the story of the hot rod race when the
Ford and the Mercury was setting a pace
that story is true I'm here to say cuz I
was a driving at Model
A it's got a Lincoln Motor and it's
really souped up that model a body makes
it look like a puff it's got eight
cylinders and use them all with an
overdrive that just won't
St got a four barrel carb and a dual
exhaust 4 11 gears that can really get
lost got safety tubes and I'm not scared
the brakes are good and the tires are
fair we left San pet drove late one
night the moon and the stars were
shining bright everything went fine up
the Great Vine Hill we was passing cars
like they was standing
[Music]
still then all of a sudden like the
flick of an eye a Cadillac sedan passed
us by the remark was made that's the car
for me but but then the tail light was
all you could
see well the Fellers rib me for being
behind so I started to make that l
unwind took my foot off the gas man
alive I shoved it down into
overdrive well I wound it up to0 Twisted
the speedometer cable off the end had my
foot feet clear to the floor says that's
all there is ain't no
more went around the corner and I passed
a truck I crossed my fingers just for
luck the fenders clicking the guard rail
post the GU beside me white as a go
[Music]
you're
on good afternoon everyone welcome to
the Joint work session or our regular
city council work session reading word
for word uh today is Monday June 10th uh
2024 it's approximately 1 p.m. I am
mayor Eric Enriquez uh we will start
with a moment of silence for the brave
men and women of the United States armed
forces as they protect our interests
around the globe as well as the
courageous men and women of the
luses police and fire department uh that
keep our city safe
247365 please join us in the pledge
to the flag of the United States of
America and to the Republic for which it
stands one nation under God indivisible
with liberty and justice for
all okay first thing councelor Karen is
not here uh but she will join us on Zoom
need a motion and a second to allow that
so move
Graham
second this is on the motion to allow
councelor Karan to participate via Zoom
councelor
McClure yes councelor matis yes
councelor Graham yes councelor
cran yes there she goes yes she got it
in councelor flotes yes councelor Beno
yes and mayor yes
okay the first thing we have is job of
the week uh Sarah
rainy good afternoon
everyone my name is Sarah rainy I am the
OneStop coordinator Ator for the
southwest region of the Workforce
Connection office offices across our
southwest region for jobs of the week we
have a utility service worker for the
city of Los Cruses that position starts
at 1807 the posting closes on the 17th
we have an animal control officer for
the city of Los cruus the posting starts
at 1886 an hour and it closes on the
17th of this month we have a test
support against Missile Range um that
posting closes in August
for Pet Boys we have an auto general
service technician the pay starts at
29,000 and the posting closes on the 1st
we also have a customer service
specialist for Sheron Williams um for
$15 an hour the posting closes on the on
July 1st as well we have a line cook
dishwasher full-time and part-time and
then a server full-time and part-time
for laposta there's several positions
open over there um and both of those
postings close on the 23rd of June
for our current events we have the
community hope job Readiness um event we
have those monthly out at the community
hope to help everybody get resumés ready
um interview skills all all sorts of
things to help them get to back into the
workforce um and then we continue on
with them at our offices as well so
that'll be on the 20th of this month and
then of course our career Essentials we
have the June 18th we have one over on
Utah Avenue and then on the 25th we have
one on Summit Court
um those are classes that are offered
throughout our region for individuals
needing help with just career Readiness
and the things to get ready to go back
into the workforce or
continue as always you can meet us over
on Alam Boulevard or go online to
employe and M to figure out anything ask
any questions or anything that you're
needing thank you
all thank you Sirah
next we have pets of the week uh Amy
defix hello everyone my name is Amy De
Felix I'm with the Animal Services
Center of the missia valley and one of
the rescue coordinators and we'll always
start off with our cat of the week so we
can go ahead and do that our cat of the
week this week is Venus her number is
76017 and she says I am a petite Kitty
who came in with some kittens of my own
they have since been adopted so I'm
looking for my forever family that will
shower me with love and pamper me like
the princess I want to be I love pets
and I'll sometimes even be a little
playful with you I'm a great companion
for anyone who wants a sweet and special
Kitty and then we also have our dog of
the week she's Porsche her number or
Porsche her number is
65092 and she says I grew up here at the
ascmv with my sister Havana I'm Dreaming
every day about what it's like to belong
to a loving forever family I promise I
will always enjoy playtime and cuddles
with my humans and I look forward to
learning lots of new things about being
a family dog will you make my dream come
true and then events of course all June
long we have our bring love home
adoption special where all of our
adoptions are free that'll go until
until the end of June and then we have
an offsite adoption event this Saturday
the 15th we will be at Kaa company we'll
be there from 11:00 a.m. to 2: p.m. and
if you need the address it is 3510
northrise
drive and then you can find us online of
course our general website is as CMV dog
we have social media Facebook Instagram
and Tik Tok we post a lot of our
adoptable animals and kind of current
events going on and then YouTube and
Spotify and apple podcasts where we
upload episodes of our podcast Tales
from the POS side and that is all I have
thank
you thank you
Amy next we'll start with our agenda
items first one is 3.1 presentation of
the Los Cruses public libraries master
plan
and we'll have Carol
Bray good afternoon mayor city council
City leadership city manager tamoy pea
and assistant city manager Sonia Delgado
and staff my name is Carol Bray I'm the
director of the quality of life
department and uh I am very excited to
welcome Brad Waters who is with godfre
and Associates Consulting and he will be
presenting today the libraryies master
plan that has been in the works for the
past two years we started in
2022 uh this is the third in a series of
Master plans that the quality of life
department has worked on uh the first
was our public art plan approved in 2019
our Museum's master plan was approved in
2021 uh today we are Pres presenting a
draft of the libraries plan and then we
look forward to to conducting a uh
master plan for senior program soon when
budget becomes available uh these Master
plans as I'm sure you all know allow us
to Envision what our valuable quality of
life facilities services and programs
will look like in the future as we
Endeavor to provide the best possible
service for our community adante karino
the libraries master plan we are looking
at today represents a journey at least
for me uh of at least 25 years for our
Los cruus public libraries in 1999 when
I was the director of the branagan
library we embarked on a 2-year master
plan project that resulted in a very
detailed plan to improve Library
services to the city of Las cruus and
surrounding area in part through the
establishment of branch locations in
growing sectors of the City councelor
matis may remember
that while that plan did not move
forward at that time I know that
subsequent library and city leaders
remained interested in how we could
improve our libraries a space needs and
master plan was completed for the
branagan library in 2007 and some
aspects of that plan were implemented in
recent years such as the Roadrunner room
that we use often
today however since the year 2000 the
population of Las cruus has nearly
doubled and we still deliver most of our
library services from the branagan
library our only full service Library
facility that is now really stretched to
its limits and barely meeting the needs
of our community we have two micro
branches at the mson center and Sage
Cafe but frankly they serve primarily
our seniors that use those centers so we
know that more needs to be done I am
very grateful to Brad Waters and the
team that he works with at godre and
Associates including his late father
Dick Waters who is my good friend and
colleague who recently passed they have
done an excellent job working on this
master plan and I really am grateful to
them they have rejuvenated some ideas
from past plans the 2000 and 2007 plans
and added much important content based
on their knowledge of today's libraries
and a detailed peer Library analysis
that Brad will tell you a little bit
about to create a master plan that will
serve our libraries and our community
for 20 years to come and perhaps
more we appreciate your
interest mayor city council and City
leadership all that you have shown in
creating a first class library system
for our community and we hope that you
will find this presentation that Brad is
about to make as inspiring as we have
found it to be I will show I will now
turn the presentation over to Brad and
return to answer questions at the
end thank you Carol and U mayor council
members City staff appreciate the
invitation to be here today um let me
make sure I can run this machine there
we go so the pre presentation today will
be uh kind of a synopsis of the report
that we gave you a draft copy of
hopefully you all got to a chance to
look at that uh we'll hit the high
points today and love to incorporate any
feedback or any any questions that you
have uh in a later draft um we brought
to town a a team of Library doctors with
each with their area of specialization
to review all aspects of your operation
uh and of the library system and we
wanted to start out by aligning uh our
the goals that we would form for the
library with Elevate L crues we
recognize that was a substantial amount
of planning that was done for that and
very significant uh so that was one of
the first things that we looked at but
we're looking at making a plan that's a
20year plan um 20 years for facilities
because it takes that long for a lot of
facilities to come online we'll look at
5 10 and 20 year planning Horizons as
you'll see here in the presentation um
and we always want to uh we see every
step in the planning process as a public
relations opportunity for the library so
we wanted to take advantage of that as
we went through the process
um one of the first things we did uh per
your RFP was to look at industry Trends
across public libraries in the nation
and that became section two of our
report um one of the key key trends is
the age specific Services how libraries
now are so uh so geared to
distinguishing the needs of toddlers
versus Grade School Kids versus Twins
and teens and even uh everybody uh every
every year after they get out of school
uh so it's all about you know meeting
the needs of the of individual customers
so you know certainly stem education the
public library is a component of the
public education system it's just not a
compulsory like the grade school or the
public schools are but it's a place
where anybody can come and learn uh so
all sorts of things Beyond books anymore
are done at the at the full service
Public Library uh clearly uh job skill
training um has done retooling people
into new new careers helping them uh
write resumés uh helping them uh
interview for a job even giving them
technology now to interview uh virtually
for a job where they might not have that
ability to do at home certainly uh you
know completing high school education or
English as the second language is
another aspect of what a lot of
libraries do uh small business support
incubating small businesses
entrepreneurs is a very popular thing in
libraries these days they provide space
for entrepreneurs they provide a comp a
computer technology that people might
not have or be able to afford this is a
startup business maker spaces with 3D
printing to make uh product uh examples
or or or patents things like that most
importantly the public library the
modern public library has a lot of open
space so space uh that's adaptable to
Future change we not we don't know what
technology will bring but we know it
will evolve and so we want to make sure
we have the space to do that that
requires movable Furniture uh being able
to have multiple uses of the same space
uh limited uh bake walls lots of glass
for controlling security and uh
supervision and Acoustics uh all of that
makes it easy to supervise and then
makes it easier for the staff and less
expensive for the staff to
operate clearly in any new construction
we want to look at a net zero building
if possible want to be as sustainable uh
as possible and as with as small carbon
footprint as we can can so reing
existing space is key to that but also
building new uh new spaces new buildings
that are full service that become that
kind of third place uh for people to to
get away from their home and from their
work uh one of the things that we like
to site is the return on investments
that public libraries bring to the table
this is a study that we're based in
Dallas Texas we like this study because
it's very conservative in its
methodology uh other places have done
these in Florida they P ered this in
2005 and then their latest uh in 2018
said
$108 return on investment we you know
even if it's
$464 like in in Texas um it's certainly
a great return on every dollar invested
so we want to make sure we always
promote that for the customers and for
the public and why is not my slide
advancing
okay any any any clues on
this see me try know where I can I know
where I H to
go there we go okay
okay um the next section of a report
dealt with public engagement so we came
to town and spent a week uh in various
forums um uh with the community from
one-on-one stakeholder interviews to
focus groups to uh a CommunityWide
meeting uh we met with with Library
staff uh we all sorts of focus groups we
also had um an online survey that we we
posted on the city website 24 questions
in Spanish Spanish and in English uh a
number of very good responses here uh
looking at you know uh certainly one
thing that we weren't surprised about
was most people drive to your facilities
but we were eager to see 40 responses
for people who walked to the library in
27 who rode bikes uh not a lot of people
take a bus to your libraries currently
but overwhelmingly uh very important uh
was what was deemed the the the library
Service as you provide um and people
were very satisfied with the library
service that is provided um we compared
that to the quality of life survey that
was done most recently and the library
was third only behind the Butterfield
shooting range and the remot control
airport so one of our recommendations is
going to be that the library should have
in order to get to first place
they should have a program on the roof
of the library where they shoot down
drones I think I think I I think that'll
be very popular right um seriously uh
the we also ask a question how did you
compare uh Los crusis Los crisis's
Public Library service with where you
were before and um you had you know 24%
said about the same 14% said it was
better here but the majority said they
actually had better service where they
were before they moved to Los cruus so
that was kind of a a bell weather we
wanted to check on uh another important
question was would you be willing to
raise taxes to pay for better Library
service and we got a very good response
here um what was even more encouraging
was The Limited number of no responses
this is the lowest number of NOS we've
seen in this this question um and the
depends always depends on the de devil
that's in the details so with a good uh
public uh public
education campaign I think you can know
you can turn a lot of those depends into
yes votes um one thing we found was that
most of the people that that replied to
the survey were on the east side of
I25 so clearly a lot of people from that
side of the of the town and clearly a
reason to put a branch library there
next uh we looked at a couple of things
uh section four of our report was the
peer Library analysis that car Carol
talked about and that right basically
LED into uh a way to to an analyze your
operation uh from a on a statistical
basis so we compared you with 15
different other Pier systems similar in
population similar in demographics
similar in number of facilities uh these
were Regional because you don't have a
lot of peers your size in in New Mexico
but a lot of these libraries too are
former clients of ours we were familiar
with what they do and how they do things
and but we were able to have a good
sample size with 16 total total uh in
the group um in summary you came you
were above the median at about 55% of
the of the 100 different metrics that we
looked at um which means you were 45%
below the median when we looked at
specific level of service metrics that
we saw as as key guideposts you were
right at the median you were 50 above
and 50 below I'm going to go through
these some of these key uh metrics
individually so first thing we look at
was Square fet per capita we look at per
capita metrics because that's that
levels the playing field right so you're
what4 Square fet per capita the perer
average is 0 6 a number of State
libraries that have standards that their
their libraries and their states have to
meet are at a
1.0 square foot per capita standard 6 is
the bare minimum we see in other states
around the country um when we looked at
your operating uh expenditures uh your
budget basically per capita you were
lower than the perer average ranked
almost at the bottom um one thing that
you do uh you have only 85% of your
Revenue comes from local sources
typically we see across the country 95%
96% here in by the peers so that was
another issue that kind of raised a flag
for us um your your Staffing was good it
was with in terms of MLS masters of
Library Science degrees Librarians
accredited Librarians in the state you
were a little bit above average and your
total staff was just a little bit below
average so in a good place there
although you currently have I think 10
vacant positions open at the library
right now um and your and the staff uh
pay is a little lower New Mexico is next
to no third from the bottom in the
United States in terms of paying your
Librarians so that's that wasn't a
surprise to us which just something we
wanted to check on we looked at the the
number of books you have both electronic
and and in print uh and you you were
pretty good there middle of the road uh
little below the average but still uh
ranking in the middle U but circulation
was much less so you have a good
collection but it wasn't circulating as
well as we might expect and certainly a
lot of that was to do with a very low
circulation to children's books when we
delved into that issue we found that you
only have 25,000 children's books
26,000 in the collection which we would
want to see probably more like 50 or
60,000 so our excuse for that is you
have a very vocal um client base that
comes from the University they come in
they ask for a lot of books there
whether it's for research or just reg
you know regular education or reading uh
so you you cater to those folks and I
think you buy a lot of books for them
but you don't buy as many for kids as
you might and and I know that Sarah
Booth the library director is working on
that already so uh you know this is
something that I think is going to turn
around pretty quickly uh turnover in
terms of collection items so how many
any uh actually get checked out you were
right at one so at 1.0 means every item
got checked out once in theory right uh
so again below the average uh your
visits were right around the middle of
the road that's a good thing um but your
program attendance was way low uh I know
you're you're they're working on that
now they have a very good outreach
program so they're getting out into the
community and and struming and you know
turning business and uh people's
acknowledgement that the library is does
exist and so I think you'll start to see
a a rise in the people coming into the
building and your your computers were
very last you were very at the bottom of
number of public computers available to
the public so those were some of the
things that we saw as key metrics we
would call those level of service
standards that we would want to see as
guideposts for guiding the future of the
library As you move into the future so
we would want to see maybe a five-year
gain in the staff expenditures 10 years
in total expenditures and then 20 years
in catching up with the space needs
because it's going to take time for
those spaces those facilities to come
online um certainly so now in our next
sections next couple of sections we
looked at not only the facilities in
terms of square footage but also how
would you deploy future future
facilities in a network in the library
so if we go with the Elevate Los crusis
population projections a 1.2 uh% growth
rate every year uh if you built no more
space to your current system uh within
20 years you'd have a
94,000 square foot deficit so you need
to build 94,000 feet of space basically
um right now the that that deficit is
under 65,000 but obviously as every year
as you grow that that that deficit grows
as well we also wanted to look at how
your current uh facilities covered the
geography so we looked at uh a 10-minute
Drive time around each of those three
locations so these polygons that you see
on your screen are those 10 minutes that
people can drive the outer edges or less
the closer they are to the dots the the
green the red and the blue dots you can
see where those locations are uh
significant here is overlap between mson
and branagan almost almost duplicate
each other so a lot of redundancy there
you can see the the municipal limits and
where there are gaps in service where no
there is no coverage within 10 minutes
so that was one of the things we wanted
to look at um we also wanted to look at
it from a 5 minute drive time uh so if I
toggle back and forth you can see the
difference how 10 minutes covers a lot
of space but the five minutes does not
but five minutes is a walkable distance
so a f minute drive time is a 10-minute
bike ride is a 40 minute walk minute
maximum So within that that period so um
we wanted to look at what that was like
because that was an Elevate Las crusis
uh uh goal
we also looked at how to expand the
Branan Library we did a whole another
presentation on that that we're not
going to go into today but I think some
of you were able to to see that uh and
we can certainly make it available uh
but we believe you can add 21 almost
22,000 square feet to brand again fairly
easily uh uh one of the things we heard
in our presentation or actually before
the presentation of that process on that
charette that we did in town was that uh
the brandan library needed an improved
Street presence so by expanding towards
the street we can actually add more
space that's the easiest place to expand
to so the least expensive way to go and
that gives us a lot more space and and
then also we would reorient the entrance
more to more of the parking spaces and
build a a two-story entrance Lobby and
Atrium so when you come into the
building you know there's a second floor
you know there's more to see on the
Upper Floor um so looking exactly how
the space would would play out we would
create a very open space in the middle
so the blue the orange and the red are
are well let me the red is children's
the blue and the center is adults and
the the Orange is teen space but the
yellow and the greens around the
perimeter all the enclosed spaces the
maker spaces the meeting rooms uh the
staff workspaces so we we keep all that
open space that we talked about earlier
in the center then it can be
reconfigured and moved around as needed
as as as technology
evolves so from there we looked at how
to meet that uh that shortfall that
94,000 ft shortfall over a period of
time whether we look at three branches
four branches five branches uh added to
your your Central Library at brandan a
total of six facilities
total so a number of way to do number of
ways to do that um um and I it's may be
hard to read here this is definitely a
chart that's in the report uh if we
expand branagan and go with three or two
additional buildings two Branch
libraries uh you can meet that that um
one square foot per capita in 15 years
but at that point then you would have to
start looking at adding facilities to
stay AB breast of that as the as the uh
population grows uh when we were looking
for uh places to put new branches we
definitely looked at Elevate lock crues
and some of the organic uh ideas that
came from that study uh certainly um you
know also against sustainability being
used mass transit being able to use uh
bicycles and even being walkable
so the first thing we looked at the
first Network we tried was a six Library
Network so ideally One Branch in every
Council District so this would be uh the
most Equitable uh option um and if we
look at it from a five minute drive time
as you see here it does give us a good
deal of coverage but you can still see
the gaps within the city limits um and
you can see some of the overlap
especially on the south and the west
side we know and you know that the
interstate uh 25 is a dividing line it's
a it's a physical barrier that that
makes it difficult to cross as is
Highway 70 um so those are you know kind
of divides the city into four quadrants
so we also took that into account we
looked at a four Library Network again
with a five minute drive time um more
efficient uh we calculated I failed to
mention before we calculated the uh cost
to staff these additional Branch
libraries only in over and above what
you currently spend on on Branigan so if
I go back one time that six Library
network is a almost a $4 million add to
your current operation costs just for
the branch libraries uh if we're down to
four buildings we're looking at a $2.4
million ad we look at a three uh
building Network we're going now to a
10-minute drive time to get enough
coverage uh to cover the to the city
limits uh we're looking at a $1.5
million ad in terms of operational costs
um I we like to stress that when we
build these libraries as Open
Spaces account for the mod modern change
we're doing that because it makes it
easier to supervise so Staffing
libraries is not a function of
proportionality to square footage more
square footage if it's open space just
means you have more service and doesn't
necessarily mean you have more staff
required so our F our our preliminary
recommendations we'd love to see you in
five years increase staff uh funding add
some administrative positions U so that
there's uh they spread out the uh the
the number of or reduce the number of
direct reports to the top level
administrators we'd love to see you
establish a library Foundation uh if if
it's legal take over the endowments and
have a foundation try to uh grow the
nest egg that you have in terms of the
Branigan and a couple other endowments
that you have and make make it where
those grow over time and you only use a
portion of that every year uh for
funding the library get that 85% of
local Revenue up to 95% kind of equal
with all other public libraries in the
country um definitely need to add
children's books Spanish books we want
to in the five years design that
prototype Library so you have the same
uh basically footprint for any branch
you build so it's Equitable and equal in
every know location where it's built uh
we want to start loaning laptops in in
library use people can take a laptop sit
anywhere they want use the Wi-Fi and
that's a cheap and inexpensive way I
should say to add computers to get your
numbers of computers up to be uh to to
meet the standards um we definitely want
to uh increase uh Outreach and programs
in the library as well uh increase the
number of library card holders I think
you're around 50% right now uh
Nationwide they averages more than
slightly more than 50% um but some of
your peers have over 100% of their City
uh residents or card holders uh we would
want to try to open a friend's bookstore
in the Bron Library we understand that
the City attorney and the attorney
general in the state now think that's
allowable and we believe the friends can
generate a lot more revenue for you if
they do that and then we would Implement
more data analytics in terms of using
data to support um both fundraising and
to support streamlining your operation
uh 10-year
recommendations uh again increase uh
funding for the the library uh
operations in total we would add Branch
Library positions as those as that
building or buildings come online which
would require increase in staff cost um
certainly construct and open those
prototype Branch or branches as the case
may be and if you can either renovate or
expand The Branding and Library within
the 10-year time frame um we definitely
want to uh you know identify the
locations for these future branches um
that's not a that's not a decision we
think we can make without input from
City staff and and certainly from city
council and the mayor so uh something we
want to continue a dialogue about U one
of the things we see as a another Trend
that I failed to mention earlier is our
mixed use libraries with retail and with
housing um a number of libraries are now
being built underneath um uh multi
family housing on top and this is
photograph of one of three branches in
the Chicago Public Library System that
does that a number of examples across
the country very successful developer
driven private sector funded uh where
the library space gets built at a
discount to the municipality in these
cases so it it could pay pay dividends
for you in that regard 20 years we're
looking at trying to reach that 1.0 foot
per capita and then just a p plan for
the long-term expansion beyond that as
you continue to grow over time so with
that uh you have any questions any
comments we' love to entertain
those okay thank you
um I'll go ahead and start with you
mayor proen thank you thank you so much
for your wonderful presentation um both
of you I really appreciate all of this
information I just have a couple
follow-ups
um the salary for libraries really stuck
out to me in your presentation um can
you share with us what that range is
right now and then are Librarians part
of the blue colar Union or are they're
not unionized not that I'm aware in this
state
um that has its pros and cons let me
see yeah um don't I don't have it it's
on my laptop I don't have it here that's
right sir we we do recognize You' just
had a compensation study done and that
has elevated a lot lot of those those
salaries um we'll put that into a cost
model we have to tell you exactly how
much it's going to cost to to staff
these future libraries and we'll add in
the the benefits and everything so you
know exactly what it's going to be but
um you saw the the difference between
your salary at 53 and the and the the
peer average of 74 um again those are
you know from Colorado from Tech not
from Texas I tell you from living there
but um probably mostly from Colorado and
other places in New Mexico well I
definitely don't like hearing that Texas
is doing anything better than us so
that's definitely don't worry they're
not okay um C mayor protm mayor mayor
protm Carol Bray for the record I
believe Sarah Booth our deputy director
can give you the exact answer to your
question thank
you good afternoon mayor proam mayor
city council uh Sarah Booth Library
deputy director for the record our
Librarians come in um our regular
Librarians start at
43,500 thank you and those are folks
with master's degrees correct that's
very very low correct that's
embarrassingly low yes it is we're and
we're very very lucky to have such
wonderful staff yes absolutely um staff
salaries has been a longtime priority
for myself and I know for this Council
so I'm glad that you're raising that
issue and thank you we'll certainly
follow up with the city manager about
that that's very concerning to me thank
you thank you
and then the can you speak a little bit
more about the library foundation and um
just I just I'm not familiar with that
kind of model and if I think you said if
it's legal did you say that or did I
misunderstood you well having a
foundation is clearly legal it's a non
it's a 503 5013c or C3 um so it would
you would have to be formed and actually
I believe when Carol was director there
was a library Foundation that what had
been formed under the city um no it's
it's a it's a
nonprofit
individual independent
thing uh Carol Bray for the record mayor
mayor proem so yes in approximately 1997
98 we formed a library Foundation um and
they were a separate 501c3 organization
with the goal to the Friends of the
library at that time were not as active
as and I forgot to mention we have a
friend's presence out here today you
probably noticed the people wearing
purple are out here U they are very
active and they have been actively
raising funds but a foundation can dig
in a little deeper look at longer term
financial goals um look at Capital
campaigns look at you know what we need
for um long-term planning and as Brad
mentioned also look at the the um estate
funds we already have and make the most
of those funds so we don't know if um
somehow that organization might still
exist on paper and we are looking into
that interesting and so what would what
is the city's role in something like
that so uh I think generally something
like that operates we have a similar
situation with our foundation with the
museums for example the museums has a
foundation now and so basically they
have Bo they have a board they meet on a
monthly basis and they report uh to the
deputy director they work with our
deputy director for museums and I I am
involved to a certain extent in working
with them but they basically work
independently but in tandem with our
goals and our objectives and and they
understand that when they when they come
to the board thank you I appreciate that
I'll certainly look a little bit more
into it yeah let me just add that the
the the model the best model is a
Advisory Board that's made Volunteers in
the community but that they hire
development Personnel you know
development professionals usually it's
one individual who's a full-time that
goes out and knows to ask people for
money especially wealthy people or
corporations Etc with probably a half
part-time or a full-time clerical person
as well so their salary is based on how
well they do but they're overseen by uh
you know an Advisory Board uh those that
tends to be the most successful those
foundations will raise in the millions
of dollars a year uh when they're up and
running and and being part of a capital
campaign is a good way to start one up
so if you decide that you want a bond
for uh for a branch library as an
example then with having a li Library
Foundation up and running then they
could you piggyback on that and help
raise money privately to help maybe
furnish or do whatever to add to the the
capital money on that campaign thank you
and then my last question was just a
clarifying question can you just repeat
a little bit about what you said getting
it from the national average to 85 to
95% or something like that can you just
give more context to that I so when we
look at when we look at library funding
we look at what comes from local
government what comes from state
government what comes from federal
government what comes from other sources
so other sources is private and mostly
it's the friends of the library if
there's a foundation then that would be
there as well so uh you know nationally
95% of Public Library funding comes from
local government revenue okay um you get
State money um and you get a good amount
because of your population size the way
it works in New Mexico um but uh we'd
love we really because I think you rely
on the Branigan and the other endowments
you have where our concern is you know
that's that nest egg is shrinking faster
than it should and so if you're going to
increase staff salaries you know
whatever you can raise that 85% to 95%
then have a foundation that's safeguards
the nest egg and grows it then that
would be ideal okay thank you and then
just lastly
um I wanted to thank you for including
the question on the um raising the GRT I
know we're having a very tough but
important conversation around some of
that so I appreciated you showing the
the support that this community would
show for public libraries I think it
shows the importance and how loved they
are in our community and underinvested
so I appreciate that as we head into
that conversation soon and then of
course um maybe this is for the city
manager but if I assume I any sort of
capital expansion to the public
libraries would also qualify for a go
Bond question
possibly yeah yes he says yes thumbs up
yes and so I I know we're what two years
from that three two years so I think you
know I definitely want us to have that
com that at the top of our heads as as
we go into um the next go Bond cycle and
what that might look like for the
library thank you
uh councilor Flores thank you Mr Mayor
and thank you for the presentation um I
had similar questions as mayor
protm Ben had um there's you mentioned
though that there's an
endowment um and who um who who controls
it or how does it work and who oversees
that and uh why is it shrinking is it
something that can be um
in invested or I'll let I know there are
three components there and I'll let
Sarah address that intelligently that I
thank you good afternoon councelor
Flores um mayor protm and mayor and city
council um Sarah Booth Library deputy
director for the
record so back in
1935 um Alice branagan generously
donated money to the city of Los crues
for a library
since that time um the library has been
using the money that she left for us to
purchase books the city um I I've been
here a year and a half and we don't have
a dedicated line item in the city budget
for books we are using the endowment um
left from Mrs branagan very generously
from Mrs branagan for books so this this
endowment is shrinking because this is
our source for for materials okay so my
question is does the endowment
um is it limited is it is it limited to
buying books it's limited to buying
materials for the library um we could
not use it for um a capital outlay
project no I understand that part but I
is there a restriction on having a fund
that bills on that endowment it seems to
me it wouldn't I mean I don't know but
it seems when there's money that is
going to shrink you look at how it won't
shrink exactly and that I'm not sure I
mean I can speak to that a little bit so
Carol Bray for the record U mayor
councelor Flores um what I've seen other
libraries do and actually Brad may know
something about this as well he probably
does um is that when there is an
endownment like that and and many
libraries do have those because if you
think about the carneg Carnegie
libraries and other libraries that are
in the world that have been mostly in
our country been established by some
generous Patron um you know there is
often money that goes along with that
and it's amazing that we still have that
endowment here actually um you know I
will say that our goal would really be
to build up that endowment as an
investment towards the future and this
is where a library Foundation would come
in that a library Foundation could um
raise additional funds um to allow us to
get to a point where perhaps we would
only use the off the branagan endowment
so that's I'm not I hope that's
answering your question but um if I
didn't maybe Brad can help me it does it
does explain um but it doesn't I guess
my question is what why why hasn't that
done why hasn't that been done before
it's almost like we're you know running
out of gasoline your gas tank and you
passed up all these gas stations and now
you're in the middle of a desert so well
and and I'm I mean it's not a criticism
it's just an observation and a comment
right and mayor protm mayor councilor
Flores I would just say uh that was the
goal of having a library Foundation
originally when I was here as the
library director I don't know what's
happened over the years since exactly um
you know obviously the foundation
doesn't exist anymore so for whatever
reason perhaps it was not successful or
it was not thought that it was needed
but um many many public libraries in the
country do this kind of thing so it's
Prett common yes thank you Miss B and
thank you very
much one last point when I said talk
about legality there I assume there have
to be some sort of legal transfer of
that money from the city to a library
Foundation that's when I I mentioned the
legality of a foundation that's what I
was talking about just to
clarify all right thank you councilor
M Carol do I have a question for you
maybe a suggestion um have you looked
into partnering being a partner with the
southern Community Foundation of
southern New Mexico uh mayor councelor
matis uh that is an excellent suggestion
and actually um that has been suggested
to me by uh I have ties still with the
El Paso Community Foundation when I
worked there and I actually am in the
rotary club with the head of the
Community Foundation here so that has
been suggested we have not looked into
that yet but that would be an option I
would think
I think I think it would be good they're
very effective with campaigning and and
helping with running bond issues and
they would also be uh like Dr Flores
mentioned uh help with the investment of
uh any balance left in your endowment so
I hope you do that thank you we
appreciate that suggestion I am the
reason I know uh about the El Paso U
Community Foundation is because they are
currently working with the foundation at
the El Paso Public Library to do what
you're suggesting so thank you for that
thank you thank you
both yes Council MCL yeah I had a
question too going to the the foundation
what would that look like in terms of
creating it would it be a resolution for
Mar end or how what is the mechanics of
that yeah I can start and you can finish
it okay uh mayor and councelor McClure
so uh you know I think it probably can
look a lot of different ways and I'm
going to let Brad speak to that also a
little bit but um you know in the case
of uh the ones I've been familiar with
you know you you bring together um
individuals who you know have a strong
interest in the library have a strong
financial background you know have the
interest in creating a foundation that
would actually help build um the
structure for the future and uh you know
working with we worked with an outside
attorney at the time that I was here
before to um get our 501c three status
and that kind of thing and just go
through the normal process of
establishing a um nonprofit uh
Corporation um now the mums foundation
and I don't know if Rebecca wants to
speak to that a little bit um museums
Foundation that we have currently in
place followed a similar procedure as I
understand
it good afternoon uh Council Rebecca
Slaughter assistant director for the
quality of life so the museum Foundation
is more of a Friends board but yes they
went through the same process and they
have uh me memo of understanding with
the city so that they can fund raise on
city property and fund raise um for the
museums adjacently and then they use
those funds either by directly giving
them to the museums for a project or um
one of the biggest projects that they've
done is they went to the state
legislature and asked for funding to
repair the Caboose that sits next to uh
the Railroad Museum and they gave those
funds directly to the city through city
council and the City Public Works
Department then spent that money as a
public works project to work on the
Caboose so it depends
on what the project is and how that
works how those funds are spent um
and um and how they're raised but if the
foundation does the fundraising at least
the Museum's Foundation if they do that
fundraising on city property
thatou covers them and they don't have
to come to city council every time they
do an event or go out and say that they
are doing it for the museums and it
works very well um in that process
so um and I think if I can speak for
what I know of the Branigan estate one
of the impediments in the past or the
discussion has been because there is a
very strict restriction on that
funding the discussion has just been
been about muddying that water and I
think that would just be a legal issue
that can be taken to the legal
department and then having that
discussion about breaking that trust to
change it to a different type of funding
and also the Alice brand again was
really awesome and she actually paid for
the building of the branagan cultural
center and building the Branigan Library
not just books but now it's just books
so anything thank you I have I have one
more question yes I'm thrilled to see
the the support that you've got here um
what would that look like in terms of
creating that um bookstore I mean I'm
I'm a big fan of seeing you know how
quickly could something like that get
implemented is there space I guess we
actually had a discussion this morning
about getting a temporary space going as
soon soon as possible Maybe by as early
as this August um um the the friends
that members that used to run the book
store before it was termed not viable uh
were maybe making as much as $100,000 a
year by selling books on a daily basis
maybe four hours a day four to five days
a week and that's not un uncommon in
places that do have an ongoing operation
we've seen bookstores that rival you
know half pric books 2,000 ft but you
don't need that uh so initially I think
we could carve out about
um 500 square ft in the in the library
now and and really make a difference in
terms of the revenue stream and that
could be done with shelving that we
already have that's CPL just that would
be great I I also find it slightly
horrifying that it isn't isn't a line
item because I know that costs of books
are incredible especially journals
things like that are very pricey I think
people don't know NE necessarily all the
services you offer but also what you pay
for them so I think that telling that
and explaining to what what that is and
asking for that funding I I am down to
support the library just as y all know
um but yeah I'm looking forward to this
expansion what would that look like what
what are you seeing that happen how
quickly can we get something like that
together
um just I mean we I think we have a
decent concept um if you we can we'll
share that more with you in the final
report
um the My hesitation is with Current
financial the current fiscal climate in
the country um every every December
Library Journal magazine publishes a
list of all the buildings that have been
renovated or built new in the public
libraries in the country and uh this
last December we
count the numbers the cost per square
foot for new library construction was
around $700 a square foot um so if you
talk about um adding 21,000 Square fet
to Branigan now there just adding the
new space you're looking at a
2022 million project that doesn't
include renovating the other space
that's there so uh you know brandan
renovation and expansion would be$ 25 to
$30 million brand new 35,000 Branch
prototype Branch Library would be about
25,000 $25 million in today's dollars
and because of the inflation situation
it's really hard for me to you know I to
Warrant that those numbers
much very far into the future um I'm I'm
a licensed architect to practice in
Texas and Wyoming I'm looking into
getting my license in New Mexico I love
the design of renovation or expansion of
your branding and building I I have a
I've grown fond very fond of it it's a
really cool building and it was really
cool concept when it was designed but
it's been kind of
frankensteined at with all the additions
that have happened to it and where there
was natural light coming to the building
originally it's all been covered up with
new new construction so um uh I think
from a timeline you would have look at
six months to a year in design another
six months to a year in construction
drawings and then a couple of years of
construction so anywhere from a 2 to
four year uh start to finish you know
from design to cutting a ribbon be the
out out outward in and out of it that
does that answer question thank you and
the last thing I would say is um if
we're not fans of having Texas doing it
better think of the amount of how many
are in El Paso how many branches do we
have in El Paso what
12 I know they're a bigger Town than us
but if we want to reflect what our
values are in terms of the services it
provides and it's not just books it's
it's Workforce Development it's all the
things you guys mentioned that's what we
value so just do you do you know off the
top of your head uh yes um mayor uh
councelor McClure I believe they're at
14 libraries so I think that's 13
branches in the main library
currently and I think we can do better
here as well so thank
you councilor mque uh Carol just just to
add to the enthusiasm
from councilor McLure you know we have
so many local great authors you know I
just met eron Underwood and Denise
Chavez that'd be a great place with the
bookstore for signing for signings and
probably draw a lot of people into the
library right uh mayor councelor matis
thank you for that Carol Bray for the
record and uh yes I think that's the
intent I mean our libraries have always
worked with local authors but you're
right we have some amazing ones here and
showcasing them and having a place to do
that is always really important thank
you again oh councelor Flores yes just a
comment go ahead thank you uh just a
comment I want to really thank you uh
Miss Bray um for and Miss Slaughter and
the friends I'm a friend of the library
too by the
way but I I don't know what happened to
but
um I'm a friend of Carol's too so there
but um I um I think I've said this
before and I mean I'm you know libraries
are just the lifeblood for I know I as a
child it was really my
Oasis going to the library uh was
probably the most wonderful thing in my
life and the love of books and my mother
mother Mish and pece uh was a reader so
we had we grew up with books in the
house but it was never enough and and
just being in a library and looking at
all those books and you know just
reading and reading and
um and I think it's just the lifeblood
of of a society of a community it really
opens paths it opens your heart it opens
your eyes and and it's inspiring um so
whatever we can do as you can see I
think you have a favorable c a council
here that is very uh Pro Library
whatever we can do I think for a
building we could probably get a a go
Bond or a capital outlay maybe you know
or combine whatever but I just really
want to thank you all um for the work
you do thank you thank you
Carol thank you Mr Mayor thank you
councelor foris yes i' also like to say
thank you for the presentation thank you
for all the information as you can see
you do have the S support up here at
Council this is long overdue and this is
something that we'd like to see to move
forward whether it's a capital outlay
request or the Geo Bond or as a GRT as
we look into increasing I feel this
would truly be a critical infrastructure
that's much needed for our community as
the pin State strong Library strong
community so I thank you for the pin I
thank you all for being here today to to
show the support that you have for our
library and uh thanks again for the
[Applause]
presentation next is item 3.2 Memorial
Medical Center overview we have our
guest uh John Harris uh Laura Thomas and
Mary armo
so we advance to the right
are we
ready okay
yeah give give it just a second so they
turn once the doors close
still out
there yeah
there they're good good supporters of
the library that's
good yeah okay go ahead Mr Harris thank
you for being here and go ahead thank
you very much thank you for having us
here I want to
uh uh tell you it's a great opportunity
for us to have an opportunity to talk
about Memorial Medical Center uh share
some of our Hospital up dates and
address some of the concerns that have
been raised about the hospital more
recently so uh with me today uh are the
following individuals first of all the
Chief Operating Officer of our hospital
is Mary armo to my left
Mary and then also our chief nursing
officer Dave
Schmidt and then uh LT uh is our Chief
Financial Officer she has lost her voice
very conveniently for this this
presentation so I will be handling her
section of the uh of the
presentation I'm John Harris I'm the CEO
of Memorial Medical Center I have been
the CEO of this hospital for 10 plus
years and to begin with I'd like to
briefly address some of the recent media
coverage including a story by NBC News
which contains a number of
inaccuracies and
misinformation about our Hospital
and its policies and its actions the
story focuses on Memorial's ownership
structure and assertions that the
hospital turns away or denies care to
poor or uninsured patients it also
questions our commitment to our patients
and Community including the charity care
and Community benefit we that we
provide I want you to know that we work
for several weeks to provide
the reporter who wrote this
story with the details to address the
misinformation and correct the flaw
assumptions but with very little
information we provided being included
in her
article the
um you need to know that we have what
has been published is not reflective of
how our Hospital cares for patients or
contrib how it contributes to our
community it certainly is not reflective
of the hard work and dedication of our
team that does so much for patients
every day in the thousands of
patients we do not turn away or deny
care to Indigent patients nor do we turn
away deny care to or delay care for
patients because of outstanding balances
or unpaid
bills in fact
it is quite the
opposite our team constantly Works to
enhance our community's access to care
and address Financial stressors and has
payment plans discounts and other
options to assist them we've been very
Progressive in in doing that and very
detailed and and assertive in trying to
help patients in fact over the past
several months we have worked with Jamie
Michael at doniana County and this is a
very important point on a new solution
to address the provision of outpatient
Cancer Care for residents who cannot
qualify for any other support one of the
advantages that we all have as New
Mexicans is the expansion of Medicaid
and if people will take the time to
apply for
that uh it helps us all this new program
in partnership with the county will
provide financial assistance for
outpatient cancer services for residents
who satisfy eligibility requirements and
do not qualify for other coverage
options like Medicaid or New Mexico
State or the New Mexico State Insurance
Pool none of this is
simple healthc care is incredibly
complex and highly regulated so in most
cases Solutions like these do not happen
overnight I have pushed aggressively for
this plan to get established we have had
the full cooperation of the County as
well as the
city but I can assure you that we are
committed to being a good Community
partner and are actively working on
additional tools and resources to help
patients better understand and connect
to what resources are available to them
we appreciate the opportunity to set the
record straight with you today and
address any specific questions or
concern concerns that you may
have
so let's move on
to these are some of the key Community
Partners Partnerships that we have uh
here in the communities you can see they
are quite
diverse
so let's talk a little about our Mission
our vision our core values of Memorial
Medical Center this is what they are our
mission is to make communities
healthier that can be challenging in any
Community not only in the city of Los
Cruses but also in the surrounding areas
throughout the county we have five other
hospitals that are much smaller than we
are that have great health care
challenges and we have tried in every
case to have relationships with them
that that of mutual support not Paris
City and as a result of that we received
many requests for transfers uh
throughout the
month our vision is we want to create
places where people choose to come for
their health
care physicians and providers want to
practice employees want to work which is
important for us as not only a city but
also as a region
we recently rolled out a new uh let me
see it's not showing up but we recently
uh rolled out a new set of core values
which include to Champion patient care
to do the right thing not only in our
personal but our professional lives
Embrace
individuality act with kindness and make
a difference together
we Embrace those core values in tens of
different things that we do within the
community because one of the things that
we hold dear is to integrate with the
community and all things that are a
priority in the
community we are local people that are
taking care of local
people and we Embrace these core values
that I just mentioned to you both inside
the hospital and Beyond its walls what
you are seeing here are a few events
from last year that include Hands-On CPR
that we taught in an
NMSU Basketball game which we are the
primary sponsor for NMSU Athletics our
annual NICU reunion is pictured there
our veterans event and even last month
uh from our annual uh cancer survivors
day we have numerous events for uh our
our soldiers throughout this this area
of all past
Wars let's talk just for a
minute about who we are as an
organization in terms of our community
benefit report and impact we are one of
the largest employers and healthc care
providers in the msia valley region we
are proud of our record in Los cruus and
doniana County
in fact we are the largest hospital in
Southern New
Mexico I'm the immediate past chair of
all of the hospitals in the state I'm
the immediate past chair of the medical
center I sit on two Economic Development
councils and I'm also on the the board
for the Chamber of
Commerce Mary that's that's sitting to
my left and your right is on the
foundation committee for the the public
schools for two decades as part of lifeo
Health Memorial has collaborated with
the city and the county to expand
healthc care services across this
region bring new providers to our
community care for all who live here and
be a great partner to each of you and
certainly to the county we don't take
that lightly no one recruits more
doctors to this community than we do we
aggressively do that because we have the
oldest medical staff in the entire
United States we also have the highest
Med Mal caps as many of you know each
year our Hospital publishes a community
benefits uh report that outlines the
many ways that we are advancing our
mission for this community and I want to
share a few of the highlights of that
document
now we have 1,400 people that depend on
Memorial Medical Center for their living
and have maintained a payroll here of
$30
million we have also added 150
physicians in advanced pra private
practitioners to our medical staff which
included Primary Care Behavioral Health
cardiology ENT gastron neurology general
surgery Orthopedics
OBGYN and many more because we firmly
believe in keeping New Mexicans in New
Mexico and we can address some of the
details about that a little bit
later last year we made more than $8
million in Capital Improvements which
included equipment and Technology
upgrades such as new automated breast
ultrasound or what is called abis we are
the only ones in the region including El
Paso that have this uh this new improved
uh M mamography
technology for earlier breast cancer
detection a state of the art linear
accelerator uh for radiation oncology
was also purchased for that we are now
able to radiate tissue in 2 minutes that
formally took 15 minutes and spare
normal tissue in the process also new
electrophysiology technology and we are
in the process waiting for a yes on an
offer that we have made to a world class
electrophysiologist because we've gone
from 80 cardiac casts per month to
approximately 3 to 400 per
month and also equipment for Advanced
Cardiovascular services that Mary's
going to cover in just a few minutes all
of our neighbors regardless of their
ability to pay is foundational to our
mission which is why Memorial Medical
Center contributed $54
million of Charity Care uninsured
discounts and uncompensated care to
those that are in need
we paid nearly $18 million in taxes
which includes property and sales taxes
that support local projects and
infrastructure we funded more than $1.7
million in the in community benefits
programs including projects posted
focused on education Community Health
Suicide
Prevention and community events we are
extremely active not only in this
community but also in other communities
as I showed before here are some of the
key Community Partnerships and
sponsorships such as Amador Health Big
Brothers Big Sisters for college of
osteopathic medicine that I mentioned
earlier for cancer Warriors donana
Community College Greater Los crus cruus
Chamber of Commerce Los crusis Public
Schools Foundation New Mexico State
University Ronald McDonald House
southern New Mexico uh Community
Foundation just to name a
few we are very proud of our economic
impact across the community not only
last year but over the year the past two
decades and we look forward to
continuing that strong record in this
community so I want to look at just for
a moment an over overview of patient
access because that's one of the
subjects that we all need to talk about
because it's us it's the people that are
sitting here in this room today it's the
people that are not able to be with us
today our focus is on providing care to
all of southern New
Mexico so I'm going to provide some
background on patient access and our
financial assistance resources and
process as I shared earlier we do not
turn away or deny care to Indigent
individuals nor do we turn away deny
care or delay care for patients because
of outstanding balances or unpaid bills
regardless of how significant those
bills are our financial assistance
team is led by CFO LT
Thomas she works with patients in many
different ways uh every way possible to
try and ex uh expand their access to
care in fact we have a dedicated team to
that purpose
so I want to talk about just a brief
overview of patient
access it is rare for people that that
we are unable to help insure uninsured
or underinsured
individuals and qualifying for coverage
or financial assistance in most cases
our team is able to to assist uninsured
individuals in qualifying for Medicaid
as I mentioned earlier assuming that
they do not meet Medicaid's requirements
for the New Mexico medical insurance
pool uh which is our which our Hospital
participates in most individuals
do the first people at the few people I
should say that who do not qualify for
Medicaid or the New Mexico medic
Insurance Pool may be candidates for the
County's healthc care assistance program
or
chap as a
program additionally our hospital is is
in network with most insurance plans and
has a lot of success in setting up
single case agreements with plans that
are out of
network if a patient comes to us does
not have an insurance plan or the
insurance plan for some odd reason there
are very few of these has not contracted
with them for example for patient care
we will negotiate with them and try to
get insurance coverage on a one-off
basis for that
individual and we spend a lot of time
doing
that and we document those activities uh
whether we're successful or we not over
the past two decades some of our
policies have evolved as Healthcare and
local and state and federal reg
regulations have evolved however any
changes in policies or procedures have
always been done in close partnership
with the city and with the
county in fact we have designated seats
for both the city and the county on our
Board of Trustees that has always been
that way through the asset purchase
agreement your city manager sits on that
board and the county manager sits on
that
board so when someone asks are we
getting monthly reports yes you are you
have some you have a representative a
responsible individual that sits on that
board on a monthly basis and all things
from quality to you name it that is
handled throughout our system and we're
not just a hospital because we have
nearly 30 Clinics of Physicians
freestanding facilities of a variety of
different types Ambulatory Surgery
Center Diagnostic Imaging Center etc etc
that are all covered during that
meeting we also understand that
navigating healthc care coverage can be
incredibly confusing for the public it
sometimes gets confusing for us as well
and the highly regulated nature of our
industry and the strict requirements
that we have to follow often mean that
healthc care providers are restricted in
the levels and kinds of support that we
can provide that said our team is always
working on additional tools and
resources to help patients better access
care
locally that's a a a true uh integral
part of our our
strategy so now with that I'm going to
ask Mary armo my Chief Operating Officer
to share some of our current and future
policies PRI sorry Mary that's fine
thank you John um hello my name is Mary
armo and I'm the chief operating officer
at Memorial Medical Center so thank you
mayor and council members for having us
here
today so I want to just talk a little
bit about our services so I moved to
last crues in 2019 to join the
leadership team at Memorial Medical
Center and as a native New Mexican this
move was a homecoming for me uh in many
ways and it's been it's been very
meaningful to watch uh and be part of
the impact our hospital has had on this
community I have seen this hospital and
Community come together to weather a
once- in a life lifetime pandemic and
rebuild the in the aftermath memorials
supported the community by being one of
the leading covid-19 testing sites in
Los crues as well as providing over
25,000 covid vaccinations during the
post during and post the pandemic we
have also focused on rebuilding our
services and our Workforce to support
and care for our
community earlier John shared some of
the facts and figures around our
community benefit report
and in the five years that I have lived
in this community I am proud to say that
Memorial's economic impact contributions
charity care taxes and payroll has
exceeded over $900
million we are all very proud to be part
of this community and a partner to this
community all right so maintaining our
core services so I know there has been
some discussion about the continuation
of services outlined in our asset
purchase agreement and and I want to
assure you that we are confident that we
are maintaining the core Services
outlined in our agreements the county
and city manager have been active
participants on our board for many years
and on a monthly basis we as John had
stated earlier we do provide information
regarding our
operations like all hospitals and
healthc care providers our services have
been impacted over the past two decades
by labor and Workforce challenges
changing the federal and changing
federal and state regulations s and the
pandemic however we have maintained all
core services and programs since
2004 we remain a full service General C
care hospital and our emergency
department treats over 40,000 patients
per year we have an active auxiliary and
pastorial program and offer
comprehensive Women's and Children's
Services delivering between 200 and
three 300 babies per year and we also
offer a Neo NE neonatal Intensive Care
Unit and P Patric Intensive Care Unit
our inpatient behavior health unit is
open and accepting
patients so in particular I did want to
address the behavior health unit as that
has been a challenging service to
maintain Amin a severe National shortage
of Behavioral providers in November of
2022 we temporarily suspended operations
in the unit due to instability of
full-time physician coverage if you look
at the statistics we need one mental
health provider per every 350 people if
you look at the Shar numbers for the
population in Southern New Mexico at
roughly 300,000 you're looking at a
minimum of 857
providers we had difficulties finding
full-time Physicians and in addition it
takes at least six months to onboard a
new physician if they are moving to the
state of New Mexico due to obtaining a
New Mexico medical license DEA license
and then going through the credentialing
process in addition to that behavior
health workers experience severe levels
of
burnout we were very very fortunate to
have formulated a strong relationship
and partnership with Peak Behavioral
Health hospital we work closely with
Sandy Emanuel the CEO of peak to secure
the needed physician coverage for MMC
which in turn creates a continuity of
care for patients who may need to be
transferred to Peak for a higher level
of care we are proud to say that our
unit continues to stay full and we have
now stabilized that service Dave Schmidt
our chief nursing officer who's here to
my right oversees the program and has
done a fantastic job getting it back to
a fully functional unit working with
both Physicians the Physicians and
nursing staff to care for our
patients so expanding uh Advanced
Services so as you know Memorial is one
of three hospitals here in Los Cruses we
are consistently working on providing
and expanding services not currently
accessible or available in donana county
and surrounding counties we are proud to
be a regional referral and transfer
center working closely with the
surrounding hospitals to provide a
higher level of specialty care and
expand access to these Services by
embedding specialists in rur rural
underserved communities like Deming
Silver City and Al mordo
currently today Memorial receives 20 250
to 300 transfer requests a month so that
tells you the amount of breath and death
that we have with our specialty services
that we're able to accept that many
patients coming into our Hospital in
fact as an example of our commitment to
this Community and Southern New Mexico
during the pandemic we focused on
recruiting to rebuild our cardiovascular
service line when I joined Memorial and
a assessed the population need for
Cardiology Services we had a we had a
few Interventional cardiologists in the
community but no hospital here in Los
crues had a full comprehensive
cardiovascular program we are proud to
say that we went from one Interventional
cardiologist to five Interventional
cardiologists two general cardiologists
two Thoracic Surgeons and we started an
electrophysiology program our
cardiologists are able to care for a
wide sub set of patients from simple
procedures uh as diagnostic procedures
to more complex procedures last year
Memorial was the first and only Hospital
in Southern New Mexico to ever offer the
trans catheter aortic valve replacement
procedure for he valve heart valve de
disease so to put that into perspective
if a patient had to have that type of
procedure they would have to go to
Albuquerque to the heart hospital or
would have to go to Al Paso which barely
just started their program up or seek
care uh out of
state so our our goal really is to be
the leading Hospital in Southern New
meeso for Cardiac
Care so without the growth of our
cardiovascular program and continued
focus on Specialty Services many
individuals in our community like my
friend will J Jacobs would have had to
travel to Al Paso Tucson Albuquerque or
Denver for care so Ju Just to uh give
you just a little bit of context around
will Jacobs he actually was my neighbor
and he had sought care in uh El Paso and
was at a point to where his heart was
only at 30% capacity so he did speak to
me I referred him to our specialist at
the hospital and because of the care
that he did receive at Memorial Medical
Center he is doing well
today and that will continue to be our
driving force and focus for our future
is identifying unmet healthare our needs
in our community and working to address
them in partnership with you and other
community
members so to discuss a little bit about
our Workforce and our culture um I did
want to address another important
priority for our leadership team which
is strengthening our Workforce as labor
challenges and shortages are real
concerns for the hospital right now in
addition to offering competitive pay and
benefits we are focused on growing our
own we are responding to Staffing
shortages by providing educational and
career opportunities for internal
employees and local members of the
community recruiting and retaining
nurses is a top priority for our
leadership team especially our CNO uh
Dave Schmidt we recently launched a new
Residency program to help new nurses
transition from school to the to the
hospital and 39 of those nurses
completed our program last year
additionally we are exploring an
International Nurse Program that would
enable us to recruit graduate foreign
graduate nurses to Memorial to fill the
open uh positions that we
have um and we are also highly focused
on training and supporting the next
generation of Physicians we proudly
partner with and support the Burl
College of osteopathic medicine and then
we also offer an acgme accredited family
Residency program
um that program has expanded to 30 total
residents with 68% of those residents
actually staying in the state of New
Mexico we do have barriers to recruiting
Physicians uh in desperately needed
Specialists to the state of New Mexico
duing to having no medical malpractice
capitation we have included in packets
that we have brought with us um healthc
care bill
0075 for more information regarding uh
uh regarding this I think it's very
important for the council members and
the mayor to really understand this bill
because it does impact the future of
Healthcare in the state of New
Mexico uh we uh with no capitation this
creates a litigious state which sways
Physicians not to choose to come to New
Mexico to practice as any type of uh
litigation stays permanently on their uh
records and with no caps that's very
very
significant the success of these
programs has led Memorial to being a
model for lifeo health and we are
helping other hospitals and communities
like ours stand up similar programs uh
to address Workforce challenges and
needs so with that I'm going to turn it
back over to John and he's going to wrap
up our presentation
I want to wrap up with our commitment to
you as a city and also to our County um
I want to thank Mary first of all uh for
her comments our goal is and always will
be keeping New Mexicans in New Mexico
and really what we me about that is that
the development of Memorial Medical
Center We Believe can be such that
people can for the most part stay here
for their health care we won't be a
trauma one or a trauma 2 Center but or
maybe even a burn center but there are
many many things that we are becoming
and we believe in being the finest
service in every service that we
offer but we Face challenges in this
community and throughout this
region the uh we we're proud proud
frankly of our record of expanding
healthc care services in our community
uh to meet the needs to enhance access
to care for all who live here and being
a great partner to so many across this
region because we can't do it alone we
need you we need the county we need NMSU
the Community
College we have working relationships
with organizations throughout the
area we're very confident though that we
have we have complied with all the terms
of the asset purchase agreement and the
lease agreement including the provision
of indigent care our term our team I
should say remains laser focused on
supporting our people employees and
providers patients and their families
and growing our programs and services to
meet the everchanging needs of Los cruus
doniana County and the surrounding
region my team and I are having uh
are always frankly happy uh to answer
our any questions or concerns that you
have about this
hospital and I want to extend an open
invitation to each of you to come and do
an on-site visit to the hospital if you
would like individual meetings with me
or with Mary LT or Dave or any of our
people to talk about services that we
offer uh policies that we have
procedures whatever it may be we are an
open book we we are extremely proud of
the 1400 people that make up Memorial
Medical Center very proud particularly I
am of the 10 years that I have had the
privilege to spend in your community
running your largest hospital not only
for this community but for the entire
region and the symbiotic relationship
that we enjoy with all of the important
hospitals in Demi Silver City TR their
consequences Zam mordo and up to Ru Doo
because they have great needs as well
not only for nurses Physicians but many
other individuals so in closing I want
to thank you for your time uh it's
always a pleasure to to come before you
sit down talk about this um as I have
said to the mayor and to our city
manager I am always available to you for
anything uh just call me and I'll be
happy to help you uh in any way I don't
mind any particular question that you
have about any subject thanks again
well thank you
John and staff thank you all for being
here in their presentation um I think
we'll start with mayor protim you have
some questions I do comments thank you
mayor thank you all for being here today
um I have um quite a few questions so
I'm just going to jump right in sure um
I was checking with our city clerk
because sometimes I have bad memory and
I was trying to remember when last time
MMC was here and I think it was 2020 and
so I today while I appreciate your
presentation certainly I think I was
definitely expecting a little bit um
more substance in the presentation and
and I just have some questions related
to
that um does MMC have things like
quality scorecards that the hospital
measure certain outcomes on whether it's
patient outcome s patient safety patient
satisfaction staff satisfaction and
safety do you have those kinds of um
data points that you collect we have a
very elaborate and comprehensive cancer
program at Memorial Medical Center and
one throughout Live point I might
add what about a I'm sorry did you say a
Cancer
Center no I said
comprehensive uh quality program quality
program thank you Dave Dave is our
quality expert
hi Dave Schmidt Chief nursing officer
for Memorial yes we do we use national
standards for our quality programs
through AG caps which is a measure that
about 4,000 hospitals use in the nation
to measure patient experience for
nursing communication doctor
communication and so forth we also have
a national program through light point
that measures our infection rates Falls
and a bunch of other quality measures as
well making sure that we present a
quality program to our community uh and
our in our patients at Memorial how
often do you collect that data it's
collected monthly monthly we report out
monthly uh report out through a whole
Hospital committee called patient
quality and safety committee um and
anybody like from the board is invited
to appear on that for teams or in person
we also post set on the units for
personnel to read and also that's
available for patients these are
nationally reported
uh things as well through CMS and
through other National Quality programs
that look that for our
reimbursements can you share any of
those with us any of those data outcomes
I I specifically I just want to do an
overview of that I've been here for
about a year and a half and I came in
January of 2023 and there are two
reasons why John brought me from
Pennsylvania to New Mexico number one is
to open our Behavioral Health Unit
because I've experienced doing that and
working in Behavioral Health but then
also to get our quality program back to
where we needed to be from the effects
of covid uh through covid most hospitals
around the nation saw about a 3 to 4%
decline in their quality scores Memorial
is no different so I was brought to
build our quality program back up
focusing on infection rates and focusing
on Falls uh focusing on readmissions and
then also focusing on that patient
experience so when they leave our
hospital they want to return to us
because we presented a great program for
them and also a great environment as
well are you able to share some of those
score scorecards with the city manager
that then he can share with us yes okay
and we do that on monthly meeting
through our board member which there are
some present as well right thank you I
have definitely talked to the city
manager about making that a priority no
worries do you have today numbers on
Hospital revenues for the last several
years that you can share with
us what what specifically are you asking
about um I'm curious about Hospital
revenues and more specifically on how
some of those revenues are invested back
into hos the hospital system well as I
mentioned my presentation we invested
last year alone $9
million uh in the facility through a in
a variety of different Technologies the
other thing that we invest in is as I
mentioned before I think we probably
have the most aggressive physician
Recruitment and advanced uh practice
recruitment program in the region I
think I'm I'm asking specific numbers
for revenues because I don't know you
said $8 million in capital Improvement
and I don't in our um asset agreement
there is a a specific um piece in here
about um the hospital committing
to let me find it in my notes um Capital
expenditures lesie shall make annual
Capital expenditures in connection with
the operation of the hospital which in
amount shall collectively average
between 4% and 5% so $8 million sounds
great but I don't know if that's four to
5% average of reinvestment in the
hospital is about 1 and 12% mhm it's not
four times that okay well that's what's
in our agreement pardon me that's when
it what that's what's in our asset um
yeah and we talked with the city and the
county about that some period of time
ago about what do hospitals invest in
and they don't just in invest in
equipment and buildings they invest in
bringing doctors to the community
bringing nurses to the community
bringing advanced uh practice
practitioners
and we bring about 35 to 45
practitioners at an average cost of
about uh when we recruit a doctor it's
about 3/4 to one and a. half million
each and then there's a loss thereafter
of maintaining those positions in the
community and we have 28 Clinics of
practitioners throughout this community
and in the region so you don't just
invest invest in equipment you invest in
a variety of things including software
applications electronic medical records
that are in the tens of millions of
dollars so no right I know we don't you
don't just uh invest in Capital
Improvements but that's specifically in
the agreement that we have with you
that's why I'm asking about it what was
recognized at the time I'm just telling
you by the city manager Robert Garza and
and also County was that we end up
investing in a variety of different
things to help this community to have
better care so that's a very large and
complex question so Happ to sit down on
another day and discuss that with you in
detail I would love that absolutely you
know in 2020 last time you all were here
the conversation we had at that work
session was regarding the capital
Improvement plan um and the hospital was
requesting to lessen it to 3% and then I
don't believe that ever came back to
council for an official vote so
according to the agreement that was made
many years ago that still is four to
between four to 5% and so I understand
that it's $8 million in investment and I
would just like to understand what that
how much the only thing I would ask you
to recognize is I think between all of
that we had a worldwide pandemic that
that kind of caught our attention for
four years so certain I think the other
thing that has changed between um well
in the last few years is that MMC was
also acquired by a private Equity Firm
Life Point and um so it's not just the
NBC uh Artic article that came out
recently but I did my research and
there's tons of Articles out there about
um the concerns that Equity firms pose
to local Healthcare and I just wanted to
read you a couple of these because I
think I know that you said the pandemic
um
impacted some of these quality control
issues but I um this jamama article this
uh Journal of American Association
article in
2023 says private Equity acquisition was
associated with increased H Hospital
acquired Adverse Events including Falls
and central line Associated blood stream
infections along with a larger but less
uh statistically precise increase in
surgical sight infections that's from
Jama the New York Times reported
something similar um and then um
Business Insider as well so I'm curious
to hear from you if you uh what you
think that what your perspective is on
how Hospital outcomes have been impacted
since Life Point acquired
MMC you know I'm going to tell you I've
I've operated hospitals for 50 years 50
years in a variety of different states I
have never worked for a finer company
than lifeo and that includes from the
top to the bottom they have never asked
me to do anything that was in
appropriate they've always asked me to
do the right thing for the community and
you saw what the core values are I think
we would be well served by not letting
Outsiders cast dispersions on a hospital
an institution that has been here in
operation for 70 years we've been here
for the last 20 of it and I can tell you
I've worked for less than a handful of
hospitals in this world and I've worked
internationally and they don't pay me
enough to tell you what I'm about to
tell you this is an
outstanding manager owner and operator
of hospitals don't let anyone dissuade
you from that if you want an answer to a
question about what the care is here
whether it be quality whether it be any
other aspect of this you call me because
I will tell you the truth I will not try
to dissuade you in any other way this is
an outstanding hospital it's only going
to get better believe in it support it
and you will save lives not only for
this community but throughout this
region so I in my judgment NBC didn't do
a good job they came in here for other
reasons uh it was not really about
Memorial Medical Center it was an
obstacle in the way and what I'm telling
you is the truth this is a great
hospital and it's going to get even
better you have a person sitting with
your city manager and always have at
that that board that has input into how
that hospital is managed as does the
county let's work together let's believe
in each other that doesn't mean uh that
we Passover issues or things that we're
challenged by whether it's cancer care
it's emergency care or whatever and
let's let's bring great quality care to
this community that's what they deserve
and that's what I'm here to provide I
appreciate that and I'm glad you said
that because I think that really means
that we're on the same page about what
we want for our community and I think
for me that means sometimes having tough
ask tough questions right the majority
of our job as elected officials has to
happen in public right I I cannot
operate privately in private meetings
just with you um the things that I learn
in my own research to do my job well I I
I want to ask those things publicly
because that's how uh change happens
right and so I please don't see this as
a call out but a call in um in order for
us to do better work together and one of
the reasons I'm saying that is because I
had a bit of a wakeup call when I read
this other article about um through
private Equity stakeholder project
Apollo which Apollo is um the global
management system for lifeo right
Apollo's uh stronghold on Hospital on
hospitals and one of the um quotes in
here specifically talks about Los Cruses
and it says in August 2022 2022 life's
Point Memorial Medical Center in Las
Cruses New Mexico closed its psychiatric
ward citing Staffing shortages according
to the hospital's lease with the city
and the county the termination of
psychiatric services could be grounds
for termination of the lease those City
officials have not yet taken any action
against the hospital and so this this
particular article then calls me out
it's calling us out right for are in
action to to ensure there's
accountability in our partnership and so
I feel now like perhaps the city and
perhaps the county I won't speak for the
county but certainly the city maybe has
been asleep at the wheel a little bit
and so I'm taking I'm just taking more
responsibility in my role as a city
councelor for our constituents because
we have the same goals of providing
quality care to our folks and um in
preparation for this meeting last time
uh when you were supposed to be here in
in um April I took a whole Sunday
afternoon and read through most of the
agreement which as you know is like
hundreds of pages um it wasn't super
exciting and it wasn't super sexy
reading but I went through it and you
know I I made uh certain um notes on
here that I think are really important
for us to remember and some of those
specific ones are about Indigent care um
in volume one part one on page 13
specifically it talks about um the
policies for treatment of indigent
patients comparable to those presently
in effect in the hospital um uh it just
basically talks about the commitment
that the hospital is making to Indigent
care and so I hear you say today that we
we will not turn anyone away and so you
at the top level are saying we won't do
that however at the community level and
I'm not talking about Outsiders I'm
talking about residents and not just one
or two but continuously residents who
have said I have been turned away I've
been turned away for um my status as an
uninsured person whatever the reason and
so what do you think that discrepancy is
between um the information that you are
sharing with today and the information
that we are he well I talked about
earlier about the complexities of
healthcare I can assure you uh Lyn
Fletcher for example most of this
discussion is around Cancer Care Lyn
Fletcher has won every humanitarian
award there is to win locally and earn
nationally from our she is an absolutely
Angelic individual in terms of her her
professionalism and how she runs that
cancer center she goes to Great l
to try and qualify anyone that comes to
our door there are always stories behind
the stories and I would say to you we
have re researched every one of these
that have come to our door we only know
of maybe two or three that are even
questionable we've had inside parties
outside parties research these but if
anyone in this community has a complaint
a legitimate argument for something we
have done or not done we apologize uh if
we have not done the right thing but
we're always interested in talking with
you because again what I'm telling you
today is that we go to Great Links to
serve the population through not just in
Las cruus but throughout the region and
sometimes that's at the cost of a great
deal of of money but you want the same
thing I want and that's what this
company is based on quality safe care
because the way I view this any one of
us could be the ne patient that comes
into that ER with a heart attack or some
other major problem so I want you to
know who runs this hospital it's me it's
not Apollo the local operations are run
by me and I'm always available to each
and every one of you Chief story knows
this and we met each other uh in when I
was at the chamber meeting and others of
you know this so the point being
we're available to each other and we
don't need an NBC reporter or anyone
else in this country outside of this
community to come to us and talk about
our Health Care system if you know
something a friend or someone else that
has had a problem at mem moral Medical
Center I can't answer for three crosses
from Mountain View but the buck stops at
my desk so you call me and I'll give you
my cell phone number I'm not going to
State it publicly but I'm going to give
each view my cell phone number so that
you can text me you can call me and if
you want a meeting with me all you have
to do is call and I'll come over to your
office we'll sit down and talk can I
step in for just a second so uh mayor po
temp uh for all the quality reports that
you're asking for we will go ahead and
provide the information that you need um
we also obviously work with econ so we
can you filter that through Eon if you
would like or send them to you
directly thank you I appreciate that I
would I would love that follow up and I
hear you sir I I also cannot discount
that the Journal of American Medical
Association is a trusted source for
information regarding our Health Care
system and when they are publicizing
information regarding Equity firms and
the serious decline of Care Quality Care
for our patients that uh these acquis
Acquisitions have brought those ra those
rais red I hope you understand that they
raise uh justifiable red flags for me
and and that is important for me to talk
about here
let me just let me just wrap this up
because I want to pass it to my
colleagues um I I the last thing I will
say is that I again I think this is an
important next step I understand that
these are tough questions but I I don't
often have you and the chance to have
you in front of me and so when when you
are I want to ask them I've also um
there have also been narratives in our
community regarding staff concerns
Staffing concerns and the quality of
safety for staff and I want to make sure
that that um I I hope that those
scorecards also include staff surveys um
that we might get um I think one of the
pieces that Mr Miho um presented at the
end was about very Specialty Care I'm
curious if you have any um response to
the concern that um even though we are
that you are bringing this very
Specialized Care that some of these
Services further jeopardize our
community by subjecting them to
inappropriate procedures and high costs
when not necessary additionally I'm
wondering if any of these services are
at the expense of providing essential
services like general surgery Behavioral
Health Services Primary Care OBGYN
emergency care or Cancer Care we don't
do that no we are not we're a highly uh
professional we are uh organization we
are not unethical and there isn't anyone
I know there are people that are trying
to this this whole PE discussion trying
to convince people that somehow or
another these PE firms run these
hospitals believe me Apollo that owns
Life Point does not run
Memorial you're looking at who runs
Memorial it's me and I don't do things
like you describe and those are
irresponsible comments being made to you
in the community and they all deserve
reputation on a fact-based basis none of
that is true none of it I wouldn't
associate with an organization that does
that so that's unethical so John can I
step in just for a second so just to you
should come up to this one just it's a
little bit hard to hear your
name just just to put it into
perspective so your name one more time
Mary
armo um like I said when I got here and
I did an assessment on the community and
looking at just Cardiology alone when
you look at the data for example just
out of our own Hospital there was over
1,800 patients diagnosed with apib which
means it's like irregular irregularities
of the heart and heartbeat and so when
you don't have an electro phys you know
phys electrophysiologist here presid at
your hospital be able to take care of it
what was happening is most people were
either having to leave Los crues to get
care or go to El Paso or not get care at
all the majority of patients in this
area do not get the care that they need
that's why we built the program that we
have today so when you look at other
Specialties such as general surgery
oncology you know we have a full line of
a general surgeons at our hospital that
continue to see patients uh medical
oncologists are very difficult to
recruit we have lost a couple of our
medical oncologists over the years uh
but that is a very high specialty High
um uh it's very uh they're very hard to
find and so having to create uh to
recruit tooot Los Cruis is difficult we
talked a little bit I've spoken to the
mayor before we want to make sure that
we're able to sell Los Cruis as a
destination to come here but you know we
need to be able to show that we have
schools that can support uh their
children we talk about all the things
about Los Cruses and why you want to
come here low crime rate it's a great
place to uh live the cost of living is
in expensive but again with the item
that I talked about earlier with Med Mal
capitation that's going to be extremely
difficult to recruit those High need
Specialists so another example is uh ear
nose and throat for this population of
300,000 people we have three ent's in
this community that also is a very high
um specialized area that's very
difficult to recruit and it goes on to
uh GI um you know radiation oncology and
so that's why as John had stated before
we need to work together to make sure
that we are able to recruit to our
hospital so it's not that we don't want
to provide services and we're very
fortunate actually to have the doctors
that we do in cardiology it took me 16
months to recruit our medical director
over this program 16 months and what he
realized is that when he got to Los
cruus and I did I showed him all of the
data because we were so underserved and
so what he realized is that people take
it for granted that when you're in a
metropolitan area you have the
Specialists that you need at your
fingertips but in a community like GL
crues you do not and so you know it's
difficult that it it is we do want to
continue to provide the services that we
offer thank you last thing I'll say is
that I think um tension like this builds
when there is a lack of communication
and lack of transparency and so this is
just an invitation to have more of those
conversations like I said I've talked to
our our new city manager about making
this a priority and so um I will make
sure I um I no longer asleep at the
wheel when it comes to the partnership
with this such an important partnership
in our community um and so it this is
just an invitation for us to have some
tough and courageous conversations but
certainly to keep having them so that we
can address some of these Community
concerns that I believe are very valid
um and and better find better ways to
address them thank May one of the things
you have to you have to appreciate that
we like most hospitals really locked
down during covid pandemic we were doing
all that we could to keep up with that
our entire Focus was on was on that
prior to that there was a lot more
communication between the parties uh you
referenced earlier a meeting that that
you had invited us to we immediately
said to the county clerk we are unable
to attend that meeting at that time
which is how this meeting got set up so
there was never a meeting schedule that
we did not show up for that we agreed to
be at we are always available to you for
the most part it's just that we have
busy schedules just like you do so but
we're happy to accommodate you in any
way that we
can but these kinds of in irresponsible
dispersions that are being passed in
this community there's no truth to these
none whatsoever we stand for Quality
Safe Care this Hospital earned the
highest award that lifeo has to offer in
Los cre uses for first and foremost
quality how it treats its employees how
it works with its doctors how it
integrates with its community and lastly
that it's financially viable lastly that
it's financially viable Apollo does not
run this hospital I do and I run it with
everyone that's sitting here before you
and many other dedicated people that
live in Los cruus respect Los cruus they
take care of their friends their
neighbors here that's what we're about
any of these other things we've got our
antenna up for any type of procedure
done by any type of specialist that is
here and if it's not appropriate we're
talking to them so we've believe me that
is placed in any well-managed Hospital
which Memorial Medical Center is I've
been doing this for 50 years this is not
my first
rodeo and that kind of thing is not
going to go on in my under under my
watch but what Mary referenced is what
we are trying to do is that there have
patients that have gone on without being
diagnosed properly and and there have
been issues in you know in this region
what we're doing is we're taking Health
Care from here to here and the
individual for example in
cardiology he has boarded in six
different areas of cardiology practice
he's a rare human being in this world
and he's our medical director
that's who you've got that is at our
side when we're looking at Cardiology
we're going to do the same thing in
every major specialty for this community
so take the time call me make an
appointment you want to talk we can sit
it in in the
boardroom at the hospital and we'll
answer any of the questions that you
have about any aspect of how Memorial is
run it's a hospital you should be proud
of believe me I am
okay thank you mayor protim I'd like to
go ahead and ask uh councelor Karan
because she's on the line uh if she has
anything any questions or
comments thank you I I appreciate you
all presenting today um and I'm really
interested I think um a lot of what you
said has been trust me and talk with me
and and I'm really just here to ask for
the receipt because that's what we're
asked for and uh so specifically I think
mayor PM alluded to some of the safety
reports that we would like and and
frankly these I think need to be
presented a public meeting um so I'm
going to not accept the invitation to
comeing invite you back in perhaps four
counselor we're we're having a
difficulty uh hearing you and and
understanding
um we're going to see if we can turn up
any volume here but if you
can speak I guess uh I don't know if
there's any uh distractions you may have
around you or if you can speak a little
louder we try
that I don't have distractions
um but uh let me see if I can try
to does this make any
difference yeah that's a little better
a little
better um so I'm I I think I'm
interested in a number of the things
that councelor
Beno mentioned um and so specifically I
would ask that we have another public
meeting I would like to schedule you all
to come and present some actual data um
and and information for us and and so I
have a few specific asks I'm hoping that
you can do that and I don't know how
many months it might take you to to
develop that but we can hopefully
schedule another work session
specifically safety related data as as
councelor voma mentioned um I think I
would also like to know um of the
charity care I would like to know two I
would I would like to see that broken
down in two ways one uh the types of pro
of of things that are being compensated
for charity care and then the
demographics of the folks who are
receiving that charity care um so both
of those facets of of the 53 million
that you alluded to um and then the last
part is related
to uh specifically continuity of care
and that is um you know moving forward
and and I think we'll have to we'll
speak with
the with the city manager in terms of
how this is presented and if it's
presented at the board meetings but I
would like to see um you know the
continuity of the types of care that are
that are being provided for instance
basic surgery um coverage you know how
often folks are being referred out of
out of town because of a lack of
Staffing and so some of the staffing
issues that councelor vano alluded to I
would I would like to see some specific
data about that as well because I think
it sounds like um you you really have
beefed up your your part Cardiology and
and um sort of acute care for for
cardiac patients and I that's that's
great but of course we know that there
are a number of other things that that
are sort of expected especially as part
of um our lease agreement so I think I
would just ask my first ask is that uh
we plan another meeting and then the
second ask is for those specific data
points so that we can share them with
the community again and and not be
asleep at the wheel in terms of paying
attention to what kinds of um services
youall are providing so we can do that
that's those are my requests please
thanks
okay I'm watching Adrien back there you
lowering
it yeah okay thank you counselor Karen
uh councelor Flores thank you Mr
Mayor I want to thank uh mayor protm Ben
comoo for doing all that research and um
focusing
on I I want you to understand this is
not an attack on you um sir it it it has
to do with the fact that uh as City
councilors we're the frontliners for
everything and I I've never been trained
to be in the military so I don't know
how to push back on that but um you know
we get everything you know there's Stray
Cats there's stray dogs there's a cow
there's a road there's a bump there's a
this is falling apart and and and we get
it
all
um and but this particular issue um is
disturbing to me because uh we used to
have a health policy Review Committee
and we would have people come in and one
of our uh the councel I believe who
started it uh was Jack emman and he
wasn't and he was a hospital administ
ministrator and he was in the audience
but I don't see him I he's gone but um
he um he would have been a very good
person and I will be speaking with him
um the concern right now um is that
patients who are Indigent are not being
treated humanely people who don't have
insurance aren't being treated humanely
and um um I know when I broke my ankle a
year ago it was like my world fell apart
you know was like I couldn't get around
and uh I was
incapacitated and then I think if I
found out I had cancer and I didn't have
coverage and I went to say you know the
stories were getting from different
people different sources I went to uh
medical
Memorial and I'd be turn say you know my
my coverage human whatever I have uh
wasn't uh good enough what would I do
what would I do would I just curl up and
die and adding insult to injury not
having the hospital say well look you're
Indigent or you don't have insurance or
we don't take that insurance or whatever
but this is what we'll do we'll work
with you and um and I haven't heard that
from Mary Miss Aro or you what do you do
in in terms of someone coming to you and
you can't provide the service and in
this case uh we have um we have a lot of
people in our community with cancer
which is probably a Fallout of the
Trinity bombing and um so what do you do
and and and and and and maybe and maybe
MSNBC is picking uh picking this up and
we'll hear what you have to say and uh
it'll you know
whatever I have no voice I'm going to
try okay I'm sorry what I have no voice
so I'm going to try and project as much
as I can um I oversee our eligibility
team we have a very large eligibility
team I have six people that dedicate
their workday only to ensuring that we
have eligibility if if you can state
your name just for the record oh Laura
Thomas I go by Al te if you if you could
just say uh if you if if you could just
uh go through the process I I I'm I we
know already that you're very well
staffed so we know that so what um how
how do you treat people who are you know
just shockingly um you know they're
probably you know just totally out of
their minds thinking well I have cancer
and people die when they have cancer and
you and the person so how do you all
these people you have working and doing
all this nice stuff so one of the things
that I felt was most unfair about the
article was that it portrayed our teams
that work very hard and work with people
that get the C diagnosis I didn't read
the article I'm talking from experience
of people who have come to us yeah so
what happens is someone's going to come
to our door and they're going to say I
don't have insurance I don't have a
means to pay the only way that they're
going to get to our door is because they
have a referral from a primary care
practitioner so that's how we get
referrals to the cancer center we also
get referrals out of the emergency
department so that's why I was talking
about that other group of people the six
people that I was talking about because
we actually placed them in the emergency
department to see which patients are
coming to the emergency department and
do not have a primary care service
provider so we can find out how do we
provide a primary care practitioner to
that population and what if they don't
have any insurance any coverage so we
also um pretty much hold their hand with
trying to under help them get into some
type of insurance
plan for people that are part of um that
are US citizens they can go through the
expanded medicaid process so we provide
them with education and the application
processes and resources to do that well
excuse me you have to be a US citizen to
receive medical uh care no I'm talking
about
providing I'm I'm talking about getting
a resource for insurance
okay so there's also an option for
undocumented noncitizens called the New
Mexico Insurance Pool we beca we worked
really hard to become members of that
insurance pool so we could provide care
for those patients that needed insurance
through um that insurance uh option and
our resource okay well thank you I do
have another question um after the um
Behavioral Unit on the fifth floor was
closed down because of covid but it was
closed down for a long time why is that
and
uh so when I arrived Dave Schmidt C uh
when I arrived at Memorial in January
the the Department's been closed down
since November and we closed it down
because we lost providers not so much
Staffing so we did not have doctors
nurse practitioners to provide medical
care and the psychiatric care for these
patients that they need that they
needed uh when I arrived like I said
John tasked me with open behavioral
health unit and we had some staff that
stayed with in the hospital that were
then kind of floated to other units to
work and keep them employed at Memorial
because they wanted to be there other
Behavioral Health nurses decide to leave
because they were not sure when we open
up again uh trying to recruit like Mar
talked about a psychiatrist to New
Mexico or just trying to to recruit a
psychiatrist to a hospital is very
difficult it's a very small pool to pull
psychiatrist in in the United States and
like m talked about it takes at least
six months to get a doctor licensed
their DEA certificate from a different
state in New Mexico that's why when we
went down that route and had some
roadblocks and getting psychiatrist to
come to New Mexico that's where we
reached out to the peak and msia Valley
to see if there was any way to partner
with that already established L uh
provider pool which the peak came out we
talked about two three months we had to
do a contract with them which again
takes time between both uh the
facilities with the peak and our
facility as well and also have that
provider then come in and train on our
EMR get credentialed uh making sure that
when they go through credentialing all
their paperwork all their medical checks
making sure they went to the right
school and have the right abilities
provide care in the hospital is there
and that takes about about two months in
itself so again it was a process that we
were working on every single day to make
sure that we open this unit as much as
possible then we find the providers we
had to make sure we had enough Staffing
to do this as well which we start in
conjunction with the last three months
of that credentialing process well we we
are all aware that there is a shortage
of of uh doctors physicians in in the
state of New Mexico so appr propo of
that um do you have a lobbyist that goes
up to uh you know to we do what's it
called the capital Santa Fe to to ask
them why they're raising I know Dr
devali um is like and there's other
doctors too who have just decided to
retire because as good as they are and
as wonderful as they are if you don't
have um me uh medical what is it Mal
medical Mal Practice Medical Mal
practice Yeah my brother-in-law is a
doctor so I know all about that um Med
if you don't have uh that uh it's
impossible to it's impossible to
practice so um does your organization
does Life Point Apollo they're pretty
powerful you would think there'd be a
Lobby that would work uh with the
legislators of resp our respective
States we do a Lobby that goes up and
state Bill 75 is a you know something
we'd like you to take a look at and also
offer your support to that to The
Roundhouse uh
a lot of when we talk about lobbyist
also there's a lobbyist for the plain of
attorneys as well um the plaintiff
attorneys in the state for malpractice
uh cases so again that is a very strong
lobby as well so any support we can get
from the city council and the county we
would really appreciate that yeah I
think uh that that's an issue too but
you didn't mention that as a factor and
to the shortage of doctors I know two of
my doctors have gone to El Paso and uh
and two of my other doctors were already
in El Paso because we didn't have them
here so um anyway well thank you thank
you thank you Mr so city councilwoman um
Flores if you look in the packet that we
gave you we actually included the actual
bill so that way you guys can
familiarize yourself with the bill
because that you know the medm Caps are
high in fact there's only two insurance
companies now that are willing to insure
Physicians uh in the state of New Mexico
and so as we talked about some of our
Specialty Services another area is
Urology we actually um there's an
independent Urology Group here in Los
Cruses um and we actually had four
urologists that were practicing at
Memorial one has elected to leave uh Los
crues and go to El Paso full-time and so
we're down to three which two of those
three are retirement age so we will then
be down to one and she's contemplating
whether to stay here or not because of
medical malpractice because they have to
pay for that out of pocket we're we're
uh we have the ability as a larger
Corporation to cover Med medical
malpractice for our employed Physicians
which is a benefit um you know for this
community but not every uh physician who
practices here in the state of New
Mexico has that so I you know we just
wanted to make sure you guys were very
well aware yeah and um it's interesting
though that that wasn't a a to me that's
a blatant F not blatant but an obvious
um Factor in in providing Services yes
and and and again I want to state that
it has a lot to do with caring for
people and the people that we hear from
feel that they're being pushed aside so
you know just keep that in mind in terms
of how you and I mean I'm not
criticizing I'm just saying that th
those are definitely bonified uh
concerns when it comes to your I mean
you want to be able to trust your doctor
your medical Prof provider I mean right
right and you know again like I said
Access to Health Care is just going to
become more difficult in the state of
New Mexico because of you know
Physicians leaving the state um so you
know we're not only impacted here in
Southern New Mexico but also in Northern
New Mexico it's the same case because
they're a very overwhelmed system there
so our goal is to continue to recruit in
Physicians and Specialists and you know
we have a team of recruiters that helps
us with that but again it's you know
really selling them to come to New
Mexico to practice here but that is a
barrier for us as medmo so uh being part
of life point being part of Apollo um do
they work with local hospitals and
doctors to make sure that uh medical M
isn't uh prohibitive yes ma'am they do
great yeah we have a team um that works
with us um that uh will help us with all
the assistance that we need with medical
malpractice and getting Physicians here
however um you know with like I said
there's only two now two insurance
companies that will provide medical M
practice insurance for the state of New
Mexico it's becoming you know a little
bit more narrow but very expensive thank
you very much I just want to make sure
that that everyone knows that that is
just for Hospital Services Center with
Life Point Apollo has no operational
responsibility for our for our site so I
just that name keeps getting brought up
that is a funding source not an actual
operational company yeah I I'm just
saying they're out there and whoever's
out there use them thank you right thank
you I thank you councelor Florence
anyone else uh I'm sorry councelor
McLure thank you all for coming and
sharing your views um I did have a
little bit um guess I'm echoing some of
the sentiments that have already been
expressed out here I was hoping that
there'd be a little bit more spe
specificity to um how you how your
strategy is with some of our
economically disadvantaged population
our heavy uninsured um population and
look forward to hearing more about that
specifically in the next work session
hopefully within the next month or two
um what I would like to hear a little
bit more about is strategy in terms of
Medicare is ranking you two out of five
tell me how you're aiming to change that
rating I'm sorry what is the question
Medicare is has you at a rating of two
out of five
so that is reference to our quality
scores uh what is publicly reported uh
the time frame that they're reporting
that is usually lagging by about a year
year and a half in some of these scores
so for example with the with the CMS
scores most of those scores are drawn
from 22 to probably about the first part
of 23 um just because the amount of
information that comes into to Medicare
and also to another organization called
LeapFrog which uh looks at a uh rating
from 8 to 8 to D 8 to f um so a lot of
information that we are viewing online
through government you know uh hospital
c.gov is old data and what we present in
our board meetings and a pcq is the
running 12month data because that is the
data that we really want to see as we
improve our scores from you know back in
June of last year to May of this year
that means that you had a strategy to
change that yes we've not SE I've not
seen any reporting from any of the
offices so at that point how have you
lifted yourself up from that R sure
happy to talk about that um so when I
got there one programs I did was an
assessment of the hospital and the
culture of what we call the culture of
safety how safe do the nurses feel when
they come to work because that translate
into Safe Care at the bedside and we do
a internal uh survey called a cozy score
was just looks at that survey of of
culture in our Hospital and when I first
arrived we were at 82% of our uh staff
taking that uh survey which is a
fantastic number for a large Hospital
like ourselves this year we actually
raised it to 83% of our staff members so
just over a thousand staff members told
us how they feel about working in the
hospital about our safety program um
which is really important because then
they give us specific information about
how they feel working where we can
improve upon and also what we're doing
good on so I took that information and
really looked at where can we get the
best bang for a buck and very short time
frame and that is when what we call a
harms reduction or something that
happens to a patient we don't want that
happen infections Falls uh ur ur TR
track infections and so forth that we do
on a daily basis also patient experience
what I focused on was those harms
because these is this is process driven
if I don't put a Folly in a patient
which is a catheter in internally
inserted I can't get an infection that
in that manner if I do things to protect
a patient from a fall they're not going
to fall with an injury
so that's process driven so that was our
first year that we really increased
those numbers um we decreased Falls we
decreased infections and now we're
turning our attention to that patient
experience nursing communication doctor
communication that is more culture and
as over the last year we've seen our
harms numbers go down and those
infections go down we are now seeing in
the last four months and icon will see
that our presentation those patient
experience scores starting to come up
because there a different sense in the
nursing staff and those staff that are
non- nurses but have a lot to do with
that patient experience the dietary
folks the EVS folks facilities folks the
radiy folks that have interaction and
have a big impact on the patient so that
when that patient leaves they want to
come back to our hospital because of
have an
experience that answer your
question so so um yeah no that's I guess
we'll hear a little bit more from
basally working from the city manager's
report then to to kind of get a sense of
what has changed what kind of processes
are implemented now thank we look at
Best Practices we look at other other
hospitals in our local environment and
also we talk to our sister hospitals too
there's 50 some of those hospitals that
we can then share ideas throughout the
country to do what's best for our
patients okay
thanks mayy oh is there anyone
else okay uh mayor prot go ahead thank
you I just I didn't want to leave here
today with um um Miss LT you said
something earlier about about the NBC
story and how you felt like that landed
on your staff and I I understand feeling
protective of Staff very much and I
didn't want to leave here um without
saying this I think I hope that we walk
away here knowing
that what the NBC story was lifting up
wasn't a criticism on your Frontline
staff which I am sure are doing their
best under what they believe the rules
are what they believe the procedures are
that they have to follow uh when they
are having these interactions and I so I
don't want it to be walk away that there
was a criticism it is I did not receive
it as a criticism of your staff I
received it as a criticism of a much
larger system in place and I I think I
just also lastly want to say that I
understand that it's difficult to
receive criticism trust me I understand
how difficult it is to receive
criticism and sometimes you have to
Swift through a lot of noise to get to
the core of why people are really fust
at and right now there is a very
legitimate conversation for us to be had
about frankly the system we live in
which is for-profit Healthcare in this
country and that is having a very
serious and real impact on the people in
our community and that's the
conversation that I hope that we
continue to have in good faith because
you you are a good we want this is a
good and important partnership and we
want to make it better and stronger and
I hope that that is what we walk away
with here today
okay I think that's we agree with you by
the way thank
you okay John just want to say thank you
thank you for uh attending and
delivering the presentation today I want
to mention to council if there's any
additional questions data information
please Ray that to or relay that to the
city manager Eon will then uh get with
uh MMC and see about uh a future a work
session with some of those uh items but
again thank you uh I think we're we're
definitely all on the same page what we
want here in this community is the best
best health care that can be offered to
our residents and I know you're working
at it uh all the staff from front line
to everyone um and so continue and we
thank you and I know there's a lot of
Partnerships that you do in the
community just uh what was it a week or
two weeks ago uh sponsoring uh the
superintendent with his uh state of the
district address those type of things as
we talked is what we can do to better
this community so we can get better
health care so uh look forward to seeing
you again and again thank you for all
that you do well thank you so much for
having us we appreciate you thank
you so next we move move to item uh 3.3
uh Los cruus Innovation and Industrial
Park update and propos changes to the
industrial park overlaying Zone uh Sarah
Gonzalez and Elizabeth terer
all right good afternoon mayor and city
council my name is Elizabeth ters and
Sarah Gonzalez and I will be giving you
an update on the Las cruus Innovation
and Industrial
Park the
um innovation in L the industrial park
as I'll call it is 913 Acres of
city-owned property um this is different
than a lot of industrial parks in that
we have a lot more say on who we're
selling the land to and how it's being
sold uh so this comes out to 27 parcels
and I just want to reference from the
beginning because we'll bring it up a
few times um we'll say the northern part
of the park and the southern part of the
park so Northern is north of I 10 and
Southern is south of I 10
a lot of work has been done in the past
few years on the industrial park to try
to get us more competitive with um
potential with other industrial parks in
other areas of the state and the country
so in July of 2021 we adopted our master
plan for the industrial park in August
of 21 the overlay District was then
adopted uh in June of 22 we did the site
certification approval process so we now
have 48 7 Acres that are site certified
which is 13 Parcels this basically means
that these Parcels are shovel ready a
business can come in today and
potentially start building tomorrow and
then finally um just this past February
we started working on replatting the
northern part of the parcels uh the
northern part of the park isn't as isn't
shovel ready like the southern part so
we're starting to slowly work on what we
need to do to get it that
way uh so we've learned some lessons in
the past since 2021 when we adopted our
our master plan we're getting a lot of
looks at the industrial park but
unfortunately we are having a lot of
lost opportunities this means that these
are potential businesses we call them
projects that are going elsewhere that
look at our industrial park but then
they end up going elsewhere for various
reasons a lot of those reasons are
because we have gaps in infrastructure
which I'll go into um in more detail in
a minute and then we also uh have
learned that our overlay District that
we adopted needs some updates um with
projects that we have been working with
there are just tweaks here and there
that we would like to make which is what
Sarah will be going through with you
today uh so last fiscal year mavita the
msia valley economic development
Alliance um they compil they always
compile data but we we asked them to to
give us some information on our lost
opportunities so there were 54 qualified
prospects last fiscal year um 30 of
those were submitted to the industrial
park and 21 of the 30 provided enough
utility information to distinguish
infrastructure
needs so out of those 21 six could not
meet the electrical requirements uh five
could not meet the water seven could not
meet the Wastewater requirements and two
could not meet the the fiber capacity or
redundancy and then further information
said that five out of the 30 had
concerns about road infrastructure Andor
planned Road buildout Three concerned
about the lack of Road between parcels
i27 and i28 which I will talk about more
in a minute one had concerns about the
road conditions of the northern section
of the park and one had concerns about
the potential buildout of Alliance drive
to the front edge
road overall the um Industrial Park
could not meet or spark concerns over
the infrastructure needs of just over
43% of the projects subm submitted in
the
park uh these are two of the main areas
that we get a lot of interest in because
of the size of the parcels um and these
are four Parcels that don't have
infrastructure to the parcel lines um Mo
when we say shovel ready that means the
the infrastructure is there and it's
ready for buildout um these four Parcels
they're large Parcels um the i27 i28 are
right on I 10 so they're very um
businesses want to go there because of
their location and but they don't have
that infrastructure so to get the
infrastructure to I4 and I5 we're
looking at around $500,000 and estimates
are a little older so that's why I put
around and then i27 i28 is going to cost
about $2 million because it not only
needs the infrastructure but it needs
the road that goes all the way
through so what are we doing about it at
this point now that we know that we have
all these needs uh we have asked for
Congressional earmarks and we have
tentatively um gotten funds about $5
million from Congressman Vasquez and
then 1.2 million from uh Congressman
Luhan so those still have to go through
the process but you know we now have
we're looking at different opportunities
as to how those funds could be used we
are also looking we've been working with
the economic development Administration
Eda to apply for a grant for $2 million
that Grant is Project Specific so uh the
grant is for i27 i28 to finish that
infrastructure and then some potential
uses uses for the funds of course
there's the infrastructure gaps I talked
about uh the wastewater treatment
facility as we get more more businesses
to the industrial park we are going to
need uh a a bigger wastewater treatment
facility so planning and designing for
that so we can start figuring out
exactly how much money we're going to
need and start looking for where that
money is going to be coming from we also
as I I talked about earlier um we have
to start planning out the northern part
of the park the southern part of the
park is very well planned out and you
can see we have very few gaps that we
need to fill uh the part of the park
isn't the same so um with that I'm going
to turn it over to Sarah and she's going
to go into more detail about the overlay
district and the potential the proposed
changes good afternoon mayor mayor proem
and city council once again Sarah
Gonzalez for the record being that the
park has already been adopted with the
new plan for 3 years it's always a good
time to basically re-evaluate what it is
we need to change in our park to bring
in our businesses and what's sometimes
preventing businesses to come in the
process of doing some of the research I
came across an article or a guiding tool
that was provided by the United Nations
Industrial Development organization in
2017 they actually collaborated with
Michigan State University and created
some guidelines on what to use and how
to develop successful industrial parks
from that information I was able to take
out three different factors based on our
zonings that we currently have at the
park and what we're developing with to
outline what we may
or we may need to look at to see for
changes on the Northern site and that's
why we have it separated into two
sections if you look at the northern
side that's going to be our Aviation and
avionics so we're expecting to see more
research and development Parks you're
looking at Technologies and Sciences you
may see more office or Labs but you're
looking at more of a campus it may be
something that's collaborated with other
universities other
organizations we would expect to see the
infrastructure on build buildings to be
at a higher design you'd want more
landscaping and it's more for the actual
pedestrian you may be walking in between
buildings because you are collaborating
together so you're building more of a
knit community on that North
Side on the South Side however we have
manufacturing and warehousing a lot of
times you're going to see larger
structures 50,000 Square ft metal
buildings that are coming in they're not
going to have those elaborate features
on their buildings they're going to be
metal structures USI mules they come in
because they're used for distribution
they're used for storage product
warehousing or the actual facility is
making some type of product and so
you're looking at a different
demographic from the north side to the
South Side we're also looking at minimum
Landscaping so we need to start focusing
on that Southside as they're only
grading the area that they're going to
need for their buildings and probably
circulation of their truck traffic that
goes into their truck traffic we're not
looking more at The Pedestrian now
you're looking at 18 reelers semi
trucks coming coming in and they're
getting their circulation they're
getting their product and they're
getting out of the park that is what our
southide is designed as it also has our
agricultural we have value added value
added land for agricultural meaning
commercial businesses can come in you're
going to look at crops you're going to
look at producing they're also going to
need a way to actually transport their
materials so once again a lot of our
focus on the south side is going to be
truck traffic whereas the north side
we're looking at basically pedestrian
traffic so looking in those items items
we've come up with some minor amendments
that need to be adjusted just what we're
seeing as far as implementation now that
the plan has been in place businesses
have come in what are some of the issues
that we've run into what are some of the
needs that they may need in order to
come into our
Park we'll start with bicycle and auto
parking currently right now there is no
parking minimums required and so when
someone comes in or a developer asks
they're like what are your parking
requirements we tell them there aren't
any sometimes that can be very difficult
for developers to understand as to what
is their minimum and so that's where we
want to do a starting point we have our
land uses and our tables basically laid
out in our current code we can defer to
those as our primary but if someone
comes in and says we don't need as many
parking stalls we should be encouraging
that we should be leaving our natural
vegetation as it is we should not be
creating islands of parking throughout
our park but go to their needs but at
least give them some kind of guideline
to start off with based on their
building and their size so our
recommendation would be to adopt the
current standards with flexibility of
knowing we can do an administrative
modification of
changed next is Landscaping we currently
have a 10% requirement to be landscaped
on a property now this is only for the
portion that is graded once again we're
recommending not to grade anything
that's not going to be used or necessary
with that what we've seen is a lot of
plants come in and if the property gets
completely graded that's a lot of
vegetation a lot of irrigation to go in
and a lot of new trees we like to keep
the natural vegetation out there because
that limits the cost on that developer a
recommendation though would be is to the
applicant providing a landscaping plan
to the economic development department
so we can actually review this based on
acreage and land use we definitely want
to see that Northern site developed
where we have a lot more trees if we're
trying to create this campus looking
like area of research but your southide
may stay more of natural vegetation and
may not require As Much
landscaping we only have minor
modifications to some of our land is
currently in the park um because
Aerospace on the North side is so
incumbent we have over 350 Acres on that
north side that is Aerospace and
Industrial one of the things that I've
looked at is for mental health and for
stress throughout actual jobs it does
say to increase your indoor
entertainment or venues and so you may
want to create some small nodes Within
These research centers so somebody can
go and exercise or maybe go and do
something where you get your free time
to get away from your job so you're
trying to create these nodes in between
that you can separate work in space and
time in town it's very easy for anybody
to get in their car go to the gym for 30
minutes get back to work and still have
that function but there's no real Center
up there where anybody can go and so
those have to be some type of
entertainment to separate people as to
where they can separate work and get out
do something maybe it's team building
some of them say there's social
interaction it's just a place for people
to go we currently don't allow that in
our Northern side and so that would be
one of our recommendations to add
we also are looking at the wholesaling
and outside storage right now it is
currently permitted in our commercial
districts we are looking to remove that
the reason being is we only have 60
Acres of commercial land and a lot of it
is our leas land it's going to our
airport so we want to limit that to
where you do see where we've promoted
the airport by either hotels restaurants
retail some kind of function in which
people can go to manufacturing allows
for wholesaling and storage Aerospace
allows for wholesaling and storage so we
have that in multiple places that we
want to limit it going into our
commercial lastly we did have someone
come in that was inquiring about RV
parking and hookups this would not be
what you would consider an RV
park it's going to be essentially
there's an image here on the right hand
side they're actually parking stalls and
so I did some research in in Santa
Teresa they actually do have this as an
ancillary use at their L's gas station
there and what it is is somebody can
come in and basically use electrical
Water and Sewer facilities for the night
you get to reserve it online so that way
you can make your stop and continue on
your journey we have several people who
come into the airport and use different
events go through different um this is a
stopping point this would be something
great that could be added as an
ancillary use to our vehicle services so
maybe it is the loves maybe it's the
alsup that we're getting or maybe it's
another business that would be located
on the North side but this becomes that
stopping point we don't have this
currently in our code and that's why
we're bringing it forward as something
to to think about as to moving forward
can this be ancillary but not a primary
use next we go into our signage through
several of our reviews right now we're
noticing that signage has become
definitely one of those Economic
Development Spurs um we have seen loves
come in and remodel theirs and look for
new signage we have all subsets coming
in and also looking for theirs our
maximum sign height right now at the
industrial park is 12 ft high if you're
coming across the highway or the freeway
I 10 you're not going to see these signs
when you look for your commercial
businesses so to encourage that
development um part of the research that
was done through loves through allsups
they do analysis they call them vied
analysis and they provide basically a
superimposed view of where you would
place a sign as if you were coming up
the
freeway based on this image you can see
where a sign basically gets superimposed
so if you're coming up you get to see
where that may actually end up if that
sign right there is at 880 ft fet can
you only imagine what 12 ft would be you
would it's basically invisible to
someone who is traveling on that freeway
we all know that there is limited
signage available on our um New Mexico
Department of Transportation signs and
so in order to encourage sign
development we are recommending that at
least the frontage roads receive that 80
foot requirement because the analysis
have been done and been proven to show
that these are how the businesses are
going to thrive but we would recommend
that only 18 ft on our interior Lots
that's currently what we use in our
current standards for any of our local
or collector roadways we do an 18t
height so that way when you drive in you
still may be able to see the business a
lot of our businesses are about 25 to 30
ft into their property so some of the
height signages may actually just cover
over that vegetation that they've left
in natural vegetation and they haven't
cleared up any of that
land we also are looking at the sign
exceeding 50 fet in square footage so a
lot of times you're looking at what they
consider as a Cabinet this is going to
be a cabinet so if this was 50 Square
fet this is all that they could have
definitely based on when loves came
through their process you know over the
past couple months theirs was over
almost 1,200 square fet based on how
many businesses they were bringing in to
that one location and so you're
promoting people to get to come in our
recommendation would still be at only
450 because we do see that businesses
are going to probably bring someone in
with them but you may not need as much
of an as that I guess I say as much
square footage as necessary for some of
our gas stations are retailers you tend
to see the 450 is going to follow maybe
some of our business signs where
multiple businesses are going to come
together and want to do one Monument
sign because we do not permit pole signs
we do ask for a monument sign so it
actually makes the industrial park look
and feel in a different direction so
you're getting a more superimposed
sign lastly we would have um our maximum
directional sign is only at 4T High when
we are dealing with semi- TR traffic and
18 wheelers 4T high is not substant IAL
review they cannot see where their
directional arrows are going they do not
see um where they're supposed to
circulate on properties and so our
recommendation for those properties
would just to be at 6 feet it's 2 feet
higher but it gives them that view of
where they actually need to go on a
property so that way they can see if
there are ad signs if there are
directional signs of where they need to
go for their
services our last topic is going to be
sidewalks um this had become a
discussion prior so we did do some
research as far as different areas
within New Mexico and what their
industrial parks have Santa Teresa's
Park is B is primarily an industrial
manufacturing Zone in which they do not
have any sidewalks on any of their roads
and so they definitely have it more of
truck traffic related businesses they
are looking for who's coming in who's
processing and who's taking stuff
out when you look at Albuquerque we have
a totally different opposite opinion
everything highlighted in pink is
basically your sidewalks and so that
outlines essentially
all the parcels that are developed have
sidewalks anything leftover they do not
have sidewalks the reason they are built
this way though is it's a research
center in technology this is what we'd
expect to see from our North Side they
have a daycare service on Pro on site
there are technology services and
Sciences for the rest of the
park we then go to Roswell which does
have limited sidewalks the airport is
located on the southide the highlighted
pink areas are where sidewalks are so
they have several sidewalk apps that do
not necessarily connect to one another
but most of the parcels are built out
and a lot of that is just because their
park has left it to the owner as if they
would like to put it in or
not we go to Rio Rancho in Rio Rancho
the only actual paved area is their main
road going in so their arterior roadway
is what is actually paved and actually
has sidewalks the only reason that this
portion right here has a sidewalk is
because this is actually a trade school
everything else within here is some type
of manufacturing warehouse metal
structure industrial zone so they do not
put in
sidewalks we then move to Sunland Park
that does also have limited sidewalks
the portion I found interesting is the
sidewalks here that are installed a lot
of the actual employees are parking on
the sidewalk so their sidewalk is
fleshed with their pavement and
employees park on the sidewalk to avoid
the truck traffic that is actually
moving through the properties and so
they've eliminated still that
walkability by B basically parking on
that
sidewalk now goes into what we have in
the industrial
park we have the north side that
currently has five Parcels developed the
way that I've actually provided this
information is that each line has a
different color because that's a linear
foot in which we or the applicant would
have to actually
install all of these areas basically
come out to different linear footages
and this is to a part of the park that
has not yet been subdivided so we're
looking at just the Parcels right now
that currently have some typee of Road
Frontage we are currently going through
a process of where we are replatting the
parcels so that we can get some more
Road connection that's going to increase
the adittional sidewalk that we're going
to have to install into the
park on the south side we have 28
Parcels that are actually developed none
of them have any sidewalk as well and so
all of these Parcels have some type of
Road Frontage but there's no sidewalk
installed these are the linear feet as
approximations for for what basically
each one of those lines came out to and
so if we're looking at the North side
and there's over 25,000 linear feet of
sidewalk that has not been installed and
then you have to look at it as being
there's two sides of the road so we're
going to times that by two and we're
looking at a cost of 450 if you're
looking probably from the private side
but it's definitely larger when you're
looking at it from a city side because
we have to pay certain wages and so this
is if you're looking at a private
Development coming in and putting this
in and we're asking for six foot
sidewalks because we want want to meet
ada8 requirements no obstructions for
any lights or anything so there's no
impediments we're looking at the north
side of just it's $1.3 million to
install sidewalks on the North side on
the south side we had the same
occurrence to where we would be looking
at almost a million dollars just based
on what infrastructure is not there
now staff's recommendation is that the
north side install the sidewalks just
because we do see that as being a
different Center we see that as going to
be your search your walk ability
someone's driving to somewhere someone's
walking this would be the person who
maybe you take your bike up to the park
and you can actually leave it in your
office and you can ride between
buildings that's going to be an
opportunity on the south side because we
are dealing with so much more of that
semi- trffic you're looking at bigger
trucks and the impediments you we are
requesting that sidewalks not be
installed on that
southide that completes my presentation
and I stand for
questions all right thank you Sarah
anyone have any
questions councelor flus thank you Sarah
I just want to thank you I'm so glad
you're back so um this is very thorough
and um it's similar to how I think it
should be done so that's why it's so
great no I it makes a lot of sense in
terms of the type of businesses and you
know the everything so and so when it
comes to the sidewalks to the businesses
that would um would they be responsible
for for paying just the way developers
do uh the uh when they're building homes
who who who would absorb that cost would
that be the city or would it
be the business or the developer mayor
mayor protm councel floes currently
right now the way the code is written it
is up to the developer to install and so
unless a waiver is approved by City
Council for an applicant to come in and
not do sidewalks into a development that
is up to the city basically to say yes
or no to code does require every
developer just like any subdivision
would come in and install
sidewalks with that also being said
though there's also the provision that
if the sidewalks are now installed and
you have gaps we have to look at
maintenance as well as the cost because
once the sidewalk is installed then the
city is to maintain maintain it because
it is now part of our
RightWay okay so depending on how the
parcels are sold it may be a patchwork
of uh sidewalks no sidewalks Gap mayor
and cancer flus that is correct right
now we see sidewalk gaps because we do
have several Parcels out there already
developed and so that portion of those
Parcels would not be complete that would
be up to whether um essentially the city
would come in and have to do those
improvements thank you thank
you thank you Council anyone anyone
else
mlar just have a quick question um I
know we referenced Albuquerque and RI
Rancho and things like that but if we're
trying to draw in perhaps um
International um
connections are you considering how
industrial parks look over there um just
as a sort of a side um a couple years
ago I went to noal Leon and went in one
of their industrial parks and it was
very walkable actually there were a lot
of people who were walking to get food
walking to the our hotel was in the
industrial park so if there was a
consideration of looking at what
international customers might be
interested in to I that's just a side
note more so than anything else mayor
mayor proam council mcar that is
something we can look into I did not
research that as part of the research of
just knowing what we have in our
environment as far as when we look at
Landscaping the irrigation because of if
we want to install the sidewalks we
definitely need to be looking at the
landscap that's going along with those
sidewalks because we don't want it to be
where you're walking and it's just
natural vegetation we'd want to see the
tree canopy extended as
well may councilor flers I don't know if
this is appropriate so um but it looks
like there's someone in the audience
that can address the
international uh issue maybe Davin or
the gentleman in the blue
shirt is is it appropriate is it okay do
we need to vote on
it
no
oh okay no that's fine no that's fine
okay no that's fine thank you that's
right thank
you okay well thanks Sarah no just one
more question sorry Sarah thank you just
on your last Point regarding the
sidewalks on the South Side um we had
recently a request for some sort of
appeal from
loves um so are you sug like is the
recommendation that
we um that I'm assuming they're coming
back with that appeal that we say no I
think the conversation that I heard at
least from that last uh time we talked
about loves was that at least on part of
the in the inside of the park um that we
did want to see sidewalks I think that
we wanted to see the park developed so
that it met the needs of the people who
work out there who probably don't have
the luxury to come into downtown for
lunch during their lunch break because
it's so far away right and so the the
desire was to develop that um certainly
with an understanding that it's an
industrial park but that it also has
people there and so I'm just curious
about if I heard that right if if we're
sort of making that assumption about
loves and the requests that they had
made from us
earlier mayor mayor prot s and
counselors our main resource is to give
you more information to decide what's
going to be better developed for our
park and so we are providing
recommendations based on studies that
have been provided the actual traffic
that works through there um we're also
currently working with the business
owners um we had started reaching out to
them to see if the sidewalk is something
that they wanted to see in the park
second of all is it something that
they'd be willing to install if the city
were to maintain it so that we'd
understand what kind of cost we'd be
looking at because of course if it
doesn't get installed now then that does
come down to the city installing it and
the cost coming down to the city and so
those have to be those recommendations
we're looking at the park from a design
of the north side and the South Park are
two different ideas as to what's being
developed but overall it's if we have
all this information what do we want to
see as a city we can understand in
basically installing that on that north
side because you will have that walkable
space where you are walking to something
not necessarily am I going to and
personally this would be me is am I
going to walk across the highway am I
going to stay on the Southside it
depends on how far yes people want to
walk what's going to be the services
provided there for them to walk on the
south side we only have a limited amount
of commercial and that's what I think
changes the actual
property based on our zoning map these
are our commercial Parcels right here
everything else is considered Industrial
in some point and so most of our
commercial is going to be to that North
Side so this may still end up being that
heavy truck traffic that's going through
there and speaking with one of the
actual businesses owner out owners out
there they actually refer to not having
sidewalks they would rather have an
actual stoplight on the corners due to
the truck traffic right now and so we're
learning a little bit more I think from
our business owners who have actually
been in the facility and had to work out
there to see what their needs are and so
those may be some of the infrastructure
needs that we need to start looking at
that's helpful thank you Sarah I
appreciate
that councilor matis U just uh curiosity
the the money that we're going to be
spending for for sidewalks that will be
from the companies that come in and and
the reason I I bring this up is you
mentioned water Wastewater gaps
electrical gaps would it be better to
concentrate on those gaps and reading
the New Mexico border Inc I was down in
Santa Teresa for eight and a half years
I noticed Grants New Mexico is getting a
7 million square foot manufacturing
company I noticed Albuquerque and real
Rancho and Roswell are getting huge U
manufacturing companies is there a
possibility that if we provide and fix
the gaps for water Wastewater electrical
and build the uh the the platforms the
foundations for a factory to go up right
away would would would that be
advantageous to actually recruit more
businesses to the to the industrial
park mayor councelor matis uh yes so the
our Focus has actually been on those
infrastructure gaps and so the earmarks
the Congressional earmarks if they come
through or if we get the Eda grant that
is where we would like to use the funds
because that is what's going to actually
bring the business in the the overlay
zone is for when they actually decide to
locate here and to start working on
their facility and it's going to be
whether these businesses that are coming
in have to build those sidewalks or not
or whether we feel they need to so
that'll the that is there kind of two
different conversations it's getting
them here which is the infrastructure
gaps and then once they're here what do
we want to require that they they have
to put in when they locate here okay
thank
you okay thank you I don't know if
councelor Karen are you still with us or
did you have any questions or comment
she hung up
waiting
waiting okay she's gone okay all right
well thanks I agree with uh staff's
recommendations that uh the sidewalks be
used on one side and uh and then I think
it it varies depending on the businesses
on on what's coming in and how it's
going to be used but thank you for the
presentation
that concludes our items for
today motion to adjourn second by
floes this is on the motion to adjourn
the work session councelor McClair yes
councelor matis yes councelor Graham yes
councelor Karan is absent councelor
flutes yes thank you councelor bomo yes
and mayor yes
just e