Tensions between Mayor Alan Webber and Councilor Michael Garcia were on display during a debate over a bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure resolution Wednesday night.
Webber and Garcia, who was the sponsor of a resolution and who was attending the City Council meeting remotely while on business travel, spoke over each other during a discussion in advance of the vote and as two motions to “call the question” — a parliamentary procedure rarely used by the City Council to end debate and bring a proposal to an immediate vote — were made by another councilor.
The resolution ultimately passed, with Webber’s support and with no votes against it, although Councilor Signe Lindell abstained. Councilors Pilar Faulkner and Amanda Chavez were not in attendance.
Garcia’s resolution has had a winding trajectory through the approval process, including being postponed once in the council’s Finance Committee and being postponed again at the last City Council meeting so Garcia and several other councilors could draft a resolution they could all agree on.
The amended resolution presented Wednesday was sponsored by Garcia and Councilors Carol Romero-Wirth, Jamie Cassutt, Lee Garcia and Pilar Faulkner.
The original resolution was based on recommendations from the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee and called on the mayor to include ongoing maintenance of bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in the city budget. Although the resolution by itself did not have the power to add money to the city budget, which is drafted by city staff and presented to councilors by the mayor, several councilors raised concerns during Finance Committee meetings about what they described as budgeting by resolution.
The amended resolution calls on city staff to develop a formula to identify a certain share of funding for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure maintenance from the money designated for vehicle travel and to use the formula to fund said maintenance in the city budget. It also calls on the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee and the Mayor’s Committee on Disability to provide input on that part of the budget to the mayor.
The initial resolution called for funding to begin in the upcoming 2025 fiscal year. In a Tuesday interview, Garcia said he hopes the structures put forward in the amended resolution will be in place in time for the preparation of the fiscal year 2026 budget.
At Wednesday’s meeting Lindell and Webber both criticized the measure, with Lindell saying she felt uncomfortable with a lack of specifics over the amount of city funding. Webber said he had “grave misgivings” over the process that developed the resolution, which he said was not transparent.
Garcia said he was “deeply offended” by Webber’s suggestion of a lack of transparency. The Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee had been working on the proposal for two years and it was presented at the committee level multiple times, Garcia said. Garcia said the mayor had multiple opportunities to bring up his concerns either one-on-one or at a previous meeting.
“Not once were those concerns brought up,” he said.
One of Webber’s sticking points was that the advisory committee had not delivered a presentation about its strategic plan to the council before the measure was considered.
“This resolution doesn’t address that,” Garcia replied, noting the committee delivered a presentation to the council in August that included the strategic plan in an agenda packet.
“That’s neither here nor there,” said Webber, who at one point held up printed-out slides he said were from the August presentation.
Webber ultimately voted in favor of the resolution. Lindell, who abstained, said she did so because she had not had time to read the amended version, which was only attached to the agenda Wednesday afternoon.
During public comment after the vote, Bike Santa Fe President Jennifer Webber thanked the council for supporting the measure and said her members understand the resolution is not a commitment for the city to spend a specific dollar amount. She added, the advisory committee was only given 10 minutes to present at the August meeting and she had been “very surprised and disappointed” at the time that there were no questions from councilors.
“I think there was an opportunity for a conversation that wasn’t taken,” said Jennifer Webber, who is not related to the mayor.
Michael Garcia thanked everyone involved in the resolution. “This definitely was an all-hands-on-deck effort,” he said.
