e
e e
[Music]
work session for Tuesday October 15th uh
it is 1 pm we're going to go ahead and
get started as you can see I am not
mayor Enriquez I am mayor pan bomo mayor
Enriquez is at a very cool mayor's
conference in Mexico City so we wish him
the best and safe travels while he is
gone and we're going to get started
today with jobs of the week come on
up go ahead
okay all right thank you very
much all right I'm Sarah Rainey I the
onstop coordinator for the southwest
region of the Workforce Connection
offices um for jobs of the week we have
have a park ranger for the city of Los
crues there's actually three positions
that they're posted on this one the
posting the position starts at 1807 and
the posting closes on the 4th of
November we also have a utility line
locator for the city of Los cruus for
2285 an hour and the posting closes on
the 21st so there's just a week left of
that we have a human resources clerk for
White Sand Missile Range um the posting
closes on the 26th of this month we have
a part-time purchasing clerk at stabin
that one starts at $28,000 a year and
the posting closes on 116 we have a
journeyman electrician at IBEW local 583
that's how the posting was listed on
there so you have to go on there and
check it out the posting closes on
November 1st for that one also for
Christa's Health we have a social worker
therapist 3 or four depending on um the
clinicians certifications and whatnot
that posting that position starts at
$62,000 a year and closes on the 3 of
November
sorry and then as always we actually
still have our time our extended hours
from 11: from 8:00 a.m. to 600 p.m. I'm
all tongue tied today 8:00 a. to 6:00
p.m. Monday through Friday we do not
close for lunch so we're there the whole
time for anybody to come in for any sort
of
support and that is all that I have I
just want to real quickly remind
everybody that we do have The Community
of Hope job Readiness event tomorrow at
The Community of Hope location so
anybody that's needing assistance out
there please come see us thank you all
thank
you good afternoon my name is Carol
Nelson I'm with Animal Services Center
of the msia valley I'm the digital
content
specialist this week for our cat of the
week um this is a repeat cat cuz
unfortunately he hasn't been adopted yet
it's Jack his number is
78833 if you would like to look him up
online he says I'm just a kitten full of
energy and sweetness I love to play and
boy can I zoom one moment I'm here the
next time I'm over there I'm a bit of a
love biter but only when I get over
excited I promise it's all good fun I am
just a little bundle of joy waiting to
share my love and energy with you if
you're looking for a sweet energetic
companion I'm your guy and then we have
chica who's currently with one of our
foster families uh her number is
80028 if you would like to look her up
on our website I'm currently living in a
cozy foster home but really want to find
my special forever family I love
snuggling so if you've got a lap I've
got a Heart full of love just waiting to
share I've been doing so good working on
my cat skills I'm also proud to say I've
had no accidents in my crate or anywhere
in the house I can't wait to meet you
and create some amazing memories
together uh this week we're going to be
at the spotted Dog Brewery on Saturday
October 19th from 12:00 to 3: we'll have
our adoptable animals um so definitely
come grab some lunch and hang out with
our pets you might just find one that
you want to adopt and we're also hosting
our drive-through vaccination clinic um
on so Sunday October 20th from 9:00 a.m.
to 1:00 p.m. Field of Dreams parking lot
um we have both lowcost and free
services so definitely come on out and
if you would like more information feel
free to visit our website uh or find us
on social media thank you thank you
thank you so much and before we continue
with our agenda item I am being told we
should do the Pledge of Allegiance so my
sincerest apologies for um forgetting to
do that so will you stand and join me
for the pledge
pH thank you okay and just for a minor
update two minor updates uh we will be
switching 3.3 and 3.4 so 3.3 will be our
last item and we do have someone joining
us virtually Christine okay and they are
here thank you just wanted to note that
first item on the agenda is 3.1
sustainability greenhouse gas inventory
update and Lisa
Lorac Rachel Meyer or Natalie
cross we can oh okay that's our virtual
folks yes that is us um please thank you
coun please make sure to introduce
yourself I'm sorry what was
please make sure to introduce
yourself yes awesome sounds good so are
we able to share our
screen yes you should be able to try it
and if not we'll get someone on it
okay all right is everyone able to see
our PowerPoint no hold we're getting
someone to come
down all righty go
[Music]
ahead okay oh there you are here we go
all right looks like we've got the
Powerpoint up on the screen so I guess
we'll get started um thank you Council
and everyone for having us today my name
is Rachel Meer I'm a senior associate
with lotus engineering and
sustainability we're a consulting firm
out of Denver Colorado and we've
previously worked with the city before
to help put together the first climate
action plan back in 2019 and we did the
first CommunityWide and first Municipal
operations inventories back back then as
well I'm joined today by my colleague
Natalie cross and we were working on
this update to the greenhouse gas
emissions inventories with Lisa Lorac
our sustainability officer so now if you
want to go to the next
slide all right just a quick overview
today of what we're going to talk about
we'll go over kind of an introduction to
greenhouse gas emissions inventories
just to make sure we're all on the same
page we'll go over the emissions results
from the CommunityWide inventory as well
as the local government operations
inventory and take a look at a couple
year-over-year comparisons and Trends
between our 2018 and our 2023 emissions
inventories if you want to advance
Natalie all right so we'll hop into our
introduction to greenhouse gas
submissions
inventories so greenhouse gases and
climate change what does all of this
mean um greenhouse gases do occur
naturally in our atmosphere they're part
of the reason why we can exist on Earth
um they act like a blanket and they trap
heat in the atmosphere and we want some
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
there's definitely some that have been
there forever we want that to be able to
trap the heat but increasingly over the
past 200 years or so as humans have
evolved and we've had the Industrial
Revolution
there's a lot more human caused
greenhouse gas emissions that have uh
increased the concentration of different
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere it's
like adding a bunch of blankets on top
of the earth um so we're we're getting a
lot lot warmer than it's been
before and this is not so good Um this
can lead to increased temperatures more
severe drought down in Las crusis flash
floods in the rainy season and dust
storms um a lot of negative impacts that
come along um with these climate impacts
um and the one way we know how to take
care of this and maybe mitigate the the
worst of these impacts over time is to
decrease those emissions that we know
our human caused which are mostly
burning fossil fuels and um some
Agricultural and Industrial
processes so now if you don't mind go to
the next
one so what are greenhouse gas emissions
inventories and inventory is just taking
a look at all of the human cause
emissions sources within a certain
boundary so for instance on the screen
you can see this little chart um the
black boundary on the outside represents
our boundary that we look at for the
emissions inventory so for instance
we'll take the city of Los crusis as an
example if the city of Las crusis is
doing an inventory the Black Box are
boundaries would be the city's boundary
we can organize then our emission
sources by Scopes Scopes being sort of
Realms of control over these sources for
a city government um scope one then is
anything that occurs fully within the
entity's boundaries so say city of Las
cruus is boundary those are the little
icons on the screen that you can see so
those include in boundary transportation
and that's all forms of transportation
so an airport
railroads um cars and trucks or if there
were water bodies boats stuff like that
we have stationary fuel combustion in
homes so that's anything used to heat or
cool a home like Natural Gas Propane
Diesel and backup
generators anything that is a fuel in
the home excluding electricity that's
its own Zone um we have in boundary
waste so a landfill or a wastewater
treatment plant industrial
facilities um agriculture if there's
agriculture within the
boundary anything like that is scope one
scope two then is going to be
electricity use and that's it just
electricity use so in homes in vehicles
anything that is scope two scope three
then is going to be
anything that occur or is a result of
activity occurring within the city's
boundaries so landfilling waste or the
generation of Wastewater but the
disposal or the treatment of that is
outside of the city boundary so that's
out of boundary waste and Wastewater we
have transmission and distribution
losses so we know that not all
electricity from the substation makes it
to your home or to your business um so
we can calculate what got lost on the
way and attribute those emissions and
then there's other little sources that
kind of depend on your location um but
that all qualifies as scope three and
then we'll add all of that up and in any
given year that's going to be your
emissions total for the
year and I think I'm going to pass it on
to my colleague
Natalie hi everyone I'm Natalie cross
I'm a research assist see it with lotus
and I'll be taking you through this next
part of the presentation just for a
little context before I start Rachel
mentioned that we did a community and a
mun Municipal inventory for Los cruus
this year a municipal inventory is just
for City operations whereas the
community inventory estimates emissions
for all emissions generating sources
within the entire city of L Cruis so
that's the section I'm going to be
taking you
through so in 2023 Los cruus generated
about 860,000 metric tons of carbon
dioxide equivalent which is the unit we
Ed to measure carbon emissions that is
equivalent to a little over 112,000
homes energy use for a whole year
um so when we look at emissions when we
look at this total emissions number
we're able to break it up into
categories called sectors so these are
large categories that include all of the
emission sources
the largest sector for Los cr' emissions
in 2023 is transportation as you can see
in this pie chart making up about 52% of
total emissions that is followed pretty
closely by residential buildings at 22%
and Commercial and industrial buildings
at
21% next is solid waste at 3% industrial
processes and product use which is
another term for refrigerant leakage in
the case of this inventory so so that
category is just refrigerant leakage at
2% and then wastewater treatment pretty
significant there at less than 1% of
total
emissions so this slide is comparing Los
crisis's emissions per capita or
emissions per person in 2023 to
different cities counties and as well as
the United States and state of New
Mexico in different years so it isn't
necessarily an Apples to Apples
comparison but we have this in here just
so you can see how Los crusis Stacks up
against similar places you can see that
Los cruus does have the lowest emissions
per capita this is a good thing this is
we really like to see that um that's
really exciting however it doesn't mean
that no action is necessary we do know
that Los cruus has a climate action plan
with a climate or an emissions reduction
goal in that plan so while this number
is great there's still action needed to
meet that
goal so in this next little section I
just explained to you the large sectors
that we can break emissions into the
sectors can be broken down into sources
so we're going to go through all of the
sectors and look at the individual
sources making up those sectors starting
with a building energy
sector as you can see down here in the
bottom left this is our total emissions
as we just saw building energy makes up
about 4 the 43% of total emissions for L
Cris within that building energy sector
we have this bigger pie chart of the all
of these sources you can see that
Natural Gas makes up more emissions or
more of the pie chart than
electricity electricity emissions
actually decreased about 12% between
2018 and 2023 whereas natural gas
emissions increased about
16% much of the decrease in the
electricity numbers came from from El
Paso Electric reducing their electricity
emission Factor about 9% between those
two years which is pretty
significant there's also a renewable
energy portfolio standard in place that
requires El Paso Electric to meet 100%
clean energy by 2030 so looking down the
road we can almost imagine those two
blue sections of the P the commercial
electricity and residential electricity
to completely go away and then then
we'll be left with completely natural
gas and the other category which is
propane um to deal with the emissions
from it's also important to note that
Los cesis is growing housing units and
population are both increasing which
will increase natural gas usage and less
electri electrification efforts
occur this is just a visualization of
that electricity versus natural gas um
emissions so you can see the navy blue
line going down that's electricity
emissions between 2018 and
2023 and you can see the light green
line going up that's natural gas
emissions so we can expect electricity
emissions to keep going down and natural
gas emissions to keep going up without
any electrification or Energy Efficiency
measures put in
place so the next sector is
transportation again transportation
makes up about 52% of toal emissions
that's the largest sector for 2023
inventory as you can see for the sources
in the transportation sector about 70%
is gasoline vehicles and 30% is diesel
vehicles the other category includes
public transit Railways and Aviation
that makes up about
3% Transportation emissions overall
decreased about 133% from 2018 and the
largest source is gasoline vehicles as
you can see in the pie chart one really
great thing that happened in Los cruus
is that electrical vehicle registrations
jumped all the way from 114 to 956
registrations which is really really
great it definitely helps mitigate those
G emission emissions from gasoline and
diesel
vehicles however it's important to note
that electric electric vehicle
registrations still only make up a
pretty small percentage of total
registrations so there's a huge
opportunity here to continue advocating
and encouraging electric vehicle
adoption so the last sector we're going
to look at is waste and Wastewater
sources again waste and Wastewater
sources in that little bottom pie chart
take up about 3% of total emissions
looking at the bigger Source chart about
92% of that is solid
waste 7% is wastewater treatment and 1%
is compost Solid Waste tonnage so the
amount of waste thrown away into the
landfill increased about 27% between
2018 and 2023 but despite this waste
emissions actually decreased about 62%
because a landfill gas capture system
was added at the landfill this is
another really great success to point
out however we do want to reiterate that
it is a one-time thing it's really great
that emissions decrease this much but
it's a one-time thing and without waste
diversion strategies implemented we can
expect waste tonnage to continue
increasing here's a visual rep
representation of that you can see in
the dark blue line the solid waste
tonnage increasing over time and then
the green line the huge drop in
emissions between 2018 and
2023 but again past 2023 because that
landfill gas capture system is already
in place now we can expect those
emissions to either stay the same or in
increase so the only way to drop that
green line faster and farther is to
decrease the amount of tonnage going
into the
landfill so now we're going to go into
some year-over-year comparisons between
2018 and 2023 see what changed between
those years first here's a table of some
kind of background data that we know
changed between those years so the first
one I want to highlight is the
electricity emission factor which we did
already mention
decreased about 9% driving a lot of the
emission trends for
electricity you can see population and
number of households both increased 11%
and 19%
respectively um another couple important
ones to pull out the number of electric
vehicles we mentioned jumped up pretty
significantly as well as the ton tons of
waste landfilled so that's a tonnage
disposed of in the landfill also
increased between those two years
here's a bar chart comparing 2018
emissions to 2023 emissions by sector so
those larger categories of
emissions the dark blue is 2018 and the
gold is
2023 we can see commercial and
industrial building energy use decreased
9% Residential Building energy use
increased
12% Transportation emissions decreased
13% Solid Waste decreased 62% again due
to that gas capture system wastewater
treatment emissions increased
24% and Industrial processes and product
use or refrigerant leakage emissions
from Air Conditioning decreased about
11% so overall we're looking at about a
12% total decrease between 2018 and
2023 this isn't another visualization of
the 2018 versus 2023 emissions compared
to the 2050 emissions goals set out in
set forth in the climate action plan so
you can see these first two gold bars
are the 2018 and 2023 total emissions
again there was that 12% decrease
between 2018 and 2023 which is about
2.4% per year and then down here this is
the goal emissions in the climate action
plan for 2050
um starting in 2023 emissions will need
to need to be decreased about 77% to
meet that 2050 goal which is about 3%
per year so current the current rate
between 2018 and 2023 is about 2.4 and
3% per year is needed to 2050 now that
seems pretty close we do want to
reiterate though that a lot of the
decrease in emissions was due to the
large decrease in waste emissions which
again was a
one-time thing so it's exciting and it
looks like Los cruus is very well on
track um but it is going to be a big
lift especially as the city continues to
grow and population grows and we're
adding more housing units um there will
be some other emissions that naturally
increase so it'll be a little bit more
work to keep staying at that same rate
to decrease emissions and meet the
goal so this last slide I have here is
shows different emissions projections
we also did a business as usual model
for the city of Los cruus and in that
model we basically project out what
would happen to emissions if no climate
action work were done so that is the
dark blue lineup here again you can see
our 2018 and 2023 emissions in this
little gold section and then from there
the blue line is the business as usual
so if no climate action were taken where
do we expect emissions to go the dark
brown line in the middle is the current
trajectory between 2018 and 2023 so
that's that 2.4 decre percent decrease
per year and with that rate until 2050
just overshooting the climate action
plan goal emissions which is this green
dashed Line This is where we hope
emissions will be in 2050 um so the
difference between the dark brown line
and the light green line is kind of that
2.4 versus the the 3% per year decrease
needed and I'm going to pass that back
to Rachel for the municipal emissions
overview all right thank you Natalie so
now we'll talk about um the other
inventory that we put together so that's
going to be the local government
operations inventory we also call this
the municipal operations inventory so
either either way I call it it's the
same same inventory so Natalie if you
want to go to the next
slide if we look at 2023 local
government or Municipal operations
emissions in 2023 we have just over
27,000 metric tons you see that on the
left side of the screen now if you
compare that to our community Emissions
on the right side of the screen in 2023
Community emissions are about 860,000
versus 27,000 for the municipal
operations so a lot more missions in the
whole Community but we do know that the
municipal missions are still a part of
our community emissions so working on
reducing local government operation
emissions is still important to help
meet the community
goals and on our next slide we'll break
those emissions down by sector again
these look a little bit different from
our community but they're really pretty
similar so stationary energy is another
name for building energy use so this is
going to be the office buildings and rec
centers and any other facilities that
the city owns and operates that's about
43% of our total emissions for the local
government Transportation that's going
to be the fleet vehicle and Equipment
emissions so any police cars or other
cars or equipment pieces that get used
as well as business travel emissions
from employees city employees and then
City employee commuting all of that
together added up is going to be 44% of
all emissions for the local
government that industrial processes and
product use that Natalie mentioned so
refrigerant leakage in HVAC systems and
buildings that's about
7% um waste thrown away at Office
Buildings and other facilities about 1%
and then wastewater treatment emissions
at 5 % and I'll just note that wa
wastewater treatment that is just the
the nitrogen processes of wastewater
treatment the energy use of that
facility is included in stationary
energy so you can see on the pie chart
the two biggest sources of emissions or
sectors of emissions building energy use
and
transportation if you want to go to the
next slide
Natalie we can further break that down
then into sources of emissions so so
there's our pie chart on the screen um
might be a little hard to read those
labels but that sort of teal green wedge
is going to be building electricity use
at 34% that's going to be our largest
emission Source on the local government
side followed then by Fuel use by fleet
vehicles about 30% of all emissions are
fuel use in fleet vehicles followed then
by employee commuting emissions at
12% uh building natural gas use at
9% and then other sources like
refrigerant leakage and wastewater
treatment um 5% 7% and then smaller
sources in that little bar chart that's
blown up on the
screen so our building energy use you
can see that adding up to 43% in
electricity and natural gas but as
Natalie mentioned um electricity use
we're assuming that El Paso Electric
will hit their goal of 100% % renewable
electricity by 2050 which means that
electricity wedge should go away we'll
assume that that goes away so that's
going to leave us then with our our
Fleet emissions employee commuting
emissions natural gas emissions just if
we do nothing from here on out so just
remember that if you want to go on to
the next slide
Natalie now comparing to 2018 the last
time we did our Municipal operations
inventory
can see overall emissions decrease about
22% between 2018 and
2023 again our dark blue bar is going to
be our 2018 emissions and then the
goldish bar is going to be the 2023
emissions so building energy use
emissions go down again in large part to
El Paso Electric's work to add renewable
energy to the electric grid and bring
down that electricity emission Factor
transportation went down just a little
bit between the two years um we had a
lot more uh refrigerant leakage or
refrigerant replacement between 2018 and
2023 and that can just mean that it's
it's becoming warmer and we're running
the air conditioning systems more and we
need to recharge or stuff is leaking
more just because of that waste
emissions go down again because we have
a landfill gas collection system now at
the landfill which is awesome we get
that drop in emissions but as Natalie
mentioned that might pop back up in the
future if we don't do more work to
divert waste from the landfill by
recycling or composting or other reusing
of products and then wastewater
treatment increased just a little bit
between the two years that tends to
align with population changes so we saw
our population wind up between 2018 and
2023 and so uh subsequently we see that
increase in wastewater treatment
emission
so if you want to go on to the next
slide Natalie oh that looks like that's
it um so thank you so much for having us
this afternoon um and we're happy to
take any questions you have on either of
these
inventories thank you Rachel and Natalie
I appreciate it and I see Lisa uh right
down here as well I'm actually gonna
turn it to you Lisa if you want to say
anything be before questions hello mayor
poem uh Council and city manager ERS and
uh audience thank you uh for uh
listening to lotus's presentation they
are a stellar group and have been
working all around the country and I
couldn't have said anything better so I
wanted to give it to the experts I do
want to say something more on a personal
on a local note here and that is I am
both uh pleased and surprised at the
great results that we saw Citywide by
reducing greenhouse gases by 12% and
within the municipality by
22% and um I want to give some shoutouts
to some of those folks who uh were
really instrumental in doing that and um
I am going to go in a an order so of of
the different sectors one of the things
is is
transportation um we have not really
moved the needle that much much on it
but we did notice that there is a
difference when less vehicle miles are
traveled and that's a really good thing
to notice because that was the biggest
factor in this so a comp when we have
complete streets walkable bikable
streets that will make a considerable
difference on our greenhouse gas
inventory so if I were to get a question
what's something good to do that can
reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by
133% if we continue to do that we're at
1% right now with EVS both um Citywide
and in our our Municipal Fleet our goals
are to reach
70% by uh 2050 that's a big lift so the
idea of
encouraging the adaptability of vehicles
by um having people see them having uh
Chargers around will be a great message
to do that and just as a KN out to El
Paso Electric on the 26 of this month
you can drive your own EV for free and
try it out so there's lots of different
models and if you haven't had that
experience yet please sign up there was
been a couple of announcements and if
you didn't get it you can ask me and
I'll send it to you but it's a great
experience to see what a Qui and
efficient ride that can be uh Angie's
going to pay me later for that just no
just a joke just a joke okay so
um the other thing that I want to really
call out is that
um I want to give props to Las Cruz's
utility the we've seen that there's been
an increase in natural gas but they have
made great strides by getting their
energy transition plan contract in place
so hopefully we'll see some uh the next
five years we'll see some significant
drops in that um I also want to mention
that um South Central Solid Waste uh
landfill uh uh installation that it did
made a huge difference but I also know
that Las crusis utility is going to be
doing composting which should be a
highlight for that and lastly I forgot
to say that I want to give a shout out
to transit for their electric buses even
that's an amazing thing that they're
doing a great role model to show it only
uses 1% of our it only reduce our ghg by
1% but what a great 1% to have that out
there so
um with that I uh just wanted to
highlight some of the good things that
we've been able to accomplish and and
encourage the council and the city staff
to think about and residents to think
about ways that they can uh act on these
different measures to reduce greenhouse
gases more we had the five hottest years
in record these last five years and um
we also know that the rest of the
country and world are dealing with
hurricanes and things like that so
mitigation is totally the best strategy
that we have and um
I really appreciate all the work that
Lotus has done for us over the years to
guide us in this path so with that
Rachel Natalie and I stand for questions
thank you Lisa I appreciate that all
right Council are there any
questions go ahead thank you thank you
and I appreciate this presentation and
to think I think it tells us we have
lots to do still but I really appreciate
the summary of of the kinds of things
that we have been doing and
what that quantitatively means um I
would argue some of the qualitative
benefits of things like people seeing
electric buses are are also um in
progress and I think really important
but um I'm hoping that we we will get a
sort of do text of this or like a link
if there's a link on the city's page to
the report findings I'm not sure if it
will be this or if there's an official
like written report but I would really
appreciate that to reference to people
when they ask kind of some of a lot of
residents ask what are we doing and what
can we do and I think that would be
really helpful to refer them to so I'm
hoping we can get that and then also you
mentioned a drive and EV thing when is
that again the next Saturday yes next
Saturday so where do we go the
26 okay yes I will send out a reminder
to everyone that'll be great thank you
Lisa yeah please either send it to all
of us or Christine and she can send it
to the whole group I love that thank you
I'll give it to communication awesome
thank you so much I appreciate it thank
you counselor anybody
else Council Flores I just want to thank
you so much um you've done a wonderful
job um in this department in your
department and I think you do it uh
pretty much all by yourself no oh you
have people uh you'll meet them today
councelor great great but the
presentation by Rachel Natalie um is
encouraging um and one of these days I
won't get a Tesla but I will get an
electric car thank
you um thank you Lisa yes it is a Tiny
But Mighty team I would argue I just
have a couple of questions if no one
else um wants to jump in um I really
appreciated this presentation I felt
like I was back in a classroom and um I
appreciate learning from experts on such
important issues on the first part of
your presentation on page eight uh you
had the different cities and at the very
bottom it talked it said the New Mexico
per capita emissions and then the US and
the discrepancy was pretty large I'm
wondering if you can speak to that the
United States and then the state of New
Mexico I'll start um mayor proam and
Council I'll start out explaining that
the state of New
Mexico is largely influ fluenced by oil
and gas which represents 50% of its
emissions and I'm going to leave it to
the to Rachel and Natalie to answer the
US
question yeah thanks Lisa so yeah as
pleas I mentioned the state of New
Mexico is largely made up of oil and gas
emissions all that largely happening on
the eastern half of the state um that
also plays into why L cruises emissions
are smaller um Las cus does not have oil
and gas emissions included in the
inventory since there's not oil and gas
development in the community um also
because there aren't large Industries
or you know maybe like bases
or large airports large industry that
tends to bring the overall emissions
down
um which is you know for better for
worse um and the in the United States I
think it's
just you know when you spread it over
333 million people it tends to bring
down emissions per capita um I mean that
that includes any emission in the
country so
agriculture really big industrial
processes all the oil and gas
development
um I think it's just that's what happens
when you have a large
population to divide it by you know New
Mexico you see it's just over 2 million
people that's that's not a lot to divide
the whole State's worth of emissions by
so that tends to inflate that value at
the bottom and do you have information
on where the United States lands in
globally in terms of these numbers and
compared to other industrialized
countries
yeah I think we had showed this in a
different presentation I think Global
emissions are closer to three or four
emissions per capita um so even less
than the city of Las cruus and then a
lot less than the United States or the
state of New Mexico um when you take the
whole Global look at emissions and you
you have sort of that divide between
more of the developed countries and the
Lesser developed countries
um Just DE divided by about 8 billion
people brings that down a whole lot um
so it is definitely a lot less thank you
thanks Rachel um okay thank you and I
think that's all really to say for me
that you know I think uh individuals can
do their best and cities and
municipalities can do their best and
it's not until extractive industry is
held accountable for other part that
we're not actually going to see progress
in terms of reversing the impacts of
climate change which is a little bit sad
um but I feel really proud to have a
sustainability office in the city of Las
Cruses and for so many of our
departments to be looking towards the
future and and to do the best way that
we can for our residents so I appreciate
that okay any other
questions okay that is it thank you so
much Rachel and Natalie or unless you're
staying for the next item
[Music]
awesome thank you so much for having us
thank you thank you
Natalie all right uh next item is 3.2
sustainabilities plugged in for good
Community initiative Lisa
Lorac I leave the meeting this you know
oh minimize it if you can just minimize
it um but don't leave
it there there you go
yep
get hello again um mayor proam council
and City management I'm Lisa Lorac the
sustainability officer for the city of
Las Cruses and I'm double dipping today
because this is a related topic and I
wanted to share it with you the
sustainability office and some and lots
of Community Partners have taken on a
priority strategy of the climate action
plan and that's related to clean energy
uh and resiliency for disadvantaged
communities in our in our area and I
wanted to tell you more about that today
and what uh has happened is that both
the sustainability office and a whole
host of different stakeholders have come
together and we've taken a deep dive
looking at some of the issues that have
been a barrier to Affordable energy and
uh efficient housing and job security
and because of these issues that I'm
about to describe we decided to take
some action on it we've learned that 55%
of low and moderate income households
live live in 5 square miles called the
infill area which I'm sure you're
familiar with houses are 40 to 70 years
old with uh Antiquated building codes
and have deferred maintenance
maintenance challenges almost 10,000 low
and moderate income households pay over
6% of their income on utilities 14% of
those people have utility disconnection
notices annually and although we have
excellent entitlement programs that
provide whole house retrofits between
all the programs only 50 houses are
retrofitted annually although there's
14,000 households living in
poverty and we also have although
inexpensive we have ineffective cooling
systems uh like evaporative coolers that
cannot
adequately uh respond during extreme
heat events and are are putting people
In Harm's Way
coupled with that we have Urban heat
that's due to the amount of asphalt and
concrete that are in these neighborhoods
that can add up to 10 degrees to um uh
hotter than the affluent neighborhoods
outside of that area there are a lot of
funds that are in the federal administra
that the federal Administration has
released through the in um inflation
reduction act and it's offered new
incentives for rebates but it's still a
daunting task on how to to navigate that
and as we plan um the workforce that's
needed we realize that historically
subcontractors encounter slow and
limited career growth so from all of
those discussions that we've had we
decided that we wanted to respond to
some of the incentives that are coming
our way through in the inflation
reduction act and together this group
formed um an an initiative called
plugged in for good and our mission
statement is to address energy
affordability and heat stress challenges
in less crues low and moderate income
housing through Equitable Solutions and
partnership focused programming so we
have three committees that are working
on this and um those committees are
facilitated by the folks that are
working with me and they also are
working with Community Partners so I
wanted them to get a CH give give a get
a chance to explain what we're doing and
what goals we're trying to
achieve and so just to let you know that
and uh if we're looking at the whole
membership of plugged in for good energy
Alliance we have impacted residents that
live in those neighborhoods we have
community-based
organizations like um donana communities
United uh the uh Community Action Agency
we have social service providers like da
uh donana County's Health and Human
Services and the Community Schools we
have
NMSU and um the donana communities
College
construction uh Technologies we have
utilities from Al Paso Electric and Las
crusis utilities there we have different
small business construction industry
technology Specialists and
sustainability and economic development
have taken a role so collectively all of
us have been discussing this for over 20
months now and because of that we've
come up with a really rich comprehensive
plan and we took all of those ideas and
we've written lots of Grants and boy
have we been lucky we have received a
prize for our first uh award it's called
the building up prize there's only 40 uh
organizations within the country that
have gotten this it's it's not a grant
per se it's an award that we get
annually for up to 5 years to both right
now we're in the planning stage but from
there we're going to be going from Pilot
to scaling and we get $400,000 a year so
up to 2 million when we're done and then
we have a department of energy Grant um
called Energy Futures grant that this
year is for planning and that money is
focusing on Workforce and health
monitoring to make sure that people's
homes are safe and we have uh 370,000
for that and we have the chance to uh
possibly get a second Grant from that
for a million dollar the third grant
that we got is from uh the state it's
called the community Energy Efficiency
or seed Grant and that is for
implementation and we're going to be
using that money for apprenticeships and
Navigators who are people that will be
helping the residents navigate through
this whole system and then we have an
Energy Efficiency Community block grant
that um where we get that our voucher to
buy energy equipment for 160,000 which
will hopefully offset the costs for um
residents and then we are applying for
an Environmental Protection
Agency environmental and climate Justice
Community change Grant and that is for
$8 million and there's a carve out for
the border so we're keeping our fingers
crossed on that and some of the
highlights for that is we're trying to
create a resiliency hub a physical
location we're trying to augment the the
funds that we get to remediate health
concerns that are in in the houses as
well as helping with different Financial
strategies that are alternatives that
are sensitive to the conditions
sensitive to people that don't have high
credit scores or don't have upfront cash
to be able to uh expand what they're
able to do for their house so all in all
this is what why you haven't seen us cuz
we've been busy so what I'm about to do
now is I want to introduce you to one of
the staff folks who's been handling one
of our sub helping to handle one of our
subcommittees and that's Ana Sanchez so
I'll bring her up to introduce more
about Community
leadership good afternoon mayor PR
tempor um members of city council and
City management my name is Ana Sanchez
and I'm a co-op with the sustainability
office here at Los crusis currently I'm
helping with the community and Equity
subcommittee along with doniana
communities United and the Community
Action Agency one of our goals is
ensuring Community leadership is H
having public participation to create an
equal status between the community
members and those in the plugged in for
good um energy Alliance so in order to
do this we have a few uh ways that we're
do we're working on this and so we are
currently developing relationships and
Trust through different activities and
conversations so one of the first
activities that we've been holding in
each of the communities is called a
fixair and this is where residents can
bring in their broken items and we have
them prepaired by volunteers with Cruis
creatives um our second engagement
activity is called Deep canvasing um me
and a few of the um a few of the members
from the community and Equity
subcommittee go into the neighborhoods
we knock on doors and we actually talk
to the residents and during my time as
we've been canvasing we've heard about a
lot of the issues that residents are
having uh mostly with affordability um
just hard they're having hardships
trying to just actually make the jump to
Energy Efficiency and so it's a really
good way just to start conversations and
gain trust with our residents lastly we
are also holding a DIY weatherization
event in December where residents can
learn how to weatherize their home on
their own so the next goals for the
community and Equity subcommittee will
be a no strings attached free home
checkup so just as you go to the doctor
or the dentist um your home also needs
to be checked and this is just to ensure
that you have a happy and healthy
home as we move forward on the spectrum
of community engagement we will work
towards empowering the communities by
co-authoring a community benefits
agreement this agreement will help give
power to the residents and help unlock
Collective power to to work towards
Solutions lastly we will also provide
Navigators to those interested in the
program our Navigators will help
residents make decisions when it comes
to retrofits and rebates which you'll
hear more about as we go through the
presentation with that I will now pass
it off to Charlie
mahti good afternoon mayor of pro tempor
council members city managers and others
in attendance my name is Charlie mahad
I'm a sustainability specialist here
with the city of Las cruus our program
is coordinating with the workforce
focused subcomittee including donana
Community College local contractors and
other stakeholders we want to
ensure that Workforce is structured to
provide living wages and opportunities
for advancement so we're working to
recruit small local companies and
Workforce that means listening to
companies and employees needs and
gathering information on areas in which
they're under served we're also
collaborating with Donata community
college's Workforce Center for training
and certification programs that includes
energy auditing
weatherization uh plumbing and
electrical programs uh other
apprenticeships for uh Hands-On
advancement of professional energy
training is part of our program uh we're
collaborating with companies other
Statewide institutions to get that done
uh we're engaging Workforce to fine-tune
plugged in for good Tech findings for uh
field conditions uh and when you do
something on a computer in a model it's
one thing when you're out in the field
doing it you get other input and ideas
along the way uh we're also supporting
businesses to strengthen out outcomes uh
that means uh working on things like
Workforce benefits programs and
wraparound services like child care and
the possibility of a tool
bank and moving on uh finances are all a
big part of any project being successful
uh uh so that means working with a tech
and financing subcommittee which
includes economists Engineers utilities
and others uh we believe that everyone
should have access to fair and flexible
financial support that meets their
unique
circumstances so we're working to
maximize Energy Efficiency with home
audits that means right sizing equipment
because if you don't do that um what
happens is evaporative coolers are
already pretty cheap to operate but many
splits can offer
uh home health and safety benefits and
uh more consistent conditions but we
need to make sure we're sizing these
units correctly uh so that means
compressing installation costs through
agreements uh things like vendor
quantity discounts and agreements with
installation Partners to help keep
prices fair for community members uh
we're bundling federal state and local
rebates uh there's some significant
rebates available through the IRA right
now the inflation reduction act uh
there's 25c rebat
uh or tax credits pardon me through the
uh IRS and El Paso Electric also has
some uh some rebates available uh we're
working on other Financial projects to
identify guaranteed and low interest
interest loans so we make sure that
households with uh uh credit challenges
in the past have good opportunities um
as well uh we're also just working to
lower utility costs with renewable
energy options that means uh community
and rooftop solar projects and uh we
want to make sure that homeowners
utility bills are still affordable with
this new technology transition uh my
colleague Jenny is going to take it from
here mayor protim uh Council C managers
Jenny ernandez the other sustainability
specialist for um the sustainability
office it's good to see many of you I'm
going to lower this because I am still
very
short um and so moving on to Affordable
and resilient housing so really the goal
for this section and and this section is
spread across all of our three
subcommittees that are working on all of
this um together and the goal of this is
for everyone to have access to
Affordable and resilient um buildings to
live in so the way that we are
approaching this with the plugged in for
good program is by modeling auditing and
monitoring in our homes and so what we
mean by modeling and auditing is um kind
of the reference that Ana made
previously is that we want to make sure
that we're putting the right equipment
and doing the right things to the houses
and obviously all houses do not have a a
one siiz fits-all so they'll require
different things and the modeling
technology and auditing will really help
us identify what specifically is needed
for each of those individual homes homes
when we talk about monitoring homes um
some of the statistics that Lisa shared
in the problem issues um it is older
housing stock right and so some of those
houses might be prone to some um air
pollutant or air quality issues that we
want to address before sealing a home um
for some of those residents and so
things like that is carbon monoxide
asbestos um find particular matters and
so we are planning to to use technology
that helps monitor that and then pulls
anomalies that we can see and then
adjust and fix and monitor again after
those implementations have been made and
then we can move on to installing
weatherization and heat pumps and this
is what we really mean by resilient
homes so a lot of folks have um res um
efficient or evaporative cooling but
some of them we've heard especially
this past Saturday we had a fix it fair
and we were speaking with residents and
a lot of those residents they might have
the technology but they don't feel
comfortable using it because they are
scared for their energy builds right so
sometimes people won't use their um
cooling systems because of the high
energy bill that they um are worried
about and vice versa in the winter um
for heating and so this is really about
creating a home that is one comfortable
and healthy but also that that our
residents feel empowered and and trust
that they don't have to worry about
running that equipment um in for their
levels of comfort and so along with that
we're providing a navigator support
which Ana also mentioned and this will
really help guide our residents to
throughout the entire process of this
program but also um help them with um
some of the financial and Technology
strategies I don't know if any of you
have tried to apply for some of the
rebates or tax credits just from EP or
the state and they can be confusing or
hard or challenging and so we want to
have people step um our residents
through that process so they can feel
comfortable and confident that they are
taking the correct steps and are being
guided through that process and not just
left alone to figure it out next we'll
be offering workshops on Home
Maintenance and like Ana said your home
also needs checkups so we want to
empower the community to be able to do
some of those lower maintenance things
that they can do themselves um via
workshops and then the next thing is
maintain Community engagement with the
proposed resiliency Hub So Lisa also
alluded to this in our that grant
funding chart and this is really a place
as kind of a One-Stop shop right where
our residents can come in and get all of
these services but also experience this
equipment I don't know about you but
when I first started Ed doing some of
this work I had no idea what a heat pump
looked like and so we want residents to
be able to come in to experience that
these Technologies to hear what it
sounds like to know what it looks like
but also have the support of somebody to
guide them through this um and explain
some of these things to them and so this
is what we really hope the resiliency
Hub can be and it's also an example for
um sustainability in general and to
exemplify those examples like having
Community I'm sorry uh solar on top with
battery backup storage and um Urban
Greening examples to help show how we
can mitigate extreme heat and things of
that nature so really a One-Stop shop
but also an example of how to implement
some of the strategies that Lotus was
talking about earlier and then last but
not least facilitate collective
empowerment evaluations so our hope
whole goal and purpose with the plugged
in for good is really to ensure that we
are empowering our residents to be able
to be the drivers of these Solutions
like I said it's not not everyone's
house is the same and so they'll require
different things but for residents to
feel empowered to then be able to drive
those Solutions and be able to um make
those changes is is something that we're
hoping to empower them with and kind of
recreate through this program and so
this evaluations portion is just
important for ongoing learning and
modifying as needed um as the residents
go through these this program and so the
next is kind of a stepping back in terms
of like overall goals of the entirety of
the program and we're referring to this
as kind of the holistic green economy
and this is really ensuring that the
transition into a green economy
prioritizes Equity health and
sustainable outcomes so again this is
just ensuring that all our homes are
safe and healthy and that again people
are not worried about being able to use
the equipment that makes their homes
safe and comfortable that we're
incorporating consumer protections we
also have heard a lot unfortunately at
the fix Affairs about residents who have
been approached by companies that
necessarily didn't turn out to be
trustworthy and so there is um we do
want to make sure that our residents
feel comfortable and trusted and so
creating prote ctions that help them
ensure that if they participate in this
program um that one we're being
transparent about those things but also
putting in protections to safeguard them
so they can feel um trusted going
through this program and the next thing
is building quality assurance and risk
management and this is similarly related
to the one above but this is
specifically about the technology so all
the work that Charlie talked about is
really making in making sure that we're
putting in the right technology at the
right house for the right things and
then advancing the clean energy economy
so stepping back um you saw there was a
lot of funding that we received but
there's a lot of funding in general
right now going across the United States
to really help transition the um green
economy and so we this is our effort to
just help us prepare the city of Las
crusis to really be able to start to
transition and to create those
opportunities for our communities and
then last but not least demonstrate the
results through evaluation we have
learned a lot already through this
process we're going to continue to learn
a lot especially as we go into the pilot
phase and so really being able to um
evaluate some of these adjust as needed
but also share broadly with other people
so we can get closer to meeting our
climate action goals that you heard
about from loce um in the previous
presentation and so I'm going to pass it
back I believe to
Lisa it disappeared it's going
back so in
closing I would like to say that not
only do I have a wonderful group of
people that I'm working with and here
and on in the city as well uh as well as
the community at large it's been
inspiring to be able to have this happen
and all of the grants that we've
received also come with technical
assistance so some of these big lifts
that we're talking about about different
Financial strategies about how to take a
deep dive in technology about how to do
Health monitoring are all being
supported by this technical assistance
so besides what you see locally we also
have a wonderful Foundation from uh from
the federal grants that we've received
and together we have been very in
intentionally um involving this the
community to address these systemic
barriers and we want that to result in
affordable and resilient buildings in
Las Cruses and it's going to it's a very
exciting time and I think that we really
seize the opportunity with the inflation
reduction act and I I hope to hear uh be
able to share lots of things to come so
we stand for questions and comments
thank you so much Lisa and team
appreciate all of you anyone on the
council have any questions
go ahead councelor matis thank you thank
you Natalie uh how do we access or how
do
we uh get in touch with you if we have
in my district I kind of walk around the
neighborhoods and meet different people
and they have different issues how do I
get them to get in touch with
you and they'll they'll get a navigator
I I think that's the word you use no no
this is a great program and this is all
Grant funded yes sir that's even
better no I mean in other words there's
no city funding coming into the program
or just City technical
staff mayor protem uh Council MTI let's
see if I can do all those questions for
you um yes primarily I'm sorry I'm like
that I just I just throw it out there
three is my limit though um
so yes there this is
uh Grant funded primarily especially for
all of the work that is being done in in
the community we are really facilitating
these these Partnerships it's kind of an
informal collaborative because there's
Workforce people there's Community uh
organizations there's technical experts
so all of the money for the grants is
going out to them there are still some
uh challenges that we
uh are going to to meet our staff time
is definitely from the city okay um and
our um and we're looking at alternative
ways of finding Gap funding um that
we're trying to do creatively and
hopefully uh we're we'll be working with
lcu to to be able to do that so I think
that we're all Partners in this but
definitely for this effort and the
scaling its grants no and and the reason
and I totally support the the staff
funding but I I think what's important
is we've heard a lot of people in uh
homes that are 30 40 50 years old and
they're on fixed
incomes that uh sometimes they become
candidates for you know being unhoused
or losing their homes or looking for
shelter so the program is such a
significant benefit to keep uh people in
their houses and it's affordable and
it's safe and and I like the word happy
because if they could you know if they
could stay in their happy home then they
will not wind uh you know result being
on on our our streets or in in our
community hope or other Shel so I I
think your program is fantastic now you
can just answer the other questions
Navigator find they protm and counselor
Ma you don't have you don't have to keep
repeating that that's okay
the
um the the stage that we're in right now
is called the planning stage so we have
we're doing that till uh February or
March of next year where we're trying to
identify uh different residents who
would be interested in a retrofit for
their home which will start with well
we'll start with describing what the
what the program is like and getting
their input to make sure they're
comfortable with how and and and can
help influence how the program is uh
comfortable for them and makes them feel
safe with the program then in the spring
early spring we'll be starting the
Audits and the the health monitoring for
uh at least 30 homes as our part of our
pilot it depends on what our response
rate is and then from there we will
start retrofitting those houses in early
summer and then we'll cycle our each
cycle each iteration will hopefully grow
bigger and bigger as as word of mouth is
um goes about and and our our funding
continues and we learn our Hard Knock
lessons and refine our process but
that's how we're approaching it so at
this juncture we're just identifying
homes so if if you um and there are
certain criteria for the rebates that
are out and that is that the the homes
are 80% of the um uh average median
income to be able to qualify for up
to
177,000 yes 17 177,000 do in rebates
okay so um that's that that's just the
federal rebates which is why we feel
that this is a wonderful way to harness
all of the rebates from state and
federal and and utilities to bundle them
and really take a huge slice out of what
the cost would normally be for them yes
thank you very much thank you
all thank you anybody
else that looks like it's it Lisa thanks
again you're welcome thank
you all right now on to the new 3.3 go
Bond quarterly update and that will be
David C no we're switching fire and goon
today thank
you thank you David
good afternoon mayor protm council my
name is David CIO your Public Works
director and I'm joined by Natalie Green
our housing and neighborhood Hood
revitalization administrator and today
we'll be providing our quarterly update
for the 2022 goond
projects just as a reminder those four
projects or questions that were approved
by our community or a new Fire Station
Number Nine the continuation of the East
Mesa Public wreck complex affordable
housing and park
improvements so the last time I was here
gave the update the fire station was
scheduled to go out to bid project has
been bid it has been awarded in the
amount of
11.08 million to Whit Sand's
construction they are slated to begin
construction later this month with an
estimated completion date of February
2026 here is the project schedule that
we've been reporting out on as you can
see or if you
notice right along there we go
this green line will show you where
we're at in the process we're right on
schedule with the estimated schedule for
this
project our next project which we also
updated was going to be going out to bid
has also been awarded to man's
Construction in the amount of
1.03 million now the next steps to
continue are finalizing that lease
agreement with the international
Boundary Water Commission and and start
construction those meetings with ibwc
are happening this afternoon just to go
over those final amendments of the
construction plans construction is
estimated or scheduled to start next
month with a completion date of
September of next year now as we had
mentioned before this project had 2
million what you're seeing is the 1.98
million with the 2% taken out for art
public places there is a remainder of
funds and with that those discussions
will begin to start going over the scope
of replacement of playground equipment
at Tel Brook
Park again here you'll see the schedule
for that project again right over here
showing where we are at in that process
just a little ahead of schedule from
there and as we continue on we'll keep
moving forward with
project next we have the continuation of
the East Mesa Public wck complex great
news which some of you already know
happened but we had the grand opening
for the facility on September 13th now
on that initial part we do have and
we're in a punch list phase because we
do have a couple things that still need
to be completed on there one of those is
the shade structures those are being
fabric fabricated they are scheduled to
be delivered in December with the
installation being completed in
January again the other item is the
playground equipment which includes
inclusive and adaptive playground items
that is in the design process now we've
gotten to a point to where we have 100%
layout we're working and negotiating the
price of those improvements for the
park I'll have an update for you at our
next quarterly update for this project
and then lastly as part of this project
the continuation of the
improvements uh we're at 90% design we
are estimating to be bidding this
project next month those items do
include eight volleyball
courts two basketball courts an Umpire
and an IT building restrooms at the 10
acre Park more Street Furniture with
benches shade structures and other
playground
equipment here you'll see the schedules
for this facility down over here on the
bottom this is where we're currently at
right now we're hitting those Target
estimated schedule dates that we had
established from the
beginning and with that I'll go ahead
and turn it over now to miss Natalie
Green good afternoon Natalie Green for
the record
um the goang question number three was
$6 million for affordable housing we
have allocated about3 million of those
dollars to various projects the first is
the three sisters um it is slated to be
completed in May of 2025 they have
grayco building number one in the
community center and then the rest of
the buildings are in various states of
construction um so they're going from
this end to this end and so they've uh
done Electrical Plumbing um some of the
curb and gutter and all the retention
walls are complete um they've drawn down
most of the city funding except for the
percentage that we retain by contract uh
padrina is also moving along uh they
have framed the third floor and roofed
um portions of the building and then
they've roofed and shingled the duplexes
and they are slated to do uh they're
hoping to have pieces of the project
complete by January or February and have
folks move in in a stagger um we're
still working that out with Community
Development but they're progressing
along but they will for sure be done by
June of
2025 uh peach tree Canyon we closed on
the financing um so thank you to the
council uh and the County Commissioners
who participated in the groundbreaking
we broke ground last week um so we'll
continue to monitor the construction and
the draw down of those
funds for Amador Crossing it doesn't
have have go bonds allocated to it but I
did just want to give an update um I
forgot to update bullet number one it is
100% designed and out to bid the bid
deadline is November 12th um our current
cost estimate is about 13.5 we've
secured uh 11.4 of the funding um
including uh a new Grant from the New
Mexico mortgage uh Housing Authority
they have allocated $1.5 million out of
their housing Innovation fund to the
city of Las crusis um so we do have uh
two other requests out we fully
anticipate getting all of our
construction funding by the end of the
year in which we can start um the
project so with that David and I will
stand for questions awesome thank you
both any questions
[Music]
from the gallery oh and I totally
forgotten to do public comment but it
looks like it's all staff so that's okay
go ahead go ahead Council thank you
mayor protm and thank you Natalie and
thank you David um I was not able to
make it uh there it's my new District
after uh you know census um I had a
conflict I had another meeting and it
didn't let out till about
10:30 um but I did receive a call from
commissioner um kamacho Susie
kamacho um for those of you who
understand Spanish um I'm sorry yeah
chaparo and um she uh was very concerned
about uh the roads that lead to that I I
wasn't there but I'm going to you know
reconnoiter and uh see what she was uh
but um she was very concerned
about um and she said she would speak
with Steven Lopez about it um but it's
appropo at this time um so apparently
there are roads leading to that uh
housing area that aren't paved did you
see that did you experience that Mr
Mayor councelor flotes or mayor protm
councelor flotes so the unpaved road is
on the county side um all the roads on
the city Side are paved up to this
property oh so our we're we're paved
yeah well I told her I didn't know
because I you know don't have a map at
home to look at um but um
okay so then the onus is on the county
to make sure that the C that the roads
are developed to access the uh housing
but so just you know by The Bu um how is
it that a housing um a housing area
would be developed built and um the
roads not being taken care of and I I
know it's the onus is on the county on
this this one but just generally
speaking I mean I'm thinking about you
know emergency vehicles access uh in
terms of uh your
car um you know hitting those bumps and
whatever so is that something that is
taken into account just mayor protm
councilor Gand I believe Comm counselor
FLOTUS councelor FLOTUS sorry uh yay
thank you
promotion I believe Community
Development is the audience so they can
speak uh to their development process
but as part of the permitting review
they do evaluate all of those factors
and depending on the size of the
development they do require a traffic
impact analysis so they would have
evaluated that as part of the permitting
um but so we did it but they
didn't uh Tim pittz uh deputy director
for Community Development uh mayor Pro
toown councilor FL as yes we did uh do
the uh uh analyses on this um there are
actually two two proper um accesses on
fully built out roads uh to this
property and um um and U along I believe
it's
a peach tree and then uh
uh oh that's it or not I'm losing my
losing my my sense of of location but
yeah there's there are uh there are two
fully built out roads that are have
access so for public safety reasons we
can get um we can get uh fire engines
ambulances so on to the site uh from two
separate locations so even if something
were to cut off one of those it would be
available uh the the county access isn't
necessary to us um it's just on the edge
of the city and and it has fully it has
full full
access so um the road that well so the
but there is a county road that isn't uh
paved that leads to the
development or no um mayor to protm
councelor flotes it is a road that leads
away from the development so it's the
extension of peach tree to Mesa Grande
so from uh Sona Ranch Peach Tree to
horada intersection is paved and so is
horada Road what's not paved is the
peach tree portion in the County area
that extends to Mesa Grande and that is
not paved okay and so just a general
question uh maybe Mr SEO could answer
this in terms of um just
planning uh
how
um in terms of just planning around a
new development a new Housing
Development um there isn't uh any
assessment as to the Ingress all the
potential Ingress ESS um to that
development mayor protm councelor florus
David CIO Public Works director and yes
as Mr Tim pittz had mentioned there was
an analysis done for that for the
Ingress and egress of those Vehicles
along the area yes and Tim u m Dr pittz
explained it very well uh but my
question is
um uh somewhat convoluted uh but
in seeing that well the access to those
apartments um is part of the Count's uh
you know
responsibility did the does the city do
the co whatever uh governments uh ever
exchange any information or concerns
about uh that sort of thing where the
road wasn't developed councilor flotes
the city has had discuss
with the county regarding Peach Tree
we've talked about those in the past and
partnering with them so we can look at
getting possibly other types of funding
to partner and build out that
infrastructure at that location since it
does border the limits of both the
county and the city so that is still an
ongoing process and that is something
that we will be looking at in partnering
not only with the county but having
other discussions with nmdot noo to look
at what are those Regional benefits for
our system the region and our community
as a whole yeah it would be great I know
that um some of the roads that we have
south of the um I70 or 70 Highway 70 so
some of those homes are um their only
access to their homes is through
easements that the city has and it's
something that um you know I've been
trying to somehow uh wave a magic wand
because some people are not able to
access their homes uh because of that so
I'll be speaking with our City attorney
about uh easements and see if we can
anyway that's a whole different subject
but I'm just concerned about muds you
know people sinking because there are
people who do sink into mud in that area
but thank you that's just an aside thank
you thank you counselor thanks counselor
anybody else can
oh can I just finish one one last
comment on that uh as David said the no
does have
a a future Transportation Corridor
through there Beach Tree Hills is
expected to be developed at some point
in time so it is eligible for for
funding as David said we're working on
that and we do work with our County
counterparts a lot on this one the the
one we were more worried about was the
the flooding on the county side of
hornado there's actually some flooding
issues over there they're not quite uh
it's not quite to the point of of a of a
flood plane but it is something that
some of the neighbors had so we did work
uh and make sure that the the drainage
operates properly with the with our
neighbors to the in the county so we do
work very closely with them thank
you thank you Dr Pitts and thank you on
Miss
green Mr CIA looks like that's it thank
you both and of course always thank you
to the voters for getting us here thank
you David and Natalie okay now to our
new 3.4 Los crues fire department master
plan input and we will have Chief Jason
Smith present
all good afternoon mayor proam members
of council fire chief Jason Smith uh
today I'll be presenting to you and
hopefully entering into some discussion
about the development of a master plan
for our fire department uh so it's
really kind of funny getting prepared
for this uh meeting I was going through
my uh old binders and I've got one here
from
2016 and it says right there on the top
master plan and that's when we first
started our Public Safety master plan
partnering with PD uh so it's been uh a
long time in the works and we finally
have gotten to the point where I think
internally we have enough skilled people
within our staff as a city and within
the department to really bring something
forward to you so this is an important
step forward uh in the future of our
fire department uh it's our 10 year 7 to
10 year plan um that we want to kind of
inate our current strategic plan as well
as the city's Elevate compreh uh
comprehensive plan we've already had 16
meetings with our staff we've had more
than four public input meetings where
we've tried to get information from the
public we've also met with our community
health care uh Partners to talk to them
about how do they see the fire
department serving their needs in the
future uh also with the help of Katrina
we've sent out employee and public
surveys as well as uh a survey for those
who partner with us uh so right now
we're going to be focusing on on this uh
master plan we're not looking at the
upcoming years or budget cycles that
we're already in and and developing
we're looking at 7 to 10 years out our
goal is simple to use your input and
your insights to really expand on what
our plan will be so whereas like our
comprehensive plan may just say hey be
the best uh we want to actually say what
being the best looks like for
us was was going to have uh deputy chief
Sean heck here he's uh held up in
another meeting about our ambulance uh
contract uh but this part of the
presentation is just giving you kind of
some current uh stats on where the fire
department's at right now here's our
list of our current seven I'm sorry
eight fire stations we have station nine
that we broke ground on with our geobond
funding so we're very thankful for that
uh we also operate an administrative
building that's our training and
Operational Support building at 1670
South Valley that's really a game
changer for us all of our Fleet is there
so we partner with fleet Fleet has
mechanics there that work on our
apparatus we also have all of our
supplies delivered there and it's also
the hub for our training so all of our
classroom training is held there it's a
least building uh so it's definitely
helping us out right
now uh so right now we have 205 uh
full-time employees that are approved in
the budget 164 of those firefighters are
assigned to emergency response we have
seven in prevention that includes the
two new inspect we've been able to add
over the last year and a half it's the
first time we've had an increase in
Staffing and prevention in the 22 years
I've been in the fire department uh we
have 13 of us in administration four
Operational Support positions and then
four in training uh really those
Operational Support and training
positions are really the ones that keep
our department going so as we look at
improving our services we look at
getting them the supplies and equipment
they need on time that really comes down
to four individuals in Operational
Support doing the ordering invoicing uh
paying the invoices getting the
inventory out to our
crews so a list of some of the services
that we do provide under prevention
response and Recovery those are also
part of our our mission statement of
what we do at lcfd we have fire code um
we have our inspectors that deal with
fire code how we apply it to buildings
subdivisions uh even to the question of
access roads that's all handled within
fire code we do inspections we try to
get to every business annually to do a
fire inspection and we also go out into
the community to provide education and
we actually were having a we had a big
school tour this morning at station one
uh so the kids were out outside there in
the front of the station seeing the
apparatus talking about fire safety
doing some fun things where they
actually got to flow water through one
of our booster lines uh so it's just
great looking out there and seeing that
interaction take place on response we
have fire and EMS and just to list it as
fire and EMS doesn't really tell the
whole picture right we go to everything
that you can imagine when a call comes
in uh this year we're projected to
respond to 26,000 calls that's 26 26,000
responses 26,000 reports that get
written by our crews so anything that's
on on a fire we think it's on fire from
I smell smoke I smell like something
Electrical uh to a structure fire uh to
even the fire we had at uh one of our
construction supply companies just the
other weekend uh those are huge um tax
that taxes is our system quite a lot
right because we've got four or five
engines and both trucks responding to
this out of the eight engines we have in
two trucks currently EMS calls we do
provide Advanced life support so we are
paramedic uh level service so everything
from common cold symptoms that require
us going and treating somebody to nausea
and vomiting to cardiac issues stroke
Syncopy or passing out uh our crews are
trained to go and and really respond to
that and handle all those calls we do
technical rescue uh most recently our
team was kind of on display with our
support to uh RI Doo for the flooding
that took place after uh the wildfire
that occurred there and then our ARF
team our air that supports our
International Airport and I know this
weekend they'll be busy as they're
supporting the air show that's taking
place at
lru uh the last part of our services
that uh we provide fall under recovery
and that's what happens after the
incident and for the longest time we've
been really trying to provide uh
followup through prevention where we
could help streamline the the permitting
process help uh businesses and residents
who experience a fire get back either
into their home or back into business uh
We've also been working this last year
on the nuisance abatement team we've had
some good successes there uh just a
couple of months ago finally a building
that's located off of donana Road on
Karen uh finally the owner demolished
that building after several fires and
that building being unsafe for uh months
if not a year or so the biggest thing I
think we've been able to add to the
recovery side of our services really
falls into Mobile integrated Healthcare
and light um because of our case
management when we get a referral from
our our firefighters in the field and it
goes to Mi our our case manager uh Wes
Smith is able to follow up make sure
that they're getting wraparound services
and get them plugged into uh services
that will help that person recover and
hopefully not have another another issue
where they need a bubble crisis response
team or they have their health care
needs
met so some telling things about our our
call volume uh in fiscal year 23 we ran
over just 23,000 calls last fiscal year
uh we're just under 25,000 as I
mentioned today we're on track for over
26,000 calls this year our fire
incidents have increased uh
substantially uh this calendar year
we're at over8 100 fire responses now
that's not all to structure fires that's
vehicle fires brush fires dumpsters um
home and building as well EMS calls you
can see the the increase there uh public
service calls that's for anything where
anybody needs help that doesn't
necessarily mean it uh relates to an
ambulance transport it could be some
things as flooding in their home maybe a
water meter that needs to be shut off uh
smoke detector alarms that keep beeping
because it happens at 3:00 a.m. for
everybody uh all sudden your smoke alarm
starts to chirp and people who are
unable to reach it or don't know what it
is and they're worried they call 911 and
our crews go out there to to respond and
take care of that and then you can see
our ambulance transports over the last
couple of
years so to put that in kind of
comparison uh we looked at uh other
cities that have the same population
size and then we looked at their call
volume and their sworn staff the number
of firefighters they have within their
staff you can see us there at the top
Los crues right 2 4,000 calls that we're
looking at in this year uh our staffing
number is 183 people assigned to
operations to Emergency Response uh you
can compare that to uh kind of our
closest neighbor in this comparison uh
Westminster Colorado they're at 153 with
16,000 calls um but just really to kind
of put into context what we do with the
number of people we have and the demand
on our system compared to other cities
of like size we are a very busy system
that's one of the things that our
Personnel uh recognize and they do at
times wear it kind of of a badge of
honor like we are busy we're out there
servering our community there's a lot
that we do and where call volume when I
started was 11,000 calls in 2002 is now
going to be 26,000 like it's more than
doubled uh so they we are staying very
busy we've been able to add resources
we've got another station on the way but
that is all needed uh to meet the
demands of our community
so we want to talk today and get your
your input and Direction on our master
plan so we've given you kind of the the
background of where the Department's at
right now we've looked at the
comprehensive plan we've identified 12
different goals within the plan that
align some in some way with what Los
cruus fire department provides and that
could include anything like Community
Prosperity environmental health and
livability our Public Health and
Wellness Workforce Development housing
diversity and all of those the fire
department has a way of connecting to
whether it's through fire code or
Outreach programs like mih we can have
an impact and have an influence on all
those areas but of all these that we
identified there's five that we want to
talk about today that we want to bring
to you for your input and we determined
those five based on our employee uh
survey and our employee
meetings so this is what's going to
drive our discussion today uh for each
of the areas we'll present you kind of a
slide in the goal and then a question to
go in an answer answer and this is where
we want to get down to the specifics
whereas like I said before where it says
hey we want you to be the best to
provide high quality EMS and fire we
really want to get down to the question
of what does that look like in 7 to 10
years so here's the the first area where
it says coordinate with regional
entities on Public Safety uh that's
taken from one of our goals within
Elevate it's a very broad uh goal it
doesn't get down to the specifics and
that's what we want to talk about today
is how do you envision us col
collaborating do you want us to be just
a stakeholder do you want us to
participate or do you want us to be a
leader in those discussions uh so it's
kind of give you an example of how that
might work uh today you might say as a
counselor well it's important for you to
work with doni fire and msia fire and
from there we would develop kind of the
goal or the objective of the master plan
to say we will work with our neighboring
fire departments to develop automatic
Aid agreements and develop joint
training and Joint standard operating
guidelines or S sogs so that's what we
want to get down to today and that's an
example of something we've actually been
doing as you saw about uh two months ago
we entered into an automatic Aid
agreement with sunon Park Fire msia and
donana Fire Rescue and
NMSU so here's the first question to you
um what is your vision uh for lcfd as a
regional partner when it comes to Public
Safety so hopefully from there mayor
protm if it's good we can engage in some
discussion or some ideas back and forth
as we go through the rest of the slides
I love that thank you chief
is this the question you're posing to
everybody this the point go jump in hit
hit the button I want to I feel like I'm
GNA if the questions get as hard as they
did at the library event uh mayor protm
we're trying to make these even harder
because we know you can we know you can
meet the challenge great but I feel like
I already did it so I'm going to let
them do it okay great all right anybody
who would like to answer um go ahead
councelor
mcair I I'm really happy happy that you
guys did enter in that partnership with
the other organizations but I guess my
question too is what what burden would
that be to be the leader because I think
we can be the leader but would that be
hard on the staff that you have right
now uh mayor Pam and and Council
McClair the yes we have to take that in
consideration as we plan if if Direction
uh is we want you to be the leader uh we
have to do an analysis and think about
well what kind of resources does that
take uh do we need another chief officer
can we do it with a management analyst
do our current resources allow us to
reach that goal and I think that's one
of the the neat things about the master
plan is we can start working that
direction we can do an assessment now we
know that that's going to be a goal
seven years from now 10 years from now
uh so we can build up for that we can uh
put those estimates of what the
financial cost may be into the
plan because yeah I would say definitely
be that leader but uh if it does kind of
that long term effect would be good to
consider at the onset then too
so I'm not saying this is mandatory but
I would like everybody to participate I
think Chief story Smith would like
everybody to participate well maybe
we'll just go down the line councelor MZ
you're next okay uh Chief I had I had
this similar concern uh you know what
happens with the city of Los cruus is
we're we're sort of like um the bank
and and so that's what I you know if you
if you can manage it control it and make
sure that it's similar to I guess MDA I
mean mvda is it will be a uh partnership
msia uh donana county is that what
you're looking at and you'll be the
regional partnership and would that go
as far as um how far south are are you
looking at to create a
regional for
mayor protm and councelor matis I I
think that's the question that I'm
really posing to you all is what do you
Vision us doing how far do you feel like
we should have a reach that's really the
question that we want to get to is uh
what's this council's direction on in
seven years you want to look back and
say the fire department is now a leader
or involved with all of these
organizations or we do automatic Aid all
the way as far as Sunland Park and you
know automatic Aid is where 91 one call
comes in we go automatically we're
dispatched and then we're responding
down um or is it just you know you want
us to be a regional partner in
healthcare where we work with our
hospitals so that's kind of the question
to to you all as your
input yeah you know we we could be very
selfish and just say within City
boundaries period uh or we could extend
our kindness and our resources to let's
say the county but you know the county
is is is huge and it it goes pretty far
south and it has many cities down there
that that can't even afford uh you know
firefighters that us some of them are
volunteers and even like Tela I think
has just come on on board with paid
staff then you have um Picacho and um I
think
wherever you have to give us your
analysis of your funding and and your
capabilities before we could restrict
you
because I I hate to restrict you because
you know you're a great Chief and we
have a fantastic fire department and we
probably could extend our our arm quite
a distance and still
succeed but I I think you have to tell
us if if that if that's a good a good
decision a good call so for now I I
would
say we're pretty much taking care of
quite a lot of calls you know when you
see 26,000 and maybe possibly
28,000 calls and your staff I showed a
number of 183 it might be 220 but it's
still short what the other cities are
handling and are those other cities
Regional
leaders mayor pman and counc P I'd have
to go back and look at those those
individual cities to see what their
level of involvement is when you look at
Colorado they're very much a regional
resource where okay all these different
districts and cities they respond within
each other they're close enough to where
they share resources much the way that
you look at the Phoenix area where you
have Phoenix fire kind of the major
section of it but the outlying cities
respond automatically back and forth
across boundary lines as if the boundary
lines don't exist at all okay no that
that's that's good information
you that that it is happening and that
it is being sustained and they are doing
a good job so you know with that said I
I support whatever decision you have and
expansion can be can be you know
attained and you still have good
resources and you can still uh recruit
firefighters I I think it's a very good
plan thank you
councelor
Graham yeah so this is the worst time to
be a city counselor because I'm really
uncomfortable making decisions from up
here that
affect the daily lives of you know not
even just your employees but the whole
Community but thinking now toward your
employees so I think my if we're
Socratic methoding this I think every
question that you ask me I would just
question back how does this affect the
people who are going to answer the calls
at 3: in the morning
and I think I think
two now correct me if I'm wrong 77
square miles is that current city of Las
cruus more or less so we're already
covering a really large area with a high
needs
population and while again I think fires
answer is always we will make it work
and you do
but I want to know how you want to make
it work and how that trickles down to
boots on the ground before before I
really weigh in
thanks go ahead thank you um thank you
Madame mayor proam uh and thank you
Chief um I think U it would be important
I have you you
um I mean you you get emergency calls
from other municipalities in the area to
help out at times right mayor proam and
Council uh Flores that is correct at
times we get uh calls to help our our
neighbors out right so but uh somehow um
what I gather from what you're saying is
that you want to make to structure it
and uh make sure that uh I don't know
what it is exactly
the
um uh what the purpose would be to have
this uh structure because
um I mean it seems to me well tell me um
do you feel overburdened by um the
resources you have now and um and
providing the services that are are
needed thank you for for that because
that brings up an important part and
Council Graham's point of how does it
impact the the troops on the ground
so our our crews do feel busy they
they're busy majority of the time
responding to calls and if they're not
there they're they're training uh so
with that being said there's also this
this culture that we have within our
department of wanting to do more wanting
to help our our regional neighbors not
just uh you know the community of or or
going into msia to help out with the
structure fire but when we had kind of
the call for service for for assisting
riodoso theying their wild fire and
they're flooding there was no shortage
of people that we have within the
department that are saying I'm available
and I want to go um so it's kind of that
the economy we have one that yes we are
a busy system our firefighters are are
busy but they still want to help and
then when we look at things like the
comprehensive plan one of the goals is
to become
a um Regional partner but there's no
specifics on what that means does it
mean that we go to every time that
there's a wildfire in New Mexico we have
a team ready to go do we want that level
of involvement um or do we want to just
help uh the basically the 3 3700 square
miles of donana County or do we take a
very narrow focus and be like well we'll
we'll collaborate we'll have meetings
with our regional Partners but we stay
within our 77 square miles um that's the
input in the direction that I'm I'm
looking for is how do we develop a
master plan how do we start setting
these longer term objectives if we don't
have kind of this big goal uh better
defined for us because I would at the
time make the call of can we handle to
do this uh with the Hurricanes uh Milton
and Helen coming through Florida and the
Panhandle in the Gulf you know talking
to city manager Ean and if we get called
for our Swift water team are you
comfortable sending us yes yeah we can
we can do that right FEMA fem
reimbursement we've got people who are
trained who are willing to go that's
extending us halfway across the country
so kind of my question for this
is what do you want us to have as a
regional goal well I'm not um I I
understand you want some direction um
but it seems to me based on what you
just said that when there is a call when
there is a need you do respond
why would you need us to tell you what
to do or to allow you to just uh be
known as uh the city that will you know
help you out when you're in dire streets
no pun intended yeah no thank you
Council Flores and I that's because
there's other things that are involved
if we want to do more in council's
direction is we want you to be more
involved we want you to continue to do
these things there's other programs and
other expenses that could occur because
of that level of involvement uh right
now we're not trained for Wildfire uh
firefighting Wildland firefighting we do
not do if that is a goal of council for
us to be involved in that that takes
planning and that takes funding and then
there's an impact uh in those areas to
the community to our city government so
before we go uh marching down a path
that takes us to things that require
extra finances and extra funding we want
to make sure it's the direction of
council okay so then um it's a budgetary
item as well and um who so where's
Leanne she's gone
right too bad well maybe Barbara I would
be the person to speak to about that but
I or can speak to that but
um I don't know um are are you saying
chief that
um you want um you want a budget that
would allow you to uh train
firefighters uh in the you know like the
Roso fire um to handle that or and then
and then well I think I would like to
see specifics as to what you uh want to
do and what you would do say uh with the
other fire departments the regional fire
departments what it would cost for the
training what it would cost would you
probably would need more firefighters on
your staff and uh there's just so many
unknowns uh I I think it's it's a
wonderful idea and I think that we
should be there for you know for any
travesty any
emergency um and I want to thank you and
and the firefighters who who do that um
but I I you know it sounds like a good
idea in the abstract but in terms of
implementing it we would need more I I
would need more
information um it sounds to me as if
you're you want us to tell you what to
do and I I I have no
idea uh well yeah go ahead help Santa go
up to CH chaparal you know go to Roso
what do I know you know I mean um I I
think it's a wonderful idea and I hope
uh that we come up with something uh uh
something tangible
and then we can go from there thank you
Chief thank you CH Chief Smith um if I
just can maybe put pause a little bit
and pull back I'm wondering if maybe you
can just for the sake of the discussion
today maybe clarify for us what it is
that you're looking for because just
from what I I'm hearing from some of my
colleagues I from what I understand you
saying is that right now you're looking
for feedback for count IL members to be
thought partners with you and the entire
rest of the fire department as you think
of this big picture master plan you're
not necessarily asking us to make fast
and hard decisions today about budgeting
about Staffing you're asking us to
engage in a thoughtful conversation with
you about big picture planning for the
future for the future of the fire
department correct it's not like
whatever we say today is that's it
that's the decision we're moving forward
but you're just looking for you know we
have our feet on the ground in our
districts what are we hearing what are
the things that we are seeing as as
folks who live in this community and
represent our districts is that sort of
what I'm I'm hearing you and what how
you want us to engage
today mayor Pro yeah that's correct is
it's the big picture it's the what do
you get the sense from your communities
that you serve the direction that we
should go it's not an ask for funding
it's not an ask for a specific program
it's so that you can have your input as
a part of this master plan U and partner
with us and most importantly with our
our firefighters who are really the
biggest contributors of of their Vision
7 to 10 years from now so it's nothing
immediate it's not a decision of a go no
go it's it's big picture aspirations I
love that so as you move forward in this
presentation I just want to encourage my
colleagues to think of it that way think
about an aspirational vision of the fire
department you're we're not here today
to make specific decisions about the
fire department but I think the chief is
asking us to engage to be thought
Partners in what in what this really big
thinking uh aspirational thinking can
look like for the department and I think
that is what would be most helpful to
you in terms of this question
specifically I for me Chief I think as I
heard you say through your presentation
that you wear it as a badge of honor
that you have these calls and that this
this team is responding to to um crises
in our community with what you have I
think for me the goal would always be to
for sure increase your staff and um to
increase salaries so that we you can be
a competitor in the region for sure um
but in addition to that as a regional
partner I think for me I would love it
for folks in not just donana County but
surrounding smaller communities to
always say we can always call the fire
department and they will always answer
our call whether they have capacity is
one thing or another but I I would love
to be the kind of fire department where
people say uh the mayor of rioso for
example can always say I can always
count on Los Cruz's fire department to
answer the phone and I don't necessarily
think the goal for us would be to be
trained in
um uh firefighting out in the woods and
um whatever you said earlier wild wild
wow um I don't necessarily think that's
the goal as that is not the primary
environment that we have in Las Cruses
but the fact that you have firefighters
who are willing to say yeah I I want to
go help our neighbors I think that's
really beautiful and I would love to
continue cultivating that and and
whatever that that looks
like May proam thank you appreciate the
uh the redirection apologize for Council
if uh not clear in setting kind of the
the expectation of what we were looking
for on him I think this question is
easier I have a question go ahead um so
um you're asking us
dang you're asking us uh but have you
gone to the rank in file what does a
union say um Council thank for that
we've had 16 meetings already with our
our staff we try to hit all of our
employees uh including our our 40-hour
prevention mih and and light teams uh
we've invited everybody to to
participate in the same type of Master
Plan activity that we're doing today
where we talked about our strengths and
opportunities and aspirations the
results we want to achieve as a
department so we've had those
discussions just this month we had a
meeting with our our labor management
team where we went over some of the
early results and asked if they wanted
additional input and we're waiting to
hear back from them if they want us to
attend a union meeting or not but we've
already had discussions with probably 99
98% of our ranking at different kinds of
models of work life balance and I felt
that that that was really interesting
and um I think for both you know the
police department the fire department
and really looking at because I I always
say this to people I work with that um
overworking is not a badge of honor
right like overworking yourself no one's
giving out awards for the most
overworked the most burnt out person and
I don't want us to have that kind of
attitude either I want us obviously to
cultivate a spirit of why you should you
know have a tenure here and why you
should stay here and also you know
cultivate the kind of work life balance
um which I know is hard for a fire
department that keeps very odd hours
very odd in terms of compared to
everybody else and so um I think for me
that's something that I would strongly
um suggest but otherwise Chief I in
terms of this I think the way we operate
is already really important and that you
um and leadership team have always come
to us and said we need we need a new we
need a new station right like I think
we've worked really well in terms of you
expressing the kinds of needs that you
have and then the council responding to
that in the best way that we can I think
we have a really good process for that
already may you want to recap while
Council cran gets her her bearings or
I'll go back to the beginning I would
like it the second shot so let's do it
second shot
um do you want to just briefly well I'll
fill her in how about that so um Chief
Smith really is engaging us in a like
aspirational big Vision thinking in
terms of the fire department and its
long-term needs and goals and things
like that and really is looking us for
us to be thought Partners in that
conversation big picture awesome thank
you no fast and hard decisions today
okay
cool okay so the next uh question talks
about community through neighborhood
events um we know that the fire
department is very important in creating
um that Safe Community but also that we
can lend to uh the feeling of a
community uh whether that's something
like the new station 9 and what we're
doing with uh public art and having that
station able to receive the public uh
for tours uh we definitely want to be
involved with the community um and so
the question for Council is uh how do
you envision lcfd being a community
partner or helping us to establish a
community identity identity through our
fire
department just some softball
questions anybody have any thoughts on
this
one I won't call on all of you yeah go
ahead Cel cor um I so you you mentioned
our upand coming fire station so I know
in my district that's that means a lot
to folks but I um
yall show up and I think to me you know
at Pride I can't tell you you know there
were dogs there were you know the usual
suspects that you would see at Pride but
people really felt like it was a real
event when when the fire truck came
through and I I have to tell you I I
know that that might be a controversial
positionality but it's a representative
of of
um the way that you show up in every
every every event that I go to you know
every Community event that I have you
all are there as partners and so I think
how we support those efforts is really
um I feel like yall are integ integral
to to our community identity and I think
folks um most most associate with with
the lcfd as as folks in our community
who are doing good all the time so you
you've really earned that reputation and
I think I would put this back to say how
can
we
um support that in your efforts that is
show that we appreciate the the that the
ways that you all show up and I think
that's that's sort of where we are from
my perspective yall are showing up
extraordinarily well and and the
community I think sentiment reflects
that and so I think it's on us to think
about the ways that we can support that
and in your planning if that's a
non-answer
so that was perfect thank you thank you
councel any other folks on this one
I think Chief sometimes um the community
sort of looks at City staff as a whole
as like out there like we live somewhere
else um but we live here too right like
we're in these neighborhoods and these
communities too and I think remembering
as we you know try to create this
Community Pride that firefighters are
your neighbors they literally live right
next to you some of their kids go to
your kids your schools with your kids
and and just remembering that they're
you know very much part of our
community okay next
question thank you counselor K mayor
protm uh so this one deals directly with
um ensuring high quality fire and EMS
Services right Emergency Medical
Services so how do we want the public to
experience our level of service in the
time of emergency so what will visiting
our stations feel like what will our
response uh be like for the community
again this is like that Visionary thing
this more of a feeling that you want the
public to have when we show up in the
time of of need and then also um what
should the public expect when it's not a
life threat or property threat uh public
service call you know what's what's
appropriate for them to experience in
those calls uh because I will tell you
like some of the public input we
received so far is there's a difference
in the Public's expectations when
somebody's having a heart attack versus
when somebody is having uh a minor
emergency that's not a life threat the
response times that they want to
experience are different but this
question is is to
councils What feelings do you want the
public to have when they interact with
us so we can better describe what high
quality fire and Emergency Medical
Services what what that means to
us there's no wrong
answer go
ahead oh my gosh you're getting me on
just like all feels here at this point
because what does that look like I think
when you're encountering people on the
worst days of their lives sometimes that
just that resounding calmness in that
storm is probably the best thing you can
offer and I I've not heard anything that
is contrary to that that when we do have
interactions in that way that that's
what we get from
lcfd so I I think that calmness that but
then yes that then transitioning into
customer service almost in that next
step of
we might not have the answer but we have
the resources to get you connected to
whatever that is which is what I feel
like the fire department does to a large
degree is be that connector so that's
hard but then going back to council cran
too that idea of how can we enable that
for you in the best ways possible that's
that's on us then too so yes keep doing
what you're doing essentially but that
that idea that is the the strength that
you have and that you are
much like the identity question where
you are firmly entrenched in the in the
community already what does that look
like again yes we are neighbors to some
of you but what does it look like when
you guys engage how do you guys feel the
same sort of camaraderie from the
community is there a way we can
encourage that for you guys as well too
so that's all I'll say thank you any
other
folks all right Chief next question
[Music]
So within uh the comprehensive plan it
talks about support for fire mobile
Integrated Health program and the crisis
intervention team uh so really is in 10
years seven years from now um what do
you want our teams to look
like yeah go ahead councelor
Graham so I think that
we see this with fire we see this with
police and dealing with what I'll just
globally call social crises is an
increasingly large part of your work and
I think that acknowledging that from you
know from the highest level down is
important so when I'm thinking about a
10-year Vision on Mi and light
envisioning that as a separate
maybe not a separate but a unique
recruiting
process that we are that we are looking
toward again thinking about Regional
Partnerships um we have an amazing
School of Social Work mayor proem is an
alumni of that you know how are we
making connections to
bring what we need in Crisis
Intervention and use it to Shore up
emergency response and I mean I think
we've done an incredible job of Shifting
roles in the last few years um but how
do we how do we build the workforce we
need to deal with the reality of what
we're
doing
thanks thank
you other thoughts on this
question yeah please councelor McClair
I very much agree that it should be a
larger component of what you do because
that is will be the need
um kind of like councilor Graham said
too that it's it's going to have to be
sort of almost not independent but a
huge Focus um because we see that it
works um problematically that is with
success you're going to need that growth
and I think in 10 years what that's
going to look like how that's going to
even perhaps integrate with PD that
might be something to consider then too
so thank you I think for me I
immediately I thought oh we must grow
light and mih and then I thought wait a
minute I don't think that's necessarily
the goal we want less crisis right we
want to have less people in crisis in
our community and so I'm wondering you
know as we Vision this how we have a
better balance between proactive
approaches versus the more reactive
approaches but I'm not necessarily
saying reactive is bad because what the
what the fire department has done really
well is is identify a problem and then
build something around it like mih right
we identified your team brilliantly
identified that there was high utilizers
of the 911 system that didn't actually
need this level of care but a different
kind of level of care and you've
responded and created something really
amazing around that which is mih we
identified that we wanted to create a
kind of different type of response out
of the 911 system that didn't just
burden the police department when it
came to people in crisis and we created
light and so those kinds of responses
are brilliant and I think we also have
to have a better plan for how to be
proactive in order to ensure that there
are less people
experiencing this kind of Crisis and I
don't think that's the only
responsibility of the fire department I
think that's very much a community um
stakeholder
effort mayor P thank you counselors
thank you for the feedback on
that uh so that's it brings us to just
the closing thoughts and ideas so this
is the last kind of catch all if there's
anything uh specific in the master plan
that you want to see us address uh
definitely we want to bring to you goals
and objectives that are are unique and
that fit our community and our
department uh but if there's any U issue
you want us to address or any point that
you want us to investigate
uh i' love to hear what those thoughts
may be before I close things
up yes go ahead can is is there a thank
you is there a working document that we
can look at or you know obviously not
right now I'm not asking you to bring up
a 300 page Google doc but is there
Council there is a working document it's
17 18 Pages not the 300 but there is a
working document we also have another
work session scheduled in November to
bring you a draft with with the feedback
with some goals and objectives and to
really make sure that we're we're
hitting everything that Council wants to
see whatever is existing can that be
shared through
Christine and to us Christine's saying
yes so thank you so
much thank you Chief it's so much work
to do these kinds of Master plans and
genuinely and authentically engaged with
the community and you've done it so
thank you thank you m mayor portam
appreciate it uh thank you for the the
feedback what I'm taking from Council is
definitely the develop more of the goals
and objectives uh the finances around
those what they could do for forward
projecting we definitely want to make
sure it matches the exercise we've
already done for Elevate Los crusis
because we did some of that forecasting
of different models of expansion but
then also balance things with our our
boots on the ground what our employees
are saying and what their goals and
objectives may be thank you thank you
and that will do it for today's work
session can I get a motion to adjourn so
move by Flores second in cor thank you
this is on a motion to end the work
session councelor McClair yes councelor
matis yes councelor Graham yes councelor
cran yes councelor flus yes mayor proam
yes and the mayor is
absent e