A bond issue that will finance an estimated $11 million in Santa Fe street improvements across the city received the final stamp of approval Wednesday from the City Council.
The bond issue, introduced in the fall by Mayor Javier Gonzales, leverages Santa Fe's share of gasoline tax revenue from the state to accelerate a suite of street-maintenance initiatives city staff say are badly needed.
Over the next three years, from March through November, give or take a few days of unseasonably warm weather, high-traffic city roadways will be resurfaced — a compressed period of work that otherwise would have taken a decade to fund and complete.
The project initially was planned for a two-year time frame. Dave Catanach, the city's director of streets and drainage, said the revised three-year window will help to "not overwhelm" the city's contractors — all local, he added.
The plan calls for $4 million in improvements in the first eight-month round of work to begin in March, with segments of Rodeo Road, Paseo de Peralta and Upper Canyon Road on the 2018 docket.
To follow in 2019 and 2020 are segments of Agua Fria Street, Galisteo Street, Johnson Street, Calle Lorca, Old Pecos Trail, Rufina Street, Siler Road, Zia Road and all of Camino Entrada. Catanach said he plans to spend roughly $4 million in the second round and what remains in the third.
The city's bond rating was recently affirmed AA-plus by Fitch and AA by Standard & Poor's.
"Despite the operational challenges we are working though the city is still a very strong credit which decreases borrowing costs to the taxpayer," city Finance Director Adam Johnson wrote in a recent email.
Brad Fluetsch, the city's cash and investments manager, said he expects $11.3 million in net proceeds from the bond issue set for Feb. 6, though he added a particularly robust U.S. jobs report, scheduled for release Friday, could lift interest rates and shrink that figure somewhat.
A Washington, D.C.-based transportation research organization, TRIP, released a report this week showing insufficient road maintenance costs each driver in the Santa Fe urban area upward of $1,500 annually.
A proposed live-work complex on Siler Road will receive a commitment of additional city money to help its application for federal tax credits.
The Arts and Creativity Complex, a 60-unit affordable housing complex slated for a parcel of land donated by the city, was bolstered by a unanimous City Council vote to commit $400,000 from what one councilor described favorably as "a menu" of options, rather than the more narrow funding avenue project backers had initially proposed.
The six-figure commitment improves the development's chances of receiving federal low-income housing tax credits to a near-certainty, project backers said.
"Affordable housing is affordable to live in but it's not affordable to build," said Alexandra Ladd of the city's Housing and Community Development Department. "It looks expensive on paper, but I can assure you, it's what these projects cost. And it's going to be worth it and the community will be proud of it."
Councilors, who approved the resolution unanimously, had been skeptical of the requested commitment, expressing initial concern about the request to reallocate funds from already-approved capital improvement projects from elsewhere in the city. The revised request more clearly lays out that the specific funds might be found through another mechanism once the federal tax credits are secured, and it identifies a handful of possible options: the Tierra Contenta revenue fund, the affordable housing trust fund, the city's economic development fund, the city's utility fund, a community development block grant entitlement and the capital improvements project list.
"The intention is that these resources will only be applied if the budget gap persists once the project is awarded [a low-income housing tax credit] subsidy," Ladd wrote in a memo.
After tax credits are awarded, a final determination about where the additional money would come from could be made a year down the road, Ladd said.
Although there was no opportunity for public comment, the council chamber was filled with dozens of supporters of the proposed complex. A sea of hands were raised when Mayor Javier Gonzales asked those in favor to identify themselves.
The parcel of land the city has donated was most recently appraised at $1.3 million. The city has also waived fees for the project, valued at about $450,000.
