Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Are we ready to go?

Chair and commissioners, we are ready to go.

Thanks very much. I'd like to call to order the Santa Fe County Planning Commission meeting for May 21st, 2026. May we get a roll call, please?

Here.

Here. Thank you very much. Everyone please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Okay, next is approval of the agenda. Staff, have there been any amendments to the agenda since it was published?

Chair Abbo and commissioners, item 4A, the final order for the Globe Malo Energy Project is not ready for action today, so that is removed from the agenda and will be heard next month. For informational purposes, item 5A, sorry, 6A, The Samara real property variances were withdrawn by the applicant, so those will not be heard. The item is on the agenda for informational purposes, as there was no notice for this hearing prior to the withdrawal.

Thank you. Wait. Let me make sure I get that straight. So the application has been withdrawn, but we have not published public notice that the application is withdrawn?

Chair and commissioners, the applicant has notified the parties that they withdrew their application, but at the same time, there was notice published for today's hearing, so we left it on the agenda in case someone read the New Mexican, saw that there was a possible hearing today. And so leaving it on the agenda with the note that it has been withdrawn. Thank you.

So if anyone is interested in this item, they don't have to stay here. That is correct. Okay. Thank you. Just want to get that clear for those three people. So with that amendment, may I get a motion for approval of the agenda?

I'll approve the agenda.

I'll second.

Thank you. We have a motion and a second. All in favor of approving the agenda, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. The next item is approval of meeting minutes. This is an action item. Are there any, may I get a motion for approval? May I get a motion for approval of the minutes? And then we can discuss any possible amendments. Motion to approve?

I'll move to approve with some changes.

Great. Thank you. So let's discuss those changes now. Do we do it in this gap?

Is that right?

Great. So who has some corrections to the minutes?

I'll just have one on my end real quick, is that I did notice that the tally of the votes was correct, but I think I had it down on my meeting minutes as I did not approve, although I did approve for that. Let me just make that change. Thank you.

Okay, on the first page, down at the bottom, you have me as a planner. It is on.

Move it closer.

Oh, sorry. As a planner with the DOT, and I'm actually the planning division director. So I'm technically not a planner there. And then on page 44 and 45, you have me down as Jennifer Griffin, and it's Jessica Griffin. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Griffin. Commissioner Brugger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Two corrections. One, on the vote to go into executive session, I did vote no, not yes. And I don't have a page number, but maybe a page or two into this, Fire Marshal Blay was referred to as Commissioner Bustamante. Wherever you see Commissioner Bustamante, it's Fire Marshal Boy.

Thanks.

And I have one on the last page of the minutes. Let me go to there. Just a sec. I want to get it right. I made a motion that I made a motion to add and there is an extraneous but added to that. So if you would remove that extraneous word, that would be great. Any other corrections to the minutes that are recommended by commissioners? Okay, with that, can we get a second for approval as amended?

Second.

Okay, all those in favor of approving the minutes as amended, please signify by saying aye. Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay, the minutes as amended are approved. The next item is approval of the final order on the consent agenda.

It's actually approval of all items on the consent agenda.

That's case number 255290, 255220, 255240. May I get a motion for approval of the final orders on the consent agenda? I move to approve all of the final orders on the consent agenda. Thank you, may I get a second?

I'll second that.

Thank you, we have a motion and a second. All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? The consent agenda is, those items are approved. And we tabled the globe mellow, so now it's Herbert, you're up.

Thank you, and good evening, Commissioners.

Since I have a full house and the rest of the evening, I just have a three-hour presentation. There's about 78 slides for you, but I hope you'll be home by at least 10.30. I've got to get a pillow. You just might want one. I'm just kidding. Thank you. I'm here to talk about an introduction to the Public Participation Plan for the Sustainable Growth Management Plan, For the county, the sustainable growth management plan is what we often call the general plan. It is a long range comprehensive land use plan for the county that gives direction on how the county ought to grow and where it ought to grow and where it ought to not grow. State law says that all development regulations must be consistent with the general plan. So the general plan is really the broad overarching a policy document that sets the stage for regulations, and regulations that must be consistent with the general plan. So it is advisory in nature, but it does have a strong link to the SLDC because both need to be consistent with one another. The SGMP was adopted in 2010, then a light update in 2015, so its time has definitely come to be updated. A plan like this typically is updated five years with a light update, maybe 10 years for a full revision. The timing horizon for this kind of plan is often 20 or 25 years. In other words, within 20, 25 years, all the stuff we said we're going to do, it should have been done by then. So that's kind of gives it also a long range intention so that we can start formulating a vision for how the community ought to grow and develop, or again, not grow or develop in terms of land conservation and so forth. What we're doing with the SGMP revision is we're starting with a public participation plan I should really probably call it not the public participation plan, but call it the public outreach and engagement plan, because that's really what we're doing. We're reaching out to the community to invite them to the events that we'll be having. So the outreach is really the invitation to participate, and the engagement is what do you do once they get there. So when it comes to outreach, we want to... Communicate communicate to the community in different ways that we're actually going to be doing this and invite them in to participate we want to build trust so that that they'll even show up in the first place and Tell them why they should participate how the plan affects their daily lives because let's be honest sometimes long-range comprehensive bland use planning and zoning no offense and isn't the most exciting thing to talk about in a public forum, but it does affect everyone's daily lives in quite substantial ways. Access to housing, access to public services, the commute, the cost of living, and a variety of things that really shape the quality of life in Santa Fe as a direct result of the work that we do here. Engagement, again, is really like the conversation that we have with the community once they come to the meeting or once they click on the website or decide to participate in one way or another and pick up the phone, etc. We have been working with a consultant and a staff within the various departments, and we've come up with a number of goals. If you don't mind, I'll go ahead and read these and elaborate. We want to demonstrate transparency in the analysis and the decision-making. We want this to see the full light of day so that the community is really informed of what we're doing and how decisions are being made. We wanna build trust and show reliability and accountability on part of the county that what we say we're gonna do is actually what we are in fact going to do, especially when it comes to land use and development decisions. We wanna educate the general public about what the topics are, about what is included in the plan itself. We want to encourage participation from groups that historically just don't participate because of lack of resources or time or interest or awareness. So we've spent a considerable amount of time identifying who these populations are and we've come up with this list here of traditional communities, those with and without a community organization. A community organization is an approved entity that represents their particular geographic area. The committee is approved by the board and initiates a community planning process that we and the staff commence with the community. Indigenous people in pueblos, not just the pueblo governments themselves, but non-profits and organizations that serve Indigenous communities. People with limited English, we want to make sure that these documents and the information we're providing, perhaps not all of it, but as much as we can, make sure that the main messages are provided in English and Spanish to invite as many people to participate as possible. Immigrant communities are often left out of these conversations, so we want to reach out to them, invite them into this. Youth, elderly, I mean if we're not doing this for the youth, then why are we here? I would suggest that. Elderly populations often don't have access to this kind of information, but yet the built environment has a tremendous effect on the quality of their daily lives. and people, we'll say, with limited financial resources. They're just probably too busy at their jobs, their second job, to participate, but nonetheless, these decisions impact them In other words, we want to reach out to the people who normally don't have the time or the capacity to participate, but are most definitely affected. Those that can afford to participate, we have a pretty reasonable assumption that they will, that they already are organized and have the capacity to participate. And of course, everyone is invited into this process, but these are the communities and the populations we want to make sure that we're reaching out to. And so we're focusing our goals on and our engagement and our messaging and our communications towards these folks here. We want to build social capital within the community. We want the community to take ownership of this plan and take some responsibility as a partner with the county in implementing the recommendations that come from the plan. It's not a spectator sport, so we want to make sure that the community feels invested and involved and has a responsibility for making sure a lot of these things get done. The county cannot do all the work ourselves. And then finally, to persuade other organizations and entities to take action. So we want to spread the word as much as we possibly can The general plan, a comprehensive land use plan, is designed in a very linear, comprehensive, rational way. You set a vision. Within your vision, you have goals. And for each goal, you have strategies. It's very linear. You do this, and then it accomplishes that. And you accomplish this, and then it accomplishes that. But life is not like that. We know it's very... circuitous it's it's not quite linear things change leadership changes circumstances changes world dynamics that are beyond the county's control happen covid for example so the plan needs to it's it's very linear for a purpose keep track keep a track record of what we're doing that we're on track But the reason I'm saying this is because if it doesn't come from the values and the desires of the community, that is really what sustains it among all the shifting and the changes. So we want it to be really community-based and empower the community, not always very rational, because human beings are not always very rational. Some of the tools for outreach and engagement, we've broken them down into three categories. For decision makers, primarily the board of county commissioners will have one-on-one briefings, presentations to the commission here and to the board. We want to have joint study sessions with the city and the county leadership to talk about areas of mutual interest. Ideally, because you may not know this, the city of Santa Fe is commencing and well ahead of us on their general plan update process. They call theirs Santa Fe Forward. We wanna make sure, ideally, that both of our documents address the same issues of mutual interest, especially when it comes to the border of the city, and wanna make sure that both plans and both policies are ultimately saying the same thing as to what we're gonna do about those issues, whether it be annexation or water or roadway standards where the city and the county meet so the roads aren't going all janky like that, for example. We want to have invitations and outreach to the Pueblos and Pueblo communities and the municipalities. Make sure they are involved on their own terms to the level that they want to be involved. They are absolutely welcome and encouraged and essential to the process because the county does not obviously stand alone. We have our own planning and planning jurisdiction, but nonetheless, we are all one community, one map, one landscape. We're contemplating a legislative dinner, something that happens with the county every year. We want to reach out to other elected officials who can add value and bring resources to the implementation of the plan. And then, of course, public hearings will be once the document is, and I'm talking about the SGMP, the public participation plan is a separate document, a separate planning effort. I'll discuss that a little bit later but we have a draft of the public participation plan that will be going forward to the board next week for an introduction and then finally for their adoption and approval and say go forth and do these things with the public. But we'll have public hearings to present the SGMP to the commission here and finally to the board for ultimate adoption by resolution. The Planning and Zoning Commission here is an integral role as an advisory committee to the board on whether to adopt or not. So look forward to your participation. And you'll be receiving invitations from me for participating in a lot of the events that we'll be having because your voice is, of course, very critical not only as citizens but as leaders and officials to endorse and recommend the plan itself. Stakeholder engagement. We are forming a work group. This will be a quite large advisory committee essentially. It'll be consisting of key staff members from several departments within the county. We're inviting the long range land use planner of the city who is very excited and eager to participate. We're asking board members to appoint two representatives of themselves to serve on this working group. And then we're also going to be having a small grant program for public engagement and offering funds to individuals and community organizations who represent those populations Because we can't reach everybody, but we know there are entities and individuals and organizations that work directly with the elderly, with youth populations, with immigrant populations. So we want to invite them and compensate them for their time to participate in the meetings that we're scheduling through the working group. So we will have another term we're using for the working group is like a miniature public meeting. Because frankly, we can't afford all the time and resources to have the consultants to go travel around the county for so many months. It becomes enormously prohibitively expensive. So we will be doing that. I will be doing that and giving as many presentations in the next year and a half to anyone who wants one. We have a huge... stakeholder list of contacts and we'll be using all the channels for media, press releases and so forth to get the word out and to make sure that I and we are available to discuss the SGMP with them in the absence of the consultants traveling around all over four corners of the county because of the expense and time it takes. So we're going to be going out to the community instead of asking the community to come to us at a workshop. We will have some of those, but those will be taking place through the working group. We'll also have a technical working group. There's going to be a lot of, well, let's say more technical issues that come up as a result of this process, and we'll need some pretty technical solutions that we know are going to emerge. So where we need to have some, probably staff, take a look, a hard look at what's what can and should be done about some of these issues. Don't know exactly what those all will be yet, because we just haven't embarked on this whole process yet, but I'm sure we'll hear quite a bit. I have a feeling affordable housing and water resources will be the two biggest topics. Perhaps traffic will be third, and my educated guess is keeping rural Santa Fe County rural will be an overarching theme and will require some technical planning because the rural communities, I think, are, I may say, are being lost to suburbia problems. where we need to have focus groups for those populations of those communities that aren't quite represented on the working group. We want to reach out to them very deliberately. If we've missed somebody, if we get partway through the process and we realize we just haven't heard from the youth, then we need to make sure we form a very specific, focused, targeted effort to outreach and engage the youth population, for example. Make sure we're not missing anyone. And, of course, everyone will have access to the documents once we put those out on the website and send those by email. So there will be opportunities for people to read and offer comments there. Some of the public engagement tools we're looking at, I mentioned the Community Engagement Partner Grant that will be going out, I mentioned earlier, to the individuals and organizations who have access to those populations that we don't. So we want to compensate them for their time and ask them and pay them to reach out to their communities with pop-ups or tabling or different events that they know that work for them. And so we think that they should be compensated for that. what we call meeting a box. That's basically Herbert going out with his box and presenting the SGMP to the public in one fashion or another. Pre-packaged materials that we can take out on a moment's notice. get the word out that way pop-ups and tabling there'll be a lot of opportunities for that i'm sure we already meet regularly with the community organizations and and the registered organizations so we'll be meeting regularly again with them give them an avenue to participate lots of community meetings i mentioned i'm going to be getting getting in the car and going to all four corners of the county That's something that's valuable for me because I frankly don't get out much, and I need to do that, especially when it comes to this kind of work. And there's a lot of communities in the county that I frankly have not been to yet, but I will be, and I want to hear from them. And the best way for me to do that is to get in the car and go out to them. It could be the volunteer fire department. It could be the mutual domestic. It could be the neighborhood association. It could be the board meeting of a nonprofit. It could be any number of organizations that that need to know about this and i'll be more than happy to engage with them and of course we'll have online surveys at different phases of the process and we're going to be putting out some webinars and videos particularly at the beginning and at the end of the process kind of a blast at the beginning and then a blast at the end to let the community know that they can and should participate The public participation plan also comes with a communications plan. I'm not going to read all of this, but we have some key messages for the key audiences. We want to make sure that people get the right message at the right time to know how and when to participate in the kind of information that we're asking of them. We have have audience segmentation that's kind of a communications and marketing term but we have these different audiences where we're going to craft our message and our communications towards those different audiences, so that we're making sure that all the bases are covered in terms of public engagement, because this is a. Comprehensive plan, meaning that every square inch of the county should have a on the map that designates it for a preferred land use. Comprehensive land use. Every inch should have a designated preferred land use. Comprehensive that we want to assemble and understand all of the issues that have an impact on the built environment when it comes to land conservation and development. It should be comprehensive that we've considered all issues. housing, open space, et cetera. And on that note, In the phase right now of what I'm calling a massive inventory, I'm reaching out to all the departments and divisions and asking them about the plans that they already have adopted. I'm reaching out to the Soil and Water Conservation District, the MPO, other land management agencies, the federal. I had a meeting with the BLM last week. I'll be meeting with the Forest Service to collect a library of all the official planning documents that they have. so that it is comprehensive that we're considering all the other landowners in the county, because we obviously, I don't think it needs to be said, but suffice to say, we're all one community. The watershed doesn't know that it's Taos Pueblo, or I'm sorry, Puaque Pueblo, or not, or that's state land, you know, et cetera. So I'm communicating early on with other land management agencies and stakeholders to do an inventory and see what kind of issues have an effect on land use and development decisions. Let's see. I'm almost done, promise. Phases in the timeline. Right now we're kind of the pre-launch or the engagement planning. We are finalizing the public participation plan, the document, and refining the tools and the measurements and so on, and gonna take that to the board for their consideration and say, okay, go ahead and do these things. So hoping to have that adopted by the Board of County Commissioners in June and then kind of a kickoff in July. And then we've broken out the planning process for the SGMP essentially in three main phases. Well, we'll be putting out different deliverables of the document for review. The first phase will have what we're calling like the purpose. Why are we doing this? The principles of long range land use planning. and some of the issues and the opportunities that we see from the current sustainable growth management plan, from the input that we are receiving from all the stakeholders and constituents that we're hearing from. So we hope to have that draft out for phase one sometime in October. And then phase two, this is when we're getting into the real fun part of putting the map together, of identifying the different types of communities. I envision this comprehensive land use plan will have four different types of land uses projected for the future. One will be a rural community, one will be a contemporary community, one will be traditional community and one will be an area where we want to direct more growth and development that doesn't necessarily have a community associated with it, at least not yet, but it will be an emerging community where we want to direct more growth and development. The idea being that the rural will stay rural. The traditional communities will be protected as traditional communities. The contemporary communities, we see them here all the time. You can pick out a contemporary community quite easily on the map. It is the uniform lots with the winding roads and the cul-de-sac. That is a contemporary community. Some of those communities may want to evolve into something different and invite different services or housing types and so on. So we'll be discussing how they can evolve. And then different scenarios for growth and development. What happens within the rural community? What shouldn't be happening within the community, rural communities, etc. ? So that will be the mapping phase. We have the three phases. Where are we now? Where are we going? And then how do we get there? So speaking of how do we get there, the phase three, the recommendations and the draft of the plan. Okay, now that we know what the issues are, what the opportunities are, what the preferred land use ought to be, well, how do we go about achieving that? So we'll be documenting that in a series of goals and strategies, really specific and really focused on land use, One example I give of what the SGMP is, it's a comprehensive land use plan, but what it is not and what I don't want it to be, I'll pick on the current SGMP for a moment. The current SGMP has several strategies on how to educate the public about how to access food stamps, how to get to WIC. And there's another whole series of narrative and goals and strategies about youth workforce development programming. Now, I love youth, I love workforce development, and I particularly love youth workforce development programs. But I argue that that kind of strategy and those goals don't have any place in a comprehensive land use plan. If the issue doesn't touch the ground in one way or another, it doesn't belong. And frankly, I know that those plans exist elsewhere. Economic Development has a plan for youth workforce development. Community Services Department has a plan for educating the public about WIC and other kind of social services programs. So if it doesn't touch the ground, it won't be included in this plan because these comprehensive general plans get to be so massive and I'll just say this finally before I end. I would rather have the SGMP criticized for being too short and too brief than being ignored for being too big. I think, don't hesitate to say that I'm the only one in this room who's read the SGMP I'm just about the only person in this room anyway. I know that, and I don't mean any disrespect to all the people that work really hard on the current Sustainable Growth Management Plan. It's just very understandable why so many people would not read it and so many other comprehensive general plans because they get to be just so lengthy and unwieldy. And they try to be everything to everybody, but they become nothing to anyone. And they get discarded for being just too big. So I'll say it again. I'd rather have the SGMP revision criticized for being too brief than being ignored for being too fat. And then finally, the final phases will be documenting. I'm going to be the primary author of this document. I'll just say as a final, I keep on saying final, but you let me go. I will keep you here till 10. One of my goals in embarking on this is to build the capacity of the staff. And I've seen way too many local governments spend way too many hundreds of thousands of dollars in a consultant contract. And the whole process is driven by consultants. And I have found in my experience that the consultant writes up what the staff tell them. So I figured, why don't we just do this ourselves as much as we can? Having said that, we have excellent consultants on board who are helping us all the way throughout the process. and you'll be meeting them because you'll be coming to our workshop meetings and so forth. I'll be writing the document myself, and so when we have the document in its draft, it'll be out for revisions and then final phase for adoption, we hope, in February 2028. We're looking at about an 18-month whole planning process, which is ambitious, but if it's anything longer than that, there's a problem because if we take more than two years to do a 10-year plan, then there's something really, really wrong with the process. I think it was the city of Memphis took five years to do their 10-year plan. Not going to do that to ourselves here.

I won't.

That's it. Happy to take any questions for you. I won't keep you any longer. There will be plenty of time to participate in the future, but I'm really happy to be here. This is kind of a light kickoff of this process, and I'll be going to the board next week for kind of kicking this off and making a very similar presentation to them. But that's my presentation. I'd be happy to take your questions.

Thanks very much. I wonder, could you go back to the last slide? I'm wondering where in your schedule planning commission recommendation for approval is, because that is part of our charter is to recommend approval, review and recommend approval for planning documents. Yeah, that'll be during phases four and five. Okay. Great. Thanks. Any questions? Commissioner Brugger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have many questions. First, really good presentation, really good. That's a general comment. Having read the sustainable growth management plan from one to the other, if you're able to do short and brief, shorter and briefer, That is an admirable goal. I'd encourage you to do that. It's not easy to do that. It might require more work, but it makes it easier. What I've seen just in the time here is that when cases come up, And approval criteria, one of them is compliance with the Sustainable Growth Management Plan. Folks will pick and choose, whether it's goals or strategies. And there's many to pick and choose from. And throughout this document, there are conflicts. So that between different goals, different strategies. So shorter and briefer is good. On your slide, or excellent slide on trying to get to the underrepresented folks, I would, just again based on my experience here, I'd contend that elderly, I don't know how you define elderly, but I don't see them as being underrepresented at all. At least the folks that have been showing up to our meetings that will in the, so, but folks who have full-time jobs, families, especially if they're kids, Incredibly hard to reach, but they're underrepresented. You know it. We see it. And that would be a goal. Try to, however you can do it, get them plugged in. You had mentioned that there's presentations, the planning commission, but then that we would be encouraged to participate because we have, at least speaking for myself, we have many, that while we've seen issues and opportunities, as far as that would need work that would help our jobs here, whether it's renewable energy sections where when they're being proposed in an agricultural rural zone, And that may not fit in the code definition, but SGMP supports it, that there could be work done to make that guidance more clear. I have others. I'll step back for a bit so others can ask questions.

Thanks very much. Any other questions? I've, go ahead, Commissioner.

Yeah, you know, I guess my question was, I was just kind of curious as far as like with respect to things that are being translated in Spanish, what specifically do you translate into Spanish? Is my mic, I thought it's on right or no?

There it is. All right, sorry about that. So yeah, yeah, just kind of curious as far as what documents you actually translated to Spanish. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Commissioner. I can't say exactly which ones yet, other than saying like the key documents, some of the invitations and the outreach for sure. Some of the key documents, perhaps for sure the executive summary, I don't imagine the entire document itself will be all translated. But some of the selected ones that really, we might even do an abridged version, like a 20-page version of the SGMP, like a pocket version, and that whole thing is a Spanish version. But for certain, a lot of the outreach and invitations will be. But I hate to say, I don't know exactly yet until we quite get there. Gotcha.

you mentioned sometime in your presentation that something, I think it was when you were talking about the work group, that you would require maybe like two members out of the commission, is that? Correct. Would that be like two members that would be involved with the work group stuff from our commission or from?

I'm sorry, I didn't, Mr. Chair, I didn't make that distinguish from the board of county commissioners. We're asking them to appoint two members.

They would be appointing two members. Correct. Which could be members of the planning and zoning commission.

Gotcha, cool.

Yeah, I was just kind of curious about that. And then I think other than that, I just kind of had some general questions. The only other question was just notification of, like, you know, how do we get notified about some of these upcoming workshops and so on? Or, you know, what are we looking at? I just did a quick, like, Google search, for instance, for Santa Fe County PPP, and I noticed that...

The Santa Fe MOP, which is the Metropolitan Planning Organization, has a PPP website, which I don't think is the same thing, right?

And, of course, you can look up community planning and public participation, and I think that is a web page on the Santa Fe County. But I'm just curious how you plan to do that, and obviously suggestions there would be to make sure that there's some sort of metadata there to make sure that if people are looking for something like this, want to get involved, that something comes up.

Mr. Chair and Commissioner, the reason you didn't find it, because it's not there yet. We are putting together the website right now. But to answer your question, there'll be website, radio, newspaper, social media, podcasts, email blasts, posters, banners, word of mouth, presentations, everything that we possibly can do within our capacity, we will... Great. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Commissioner Brugger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Foster, I think when you're doing this, your list of community organizations and registered organizations need some work that would be more extensive list. In the last case, it was outside of Stanley. A big case, battery energy storage system. And the Santa Fe Association of Realtors popped up. as a either community organization or registered organization, nobody else. They're always there, but shoot, at least in that area, having water associations, there'd be a lot more interested parties than the Santa Fe community. Association of Realtors. So that I would encourage that list, wherever that list resides, to be really improved. I applaud you for taking on the effort to be the primary author of this. Do you have a consultant? Who is the consultant and what part of this would they be working on?

Thank you, Mr. Chair, Commissioner. The name of the consultant firm is Placemakers out of Albuquerque and Philadelphia. They're helping us through the entire process. They have expertise in public outreach and engagement and land use planning. They did the comprehensive land use plan and public engagement for Dona Ana County, for example, and many other communities around the country.

Okay, thank you. Would, as part of your effort to take a look at what worked in the existing plan and maybe what didn't work as well, would you, as part of your exercise here, be contacting some of your predecessors? Yes. I won't name names because they were primary authors as well, and I think they haven't been gone that long. I mean, its turnover is... there's a lot of turnover. But that would be something that would be beneficial. Would you be doing that, reaching out to those folks?

Mr. Chair, now that you mention it, that's an excellent idea. That idea hadn't popped into my head, but that's an excellent suggestion. I will contact him very soon.

That's all I have. Thank you.

Thanks very much. I just have a recommendation. I think it's important if you have an opportunity to put the presentation that we saw that nobody, except for the people in the room, Nobody else has seen this presentation. And linking it to putting it on the, what do you guys call this thing, diligent one, uploading that to the packet so that, because people use the packet as a reference, go back to it. So you might want to, on your item, have the presentation link there so that someone can be referred to it, whether it's one of us talking to someone saying, oh, you should go look at this, or someone else who hoped to be here but couldn't. So that might be something you just want to do whenever you have a meeting that uses this platform, you might want to do that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, I will. It is on the diligent community for the Board of County Commissioners meeting next week, but I don't believe it.

Okay, all good, all good.

Could I say just two other things in response is what I'm envisioning, at least two things for this document. One is a very separate chapter that's called development policies. And it is, I would hope, more than just a checklist, but it is a checklist of what we expect the developers to do at the regional level, at the block level, at the community level, and at the lot level, so that we can give that to developers and say, here's what the SGMP is asking you to do, depending on the scope and the scale of the project. Connect trails, for example. If there's an opportunity to connect a trail, well, you expect them to do that instead of just saying, well, the SLDC doesn't make me do that. Well, the plan is asking you to do that. Or it could be rooftop solar at the lot level. Our staff, we have to do, we call them cherry pickers. Cherry picking, you have to pick what you like and leave the rest and make your argument there and kind of hunt through the SGMP. We want to avoid that and create a chapter that says development policies, here's what, and so that the staff can say, well, did they do it, did they not? Did they do it, did they not? So it is... very checklist-oriented, but very, very clear and easy to find so we don't have to hunt and peck or cherry-pick throughout the document. And another thing that I do imagine as a separate chapter of this document is proposed SLDC revisions. that just has a list of here's what we want to do to make sure that the plan and the code are really unified and one and the same because there are certainly disconnects between the kind of development that we say we want and the plan and the development that we get on the ground through the code. So that will be a key element so that these recommendations aren't scattered all throughout this whole series of goals and strategies and objectives and narrative that's spread out across 13 elements of the document. two things that I want to do to make it very explicit and very user-friendly.

Thank you very much, Herbert.

Thank you again. I look forward to working with you, and you won't see me before too long. Wait, one more question. Of course. Commissioner Brugger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for indulging me. I can't help it. In your technical work group, hopefully you're including Santa Fe County utilities, And given that water comes up in so many of the cases that we see, that interest should be represented on the work group. And even, it goes without saying, but I just wanted to put it out there.

Yeah, Mr. Chair, Mr. Commissioner, I have no doubt that they will be the shining stars of the Technical Advisory Committee, whether they like that or not. Thanks again, appreciate it.

Thank you. Okay, since our next item has been withdrawn, are there any public, no? Matters from the commission. Any commission? Commissioner Brugger. Chair and commissioners, we have...

The public has a voice.

Okay, thank you. Didn't see you, but please state your name.

My name is Chris Michels, and I'm a citizen from Chisuke. And I've... I've come here today to see what you're up to because I haven't been able to get in contact with the board because your contact information isn't available. I tried to get it from your contact point and wasn't able to do that. At least the chair should be available at least by email so the public has a chance. You have a lot of problems with your meetings and you're probably not aware of them because your attorney isn't doing his job. First off, you're an OMA violation today. You're an OMA violation because the OMA resolution you have right now is out of date. The county commission hasn't updated it. You are currently in violation. Your attorney should tell you he doesn't do that because the county attorneys don't do that. They're not doing their job. So you've got a couple of OMA violations, so you shouldn't have even had the meeting. You've got a problem with rules of order, which apparently you're not familiar with. Your county attorney should be giving you advice on the rules of order. Part of the problems you have with the rules of order, for example, public concern, if you actually look at the current rules of order, is about item four. Your county attorney should catch this and advise you. Because he doesn't do his job, since you're all sworn to follow the rules of order and the OMA, I suggest that you are responsible for those because your county attorney isn't. You might get on him a bit, but in fact, the responsibility is yours. The county attorneys in these boards typically don't do their job. So the other issue that you have is, someone just raised it, is this presentation should have been linked. It was not. So why not? Because they didn't care to. You should be getting public involvement if you actually, Rules of Order calls you for offering public, looking for public input as you step through your agenda. I notice you're not doing that, probably because you're not aware of it, because you're not aware of the Rules of Order. Again, rather than just go down, I'd be willing to work with your board and try to help you actually get in compliance with our laws if I could, but right now I don't even know how to contact you. I'm also a member of the elderly and you've got problems there because you're not, if you actually read the rules, there's specific requirements if you're using a hybrid format as far as identifying yourself so that somebody actually has a chance of following what you're doing. You're not doing that. You're not aware of it because your attorney isn't making you aware of it again. You've got some really bad problems as far as your procedures, and the county attorney's office and the BCC is not doing their job to make you aware of what's going on. It's not just your committee. We have this problem across virtually all the committees in Santa Fe County because the Santa Fe County Commission and the county attorney's office isn't meeting their responsibilities. So I encourage you, please do your job because you've got to pick up for them. They're not doing theirs. Anyway. I'll leave you with that. I'm happy to work with you in more detail to help you get legal. The county knows how to contact me because we've had this issue for quite a while. Anyway, I'll be checking in at your next meeting, and I hope to see some improvements in your process and your notices. Thank you. Good luck with this upcoming outreach. Your outreach... Based upon experience and the fact of what's going on, I say before me is, you need to work on this because you're not getting the support that you should be getting from the county staff. You need to have your own staff looking into this and having your own opinion about what's going on here. Anyway, I'll leave you there. Basically, the citizens of this county don't show up at these meetings because they don't feel like they're welcome. Make them welcome, please. Thank you. Have a good day.

Thank you, sir. I encourage you to document your specific complaints about procedures and process and submit that to the development staff so that we can look at it. You know, you rattled off a large number of what you believe are deficiencies, but I didn't take notes there. And so I would really like to understand specifically what the violations of the law, as you put it, are so that we can address them and you can get off this topic. You know, you can feel assured that your input has been addressed. So if you have written specific information to the county attorney about something, deficiencies, as you would call them, I'll ask for those. And thank you very much for your input.

I tell you, part of the reason I came here and talked to you is because my rattled off information, as you say, should be in the minutes. If it's not, you've got other problems.

I'm not able to refer to those minutes until a month from now. And so... And so, but you say you violated the OMA. So you didn't say how. So please, with specific objections, that would be the way to do it. Just saying you violate the OMA does not provide a logical course for correction. So please be a little bit more explicit in your communication. Thank you.

I don't even know how to contact you because it's not on your website.

I am not going to speak with individuals outside of this forum. I sit on a commission, and I'm a volunteer for this. So I'm not interested in learning about what you believe and carrying that water. Instead, I think it's if you have objections, please raise those objections in a logical, linear fashion so that they can be addressed. Thanks very much. Yeah, matters from the commission. Commissioner Brugger.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, thank you for being chair, Eric. That's a matter from the committee.

I wasn't going to say that, but I do now.

The I think I will bring this up every meeting that doesn't go on for a really long time, but it's great that we're making changes to the SGMP. But again, I really look forward to when we can have some amendments to the code. In particular, to get instated, not reinstated, but to provide us with the ability to weigh in on subdivision requests, not just variances or conditional use permits, but subdivision requests like all other planning commissions do. Hopefully that can be done sooner than waiting for all of the code updates. And I just intend to bring this up after every meeting. So thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner. Any other matters from commissioners? Next on the agenda is, sorry, matters from the attorney.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have nothing to bring up this evening.

Thanks.

Matters from staff. Chair and commissioners, just to address Commissioner Brugger's comment and suggestion about code amendments, we have a consultant that we are currently working with for some technical corrections to the SLDC. We'll consider what you just stated about your interest in subdivisions and whether that meets that scope, but we intend to have those technical corrections come through the approval process within this next upcoming fiscal year. So in the next year, you will see some code amendments to the SLDC. And that is all we have for staff.

Thank you. I'd like to ask staff, what's up for the, what's anticipated for June? Commissioner Griffin is unable to attend. And I'm wondering if we have an idea of what topics will be on the agenda for June.

Chair and Commissioners, there are a couple of upcoming variances and a conditional use permit that were just heard by the hearing officer. So those, we anticipate, will come forward. The final order that was tabled today for Linnea, the Globe Mallow Energy, will be on the agenda. I believe that is it at this point in time. There may be three cases.

Got it. And if you could make sure to... check with commissioners to make sure we have a quorum, you know, with one out and, you know, a couple more missing, we're getting onto the summertime. So if you could just make sure that if this needs to be delayed, postponed, that we do that. Understood. So we meet next June 18th and may I get a motion for adjournment? So move. May I get a second to that? I'll second that.