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Oh my gosh.
You're live.
Well, good afternoon everyone. Welcome
to our work session. Today is Monday,
May 12th, 2025. It's approximately 1
p.m. I am Mayor Eric Enriquez. Uh we
will start with a moment of silence for
the brave men and women of the United
States Armed Forces as they protect our
interests around the globe as well as
the courageous men and women of the Los
Cusus Police and Los Cusus Fire
Department that keep our city safe 24/7
365. If you join me in the pledge. I
pledge algiance to the flag of the
United States of America and to the
republic for which it stands. One nation
under God, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all.
We'll go ahead and start with the agenda
items 2.1. Uh we'll start out with visit
Los Cusus uh
presentation. Relle Miller Hernandez.
Start us off.
All right. Good afternoon, Mayor
Prom Mayor Peno, sorry, and counselors.
Um, for the record, I am Michelle Miller
Hernandez, Visit Los Cusus Executive
Director, and today my team and I are
here to present our Visit Los Cusus
annual update.
First, I would like to start with a
short video um describing what the VLC
program is all about.
Visit Los Cusus, a key program of the
city of Los Cusus, your gateway to
southern New Mexico's premier
destination. We're more than just
tourism where economic drivers,
community partners, and ambassadors of
our city's unique spirit. Our mission to
boost local economy by attracting
visitors, conferences, and events. From
our main street visitor center, we
showcase Los Cusus's diverse attractions
from mouthwatering cuisine, outdoor
adventures to rich culture and space
industry innovations. By promoting
tourism, we support local businesses,
improve infrastructure, and enhance
quality of life for all Los Cusins.
We're not just welcoming visitors, we're
fostering community pride and
sustainable
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growth. So, this video was originally
put to uh produced for our HR
department. Um they're putting to great
together this great project to introduce
um new our programs to new employees.
So, this is part of it and it featured
Ed Carneathan's voice uh the voice of
the Aggies.
Um, so next I want to visit Los I
apologize. A key program of the city of
Lo, let
me
h there we go. Sorry. So, a reminder of
our staff. Uh, currently we have myself,
we have a VLC intern that's uh vacant at
this time. Leslie Galbadon is our
executive assistant and I just wanted to
mention how long they've been here with
the city. She's been here eight years
and Sonia Benwell who's not in the crowd
today, our audience today is our visitor
information specialist. She just
celebrated 26 years. Um we have Lorenna
Lozano who was an intern, came back as
our communication specialist and now our
director uh for of marketing for five
years. underneath her is Norm Detliff
who has been with the city for 14 years.
And K, if you could wave when when I
mention your names, Lorenna. Um, and
then we have Nuvia, who was an intern
and is now a marketing specialist. So,
she's been here about a year as a
full-time employee. Um, Sergio Selenus,
our distribution specialist, has been
with the city for
um, sorry Sergio. 15
years. Then we have Liz Vega, our event
manager, who was out when I was putting
together the years. How long have you
been with us now? About 13 years.
Um, Albert Herrera, who is our director
of sales, has been with the city for 13
years. Ed Carneathan, uh, just a little
over 20 years. He's our sports sales
manager. Hillary Dutcher, our outdoor,
um, wreck and destination experiences
manager, 12 years. And then we do have a
vacant convention services or excuse me,
sales manager. And I've been with the
city almost 18 years. So we've we have a
very um seasoned crew. Um we also have
our advisory board. Alice Kuth who is
our currently our president of our board
is here with us today. She's with
T-minus space by N2K media. Our board
we're required to have five board
members. Two have to be from the hotel
industry, two from the hospitality and
tourism industry and one at large. So,
we also have Stephanie Hawkins who is
with the owner of Messia Valley um wine
and brew tours, Alexander McKenna with
uh New Mexico Historical Sites, Kevin
Perez with Heritage Hotels, which you
would also know as Hotel Encanto here
locally and Hilton Garden in and we have
Nicholas Pierce with the Townplay
Suites.
So, some of you were not with us the
last time uh counselors we did our
presentation. Um but it's a reminder how
we're funded. We are funded by lodgers
tax. Um actually I think everyone here
today has been with us but um but just a
reminder we are funded uh solely by
lodgers tax with the exception of a
couple grants that we get and uh that's
typically uh either we received money
from ARPA and then we received money we
received money from the state
occasionally the tourism department. Um
in FY24 our lodgers tax revenue was 2.8
8 million that is uh generated from the
5% lodgers tax per night on revenues. Uh
allowable uses are primarily
um promoting, marketing and advertising
Los Cusus as a tourism destination. As
our marketing director will remind you,
you will not see a lot of our
advertising because we primarily have to
advertise outside the area.
Um, every almost every year the they're
they don't have it posted yet, but the
New Mexico Tourism Department does do an
economic impact report. Their latest
report available is from FY23, and they
do do it by the county. Um,
but actually a lot, just to let you
know, a lot of our county does not
collect uh the county itself does not
collect lodger tax. It's the
municipalities, but um meaning excuse
me, the towns, the cities. I I believe
they don't do it because most of the
hotels are in those cities and not just
the rural county areas. Um so 521
million approximately was um in the
report recorded in visitor spending for
our county and
8.4% of the jobs in our county are
sustained through um tourism and
hospitality.
So, with that, I'm going to pass this on
to Albert Herrera, who is our sales
director. Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor
Prom, and city council members. For the
record, I'm Albert Era, director of
sales for Visit Los Cusus. I'll be
speaking to you directly on behalf of
the sales team.
The primary goal of the sales team is to
promote Los Cusus as a desired
destination and to generate overnight
stays and visitor spending. This is
broken down into a team effort into
three basically three markets. So the
first markets be convention and meet and
meetings market which currently I'm
currently handling. Sports market, Mr.
Ed Carthon and as Roelle mentioned the
voice of the Aggies and outdoor
recreation along with leisure and group
tour group travel, Miss Hillary
Dutch. We are our local We are our
industry's local leaison that promote
the city through the power of
storytelling when visiting potential
clients and visitors. Essentially, we
are the face of Las Cusus when traveling
and representing our city in our
industry. On a national EI, we roughly
spend
$234 I'm sorry, $234 is spent per day
for conventions. Uh the motor coach
industry is about $165 per day.
$150 for sport for adult sporting groups
and $120 for youth sporting groups. The
sales team works hard to prevent to
perfect our craft and inform potential
clients on what Los Cusus has to offer.
We are consistently networking with
organizations, event directors, meeting
planners, tour operators, key potential
influencers um to inform them on Los
Cusus, the real New
Mexico. Ways of reaching potential
clients have proven that have been
proven to be productive for us is
through attending trade shows, quarterly
newsletters, mailing campaigns along
with familiarization tours. We have a
proven success rate on capturing
business when hosting a site tour. Once
a client agrees to come to a hosted
visit to Los Cusus, they usually fall in
love with it. I mean, who doesn't,
right? We all live here. We all love it.
You know, it's one of those things we do
get in front of clientele and on a
national level, they're like, "Where's
Los Cusus? Where in New Mexico?" Um, so
to be able to have them come out and
actually have a site visit is very
promising for us for the fact that
they're actually utilizing and looking
at our area. And then once they fall
once they come into New Mexico in
general, people usually always fall in
love with it. and hearsay. I mean, with
Las Cusus, it's the same
boat. Attending industry trade shows is
our number one way to get in front of
clients and build relationships.
According to the meeting planners
international outlook, the report showed
that businesses that would be would be
back to normal in 2024. As of the c as
of the first quarter edition for 2025,
65% of professionals have found this to
be true are back to the pre- pandemic
level. Um, they did rise up in 2023. 24
was supposed to kind of level out and 25
is is leveling out once again in regards
to all
markets. Some exciting things have been
happening at the Los Cusen Convention
Center as well. They have installed a
new HD digital screen along with new
furniture. They've also installed new
carpet new carpet replacement in 2024.
They've they're upgrading to fiber optic
highspeed internet. The New Mexico uh
New Mexico State University's art
department installed an art on the north
terrace of the center. and their chef.
Their chef Armando has created what he
calls chef creates. It's an event where
once a quarter he has an intimate,
unforgettable dining experience with a
rotating four to five course meal uh
course menu. I apologize that's open to
the public. The event is geared towards
highlighting the chef's talent. Now, he
created that and it's actually going
extremely well. Each one of them that
they've had is been sold out in that
capacity. It's also utilized as a sales
tactic as well. their sales staff is
actually inviting potential clients that
are hosting conferences, conventions,
and meetings or trade shows to actually
come down and specifically for that
event. So, it's on a lot smaller of a
scale, roughly about it's capped out at
roughly about 40 people. Again, to
really kind of showcase what the what
the Los Cruises Convention Center can do
foodwise. The convention center had a
total of 25 com convent
conferences/conventions in 2024, and for
2025, they're currently pacing to exceed
that number. I'd like to note that not
all meetings held at the convention
center are considered conferences and or
conventions. Um, a few factors that go
into this are the number of attendees
and estimated room nights that actually
make them either a conference and or a
convention. So, we can have a we can
have a trade show that has 3,000 people,
but if those 3,000 people are local,
it's not going to be actually clarified
as a conference and or convention.
The convention center staff um sales
staff continues to partner with visit
loss cruises on our sales efforts and
currently attending trade shows with
us. Moving on to the convention market
specifically. Um of course I can go on
and on and on about conventions and each
market. Um so I just went ahead and
threw a couple of them on there just to
kind of highlight. Um 2025 we actually
hosted the aggra aggrability national
training. This agg the aggrability is an
aggrability is a national program that
helps people with visible and invisible
disabilities um get the help they need
to be able to continue farming and
ranching. And the farming ranch heritage
museum actually has an exhibit
specifically solely on this on this. So
they we worked with them as well as New
York State University to actually go out
and bid and try to host their 2025
conference and we hosted that back in
March. So that was definitely a
highlight and we got tons of kudos in
regards to the city, the Foreman ranch
and Mishu and so forth. Another one that
I like to highlight and only because I
know Mayor Enriquez is in this picture
up to the top my right and probably your
left. I don't know if you guys can see
it. Um May Mayor Enriquez um actually
spoke at the American Walking Club by
annual convention that just occurred a
couple weeks ago. So this convention
actually had 300 people that were here
for seven days straight walking all over
Los Cusus. So you might have seen them
during the farmers market. They've also
went out to White Sands. They've gone
they not only did they hit all of Los
Cusus, they went to Messia, they went to
um the Bosa State far state park. They
also went out to El Paso. They did walks
in surrounding communities as well.
Elmagoro, Rioso, Silver City,
Albuquerque. So they pretty much
encompassed the entire state. However,
the main 7-day conference was actually
hosted here in Los Cusus.
In 2024, we hosted the Agricultural
Historical Society um that spent a week
in Los Cusus, not only having their
meeting, but exploring all things in Los
Cru, all things lost, all things in
agricultural. So, the picture right in
the middle is actually me welcoming them
on one of their tours. So, they had
multiple tours throughout multiple days
um showcasing all things agricultural
based. In 2026, we'll welcome back the
New Mexico Municipal League
Conference. Moving on to the sports
market. Um, this is definitely a
highlight. Mr. Ed Carneathan, um, and of
course, Voice of Aggies was actually was
inducted into the New Mexico UTSA Hall
of Fame for his longtime partnership
with with the organization. His his
support and efforts ensure that we host
competitive softball and baseball
tournaments throughout each year, but to
be able to be inducted into the Hall of
Fame. Congrats,
Ed. Few additional highlights on the
sports market. The Holy Chala softball
tournament was nominated and won the
2024 New Mexico Top Hat Award for the
most outstanding event throughout the
state. The award is given through New
Mexico Hospitality Association. As we
all know, the Hol is a staple in Las
Cusus. It's the largest single weekend,
48 hour continuous play adult slow pitch
softball event in in the United States.
So definitely something that we wanted
to make sure we highlighted and
nominated him for and they actually got
one won the award. So definitely a
highlight for us. The state 47 Los Cusus
marathon and half marathon was recently
recognized as one of the top 50 best
Boston qualifiers for 2025. Um and again
another highlight for for visit Los
Cusus. Um this event was actually
created in-house and we hosted it for
about two years and then we partnered
one with Wonderlust Running Company. The
the event continues to grow each year
and happens annually in January
coordinating with the anniversary of the
date that New Mexico was recognized as a
state.
Moving on to the tourism and outdoor
recreation. In 2024, we capitalize on
site visits in the motor coach market.
So, the motor coach market is those
companies that sell different
um destinations and sell different
itineraries and you kind of jump on the
jump on their motor coach and kind of
cross crunch it, right? Anywhere from
specific destination or going literally
from one side of the United States or to
the other. And we brought in a variety
of motor coach companies to showcase
what Los Cusus has to offer in tourism.
We're excited to say that we are now
getting back in onto their itineraries
through 2028. This market was one of the
harder markets to to recoup and come
back after after COVID. And so to be
able to see those motor coaches come
into Los Cusus again is definitely a
highlight for us. Um, a lot of them
either re redesigned all their
itineraries and excluded Los Cusus and
or went to just larger markets, meaning
larger cities. So to be able to see them
to so to be able to see us getting back
onto their itineraries is definitely a
positive for us. Los Cruus also hosted
the outdoor travel writers association
um board meeting in February 2024. The
group hosted their annual conference in
El Paso in September of the same year.
During that annual conference, Los Cusus
hosted roughly about 150 outdoor travel
writers um for a dinner out at the Rio
Grand Winery.
During their board meeting, which
occurred first and here, that board
meeting was here in Los Cusus. They went
a gravel, they went on a gravel ride
with some local cyclist. They also had a
guided hike with the friends of um
OMDPN and went bird watching at the
Messia Valley Bosa State Park. Los Cusus
was also host to the 20 to to the New
Mexico Outdoor Economics Conference in
2024, having over 325 attendees. The
conference doubled in its size since its
inception where Las Cusus hosted its
first annual conference. And last, new
and exciting for 2025 is the Backyard
Altter Run. Um the this is a 24-hour
100mile endurance trail run race that
will be taking place in the prehistoric
trackways national monument. The route
is 4.2 miles is the route is a 4.2 mile
loop. Runners must run a minimum of one
loop per hour where they try to become
the last person standing. I don't know
about you all, but I cannot run 100
miles in 24 hours. I'm sorry. So, more
kudos to them. Uh, the runners are
allowed to leave the race whenever
they've met their goal or feel as they
have endured as much as they can, even
without finishing the race. The goal is
to finish and complete 100 miles in a
24-hour period. On the outdoor rec side,
Visit Los Cusus' role is in outdoor
recreation is to support businesses,
organizations that promote outdoor
recreation in Los Cru in Los Cusus via
marketing efforts, event promotion,
providing information about
letters, providing information about and
letters of support for grant
opportunities and be a resource to
visitors so they know what recreational
opportunities are available to them.
Mayor, Mayor Prom, and city council
members. Thank you for your time. I am
now going to introduce O Miss Elizabeth
Obega, our events
manager. Hello, mayor and city council.
I'm Liz Vega, event manager with Visa
Las Cusus. Our office technically
produces only one event in house each
year, Ma Los Cusus, which I'll talk
about in a minute, but we assist many,
many more local producers of events to
help build a year-round calendar full of
rich experiences you can only get in our
community. On this slide is a selection
of events Visit Las Cusus has supported
in a variety of ways. The Las Cruis
Space Festival will be celebrating its
eighth year this September. Previous
support of this event by Visit Los Cusus
has been marketing and advertising,
printing, event logistics, and last year
we even brought NASA astronaut Nicole
Sto to this very city council chamber
for a presentation on her time aboard
the International Space Station. We had
about 80 attendees wowed that they got
to hear from the astronaut who was the
first to watercol in space and the first
to live tweet from the ISS. We also
support the Las Cusus International Film
Festival that has grown into a vibrant
tourism event over its decade of
existence and newer events like the Las
Cusus PCON Festival who use our space
for meetings and is an event the New
Mexico Department of Tourism is excited
to see grow as agricultural tourism
becomes a larger trend. We also become
more involved year-over-year with the
Southern New Mexico Pride Parade in
October. This event is the largest pride
parade in our region and has the
continuing potential to provide a safe
and welcoming celebration for members of
the LGBTQIA plus community. An event we
are very proud to have launched earlier
this year, pun intended, is the Messia
Valley Balloon Rally. After a 17-year
hiatus, a dedicated group of local
enthusiasts contacted us for help to
fill the skies with hot air balloons.
The first year back was a huge success
and they are excited for year two,
January 16th through the 19th,
2026. This is just a selection of
special events we are involved with, but
we are growing our portfolio and always
welcoming more opportunities for
tourists to experience our authentic
culture. Coming this year is a revamp of
the very popular outdoor bike packing
event, Dangerbird. And I am really
excited to talk about our work with the
inaugural Southern New Mexico Book
Festival coming to you and readers and
writers everywhere in
October. Now to meet Las Cusus. Our
small team is still recovering from the
fantastic event we produced and the
300,000 cumulative steps we took a few
weeks ago on Saturday, April 26th. This
third annual event is a sizable
celebration of all the things that make
Las Cusus unique. We want attendees to
look mida all the experiences on offer
from outdoor recreation, history and
culture, arts, cuisine and music. This
year about 12,000 friends, families and
visitors joined us and enjoyed the
addition of very popular luchador
matches, ditos stilt walkers, and a
firstofits-kind drone show that we are
still hearing people rave
about. It is a labor of love.
It is a labor of love, but it is an
event that the community has embraced.
It is also an opportunity for local
tourism related organizations to
showcase like Friends of the Oregon
Mountains Desert Peaks, Bureau of Land
Management, New Mexico Historical Sites,
the 4x4 Club, City Public Art, Museums
and Library, and the balloon rally was
out with a full-size balloon basket to
take pictures in. The numbers are in,
and this year's Midas PR value was $3.8
million.
We're already brainstorming ways to make
next year's MEA more impactful and
inclusive. It truly is a celebration of
everything the real New Mexico has to
offer. With that, here's a brief recap
of the 2025 meet Las Cusus.
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I'll now turn it over to Hill Lozano,
our director of marketing.
All right, mayor, mayor, prom, city
council members. I'm Loreno Lozano. I'm
the director of marketing for Visit Los
Cusus. Um, so as fiscal year 2025 rounds
down, I'm just going to highlight a few
of some big projects that I worked on.
Um, and this is addition to in addition
to everything we do throughout the year.
So, the first thing you see is our
official 2025 visit Las Cusus visitors
guide. It was released January 1st. Um,
our cover art was done by Tina Belaloo.
You can see this actual mural on the
Cusus Creatives building. Um, and it was
also part of like a citywide art project
where people could come and actually
take part in painting the mural. So,
that is our cover for this year. Um, one
thing I would like to note is it's all
done in house. So, we do it um with our
team at Visit Los Cusus. Um and it also
has no ads because of this. So, we hear
a lot of really amazing, excuse me, a
lot of really amazing feedback from
people um during our trade shows and our
travel shows of the fact that it does
not have ads. Um they can just kind of
focus on all the amazing things there
are to see and do in Los Cusus. Uh the
second thing I'm going to show you is um
some of our new visitor center merch.
Um, if you were here for the
presentation last time, uh, we did this,
I did mention that, um, after our
rebrand, we saw a pretty big spike in
the interest in um, our visitor center
merchandise. And so that's really
continuing today. We did um, some new
products towards the end of last year,
and this is what they are.
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Yeah.
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Uh the video itself is an ad or
something that we do play on social
media just to remind people that um we
are here and they can come and kind of
take a piece of loss cruises home with
them. Uh at the end you'll see candles.
There's three candles that we um worked
on with Stone Oak Collective. They were
custom made um for us so that we could
showcase some amazing scents that are
very specific to Los Cusus. So the first
one's going to be prickly pear. Uh the
second one is Cyprus and juniper which
um is found throughout the Messia
Valley. And then the last one's my
personal favorite, which is um a desert
rain scent, which focuses on creasso,
which is the scent that we smell when it
rains here in Los
Creus. And then the last thing I want to
um highlight for FY25 is the evergreen
um campaign completion. So um one thing
that we did throughout the entire year
is consistently have commercials made
specific to certain times of year. Um
and so we created a variety of
commercials. they are running year round
and this is in addition to what we run
on top of that which are is going to be
like our event support but also um
videos that we do that um highlight and
promote some of the other projects that
we have. But we are com we have
completed this evergreen campaign and so
now we have commercials that we run
streaming and on social media the entire
year to promote visit Los Cusus to
promote Los Cusus itself um in addition
to everything else. So that is something
that we are running consistently
throughout the year and that's something
that's very important um specifically to
the goal of what visit Los Cruises
is. So going into fiscal year 2026 um
some of the current initiatives I want
to talk about the first thing is brand
reinforcement expansion. Um we are going
to be advertising in FY26 on Disney Plus
and Hulu. So, our commercials will be
seen on Disney Plus and Hulu um amongst
some of the other streaming services
that we already do advertising with. Uh
second is going to be our multilingual
marketing materials. Um so, uh some of
you might know that we do have a Spanish
edition of our visitors guide, but in
addition to this, we um actually have
continued accessibility um on our
website and also um we're moving into
digital editions. So, right now we have
PDFs of some of our print materials on
our website right now. So, that includes
our visitors guide. Um, but we are
working with and uh Nia here who I'll
introduce um is completing one that is
just for our visitors guide and our new
visitors guide. So, when people look
through it, they kind of flip through it
like an actual book, but there's going
to be links to um things that they can
see on our website to support some of
the material and also some of the videos
that we um have produced.
And then the third thing is going to be
um highlighting specific tourism uh
drivers in and around Los Cusus. So
that's um with targeted campaign
planning. So um as I mentioned before,
we had evergreen campaigns where we
created commercials that are going to
highlight Los Cusus and a variety of
things in Los Cusus throughout the year.
Um what we want to do moving into FY26
is do some targeted campaigns. And that
means for example like I can give you an
example of wine. Wine's a really big uh
tourism driver to Los Cusus. So we can
structure a whole campaign around wine,
printed materials, videos, um long form
videos, um advertisements, print, um
things like that that are just going to
target, um across multiple
platforms. And then um Michelle
introduced Nuvia. She's our new
marketing specialist. Uh she was a
former intern. She came to us via NMSU
and um we got to keep her for a little
while and then she um eventually became
part of um a permanent part of Visit Los
Cusus. So uh some of the things that she
does for us, she maintains our blog. Um
she does weekly videos for our Tik Tok.
Uh she also helps with a lot of written
material um and kind of an assisting
role for myself with uh press releases
and maintaining relationships with the
news outlets here as well. Norm um just
to kind of highlight some of the other
staff that you guys might have might
know, but um some of their
accomplishments especially uh Norm he uh
does a lot of photos, a lot of the
amazing photos in our ads and our
visitors guide. A lot of that is from
Norm. Um so he expands and maintains our
visit Los Creus photo library. Um and
him and Ed do this awesome podcast,
Visit Lost Creus Live. Uh Norm produces
and edits that. Uh it's also a video
podcast. You can see that on YouTube.
And then Sedill, he's our distribution
specialist. Um, but two things um that
are some kind of amazing things that
he's done. He's our RC balloon pilot. So
if you've seen our visit Los Cusus
balloon uh at some of the events, he's
the one that's piloting piloting it. Um
not only does he do that here in Los
Cusus at events in Los Cusus, but he
also goes out to places like Colorado
Springs, Texas, um other places in New
Mexico, California, um promoting Los
Cusus this way. Uh he also got his drone
pilot license. So he's um doing
expanding our visit Los Cusus video
library with some drone footage as
well. And then this is just kind of a
small taste of some of the um tools that
we use to promote Los Cusus. Um, and
I'll show you some examples of some of
them, but uh, things like having travel
writers and bloggers write about Los
Cusus, uh, search engine optimization,
search engine marketing, um, social
media ads, print ads, u maintaining our
website, as well as, um, itineraries on
our website for people specifically
coming in to help them plan their visit.
So, this will include like couples or
families. Um, we can help them a little
bit, focus on some of those kinds of
things specifically that they might want
to do.
All right. So, this first video you're
going to see, this is Cara Wandering.
She's an influencer on um Instagram. We
had her come down specifically in
January to highlight the Messiah Valley
Balloon Rally. Um she has been here
before. Uh she is an influencer that we
had come down here specifically for that
event. But what um bringing influencers
down does is it introduces Los Cusus to
an audience that we otherwise might not
have been able to reach. Um she did an
amazing job. This is just one of the
videos that she did, but this highlights
a lot of the things she did in and
around Los Prius during her weekend
here. Uh if you've um also been to Mina,
you might have noticed like a large
group. Uh those are the influencers that
come in via um a grant through New
Mexico Tourism Department that we have
and they'll come into Los Cusus from
places like they came in this year from
places like Utah, California, Colorado,
Texas um to promote their trip to Los
Cusus and specifically highlight Los
Cusus.
[Applause]
So this is an ad that we had done. Um
this is an example of our long form
content. So we have um a series called
the real New Mexico. This was the first
episode that we did. Um it's about 10 15
minutes long. It's three different
segments. Um and what we're doing with
this is we're highlighting things in and
around Los Cusus. We have a host, her
name is Jessica. Um, in this first
episode, we highlighted um an Airbnb
that's unique um here in Los Cusus, a
sign company that's locally owned, and
then um also the elephant the elephant
bar, elephant ranch bar, um over off
Picachio. Uh we did um a highlight. He
showed us how to make a drink in that
part of the segment. So, uh Jessica does
a really great job hosting it. We are
wrapping up edits on our second episode,
so that should be out very, very soon.
Um that particular episode is
highlighting kind of like spending a day
in Los Cusus. Uh hiking tips for people
that um have hope have never hiked here
mo more than likely. Um if you're coming
in from somewhere else and you're hiking
in the desert, it's very different. So
uh we want to make sure that people are
safe. Um she also highlighted the Bosa
Brewing Company. Um their founders went
to NMSU, went to school in NMSU and
started their business. So that we
highlighted some of their drinks as well
as their food. and then they also went
to Fort Seldon to um kind of show off
that
attraction. The third thing you're going
to see on your screen um is going to be
the ad that we have running in uh the
New Mexico Adventure Guide. This is our
state tourism guide. So um this is
distributed not only throughout New
Mexico but the United States as well as
internationally by the states. Um if you
see in the corner the right hand corner
we have a QR code. This helps us track
um our investment in this ad. This shows
us how many people are actually engaging
with the ad. How many people are
interested in learning more about Los
Cruus and seeing more about Los Cruus um
and engaging with um what we
produced. And then the next thing you're
going to see is going to be our Starruck
ad. This is one of three ads that we
have at the El Paso International
Airport. Uh we are very strategic about
that the about it. These are all back
lit ads, so we want to make sure that
the photos that we have are very
striking, are going to stand out. Uh,
after the installation, they took this
photo, and you already see that there's
one woman that's actually engaging with
the ad and looking at it. And then
you'll see the QR code in the corner as
well. Again, tracking our investment and
making sure that um, people are engaging
with our
ad. The last thing you're you're going
to see is one of two billboards that we
have along I 10. um it's coming in like
if you're coming in from Los Cusus uh to
Las Cusus from El Paso, you'll likely
see this ad. Uh we're trying to be a
little cheeky with it. Um encouraging
people to stop in Los Cusus uh to have a
bite to
eat. All right. And then the last video
I'm going to show you is an example of
the evergreen ads that we created
throughout the entire year. This one
specifically was an outdoor recreation
ad that was created to to run um in the
wintertime. So, because of our mild
climate, we are able to outdoor recreate
here in Los Cru this year round. Um this
ad ran on our broadcast um streaming and
socials throughout the month of January
and February um to highlight our outdoor
recreation. Out here, the land speaks if
you're ready to listen. In the quiet of
the Messia Valley, Bos, nature reveals
itself. Mild winter temperatures calling
you to explore. Between open roads and
the rugged trails of the Chihuahuan
Desert, the journey is yours to carve.
Tea off under the desert skies, wander
dunes of gypsum, or ride the trails that
have felt the hoof beatats of centuries.
Every step brings you closer to
something real. Visit Los Cusus, the
real New Mexico.
So, um, as Relle pointed out, our ads
are very targeted outside of the city.
You might see them though on streaming
services, YouTube, uh things like that,
but they all are on our YouTube page so
that anyone in the community can see
what we are doing. So with that, I will
hand it back to um our executive
director,
Michelle. So just one more slide. Um we
do have I have a couple more additional
updates. Um, Albert did mention earlier
the New Mexico Hospitality Association
hat top top hat nominees and finalists.
So, I just wanted to highlight that
visit Los Cusus and our industry
partners did receive we were 15 15 of
the categories we were finalists. Uh, we
won eight of those. Uh, there are a
couple I want to point out specifically.
We did win the be best broadcast
campaign for our real New Mexico
uh campaign. We also won best new
experience for Mida Los Cruusfest. And
we are lucky today. I didn't know he was
going to be here, but Russ Smith was
recognized as tourism professional of
the year, which is a wonderful
accomplishment. Thank you,
Russ. And we and like I said, we've won
many more. Um, and last thing is I am
proud to announce that I was uh
appointed by the governor to the
semiquincentennial. That just flew off,
right? Just took a lot of practice. Um,
commission and we are tasked with
promoting and coordinating events and
activities in New Mexico.
uh focusing on celebrating the 250th
anniversary of the United States. And I
am working diligently to make sure that
southern New Mexico and Los Cruus are
represented in this
celebration. And with that, any
questions or comments?
Oh, thanks Roelle. Great presentation
and great work that you all do. Thank
you. I'll turn it over uh councelor
Karin. I just wanted to say thank you. I
have sent a few conferences y'all's way
and you guys have really helped um a
whole bunch of different folks that that
are thinking of coming to Los Cusus. I
got my new swag and people are already
into into it and so I'll be stopping by
again to to pick up more um really they
have really cool t-shirts and stuff if
you haven't seen them lately.
um uh great swag, a new new bunch of
swag available, but I just really want
to express my gratitude because I've
heard so much so many good things and so
many positive, you know, sort of
interactions that folks with have had
with your office and then I feel like
it's it's putting Las Cruises on the
radar. I've seen those ads at the El
Paso airport and I feel like super proud
of of us representing. So, thank you for
all that you do and for thinking forward
and really putting the best of Las
Cruises out there in the in the world.
So, thank you all. Thank you.
Anyone else?
No, I just wanted to comment uh the the
same thing. My gratitude. Thank you for
all the work that you do. You know, the
third annual meet uh Los Cusus and
already at a value of 3.8 million.
That's that's amazing. That's awesome.
Bringing back the balloon rally after
what was it 17 years and bringing that
back and then continuing the whole
Inchila softball tournament. you know,
um what is it like 17 states come in,
over 300, 400 teams come in. Uh it's
great. It puts us on the map. You do you
do a great job in in promoting. But I do
have to say to Albert, thank you uh as
well as all the staff. What I was most
amazed when I was able to welcome the
America's walking club was how long
you'd been working on bringing this
conference to Los Cusus. Give give me
give us that year again.
17 beginning of 18. Yeah. Since 2007 18.
It just goes the dedication, the
commitment, the hard work that you all
put in to visit Los Cusus and you make
us proud and and uh we're very proud of
you all. Thank you very much, Roelle.
Thank you. Thank you for all your
support. Yeah.
So, next on the agenda is a New Mexico
legislative update and Barbara Beno with
Larry Har.
Let's
see. Good afternoon, uh, mayor and
council. For the record, my name is
Barbara Bencomo, chief administrative
officer for the city of Los Cusus. Uh
today we are happy to present you with
an overview of the
2025 legislative session. As um the
mayor mentioned earlier, Larry Heran,
our lobbyist, is also with us to talk
about uh some of the policies and and
initiatives that came forward during the
session. But before we get started, I
would actually like to recognize some of
our legislators andor their aids who are
here with us today. So, I'm just going
to ask them to stand um as I as I read
their names. First, we have
Representative Mikuela Lara Kadena,
District
33. Representative Joanne Ferrari,
District
37, Senator Carrie Hamlin, District 38.
Uh, we have Connie Chapman, the
legislative aid for Representative
Anhelica Rubio, District
35. We have Senator Jeff Steinborn,
District
[Applause]
36. Thank you all so much for being
here. And before we get into the details
of the presentation, I would invite you,
if any of you would like to come to the
podium to say anything, we welcome
that. All right. Well, then we will just
jump in to the to the
presentation. Um, so I'm going to turn
this over to Larry Heran, our lobbyist,
to go through the overview. Thanks,
Larry.
Thank you, Barbara. Um, mayor, members
of council, for the record, Larry Heran,
lobbyist for the city of Los Cusus. It's
good to be in front of you again, having
survived another session. Uh what I will
say is um the experience we have with
our legislative delegation is positive
which I I think it's a really good
illustration when you see how many
legislators came before you today to be
present for this uh for the legislative
update. They make our job a lot easier.
Um and they're it's a really good
delegation. They collaborate well and
they're good to deal with. So it makes
it they they do good service to the city
of Los Cruus and Donana County. So, this
year was a 60-day legislative session
began on January 21st and ended on March
22nd. As you'll remember, a 60-day
legislative session means the field is
open for legislators to introduce
legislation on any topic, unlike a
30-day or a short session. A total of
1182 bills were introduced. That seems
like a lot. That's still a pretty small
number for a 60-day session, but as
you'll see when we get into some of the
policy issues. They may not have had as
many bills as they normally do, but they
tackled some pretty heavy topics this
session. And then there was 148
memorials, joint memorials, and joint
resolutions. And then on behalf of the
city of Los Cusus track a total of 142
different pieces of legislation. One
thing I didn't put in in the
presentation, but we we have Connie
Chapman is here and uh as legislative
aids for legislators, we've talked about
modernization of the legislature before
you. That's been a policy priority for
the city before. This is the first time
that every legislator now has a
legislative aid working for them in
their districts. Started before the
session. I and and they would correct me
or when they when they all were hired. I
think the last batch were eligible.
Legislators have room to hire. Not all
legislative hire. So just so so we can
hear that. Thank you, Representative. I
appreciate that. They do not have to
hire legislative aid. They have the
ability to hire legislative aid. So it's
an option for them if they choose not
to. So I appreciate that um
Representative Kadana. And so that's the
first time legislators have had
full-time or have the ability to have
staff. Um so that's part of that
modernization effort that we've been
talking about. Is it the arrow?
I always forget how to work the
PowerPoint. Actually, you just click
that.
So, we'll start with crime and and
criminal competency. That was a big
topic um we discussed before the council
u before the session started. The first
half of the the 60-day session, the
legislature focused primarily on um
criminal justice reform and criminal
competency. What came out of that was
House Bill 8, which was they they tagged
as their omnibus crime package. They
took various pieces of legislation and
rolled them into House Bill 8 and that
was passed within just over the first 30
days of the session that dealt with um
criminal competency restoration which
Chief Story has been very active and
engaged with not only the council but
with the legislature talking about um
expanded criminal commitment and civil
commitment of the assisted outpatient
treatment act. Um the Glock switches or
weapon conversion devices were were
prohibited. additional sentencing for
fentanyl trafficking and changes to DWI
blood testing. Um made shooting threats
a fourth degree felony and they added
progressive um penalties for motor
vehicle theft. That was the that was the
the main crime package that they that
they passed. Also, House Bill 12, which
was changes to the extreme the red flag
law, the extreme risk firearm protection
order. this they made a change to allow
law enforcement officers to also
petition for red flag petitions. Um and
then also instead of waiting to
relinquish firearms once the order is
served the the person who is service has
been filed upon must relinquish their
firearms. They also passed Senate Bill
one and Senate Bill three uh related to
behavioral health. They created a
behavioral health trust fund with a
hund00 million appropriation to focus on
behavioral health services. And then
Senate Bill three is the behavioral
health reform and investment act that
created a a committee and regional plans
um and funding strategies for behavioral
health services throughout the state.
That's heavily heavy involvement through
the um uh administrative office of the
courts to come up with those regional
plans. And then they also appropriated
$200 million to various state agencies
to fund behavioral health programs
throughout the state. And that's the the
behavioral health side of of the
criminal justice reform that they that
they passed during the
session. Overall, the state still has
positive um very positive budget
outlook. Although we're starting to see
the price of oil um dip production is
slowing and as we've talked about um
over 50% of our budget is based upon oil
production in the state of New Mexico.
They passed a $10.65 $65 billion budget
with 30%
reserves as is normal in a 60-day
legislative session. They did come up,
we an ominous tax reform package,
although by the time it it passed and it
came out of um House Bill 14 was the
vehicle for for the um tax reform
package. When it passed, it had an
earned income tax credit, foster parent
guardian tax credit, health practitioner
co- insurance, and liquored excise tax
portions of it with a price tag of about
$150 million. the the big discussion.
Um, some might call it was a pretty
robust discussion related to the tax
package because originally the tax
package was going to be funded with a
new um an increase on gas on oil
production and equalization tax that you
they tax and natural gas at a different
rate. If had they raised the tax on oil,
it would have generated I believe 400
400 to $450 million that would have
funded the tax package. that piece came
out in when they had the bill passed in
the Senate and so there was no new tax
increase on it. So the package that went
up to the governor included those pieces
and then it was vetoed um post session.
So there was no omnibus tax bill that
passed and was signed into
law for us. As you'll recall, one of our
priorities for the past several years
has been the Essential Services
Development Act and Senator Hamlin um
was our sponsor for the legislation this
year. That's the enabling legislation to
allow an exception to the anti-donation
co clause to allow spending of state
dollars on private property for
essential services which now is defined
as any utility. Um that would that would
focus on primarily on residential
development. So, what we have to do or
what you as a body would have to do is
develop a plan, pass an ordinance
setting forth a criteria for how you're
going to um determine folks are eligible
for some of that funding. We submit that
to the Department of Finance
Administration at the state. If they
approve our plan, we can then get
legislative funding to fund those
essential household services. So, the
bill was introduced um early on in the
session. We weren't sure if we were
going to be able to get it passed
because it was a pretty heavy lift. Um,
but it progressed with I believe almost
unanimous support. We might have had one
no vote. We had one no vote on the
legislation the entire time through. And
so um again, we appreciate the efforts
of the delegation and particularly
Senator Hamlin for um carrying that
legislation for us. It's three years in
a row we've we've done bills together
for the city. So I'm not sure what we'll
be doing together for the 30-day um to
pass another
bill. Um housing and homelessness. We
we've had a lot of discussion with you
uh about housing and homelessness. Um in
the budget 110 million uh went to the
department of finance administration for
housing
initiatives. When you all or when you
all came to Santa Fe and we had some
meetings relating to housing, it was
identified that 10 million was going to
be designated for the city of Los Cusus
and 80 million was going to be
designated for the city of Albuquerque
for these housing initiatives. Those did
not make it through the line item veto
process. The funding remained but the
language specifying for city of
Albuquerque and city of O Cusus was line
item veto. So the the money is still
there. The administration actually
reached out right before the veto
happened and connected us with uh Serita
Ner who's the uh secretary for workforce
solutions who now is also going to be
running the office of housing. I she's
already been down to the city of Los
Cruz had some meetings. So, we were
assured that the the line item veto had
nothing to do with the fact that it came
to Los Cusus. The administration wanted
to make sure they had flexibility to
spend as appropriate and that that money
will still be available for us for our
housing initiatives. Um, the Office of
Housing, Senate Bill 205, which I know
uh many members of the council were
tracking, that failed, did not pass. Um,
that died in the Senate Finance
Committee. And then Senate Bill 267,
Senator Hamlet's legislation related to
housing application fees passed and was
signed into law. Um, and if she wants to
add anything on it, I'll let that add
specifics, but that adds protection for
renters, caps application and late fees,
um, for those for tenants and also an
increase in notice of fees that are
going to be passed on to folks. So, um,
efforts to help the housing
situation. Other funding in the budget,
um, $12 million went to the rural air
service grants. So the city of Los Cusus
is still receiving rural air service
grants. So I don't think we had anything
where we're trying to get more of that
money now, but it's a program that we've
utilized and so it's important for us to
ensure that funding is still available
for that rural air service grant. So
that received some funding this year. We
did receive a $1 million appropriation
for the Los Cusus Air Show through the
Department of Tourism. There's 200
million that went for um water project
funds that's available and 131 million
to fund the deficit of that employee
group health plan. We've been talking
about that for quite a while where there
was a deficit because rates hadn't been
raised on state and mun and local
government employees that have
participated in the the state program
for health benefits. So there was a
deficit. They had tried to assess local
governments a few years ago. That
resulted in a lawsuit and a stay on that
lawsuit. So this year the legislator
legislature put $131 million in to fund
that deficit and take care of that
deficit. Um inspection of public
records, we talked about that before the
session about efforts from the municipal
league and also supported um by the city
council and the clerk about changes to
the inspection of public records act.
three different bills were introduced.
Um the municipal league's efforts uh
carried by Representative Christine
Chandler and then coming out of the
Association of Counties and particularly
Sandoval County, there were two other
pieces um rep Representative Kates
sponsored House Bill 139 and House Bill
497 by Representative Katherine Brown.
Those were much bigger bites than than
the effort as proposed by Representative
Chandler to essentially rewrite the
entire act. What it did was about what
we expected. No, no um IRA bills passed,
but it did generate start a conversation
about needed reforms to the inspection
of public records act. So that's
something we'll see again in the
interim. The municipal league will
continue their efforts um to work with
the foundation for open government and
the press association to see if they can
come up with some changes to IRA. And
then you may recall we had a
presentation about the house animal
welfare trust fund right before the
session. Animal protection came before
the council and was here when I
presented and they asked for your
support for the animal welfare trust
fund. That bill did pass and received a
$5 million appropriation. So there's $5
million available for um entities that
have uh animal shelters to obtain some
funding for their for their
efforts. Paid family medical leave. it
was introduced again. They the tactic uh
or the house of origin changed this
year. They started it in the house. It
had passed the senate and ended up in
the house um in previous sessions. This
year it started in the house. It passed
3831 out of the house after some pretty
significant amendments. Um the
significant changes were it went from 12
weeks to 6 weeks um paid family leave
for what they called family wellness.
And then if it unpaid, it offered 12
weeks of unpaid leave for birth or
adoption of a child. And in even though
it was unpaid leave, there was a $9,000
payment in u with the intent of
replacing lost wages for the birth of a
child that would have come out of the
early childhood trust fund. That bill
after it um got out of the house was
heard in the Senate Finance Committee
and it failed to pass out of the Senate
Finance Committee. So it did not pass
again. Um, as we've as the discussion
we've had in the past, it's an important
piece of legislation for for you all to
know about because it would have applied
to to employees of the city. We we
haven't been involved in the discussion,
but it's something that will be back.
Again, this is an effort from the
legislators that we're going to see
another version of paid family medical
leave if the governor gets gives it a
message in the 30-day, if not in the
next 60 days. So, it's something we just
need to continue to be aware of. I'll
keep you apprised on on how those
efforts are going. And then um House
Bill Six was introduced by some of the
labor unions. And what House Bill Six
does and it was signed into law. It was
um sponsored by Representative Pansky
out of Santa Fe. If a private entity is
getting an industrial revenue bond um
from a local government, then they are
required to pay prevailing wage like the
local government is required to pay
prevailing wage on public works
projects.
Um, also this is the second time we've
seen this, a local solar access fund
grants for local governments for solar
projects that passed and was signed into
law. There's $20 million available or
will be under that program. And then as
a result of some discussions we had and
and you may remember we talked about a
meeting with the municipal league and
the some developers prior to the session
last fall about changes to local
governments approval of zoning permits
permitting etc for construction
projects. What we did see is we saw
three different pieces of legislation
that would have preempted local
government authority. Um as it relates
to local zoning for master plan
developments. Um, there was a piece of
legislation that would have restricted
your ability to say that you can't have
accessory dwelling units or casitas on a
piece of property. And then also there
was a piece of legislation that would
have required you to report on all the
permitting and how long it takes for
permits to be approved at a local
government level. None of those efforts
passed. They were opposed pretty
strongly by the municipal because it was
a preemption issue. But it's something
to signal that we need to continue
conversations with developers and as it
relates to housing and businesses to
make sure we're doing things as
efficiently as possible if we can.
Otherwise, what we'll see is more um
preeemption
legislation. And that's it. And capital
outlay. I'll kick back to Barbara before
I forget. I will say and I think I may
be um stealing a little bit of her
thunder. We're going to have I think
it's our third annual capital outlay um
forum on July. August the 3rd on July
8th where we invite nonprofits to come
to the city. Um Senator Hamlin was here
the last time. Representative Rubio's
attended in the past. We present on the
city's capital outlay process how it
works at the legislature so that those
nonprofits um know how to tap into
capital outlay. So that's going to be
July 8th I think at 10 a.m.
9 to you.
All right. Thank you so much, Larry.
Once again, Barbara Ben Como for the
record. Um, so this is just a brief
overview of our capital outlay process
once you as city council have adopted
the city CIP that forms the basis of
what we submit to the state. Um, that
documents the capital projects that are
potentially um on the table uh for us to
request funding and support for. We meet
with our legislators to understand their
interest and priorities. Of course, we
have that same discussions and and work
session with council as well to get
input and then we adopt uh the
priorities that we'll be moving forward
with in the next legislative session.
Once that is complete and this is
typically in January, we submit our
priorities to the state through the
legislative council services portal.
This year I'm going to present just a
few highlights of some of the priorities
we identified, what we requested, and
what we received funding for uh so
generously from our supportive
legislators. So for the mobile
integrated health uh building, which
also encompasses our light program, we
requested $2.5 million. We actually
received $5.5 million for this
project. For our police realtime crime
center, we requested $1 million and we
received $1.8
million. For housing, we have two
projects that were submitted as
priorities. Basos Veres and the Amadore
Crossing project. We received almost $2
million. For them both, we had requested
just over four
million. And for our Thomas Brown
Library, uh we requested $5.6 million.
We received almost a million dollars for
this
project. Altogether, you will see in
this graph all of the projects that were
funded or received funding from our
legislators. Everything from the CIT MIH
building down to inductive
charging. And in total, the city of Los
Cusus will receive just over 13.8
million. Councelor Karan is smiling
because she was the one who requested
this graphic a few years ago and I just
have continued to bring it forward
because it's a crowd-pleaser. At least
it pleases councelor
Karan. Um next steps uh we'll have
interim committee meetings of course uh
until the next session um comes together
in 2026. We will have our New Mexico
capital outlay workshop as Larry
mentioned earlier and that's something
that Senator Hamlin so generously helps
to facilitate with us July 8th. We in
addition to go going over the city's
capital outlay process and how that
dovetales with the state process. We
last year also included an overview of
the grow program which the COG
administers and we anticipate having
them here again so that they can speak
to that separate process, how it works
and how it's
administered. Um, of course, as I
mentioned, we'll be going through our
capital uh our prioritization process
for our capital outlay projects once the
CIP is adopted. And then in the fall,
hopefully earlier, but typically in the
fall, we um receive the funding
agreements from the state and we will
make budget adjustments for the 2025 uh
projects for that received funding so
that we can start uh constructing those
projects. So that is the timeline of
next steps coming forward.
And then last but not least, I know we
mentioned this earlier. We thank our
legislators so much for their support um
for for sharing their time with us to
let us know what their priorities are,
for listening to us uh to hear what our
concerns and initiatives are. And just
want to play this uh brief video for
them.
[Music]
Thank you for supporting houses in Las.
Thank you for supporting public transit.
Thank you for supporting our libraries.
Thank you for supporting public safety.
Thank you for
Thank you for supporting utilities.
Thank you for supporting public safety.
Thank you for supporting our museums.
Thank you. And I get a big round of
applause. Thank you so
much. Oops. Did it again. Let's see. And
with
that, we'll go ahead and stand for
questions. And I think I got to scroll
through here. Oops. did it again. So
sorry. But we will stand for questions
and I'll invite Larry to come up here as
well in case you all have anything that
you would like to ask. Thank you so
much.
Thank you Barbara. Anyone? Mayor Promp.
Thank you. Um thank you Larry and
Barbara. Thank you Larry especially for
um all you do for the city and for
always answering our call when we say,
"Hey, we're coming up. Can you help us
please?" and you honestly you make it
very easy coming up there and and it I
always feel really like really
successful and then just really good
leaving Santa Fe um after spending a day
with you. So, thank you very much. Then
of course, thank you to our legislators,
those that are here today and but all of
um your colleagues I um obviously in in
your investment and your continued
investment for Los Cusus.
Um, I do just want to note that um, in
previous years we've received a lot more
money for housing. And I think this year
I do want to note for the public
especially that it's not that our our
legislators are not interested in
housing. It's that I think for a lot of
us we were very excited about the
prospect and the potential of those $10
million in the budget. Um, that many of
us of course then went out and asked our
legislators to fund other other
projects, right? Right. And they
obviously did and they came through as
they always do. And so it's not that
they don't care about that. I think that
it's we all just had a bit bit of a
different hope for what that turnout was
going to be, that outcome. Um, thank you
so much, Larry, for ensuring that we
were able to meet with the Secretary of
Workforce Development and really
continue to work with our our housing
team, Natalie, to to make sure that all
of our housing projects are at the top
of the list. Um, and that the state
understands that we're ready. if they
give us $10 million, we will spend $10
million. So, um, for the for legislators
here, if you talk to Secretary Ner, tell
her we're ready and to give us money.
Um, so, thank you for that. And then, of
course, I'm really excited for for the
investment in the um, mobile integrated
health center and light uh, projects. I
sent out a lot of texts myself
specifically for that project. And so,
um, I'm excited for that to um, to come
to fruition. And then really my last
question, Larry, was um the animal
advocates here locally have been
reaching out to to us a lot about um how
this the that potential investment could
work. Do you have any sort of idea on
how that will roll out and how the city
can stay on top of um receiving some of
those funds? Um thank you, mayor and
Mayor Pro Tim. I don't know specifics on
that. I'll I I can I will make some
inquiries and get back to you just to
find out because I'm not sure what that
grant program is going to be or the
process. So, there's still once they get
the appropriation, I'll have to set up
how that grant works. And then I'll take
the opportunity and um I I should have
mentioned it before when I was here
before you in the fall, you asked as a
body, how can we be effective in
advocating and being more effective with
the legislature? And I think what we saw
this session was we saw good
participation from you as a governing
body. Also the city manager and
assistant city managers, they came up a
couple of different times. Our
legislators every time we asked, can we
come see you? They all said yes. Um
without exception. And I think what
we're seeing and we've seen more active
participation in the last couple years,
especially related to housing. Chief
Story was there a lot working on public
safety. I we saw a different level
engagement from you as a body and staff
and I think that that's why I think
you're seeing um that that does bear
fruit and and they will speak for
themselves. But I know the legislators
always appreciate it when you take the
effort to go up and see them. And it's
always a pleasure having you there and
getting to walk around. I'm glad to know
you feel you're successful because
sometimes people leave the capital
wanting to pull their head out or bang
their head into a wall. But um it does
bear fruit and so so
um going forward I would urge you as a
body and also as staff to continue that
kind of proactive approach. And then
lastly um I do just want to say a
special very special thank you for
legislators for supporting that
behavioral health package. I know it's
not necessarily something as a body we
took a stand on. Um but you know that
investment is tremendous. So um thank
you. It's it's historic and so
important. Thank you,
Councelor Grampy. Well, I for once can
answer a question instead of just asking
one. Um, thank you so much. Um, thanks
to our incredible animal advocate
community. Um, I was forwarded some
information recently and it looks like
uh the DFA, the New Mexico Department of
Finance um administration has sent
around um what they're calling a animal
welfare needs assessment survey. Um so
that is that seems to be the first step
in seeing how they might create uh grant
criteria and funding priorities. And
I've shared this along with our um
amazing grant team here at the city and
they will collaborate obviously with the
animal services center here locally. So
it looks like we have you know at least
a first step
happening.
Thanks. And actually I will ask a
question. Sorry.
um probably something I should already
know, but when we are um generously
given beyond what we've asked for
specifically with MIH building and I
believe our real-time crime center also
um certainly in the MIH building there
was a big disparity we got like an extra
3 million. So how does that work? A
life-sized statue of Chief Daniels
goldplated. Just kidding. public.
Thank you, mayor and counselor. And then
I'll and Barbara will jump in as well
for those projects and and I will look
to Barbara for the NIH building. But I
do know from the real time crime center,
the way we scaled the project was to try
and achieve a phase of funding. So like
like on the real-time crime center that
money will be spent. We'll just be able
to use it quicker than we thought we
were going to have to go back rather
than going back for more. and MIH. I'm
not sure if that's probably the same
answer.
Thanks, Larry. Barbara Ben Como for the
record and actually I asked Chief
Daniels to be prepared for this question
because I thought it might come up. Um,
obviously for us, we were looking at uh,
as Larry said, how we scoped the
project. What were the words that we
used in the proposal that we made to the
state for how we would spend the funds?
and we and we tend to either uh want to
make the language broad enough that we
could still use it for um additional
items or additional scopes of the
project. But I do want to turn it over
to Chief Daniels. He wants to add
something specific uh to the NIH
building.
So Mayor Mayor
Prom Council, uh I just wanted to uh
follow up on on on that. So, we will be
able to utilize the funding. One of the
uh the things that is the FFNE, the the
furnishings for it and and getting that
completed, we were going to have to
likely come back and and ask for
additional funding to get it fully
furnished. This will allow us to do
that. and and it also relieves a a very
big concern with the uh with the recent
executive order because $3
million have
been congressionally uh given to us for
that. So So this may further help us if
if we end up having
to lose that funding. So So thank you to
everybody. It really relieved some
stress on our end.
Thank you so much. Thank you, mayor.
Anyone
else? All right. Again, Barbara Larry,
thank you very much. And to our
legislators, thank you for all your hard
work, your challenging work, your good
service work. Um, we really appreciate
all that you do and try to make not only
Los Cruuses, but our state better. So,
we thank you for that. Thank you very
much.
That's all we had for today. So motion
to dismiss. To adjourn. Move to
adjourn. Seconded.
This is on the motion to adjourn the
work session. Councelor Mccclure. Yes.
Councelor Matis is absent. Councelor
Graham. Yes. Councelor Crarant. Yes.
Councelor Fletus is absent. Councelor
Bencoml. Yes. And mayor.
Yes.