So, talking about indigent fund might be one of the better ways that we can go about doing that. Is there any other questions around this money specifically? Oh, go ahead, Director Emery. I'm so sorry. Okay, thank you, Chair Castro. Just also, just a reminder to all that through Connect, through Unite Us, there are flex funds available. We're talking about a broad array of topics right now, but Connect does offer flex funds. They have figured out how to do it and do it well. That is where those funds, how those funds were extended so well during the pandemic. So that is a program that is happening, and, you know, it always needs support. So thankful. And as usual, I always have these presentations of amazing work that we've done with one-time funding. So I just want to draw attention to the fact that $250,000 is a lot of money. I mean, not in the big scheme of things, but for us to allocate to programs like this. And so if we can be creative and look for different ways that we could support these efforts, I would be very much in favor. If not, thank you so much. We appreciate your time, and we're here for anything that you need. Thank you so much. We can go on to our one item off of the consent agenda. The item that has been pulled for discussion is Request for Approval of a Memorandum of Understanding with the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management to support the Executive Order 2025-358 with police personnel and resources to address crimes related to drug trafficking, violent crimes, and public safety threats. And Ben Valdez is online. I'm going to, as we promote Interim Chief, I pulled this. Most likely, I will be voting against it, but mostly for information. Chief Valdez, would you be interested in telling us what this consists of and what services we potentially are assisting in with violent crime and drug trafficking? Yes, Madam Chair, thank you. So the Governor's Office reached out to the Santa Fe Police Department to assist with an executive order to address overdose deaths, drug-related offenses in Rio Arriba County, and a number of tribal communities in Northern New Mexico. So the City of Santa Fe lies at a crossroads of two drug trafficking routes. One is Interstate 25. The second one is US 84/285. And those trafficking routes head north to other destinations. Santa Fe used to be kind of a pass-through, but in recent years, due to our staffing levels and other challenges that we've faced, unfortunately, Santa Fe has become a destination city, and that's been evident in things that we've seen in our community. We've seen an increase of overdose deaths due to fentanyl use. We've seen an increase in homelessness, and we also see an increase in retail crime and violent crime. By joining the emergency order and assisting the Governor with these operations, our hope is that we're going to be utilizing these funds that are provided to get equipment that we would need to help curtail the drug trafficking, making it much more difficult for people that are engaged in that type of criminal activity to operate in our community, and also to start addressing some of those high-intensity drug trafficking routes that run right through our community. Right now, we are presently working with the Governor's Office. We are not eligible for funding, but we've been providing them with our arrest statistics. And that's been showing a direct correlation, not just with our organization, but also with other participating agencies that Rio Arriba County has seen a decrease in overdose deaths, which is a good sign and, again, a welcome relief for those folks that are affected by drug addiction. So we're trying to go and make sure that we are doing a full approach to this. We're not just addressing those communities because Santa Fe is a hub community, and many folks come to our community to receive services for medical providers. Some may work in this area. They come in here to shop. So anything that affects the surrounding communities is going to affect Santa Fe. And that's why it's important for us to make sure that we have the resources we need to, one, address this challenge that's been plaguing our community for many years that has been responsible for the deaths of many people due to drug addiction. The other side of it too is the violent crime side of things, and that's something that most folks don't tend to see. Human trafficking is occurring in our community, and it's because of drug trafficking. Our big focus isn't going to be on people that are addicted. Again, our focus remains to try to get them connected with services, to get them resources so they can help fight their addiction, and we want them to be able to have, again, prosperous lives. Our focus is on the folks that are poisoning those individuals that are causing such harm to our community and others in Northern New Mexico and for us to try to make a lot of progress in that area. And with that, I'll stand for any questions. Thank you so much. I just want to be sure that I understand most of the funds are going towards personnel for additional hours potentially because I didn't hear any equipment, and we might be in both Santa Fe County and Rio Arriba County. Is that correct? Madam Chair, these funds are going to be for the use by the Santa Fe Police Department, and it's going to be us supporting the efforts in both Santa Fe County and Rio Arriba County with the emergency order that is happening up in the Española area. And the funds will be utilized for overtime reimbursement, but also for equipment purchases. And what we're looking at is to get some devices that help us with identifying narcotics. And this is a better approach. We have two devices currently with our department. They are very pricey, but what it allows us to do is if there is, let's say, suspected fentanyl in a cellophane or plastic package, we no longer have to take it out and risk having our folks get contaminated by that substance. They can put that device next to the bag. It does a test, and it can give us a presumptive test of what the chemical that's inside the bag is. Thank you so much. Other questions from the committee? No. I would entertain a motion. Oh, Councilor Feghali. I was trying to formulate it in my head. Councilor, sorry. She failed us. Thank you. What how is the funding split? So is this whole $750,000 coming to Santa Fe PD, and then it will be for operations within the city? I'm just unclear how we how we are working with the county and Rio Arriba. Madam Chair, Councilor Feghali, so the $750,000 that's for all of the agencies that are working as a participating agency for the emergency order. So any participating agency will have access to those funds for the purpose of reimbursement. With the Santa Fe Police Department, our primary focus is going to be here in our community. However, if there is assistance needed in neighboring communities, we do have MOUs and cross commissions, and also other agreements in place. So if our assistance is needed with surrounding agencies for resources, for example, let's say they don't have a narcotics detector dog and they need our assistance, they can make a request for mutual aid, and we can provide them that assistance. Okay. So we're not getting the whole $750,000. We are splitting that with the two other jurisdictions? Yes, Councilor, that's correct. Thank you. There's no further questions. I would entertain a motion. I move to approve. Second. I could get a roll call, please, Marcella. Councilor Feghali? Yes. Councilor Barrett? Yes. Councilor Chavez? Yes. Councilor Cassette? Yes. Madam Chair? Yes. Motion passes. Sorry. No, I apologize. Motion passes. Thank you so much. And so with that, I didn't have public comment because there was nobody in the audience. I just want to double check there's no one online that wanted to give public comment. There's not. Perfect. With that, I think that we should just have matters from staff. Director Nelson, would you like to start? Nelson. I'm sorry. Oh, we say it wrong. Thank you, Councilor Castro. I just got back from the Economic Development Governor's Conference for the State of New Mexico and proudly representing City of Santa Fe in our office. We presented on the Small Business Navigator Program and the successes that we've had implementing that ecosystem organization, and it has been a great experience to learn more about what is going on throughout the state related to topics within economic development. On Monday, we attended the Thriving Families Conference that was hosted by the Asset Funders Network. This was also a really great place to convene with our philanthropic partners that are working on issues on the other side of economic development to support economic mobility, looking at access to affordable childcare, social infrastructure. So, again, it was really great to be there and connecting with colleagues around the state. I will note that we're really excited to continue moving forward with our strategic economic development strategy. Really thrilled to have made some recent connections lately. Our consultant is working with our airport team to make sure that their strategy is going to parlay and be complementary to our efforts and vice versa. And regarding events that are coming up, we are hosting our upcoming Business 101. This is a really great opportunity to share with your constituents that are eager to explore starting a business or they're new to starting a business. We really like this program because often we have representatives from land use or our City Attorney's Office that are available to the public and meet and discuss questions. And I will note another event that I'm really excited to tell is on Wednesday, we are inviting our financial partners to meet with our navigator network. This is really our initiative to make sure that our relationships are strong with our community, not only our community finance partners, banks, CDFIs, credit unions, but all the way up to grant funders, philanthropy, equity investors. I think our RSVP right now is about 50 different financial partners, and this is really focused on us and our business service providers having a first name relationship with those organizations. And proceeding will be the public finance fairs. So we're kicking those off again. If you recall, we hosted a series of them, and this will be available for public to come and meet the financial partners that are interested, grants, loans, etcetera. We also have our downtown meeting on Tuesday. I'm skipping around, but if you have constituents that have businesses in the downtown area or are employees of employers in the downtown area, that's happening 6:00 on Tuesday. And I believe we'll have Director Randy Randall giving some updates from tourism and exploring some topics. One exciting topic that came up was looking at recent successes around the state implementing business improvement districts, and we'll see how far that topic goes as well. But invite all of you to come to these upcoming events. Thank you. Thank you so much, Trevor. Keep going, but I'm going to. No, it's fine. We're over here saying we know some business improvement districts, so we need to come talk to you. Director Emery. It's always, thank you, Chair Castro. It's always great to go after Director Nelson. Thank you. Thank you all. So quite a few things happening in Community Services as always. Just riding on Johanna's coattails a little bit. A reminder to everyone, I think our public libraries do about 500 free programs for families a year. So please do, if you're looking for free family events, our public libraries are funded to do so. We offer programming at all three of our libraries, evenings, weekends, daytime. So please do take advantage of what we are really providing as a city. Next, coming out of Senior Services on next Thursday, September 10, we have our Ballet de Oro dance. It's in the Convention Center. That's a partnership with the county. We have it every year. You're all invited. I love seniors' dances. They're the best because, you know, they just dance the best. They know what's going on. Lunch will be served during that as well. So please do come join us. Another thing coming out of our Senior Services Division is that on September 9 from 10:00 to 11:00, we have a power of attorney seminar. So something people don't often know is that we do offer a lot of really robust programming within our senior centers too, particularly at the Meg, the Mary Esther Gonzales Senior Center. And so things like powers of attorney, many, many other programming, but things that you might not think are happening. I know bingo is obviously number one, but lots of and lunch, but there are lots of other things that happen within our Senior Services Division. The GCCC, the Chavez Center has opened back up after its annual closure. Check it out. It is literally sparkling in there. Even from the camera view that I checked this morning, the floors are glistening. We have, they did a ton of work. So shout out to our Recreation Director, Tom Miller, and really all of the GCCC staff and our facilities crew who moving furniture, scrubbing walls, like, giving a lot of love to a facility that gives a lot of love to the community. So thank you to the community for your patience in letting that happen, and please go check it out because it looks really pretty. More from recreation, we will have adjusted pool hours again. That those hours are coming out soon. I think they'll be released, I think, later today if they haven't already. But thanks to our very successful lifeguard rapid hire, should be probably the first week of October. We should start seeing expanded hours at Fort Marcy. So we are working hard to have as many pool hours as we possibly can, and thank you to that. Also, huge shout out. I don't think we've had a Quality of Life meeting since the rapid hire, but we were able to hire quite a few lifeguards. And we hit Monica Acevedo, our new HR Director, with this idea, I think, her second day on the job, and she rolled with us. So, really, it was a great event. So thank you to everyone. Our strategic plan for homelessness, the RFQ closed last Friday. We had 17 applicants for that strategic planning process. So we are reviewing applications right now and finding the right provider to help us with that five-year strategic plan. Just one more thing. You guys know that I always like to talk about kids. The Teen Center is selling celebrating its third anniversary next week. I really love open events at the Teen Center because that is usually a closed facility. That facility is closed so that we can protect the safety of children. But it's always really nice to go to the facility, see how beautiful it is before you're sending their kid your kids there, and you're like, I have never even been inside. So, please do check out the Teen Center third year anniversary. And that's all from me. Amazing. Well, thank you, Director. Marcella, anything from you today? Wonderful. From the committee. Councilor Feghali will start on this side. Thank you. Director Nelson, I apologize on behalf of myself and Councilor Castro, but we have a study session during that neighborhood meeting. So I told Montek already that we are not able to make it, but I don't know. Maybe Councilor Castro is going to skip the study session. I will not be able to make it. But I love that we have those, and I hope this one goes as well as the previous ones have. And, yeah, that was, yay for Zozobra, yay for the Chavez Center. Yeah, that's it. Thanks. Councilor Barrett. Councilor Chavez. Councilor Cassette. Also, please have a safe and everyone. And if we are adjourned until September 23, thank you.