[Music]
okay good afternoon everyone welcome to
the work session of las cruces city
council today is monday september 12
20 22.
um before we begin i'm going to ask you
rise for the pledge of allegiance as
well as a brief moment of silence
followed by that
for those who perished during 9 11 as
well as the
members of the public safety police and
fire
who lost their lives hiding in the twin
towers as well as the pentagon in flight
93.
please join me in the pledge
the united states of america
to the republic for which it stands
under god indivisible with liberty and
justice
okay as we usually start off this
introduction of our pets of the week and
jennifer martinez from our
communications office will introduce
them
good afternoon mayor and council i'm
jennifer martinez with the city's
communications office
and as usual i will begin introducing
you to our cat of the week and i will
begin with paintbrush
paintbrush is a little shy to start but
once you give them a chance to warm up
warm up look out sweetness this guy
loves to be pet and will rub up against
you asking for pets he promises to be a
great companion if you just give him a
little bit of time
and then every day is tongue out tuesday
for this guy devin is a happy-go-lucky
boy who's been at the shelter for almost
an entire year so let's work extra hard
this week to get the word out and help
get this guy a forever home
if you have room in your home in your
heart please come down to the center to
visit him
or paintbrush best friends national
adoption weekend is september 16th
through the 18th there is no better time
to bring paintbrush or devin home there
is also a weekend event at petsmart it
takes place from 11 a.m to 2 p.m this
saturday thank you mayor okay thank you
jennifer
and now we're going to have our jobs of
the week
and looks like we're a new
person who's going to be introduced as
amanda tapia
he's going to be from the new mexico
workforce connections
good afternoon my name is amanda tapia
and it is a pleasure to be here to talk
about the jobs of the
week the city of las cruces has an
animal control officer position
available
saputo cheese currently has a packaging
operator position available
there is a facility maintenance
technician with the new mexico state
university
dearson charities also has a resident
monitor position available
and amador health center has a medical
assistant position available
great thank you
some notes for the month of september
today the 12th and tuesday september
13th from 9 00 am until 2 pm early
childhood development job fair is being
held at new mexico workforce connection
office 226 south alameda boulevard
wednesday the 14th
from 9 00 to 11 a.m and then again 1 30
to 3 p.m there will be an employer
connection event as well at
new mexico workforce connection office
for more information on
the positions opening and events please
reach out to new mexico workforce
connections 575-524-6250
at our offices on south alameda or by
visiting www.employnm.com
thank you okay very good very good
amanda thanks for
did a lot better job than chris so
i'm just kidding i'm just messing with
you
okay so we have four items on the agenda
first one being the
redistricting
concept maps and it looks like
christine rivera our city clerk is going
to be presenting
and if you're wondering who the lady is
to the left that's teresa
um good afternoon mayor city council i'm
christine rivera c clarke and today i
have for you the much anticipated
redistricting
so i'm going to go through a little
background and then i'm going to turn it
over to research and polling i have
brittany poss here with me who's going
to go over the concept maps and then we
also have michael sharp on the line in
case you have any additional questions
so a little background on why we do
redistricting it is part of our charter
and the charter states that we will have
a periodic review of the boundaries of
the districts and that each council
district shall contain as nearly as
possible substantially the same
population based upon the most recent
federal census
so how we began this process is we
created the redistricting ad hoc
committee which was approved on
september 7th and that was resolution
22-031
and then we contracted with research and
polling in february of 2022
i had an initial meeting with them and
then we decided to go ahead and meet
with our committee
so i'd like to actually
thank our committee they were they did a
fantastic job it was a very difficult
job and so i really want to thank them
and i want to point some of them out who
are here in the audience
estella hernandez
she was our district 1 representative
rosemarie sanchez was our district two
terry cook district three
lydia hammond district four she was also
our chair so she kept us in line
francis lerner district five
michael harris district six who was also
our vice chair
and then dr bobby green who was our at
large position
so
our redistricting ad hoc committee began
meeting in april april 13th to be exact
and they met about every two weeks
except for the month of june we only met
once because they wanted to get public
comment
and our last meeting was august 3rd at
this point they reviewed um it was at
least 10 when i looked back i think it
was about 12 they reviewed 12 concept
maps and narrowed it down to four which
are going to be presented to you today
so we did have public comments
we had it via
email we had a special email set up so
that people could
email our comments regarding
redistricting of course the meetings
were open to the public so we did have
in-person
comments
we also had our communications office
set up a wedge a web page which was on
the front page of the
city website
as well as we had a couple news releases
go out asking for a public comment
related to that
so um as i mentioned earlier we did have
four main concept maps that the
committee wanted us to bring to you
today and they did rank them for you
so as you can see the least favorite was
concept map b
and then the
favorite was concept k
and britney will get more into those
concept maps a little later in the
presentation
so now i'm going to actually turn it
over to brittany poss who is going to go
over some
redistricting principles with you and
then go over the concept maps
thank you madam city clerk good morning
members of the council mr mayor mr
manager i'm so so excited to be here um
and thank you to madam clerk she has
shepherded this process and done such an
incredible job
it's been really easy on us as
contractors and and i think the
committee has done some really great
work and i'm i'm so excited this morning
to hear your feedback on some of the
work that they've done um what i'd like
to do today um just by way of
introduction my name is brittany poss
i'm the director of data and analytics
at research and polling and we provide
the professional services for
redistricting for
cities like las cruces for counties and
school boards and we also redistricted
the state
and have the last like 40 years so we we
have a little bit of experience doing
redistricting
so today
i want to talk just a little bit about
the principles of redistricting to sort
of outline you know what the
requirements are and sort of what the
the things that the committee had to
think through and that you'll now be
required to think through
look at the actual census data for las
cruces to sort of see what the score is
and and you know what the sort of
pressures are in terms of how we drew
the lines and then go over those four
maps that have been recommended to you
by your redistricting committee so as
the madam clerk said that redistricting
redistricting is a constitutional
requirement after the census completes
their account and as you know in 2020
the census went around
and tried to count everybody living in
the city of las cruces so that includes
adults children students immigrants
citizens non-citizens
when we use census data for
redistricting we're using the total
population of the city of las cruces
um and then we use those data to redraw
the district boundaries and this really
comes down to the idea of one person one
vote and equal representation so if
somebody you know in a district on the
east mesa is in a district with a lot of
people they're getting less
representation than somebody in the
university area who's in a district with
fewer people right so we we really take
this opportunity to equalize the
districts but this is also a really sort
of important critical juncture that
happens every 10 years where you get the
opportunity to sort of rethink existing
boundaries is this still working for the
city you know is there something we can
do with the population that lives here
today uh that would be more advantageous
for the community so it's a really
exciting time i love redistricting i
think it's great i'm so excited to be
here talking to you about it there are
some uh
major principles to keep in mind as
you're drawing boundaries and
considering maps these are equal
population minority voting rights
contiguity compactness and communities
of interest and i'll talk really briefly
about each one of these so in terms of
equal population again sort of the
thrust of redistricting is really about
one person one vote so we want to make
sure that these districts are equal
what does equal mean that's a great
question that i ask myself
so we start with ideal population and
the way we get this is some really fancy
math just kidding it's really easy
divide the total city population by the
number of districts which as you know is
six and that gets us the perfect sort of
ideal population for each district then
as madam city clerk said the charter as
well as state law allows districts to be
substantially equal so districts don't
have to be perfectly equal and according
to state law for cities like las cruces
that means that there's an allowable
population deviation of plus or minus
five percent around that ideal district
population and that flexibility gives us
the opportunity to
um you know
do satisfy other goals of redistricting
like minority voting rights which i'll
talk about in a second or keeping
communities of interest together
speaking of minority voting rights this
is always sort of an awkward term to use
especially in new mexico especially in
las cruces because communities of color
are not the minority but this is legal
terminology that comes out of the voting
rights act and then is applied to
redistricting and the idea is really
that when drawing districts you want to
be careful not to dilute the voting
strength of communities of color you
draw districts that allow communities of
color the opportunity to elect a
candidate of their choice and most often
this means you want to watch out for
packing or cracking packing is when you
concentrate as much of a community of
color into a single district as possible
to minimize their influence in any other
districts
and cracking is when you sort of do the
opposite you try to take a community of
color into as many districts as you can
in order to minimize that community's
influence in any one given district so
we'll look out for that sort of packing
and cracking
there is a caveat to this this is an
image of a north carolina congressional
district in 1991 and this is right this
is a silly looking congressional
district and basically what's happening
is it's following an interstate picking
up all of the black communities that
live along the interstate and the
supreme court said that this is racial
gerrymandering when you use race as the
predominant factor in redistricting
subordinating the other principles of
redistricting like in this case
compactness
that's a racial gerrymandering you want
to watch out for that so it's a little
bit of a fine line to walk but i think
it's an important thing to consider
next is contiguity and this is just the
idea that all parts of the district are
connected so you can see on the left
this a b and c are contiguous districts
on the right they're not contiguous
because there's an island of population
in district a that's not connected to
the rest of district a it's pretty
self-explanatory
um
this is impacted by city boundaries so
as you know um district two in the
university area has sort of just a
little bit of point contiguity
there and i can show you when we look at
the maps but there's just sort of an
island of population around centennial
high school that's connected to
district two and you know that's just
about city boundaries and so that's not
impacted by any sort of contiguity rules
then compactness is really important so
we looked at that north carolina
district that is a very non-compact
district
it's really about how a district is
distributed around its center does it
look like a circle or a square or does
it look like a pencil or a snake or like
this texas congressional district in
1991 that's just sort of jutting around
everywhere so you want to look for
districts that are sort of tightly
clustered around its center point there
are sort of mathematical measures of
this but we all know what shapes look
like you sort of know it when you see it
again this can be impacted by municipal
boundaries as you know there's sort of
road contiguity in district 4 along i-10
out into the west mesa area where the
airport is and that's just city
boundaries so that that district is
always going to look a little less
compact and that's okay
and then finally
we want to think about communities of
interest and this is identifying
groups or areas with shared
characteristics like language history
lived experiences and working to draw
districts that keep those communities of
interest together
we heard a lot during the committee
process
from the public about the importance of
the mesquite historic district and the
alameda depot neighborhood and the
importance of keeping those in one
district and that guided some of the
committee's thinking
also we heard about um you know east of
i-25 and north of loman and that sort of
sonoma ranch area needing to stay
together as a community of interest
so this is definitely something that the
committee was very sensitive to heard a
lot of public input on
and it's it's an important sort of
principle of redistricting
um other things you can consider as you
draw boundaries are uh you know keeping
the core of existing districts intact
uh to ease voter confusion or
considering the residence of incumbents
things like that
just really briefly there's often
tension among these principles there is
no such thing as a perfect map you know
sometimes honoring a community of
interest may affect how compact a
district is or ensuring that you know
we're meeting minority voting rights
may mean larger population deviations
across districts so it's about following
the legal rules
but prioritizing the principles to
create the districts that are best for
las cruces so
with all that said let's move on to the
fun part which is the actual data for
the city of las cruces so according to
the 2020 census the population of las
cruces is a little over 111 000 folks
and you can see the percent change by
decade in the the
sort of right three columns of this
slide
um and you can see that you know while
las cruces grew by about 14 over the
last decade that's less than half of the
growth that it saw in the previous
decade from 2000 to 2010 but las cruces
was one of the faster growing areas in
the state so the state as a whole grew
by 2.8 over the decade which is the
lowest rate of growth in new mexico's
history so
you know las cruces is sort of a winner
on that score
but it still is less than you've seen
other decades
and
you know as you might imagine as you i'm
sure intuit
this growth is not evenly distributed
across the city right there are places
that grew a lot faster like the east
mesa so you can see districts five and
six uh district five grew at almost
fifty percent over the last decade uh
district six uh by more than 25 percent
uh and then on the east side of i sorry
the west side of i-25 there was a lot
less growth and some uh districts
actually lost population uh so you can
see district two the university area
grew a little bit but didn't keep pace
with the city as a whole
district four also grew a little bit
but districts one and three sort of the
core sort of downtown historic areas
actually lost population over the decade
and so that impacts sort of what we have
to do in terms of adjusting the
boundaries for equal population
this is another look at this and here
we're looking at the i the deviation
from the ideal population and you'll
remember that's the total city
population divided by six and we're
allowed that flexibility of plus or
minus five percent and you can see that
all six of the districts are outside of
that allowable deviation so all of the
districts are either going to have to
grow and gain some population or shrink
and lose population and of course it's
districts five and six that are going to
need to shrink and lose population so at
least one west side district is going to
have to cross i-25 to pick up that
population and then the other districts
on the west side of 25 will need to grow
and gain population
so this is a look at the race and
ethnicity data for the city of las
cruces here we're moving from looking at
total population to looking at adult
population because for redistricting
we're mostly looking at race and
ethnicity data around sort of minority
voting rights in the vra so we're
looking at voting age population so
adult population
the hispanic percentage in the city was
56 percent
black 2.3 asian 1.9 native 0.9 and white
36.5
and again not evenly distributed across
the districts currently five of the six
districts are majority hispanic um and
district six is still majority minority
um
but it's uh
yeah and and so you know the other
racial and ethnic groups don't meet the
sort of
stringent legal requirements of the vra
to have special districts drawn for them
but it is important to sort of know
where folks are distributed across the
city so you can see the hispanic the
black the api the native american and
white percentages in each
district
and um with that so i'm happy to stop
and take questions about sort of the
principles or the data or um happy to
also just jump into looking at the maps
mr mayor
thank you brittany that was excellent i
think you i think the committee did an
excellent job i know it's a challenging
task every 10 years but it looks good
so on the maps the stars represent i
presume where the each respective
counselor lives that's correct yes okay
councilor flores
thank you mr mayor and thank you so much
miss vra
thank you so much for that explanation
as to why the census is so important and
to have that one person one vote
represented
in our
in our polling excuse me on the day of
elections
but
how many
people
did you did you take any data on
the number of people that showed up from
their respective districts to
participate in the input
by those people do you have that data
mayor councillor florida's it was
majority the historic
districts alameda and mesquite those
were the ones that showed up primarily
and
did you believe that there was a fair
representation of those who participated
in that a city-wide district-wide
probably not you're making a face
you're smiling you're counselor i would
say probably not we did not get a whole
lot of feedback we did put out
news releases we had a website we had a
email address and we did not get very
much feedback
okay thank you so much and
insofar as the
the breakdown of white hispanic
a lot of people i know
because i'm originally from texas but
grew up in california
i know that in in new mexico a lot of
hispanics consider themselves white
and
a lot of whites consider themselves
white
so
do we
have anything that delineates the
difference between a hispanic white
and a white white
mr mayor and counselor foreign
so we use this census categories and we
when we look at the white population we
pull out anybody that also said they
were hispanic
so we're uh we call this category
non-hispanic white
um and then the hispanic uh category is
anybody who said they were hispanic okay
so they checked so
but you don't
oh i see so there were
non-hispanic whites
so then where do you put
so so where do you put the hispanic i
mean how do you differentiate or in
terms of the
the ethnicity breakdown sure so anyone
who chose hispanic on their census form
is in the hispanic category
yes
so that includes you know anybody that
shows uh hispanic and black or hispanic
and white
so any hispanic at all and then all of
the other uh racial groups don't include
hispanics in them yes i see thank you
very much thank you thank you mr mayor
so i'm interested councillor beta yes
thank you thank you very much for this
uh one
piece of information that i found very
useful as i was being educated and i
thought it would be important for you to
maybe clarify for the public when we
look at these maps we are seeing
precinct numbers
and kind of um
in my district
especially and given these maps
you can see how some areas are included
and not and it may not necessarily make
sense but it is due to these precincts
having to be kept together so i was
wondering if you could just explain that
for us yes mr mayor and and counselor
beta thank you so much for that
opportunity um yes so um state law
require doesn't require uh suggests that
local governments uh don't split
precincts
and that just sort of makes it easier
for voters it makes it easier for city
and county clerks to run elections and
so we're sort of constrained by where
those precinct boundaries are and so
there are places where
um you know we wish we could hold the
boundary all the way down maine for
example but because of how the precincts
are built um there might be a little jag
onto a side street
so yes thank you thank you thank you
mayor
so i was gonna say i was interested to
see if the counselors would like to
comment i mean how you feel about the
districts that
uh
you know i know it's a challenge um i'm
trying to think you know one point or
another in my 30 some odd years i've
walked this whole city and i'm trying to
kind of place them together and it looks
good i know district one's changed quite
a bit two not that much three it's
changed four has changed so i mean it
just
a big part
oh okay
okay so you want to go to presentation
okay i'd be happy to do that mr mayor
thank you
um so
what you're seeing now uh is the first
of the four concepts that were
recommended to you by the committee uh
this is actually just worked out that
alphabetically is sort of in descending
order of favorability
so this is sort of the least favorite of
the four that were sent to you
this is concept b
and this is a really sort of a
minimal change in that it really is
moving boundaries mostly to account for
those population shifts that we talked
about earlier um and as we talked about
at least one district from west of i-25
is going to have to cross east of 25 to
pick up that excess population under
concept b it happens in two places
district one
crosses 25 north of the sandhill arroyo
to rincon street
into district five and then
sort of on the south end of town
district two crosses um
i-25 and telshore south of loman
to pick up that excess population from
district six and i'm actually going to
turn on the current districts just so
you can sort of see where the changes
are a little bit easier so the current
districts are this sort of green and
white
um check
so you can see where the changes are
so i'll just go really quickly one by
one district one
as it crosses i-25 to take that excess
population just moves totally sort of
north and east it stays
south of the sand hill arroyo stays west
of i-25
and stays north of basically spruce and
chestnut here
district 2 is still primarily a
university district
staying mostly south of missouri
district 3 needs to come in here and
cross boots to
to farney
to pick up some excess population for
district three
and district three stays totally south
south of telstra so you um under current
districts district three comes all the
way out almost to the city limits
between missouri and hill rise this
keeps district three totally
west of telshur
and then it's district two that's sort
of pushing north
district four looks pretty similar to
the way it does today except that it's
this is the one that we're trying to
sort of keep along maine
but we're sort of contending with some
of those precinct issues
but district four does not cross main uh
in the east and so this is concept b
so concepts
h1 is the next and this was the sort of
third favorite of the committee
according to the rankings
um
oops
sorry about that again i'm going to put
on the current districts so you can see
where the changes are so this takes a
different approach to picking up that
excess population from the east mesa
district 3 actually comes
all the way to gas line road
through sonoma ranch
along this is a big arroyo here
the southern boundary of district 3
stays pretty similar to the way it is
today at least on the east side
that's a little too much population for
district 6 to lose and district 5 still
needs to
shed a little bit of population so
district 6 actually crosses i-70 under
concept h1
um to this is
central
and uh
and mesa drive up in here in the east
mesa
um this is also sort of a different
configuration of districts one and four
so where under current districts
district four is sort of on the west and
district one is sort of on the east this
is more of a like horizontal orientation
where district four takes the northern
part and district one takes the southern
part so district one does not cross
maine
uh in the north and sort of jogs along
like picacho
and amador here in the north so that
becomes the boundary between district
four and district one and then district
four pushes all the way up to i-25 here
in the north and then district one
needed a little additional population so
it actually comes down and takes messiah
park
here in the west from district two so
district two ends up needing to cross
missouri
and pick up a little excess population
here south of bellama between trivets
and solano
and then also continues to cross
i-25 as it does today but moves a little
further north of missouri
taking that piece of district three that
under current districts crosses telshore
but under h1 district 2 picks that up
so that's concept h1
and then concept j which was actually
drawn by a member of the committee
is yet another way to sort of think
about districts crossing i-25 so this
keeps district 3 rather than going all
the way to gas line keeps it west of
north road runner parkway
and then
going sort of all the way to the city
limits south of lowman
this is a really similar district 2 to
current districts it just goes a little
bit north to pick up some more of that
population that it needed but it picks
it up on the
east side of the city
the the southern and
western boundary of district 2 is
unchanged
district 1 and district 4 again have
that sort of vertical orientation where
district 4 is in the west and actually
district 4 under concept j looks exactly
the same as under concept b it stays
totally west of maine
where we can because of the precinct
issues and then district one looks
pretty similar to the way it is today
but it comes um even further north and
and follows i-25 it also takes
the sort of northern part of district 3
that was north of spruce
and west of walnut from the current
district 3.
so this is
another way to sort of think about the
districts concept j
and then finally concept k which was the
committee's number one pick
we see the crossing over i-25 looks a
lot more similar to concept b
where it's coming from both the north
and the south but this time we have that
horizontal orientation of district one
and four but it moves so far north and
east that actually district one ends up
coming and picking up the west mesa and
the airport area
so here district four is taking that
piece that we saw district one take
under concept b between the sandhill
arroyo and rincon
and then we see district 3
moving
sort of north and east
but it doesn't cross loman
the southern boundary here is missouri
district two so then district two this
is different rather than taking
population from the east side of town
takes population on the west side and so
it crosses
crosses avenida de macia uh all the way
up to this is a amador
so it's sort of rather than going up on
the east side to pick up population it
goes up on the west side
uh under concept k
and then you know we see district one
sort of coming through that you know
historic middle of town and then out
onto the west mesa and then district
four
retains may
mayfield high school
but stays mostly north of picacho and
then
north of maine
so mr mayor those are the four concepts
that the committee is suggesting to you
okay
so counselor bin cuomo councillor abetta
oh and
council flores all right
thanks mayor
um thank you so much i
see the enthusiasm in your face about
this and i really it makes me feel
really um confident in this process so
thank you and to members of the
committee as well i really want to thank
them for all their work
um
oh gosh where do i start okay um
we'll just start with this one the
committee's favorite
happens to be my least favorite
um i'm curious about like in your
professional experience um
district 4 is is in brand new district
the way i look at it right the way that
i have come to know and walk and build
relationships with people in district
four
this gives district four an entirely new
identity i'm curious about in terms of
the principles where
that sort of lies is it like
the sacrificial lamb in order to ensure
um communities of interesting together
i'm just curious about your analysis on
this map absolutely and i i think you're
right i think that a huge chunk of this
is new population for district four um
it does keep you in the district somehow
that's kind of it though right
um but you know the the idea of sort of
keeping the cores of existing districts
intact is definitely something that we
talk about in redistricting as you know
sort of
not um changing districts a whole lot so
that voters don't get confused and so
that you know it's exactly what you're
talking about so that this sort of
district that's been together a long
time stays together but that is not a
requirement of redistricting that's just
sort of something that you can think
about if you um if you want to and um
you know based on the feedback that the
committee got and the discussions that
they had you know they obviously thought
this was a good option for
the city
um you know even though it does sort of
violate that core of existing district
principle
um
oh let me pull up my notes here do you
have
data on the
four maps on how many are now hispanic
majority yes
um so all of them except
one
keep five hispanic majority
concept k michael i don't know if you
have this on the top of your head
oh hey brittany uh and council and mayor
um
this is michael sharpe with researcher
bullying uh i can
i'm sorry brady i don't really have that
off the top of my head
but i can
i can find it
i think we have so okay so with
the
four plans
adopted uh put forth by the committee
uh concepts b had four
adult hispanic districts
h
one i don't let's see h one i don't have
that number in front of me
uh j had five and k had four h1 also has
five
okay
so b and k have four and h and j have
five excuse me brittany can can i get
the gentleman's name one more time
please i'm sorry this is michael sharp
from research
he's he's the vice president and he was
at more meetings than i was so we
thought it would be good to have him in
the room okay thank you mike i'm sorry
no no problem
i forgot to flip up the little lens
cover so here i am
can you just repeat that for
the hispanic majority then two of the
new maps so the current map has five
districts that are majority hispanic
that's right right two of the new maps k
and b
loses one right
and then h1 and j
remain at five that's right and all
plans um have all districts as majority
minority okay is
k and b having four is that new to the
city would that be the first time in a
long time that that happens or
i don't know michael um do you remember
historically
uh let's see if i can pull up
from 10 years ago
let's see
so 10 years ago on your current when the
current your current districts were
adopted
um
there at the time they were adopted
there were four
uh his adult hispanic districts i
probably means that my guess would be
the district five 5
10 years ago was less than 50 adult
hispanic
and
and now just i don't want to misstate
myself but i'll double check it before i
say anything
and
now district 5 is at 56
adult hispanics so district 5 10 years
ago is not adult hispanic but it is
today
so there were four ten years ago five uh
today
okay that's helpful moving forward let's
say k and b move forward
what is
sort of the
consequence of losing one additional
district that's hispanic majority in a
city that is hispanic majority
absolutely um so when it comes to actual
consequences from the voting rights act
um
there are some very sort of stringent
requirements there's three prongs
they're called jingles factors which
always sounds really weird to me
but it's really about um you know does
so one of the factors is does the
hispanic population vote as a cohesive
block and then does the white population
vote in a cohesive block against the
hispanic candidate and so we don't
actually see a lot of that happening in
las cruces
and so you probably wouldn't run into
any vra problems but it is something to
consider in terms of communities of
interest if if that's something that you
um
that's important to you and um you know
we don't see really evidence of packing
or cracking in this scenario it doesn't
um you know there there aren't lines
that are drawn that are sort of um seem
really race-based where it's like trying
to keep all of the hispanic
neighborhoods together and it's kind of
impossible to do in las cruces anyway
because you know hispanic folks live all
over the place so um i don't think
you're gonna run into any trouble
but it definitely is something you can
prioritize
okay thank you that's super helpful um
maybe just my last question um it's so
funny i would say that
my favorite map was b
so
a little bit opposite of the committee
can you talk about perhaps i imagine the
map be though was a a map where
communities of interest spoke against um
simply just because of like the
downtownish area i'm curious to hear
from you
the feedback on map b from the community
sure and um you know if any of the
members of the committee are interested
in in speaking on that i am happy to
yield the floor um i can show you so
this is concept b
and we actually developed sort of a
layer that includes the the alameda
depot and the mesquite historic district
that we sort of heard a lot about and so
this right here
um
west of maine this is the alameda depot
neighborhood according to the members of
the public that talked about it this is
was the boundaries they talked about and
then the mesquite historic district um
is over here on the east side of of
maine
um and so i'm not sure if in terms of
sort of as a function of
taking public comment if having these in
two separate districts was part of the
issue
uh with concept b i um
yeah i think maybe the committee members
would be better able to speak to that
and actually that's not true i was just
looking at my notes from when i was
prepping for today j was my favorite
actually um
can you show us this similar map with
jay with this overlay that you have in
this one absolutely
counselor so j was your favorite not be
yeah okay
but easy to remember i guess which one
were my top two
so
this
is uh concept j and so alameda depot is
whole in district four under concept j
and then actually the messiah or sorry
the mesquite historic district is split
between district one and district three
um sort of the piece
where the current incumbent in district
three lives stays with district three
and the rest of it goes in district one
under concept j interesting so the so
these communities of interest would now
be represented by three people instead
of just one that's right and you know we
we sort of hear different uh thoughts on
that uh because you know sometimes
uh communities of interest want to have
more than one representative and um you
know we heard that a lot actually from
the tribes and pueblos like um really
likes to be in two separate um you know
legislative districts
but other times you know folks in those
communities want to stay together
so it really it sort of depends on the
community that's really interesting i
mean honestly as a community organizer
who's been on that side longer than i've
been on this side
when i think about building power when i
think about wanting to pass something
meaningful
i think about
how you do that the easiest and you do
that when you have three representatives
um
on this council you need four votes to
get something passed right and so that's
that's interesting feedback i would love
to hear from the committee or members of
the community
how they see this differently
because when i look at this map
it makes the most sense to me in terms
of
the growth where the growth has been in
terms of
keeping
i mean i think
they're all going to change right we're
going to have to change the community
has grown in
very specific areas and so
um
and i i do apologize if i'm not looking
at the districts on the other side of 25
and just focusing on this side
mostly but
when i do that jay makes the most sense
to me so i'll pass it to you all mayor
thank you
and thank you so much for the
information
okay thank you councillor beta
thank you mayor
and thank you as
i was looking at these maps as well
j and b also stood out
for a few reasons
but i do want to talk about the public
comments and how we've seen
really great organization i think in
some specific communities which i think
is wonderful but the reverse side for
other districts is that um
you know they don't necessarily get the
same voice and it can come out in
different ways
there was a statistic brought to me
today
that
you know the district front one these
historic areas they have
22 public
art pieces from our community the rest
of the city only has 22. so five other
districts share 22. and so that's
because we have really great activism
from this one district which is
fantastic but what has it done to the
rest of the community and so that's kind
of the framework that i look at with
for my district which
does need growth in some ways and so i
want to make sure that i'm looking at
that lens as well as what's beneficial
for the city as a whole
and that's one of the reasons why i do
favor concept j and concept b
it keeps a lot of those core areas
one thing that i found and then when i
talk to with different community members
is schools often become hub centers of
community when kids are going to places
so gathering more
um i guess territory up in the hill rise
zone
where there's school there's families
there's neighbors they're already
connected together that makes a lot of
sense and also coincides to what a lot
of these individuals are doing i do have
to comment that i believe it's precinct
103 should be adjusted at some point on
that level because there are obvious
issues with how it's drawn that kind of
separates out
a little bit
of that community from being included in
some of these areas
and then with another one one of the
only i think it's on concept
i'm looking
concept h
one of the only areas that i have a
really strong i would say
neighborhood core identity is that of
macia park
and it is something that is very much
used to being around the university it's
a lot of people that are
worked there it's part of that fabric so
that would be getting shifted out
which does mean that district one will
now have two very very strong community
identity spots which can be really great
however
it will divide that attention so thank
you
so your your negative one would be h or
the one you wouldn't be so supportive of
the ones that i
am supportive on is j and b
okay
councilor flores
uh thank you mr mayor and thank you
again and and thank you michael sharp
for um answering some of the questions
um i i don't know it by number but
i have this question about
the area by the airport
which is currently
district 4.
what is the population there i know we
have businesses out there we have the
airport but what is the population there
give me just one second i can get it for
you
12 or 13 residents i think
13 13 people right
so we have just a handful literally a
handful of residents there
now um in the
map that has
a district 1
covering that area
and then having district 4 move
i was going to say
that one yeah so does that make the
population more equitable or
and because we are
dominant predominantly hispanic here um
you can look at our city council
um
would um does that make it
what are the respective populations of
the districts do you have that in front
of you
under this proposed map
um i
will pull that up but i can tell you
that 13 people aren't going to make that
big of a difference no but my question
goes to how impacted district 1 is
got you so um under concept k which is
this one district one the total
population is um
561 which actually is a deviation from
the ideal population of three people so
it's actually a very
sort of middling population district and
which is okay and which is the highest
population which district has the
highest five or six
um under concept k after we've moved the
boundaries uh district four ends up at
the highest end of the deviation so with
the most people
in it
under concept and what um
and what is
what is the population in district five
uh so
under in this map district five is uh 17
780 so it's actually on the low end of
the deviation
district 5 under this plan
and what about district 6
district 6 is 18
187 which is
a difference of from the ideal of about
377 people so is that the highest
population that we have in these
districts uh no the the largest district
in terms of population under concept k
is four is district four
oh
okay
but they're all pretty much within the
ballpark of the percentage they are they
are so district four is on the high end
but still less than five percent away
from the ideal population and district
four is on the low end but still within
that allowable plus or minus and the
hispanic population is well represented
or at least
what's the word relative
so concept k is one of the ones that
only has four hispanic voting age
population districts
but the uh the fifth one is right at
49.5
so it's very close to being
above 50 hispanic but it's just not
quite there
oh and
what about district six do you have the
breakdown on how many hispanics are
there so district six has 39
hispanic voting age population under
concept k oh okay
and as far as um a counselor
a beta's uh point about the
art the city art board by the way
does look at all of this and the reason
we have more art in parts of the city is
because
they are designated
as historic and therefore
are capable of acquiring more money in
that regard in terms of having art and
it may sound it is i mean yeah and it is
something by the way that was brought up
at wednesday last wednesday's meeting in
terms of distributing art
and uh you know having art represented
throughout the city and that's a very
difficult um
it's very it's difficult because of the
money that's involved and i in areas
such as district i think it's your
district the new fire station yeah
like the art piece there came out of the
funds that were allocated through the go
bond the two percent
but even that is facing some problems
because of engineering the design is
absolutely beautiful but
there's uh engineering issues that have
held back the actual mounting of the art
piece yeah so it's going to be delayed
but it'll be fantastic when it is done
it's really beautiful but
but i i just want to
i think that we a city council should
definitely keep an eye on how
we're
doing our art around the city because
it's true
what uh
counselor bank
abeyta
mentioned is true but not because the
city
it's not the city's fault
i mean and i don't and i really don't
think that um
the distribution of uh
you know the maps don't necessarily
it has more to do well it's just more
complex than than just uh precincts and
and equitable voting districts so
thank you thank you mr mayor
mr councillor did you have a preference
of of the maps which ones one or two or
anything
my preference is the one that we're on
right now i and and the reason is
because
i'm sorry which is the one we're on
right now i believe which one are we on
right now i don't know mr mayor it's
concept k
it's concept k and it's okay with me
and i want also want to thank the
committee i know that michael
um
michael harris uh went we spent a couple
of hours going through this and
and he and i know that everybody else on
that committee worked really hard and
are dedicated to the principles that
drive
redistricting so thank you all very much
thank you thank you mr mayor mayor pro
tem
thank you mayor thank you brittany so
much for
being here and michael for your work
i know it was cumbersome and you had um
so many meetings and it was sort of
trying to
to organize everybody and keep things
straight so and thank you to the
committee um for your work
and your commitment um i know it it you
all show up in a voluntary basis and so
but i thank you i'm deeply grateful
it was a lot of work and i'm thankful
for each and every one of you
brittany um
gosh i was writing as many notes as i
could especially um thank you to the
counselors they made some great
you can't read your my writing but i can
um the questions were great um but let
me i'm going to start with
because we are in concept k
and
and i know counselor bencomo asked the
question in terms of sort of those
overlays but some of the biggest
concerns related to district one
is um keeping our historic right the
original town site which includes the
alameda depot area the downtown and the
mesquite historic district but the
mesquite historic district is separated
right north mesquite has been
all separated for 10 years and i hear
often how difficult that is
for them and the feeling of isolation
because it is considered historic and
yet they're
they're um
not included in a lot of the the things
that are that are happening so tell me
again
does this include the miski north
on k
so k it includes in district 1 both the
alameda depot and all of the mesquite
historic district including the south
west portion
it does not include the portion uh south
of amador east of esperanza
west of solano and north of utah
that is with district three under
concept k
okay okay so it does include
uh
it does include everything but that in
district one
and then the amador to utah and
esperanza to solano is in district three
yes okay thank you
um and then on concept h1
oh also i'm sorry
concept k
let me ask you where i live there's some
weird things happening off of juniper so
that belongs in council graham's area of
like mulberry there's some weird
um i i there's parts of of my district
are east and but you know that
there is that line and the west part it
belongs to councilor graham now that i'm
i'm talking about
kilmer
um you know those areas up there
mulberry west now does that include
this area as well
excuse me concept k so concept k keeps
the southern boundary of district one in
that area completely along spruce so it
doesn't you can see here the current
districts i think is what you're talking
about here where district three comes up
and
this is like that mulberry area actually
this is where my brother lives um
and yes
it's your brother okay um so yes uh
spruce is the northern boundary of
district three under concept k
and and this is also the one that
includes a piece of mesia park that um
counselor
abeda is talking about uh that is an
issue with that's not concept k i think
that's concept uh
h1
oh yes you're right you're right i have
it in my
my notes you're right is that right
yes
i was just giving you some time too yes
yes okay good okay now concept h1
yes i'll ask just similar questions does
that include
both the alameda mesquite the north
mesquite
and that whole
area that i mentioned before
yes so this is concept h1 i'm going to
turn on that historic district so this
uh in terms of the historic
neighborhoods this looks the same as
concept k
in that everything uh sort of
west of esperanza is in district one and
everything east of esperanza
is in district 3.
this also holds the boundary along
spruce
ah okay okay
so um
you know
when i got elected in my signature i've
worked really hard to organize the area
and that's what you saw you saw people
coming um and real concerned about
redistricting and the separation the
separation you know amongst their
district um
and and you've seen there were letters i
know there were emails there were a
significant and and i feel like it was a
lot of because of my organizing you know
the neighborhood watch and association
programs that was my vision for
my district and and and so that's what
you see and so um i i i want to honor
those folks that took the time to come
out
you also see very specifically um
you know
organizing around the arts and cultural
district that was new in in my first
term going into the second term and
they've been successful in in what they
do but
um
and so i i want to honor you know that
work and i want folks and um to know
my colleagues here that there were
numerous letters there were numerous
times that our folks from the district
came and by on
they were very clear they wanted to
remain the same
um
and and incorporate that northern piece
of of miski and i want there were some
things i wanted to clean up about the
district as well and i'll continue to to
advocate for that
it was weird as you're walking that oh i
have this part but i don't have the west
side and although i live in that area i
walk that area run that area i mean i i
it's hard because folks are are commun
or like for example lift up las cruces
i'm divided in that madrid area
um a certain um i don't know if it's
evelyn west but those aren't
those aren't my constituents but yet
though that's a piece of that lift up
program and so i mean i'm just
advocating for everybody um but it was
making it difficult and so i i
completely understand so for me the
priority for me my number one is h1 and
i can get behind concept k as well thank
you
thank you mayor thank you mayor pro tem
council graham
thank you so much
um
to answer your question mayor
from the top i am also comfortable with
j and b
so just you can get the
keep the tally going there
exactly becky and joanna i guess
if that helps
um
so as as pointed out district 3 had the
most stable population in terms of
numbers i think and
i'm also i'm listening and thinking um
you know i'm one of the newest
people up here
and
i i don't have
the experience that some of my
colleagues have in working
directly with this specific district on
organizing or on
neighborhood specific projects
so i think that my tendency is to think
a little more broadly about the entire
city and i think that's why
concept maps j and b
are ringing
most true to me
be b looks the most familiar
at least to me and i think
you know i i understand that there are a
lot of principles and values at play
here um but you know there's there's
probably a comfort in that both for the
people sitting up here and for the
people out in the larger
in the larger electorate and the larger
communities so i think i'm
i'm seeing las cruces as a community of
interest
as opposed to recognizing
there's a lot more to it than that
i think too as i'm listening to
to my colleagues and appreciating all
the work they've done
it's incumbent on us up here to also
work together there are going to be
changes
and i recognize that it's not always
going to be the same faces up here
things are going to change
amongst the representatives amongst the
districts
and i just want to say that i
have had thus far really good experience
collaborating together
trying to keep one another's populations
and communities and neighborhoods in
mind for the greater good and maybe i'm
naively optimistic but
i think that trend
will continue
so
for the districts for the neighborhoods
i shouldn't say the districts not the
capital d districts but the smaller d
districts
i hope that you can feel confident that
if you are
quote unquote split
that i think the people up here are
going to find ways to work together
to keep your interests at heart
so again t l d r j
and b
thanks
mr beta you have another question or
comment yes i do thank you i was gonna
ask um with most of these maps it does
retain the airport district
with
with four
except for map k
which switched it and so i was curious
about the population growth in that area
and why the switch for that
mr mayor and councillor i think that was
less about population as we said that
whole area has about 13 people in it
it was more about the pressures of what
the other districts were doing so i
pulled that up again this is concept k
where the airport area goes into
district one
and so you can see
this is the one where district two
comes up on the west side and so as it
comes up on the west side it sort of
pushes district 1 north
in that sort of
you know north south district 1 and
district 4 configuration and so you know
because the only way to get out to the
airport and have contiguity is along
i-10
whatever sort of is touching i-10 in
that space is going to be the district
that ends up going out to the airport so
i don't think it was about population so
much as the other goals of this map
okay thank you
i just erased something here
um
hold on
i erased the wrong one
okay so i took a look at it as well of
course i it makes no difference to me
because the district is the whole city
for me but
but um
after listening to my colleagues this is
what i have so far and i like them all
except to be
okay so
if you were to do b i show counselors a
beta and graham who like b
h one i see mayor pro-tem gandara and
myself i'm okay with h1
j
oh excuse me k
uh i show three so counselor florida's
mayor pro 10 man and i can go with
k as well and then j
i see counselor bing cuomo a beta graham
and i can go with jay as well
i don't know what
counselor
quran
but
i think
looks like either
k or j
probably uh
yeah i mean i could i go with it all of
them i just don't i don't particularly
care for b
so but the others are okay
well i don't want b so i can go for
anyone but b
well then
but uh you know like
go with what i think makes sense and the
majority likes you know even if there's
three then
to me that's majority
but we don't know what counselor quran
likes
so i think if we bring back
k and j
then that way there she can decide
oh mayor patel i'm sorry yes can you
change is this concept this is not j
this is concept j two concept j please
thank you mayor
is concept j
the least amount of change or for one
what is that
but it separates the
alameda and the
yeah not for it sorry thank you
i will say i'll just throw this out here
if you look at regardless of what map
you're looking at if you look at
district five right above the number
you see how it's still white so that's
in the county and then look directly to
the right how there's a little like a
jigsaw
i
i don't know but i would foresee down
the road i don't know why that's in the
county but that would be easily annexed
into the city and it would make things a
lot easier and then on all of a sudden
it can make a population in district
five but
i don't know that's it's unusual that
that we have it like that because i i
it's got to cause some problems for our
representatives for our city for
counties especially when you're trying
to coordinate
paving of roads or or services
you know it's in the county or we can't
pave this or you know things of that
nature so that's not the purpose of it
oh i know i know i'm just saying this
i'm just throwing
what i'm trying to say is if for some
reason one of these particular districts
was a little bit low in district five
but that's a a way to immediately add to
the population that's all
so we have councilor bin cuomo
councillor brown thanks mayor
um i just wanted to note that kay
um the reason i you know i would be hard
for me to get behind this is because it
does give
district 4 an entirely new identity just
like h1 does
basically the only part that stays
intact with district 4 is the area where
i currently live
and so that's difficult that's a
difficult thing even though i might not
be here in two years right like that's
still a difficult thing to
[Music]
to advocate for given
the work that has been done historically
in district four
um and then the other thing to note
right is that k
um does reduce the number of hit
majority hispanic districts to four was
the only was the other caveat that i
think is
important to consider
i i agree with what you're saying i'd
probably would be leaning more towards
jay because k is pretty radical i mean
it does change things it moves it it
shakes things up i'll be candid with you
on that
no kate does
counselor graham you had a comment
yes thank you i don't know if this is
technologically possible can we side by
side concept maps
um instead of flipping back we can't no
i'm sorry okay yeah cool thanks just
thought it was a weird software yeah
sorry
thank you
um if you wanted to i could overlay just
the boundaries of one map on top of
another map but that's sort of hard to
see especially as small as this is
i'll just give her my ipad and then she
can just take a look at it
you want the ipad
okay all right councilor flotus thank
you mayor
and thank you again brittany
ms ross
so
as far as
populations go
i know that the city owns
land
just north of the airport
and there has been
some talk
about
um
housing developments there
um
there be a uh they you know whoever
develops there has to look at air
flights
and
the airport
will probably be an international
or excuse me interest state
facility
hopefully within the next year if all
goes well should have been at the end of
this year but there was some
setbacks
[Music]
so but there's still that potential
depending on air flights and all that
sort of stuff and the noise
so this is the redistricting we're doing
now is going to
the decision we make will hold through
until the next census in 2030.
and
that's 10 years well eight years from
now
and las cruces is growing so fast
and
i have to say in some ways
well a lot of the land
that is city property in districts five
and six already
owned by developers
and those uh that's going up like
you know like wild weeds quite frankly
very unattractive to me but that's just
my personal opinion
so yeah district 4 has the potential of
actually
i think that's the one that's going to
grow the most
thank you
okay is there any members of the public
who would like to comment on this i
don't know if any of you out in the
committees wanted to say anything
no okay
so i guess
if you want to just maybe bring back
k j
because i think those are i think j is
more of the
less
um shake up k is
is that
i don't know which one this is
yeah this one is j on the screen is j or
k this one's j oh okay yeah and that you
know
other than a little bit here and there i
think
okay i can bring back um j and k and we
can amend based on your vote at the
council meeting yeah okay okay all right
okay well thank you very much thank you
for the press this is brian sanderoff
still there he is yes he sends me on the
roadshow but he is still around
all right we'll give him my regards
please i will absolutely
okay thank you very much
next we have sister cities foundation
update and elizabeth peters will be
presenting
good afternoon mayor and city council my
name is elizabeth teters and i am
actually just going to be introducing mr
tim chapel he is the president of the
las cruces
sister cities foundation
okay thank you
uh good afternoon everybody
see if i can
not get an echo going on here
it's my pleasure to come and present to
you guys excuse me tim i just need to
introduce you or
say state your name please oh i'm sorry
uh yes i'm a tim chapel and i'm
president of las cruces sister cities
foundation
and i'm here to present on
on our current standings and inform the
council members who are familiar with us
some of the things that that we do
because we we are very
tight part of the of the city
oops the wrong button
so what i'm going to be talking about
today is we're going to go over a little
bit of the history of sister cities and
sister cities international
i'll talk about some of the recent
events that we have had going on through
our organization
i'll give you some
a brief background on our name berg
affiliation our lairdo affiliation
a proposed cuatimoc
affiliation and then some upcoming
events and if you have any questions at
any time please don't hesitate to ask
in 1956 president eisenhower started
sister cities he had been through two
major wars and realized that sometimes
governments are maybe not the best
the best way to to get people to
cooperate and so he started the sister
cities foundation
and what he called citizen um diplomats
trying to get people to talk to people
you know we we do exchanges where we go
and we do
city you know the cities working
together the
education cultural exchanges and by
going and meeting people sitting down
having dinner with them lunch
experiencing their culture we're more
than likely to cooperate and so it's a
wonderful
a wonderful opportunity we've had the
lardo affiliation
which is laerto mexico and i'll talk
more about that started in 1982
then the nienberg one came in 1993.
las cruces sister cities is a 501c3
which means we're a non-profit
organization and we have to comply with
all of the
ramp legal parts of that
some of the recent events is in the fall
of 2018
a group from nein berg and name bird
delegation came and visited i'll
show some pictures of that here in just
a minute
in 2019 we had a delegation come from
our sister city in laerdo mexico
and we also
participated in with the mayor at the
international mayoral summit between
el paso and juarez which was just a
fabulous event
and then we also had a las cruces sister
cities concert which i'll talk about
here in a second
let me talk a little bit first about our
neinberg affiliate neanberg is in
lower saxony in germany it's a smaller
town smaller than us about 32 000 people
it's quite a historic place this is
their farmers market
which is just as i understand one of the
leading ones in in europe where it has
it just goes on in food and
and beautiful flowers and all kinds of
things like that
in their fault this is a picture from
their fall visit in 2018 where we have
members of
um their delegation
and city representatives here at the
time
okay and what we did is they we had an
event here at the city council meeting
where we have reaffirmed our cooperation
with nienberg and the mayors actually
reassigned an agreement saying that
we want to continue to work together as
sister cities
um
excuse me this is an
an interesting picture because it looks
like it's just people here in the
gallery but at the same time we had the
visit if you notice that there's several
students that were also exchange
students that were here going to they
were at centennial high school
for about two weeks and so we we have
had exchanges in the past where we will
send students to germany and they go and
visit in neinberg and participate in the
school program to see how the school's
functions and stuff like that and they
did the same thing over here and the
students are housed with people in the
community and stuff it's a wonderful
opportunity
and then we had a beautiful cake
um i put together just a few pictures um
i i were running out of time so i didn't
want to get into a boat but that group
of people there is when the last visit
we had to neinberg
when was that jim
2015 that was in 2015 the last time we
went over
there
and i'll talk in a minute about some
upcoming events about what's what we
have planned for that
our next sister city is um laerto
durango mexico it has a population of
about 150 000
it's part of the tri-cities
there's lardo torreon and gomes palacio
they're all it's kind of hard to tell
the difference between one unless you
see a sign when you drive between them
but they are they are um
in different states as well as cities
laerto is the oldest city it was the
first one that was founded there as part
of a hacienda
and you can see over on the on the right
hand side the um that's part of the
plaza and the city offices downtown
we had we hosted them here for a visit
in 2019 this was uh um
hale huber's house at the time you can
see it looks like it rained there we
were going to have a barbecue and that
was the last time it actually rained
here in las cruces
um so but what was interesting is that
we had um
it rained so we had to go inside and you
can see us sitting inside the house and
it was really worked out well because
everybody sat around and talked and we
actually sing some songs and then
when when the rain let up and we were
out able to go out and have our barbecue
everybody intermixed you know sometimes
when you have delegations on visits
people get kind of they'll stick with
the people that they know and everybody
just had a wonderful time it worked out
really well
we also did a signing agreement here at
the city hall where we where the mayors
re
signed
confirmation that they wanted to support
the sister cities affiliation we also
took him down here to the wall that's
outside
and what's interesting and i didn't get
a picture of it but the back side of
these
murals there
is marble that was actually donated
from lardo
to las cruces when these when these were
originally down in the downtown area
um and they managed to um save it and
incorporate it back into the mine into
the the back side of these
of these um pictures the tiles and
there's some of the visit when we took
them downtown we were very proud to show
them the revitalization of the downtown
area and they got some good ideas they
were glad to see that as well
now we have a new affiliation that we're
looking at trying potemok i believe i
said that right which is also in
chihuahua mexico it has a population of
about a hundred and eighty thousand
um
beto flores who is the
with the city of guatemala and is with
their um
economic
office
i took some of these pictures from a
slideshow he presented to us and if you
would like more information i'm sure he
would be more than happy to give you the
details because it's just
the and i know the mayor you had um
talked with him and met with their mayor
about all the
all of the the opportunities that could
go on between
our two cities which is just pretty
amazing
it's only about 250 miles 300 miles
south of las cruces and it's just a
straight a straight shot when you get to
when you get just south of chihuahua if
you take sort of take the road that goes
to the left you go down to leroy and
torion and if you go the other way you
go to kuatemok which is also called
sometimes the gateway
to copper canyon
okay and i've got a
picture of that one of the things i
found very interesting about this is
they were just had a had a celebration
down there where they have three
sort of groups of people they have the
um
the that the native americans
is a tahar mara um name for the the
village that's there so there's a big
population of that between there and in
copper canyon
then there's the mennonites who move
down there as you can see from the
plaque 100 years ago which have a large
um
they're
quite um
into the farming and some of the act
some of the the manufacturing that goes
on down there and then you have just the
the rest the hispanic population and
they all
live and cooperate and work together
down there
on the right hand side they talk about
copper canyon and sierra tara humata
which is just as i understand that area
that whole thing is like twice the size
of the grand canyon and the youth in the
us it's i haven't been there but it's on
my bucket list it's one of those things
i would just love to go see they have a
train that goes through there that's
just fabulous
i'm sorry the route goes from them
yes yes ma'am yes ma'am um so just to
give you a brief history of what's going
on with this affiliation is we were
approached in march um by city
representatives about what it would take
to form a a new affiliation and we
actually have
um if anybody wants to see it i brought
a copy of it it's quite a it's from the
sister cities international on what it
takes you know we can't just go and say
oh let's be sister cities with this
sister cities with them there has to be
um uh
committees on in both towns made up of
you know the people of the population of
the area um
and so it was presented to us and then
they gave us a formal presentation our
board meeting on april 22nd
and on on in april and on the 21st the
board approved the formation of a new
affiliation we sent an email
um to the city saying that that we had
you had our approval to do this um but
and we have about one year period to
meet all the requirements of of forming
forming a new affiliation
we've had um some concerns that there's
been a number of turnovers of our points
of contact with sister cities and we're
not really sure what what the status of
of that is with the city
so might we plan on meeting with
our new miss
teeters here as soon as as soon as we
get an opportunity to go over what the
current status of that is going to be
this is just a quick picture of the
mayoral summit down in el paso which uh
which was just really neat if you um
it was a really interesting celebration
i've lived here was born and raised here
in las cruces and i never i really got
an appreciation for how
the city of el paso and the city of
juarez really do view themselves as
sister cities and they were talking
about there was a number of
presentations in the number of
how how closely they are they are tied
you know both economically and
culturally and stuff like that they took
us we went one night over to
[Music]
over to juarez you can see there where
they showed us around showed us some of
the new museums they have they have put
up and stuff like that they're on the
left of that picture way in the back
mirror that's near miyagashima there
where they had a um
a discussion panel of mayors from around
the city it's really interesting that
the president of the sister cities
international foundation is the mayor of
of san antonio and how their their city
is big in doing sister cities with some
of the cities in mexico as well
and this was when i was talking about
the sister cities
concert the new horizons sisti
new horizons symphony
jorge martinez rios is actually from
down in the torion area his parents
actually live in lairdo and he supports
tremendously the amount of us being able
to do a cultural musical exchange with
the groups down there and it's just it's
fabulous some of the the players in that
band right there they had brought up
from mexico
um i think they were from torreon and
it's interesting because the uh the
conductor from from
in torreon is from the us and jorge's
from mexico is actually kind of
interesting combination but it was a
wonderful event an ability for us to
get our name out there in the community
so here are some of the events we have
planning well obviously here today the
working session we're going to be having
a nienberg meeting here
i'm not sure if we'll actually have it
on the 17th but we plan on having a zoom
meeting the one thing i can say about
the pandemic
is it really opened us the opened us the
opportunity for us to be able to have
when we have our meetings
here we can have meetings with the
representatives from around the world so
we always have representatives now from
the neinberg we try and have those on a
saturday about noon because there's a
seven eight hour difference
eight eight hour difference with with
nienberg so we have it
um
saturdays at noon so they're people you
know they don't have to be on their job
but yet it's not at eight o'clock at
night or midnight there so and that's
worked out really really well
we're going to be having an annual
meeting coming up with the board still
needs to figure out that
there was there is scheduled a mayoral
summit
11th to 14th in san diego i'm not sure
if the mayor is going to be able to
attend or not but
i know you were very supportive of the
one down in el paso
we'll have our foundation board meeting
coming up in october
then another public nein berg another
laerdal meeting and then
right now we just had two of our
representatives were over in neinberg
looking at trying to plan
a trip next year to neinberg germany and
as soon as i have a chance to meet with
him they just literally got back we'll
provide you guys with more details
because it's uh it's uh it's a fantastic
if you guys get a chance to participate
you know obviously all
all you know
the mayor and counselors and anybody
would certainly be invited to go to do
something like that and it's a wonderful
opportunity
with that do you have any questions
let me just ask one before i turn to my
calling so you know i'm asked often
about you know can we be sister city
here there and and i was of the
impression
that you can only have one per country
so they changed that they did
you were absolutely right that was
that was the rule and they and i double
checked that when when you came and
asked about us doing another one and
yeah
the sister cities internationals yeah
do all you want okay
i i now i understand because i i wasn't
aware of what homework which i'm okay
with i told i i got a a
text from um
some a friend of mine in juarez wanting
to know if we could sign something in in
san diego i said you know i gotta
you gotta let the city council know i
can't do this on my own so it's very
timely that we have this here today so
i'm okay i i told him i said i didn't
think we could do
two in a country but if you're saying
they've rely if sister cities
international has relaxed the rules um
that's good okay yes we can have as many
as
our biggest limitation as as for sister
cities las cruces is manpower you know
we're we're just
we're we're stretched to our limits so
that's why we need if we want a new
another sister city somebody's going to
have to bring in
you know people to do that
yeah because i know that when we've had
summits or when we've had meetings in
juarez a lot of representatives from
from chihuahua show and and they i get
the impression there could be a lot of
trade or a lot of business as well you
know between the two cities absolutely
absolutely councilor flores
thank you mr mayor and thank you so much
tim for your presentation
um
what was it three four years ago
when
lerdo was here yes yeah so i think
friendships were really forged and i see
um two very special people there
and um
so i you know and yeah and eisenhower
was right he also brought the autobahn
the freeway
so he picked up a lot on his tours of
duty
so i think it's wonderful that you've
worked so hard and i want to thank you
from the bottom of my heart for
uh bringing people together because
you're it's absolutely you're absolutely
right i mean we never know when
different countries are going to be at
war with each other
and as we have now going out you know
where but um
but i think that when it's a one-on-one
you get to know people for
you know we get to know each other for
who we are
and we're all made of you know skin you
know
and bones and blood and everything like
that but i just really really want to
thank you and because it is an effort
and it's a commitment and i can't wait
to hear
about niamberg
i love germany it's a beautiful place
and i know it has a horrible
stigma because of world war ii
but when you meet the people and i was
in munich
and
it's interesting how
they don't hide the history
of what happened during world war ii
but they don't condone it
and
and it's good to know that
so it's i like the global understanding
my father
was active in city affairs in santa fe
springs california
and we had two sister cities at the time
this was back in the 60s and 70s and it
was nagoya japan
and hermosillo mexico
so worse is it
i confuse the two i'm sorry
but anyway and that too and and mayor
mikashima is absolutely correct about
um
about economic development and i'm glad
that
that miss pete the teeters is here
um we need to meet
forge more of that to benefit both
countries
so again thank you and thank you mr
mayor
thank you
so council you're okay moving forward
with
sister city's agreement with guatoma
oh with park denmark
give you spanish lessons
um
yes absolutely as i said santa fe
springs had two back when
so uh i think that there is a limit in
this and the more the merrier so yes
absolutely thank you although i've never
seen it i've heard about copper canyon
that that it's actually five to eight
times larger than grand canyon yes and
jim did mention that but you were busy
on your cell phone but
i was not everyone
oh excuse me you were busy looking at
your screens yes yeah
i was trying to get the maps for
accounting yeah in fact i haven't taken
that trip but
people who i know and i think maybe your
family has been on it
um
is that it's amazing because because of
the width and depth or height whatever
that
people say you can actually see the
stars below you
and that it's just an amazing and
amazing trip one of these years i'll do
it thank you
we have count mayor pro tem goddamn and
then councilman cuomo
thank you so much mayor thank you um mr
chapel appreciate you and your
presentation giving us information and
for all of you who sit in sister city
i was honored to be able to be a part of
those visits from nimburg and loretto
and the music i mean it was standing
room only i think i was standing in the
back because i got there a bit late when
it happened at new mexico state
university and it was it was impressive
um so thank you so much for all your
work
um
i i i think this is really important and
for me almost most important is the
relationship that we're forging with our
youth i think being able to have them
here
and that that two weeks is is a
phenomenal experience and i like to
um and i know it'll take some coronation
but i i think we should really there's
something there i think you know when we
can get our youth
and i agree with you with the pandemic
but so much many of our youth are so
um
technology savvy and so you know not
only zoom but the social media and
they're communicating with kids all over
the you know the world frankly so
um i'm i'm four including um the other
um sister remind me the name again
yes thank you mayor
councillor bingham thanks mayor thank
you so much i'm i'm very new to the
sister city program um
i have a question but i did want to note
that i'm actually i'm originally from a
little town
about two hours north of quak north and
then a little west of guatemala oh
really cool um
and copper canyon is one of my mom's
favorite places on the planet
um
but just some questions about sister
cities i'm just curious around like is
was guacamole chosen
for
las cruces specifically or
i i'm not sure how that i guess me or
you could probably come up yeah so i
think what happens is like i said i get
offers hey can we be sister cities and i
and i usually say i'd like to but we
have this this
you know limitation that two on one per
country and i guess they must have just
followed through with it because these
guys knew about it i didn't even know
about it and then i get a text about
three weeks ago saying hey can we do
this in san diego no we can't do this i
don't think the council even knows about
this is what this come up with and so um
so they were pretty pretty uh
they want to see this happen so
i said i can't do anything without
council's approval and and so this was
when i saw it on the agenda i thought
wow this is uh pretty good mayor i'm
just mostly curious about like is there
like strategy behind it like the
economic development opportunities like
what's
you usually what what sister cities
likes in addition to being able to reach
out to our neighbors or or usually they
try to make it the cities of the same
size you know like we don't we can't be
sister cities with some city that's
millions three million population but
they but one of the key is to have uh
is to have a participation from people
over here in las cruces
that would would uh entertain and and
greet the residents because there though
worked out good because of the community
college
there were students that would go back
and forth and they would have and the
university new mexico state would would
we'd have various things with that and
then nienberg there's just a lot of
residents from las cruces who enjoy
going to germany and so they were they
took it upon themselves to really
entertain and help with the because
there's really not a whole lot of money
i don't even think we budget if we do
it's very small from the city uh very
small i don't know five thousand dollars
maybe it's it's that much okay cool
mayor thank you that's interesting last
thing i'll say is i've been took them
off many times there's a big mennonite
community in guatemala they they have
great cheese yes
well maybe we can buy it and then sell
it to sappuro and make some money
make a little money there mayor
counselor ben cuomo uh just to add a
little bit to your question about
whether this came to be um i'm going to
speak on behalf of dr payers he went
down to chihuahua city
earlier this year i believe and um on
the way i don't i'm not sure if
representatives come from guatemala or
they stopped on the way but
they connected and he started learning
about agriculture and how um and the
mennonite community and so i i believe
the conversation started with because
we're heavy in agriculture also they do
cheese we obviously do chilis and pecans
and stuff
so this conversation kind of started
economic development like figuring out
how we can connect and being a sister
city was a way to make that happen
very good
so you're good with moving forward
any other counselors
no
okay happy to move funky great okay so
i guess we'll
have something to move forward to and
have uh have staff bring back something
i don't know what because the last i i
think the agreements with lerodo and
nienberg were here even before i was
a member yeah yeah we were just
reaffirming them you know kind of on the
anniversary the same thing
um
we hope maybe you'll be able to get a
chance to go to neinberg when we have
the trip coming up next i would like to
but that would be good
right if i already put my order in i i'm
not too too good at drinking
uh warm temperature beer
okay
well if nobody has anything else thank
you thank you so much for your your the
time and opportunity to come and present
if you have any questions please get a
hold of me and i'll be glad to work with
you and answer any questions you may
have i want to thank you and and roger
and
hale for and all those that are
participating in sister cities we
couldn't have this without you all
because you i know you get you volunteer
your time and your efforts and you do it
because of the love of people and and
and sense of community so thank you very
much you're welcome thank you
okay so
next 5.3.3
the arpa reporting
it looks like amber vaughn will be
leading that off
sorry
good afternoon mayor and council my name
is amber vaughn for the record and today
i will be going over the american rescue
plan act transparency portal that has
been developed using opengov and has
been placed on the website
so here's a picture of just the main
page when you log in i know it's small
i'll go into detail with some larger
font with what's actually on there
this is just how the front page looks
on that front page there is a summary
that explains the first transfer funding
and the second tranche and when they
came in and how much those were for it
also outlines what the money was to be
used for for coven 19 response efforts
to continue to the decreased spread of
the virus and to bring the pandemic
under control so it goes into all of
that detail on that page
under that there are additional links to
other websites one of those is the
federal government's financial recovery
efforts and arpa page that gives all the
rules for arpa as well as the city of
las cruces has a page on here that has
all the resolutions and some reports
that have been developed for arpa
it also has a link to the dona ana
county rental assistance program as well
as the state of new mexico mortgage
assistant program
another item on the page is a chart and
this chart shows the money that has been
received and the expenditures that have
been expended for arpa this is the whole
distribution so in its by fiscal year
and if you hover over those items it'll
give you the actual detailed dollar
amounts on those
now a little further down the page we're
going to have the different focus areas
that were decided by council one of
those is the sport public health
response i replace public sector revenue
loss
address negative economic impacts
improve water and sewer infrastructure
and provide premium pay to essential
workers now each one of these pictures
and text has a link that you can click
on that's going to take you to a new
page that's going to give you specific
information about that area so the one i
chose to show today is the public health
response it will give a summary of what
was decided what the money is to be used
for what the final rule was from the
federal from the treasury
there will also be a list of all of the
different programs or projects that were
selected under that specific focus area
each one of those links each one of
those like the mih says two squad
vehicles you'll be able to click on that
and it will take you to another page
that's going to tell you the status of
that and how much money has been spent
and how much money was allotted for that
there is a page on there that is what's
called resolutions and reporting it has
a list of all the city of las cruces
resolutions that were approved for arpa
you can click on those and it will take
you to the actual resolution so you can
read it
also finance creates quarterly reports
to the treasury those are linked as well
so you can click on those and see those
and as any audit reports come in those
will also be linked
coming soon
will be the community investment
projects information so all those
projects that were reviewed and once the
contracts are approved we will be able
to link and have that information also
on this transparency portal so that the
public and city council can go and
review those what's been spent what
information is available and any
reporting that's available
so just to give you an update on how to
get there it is on the city website
www.los hyphen cruises.org i think it's
switching to gov as well
government and the transparency and
accountability and it has american
rescue plan act and you can click on
that and it'll take you to that website
and i'll stand for any questions
thank you amber
question counselor
thank you uh thank you amber uh more of
just a comment and a
honestly a thank you i think this is
really important to show
the community and as we go to the second
tranche of money to see where these
programs are going to and how they're
helping their community so really
um
really excited to see this and thank you
for the details that will be added to it
so thanks thank you mayor
thank you thank you anyone else
i i agree as well this was really good
and we appreciate that very much and
ifo told me that software costs a lot of
money
yes and there can be more reports
developed from that good
okay so nothing further thank you okay
great thanks
okay last is item 3.4
city las cruces economic outlook and
dr monica torres will be presenting
you do have a phd right i just called
you a doctor yes okay just want to make
sure i thought so i wasn't too sure
thank you mr mayor and members of city
council monika torres city economist
with economic development
i will be giving you an overview on the
latest data on employment
unemployment rate
cannabis sales grt
consumer price index and employment on
different sectors
so
data available as
last month indicates that employment
remains really strong in the city of las
cruces employment grew about three
percent in july
as compared to previous year this is
about 1 400 additional workers
and while labor force didn't see a large
increase there's still 22 persons joined
the level of labor force
and on the nation at the end of your
life they were about
sorry
11.2
anfield u.s job openings which is about
two job openings for every person that
is count as unemployed
and while unemployment rate saw a small
increase in june and july as compared to
may at 4.7
the unemployment rate for
july remains at some of the lowest
levels in recent years
there were about 2 000 persons actively
looking for a job in july 2022
and while most sectors experience growth
in the
las cruces msa
leisure in hospitality grew about 11
which is about 900
additional jobs
another sector that has been growing its
education and health services
in a year-over-year basis of july it
increased three percent which is about
500 additional jobs
in june business month
drt increased 12 percent and at 10.7
millions
and in regards to cannabis sales they're
being very stable
while there was a small decrease in
june at the end of august sales went
back to their previous level in may
23.3 million
and while medical sales size small one
percent decreased adult sales saw an
equivalent
increase
on regards to new business registrations
there were 77 new business registrations
in
august 2022 as compared to a previous
year that's 10 additional registrations
and in regards to consumer price index
while we saw small decrease in july as
compared to a previous month
consumer price indexes remains uh
levels
high levels
in recent years
therefore the federal reserve started
increasing the feds fund rate
today it has increased about 2.25
percentage points and it has seen all
the possibility for further increases
so looking ahead employment remains
really strong in the city of las cruces
unemployment rate is among the lowest
rates in recent years
most sectors have been growing in las
cruces msa
especially leisure and hospitality
but the nation is also experiencing
high inflation and as i said before the
federal reserve started increasing the
fed's fund rate which is typically used
world that has a benchmark for the rates
for all their interest
rate for loans
an increase in interest rates can have
an impact in demand and therefore in
employment as borrowing becomes more
expensive
but we also have to keep in mind that
job openings are near historical levels
in the nation
so the next federal reserve meeting is
at the end of september and we
they're
going to decide what to do next to
control prices
i don't know if you have any questions
mayor pro tem councillor bingham
thank you mayor thank you so much dr
torres i always find this so fascinating
and you were amazing so thank you i have
a lot of respect for for you
um and the work that you do for us here
um i just wanted to um
our unemployment it's 4.7 percent here
in las cruces or dona in las cruces las
cruces gosh that's
that's pretty low it's pretty low and
and and the
2274 folks are looking for a position
dr torres um
and then
how many jobs are available in our
city
i don't think i have an answer for that
i can look um we have a database that we
can look but it's not
it's
inclusive i'm assuming it's um they
might have repetitive entries like i
need to dig for a deeper and see if i
can get that information okay but as
right now i don't have the number that
would be great i'd love to to see that
if you know how many positions and i
mean this is really important to me
because we hear a lot of
um and i'll say this last council
meeting somebody came up and said oh you
know the state of new mexico and las
cruces specifically is downhill
and i know that's not true we've had the
highest grt that we've had even
pre-pandemic
and this is important for us to know
especially around the leisure and
hospitality where we hear
um you know the sky is going to fall
because you raise minimum wage and you
know those things of that sort and it
hasn't happened even during a pandemic
and so this is really important
information to me um i also
want
yes mary i'm sorry did you so i'm sorry
um
i had another
slide five can you go back to that
okay i just i wanted to take a picture
um now are you saying on the plus 500
the three percent for education and
health specifically
are those new positions that have been
created
specifically for our area here in las
cruces
can you explain that a little more dr
torres this is the year where your
change you cannot feel like um
yes
as compared to
do you like 2021 there were 500
additional jobs in education and health
services
um
new position
essentially so compared to less okay
that's great
it's excellent i think and you know i've
been really concerned about our health
sector and the number of
positions that we have available
you know i've heard different averages
of the age of a lot of our doctors
specifically and we've been talking
about that at our economic development
policy review committee specifically
around the medical sector and
most specifically are pediatricians and
you know in order for us to just
continue to to maintain and you know
increase our grt
that whole legal study that was spoken
of you came and you did a presentation
about that leakage study and and so many
people leave our city specifically to
get specialty that you know visits taken
care of that is a huge burden for our
folks but more where i'm mostly
concerned is our pediatricians we don't
have enough pediatricians to meet the
need
specifically and so
um any thoughts dr torres around that
and maybe i know elizabeth is here but
we i would really like to focus
specifically on on that i know that you
in conjunction with workforce um
solutions to the health fair
specific to our health um sector um but
anything that we can do around that and
and and
partnering with our schools our
education system i think are important
because they go hand in hand right in
order to recruit our our physicians and
our specialty
docs
um you know we have to have a
a really a top-notch education and so
mayor i would like to see us have a a
joint meeting with our school board
specifically i've heard a lot you know
when we're recruiting our
physicians and such it's really hard for
the spouses because they come to a new
community
hard to connect in a new community and i
want us to just be very mindful of that
i think it's it's important and then dr
torres remind me around um the
can you
the
the price index the consumer price index
can you explain that a little more
to me and why that's important
this is inflation this is the
um
[Music]
the rate of change in prices for all
items for the u.s average city okay
so in
in june
the nation experienced the highest level
in 40 years
it inch a little lower
for july the next numbers are coming up
in the next couple days or is it a
quarterly it's a monthly monthly monthly
it comes around the 13th okay
um
now anything that we could do as a city
as a council to help reduce that
i think this is um
the federal reserve is working towards
controlling prices is one of their
priority and they
they're very focused on achieving this
so
as a city i don't think i have an answer
for
i think thank you dr dolez thank you
mary those are all my questions
counselor bancomo thanks mayor thank you
so much dr torres for your presentation
it's always very informative um
back to the questions around
unemployment do you have demographics on
those 4.7 is that hard
i don't have demographics like sometimes
for city level it's hard to find data
yeah but i can look and see what i can
find for you i would love that right
because it's not just numbers or people
right and i'd want to know
i know and i know the economic
department has been working really hard
to do a ton of
job fairs and even very specific job
fairs and so i'm just you know i i want
to understand better
uh who these folks are is it young
people is it older folks like who are
they so that we can
reach out to them
in a better manner
on page five
where does the cannabis industry it
could fall under a bunch of these right
retail
this is for the las cruces msa and um
they don't
they just present the sectors they don't
disaggregate so i'm guessing some of the
cannabis can be in the retail trade
but i don't have the data okay that's
okay that i'm just curious to
figure that out my other two questions
are more broad and given the recent
federal legislation or on the inflation
act i'm curious if you have any
assessments as to how that might impact
las cruces and our economic outlook
well there's some
in a recent speech federal
reserve um chair their own polls uh that
they will
they're working towards
lowering
inflation and
this might create some softening of the
job market conditions the
best case scenario is like there's a lot
of job openings right now so that they
may decrease the number of job openings
available they might decrease the job
growth
rate
and
worst-case scenario it can increase the
unemployment rate
okay interesting okay
are you giving these outlooks quarterly
yeah we put them in our website okay
there's a link economic outlooks okay so
maybe by next quarterly update you'll
have some information on that on what
the inflation reduction act possibly did
yeah like a
good thing and you like
hit a little lower still high but at
least it didn't win
higher right so let's see this month
next coming month so yeah we will be
publishing the economic outlook and then
i'm really curious about
the student loan forgiveness information
and
do you think there's going to be any way
to
when that happens
to know what impact it had on las cruces
i will need to look into that okay i'll
i'll look into that
i'd be so curious how many families in
las cruces were impacted by that thank
you so much dr torres
thank you councillor flotus
thank you mr mayor and thank you dr
torres
phd in economics it's always a pleasure
to see you and thank you for your
presentation
um
can you go to page nine please
so um
the federal fund i think is a
fiction of economics
and i don't understand economics that's
why i'm in awe of you and dr payatis and
anybody who gets
like an a or a b in macro or
macro or
whatever uh
macro
and what's the other one micro
oh yeah michael yeah there you go there
you have it economics
but um you know you you look at
you know i
you know you look at all the
uh you know the ups and downs and
and
really up and then it comes down again
is there a comprehensive report that
shows what contributes
to
the
federal fund
the reserve the federal reserve
making
these adjustments i mean is there
something objective that we the lay
people
can look at and fully understand
and that's why i think it's a fiction i
think and because burnett you know the
old guy ben bernanke
i mean when he was asked i i you know
this always comes to mind whenever you
know the federal reserve comes up
because
he was asked
and he boldly said
you reduce inflation by moving by moving
just move the decimal i mean he said it
was very cynical but he was he didn't
you know you think he's joking he wasn't
so
that's why i think it's a fiction i
think that um
a lot of these things can be adjusted
you know like right now interest rates
on anything on credit cards on this that
and the other are just out of this world
and it did i don't know
is there any explanation or any kind of
a
way of
um
i mean how do they come to the consumer
price index other than just fixing
prices
i mean how do they arrive at that do you
know but to consume how did a right to
the consumer price index it's um
they gather
prices around the city it's a they have
a basket of goods that they track on a
certain time period
it's very comprehensive of like
what kind of products are talking and
then there's energy there's
one bunch of different items that they
use to calculate the consumer price
index but
i can find um
maybe some document that gives a better
explanation that i can share with you
like on how
and then the federal fund rate it's um
it's used as a benchmark to
for other loans like credit cards
mortgage rates so
typically that increases other
rate in other loans will tend to
increase
we already experienced an increase in
the 30-year mortgage rate as a result of
some of the increases we've seen so far
right
see the only
the only thing that i can look at
objectively
is and then of course blame it on covid
anything happens blame it on covid
um
where you know there was a
loss of
like the production of lumber coming
from
from canada i mean it went up
exponentially because
because of covet um
and then
prices of food prices i mean everything
you go to the market and you thought and
you think wait a minute wasn't that just
like two dollars last week and this week
it's four dollars
and it's like you know from cotton balls
up all the way to
you know bird seed to
to meats and produce
so
i guess it's a global thing where
prices have gone up
because we don't have enough
uh commodities
commodities are scarce because of covent
everything because of covid i don't know
i i guess i'm just kind of like
wondering where how it can end and i
guess there's no end to it and i know i
you know i know you don't have a crystal
ball
but all of this just really it's
fascinating to me at the same time it's
dreadful in terms of the impact it's
having you know worldwide but especially
here in our community
i think there was a
couple of things uh
work together to create this environment
the kobe brought a lot of changes
there was a lot of supply chain
disruptions
demand and supply imbalances
then we had geopolitical factors the war
in ukraine created more constraints
all the closures to the pandemic also
led to more imbalances so
we had a period of very low interest
rates for a long time that could have
also play a role
so there's a lot of parts contributing
to the current uncertainty that we're
living in the nation
yes well thank you so much
dr doris for shedding some light on that
yeah thank you and thank you mr mayor
anybody else
so i just wanted to address something
mayor tim you're talking about the
doctors the few that i've spoken with a
lot of the
sole proprietors are going they're
selling their practice to the hospitals
and the they cite two reasons one is the
professional liability rates are going
up a lot
and two there was um
there was something that the
i guess a lot of attorney generals
throughout different states
just started looking at all these
doctors and were checking to make sure
they didn't
weren't over billing for medicaid fraud
and they would do these
these audits and then charge the doctors
for these audits and some of them were
pretty expensive and they were just
tired of the red tape the insurance
companies weren't health insurance
companies weren't reimbursing them right
away and they were taking 30 90 days
before they get paid and they just
you know so these you're starting to see
hospitals
owning these small practices and so it's
a little
it's going to be it's a challenge for
them and yeah so
i just want to share that with you that
part there
okay so was uh thank you very much for
that update we appreciate that it
doesn't look like there's anything else
on the agenda
so if there's nothing further
entertaining a motion to adjourn so
moved second thank you made by counselor
beta second by councilman cuomo
christine
this is on the motion to adjourn the
work session counselor beta yes
councilor graham yes
counselor ben como yes councillor quran
is absent councilor flores yes
councillor gandara
yes mayor yes okay we're adjourned it's
308 pm thank you
[Applause]
okay so this is the agenda setting
meeting for the september 19
2022 city council meeting number one
non-consent one non-consent two
non-consent two non-consensual three
non-consent three non-consent for
non-consent for non-consent five
non-consent five non-concern six
non-consent six non-consensus seven on
consent seven non-consent
you