I’m thrilled to see Santa Fe beginning to reemerge after a long, hard year. Spanish Market, Indian Market and the International Folk Art Market all will return in person this summer, reinvigorating the celebration of cultures for which our city is known. As our vaccination rates continue to climb, we see restaurants are busier and people feel safer in public spaces. We’ve implemented new systems and gained new tools through our pandemic work to keep people safer and work in smarter ways. And none of this could have happened without the dedication and perseverance of our city staff.
City employees work tirelessly, often without acknowledgment. This was true before the pandemic, but it was especially clear throughout this public health emergency, when our staff revamped their work to ensure residents were safe and healthy. We’ve learned how resilient our staffers are, and how creative and nimble they are even in the face of bureaucratic obstacles.
So many of our city services continued unabated or nimbly shifted their operations to continue to serve residents. City buses kept running throughout the pandemic, implementing strict safety measures. Trash pickup was never interrupted. Senior Services transitioned to serving 1,300 Santa Feans with Meals on Wheels. Our Recreation Department launched Recreation on Wheels to bring recreation to children in the neighborhoods where they live, while working diligently to relaunch our summer camp program this year, serving 420 children and employing 40 young people, all while implementing new policies to keep children safe. And these are just a few examples — behind the scenes, all departments worked hard to keep our city afloat.
The agility shown by our staff and our city will continue to benefit all Santa Fe residents for years to come. We accelerated the implementation of technology that otherwise could have taken us years to roll out. We moved more services online, making them more accessible to more people. Demonstrating our ability to efficiently and effectively distribute services helped us secure CARES Act funding, American Rescue Plan funding and other funds to help families and organizations in need.
The pandemic brought new challenges to Santa Fe residents and exacerbated already existing problems. Nowhere was this more evident than housing. With the leadership of the mayor and City Council, we implemented an eviction and water-shutoff moratorium. To address our long-standing affordable housing shortage, we’ve invested $1.8 million into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, identified new funding sources alongside that investment and guaranteed a $3 million investment in the upcoming fiscal year. And, thanks to the building boom, we’ve got more affordable housing inventory coming.
With the onset of the pandemic, the close quarters of many of our shelters became a public health hazard. To keep the most vulnerable among us safe, we stood up an emergency shelter and moved quickly to relocate homeless Santa Feans and implement robust COVID-19 testing. These actions illustrated our commitment to Santa Fe’s homeless population, who in other areas across the country were ravaged by COVID-19 infections that spread like wildfire in crowded shelters. While working to address the short-term needs, we continued to build our partnership with Community Solutions and other local organizations, which enabled us to help with the purchase of Santa Fe Suites, a groundbreaking initiative that provides shelter and necessary services to housing-insecure people in Santa Fe.
We’ve all been challenged in more ways than we know this year, and yet as we come through, I think we’ll find we’re stronger and more resilient than ever. I am so proud of the staff of this city. I hope you are, too.
Jarel LaPan Hill is the city manager for the city of Santa Fe.
