Last week’s meeting of the Santa Fe Gathering Body was supposed to be a fare-thee-well for the outgoing mayor and two city council members, but a brief dose of reality-television level drama derailed proceedings and ended with a City Manager vacancy to fill.
City Manager Mark Scott told SFR on Friday his last day in the position would be Jan. 1, just days after Mayor-elect Michael Garcia is inaugurated into office.
Courtesy of City of Santa Fe
City Manager Appointee Mark Scott
Tensions flared in Mayor Alan Webber’s last council meeting during a discussion about the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Garcia, who has long locked horns with the outgoing administration, blasted Webber and his staff for a lack of transparency.
Garcia was pressing Finance Director Emily Oster about a budget adjustment resolution for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund when Scott, 78, jumped in and let the incoming council leader have it.
"I’m going to object a little bit, because I think the line of questioning here is suggesting a failure, maybe even intentionally, to not advise the City Council of something that a governing body should be aware of, and that’s ridiculous. That’s not at all true, it never has been true. It’s not uncommon that you have funds that have different revenue sources and different expenses,” he said. “I heard yesterday in the meeting with you, we started having funds received for this purpose that have been intermixed with the community development fund for a long time. So it’s not like we didn’t have a fund where this money was going, we always did. And the governing body received audits year after year after year that didn’t have a separate, free-standing affordable housing fund.”
Scott admitted, “Do I think that you should have had that? Yeah, I do, and I became aware of this somewhere in the last year that needed to have this, because I sat through the budget reviews and whenever it was, and people couldn’t identify the total exactly, so we’ve been working on it since then. No secret that we’ve been working on it since then. It was discussed during the budget meetings ad nauseam—go back and listen to them, the discussion came up over and over, but nobody had actually identified that the solution to that was creating an affordable housing trust fund. I think many people thought we had one because the narrative referred to it. So we’ve solved the problem; we’ve taken the time, we’ve taken the effort to put it together.”
Scott became a little more emotional, "But the implication that anybody had chosen not to inform the governing body is frankly just offensive, and you need to quit doing that to people. You’re about to be our leader. We need to trust the person who’s coming into that leadership role to be fair, and Mr. Garcia, you’re not fair. You’re often not fair. I’ve completely had it, and I’m sorry but I’m not sitting through another one of these interrogations, gotcha moments when you’re saying things that just aren’t true, and you’re casting aspersions on perfectly good people who don’t deserve to have those things thrown at them.
Before leaving the proceedings, Scott said, "You and I obviously are done— and I’m sorry—at the end of the year. I do wish you all the success in the world, and I hope for this city that you figure out how to be the leader that I hope you will be."
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Michael Garcia
When the council later went into executive session, Scott had been replaced by Deputy City Manager Andrea Phillips.
The big fight was over the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which the city has budgeted $3 million annually for since 2022, using money from the general fund that is then awarded to local organizations working on affordable housing-related initiatives.
Whilst reconciling and separating out the Affordable Housing Trust Fund activity from a larger fund it was included in, staff noticed money was only being transferred into the fund to cover the reimbursement requests from awardees—often significantly less than the annual budget.
Finance and Affordable Housing staff have been working to separate out the fund ever since, according to Oster, but the issue only became public when the request for the budget adjustment resolution was presented last week.
After a lengthy discussion, the council voted 7-1 to approve the adjustment. Garcia voted against the measure, calling it "irresponsible" to vote on such a significant item while he still had unanswered questions, and described it as "another failure of the Alan Webber administration."
Garcia said during the back and forth, "I am so thankful that this administration is coming to a close,"
Outgoing councilor member Carol Romero-Wirth, cut Garcia off to tell him his comments violated regulations against personal attacks from the dais.
Whew! Looking forward to see how Garcia livens up his swearing-ceremony on Dec. 30.
Dog Gone
When the council wasn’t in chaos, they did vote on an ordinance aimed at keeping animals off of street medians.
Spearheaded by outgoing council member Signe Lindell, the measure passed 6-2 and was co-sponsored by councilors Jamie Cassutt, Alma Castro and Pilar Faulkner. It follows an ordinance that took effect in February banning people from standing in medians less than 3 feet wide.
“This proposal is not just an act of addressing animal protection; the proposed ordinance will disrupt, displace, and perpetuate the cycle of poverty with a profound negative impact,” Karen Cain, Street Homeless Animal Project director told the Governing Body.
The ordinance includes changes to city code defining the criteria for animal abandonment. Amendments lowered the fine from $200 to $50 for having an animal on a median and clarified alternate penalties for those who couldn’t pay them.
Lindell, often an advocate for animal welfare protections during her 12 years on the council, said a street median is an "absolutely unacceptable" environment for an animal and challenged any notion that she supported the ordinance for any reason other than animal welfare.
"It’s not only incorrect, it’s unfair," she said.
Most public comment was against the ordinance, but Consuelo's Place Shelter Manager Michele Williams appeared via Zoom in support of the measure.
"This is not a safe environment for animals to be in," Williams said.
Councilors Michael Garcia and Lee Garcia voted against the measure. Lee Garcia said he was not in support of animals being on medians, but said he saw examples of the law banning people from standing in medians being broken all the time.
"I have a hard time with voting for something where I don't feel we're going to be able to enforce wholeheartedly, and where it would potentially put a person at risk of losing their companion, which is difficult," Garcia said.
Other council business
Once the council quit bickering about the Affordable Housing Trust Fund last week, it unanimously approved four grant agreements totaling $3.675 million for 2025's affordable housing trust fund awards. The grants will go to Homewise Inc., The Housing Trust, Santa Fe County and developer TWG.
Council members:
- Unanimously approved two exclusive negotiation agreements for the city to enter into negotiations for the sale of three tracts of land on the Midtown campus. The land is lined up for a mixed-used arts space and a technology hub. Both proposals include housing.
- Unanimously approved the city manager issuing a request for proposals for two parcels at 1522 and 1650 W. Alameda St. to be put up for sale to a qualified affordable housing developer.
- Met in executive session to discuss legal matters for about an hour then returned to unanimously approve a $300,000 settlement with a policeman who sued the city after incurring a severe injury by a police dog in 2022.
