[Music]
You're live.
Well, good afternoon and welcome to our
work session. Um, starting with uh pets
of the week. Do we have There you are,
Carol.
[Music]
Good afternoon. I am Carol Nelson,
digital content specialist uh for the
Animal Services Center of the Messia
Valley. Just as a reminder, we are
having our Clear the Shelter special
this month where all adoptions are free
through the entire month, so it's a
great time to adopt. We are currently at
about 80 adoptions this month, so super
proud of that. Our dog of the week is
Charlotte, number 23286.
I'm a confident sweetheart with a nose
for adventure. At just under seven years
old, I might be one of the older pups
around here, but don't let that fool
you. I'm still bursting with joy,
curiosity, and a whole lot of love to
share.
I'm quite the clever girl already
knowing how to sit and give paw. You'll
often catch me offering gentle kisses
and handshakes just like a proper lady.
While I can be a bit selective about my
dog friends, I am more open with humans
and their affection. I'm more than ready
to trade in my kennel for a cozy couch
and a forever family.
And this week we have Ash for our cat of
the week 93146.
I'm your quiet observer with a playful
heart. I may not be the first one to
rush over for attention, but I still
have a fun loving side that really
shines when I'm with my fellow feline
friends. I'm a pro at cuddle puddles and
a champ at roughousing with my condo
mates. While I'm still warming up to the
idea of human affection, I might scoot
off if you get too close too quickly.
I'm always curious and alert, watching
and learning from a comfy distance. I'm
ready to grow and explore this wonderful
world. Let's take it slow and see where
the journey leads.
And we do want to highlight our
long-term residents as well. Um although
we're having a lot of adoptions.
Unfortunately, our long-term residents
are still uh struggling to get adopted.
So, all really great options. Fessa has
now been with us 279 days. Rolley has
been with us 269 days. Eley 264. And
Kesha has been with us 246 days.
Uh this coming weekend we will be at
Petco from 9 to 12. So definitely come
by and see us at our weekend event. And
as always, feel free to look at our
website or follow us on social media for
more information.
Thank you.
All right. Thank you.
Next, we'll go into our agenda items.
2.1 are annual updates from economic
development partners.
We'll start with Selena.
Good afternoon, mayor and members of
city council. My name is Selena Morales
of economic development. Today, you'll
be hearing from several of our key
community and economic development
partners who play an important role in
advancing the city's goals through
collaboration, innovation, and on the
ground impact. These annual updates
provide an opportunity to reflect on
what's being accomplished over the past
year, share upcoming priorities, and
continue strengthening our partnership
moving forward. We'll begin with
Downtown Loss Partnership, or DLCP, the
city's designated Main Street America
organization.
DLCP is focused on downtown
revitalization through business support,
placemaking, preservation, and community
engagement. I'd like to welcome Jeffrey
Stewart to share his annual update with
you. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Selena, for that
introduction. Thank you uh for allowing
me to be in front of you all, members of
the council and Mayor Prom or uh Mayor,
sorry. Um so, I will go ahead
and just jump right in.
Can Can you go ahead and state your name
for the record?
Oh, yes, sir. Sorry about that. Uh
Jeffrey Stewart with Downtown Los Cru's
Partnership.
Are we good now? All right, cool. Just
want to make sure. Uh, so I'm not the
lucky one here to present to you because
I drew the short straw. I am the one
here to present to you about our
organization and everything great that
it can do for the city. Uh, because I am
the one who has the most passion for
this organization at this time. Um, it's
not a passion that I had developed um,
immediately upon my interactions with
the organization. Um, I started off as a
small business owner at Messia Valley
Pharmacy in the downtown district a few
years ago now and essentially at that
time the executive director um as well
as Susan, our last executive director
came to me with assistance in this
programming and it allowed us to be a
better pharmacy um in the downtown
district. Um, but it wasn't then that I
became excited about organization. It
wasn't even in 2022 as the ACD chair or
arts and cultural district chair. Um,
and it actually even wasn't when I was
elected vice president of our
organization a little over a year ago.
Um, it actually began the beginning of
this year, um, when I was lucky enough
to get selected to go to the, um, the
state capital and I would go with Main
Street America and we were able to stock
uh, speak with our legislators about all
the things that we can do as an
organization nationally as well as in
our state. Um, and then it was really
then that I was able to see the benefit
and the things that we can do as an
organization and that fire that kind of
ignited into me that I could bring back
um to hopefully show with you all if you
were unaware, but also just to continue
the good work that we do as a Main
Street program. It's not just me that
does it obviously. Uh, this is our board
here. Uh, John Munoz, he's our
president. He's with Electronic
Caregiver and also in the stands here
today. Uh, Christa Morehead with
Arrowhead. Briea Bifford's a cool story.
She's actually a legacy. Um, so we've
had a partnership with the city for over
20 years now and Briea started off in
our organization as a child. Um, her dad
was actually one of the founding me
members of our organization all those
years back and now she's come full
circle and is on our board as well. She
works with national organizations doing
this exact same thing Main Street
America uh with their branding and stuff
like that. Uh, Richard Hos he is a
principal here at one of the architects
firm in our district as well as the
governor of the Rotary uh, club recent
governor.
So Selena kind of briefly touched on
what we do as an organization. It's
revitalization. Um it's helping our
businesses. It's helping the arts. It's
culture. Um it seems to be a lot of
things that we do. Um but you know, we
work hard to get it done and all the
different methods in which we can do
them for you. Um the
uh I guess going back to it essentially
the the things in which we're
responsible for. So, like not only are
we the economic partners with y'all, but
we are responsible specifically for the
downtown district. The downtown district
is an encompassing term as I'm sure you
all are well aware. Uh, but it includes
the TID, it includes the arts and
cultural district, and it includes also
pieces of the historic Mosquet District
as well.
So, the state of downtown, obviously,
I'm probably a little biased when it
comes to this, but I think we're doing
great. I think there are a lot of things
that we should be excited about uh
moving forward. Um, you know, we have a
dynamic downtown. On any given workday,
there's about 6,000 workers in the
district. As you all are aware, we have
millions of dollars in the TID, um, you
know, capability spend in our in our
district. Uh, we recently just got
through with our ACD uh, gateway
monuments and putting those up, and you
can see the picture to the right there.
Uh, the lighting is expected to be
finished by the end of this year. Uh, we
have amazing events. You guys obviously
did great with Mida, but Zombie Walk and
Chili Drop is something that we are
usually um representative of and
year-over-year that just gets better and
better. Um we are third a nationally
recognized, third place right now and
like USA Today's for the chili drop. Uh
zombie walk the year-over-year data is
outstanding. And then we loved
everything that happened with MIA this
last year. Uh our farmers market
nationally recognized. Um it's seven
square blocks. It's over 300 vendors
rotating on any given weekend. Um, and
then not only that, but it's the
business incentives that we're able to
offer potential businesses coming into
our district. Um, there's also something
to be excited about. Um, the matching
grant, so that it helps them get some
money to, you know, help their um,
physical location or storefront. And
then the other thing is a qualified
opportunity zone. So, it helps
developers come into our area to do more
of a job, which I'm sure you guys are
well aware, so I won't talk too much on
that. Uh, one of the things that we're
tasked to do uh, for our district is
promotion. So there's there's four
pillars of the main street approach.
Promotion is one of them and we do it in
a number of different ways but the way
in which we directly help our businesses
is getting their message out more
effectively to the community. Um so what
we did is we partner with media
companies um and we essentially host
these videos for our our businesses. We
did 12 I think a year. We piloted
starting in 22 23 um and you can see the
the graph. It's just basically trying to
show you all that we're it's getting
better. Um, we started off we had 1,600
unique viewers per video on average. Now
we're at 4,900 unique visitors on
average and now we're in uh year 2324
and we've worked our way up to almost
9,000. Um, so we're just trying to do
our part to help our businesses get more
of their messaging and more of their
marketing out um at zero cost to the
business.
Another thing that we do for the
district is our annual survey. So we're
always doing this. It's not like a
specific time period, but it's just
throughout the year. Um since 2018 there
was a positive increase of the overall
downtown. Um so from our surveyors
basically from 2018 to 2021 it was just
steadily increasing their perception of
the downtown as a district. Um you can
kind of see in 2021 2022 it leveled out
at about 3.7 and now it's been on a
steady decline from 22 to 23 and 23 to
24. Uh we are hopeful however just with
the first month or two or two of our
fiscal uh year we already have good
results um from our current surveys. So
looking forward it seems to be doing
better. Um we have a lot of activity in
our district. This is just a graph to
show you the different businesses that
have either come in out or permanently
closed. Um obviously permanently closed
is at nine and we hate to see that
especially as an organization that helps
businesses and helps our citizens. Um,
however, you know, there is movement
both ways. It's not all bad. Um, but
it's something that we definitely want
to look into and just, you know, remain
cognizant of as we continue going
forward and trying to make our our
district better.
Um, I would be remiss not to mention the
largest uh lever of our district in
Omador Live. That is a large gap in our
market. Um and you know we want to be
hopeful like although it is an issue
although it's something that is
definitely um the citizens are missing
um it's not a systemic problem um we're
going to get ahead of it we're already
working with stakeholders to try to you
know do something about it um as much as
we can um but basically I I bring up
because on that survey and I can go back
just to show you but um the number one
and number two things on this survey
that we can do better on each year
number one and number two every year is
an increased mixed uses of businesses
and space and then also of the
businesses they would like to see it's
dining and entertainment. So seeing
Amodore leave is um quite a loss. Um
however we take everything uh as an
opportunity, right? So it's a challenge.
It's not going to get us down. We're
going to work together. We're going to
get over it. Um but that's kind of the
the passion stuff I got from Santa Fe.
How do we work together? How do we do
better? how can we, you know, elevate
our district and move to the next level
economically. Um, and basically it comes
down to collaborative efforts. Selena
said it herself, but essentially it's
focusing on the things that we do right,
leveraging our strengths as an
organization and doing so in an
effective manner for all of our
stakeholders. Um, so you can see local
government, state government, business
owners, community members, nonprofits,
and community leaders. Um, so there's
three major things in which we do really
well. Um, the first one I like to talk
about is capital outlay. Um, so capital
outlay since 2019, we brought nearly
$2.9 million in capital outlay funding
to the city. Uh, that's over four times
the total amount the city has invested
in us. So in other words, for every $1
spent on our organization, we bring back
$4 in capital outlay dollars to benefit
our community in the form of public
infrastructure.
Um, and it's and the good thing about it
is uh it's almost time for capital
outlay to come back up for our
organization. So, just to give you a
little insight, the way it works is
essentially a lottery program. There's
32 other main street programs in our
state and we are just one of the 32. Um,
and essentially every 5 to seven years
they cycle this capital outlay money.
It's like they don't want to, you know,
um, give preference to one community
over the other. So, they try to do a
good job about spreading it. But the
thing is and things I learned at Santa
Fe is that of the 32 Main Street America
programs, there's limited projects that
are shovel ready. So it might be time
for Deming to get their money, but they
don't have their projects. So they got
to get skipped and then it goes to
whoever and next and so on and so forth.
And so that's something that we can hone
in on is being better working with our
stakeholders to have shovel ready
projects. Shovelready projects that map
and meet the master plan of the downtown
district. And the better we can do
working with our stakeholders to combine
what our vision is and our future with
what we want to do with our district,
the better we can work as an
organization in Main Street to get
capital alllay dollars flowing to and
through our city. Um the
so in other words, like if the only
thing we focused on was uh capital
dollars, then we would still be an
excellent return on investment for the
city. Um and that's just one of the
highlights, but good thing that that's
not all we do, right? Capital outlay is
just one of the many things. But the
other you know very large thing that we
can do is called technical assistance.
So this is tailored more towards uh
business um and organizations within our
district. Basically technical assistance
means that we get specialists at the
state level from the the New Mexico ED
department to essentially give us their
expertise free of charge to the
businesses. Um so it's for a number of
things experts in areas like marketing,
storefront design, event programming or
business operations. Um, so it's not a
one-sizefits-all approach. We listen to
the needs of our stakeholders and match
them with the right revitalization
specialists to help them succeed. It's
basically a tailored support system and
it helps our businesses grow,
strengthens the local economy and eval
elevates our entire district as a whole.
Um, the last thing that we wanted to
focus on is like even though we do
capital, even though we do technical
assistance and this is free of charge to
the businesses, it's free of charge to
people in our district. It's because
we're through that Main Street
accredited program that we have that
opportunity to offer that. Um, but the
other thing that we do, um,
uh, we believe that the city's
investment should go even further. Um,
our long-term goal is to generate more
of our own revenue so we can carry out
our mission and reduce dependence on
city contract funding. Um, and we have
the most viable way in which we have to
do that. Uh, we believe as an
organization is through increased
sponsorship dollars of our cultural
events. Uh the partnership between our
organization and the city has already
proven its value with the events like
Zombie Walk and Chili Drop
year-over-year. I spoke to it earlier.
They're they're doing better. Um and we
have increased attendance by the
thousands and continue to make our part
and do our part as an organization to
make these events successful. Some
updates on that. I recently partnered
with NMSU College of Engineering. They
have a capstone project and we basically
have commissioned them to produce us a
new chili for the event. Um so an
updated chili, stick with the times,
etc. And then we also recently got a
$10,000 grant from the TE's department
at the tourism and basically just to use
on the event. We haven't figured out
what it has to be used on directly, but
it's just something to make it even
bigger and better for next year. Um, so
basically these collaborations have
allowed us to expand our existing
programs, and we see sponsorship
opportunities and business partnerships
is the most viable way to keep us
growing as an organization. By adding
more value for the businesses who
support our events, we can expand
cultural programming, grow the arts and
cultural district, and strengthen our
organization for years to come.
Well, um, with those being the things
that we're going to focus on to do
better as an organization, it kind of
called for an increase or a a facelift
to our organization as well, not only
with the branding, but as well as the
governance. Um, so we wanted to do
everything we can do to be accountable
and be good stewards of city money. and
we want to be able to prove to you that
the things that we're doing actually
have an impact or quantifiable and you
can see the report that we're doing on
any given day, any given month. And
Selena can call me, ask for it, and I
can give it to her. That's something in
the past it's taken us time to do as far
as just our our antiquated methods of
keeping up our progress and reporting
our progress. And so we're uplifting
those methods to hopefully become more
automated um now and into the future.
And also that you see here's the
rebranding. So we kind of talked about
as an organization essentially although
we want you all to know who we are and
everything that we do um and everything
we can do for the community etc. It's
not really that important. We we are not
important. It's what we can do for our
businesses and the community that's
important. It's it's important that
everyone in our city as well as tourism
that comes to our city is aware that
downtown is a prime location to go enjoy
live, work, play, etc. Um, so that's why
we kind of took a step back and, you
know, as you see us going forward, we're
going to be soft launching our brand.
Um, so instead of downtown Los Cusus
partnership, it will now be Main Street
Los Cusus. Uh, basically we're doing
that to uh to align more closely with
the national Main Street brand, which
strengthens our professional
recognition, credibility, and connection
to the larger network of Main Street
programs across the country. But like I
said, that's secondary to what we want
to do. and you see downtown Los Cusus,
Alama district, Mosqu district, arts and
cultural district. Um, basically just
working together with our stakeholders
to effectively put placemaking into our
community so that we can essentially
guide people towards businesses, guide
people towards things to do within our
district.
Um,
that is pretty much it. The last slide
here is looking forward. Um, you know,
that that that's it. Um, we have room to
improve obviously like everybody always
does. Um, but we think we've done a good
job as far as capital and things like
that are concerned, but we we think we
can do much better. Um, and we hope, you
know, we hope to do that for you going
forward and thank you for the chance
given us. Um, we'll continue to work
alongside our stakeholders to foster a
safe, vibrant, and economically thriving
downtown.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jeffrey. Yes, sir. Any
questions?
Councelor Matise.
Okay. I was just go ahead, Mayor Proton.
Thank you. Um, thank you so much. It's
nice to meet you. I don't think I've met
you before. Yeah,
we have. Okay. My apologies. Meet lots
of people.
Yeah, you're busy.
Nice to see you again. Um, I appreciate
your diversific you talking about the
diversification funding. I think that's
uh really important as a nonprofit to to
not rely just on one source of funding.
So, I appreciate you noting that and
that you all have a commitment to that.
I do just have a couple of questions um
on the for the businesses either leaving
the district, closing permanently, or
even the ones coming in. Are do you have
um surveys on that like information that
you're gathering for the people leaving,
but even the people coming in, right?
Like why did they choose downtown as
their location? That kind of
information.
So, we don't have a standardized process
as of yet. Um but one thing we do a
important job trying to do is um call
the businesses specifically who leave
and basically kind of run an audit like
hey what did we do wrong? Is there
something we could do better as an
organization to help you out in the
future um or anything that we can do
that might help any other organization
that you can think about that might
still be in our district or interested
relocating to our district. Um but no
not having a you know
a standardized process to do so. No, not
yet. But I think that's a good good
idea. Um, Selena, do we have anything
from the city?
Oh,
thank you, Mayor Espeno. So, previously
when Susan, she's no longer the
director, now it's Lyanna. Um, but she
did do a lot of surveys for us when it
comes to um issues that arised. We as a
city had our own surveys that she would
go out and fill out um and get questions
on. So, we do have we do have those on
some of the businesses. I know we're
trying to figure out a new process with
the new leadership and see if we're
going to continue the same surveys or
tweak them a little better so that we
can quantify that data.
And I, you know, I I understand that
maybe someone who's closing a business,
the last thing they want to do is fill
out a survey. But I I think it's
important feedback for you all for us as
a city, how do we support businesses
better? Um, similarly to the ones moving
out of district, that's really
interesting to me. Um, but also the ones
coming in, like I said, right? Like what
made you choose downtown? So I I think I
would encourage us to think about
something like that in partnership with
you all. Obviously you all are there,
right? And um and have those
connections. So I think that'd be really
important. Um
and then um my other question was do you
have sort of a an audit on the buildings
currently empty downtown?
Yeah. Yeah. So, we have a um it's it's a
business inventory list is what we call
it, but essentially it includes vacant
buildings. Uh buildings that could use
storefront uh help or placemaking or
signage, things like that. Um but it's
an encompassing list that incorporates
vacant buildings. Um but that's part of
our service contract is to we have a
list, but update that list quarterly,
make sure it's good to go so we can give
it to you whenever you need it.
Awesome. Great. And I mean I think in
coordination with even the TID right how
are we sort of marketing those uh off
those uh storefronts that are available
and ready to use. Obviously we don't
want to sit them you know sitting for
empty for a long time.
Yeah.
One example I can think of is the Sunuse
building right like that's been empty
for a little longer than I would have
loved to see it empty. I understand it's
huge but um I would love to for us to
sort of how how do we market that and
stay stay ahead of of that? Um, and then
just lastly, obviously something I would
love to see and um, hopefully with
Realize and all of these things, it'll
make it easier for us to have more mixed
use um, uh, in the downtown, especially
uh, with living spaces, right? I'm
curious. I know that there's like at
least the one apartment complex, right?
If if that is a business that you all
um, communicate with. And I, you know, I
would love to understand what like
residents of the downtown area, um,
people who live downtown, how they see,
how they see the the area, um, as well
as consumers, right?
Yeah. No, that makes sense.
Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate.
Of course. Yes, ma'am.
All right. Again, Jeffrey, thank you.
And yeah, I I uh I appreciate your
passion and your drive and and the
commitment that you have for downtown.
As you can see, the city of Los Cusus uh
throughout history is always an
improvement and revitalizing the
downtown. And since the investment of
the plaza, we want to make sure that we
continue that and we work with that. And
yes, it's it's sad about the Amidor
live, but that's something that we want
to make sure that gets up and going and
we're all concerned about that as well.
Yes, sir.
All right. So, thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
All right. Thank you.
All right. Thanks.
Thank you, Mayor Council Member Selena
Morales. Uh, now we'll hear from our
another vital partner in our downtown
ecosystem, the Farmers and Craft Market
of Los Cusus. This is a nationally
recognized market that not only provides
a platform for local entrepreneurs,
farmers, and artisans, but also draws
residents and visitors alike to our
downtown every week, contributing to
both economic activity and community
vibrancy. I'd like to welcome Karen
Bracha to preserve their annual update.
Good afternoon, mayor, council members.
I am Karen Bradshaw, and I manage the
farmers and crafts market of Los Cusus.
Uh, let's see if I remember how to work
this stuff. Just push the buttons. Ah,
that's right.
All right. So,
um we continue to support the um SNAP
and double up food program in the state
as well as our WIC and our senior um
program for our lower income community
members. Um this past year
we managed we uh took in 43,000 in SNAP
and we did 40,000 in the double up
program.
um basic general market information. We
have 151 permanent members,
126 temporary vendors. We have 68
musicians, of which 16 are under the age
of 18. There are over 150 nonprofits and
community outreach groups that have the
um opportunity to set up at the market
as well as city and state agencies.
Um we have 32 farmers, ranchers, honey
plants, fresh flowers and pet food
vendors.
Um 194 arts and craft vendors and this
includes both permanent and temps. Um
prepared on site food vendors, we have
20. Uh prepackaged food, we have 30. And
then regular community and service uh
vendors, we have three. Plus, of course,
our market booth, which um is where we
manage the EBT program and the double
up food buck program.
Um advertising. In the past fiscal year,
we continue to distribute uh rack cards
throughout the state. We have both uh
social media and website. We have uh two
Facebook pages, Instagram.
Um, we use Adam's radio regularly. They
do remotes
down at the market as well as
advertising. Uh, New Mexico magazines
adventure travel guide, uh, Southwest
Contemporary, and we recently were
accepted by the USDA as part of the
Taste the Tradition program.
Um, we also were just recently accepted
by the, uh, New Mexico Department of
Tourism. Um, so we're in the process of
getting set up with them as well.
Um, we, let's see, bulletin's best of
Messiah Valley for 2025. We actually
came in first place for best attraction,
best cultural event, best outdoor event,
best family entertainment, and best
local event this past year.
Um KTL 101.5 the local community radio
broadcasts live from the market plaza
actually down at the plaza uh every
month
and then KRWG also broadcasts live every
spring and fall and we actually will see
them next month. We've already got that
set up with them. And actually this
Saturday, if you all want to come down
to the plaza and the market, you will um
get to see um a local celebrity Jazz
Sachs performing live on the Plaza stage
from 10 to 11. I understand her music is
fantastic.
Um let's see.
American Farmland Trust. Ah, yes. Once
again,
it is time for everyone to please vote
for the market to get us to that
national
um recognition. Um, last year we were
first place in the state. Um,
let's see. We would like to do that
again this year. So, please everybody
remember to vote for us. Only one vote
per person, but please remember to do
so.
And let's see, ah, special events. This
past year, we had our pet costume
contest,
and we had over 20 entries, actually
almost 30 entries this past year. Um,
with prizes for first, second, and third
place
provided by the our local businesses. Um
both uh Jackie Marquez Williamson and
Joey Hernandez from Adams Radio were our
judges this past year and then
our Easter egg hunt which is always so
much fun down at the market. This year
we got to collaborate with keep um Los
Cusus beautiful because Earth Day was
also doing they were also doing their
celebration of Earth Day on the plaza.
So, we managed to distribute over 12,000
plastic eggs full of candy and prizes to
the kids this past distiller back in
April. Um,
so it it's it was fun. And then KTL
also did a live broadcast um on the
Plaza stage during the event and they
had rockabilly strangers playing live
for us. So, we had a lot of fun and we
really did enjoy having um the city of
Los Cruus collaborate with us that day.
Um unfortunately, this coming year the
dates don't line up as well, so we won't
get to do it again until I think 2027.
We've already been looking because it
was so much fun. Um
and then basically that's it guys.
Questions?
Oh, thank you Karen. Anyone have any
questions?
No. No. I just want to say
congratulations on all the awards. It's
always great to see and it's always uh
jam-packed at the downtown uh especially
on Saturdays. I was there this past
Saturday. I guess there was a car show
going on as well and it was it was
it was a normal summer market.
A normal summer morning.
That was a normal summer market.
Yeah. Very busy. So, thank you for all
that. Hey, we, you know, we have fun. We
enjoy what we do. Um, we're definitely
there for the community in the downtown.
Um,
we like the fact that we're a stepping
stone for small businesses in the
community. Um, I know some of our
vendors have moved on to brick and
mortars, so that's always a plus. Um, so
yeah, we have fun. Well,
thank you.
Thank you guys.
Thank you, Mayor Counselor Selena
Morales. Next, we'll hear from film Los
Cusus, our partner leading efforts to
grow and support the local film and
media industry through workforce
development, location services, and
production spent. Film Los Cusus helps
position Los Cusus as a film friendly
destination and an economic driver for
the region. Please welcome Andrew to
share his update.
Okay, thank you. Hello. Good afternoon,
Mr. Mayor and city council members.
Thank you for having me. I'm Andrew Har.
I'm the film leazison here at Film Las
Cusus. uh film Las Cruus. The mission of
film Las Cruus is to promote and develop
the film and entertainment arts industry
in the city of Las Cusus and Donana
County. We have also added the cities of
Anthony, Sunland Park. And then we help
the other municipalities even if they do
not uh support us like Hatch, you know,
whenever they have a project with Hatch,
we want to help them out so they don't
have any problems. All right. So, we
have a staff of three. There is uh
Elijah Vando who's our associate film
leaison. I'm Andrew um the film leazison
and we have Erica Onatia as our
operations coordinator and they've also
joined us here today.
We also are we are run by a board of
directors. Our president is Senator Ste
Jeff Steinborn. Our vice president is a
makeup artist named Pepper Gyos. Our
treasurer is a line producer or
production coordinator named Christopher
Stanley. And our secretary is um she
works for uh the school district but her
name is Denise Lefrance Ojanga. Uh we
also have Matt Burns, Stephen Osborne,
uh Lynwood Spinx, Natalie Shander,
Marilyn Bindis, Christina Baloo, and
Jerry Proaka as part of our board.
So our economic impact um one of the
give me one second. So we have a group
of metrics that we always try to meet.
Those metrics are production permit,
production days, local spend, film
friendly businesses, locations, worker
days, total hotel nights, uh, Los Cruus
crew, and funding. So, first, let's go
over the economic impact specific to the
city of Los Cusus. So, worker days are
days when the workers are on set, that
is local workers and uh, coming from out
of town. Our baseline is a,000 days and
this last year we got 3,655
days. our production days. Now, these
are days that are um their film is in
town filming. Um and that is our
baseline is 140 days. This year we only
hit 114, but that is the one that's most
out of our control because the
productions are the ones who kind of
line up when they have uh when they're
going to film. We can have two films
with very same budgets. One that's going
to shoot for two weeks, one that's going
to shoot for two months. It just depends
on the productions. I will say we do not
include pre-production or
post-production. Pre-production is when
the production has come into town. It's
when they're starting to look for
locations. They'll go on what's called a
location scout, which we'll talk about
in a little bit. And they'll do other
things, starting to hire crew for that.
We don't include that because it's not
as uh intensive. There's only a couple
of people right now. There's a
production and they have about three
people. Um but if we added those days,
they had 87 uh pre-production days. And
then our local spend, our baseline is a
million dollars. This last year we were
very busy and we had a local spend of
$10 million um and then 93980.
Those numbers I don't know how to read
them so we'll just go with 10 million.
Um but yes so it was a very successful
year this last year and I will say even
this year starting from January there
has not been a month where we haven't
had a production of some kind in town. I
hope that we started with a pretty big
production. There's a picture of it
right there. As you can see, that's our
office and right next to it, you can see
the production that's in town. They were
shooting a car chase scene in that one.
So, for inquiries,
this is when productions are reaching
out to us. We do what is called location
packages. When a production is coming
into town or they haven't come into town
yet, they'll send us a script or a list
of locations. We create a location
package on them to say, "Right now,
we're looking for an oil rig for a
production. Their movie takes place
entirely on an oil rig. So, we'll put
together a package showing them what we
have in the area. Last year, we had 55.
Um, a lot of times they will ask for
crew and vendor information. So, we've
sent uh 68 uh crew informations and 66
vendor informations. And then in
location scouts, that's again once we've
sent them the location package, if they
are interested, they think they can make
the movie here, they will set up what's
called the location scout. That's when a
few of the main uh crew members, usually
the director, a producer, and maybe a
DP, maybe an art person will come down
because they want to look at the places
in um in person. And so last year we had
47 and to think that we had 55 location
packages and out of that 55, 47 decided
enough to come into town. Um, another
thing that's also helpful with us, and
I'll take time to say thank you to the
city, the uh, Las Cusus Police
Department, the fire department. The way
that we get these location scouts, uh, a
lot of times they'll call us and say,
"Hey, we are coming in today. Can we
have a location scout tomorrow?" So, it
is very time-sensitive. Thankfully, the
city um, is very helpful with us. The,
uh, Los Cusus Police Department
especially, we had a production shooting
off of East Mesa the other day, and then
tomorrow they wanted a scout. The police
department was able to accommodate both
of those and they have been a great
tremendous help. Let's go to this next
one. Social media is a way we kind of
get our news out. Um and for social
media we had um 179,000 people reach. We
had 176
176 posts and then for the web we had
82,000 page views. So it is one of the
things about film is that it's very
online. That's where crews are finding
the cast. they're finding crew members
and so we do have to stay active on all
social medias and if you follow our
social media you'll see a lot of times
we'll send out casting calls and crew
calls for that purpose.
So last year our baseline for uh permits
is and a permit if in case anyone
doesn't know a film permit is uh
whenever the film needs anything that's
going to disrupt the public whether it's
uh they want to shut down a street or
whether they just want to do what's
called uh intermediate traffic control.
Well they'll stop the traffic and then
film their scene and then let the cars
through. They'll need a permit of that
uh for that obviously if they're going
to rent any equipment or any city
property they'll need a permit. Um, and
sometimes they'll just want a permit,
like if there's a documentary, they
might just want a permit just so that
the authorities know that they're
filming out there. Um, and so our
baseline is 15. Last year we had 38.
So we also were building our film crew.
Um, we have uh educational institutional
outreach. We also have interns. We have
interns from uh CMT, which is the um the
Donana County uh community college. We
have CMI which is NMSU and then we of
course go to the public school
districts. We always are trying to get
interns. Right now we have two. They're
from a program called Skillbridge where
veterans as they're when they're still
active duty military they will for the
last six months instead of staying on
base they can uh opt to join some kind
of industry to see if they can work in
that industry. And so we'll get with
them and we'll kind of show them around
on film and stuff like that. Right now
we have two of those interns. For our
crew database, our target is 280 and
right now we have 813 in our database.
Um again, our crew keeps growing bigger.
Every time we have a production in town,
our crew gets a little bigger. Uh we
also do workshops and training. Some of
our workshops are we'll have the w uh
that's an event where we bring
independent filmmakers. We show them
their short films, their music videos.
We let them talk to the public and kind
of network. Every other Friday, we also
have our screenwriting workshop that's
run by a produced screenwriter and he
will help you workshop your script kind
of they'll read it out loud, they'll go
through it to help upcoming
screenwriters get better at their craft.
So for support services, uh we have a
target of 121 film film friendly
businesses. And to be a film friendly
business, one of the things we do is
kind of talk to them. The best example
is catering. If you hire a caterer for
your event, you're usually have one
event that's, you know, that you're
having. But for film, a caterer needs to
have two meals prepared every single
day. And they have to be different
meals. So, we'll meet with them. When a
caterer does want to be on our database,
we'll meet with them. We'll explain to
them what that entails and what it means
for film. This way, they know kind of
what they're getting into before they
answer that phone call. because we don't
we have had a couple of businesses where
they kept giving everyone enchiladas and
after like the third day people were
like okay that's enough of those so we
we try to tell them like it has to be a
lot of differences um but yes so we will
talk to them or of course film is 24/7
so explaining to them that they might
call at 9:00 at night to ask you to do
something it's not out of the ordinary
this way the the businesses are prepared
for that
so location assistant another big part
of film making is filming on locations.
That's usually the first step after they
find out about our wonderful incentive
is they want to make sure that they can
film this movie here in Los Cru's. And
sometimes it takes a lot like we've had
everyone. We've had uh locations that
wanted to be California, Mexico, we've
had China, we've tried to match a lot of
like Palm Springs. So it is just trying
to show them what we have in the area.
Our target is 650 and right now we have
1,67.
Uh so this is our dashboard that shows
all of our um different metrics. As you
can see it has the production permits,
production days, the local spend, the
film friendly businesses and uh and
everything else. As you can see, we have
met all of our metrics except for
production days. Uh but this year, like
I said, was very good. And our hotel
nights is 3,524
for the last year. Um, and yeah.
Okay. I don't know if this is going to
work.
Okay, cool. So before uh so we have a
little video. We have what's called the
real when productions because you have
to remember a lot of these productions
are coming in. We've had some from
Finland this year. We had some from
Asia. We have a lot from LA. We have one
right now from Washington. So, they're
coming in from out of town. They don't
really know what we have. So, we do like
to have something ready. Eli was able to
make us a real to kind of update them.
It's just kind of a breakdown of what we
do in a two-minute video. So, I would
like to play that
[Music]
Heat. Heat.
[Music]
Heat. Heat. N.
And before uh I open it up to questions,
I do want to just thank again the police
department, the fire department, traffic
control. They all help us so much. We
have explained to them how, you know, a
production might lose a location the day
before and so they have to change
everything and of course if they miss
that day, it could cost them thousands
of dollars. So the fact that the city is
able to help us make sure that that
doesn't happen or try to get us as much
as we can is very imperative and it
helps. It's one of the best things about
the film office is the work. Of course,
city economic development with cruise
and everyone else as well, Selena,
they're very helpful. So, I do want to I
cannot end this panel presentation
without thanking them. So, thank you
guys. And uh any questions?
Oh, watch it again. No, I'm just
kidding.
All right. Thank you, Andrew. Any
questions? Anyone comments?
Okay.
No, thank you, Andrew. We really
appreciate it. It it it does what you're
talking about economic development, uh
putting people to work and the
excitement. Even I got caught up. I
thought Aluccino was downstairs, so I
ran down there and it was his double.
But still, it it was it was exciting.
It's it's great that you bring that to
our community. So, thank you.
Well, thank you. And we have heard even
when we were in Santa Fe for an event
for the film office. A lot of people
were saying that they've heard a lot of
great things about Las Cruz and how easy
it is to film here. We even had film
crew who moved up to Albuquerque
starting to move back. So, we're getting
them. But, thank you guys so much.
Thanks again, Andrew.
All right, Selena.
Thank you, Selena Morales. For the
record, our final presentation today
comes from the Messia Valley Economic
Development Alliance, also known as
MAVITA. As our regional economic
development partner, Mavvita focuses on
business recruitment, expansion, and
investment efforts that strengthen our
local economy and support job creation
across key industries. Please join me in
welcoming Davin Lopez to share Mavvita's
annual update.
Thank you very much,
Mr. Mayor, council. It's great to be in
front of you again to talk about the
achievements of Avita this year. I'm
going to just start off by uh welcoming
some of my uh team members here. We got
Brian Garcia. He's our VP of business
development.
I think you met Carlos Pa. He's our
director of marketing. He's kind of our
operations in in terms of a production
marketing powerhouse. We have He's our
team there. We have a team of five all
together on staff. That does include me.
And I'm also bringing to the table uh
Eric Montgomery who's our new uh chair
for the year. And he's going to want to
say a few words when I finish. So, thank
you for having us. Uh, first, thank you
for being part of economic development
and thank you for the partnership that
we've had now for 30 years. Um, I can
tell you that it's it's nice to see that
we're working with your staff, economic
development staff, really on a daily
basis, if not multiple times a day. And
even better, too, as well, over the past
year, we've been working a lot more with
the community development staff as we
find new ways to try to bring new uh
development to the region. Uh, I'm going
to state my mission for the
organization. Our goal is to bring
economic based jobs to the region,
improving the health and wealth of
residents around Donana County and Los
Cruus. Uh, we think this is important.
Uh, not only does it diversify industry,
which I think we truly need, especially
when we're hearing about federal
cutbacks, diversification of industry is
critical, and it also invites new
revenue dollars into the into the area
as well to make up for the differences
we might lose. So we implement this
strategy through aggressively trying to
bring companies to the region. We also
uh try to work with existing economic
based companies and really provide them
technical assistance, grants, any way we
can help them to stay and grow. And uh
we've made quite a few achievements in
that this past year as well. So let me
just jump to it. our industry retention
uh attraction and retention plan and
again this is trying to really put Los
Cusus on the global map for foreign
direct investment attraction uh to uh
adhere to some of the trends that are
taking place especially nearshoring and
and onshoring that's the repurposing of
production coming from Asian company
Asian countries coming to the United
States um and then of course what we're
trying to do is just be recognized as a
world-class area that's inviting to
companies to help them succeed and
So when we look at our marketing efforts
this past year we ran three campaigns uh
and when we run these marketing
campaigns we try and touch upon industry
pain points that are taking place
challenges that the industry is having
that we can over help them overcome by
coming to this area. We have for the
third year now we're running a your site
is ready campaign and that your site is
ready is not only focused on all the
industrial sites in the region but
particularly we're we had a goal and a
strategy which I'll talk about in a
minute uh to try to bring more attention
to Los Cus's innovation and industrial
park. Uh we're running a center of trade
campaign that's really access. We're
providing in our region access for
companies they can come here. They can
access workforce. They can access a
large demographic base as the three
regions together. they can access talent
uh pull through our multiple
universities in the region and it puts
us on a level of competition where alone
by ourselves we would not be able to get
on the radar of major site searches
major site searches that look at
populations primarily of multi-million
uh multi-million population. So it
allows us to really center ourselves as
a location where geographically they can
they can um uh tap into bational
strategies and accomplish what they need
to accomplish. Uh and then we have a
discover your workforce campaign. We ran
a uh we uh commissioned a study about
two and a half years ago uh that looked
at what our advanced manufacturing
sector could provide in terms of
workforce and skill sets. And so we
wanted to get right out of the door with
that and we've been marketing that now
for two years as well because workforce
and skilled workforce is a challenge
that companies are looking to solve and
they make their location decisions as a
result of that. Once we choose the
campaign, what we try to do is run a
consistent medium uh consistent
messaging across all of our marketing
channels. Uh I think about maybe two
quarters ago, maybe three quarters ago,
we had uh uh Carlos Pod, our marketing
director, come up and he gave about a
30-minute presentation on what we do.
And we he calls it connected marketing.
But what that basically means is what we
we establish the messaging, we establish
the targets and then through multiple
medium channels we go out there and we
we we advertise uh through trade shows,
traditional marketing channels, through
websites, social media, uh digital
media, and we also try to go after
earned media as well. And at any point
if you'd like uh you know uh Carlos to
come back and and give a briefing on
that, we're happy to do so anytime. Uh
but let me give you an example of what
this means. like your site is ready. So
we started with this on the left
discover loss cusus in the borderlex
region. We started talking about all the
advantages that this is the messaging.
We have an FTZ foreign trade zone. We're
an opportunity zone. We have fasttrack
permitting, interstate access, land
incentives, site certified, all the
benefits of coming to this area. And
then in the middle there's this collage
of a lot of different ways we get that
message out across many different
mediums and channels. But we also
connect it back like through a QR code
as an example. And this is a live QR
code. It goes to a landing page that
talks more specifically about the Los
Cusus Innovation and Industrial Park. So
then we can actually track the marketing
and the success of it. And we'll do this
time and time again with all of our
channels so that we can have a better
idea of which what which are the most
effective and which are getting the most
attention in terms of how we put the
message out there.
When we look at our marketing output,
that means all of our business
development and and marketing mediums
all together. Uh we have what we call
traditional marketing. That's
relationship building. We attended the
five of us 24 industry trade shows. And
when I say the five of us, not
collectively, we we break it up, but I'm
just saying that's a lot of trade shows
in a year for f for five people. Really
four people. Uh we did two prospect
missions where we went to visit site
selectors and companies and major
markets. We would like to increase that.
That has gone down a little bit in the
past couple years.
We brought in six FAM tours, what we
call them, familiarization tours. That's
when we bring site selectors and more
recently foreign delegations to the area
uh so that they can become become
familiar with our area and go back and
have um consideration when they're
talking to their clients or when they're
talking about their relocation
opportunities even if it's one two three
years down the line. Uh more recently,
we had a delegation come in from India.
uh the mayor and your staff were uh
great to come and join us as well and
and get to meet them. Uh and that goes a
long way in showing that we're a
businessfriendly and open community. Uh
and then we did we had a reach out to
site selector consultants. They are
consultants who have their hands on the
uh expansion plans of many different
companies. They're very competitive to
get in front of. Uh but we got in front
of 158 site selectors this past year
through our different channels.
Uh when we look at digital, we try to do
a combined campaign that includes uh not
only putting in print but leveraging the
digital that those print publications
have in place. Uh through that through
our channels this past year, we we
reached 120 110,000 through print and
that extended to another 309,000
executives who saw our message on on
digital on digital media. And then we
also have a social and organic uh
marketing campaign where we had a reach
of over 707,000 people this past year.
Individuals and executives making these
decisions.
Now that's all paid advertising. We we
have to pay to accomplish that. One of
the things that's very hard to
understand is what is the value of
earned media? That's the media you are
you're able to generate because of the
paid ad, but it's an extension of the
eyeballs that go directly to the paid
ads. And it's it's above and beyond.
It's kind of free media and we do our
best to try to to drum up as much earned
media as we can on our own. For example,
uh through a lot of these channels, we
will uh we will produce our own content,
news stories, and we push it out there.
We push it out there through these
mediums and that doing that inhouse
becomes that earn media. But unless you
have a very sophisticated software or a
consultant to come and tell you what the
value of earn media is, it's it's hard
to determine quite frankly. But we have
a very good relationship with expansion
solutions magazine. Uh in fact so much
so that on their front page in the past
two weeks they said hey we were working
with four different communities
uh to put their video put some
promotional videos up on their front
page and one dropped out or they weren't
ready and so do you have something
available and we did so we jumped in and
for free we're able to get on expansion
solutions front page with videos
promoting Los Cusus and the and the New
Mexico borderlex region. And they went a
step further and they uh last year they
tried to determine for us based on their
channel alone what the earned media we
generated through them was and they
calculated at it it as up to two mill
almost up to 2 million u value of that
earned media $2 million uh because
through that through that channel of of
trying to push out content for free we
were able to reach 420,000 uh people in
that respect. So uh we're trying to do
this in many areas. So I think our
earned media potential is actually much
larger than what I'm showcasing right
now. Uh let me move to the retention and
expansion program. That's where we try
to work with existing companies, provide
them with technical assistance and and
channels to help them grow. We had 36
consultations this past year. Uh when I
say 36 consultations, that's 36 meetings
with 36 individual companies. uh when we
start working with companies and
understand how we can help them that
sometimes turns into two three four five
meetings that we have with that
individual company. Uh Jessica Len Robas
who runs this uh uh for us is was not
available today but if we ever want to
expand on that dialogue I'm happy to
have her back and come and answer
questions more specifically. Uh of that
36 companies we met with 13 were
firsttime visits. Uh it's wonderful when
we can engage with um um companies year
after year, the same company year after
the year. Sometimes they don't need that
level of of engagement with us, but it's
always nice when we can expand beyond
just a core number of companies and
actually get to meet more. So that's a
43% increase. And one of the things I
think I'm most proud about of Jessica
Lynn's uh work in this area
was our our goal is always not only to
provide technical assistance to be an
extension of the city in terms of
offering support to these companies out
there. But uh what we've done is we try
to engage well how many of these
meetings actually turn into projects.
Projects means hey they've defined that
they want to grow. They either have some
capital equipment purchases they need or
they're going to grow employment, but
they don't know how to get there. And so
when we can identify that they actually
have growth, that's when we start to
look at it. How can we bring these
grants to you? How can we bring
technical assistance to you? What can we
do to help you achieve that? Because
that's how we grow, that's how we
diversify, that's how we provide that
health and wealth back to the residents
of of of Los Cusus.
So 55%
of the project companies we met with had
to find that they might have potential
growth. That that's wonderful to hear.
Uh Jessica Lynn also provided some some
concerns through the surveying we do
with companies. And then there's an
industry breakdown of the companies we
met with. As far as industry industry
breakground breakdown, you'll find that
the overwhelming amount of companies
we're meeting with are value added a uh
and these are companies that are here in
the region. They've probably grown in
the region for decades, you know, with
within agriculture. They're now moving
into consumer products and we're trying
to help them get there. The more they
grow, then we flourish as a as a
agricultural community as well, which is
our roots here. Um, in terms of comments
and concerns, I'll only mention two or
three. Uh, the biggest ones issued were
safety and security, uh, then permitting
and planning, and then third was, uh, ch
the changing marketplace. The changing
marketplace really just has to do a lot
with uncertainty that's out there. Uh
whether it's tariffs or whether it's
other things, it's uncertainty kills
projects. Uncertainty uh stops our
ability to attract and grow. And so some
of them may be in our control, some of
them are outside of our control. Many of
them are outside of our control right
now. Uh but it's something we want to
keep our eyes on and see if we actually
have any tools to support that.
This is a list of companies that we did
uh support through uh our retention and
expansion program that we did meet with
to provide some kind of level of
assistance. And then overall here are
the projects we supported that have led
to job creations this past year. Um you
know
I'm always asked do we only support big
projects?
And I always tell people no we support
whether you're you're trying to grow one
individual an employee or 200 to 500. So
when we and and and quite frankly
helping the small business grow is much
harder than getting the large one in
because they need more resources and we
just don't have them in the state. So
when we're looking at backyard farms or
freeze-dried products or or Endeavor DNA
this past year, which is a bioscience
project company that we brought in, I
like those numbers, five, six, 29 jobs.
We also work with the larger expansions
like Franco Whole Foods. Not only did we
help them with an existing expansion of
30 employees growing in the area, but
they're also now committed to bringing
their San Diego operation to here to
commit 200 plus jobs.
There are a couple of projects that we,
you know, we really wanted to get to the
finish line by uh by J by June 30th. It
just didn't happen. Uh and I'll talk
about that in just a second. One of them
is a pecan processing company. Um some
incentives from the state just weren't
working out. So, uh that became delayed.
and the second one was just, you know,
delayed by the the due diligence itself.
But we feel we're 95% there. Within the
next 30 to 45 days, we think we're going
to have an announcement on that at the
Los Cusus Industrial Park.
If you look at our results that are
under our contract, um you'll see that
in three major categories, qualified
prospects, site visits, and completed
projects, we were able to meet our
numbers. in terms of the jobs created
payroll we were a little bit short and
capital investment numbers fell short as
well we have a lot of metrics that we
look at so I understand it's very
difficult for maybe you to look at this
and say is this success or not uh so I'm
looking at it in two different ways um
number one what is the weighted
performance of all those metrics if you
look at that look at it from that
perspective it's 112%.
I will tell you these numbers are based
off of our aspirations. We overshoot
year after year because at the end of
the day we're we're in business
development. We're in marketing. We try
to shoot for the stars. But just as a
reminder just as a reminder it doesn't
take a lot of economic based activity to
support your efforts in Mvita. So, for
example, on average, on average, I'm not
saying that this is consistent, but on
average, through our impact analysis,
we've determined that on average, 50
jobs and $3.2 million in capital
investment
allowed you to break even on your
investment in Mvita. 50 jobs and 3.2
million. So, another way to look at on
average over the last 10 years, we
brought in about 315 jobs and 20 million
in capital investment. That's on
average. And that's a 620% ROI on your
annual investment to us. We use impact
analysis to find these numbers. It's a
thirdparty uh software company we
utilize to do this. Uh they use implant
data which is recognized by u uh
universities all over the country and
they also adjust uh they also cater it
to local tax dynamics here and and mill
rates here of the area.
10ear results. I'll just leave it at
that. I'll say you can look at those
numbers in terms of capital investment,
but over 3,000 jobs created in the in
the city of Los Cusus and over $125
million in capital investment over those
10 years.
Now, I want to do something else because
I've I know we're a contract, but I
always felt we're a partner as well. And
what we're trying to do constantly is
we're trying to figure out ways outside
of the contract how we can improve the
business environment so that we can
succeed at what our mission is. So in
talking about that partnership and where
we go above and beyond, there's a lot of
activity that takes a lot of our time.
I'll talk about a few of them. Uh the
New Mexico Border Plex closing incentive
is something I've talked about. It's now
in our third year. Uh for those of you
who know me, you you know I've been
saying we've needed a localized
incentive for many years. Uh you know
the state provides LITA, but we can't
always rely on the state providing LITA
to some of the projects that we want to
bring in. We want to have some control
of our own destiny. So, we were
fortunate enough a few years back to
identify funding that came out of the
merger with El Paso Electric and we uh
we actually created a a program through
a grant which then awarded a basically a
private sector closing fund. Now, I
might be wrong, but I think it's a
private sector closing fund is one of
its kind anywhere. I have not seen it.
Most incentives are provided by states
and communities.
To date, we've committed $790,000 to
projects to grow in the city of Los
Cusus. That totals over 1,000 jobs and
nine projects or expansions supported.
And let me tell you what I like about
this and having our own creating our own
destiny. A lot of these projects are
projects that state Lita would not
provide. Like a lot of them are smaller
companies. Maybe they just need a piece
of equipment and without a piece of
equipment they're going to grow two jobs
but that won't qualify for state lita.
We're able to step in and help them in
that case. Worthington Farms, Backyard
Farms, Palladium Diagn Diagnostics um
are are examples of that. And then
working with larger companies like uh
Franco's uh Franco Franco's Relocation.
Um we working with uh Crawford Hoy and
I'll talk about that in a second who
they are and also we've already
identified three projects we're working
with which again trying to get companies
to the finish line um is we have 300
$300,000 left in the queue which we've
identified to three projects to locate
here in Los Cusus. One is project
hickory, another is project Iron Man and
the third is project Icicle and I'll
talk about those in a second.
The second initiative that we've been
working on is automate up. This is how
we're trying to scale up our talent pool
here in the region for technically
surging jobs and opportunities. Uh we
are in our third year of this program as
well. Last year we were recognized by
the governor at the state uh governor's
economic development conference as a
program winner for this for this within
the uh retention and expansion category.
And what we've done uh the first year
and a half of the program because of the
funding coming from the state for it, it
was uh funding that was specifically
geared towards advanced manufacturing.
We're able to work with your staff and
identify potential uses of ARPA dollars
to utilize to grow grow this opportunity
and program here in Los Cusus. We did
realize, you know, right now Los Cusus
does not have a large manufacturing
industrial base in which to apply the
exact same program we were using. So we
had to expand the program and that's the
plus in automate up. Um and so we had to
identify the industries that make sense
to Los Cusus that are growing in the
teleahalth areas and and and the needs
within I mean sorry in technical areas
teleaalth is included in that aerospace
uh coding uh EV uh now AI all of these
techn technically surging careers and so
we had to go out and identify new new
certificates that would help companies
expand their employees to to obtain
these skill sets and we also expanded it
towards indiv individuals as well. We
said, "Hey, wouldn't this also be
beneficial if it didn't help just
existing employees, but what about what
about students? Where are there gaps in
micro certifications that are not being
filled at NMSU or DACC or somewhere
else, but could help
a young person, whether it's right out
of college or right out of high school,
expand their career opportunities? We
thought that was just as valuable. So
our part so in terms of the expansion
that we did training we had tooling you
that was a a a private company that is
part of the society of manufacturing
engineers on a national scale. They
provided some of these certificates that
we had already been using but then we
partnered with NMSU and DCC to utilize
some of the certificates they were
producing and now we could run it
through the program and we could pay for
it as well. Uh then we had to find new
pathways. How do we get in front of
these individuals, especially students
who might need this assistance? So, we
partnered with uh Las Montana, DACC,
LCPS, and and the Bridge of Southern New
Mexico. And of course, funding started
with the state of New Mexico, but we've
also applied for other grants to help
this funding. The EP Charitable
Foundation, we're in our second year
receiving a grant from them. And of
course, the city of Los Cusus and your
ARPA dollars that are going towards this
program. So um right now as of today uh
within the city of Los Cusus uh for this
the plus part of the program uh we have
116 certifications committed at this
point. When I say committed it means
because you have you have companies that
are using them or you have individuals
that are in the process of going through
it. Some of these certificates will take
you know four five six months and you
can see the different programs out here.
Um AWS certificates was a big one with
electronic caregiver and also tellaalth
certificates. The teleaalth program is
something um created through NMSU but
it's a way where you can now train
traditional nurses on how to move
forward with the online the cloud tools
and the interaction to provide these
services uh in terms of a teleaalth
world and that seems to be a big growth
area big growth area in this state
because not only do we have nursing
shortages of course but we're also rural
so I mean we think this is beneficial if
we can get that these certificates out
to these individuals. Uh but certified
manufacturing, robotics, EV, uh a USDA
uh a GAP uh certificate with backyard
farms, food control processes. Uh and
when it comes time that you want to have
a work session on the use of ARPA, love
to have Jessica Lynn come back and
explain all the details to grow the
program and and what it's taken to get
there. But I think 116 certifica
certifications in a year is is a great
start.
Other uh strategic initiative is um
again many of you who know me you have
you know I've said for years we need to
figure out a way to attract capital from
developers to come to the region and
build. And it's very difficult to do.
We're in a tertiary market by
population. Um and so we had to we had
to change the model. And I just want to
let you know before I get started, the
governor's conference on economic
development is next month. For this, we
are already a program nominee in terms
of innovation. This is a partnership
that took place with Las Cusa's economic
development staff and ourselves. So,
we're both nominated for this for this
coming uh uh conference next month.
So, problem lack of readily available
facilities impedes industry attraction.
If a company knows they have to wait 13
or 14 months for a building to be built,
they're going to move on to where the
inventory exists. That's just how it is.
We've we've we've dealt with this issue
for as long as I've been here, and it's
an issue that the state overall has been
dealing with, not just us. Uh but the
challenge is there's a lot of risk
exposure in terms of inviting a
developer to come and build here. A
developer is not going to build
speculatively
and take the risk of putting, you know,
10, 20, $30 million into vertical
development and then have a fear of
waiting two, three years before they
find a tenant. And that's why these
developers go to major markets, the
Phoenix's, the Houston, where there is
more of an more of a chance that the
time frame to find a user, an end user,
a tenant is shortened. That's why they
make those investments. So what we did
is we said well what if we help them
along the way what if we help them
identify site they don't have to
purchase the site but they can start
doing all the engineering the planning
and the pre-permitting and get it to a
point where it's marketable with
renderings then together them and us we
can take it to the marketplace and when
we find an end user it may only take
eight months to build it may take nine
months to build right not 13 14 15
months of uncertainty And by by going in
that direction, we can provide a little
bit more confidence to them. They can
get to know the market. They can get to
know the business friendliness while
they're here so that they can make those
moves, make that investment. And by by
no means, this pre prespec engineer
design pre-permitting, that's not that's
not cheap. That's still about a 200
$250,000 investment. So we've been
working with the city in this case uh
trying to get the company to go from a
these companies to go from a uh to a
option to purchase agreement. So the
option gives them timeline to do all
these things in market and then when
they find the end user they can pull the
trigger and then move forward with
development. So it removes high risk
that they have and it creates a lower
risk and a more high readiness strategy.
But I think one of the things is we know
we want this. The economic development
team locally here wants it. So it
bridges a gap between community goals
and market realities. And I think that's
why the state thought it was innovative
enough to say this is deservant of of at
least to be nominated because we're
trying to think out of the box to figure
out solutions that don't necessarily
cost us anything to do.
So
the first step in this was really goes
back a couple years when you when you
approved a fasttrack permitting program.
I mean that that was a big initial step
because that gives us something to
provide information to the developer
that they can go to market
and then they get to know us and they
get to know whether we are
businessfriendly and we are by all means
stand behind our word. That was a big
step and and I thank you for making that
positive vote on it. The other thing we
did at the same time was going back to
your site is ready campaign. We pushed
that across the country. One of our
target markets were the developers, the
industrial developers that we knew and
didn't know and tried to get them on the
radar.
And we right now we have three
developers that have an interest in
doing something in Los Cusus at the Los
Cusus Innovation Indust Industrial Park.
The first one,
you're all aware about it. It's Crawford
Hoying. They're the company who has
plans to do a uh major uh cold storage
facility at the Los Cruus Innovation and
Indust Industrial Park. I don't count
these on our numbers at all in terms of,
you know, investment numbers or job
numbers in terms of our year-end
reporting because we want to wait until
it's actually concluded. We want to be
very conservative in terms of make
making sure we're taking all the right
steps, making sure that commitment is
firm and making sure then then we can
start to move forward on what the
actionable plan is and whether it counts
towards a metric or not. Uh but one of
the things is we did commit
going back to that fund I mentioned that
that closing fund. We did commit
$300,000 to that developer
to hopefully make their decision. When I
say commit, you know, we they don't get
a dime until we get a dollar. There's
metrics involved in all of that. You
know, they have to put up substantial
capital investment before that is is
received, but it keeps them in the game
and and it it makes them feel that they
are being welcome here and wanted here.
Uh, another company we're dealing with,
Project Planner, we call it. They're a
Michigan-based industrial developer. uh
they are right now in the final stages
of working with your staff to sign that
lease option to purchase agreement. Um
we have already talked to them about
once they do so and begin the planning
and renderings, we will go to pre-market
together different industry trade shows,
different conferences to uh to market
their opportunity at at our location.
What's interesting about this is they
took six to seven months to evaluate the
marketplace before they even made a
decision that they wanted to try this
program out with us. And they came back
and they said to us, "We believe
this market might be ripe for a plan for
a million square foot logistics
facility." And that's what we're talking
about right now. I'm not saying that
that's final and done. I'm saying that's
what we're talking about right now. We
have an out ofstate developer that's
interested. They've been putting the
time in. and hopefully we get them to
the next level. The other thing that's
interesting about this site that they're
looking at, it's been a very difficult
to market site at the Los Cus Industrial
Park because it lacks about $700,000 in
infrastructure that's needed to get road
and utilities to the site. The beauty of
this is they'll be coming in and they'll
be taking care of that infrastructure if
they if they are to proceed,
which means it's a $700,000 cost savings
to the city to even get that site mark
marketable in the first place.
The third one is a smaller uh developer,
XYZ Cander. We've met with them probably
dozens of times now. Uh they're looking
to do uh they're out of Texas. are
looking to do very similar but on 15
acres of land probably about a 200,000
foot buildout. Uh the beauty of this
also is they've been very engaged in the
community. We've been introducing them
to other uh other areas like uh
Arrowhead Research Park who is looking
for a developer to identify other
relationships that can help our other
partners grow in the region. Uh and
again with all of them we are working on
joint marketing strategies to help them
with this effort.
Finally,
strategic initiatives are site readiness
and this is where we're now looking at
where do we have potential industrial
sites and we're looking 10 years ahead
now potential industrial sites that we
can start prepping for future growth
when that time comes.
Now there is something pertinent about
this because as I mentioned we're not
the only ones without spec developers.
We're not the only ones without
infrastructure ready sites. Uh, I've
been part of New Mexico Idea, which is
the Association for Economic Developers
around the state. I'm I'm their vice
chair, and for the last three years,
we've been trying to lobby the state to
put dollars into a site readiness
program.
SP 169 was approved this past year. Um,
we asked for 100 million. I'll just be
honest. We we thought the state needed a
hund00 million fund to accomplish what
it needed to accomplish. Unfortunately,
came in at 24 million, but we hopeful
hope it's just a start for reinvestment
going forward.
um along with HB19 the trade port
development act that's another means
that could provide funding to sites uh
to potential sites in the region those
two will work hand inand as they
decipher where dollars will go um and
also we've identified working with El
Paso Electric in terms of doing site
certifications not just site readiness
programs which get into site
characterization what's missing from the
site what infrastructure is needed
what's going to be the cost of all that
but then we can get to site
certification which makes it a marketing
process and we can get those sites in
front of site selectors across the
country. Um we've identified two sites
here in Los Cusus that we have submitted
this to. Uh one is a state land office
section of a land right next to the Los
Cruises in Innovation and Industrial
Park. Um
I have no doubt 5 10 years we're going
to need the space. I have no doubt.
So, uh, we're trying to plan for that
next 5 to 10 years out. And then there's
70 acres of state land. It's as it's
part of an east side development, um,
near the high school, uh, which we're
looking to provide site readiness
funding for that as well.
So, with that, um, I'll leave it up to
any questions you might have. So, thank
you for your time and thank you for your
partnership again. Oh, and I'm sorry,
Eric wanted to say a few words. If you
you if you'd allow that, I'd appreciate
that.
Yeah, go ahead.
Good afternoon, mayor, city council,
city staff. My name is Eric Montgomery.
I am currently the uh serving chair of
Nvidita. I want to thank you for the
opportunity to speak today. I know it's
been a long presentation. I just want to
keep this brief on behalf of the board.
The past 30 years of Mvita's focused
mission growing economic based
industries and job opportunities in our
region
were marked by this last year's worth of
work. 30 years of results. Companies
like electronic caregiver in the
downtown did downtown town did X2 and
SAT in the innovation in industrial
park. Big tuna pipe in district 4, MCI
mass markets in district 2, palladium
diagnostics at arrowhead centers,
Saputoa cheese and we had a list earlier
of many more.
I think what matters most as much as
what Mvita has worked and brought in to
this community is how Mvita has shown up
as a partner. Mvita was there when Los
Cusus went to Mojave and spoke to Virgin
Galactic employees about making this
community their home. Mvita was there
when the city stood up its economic
development department all the way from
an economic development division of
three and a half FTEES under community
development.
Levita has been there with Elevate Los
Cusus, Realize Los Cusus, and every
plan, committee, and initiative that
ever asked, "How can we move this
community for forward?" Levit has been a
partner in helping you to drive growth
for your citizens.
As a private sector investor, I could go
out and I could recreate Mvita's impact
in house, but would it cost me 10 times
more than what I give? 10 years longer
to build and I'd still not deliver the
reach, the insight or the credibility
that this organization brings. economic
development. MVITA isn't just efficient,
it's essential
at our from the advanced manufacturing
workforce report that you received
copies of last year to the award-winning
Automate Up program, which I'll just
highlight when Gen Z is moving toward
quick consumable
skills training comes out at the perfect
time.
Levita is not only responding to today's
needs, but building for tomorrow.
At our recent board retreat, we
sharpened our focus to really focus on
growth, sustainability, and education.
It's our commitment as we have
restructured our board to go deeper in
strategy and engagement that we will
bring each of those items back to our
partners, including the city of Los
Cusus.
And we invite you
to become more deeply involved,
to come to our board meetings, to attend
our committee meetings, to see that
level of engagement.
We commit to you
to keep building this momentum together.
For 30 years, Mvita has worked to
strengthen our community's economic
base. the very things that fund better
schools, safer neighborhoods, and more
parks and services for all as a win for
all of us. On behalf of the MVIA board,
thank you. Thank you for this
partnership. We've accomplished an
incredible amount together and we all
look forward to the next plus one, a
year of growth, of action, and of shared
success. Thank you so much for your time
today.
All right. Thank you, Eric.
Any questions?
Well, Councelor Flores,
thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the
presentation, Devon. I have so many
questions. Um, how long have you been
had uh how long have you had contracts
with the city to deliver?
Mr. Mayor, counselor, I think we're
probably about seven years now that
we've had a contract. Before that, we
operated just under an a memorandum of
understanding with the city before that.
Okay. And how many businesses um have
you been able to uh negotiate
um on behalf of the city?
Oh, I mean, um I'd have to go back and
pull those numbers to you for you. I
don't have that right off the top of my
head. This, you know, this goes back 30
years. I've been here about 16 years
now. Um, as I mentioned in the report,
uh, I showed you 10 years of
opportunities that we brought to the
city, but, uh, going back that far, I
don't have that off the top of my head,
but I can get that for you.
Okay. Um, in the eight years I've been
on city council, um, I have heard you
say that, um,
there's there are businesses that you
have tapped, but we don't have what it
takes to bring those businesses to
Lasuses, and that concerns me. uh very
much. Um and u I think you mentioned
Franco and or something and that was an
extension and there's a couple of other
things out at the industrial park um
that may have uh come in. I don't know
if they were here uh because of Mvita. I
think they were here before that. I
might be wrong. Uh but my concern um
Davin is that um
I I think h how many how many other uh
clients do you have in the area? El Paso
is a big one,
right,
Mr. Mr. Mayor Counselor? We we have two
stakeholders.
That's city of Los Cusus and Dona County
and and of course the communities within
it. But in terms of contracts, we have
it with city of electric louses and dona
county.
Okay.
And then of course we try to uh we try
to look for other funding channels to
support it. Um I I didn't mention it
this time but in the past I've mentioned
we have about a 100 private sector
partners that fund our mission and
they're funding the support you know of
this mission to be accomplished for the
city and for Dona County. Uh last three
years we've been looking for grants as
well. um their grants are very hard to
come by. Some of these grants as you may
know that it it it pushes us us into
having to create a program and then we
don't have staff to really uh do those
things and then it's hard for us to to
really concentrate on the core aspect of
what our contract is and that is
industry attraction and that's becomes a
very expensive proposition. Um that's
why we go and we have diversified
funding to the tune of about 1.1
million. um about 550 of that comes from
public sector, you know, uh county and
city and then the rest comes from the
private sector.
Okay. So, um
when you go to uh these different um I
guess for a lack of a better word,
shows, you know, industrial type shows
throughout the country. Um
how how does that work? because I I I've
gathered that that's that you do that
and I think there was even a trip to
Asia or something and maybe other
countries as well. Um and I you know I
just want to know what the return is on
all all of that. I don't think uh I
think there was that one company that
came in and it turned out to be
fraudulent. Uh they were out of uh
Fresno, California.
And um and I'm just so I'm really
curious uh Mr. Lopez exactly what it is
you've delivered to the city of Lasus.
Well, so let me uh Mayor Council, let me
ask
and and I'm I I am impressed with
everything that you've reached out, you
know, how you network, but how have we
the city of Laserus benefited and how
many businesses have you been able to
land for us?
So, mayor counselor, let me let me talk
about when you ask about trade shows. We
go to industry targeted trade shows
across the country, and we do it in two
ways. where we have funding available,
we will actually do an exhibit there.
Um, but that becomes very costly. We
don't have a lot of money to do
exhibits. So, what we do otherwise then
is we'll go to these trade shows and we
walk them aggressively. And what that
basically means if you have 300 vendors
there, we're going to each vendor
introducing ourselves, talking to them
about the benefits of being in Los
Cusus, asking them, do they do they have
projections for growth? Are they going
to be expanding? If they're not the
right person to speak to, is there
someone that we can get a hold of? We
come back then and then we we scour
through and we we try to reach out again
to those to those individuals, try to
find the proper people to begin
communications with. And that's just one
show. That one show can turn into a
process, a time a timetable process
because of second, third, fourth, fifth
interactions um that you know uh not
only takes a lot of time, energy and and
dollars to do so in terms of personnel
costs uh but also yeah the rewards
aren't immediate. I've mentioned this
before in the past. You know, we did we
did a uh a study on our own projects a
couple years ago where from the time a
company contacts us about making a
decision, it takes them about 15 16
months before they actually begin
operations. And that's not even talking
about the time period in between or
before that to establish the
relationship to even put the trust to
come to their our area and take a look
at what we have to offer. Um, you
mentioned what is the return I guess for
going to an international show like
Taiwan. Uh, and no um I maybe I'm going
to jump in front of your question. No,
we don't go to a lot of countries.
Mexico is a target area for us and the
United States is a target area for us.
Um, uh, other states, other communities
from all over the country. They scour
internationally from India uh to Germany
to uh to Taiwan, China, our state
included. We don't have the luxury to do
that. So when we did the China, I'm
sorry, the Taiwan uh tour about two
years ago, that was paid for completely
by the Taiwanese delegation.
Flights as well as uh hotels paid for
meals. I might have picked up a couple
of meals for myself at the airport.
That's about it. Um,
myself along with three other states
were able to present at Taiwan business
at US days in Taiwan. It's a conference
trade show. We're able to present to
over 100 companies at that trade show.
Um, we were able to highlight the Las
Cusus Innovation and Industrial Park.
Um, because the governor went on that
trip, we were able to leverage her
ability to get in front of more
companies. We got in front of three or
four different industry associations as
well. Each of those had about 60 to 80
members that we got to pitch the same
to. So when we go back to earn media,
you look at that Taiwan trip that did
not cost the city of Los Cusus nothing.
when as a follow-up to that, we were
able to get in front of a Taiwanese
delegation coming to Albuquerque where
we went with a mayor and your staff
where the mayor had keynote speaking at
that in order to talk about the benefits
of living in Los Cusus, growing in Los
Cusus, as well as our Las Cus innovation
and industrial park. I don't know what
the value of that earned media is. I
would say it's quite a bit and it didn't
cost the taxpayers anything. Well, it
it's not uh that wasn't my uh ultimate
concern. Um my concern is that we're not
getting any returns and and I and I'm
not um privy to everything that you do.
Um
and I just uh
you know I just question
and uh
you know I question and doubt u how
successful
uh your organization can be and I
understand I understand this is Las
Cruus. it's not, you know, it's not El
Paso,
but um and it's not, you know, Houston
or, you know, whatever. But um I
I just uh I guess I would like to see uh
Mr. Lopez um more returns um on this
investment. It doesn't seem to be a very
profitable investment for the city of
Lasus. So, mayor, city councelor, I'll
go back to the 10 10ear chart I showed
you. Uh, this has to do with our loss
cruises contract. 3,000 jobs, 125
million capital investment over that
10-year period of time. Um,
again, we go back to implant analysis to
try to understand whether there's an
ROI. And I I I get it. We try to be very
cautious and good stewards of the
taxpayer dollars. We do at Mavvita. We
try very hard to. And that's why every
single year we show you what the ROI is
in our final reporting. Every single
year we do this. And um I mean I guess
we can agree to disagree, but our
numbers show that based on the resources
you pro provide to Mvita, we're
providing a very strong return on
investment. Do I want more? Do I want to
achieve more? Absolutely.
Is the absolutely excuse me. Is the ROI
exclusively um representative of the to
the ROI in Lasus?
That is correct, mayor, city council. We
have a separate ROI that we show to the
county based on their investment in us
as well. And again, this this utilizes
GR expected GRT. And I'm not going to
I'm not going to say that implant data
is perfect because we'll never know
unless the state reports to you and you
report back to us every tax dollar that
comes in. We don't have that luxury.
Implant data like I mentioned is
nationally recognized and um it tries to
estimate what that ROI impact analysis
is to a community on a result of
bringing a company to the region.
And exactly um
you know you it seems like at this point
you would have pivoted into um because
there's a lot of things Lasclus doesn't
have and that's what we hear when you
report we don't have this you know we
don't have that uh yada yada and uh I'm
just concerned that's not def that's not
going to change um it hasn't changed in
eight years as far as I could see. So,
um I I just want to lay that out to you.
Um
Mr. Lopez and uh and I just hope that my
colleagues and the departments in in the
city who are keener on this, I'm not an
economist,
but I am a lawyer and I question a lot.
And so,
um thank you. Thank you, mayor,
mayor, city councelor. And I I
appreciate that you're questioning
because we do the same thing. Um I can
show you the data we have. Um would I
like more resources to accomplish more?
Absolutely. Uh but the pivoting we have
done is to try to make ourselves more
competitive. That is why we we went out
and started that private sector
incentive. I've been saying for years we
needed one, a local incentive so we can
close deals and do more than what the
state provides to us. We went and did
that. It's not a lot of dollars, but
it's something we went out to get. Same
thing with skill set development, trying
to understand the gaps that were taking
place that we needed to prepare for for
technology jobs of the future for our
residents. We went and created that
program. Same thing with the development
program I was mentioning you, you know,
I've been saying this for years. When we
have the PRC, we need developers. We
need developers to see Los Cusus, want
to invest in Los Cruus, but we never had
a pathway to get there. We we're we're
pivoting to put these tools in place so
that hopefully we can become a better
platform and and be able to attract more
and more companies. Believe me, I want
it. But I also think we need to have
strong conversations about what
investment is needed and I think we need
to have conversations about the
willingness to make those investments.
Um I've been asking for years for
resources and a lot of times I'm asking
not for resources to go to Mvita. I'm
asking for resources like the incentives
and things like that to help us close
deals. Um, but I think we need to have
an honest conversation together about,
you know, do we want to go after
industry attraction? Because if the
answer is
exactly the conversation I'd like to
have and that's why I'm asking the
questions I'm asking and I think we have
uh a lot of talent in this city in in
our staff here at city hall. Um, in
fact, you know, we have people who are
absolutely brilliant and we're very
fortunate to have them as part of our
staff and it seems to me that that would
be something you would have been working
on and not wait 10 years or whatever it
is and see that there's very little
returns. So, um I I don't know. I I
think I've expressed uh my dismay and my
disappointment and uh I I I seed to uh
my colleagues.
Thank you, mayor. Thank you, counselor.
Yeah, just a second. I'm going to let uh
our city manager um chime in real quick.
Thank you, Deon. Council Flores, thank
you. I I just wanted to share something
and have it returned to the council for
comments, but just something to bring to
the attention. Um these these are
discussions as we've brought up with
MVita before. They are a community
partner and I appreciate uh the
presentation. One thing I do want to
bring to um to the forefront I was
impressed with um Devon a few months
back or maybe a year ago, you had
brought some creativity. I think it was
good because you had mentioned the word
incentives. Um, incentives is something
that is critical to attract um, any type
of industry to Las Cruises as our
council knows and I thought it was
impressive and I wanted to share the
opportunity that Devon brought. Um,
remind me Devin when it was was it the
foundation? Was it the board where we
were talking about bringing more money
to the pot? And so it was a matching um
it it was a a matching grant. You found
incentives with the foundation. And I
thought and and I'll I'll turn it over
to Devon, but I I just wanted to bring
that forward because incentives
are tough, especially when they come
from our general fund. So we're always
looking for other additional funds. So,
I I thought it was great for Deon
reaching out to the community and
looking for additional incentives where
we could match uh that. So, could you
could you talk about that again?
Yeah, mayor. Um, city manager. So, that
had to do with the uh El Paso Electric,
New Mexico Economic Development Fund
that came out as a result from the uh
the merger that took place with El Paso
Electric a few years back. And one of
the things we were thinking of doing
with that is is having a private public
partnership in terms of bringing value
to a company to close the deal,
especially on the developer side because
right now in the state of New Mexico,
there are no incentives that attract a
developer, a speculative developer. And
so one of the things we were thinking of
is we are somewhat landri I guess is
what I'd say with our loss Chris's
industrial park, but maybe we don't have
the cash value incentives. Whereas
through this program, we could leverage
the cash value of incentives combined
with perhaps putting land on the table
as part of the package to to uh get the
developer to make the commitment, get
past the hurdles uh so that they would
take the risk in going vertical into our
community and build speculative
development.
Okay, Mayor Prom.
Thanks, Mayor. Uh thank you Devin and um
the rest of the team for the
presentation today. Um of course I you
know I've already expressed this to the
city manager. I of course wish this
would have happened before the budget
session in May. Um because I do know
that um at least two of you in this list
um asked for increases to your contract.
Um and I just I wanted to have this
conversation and mayor I do have more
general conversations. I'll ask my
specific move to conversations but um
and then you know put get it back to my
colleagues but I do have general
conversations for staff after um
regarding that process. Anyway, um just
so that I'm clear, Davin, um I want to
finish really with this like willing
willingness to invest conversation, but
before I get there, I have some
questions on on this page 10 just so
that I'm understanding it clear
to date from recruitment to signing the
dot, there's a new business here that
has been um five total projects,
correct?
Am I reading that incorrect?
Mayor Mayor Prom, that is correct. Yes,
that is correct. Okay. And um councelor
FL has brought a good clarification.
That is five projects in the city of Los
Cusus.
Mayor Mayor Potam, that is correct.
Okay. And similarly to the 275 new jobs,
those are all Los Cruus jobs.
Mayor Mayor Prom. Yes, that is correct.
Okay. Awesome. Thank you. I I wasn't
sure if um
the data was upana county in terms of
the 20 projects that have I don't
remember what slide this was on the 20
projects that you said there was about a
55%
uh of of projects saying that they had
potential growth and desire to increase.
Is that also uh just what numbers are
these for? Is that lost cruises or is
that total? Yeah, Mayor Mayor Prom, this
entire presentation is broken out by
just our contract, which is the city of
Los Cusus.
Okay.
And um and so so the uh 36 consultations
were with 36 companies in Los Cusus. I
think Brian can correct me, but I think
our total number for the entire county
might be around 65 or
76
76. So this 30 36 are attributed just to
city of Los Cru's companies. Can you
give us just a little preview of what
these 20 projects, what industry they're
in? Oh, is this the graph right here?
Yes.
Okay. Thank you. Sorry about that. I I
missed that earlier.
Okay. Thanks. I appreciate the
clarification. Um, and then in terms of
the challenges that you presented, um, I
think we have, honestly, I think we have
been having this conversation for
several years now in terms of what, um,
is not readily available.
Um,
I'm curious what kind of industries
you're hearing this feedback from. I
think ultimately, right, like I we're
never going to be Dallas, Houston,
Phoenix. That's just we're not going to
be, right? And so I'm curious if that's
our competition then I'm wondering if
we'll lose next to every time. Um and so
what are the kinds of conversations
we're having with industry that make
sense to
our region and to Los Cruus?
So Mayor Mayor Prom um
we will lose projects to larger
municipalities um especially when you
have very high numbers of employees that
are needed. That's going to be the first
thing that weeds us out more than more
than anything. And you're talking about
a thousand500
employees, you know, but we have to when
we ever when we get those uh requests
for information, we we do take the
effort to try to go after them. Um I've
always been a big believer we can, for
lack of a better word, we can hunt the
elephants, right? But we're in New
Mexico. We have to make sure to eat the
rabbits along the way. I've always
believed in that. And that's why when I
talked earlier about one, five, 10 jobs
at a time, we're very happy with those
success. Now, it takes a lot longer to
get to them. And so, everybody seems to
want to the big projects, but I always
say that our niche for employment is
usually between 250 and 500. And with
those types of companies, you're you're
looking at where maybe there's too much
labor competition in a given market. So,
I think those are very realistic uh
target or companies and target
industries that we go after in order to
try to lure them to the area. Um, are
they the big splash? You know, are they
going to be, you know, the the big
Fortune 500 all the time? No. Maybe
we'll get one. I hope we get one, but
250 to 500 employees is really our
niche. And then we compete against
primarily uh Arizona and a lot of Texas
communities. And there's the the
difference with Texas communities is
they have a way of funding economic
development that is just it's hard to
compare with. But right now, let me let
me uh explain. We have that project I
mentioned where I feel we're 95% there.
We're competing against Midland for
that. I happen to know that. And I and
and I think we're 95% there because they
want to be here because we offer a
little bit extra in terms of what
they're not going to get over there. You
know, a university having a university
in our backyard is important. It shows
that there is a future talent pool for
long-term growth. These are these are uh
things that companies look at that may
not be the first decision-making choice
of where they locate, but when we're
tied with someone else, it becomes that
that benefit. Quality of life. I would
say we have better quality of life than
a lot of these Texas communities with
more money that we compete against. And
we leverage all of those factors in our
discussions with companies when we're
trying to bring them to the area. So,
no, I we're not going to be a Dallas.
We're not gonna be Dallas, at least not
probably in my lifetime, but but we can
compete for projects. And one of the the
challenges I mentioned, and I hate to be
repeating it, is that we need to just be
uh I think a little bit stronger in
terms of what package we can bring to
the table. And of course, developing or
having readily available facilities,
however we get there, uh I think is
crucial as well.
Thanks for that.
Thank you. I look I you know you're
talking about that willingness to have
conversations about investments. I'm
willing to I don't know at least since
I've been here I don't know that there
hasn't been a willingness at least from
this side of the dis have those
conversations. I think for me the
important factor to sort of highlight is
that I want to make sure that we're
talking to folks that make sense to the
region that are sustainable that are
responsible. Our neighbors in Tucson
just voted down a very water intensive
contract for their community and I
thought that was really powerful right
like we don't want to sell our souls to
the highest bidder just for that
contract. we also want to be responsible
with the resources that we have. Um, and
you know, for me, and so when we talk
about incentives and these kinds of
things for bigger companies, I want to
make sure that um, yeah, that we're
saying please come here and we have a
negotiating tool, but I also want folks
to come here and vest back into our
community, right? It's not just often
for people we call these handouts, but
for uh organizations and businesses we
call them incentives, right? And so um I
want to make sure that the conversation
we are we continue to have is is one
that um
uplifts the the kind of work that we
wish our people to have here in our
community. Um, I have concerns too, but
I I want to continue to have these
conversations publicly with you all
because you are partners, right? It's
not just a contract. Um, and so that's
ultimately th those were the these were
the conversations that I I wanted to
have. Um, again, I have more general
questions about all of these contracts,
but those are for staff. So, I'll just
wait, mayor, till everyone asks their
Mvita specific questions. Oh, and then
I'm sorry, one last question for you,
Davin. You mentioned the the breakup of
your budget and I missed it. You said
how what percentage is public dollars
versus public?
So, Mayor Mayor Prom, we're about
500,000 in private and five 550 in
public.
So, about 5050. Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you,
Councelor Matise.
Hello, Dad. Mr. Lopez
uh little different questioning and
maybe you could just uh wrap it up and
concise of all the questions I have or
or comments. You know, I worked with you
many ribbon cutings and Santa Teresa
over the eight years that I was down at
the border authority. Um I'm asking a
little different question for
challenging. I really support your
organization and you know that
as long as I was mayor and and council
and a public person. Uh I think without
your organization, Los Cusus wouldn't be
doing as well as it is as well as the
county because you you operate in both
city and the county in in your
negotiations. What I what I like to know
is some of the challenges you have and
and sometimes you won't bring it forward
because it it may be negative and it may
be negative on this particular council
but in the last couple of years I I
think under the direction of chief story
we're seeing things in the crime
statistics
actually they're getting better. Where
were the challenges in the last eight
years when the city of Los Cusus had a
high crime record, had some blight, had
some El Paso, things turning bad
kind of describe those with me. I'm
interested in that. When you're sitting
with CEOs like we did in Santa Teresa,
you know, they have many questions like
one of the questions that always comes
up is we're 50th in education.
uh mention these challenges and how
you've actually overcome them because
you actually produced results with I
think a lot of challenges. Is is that a
tough question or do you want to handle
it?
Mayor, counselor, it is a tough
question. Um and I'll try to kind of
give some examples. You know, we uh let
me let me talk about taxes for a second
as an example. Um, and then I'll I'll
I'll try to talk more about some of the
other things like like crime and how
they impact economic development. But on
the tax side, we always have companies,
we have site selectors that will say,
"Well, but this tax is pretty high that
you have here." And we always have to
tell them, "You need to look at the
entire package. You need to look at
everything together. Compare that to
Texas together because maybe Texas might
have no income tax, but our property
taxes are much lower." So you know we we
want we want them to know the entire
story and a lot of our dialogue is
really letting them know the entire
story. Now when you mention crime, it's
very similar. You know, we have to talk
about when when companies are making
relocation decisions,
uh they look at crime as a bucket of
decision-m that's under quality of life
to them. And they'll look at crime,
they'll look at health care, and they'll
look at education. And they're going to
combine those three in terms of their
decision-making under that quality of
life category. quality of life category
comes behind other things like is there
the right land, is there the right
infrastructure, is there the right labor
force, is it the right skill sets, are
there other ancillary benefits to my
industry from being here. Um, but that
is a conversation. So, we have to we
have to talk to them about a more
holistic story and compare it quite
frankly to other cities and communities.
No one is free. No one is you know
completely clear of all the challenges
we face as well and we have to make that
comparison so they see it through our
eyes. Um, that's how we talk about it.
That's how we negotiate with it. We try
to be honest with our with our clients,
especially site selectors, because if
we're not honest with them, they'll
never bring another deal to us again.
Um, so, but letting them know the big
picture as a whole, and then making that
comparison against other regions, goes a
long way. even little things like, "Wow,
you know, you're you're an hour from an
airport,
an international airport, you know, and
uh uh we then we talked to them about,
well, if you were in Los Angeles, where
I used to live and I was 7 miles away,
it would still take me about an hour to
get to the airport." When you put it in
that perspective of things, they realize
then they understand, oh, you're right.
An hour is not too bad. So we're always
trying to tell the entire story which
when you look at the entire story it
does paint a different brush. Um but you
know even on the local level working
with companies when they bring up
concerns you know you can see safety and
security is is a top concern. So you
know it's a concern for companies coming
in under quality of life but it's also a
concern for local companies as well. But
again we try to talk about what are the
other benefits of being in the region.
Councelor I hope that that was a tough
question. I hope I answered it for you.
No thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Anyone else?
What's that?
For who?
Okay. Thank you, Devin. Thank you, Eric,
Brian, Carlos. Um I just want to say
that you know to share with the rest of
the group is like I remain optimistic
very optimistic with with Mvita and the
work that they're doing and the things
because of so many challenges that that
that we face when you look at the
industrial park whether it's the
electricity electricity water waste uh
the airport it it it is we're not Dallas
we're not Houston and then at the state
level we're not getting those
incentives. The state economic
development department has u a budget
and then they reduce it the next year
and then it increases and then it
reduces. So we got to start at even from
the top is like how serious are we about
economic development. So I really look
at not how much it's costing us but how
much you're really saving us because if
we had to do this alone as a city it
would be very costly. So, the brochures,
I say that about Carlos, my production
manager. Um, you know, it's it's a lot
of work that goes into these visits and
these tours and everything else that we
internally as a city, it would be very
very costly. So, I appreciate the
partnership and everything you're doing.
We look at costs, but then again,
there's another side to that. What's our
savings? What is it really saving us to
try to get businesses to come to Los
Cruises? And that's why I'm very
optimistic with the things that we're
doing. And the last retreat especially,
there is more focus and there's more
collaboration with members of this
community, NMSU, the bridge, just just
seeing everybody come together. I think
that's how it all started was members of
the community saying, "We need to
partner up. We need to help the city. We
need to help the county." And it's, you
know, one of those things that goes up
and down, up and down, up and down
throughout the years, whether it's
interest rates, what whatever
challenges, tariffs, now whatever comes
our way, there's that curve that keeps
moving. But I think right now we're at a
point where the community is coming
forward and saying, "Let's all pitch in
and let's help and let's put our
ingredients together." So, you know, I'm
still going to stay in and make those
visits and meet members of India,
Taiwan, whoever you bring to the table.
I appreciate it. So that we can get
business here in Los Cusus. A aside from
really the the the limitations and
challenges that we do have. So, so thank
you for your partnership and all the
work you do.
Mayor, counselors, thank you for your
time today and for the partnership and
hopefully for a good year ahead. So,
thank you. All right. Thanks.
I think that was the last one.
So, a motion to adjourn.
So, moved.
Second by.
This is on the motion to adjourn the
work session. Councelor McClur,
yes.
Councelor Matise,
yes.
Councelor Graham,
yes. Councelor Karan,
yes. Councelor Fletus.
Yes.
Councelor Bengho.
Yes.
Mayor,
yes.