Thick Blue Line

The Santa Fe City Council on Wednesday punted a proposal that would have extended the work of its sputtering Community Health and Safety Task Force until the end of 2022.

The resolution heads back to the Finance and Quality of Life Committee for further discussion, but the clock is ticking: The task force’s work is set to conclude at the end of the year, and the council is set to meet just once more before year’s end on Dec. 8.

Despite recent departures from the task force, councilors at their regular meeting continued to say its mission is important for Santa Fe, particularly in light of recent local and national movements to address police violence and the systemic issues of race and class that drive it.

To help with the work ahead, the task force wants to enlist well-known University of New Mexico political science professor Gabriel Sanchez to outline a community engagement plan.

At Wednesday’s council meeting, Sanchez said he’d conduct city-wide surveys, focus groups and community forums, all of which would be anonymous to maintain trust between the community and partner organizations.

He said the work would take four to six months and did not offer a price tag for what it’d cost the city if the resolution is ultimately passed.

“We really want to strive for ensuring all members of the community have access points to provide their voice on these really important discussions,” Sanchez told the governing body. “Members of the African American, Black, community, Native American, Asian American, LGBT communities in particular, are groups that my team has expertise in being able to collect data from.”

Mayor Alan Webber and Councilors Renee Villarreal and Chris Rivera proposed the task force in July in response to unprecedented protests across the nation. Its mission: to examine health and safety services in the city and how those departments, including police and fire, can work better for the citizens they serve.

The task force’s term was set to expire in December, but supporters of the resolution said Wednesday that, with additional time, the group would have a chance to hear from Santa Feans most affected by public safety policies.

“We’re in the middle of a very rapidly moving and changing profile in cities across the country about what law enforcement, public health and safety need to look like,” Webber said, pointing to voters in Minneapolis who narrowly turned down a proposal to overhaul the city’s law enforcement system last Tuesday in a record-turnout election.

Councilor Carol Romero-Wirth proposed sending the resolution to extend the task force’s work back to committee. She says the presentation shared with the City Council wasn’t available prior to the meeting and thought that information should be considered to ensure the task force has sufficient resources.

The task force—and the city’s approach to policing more broadly—have drawn plenty of criticism.

The Webber administration’s efforts to maintain secrecy around police discipline records, for example, stands at odds with the task force’s duties, which include “engendering trust” with the community. In June the police union sided with the city, opposing SFR’s ongoing lawsuit against the city that aims to make those disciplinary files public.

And in March, the task force successfully petitioned to close its meetings to the public.

Villarreal, who co-chairs the task force with Rivera, addressed the secrecy when the topic of the group’s membership came into question on Wednesday.

Responding to a question from Romero-Wirth about changes in membership since the group’s advent, Villarreal said, “We changed the resolution to be able to have closed meetings, because the two members that shifted off didn’t feel safe in that space.”

Villarreal said two members left the task force, one new member joined and then another member split since it was established last year, leaving two fewer members than the original 11. Additionally the group’s facilitator changed; Valeria Alarcón took over from Sunshine Muse earlier this year.

Villarreal says of the task force membership: “I think we’re comfortable with the group we have...we hadn’t thought about bringing more members on.”

Romero-Wirth explained that the closed-door nature of the group makes it difficult to follow its progress. She asked the group to share more about its work, saying, “I want...to know what particular things you’re looking at and who you’re looking at for models and what you’re learning.”

Despite the task force’s promise of quarterly reports to the governing body, Romero-Wirth said, “I’m still concerned that we’re not coming along with you.”