After a few weeks ironing out the details in near-daily finance committee meetings, the City of Santa Fe Governing Body unanimously approved the city budget for the 2026 fiscal year on May 14, which totaled $479.4 million—a nearly 9% increase from last year.
A memorandum sent to the Governing Body from the city’s finance director Emily Oster and budget officer Andy Hopkins clarifies that a bulk of the $21 million increase in the city’s $160.5 million general fund can be attributed to salary increases for city employees.
“We've made noteworthy investments in the city workforce,” City Manager Mark Scott said at the meeting. “We've needed to do that to be able to keep employees and be competitive in the market…if anything, it's getting more difficult.”
In addition to bringing new positions to city departments in critical need of staff, $4.5 million has been allocated to fund a 3% increase in salary and salary-dependent benefits for all city employees, in accordance with recommendations from a compensation study from 2023 that last year brought an average 8% salary increase to city employees. Combined with last year’s increases to employee salaries, the overall cost of these two bumps in pay is $11.7 million.
Scott also noted that alongside the increased compensation, his office will be looking at “substantial revision” to the city's internal performance evaluation system of employees and focus on filling vacant positions across city departments, especially in management positions.
“It's important for any organization to do that. We need to be accountable for what we do,” Scott said. “We've got key positions at every level of this organization, and we need to get those positions filled at a much better pace than we have compensation. That's a high priority for this particular year.”
Katherine Lewin
Affordable housing is among the targets of Santa Fe's budget for FY 2026.
A notable addition to the budget is funding for three new program manager positions in the Youth & Family Services Division, which Scott told the Governing Body would include a housing and support services program manager, a homelessness response program manager and a data, reporting and policy development program manager.
Community Health and Safety Department Director Henri Hammond-Paul tells SFR that he is "excited" that these three new program managers will help the department fully staff his department's efforts in homeless services.
"These new positions will focus on eviction prevention and making sure that we are not only trying to solve problems in the immediate, but to address the flow of people becoming homeless in the first place," Hammond-Paul says.
Scott added that aside from these positions, other initiatives to improve the state of homelessness (and by extension, housing) would include the establishment of at least two more new Micro Communities similar to the one Santa Fe currently has—a community of small pallet homes serving as transitional housing for homeless Santa Feans that also provide related services. Discussions of an expanded project and five potential sites for these communities have been underway at Governing Body meetings already this year.
“We're excited to have the opportunity to do that,” Scott said. “This is all the result of the Governing Body being willing to let us move forward with acquiring those facilities, and we are going to very seriously work with you on how to move forward in terms of the public participation on that in the very near future.”
Hammond-Paul also says that in the upcoming year, he plans to prioritize capital improvements to facilities under the department's purview, including the Genoveva Chavez Community Center, the libraries and senior centers.
The city’s Affordable Housing Department also received a sizable increase when compared to the previous year—a $2.6 million (or 43.1%) increase. The proposed budget includes $5 million for affordable housing initiatives and programs, including low-income homebuyer and housing assistance, and the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund will receive $3 million.
City Councilor Michael Garcia noted that he would like to see this $3 million go toward supporting affordable housing being developed at the city’s Midtown campus, which Scott confirmed at the meeting will be making progress this year.
“There are some changes that I would like to see be made to this budget,” Garcia said. “When we're talking about the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, I'm glad that there's the appetite from the Governing Body to dedicate the resources to build homes and not granted out to other means.”
The Governing Body also approved two amendments to the budget before it was approved, which resulted in the Public Works Department’s Parks and Open Space Division receiving an additional $633,900.
“We all know that we have a deficit in our capacity to maintain all the parks, medians and trails that this community is blessed to own, but it's a challenge to keep up with the maintenance,” Scott said. “This is one-time funding, but it should make a real difference, and we are excited that through the process that we've been through the last few weeks, there's been an identification of a need for that funding.”
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Katherine Lewin
On June 6 a boy sits on the playground at the park that wasn't really a park.
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Lauren Thompson
Parks officials say they have a plan to protect future fruit trees in the park.
Parks and Open Space Division Director Melissa McDonald tells SFR her department hopes to further explore a new approach to crew management to help them respond more quickly to complaints that residents file concerning the city’s parks, open spaces and trails.
“I’m pleased that the approved budget was amended to include funding to strengthen our park maintenance efforts,” McDonald says. “This investment will help us better address longstanding needs and improve service delivery.”
This new approach, she says, is a pilot program where the parks’ staff team up to quickly address last-minute complaints and issues across city parks that would usually disrupt the main park crews’ regularly assigned duties.
“It’s a positive step forward for our team,” McDonald says. “Our top priority is strengthening our core functions for park maintenance, particularly weeding, graffiti removal, litter pickup. These day-to-day efforts are essential to keeping our parks clean and welcoming.”
Garcia criticized the added funds for the parks being one-time funding, which he says means it may not be possible for the parks department to continue maintaining the parks at the same level in future years.
“Our parks are only going to grow and grow, and I'm quite disappointed that we didn't figure out a way to fund this in a sustainable manner, and that's why I had been reaching out to [Scott] to figure out where we can ultimately shift resources from. I think it could be done,” Garcia said.
He also noted this as an example of the city’s need for increased staff across all departments, noting that between 2018 and this year, the number of city employees with the AFSCME union dropped from 757 to 631.
“Under how many of those employees were parks workers?” Garcia asked. “We need to be working in a direction where we're building up a robust workforce that is going to ultimately provide the day-to-day basic city services that residents not only are asking for, but they deserve.”
City Councilor Carol Romero-Wirth addressed concerns at the meeting she noted the public may have with federal funding cuts and how they could potentially impact the city budget in the future. She said the city has “very healthy reserves” that go beyond what the state law requires.
“So, there is that cushion for us for dealing with unexpected things that may occur throughout the year,” Romero-Wirth said. “We will be tracking this budget, and we may have to come back and make adjustments if revenues aren't coming in as we anticipate them to or if other things occur that impact the budget.”
