This was the 26th meeting of the 26th City Council, held at 5:00 PM in the Vincent E. Griego Chambers. All nine councilors were present. The meeting included a presentation on the Route 66 Centennial, approvals of mayoral appointments, a resolution for a master plan, a memorial supporting military spouse licensure portability, and an executive session regarding EPA complaints. The meeting adjourned at 7:20 PM.
Good evening, everyone. This is the 26th meeting of the 26th Council, and we will come to order. All counselors are present this evening with Councillor Sanchez joining on Zoom and Councilor Lewis should be here momentarily. We're going to begin the evening with a moment of silence, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance in both English and Spanish. Civic Plaza parking passes are provided for members of the public. You can obtain a parking pass from council staff at the near at the table near the chamber's entrance. Members of the public, city staff, and the media have the ability to view this meeting in person. Bear with us as we test out some of our sound time and try to improve it. Pardon me. So members of the public can view this meeting in person and on live streams through four different platforms Gov TV on Comcast Channel 16, the Gup TV website, YouTube, and Zoom webinar. The live streams can be can be accessed from most smartphones, tablets, or computers. Also, this meeting is closed, captioned, and you may enable the closed captioning services on your television or device at this time. We're good for now. Okay. The video recording of this and all past council meetings will remain available for viewing at any time on the city council's website. Council staff is available via telephone. If members of the public need assistance finding the videos online, please call 505 768-310 for assistance during business hours Monday through Friday, 8 to 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The council will take a break at approximately 7 p.m. this evening if needed. With regard to decorum in the chambers, we want tonight's proceeding to be as civil and respectful as possible. Please do not make any personal attacks and please no applause or snapping or other outbursts during the meeting. Good evening. Hello. Okay. Okay. Just have to read and click at the same time. And I do the best I can. All right. So I assume you guys can see the presentation. Yes, we can. Thank you. Okay, great. All right. Um, Council President Sun, members of the council, thank you so much for this opportunity to talk about the Route 66 Centennial. Uh, it is just less than a year away now. So it seems like we've been talking about it for a while. Um, and it's getting closer and closer, and we've made a lot of great progress. Um, I'm gonna just hit on a couple of high notes today. Um see here. Uh one thing that we're very proud of is that we've brought in quite a bit of external funding. So we've had um really generous support from the mayor's office and from council over the past few uh few years in non-recurring funding, but we've also brought in additional funding. So we've have um the Department of Arts and Culture has brought in over a half million dollars from New Mexico True. No, the council brought in over $300,000 from I mean New Mexico Tourism Department, New Mexico True Money, and um, we've also brought in a little bit of money from the National Endowment for the Arts and also the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Um we have started on our big initiative, which is uh really to activate the whole length of Route 66 from singing arrow open space all the way to Nine Mile Hill and the Route 66 Visitor Center through what we're calling art fueled road trip. So this is gonna be about 20 different stops from open space all the way to the visitors center. It's gonna be a combination of augmented reality and new murals and sculptures along the way, and they'll be uh kind of um an overarching story that will guide visitors and locals alike to visit um different stops along the way and experience new uh art activations. So we'll be working with local artists, and we have two really important and exciting creative partners for that. One of them is Refract Studio, which is an augmented reality studio out of um Santa Fe that's done some amazing national work and gotten some really impressive recent awards, and the other one is familiar to a lot of people, and that's meow wolf. And so we just finalized our partnership with Meow Wolf, and they'll be coming on board for those of you that joined us yesterday.