[Music]
okay good afternoon everyone welcome to
our city council meeting today is monday
april
excuse me on april august 15th 2022 it's
approximately 1 p.m uh before we have
our pledge of allegiance i'm going to
ask you if you please rise for a brief
moment of silence as we reflect back on
the brave men women the united states
armed forces as they protect our
interests around the globe as well as
the courageous men and women of las
cruces police department and the las
cruces fire department as they keep our
city safe 24 7 365.
counselor beta join me in the pledge
i pledge allegiance to the flag of the
united states of america and to the
republic for which it stands one nation
under god indivisible with liberty and
justice for all
thank you
okay now we're going to have our
pets of the week and jennifer martinez
from our communications office will be
presenting
good afternoon mayor and council i am
jennifer martinez with the city's
communications office and today i would
like to introduce you to our cat and dog
of the week
and i will begin with
marley
marley loves going on walks she is very
gentle when taking treats she does need
a little bit of time and reassurance
getting to know people but once she does
she does become very comfortable if
given that time to adjust marley is a
little over a year old and can be a
little bit scared sometimes when put in
new environments or situations
and then we have doja doja is a six
pound little thing who is about three
years old this little girl is just
waiting for her forever family to stroll
in and fall in love she is on the quiet
side and a little reserved as well dosia
has had a previous owner who made her
feel very loved and very safe but that
owner has passed away
you can meet doja or marley by calling
the animal services center at eight two
zero zero one eight to make an
appointment to visit
and if i can remind you we're halfway
into the clear the shelters adoption
promotion and that is where the adoption
fees are reduced to twenty five dollars
there's also an adoption event going on
saturday at petco from 11am to 2pm so
you can come and get to know some of
your new best friends thank you mayor
thank you jennifer
okay now we're going to have chris favor
from economic development
to the jobs of the week
good afternoon mayor council
i will be taking over jobs of the week
oh okay
okay
mervda is looking for
911 call takers uh they pay basically 18
an hour and those positions close on
october 10th
uh adelante development center is
looking for cooks uh 15 per hour and
those positions close the end of this
month
liberty engineering wire products is
looking for maintenance mechanics 20 to
24 an hour depending on experience that
too closes the end of this month
style america is looking for stylists
between 11 and thirteen dollars an hour
depending on experience that closes
august twenty seventh
and southwest alarm and fires looking
for three alarm technicians
pay between fourteen and twenty dollars
per hour depending on experience that
closes september 9th
just as a reminder all jobs and
internships can be found at
employmentnm.com
or at governmentjobs.com
careers
slash las cruces and if you're looking
to get in touch with workforce
connections you can reach them at
575-524-6250
or in their offices at 26 or 200
226 south alameda boulevard or on their
website at employeenm.com
thank you
all right thanks chris
okay now we're going to have a
presentation of proclamations and i
believe counselor beta has a
proclamation
there's a little button a little bit
higher there you go thank you
we do have a one proclamation for our
monuments to main street month it is
presented to william bill childress and
anyone
from that organization if you'd like to
come up now
okay with that in mind
we will just continue with the
proclamation
whereas public lands ensure the
ecological beauty of our community and
provide a place for children and adults
to connect with nature and
recreate outdoors and whereas public
lands provide space for active
communities that aid in the prevention
of chronic diseases provide therapeutic
recreation for services for individuals
with disabilities and also improve the
mental and emotional health of all
citizens
and whereas public lands are vitally
important
to establishing and maintaining the
quality of life in our communities
ensuring the health of all citizens and
contributing to the economic
environmental well-being of our
community
and whereas local public lands increase
a community's economic prosperity
through increased tourism and the
attraction and retention of businesses
and whereas the city of las cruces
recognizes the benefits derived from
public land recreations resources
now therefore we the mayor and city
council of the city of las cruces new
mexico do hereby proclaim the month of
september 2022
as monuments to main street month and
urge the citizens of las cruces new
mexico to join in recognizing the
critical roles public lands play in our
city signed by our mayor kenmi yagashima
and attested by christina vera our city
clerk
thank you
okay thank you councillor
mr childress isn't here i guess
okay all right
so that takes care of that now we're
going to go to
conflict of interest statement this is
where i ask if any member of the
city council city manager or any member
of city staff has any known conflict of
interest on any item on the agenda
none
and graham none regarding 8.3 i just
want to disclose i am a landlord so i'll
just
share that with you
okay now we're going to go to
public participation this is where
members of the public can speak to
council
for a total of three minutes uh seven
minutes total three minutes for public
uh participation four minutes for items
that are on the agenda
if you can't wait and you need to speak
or say something about an item that's on
the agenda please let us know because
the council won't be able to respond to
you
normally i start on my left
well judge
you're welcome i i know you've got to
get back to court so you're welcome to
just introduce yourself and share with
us what you came here for
thank you good afternoon i am presiding
las cruces municipal judge joy goldbaum
and at next week's city council meeting
i will be doing a presentation that i
think will address most of your
questions and concerns about the court
and i hope will be very informative for
you
so most
of what i'm about to say will be
addressed next week
a little fuller but i did want to inform
you right away that kieran ryan is no
longer serving as a municipal judge
there was some irregularity
or
misrepresentation about his
qualifications he's no longer licensed
to practice law in new mexico and city
code section
17-34
a states in part
no person may be elected or appointed
municipal judge who is not an active
member in good standing of the new
mexico state bar association
unfortunately he did hear cases last
week and i will have to go through those
to determine if they need to be
dismissed or can be reheard
there was no reason to rush through that
appointment
and to do so without
my input or even my knowledge
i must implore this council the city
manager the mayor and the city
attorney's office
not to vote on any changes to the
municipal court or its personnel without
my prior knowledge
and input
i will have more to say on this matter
and others regarding the court next week
but again until then i insist that you
take no action of any kind involving the
court
without my knowledge and input and i
leave you with the following statement
from the city's webpage on transparency
and accountability
you have a right to know what the city
of las cruces is doing for you the city
operates in a manner that creates trust
so it can lead to a successful
organization
this municipal organization has an
obligation to our residents to be open
and honest
i want to work with you in a spirit of
collaboration
i'll say more about that next week as
well thank you excuse me judge i believe
i believe brad from our city attorney's
office will respond to your
your comment
thank you mayor
council members
so is it the court's position
that
mr ryan or judge ryan whichever you
prefer
is not a member of the new mexico bar if
he is on inactive status
yes that was our position ma'am you're
going to have to come to the podium if
you're going to respond we can't we
can't pick your answers up from the
audience
nor do we allow members to do that
good afternoon
hello judge yes that is excuse me ma'am
can you speak into the microphone please
yes that is my position all right and
this is judge goldbaum from the las
cruces municipal court thank you judge
so i reviewed before i came in
section i believe it's 902
and it's subsections that states that no
one shall be elected
a municipal judge
unless they are
an active member of the bar licensed
attorney now you cited section
17-34a is that correct yes sir
and is it
your understanding of that
i have not reviewed that full disclosure
but is it your position that that
ordinance states that no one shall be
appointed
unless they are an active member of the
new mexico bar yes sir okay
all right thank you judge thank you mr
douglas
okay so now we're going to go ahead and
begin our
public participation i usually start on
my left first row mr burunda you have
three minutes
yes my name is paul burunda and i've
been a resident so
i was born and raised here in las cruces
70s almost 78 years ago
last week
our last city council meeting on august
the 1st
i touched base on this very issue of
judge ryan's appointment
i did then contact the city clerk's
office and got copies of the
booklet here
and
[Music]
i contacted the governor's office and
the
attorney general's office on this issue
but
first of all
one other thing i wanted to add i had
asked the mayor
for the city council for an additional
five minutes so that i could
discuss other issues but
mayor miyagashima and i don't get along
very well so he denies me anything and
everything chance that he gets
to for me to speak and i spoke about
this issue but the most important part
of this is to disclose to the city
council
you voted
in favor of appointment of judge ryan
without knowing anything about what he
is all about and i'm ashamed of you and
you should be ashamed of yourself for
doing it
a year and a half ago i came here and i
spoke
to before the council and judge
gallagher gallagher chief gallagher
appointed
a internal affairs division to
investigate ryan for
perjury allowing the officer to perjure
himself and i also then appealed
he found me guilty and i appealed to
district court and before marty virus
and she stated to me in court and i have
all the evidence she said i as long as
i'm judged here of the third judicial
district court i will never hold a
police officer accountable for perjury
that's the kind of government we have
you should be ashamed of yourself for
voting for something you knew nothing
about
and all of all of you all of you that
sit here today except for mrs graham and
mrs karan were on the council at the
time you are my district one
representative mrs cantor and you've
known all along everything that has been
happening that i've shared with you
whether you say you're helping me i
don't see any progress
now mrs flores you mentioned
on on the august 1st that um the mayor
was a multi-millionaire i wonder how we
got that money
it's in it's in it's a city council
meeting so you don't don't look
surprised uh i um
at least that's what what my impression
is from listening
to uh watching the city council meeting
of august the first
and the governor is looking at it too
and we are not as citizens going to vote
for our uh
another governor thank you mr burndale
your time is up
without
hell to pay thank you
okay so that was first row 81 on the
second row
you really want to follow that
mr mayor
yes
go ahead sir i just need you to state
your name please
mr mayor
city council
my name is michael potts and i just came
here to give you some information and
discuss this resolution 23022 that you
have before you today sir you won't be
able to stay for that resolution
will you be able to stay to talk about
that resolution because we don't
normally talk about the agenda
participation
is usually for other things that aren't
on the agenda
oh well then i apologize
if you can wait it won't be that long i
don't think okay thanks thank you sir
thank you
just need to state your name please
before you start the clock mr mayor my
name is billy lawrence i'd like to claim
all three minutes of my time if there's
any questions you feel free to ask me at
the end of my
discussion or presentation
so starting now again my name is billy
lawrence i'm a combat veteran u.s air
force vet 23 years eight months and two
days i served two tours in iraq
greetings my name is billy lawrence i
live at 1955 palm canyon drive i'm here
today to discuss the special use
permitting process for the halfway house
established at 1955 palm canyon drive i
understand that in accordance with the
fair federal fair housing act in the ada
local governments are required to make
reasonable accommodation for recovering
alcoholics and drug addicts who live in
group environments i'm not here to
protest the fact that the halfway house
has been established next door to me in
september of 21
2021 i'm here to discuss what i believe
to be a procedural error committed by
the city
of las cruces during the establishment
of this halfway house and how it's
arbitrary and capricious decision not to
post a special use notice resulted in a
procedural error which has caused me
and caused severely diminished my my
quality of life for me and my family and
others that are affected around the city
for this same situation on or about 19
meg i called the city planning office
and i spoke with john i believe his last
name was munoz i'm not sure uh after
putting me on a brief hold to confer
with his with his co-worker he advised
me that they had discussed the the
special use permitting process for this
specific specific address and it was
decided that this house didn't meet the
definition of a halfway house he further
stated that this house was like a house
full of college kids renting rooms and
the special use permitting process
wasn't required i told him that i didn't
agree and he could come and see the
neighbors for himself i then told him i
would send a letter further explaining
my reasoning i sent the letter on 28
million i was contacted right away by
the planning and zoning lead i would
assume with a hyphenated name that
included rogers she was very polite she
told me that they're in the process of
updating the ordinance on the definition
of a halfway house because it was
something to the effect of the ordinance
isn't clear or it's ambiguous in the way
it was currently written i told her for
this discussion we're looking at the
current ordinance i specifically asked
her what criteria was used as a basis
for their decision and and she didn't
really answer the question but she said
if i didn't like their decision i can do
one of two things call codes to complain
if there's violations next door or pay
250 dollars to appeal their decision i
specifically asked if she would please
answer my questions in writing provide
me a written response to my for my file
at the earliest convenience as of this
date i have not received a response from
anyone so i called the city manager's
office
on friday the 12th that spoke with
annette who found my email and re-sent
it to all of you again including you
counselor flores
lastly i thought i haven't dis
i thought lastly although i haven't
discussed this situation my with my
neighbors or any other affected parties
i have discussed it with an attorney and
he referred me to the new mexico state
bar i haven't retained his services but
he's advised me that procedural errors
committed by municipalities can be fatal
mistakes resulting in lawsuits or
settlements for damages and he strongly
recommended i attain legal counsel asap
my first letter was an inquiry my next
letter i have already prepared is a
demand letter should the city continue
to ignore my request for an explanation
i'm available to meet with your legal
counsel or anyone else in a more private
city to discuss this matter in greater
detail any questions
the only thing i have sir if you'd like
to leave that with the city clerk um
i'll take a look at it and sure you have
the no you have the letter mr mayor you
have the letter all of you have the
letter yeah once the florida has it let
me just share with you that if they send
it to all council members it's very
unlikely it's going to be responded to
sir so
that no i i just got insane you want to
leave with the city clerk fine if you
don't want to okay we're the next next
speaker okay we'll go to the next one
okay
you're welcome okay third row anyone
fourth row
there's going to be a full moon tonight
afternoon everybody
my name is patrick nolan i serve as
executive director with friends of
oregon mountains cesar peaks
i'm here to give a thank you to the city
of las cruces um
this year we are co-hosting danger bird
this is the yearly route of the
monumental loop uh for those of you that
don't know many of you probably know
more than you want to know about the
loop it is it connects all four parts of
the national monument and this year is
our first permanent event where folks
are registering and we were able to do
this thankfully for the with the support
of visit las cruces and the good folks
over there specifically hillary and
rochelle who are really instrumental in
believing in the in the monumental loop
um registration closed at 150 so of
those 150 half of those folks are from
out of the state of new mexico
so i think that's a really good sign of
like economic development bringing folks
here to southern new mexico from all
over wisconsin california
maine i think there was a maine in there
the florida lots of texas arizona and
then we're also some new mexicans out
there because we protect
public lands for new mexicans too
of the riders are female which i
understand we need to do a better job of
so i just think it's important to mark
that um
we need to get more young women out on
bikes so we will continue to work with
the city of las cruces parks and rec on
that kind of program
so like i said this is the first year
it's a permanent event with our local
blm office and i invite you to come to
the backpacking summit which will take
place at klein park on october 28th and
we're really talking all things outdoor
wreck it's a great chance to learn more
i'm sure we can get somebody up here to
serve on a panel to talk about what the
city is doing for outdoor recreation
and then the ride will kick off october
29th from the downtown plaza somewhere
around here
and you can ride on that you don't have
to do the whole 200 mile loop but you
can ride on that intro ride and send
folks off on their voyage so thank you
again to the city council and to visit
las cruces
all right thank you patrick
that was what the fourth row i believe
fifth row anyone
sixth row
seventh row
you know okay yeah you too i'm juan and
this uh this lady here
i'm juan garcia mayor counselors
i understand using social justice
verbiage helps court political points
but i find it very troubling and
divisive
seeing soul issues revolve around
identity
or racial or victimhood context
a quote from the resolution
23-22
presents the ideology of the oppressors
and the oppressed
this time the landlords being the
oppressors
sourcing and unquote source of income
discrimination contributes to the
perpetuation
of racially segregated communities
racially segregated communities and
neighborhoods with concentrated poverty
well
i don't believe there should be
discrimination against anyone but on the
other hand landlords have to make a risk
assessment on who they will do business
with
many landlords from mom and pop small
businesses who are trying to make some
supplemental income
to survive in a high cost of living
environment
they count on the rent to pay the
maintenance or mortgage of their rentals
or for their own steady stream of income
many are on fixed income i know a few of
those
when a tenant defaults the landlord is
stuck with resolving the problem at
their own expense
and i quote increased efforts to combat
income discrimination through
aggressively investigating and
prosecuting landlords who refuse to rent
the tenants
you can drive a truck through that quote
so if a landlord deems a prospective
tenant is a risk and refuses to rent
you're going to prosecute him or her
please stop with the racial divisiveness
and class warfare being pushed by the
narrative included in this proposed
resolution thank you
yes ma'am
in the back
hello my name is marie o'connor excuse
me i struggle with public speaking
i just found that there would be a
discussion on the resolution
in support of new mexico's legislation
to protect tenants from income
discrimination by landlords
ms o'connor can you can't wait until
that item comes up for discussion
because this is typically used for just
public participation the reason why the
other gentleman before you he didn't
specifically ask anything or identify
about the resolution he just start
talking okay yeah this is my first time
i'm not sure how to go if you're if you
can wait uh it probably won't be long
it'll probably be up here in the next 30
minutes that we'll be discussing okay is
that okay okay thank you
all right so that was a seventh row
anyone on the
rick
hello my name is rick renaud i was going
to speak on 8.3 because i had to leave
is that okay
okay oh sure go ahead all right uh thank
you thank you
you just got three minutes though yes
okay that's fine uh thank you mr mayor
and city council
following up on juan's remarks i was a
landlord me and my wife i worked at
white sands my wife was a teacher we
bought a house about 2008 a
an investment home
the payment was twenty five hundred
dollars a month
all interest
and we couldn't sell it we couldn't sell
it for months
imagine two months going by five
thousand dollars
we're the rich landlords that you guys
are
seemingly or that the resolution you
that you may support i'd advise not to
support the resolution is because you're
hitting small guys my father-in-law in
roswell he used to own ten houses five
now he owns two
so i'm just i i would say please vote no
on the resolution because you're hitting
the small guys and it does seem punitive
that that uh that law the way it's
written
so thank you
okay that was some throw anyone on the
eighth row
ninth row yes sir put your hand up
peter goodman
i think maybe so um
good morning i am peter goodman uh i'm a
journalist in town here i'm not going to
speak on that resolution but i will
respond to what juan said hope to talk
to him more on radio sometime but
the in a world where
a black family can get a
appraisal that's fifty or a hundred
thousand dollars higher
by not meeting with the appraiser and
hiding all their ethnic
all their family photos and ethnic
literature
dealing with racism
is still a serious problem
but
i'm really here to
i hope without the same kind of heat
as some others
discuss the
judge ryan's situation
technically i think he's probably
practicing law without a license
in california that would be treated
either as a felony or as a misdemeanor
now here
this situation obviously would not be a
felony and probably wouldn't be
prosecuted as a misdemeanor personal
privilege
so again point of personal privilege to
ask a legal question
sure yes counselor thank you um
as
mr goodman stands as an alternate
judging is this a type of public comment
that
is
since he brought up pending potential
pending litigation okay for a
employee
counselor to be clear what you're asking
is because mr goodman acts as an
alternate judge to the court uh should
he be exposing certain views it could be
detrimental to the city or or it's for
its employees yes
so
mayor
council members
the situation that we have here
is that
a judge who was appointed
not elected to fill a vacant seat
is being subjected to public comment now
and i believe
the issue that has been raised by mr
goodman judge goodman if you will
is whether or not a possible crime
has been
committed
it seems to me and
this is very much
a a new issue
that it might be something
that ought better be
fully investigated
first
because the judge
accusing even if judge goodman or mr
goodman is not accusing i i've said
accused that let me be clear that's kind
of a by the way
um
i don't even know if practicing law
without a license is a crime here
i haven't looked that up
but i think it's pretty clear
and you practice in the municipal court
that judge ryan would not be allowed to
defend anybody or prosecute anybody
without being an active member of the
bar
um pragmatically you know that some of
the defense counsel try to appeal on the
basis that an alternative judge heard
the case what would they do with a guy
who's not even an active member of the
bar
and i don't think you'd go to court or
and hang your hat on the difference
between elected and appointed i mean if
you can only elect certain people
i don't think the council would ever be
in a position of saying
yeah but we're the council so we can
appoint people who don't otherwise
qualify i don't think you could say that
with a straight face
[Music]
i also um and i judge i i
i have seen an email from judge ryan
that suggests he didn't even start the
process
um i don't want to criticize him on the
other hand
i would certain and you'll have a chance
to discuss the whole municipal court
situation
with judge goldbaum in a week or so
but i would certainly have some concerns
that he jumped right in
at least one of the council members is a
lawyer and i'm pretty sure if she were
in this situation where
she wasn't sure whether she was
qualified to do something or there might
be any chance somebody would say she
wasn't
she'd go to the books or call the bar
they're easy they're easy to call and
and question
so
i would have concerns at any rate thank
you very much and
very much like almost everything you
folks do
i got a question for you peter
so in new mexico is it your
understanding that the only authority
that can remove a judge is this new
mexico supreme court
certainly for misconduct exactly yeah
and there has to be a trial there has to
be
all kinds of information done so i just
wanted to share that with you
um but okay i was just curious if you
knew the answer but as far as i know uh
you're correct on that right
thank you
okay so that was uh seventh row
was there anybody else
wishing to speak on anyone on my left
left side
oh good i appreciate that sir you know
that way there i can look at it we can
we can do you have your email address on
there as well
okay good thank you
okay now i'm going to start on my right
first two rows of staff third row
fourth row
fifth row
sixth row
seventh eighth anyone on my right
okay that takes care of public
participation
now i have a closed meeting statement to
read
excuse me
as soon as i find it here it is
whilst cruise city council met in closed
session at 11 am august 1st 2022
following members were in attendance
councillors flores bincomo graham abeda
myself kenmi agushima
participated via telephone staff
president was lisa larocque
sustainability coordinator delaila walsh
director of las cruces utilities
adrianne whitmer las cruces utilities
jennifer vega city attorney anastasia
stevens outside city attorney
or contract attorney akane tamopeo
assistant city manager ifo billy city
manager leanne demouche director of
financial services david sevillo
director of public works
meeting adjourned at 12 25 p.m for the
record las cruces city council met in
closed session only discussed those
limited items as this stated in the
posted notice
which was one to discuss pending or
threatened litigation regarding the new
mexico public regulation commission case
number
21-00269-ut in the matter of the
application
of el paso electric for approval of grid
monetization project to implement an
advanced metering system which is closed
pursuant to nmsa available
[Music]
which is closed pursuant to nmsa 1978
section 10-15-1 h number seven and the
third item was to discuss pending or
threatened litigation regarding case
number
21-00177-ut concerning the proposed
amendments to rule 17.5
440 nmac line extensions which is closed
pursuant to nmsa 1978 section
10-15-1 h number seven
okay now we're going to go to the
acceptance of the agenda i'm going to
need a motion in a second please so
moved by flores
second aveda emotion made by counselor
florida second by counselor beta
christine
this is on the motion to accept the
agenda as presented counselor abeda yes
councilor graham yes
counselor bencomo yes councillor koran
yes counselor flotez yes
councillor gondara yes and mayor
yes
okay so
first item 8.1
excuse me resolution 23-020
the motion in a second
okay emotion made by counselor florida
second by counselor karen
and dave duncan
well
good afternoon mayor
were you here before yes sir okay that's
right one other time that's right okay
you're a veteran now yeah uh trying to
be
can't get it go full screen for me
there we go
all right good afternoon mayor
councillors i'm here to present today
two engineering on-call engineering
agreements that we put out an rfp for
these are going to be for
on-call electrical engineering services
we put out the
rfp in march of this year and from that
rfp we received two proposals and these
proposals were for
you know services such as electrical
system designed for buildings
booster stations lift stations and odor
control
stations
this selective value committee did
review the proposals and they
recommended that we award both
contracts to both
both firms one of which is bohannon and
houston and the other is moles and
corbin both of las cruces
and both of these agreements will be up
for four up to four years
based on approved budget appropriations
and they'll be 500 000 apiece now these
are only used for already approved
budgeted projects so it's you know
that's all it can be used for so the 500
500 000 cap is just
for contractual purposes even though all
the budget all the pro projects they'll
be used on already approved
and these are your options and i'll
stand for questions
thanks steve
questions
members of the public
i'm seeing none
christine
this is on the motion to approve
resolution 23-020
counselor aveda yes
councilor graham yes
counselor ben como yes
councillor quran yes
councilor flores yes councillor gandara
yes mayor yes
okay item 8.2 resolution 23-021
i need a motion a second so move to veda
second gun motion made by counselor
second by mayor pro tem gander
and natalie green will be discussing
good afternoon mr mayor members of
council natalie green with economic
development for the record uh the
resolution before you is the adoption of
the messiah valley community hope master
plan
just a little background in 2021 the
city hired hewitt zollers
in conjunction with arc and real estate
advisors
to conduct a master plan of the messiah
valley community of hope campus its
purpose was to assist the city and the
alliance agencies in planning for the
future campus needs and assess the
current conditions and the management
relationship between the city and the
five alliance agencies
the campus is located at 999 west amador
the master plan evaluated
two distinct phases the first was to
understand the current program needs
demands and future plans of each of the
alliance agencies and the second was to
assess the management structure the
entity relationships and the structure
of the campus operations
the existing site is before you building
one was constructed in 1994. it used to
house hacienda del sol messiah valley
community of hope el caldito and st
luke's it currently houses el caldito
sandwiched between amador health center
on both the north and
south ends of the building
building two was constructed in 2000
for jardin de los ninos and then
building three was built in 2005 and
expanded out the messiah valley
community of hope
day shelter services and the casa de
peregrinos and then in 2011 we added
camp hope
hubert zoller performed a facilities
condition assessment which
is a ratio between the cost of repairs
to the building and the current
replacement value based on
insurance standards and so they
determined that the overall campus has a
63.3 percent uh ranking which just
basically means that it's it needs some
investment
because it's near its
useful life
the condition assessments that they
performed there was a number of things
that they noted
they identified about 26 million dollars
in capital improvements that could or
should occur over the next five years
some of those are
hv ac systems
ada accessibility parking lot
landscaping erosion
an additional driveway and we'll get
into some of that in a future slide
real estate
advisors
did do an assessment
they did a review of
how the physical
buildings are being used and managed by
the non-profits and they also did an
assessment of their resources and our
resources and then provided some
recommendations on future
decision-making some of their red
recommendations were to
dedicate a full-time maintenance staff
person to help streamline and build
efficiency in the facility process so a
single point of contact that was
familiar with the campus and the lease
responsibilities could handle the
day-to-day maintenance and repair and
coordinate work orders
not only with our staff but with outside
vendors
they recommended a standardized process
for the quarterly anti-donation log
submissions and maintenance submissions
again with staff transitions and changes
within the organization a standardized
process is always beneficial
recommended that we amend both the
master lease and its respective sub
leases to account for changes that are
occurring on the campus as council may
remember there's been some alterations
or additions to the campus to include a
future expansion of amador health center
and then the casa de peregrino's new
facility and then camp hope so the
subleases would not only identify that
new square footage it would also just
have a more consistent
format
this is the conceptual
site that they
provided to us again this is just a
an ultimate build out of the site what
it would look like it creates an
additional access road
it relocates the el caldito soup kitchen
which would allow the full expansion of
amador health in building one
it creates a shared storage
many of the nonprofits have connex boxes
that they're using around the campus
it
allows for the relocation or potential
renovation of jardin de los ninos
it would it demonstrates the the new
warehouse in casa de peregrinos
it also shows the
once casa de peregrinos
moves out of building three
uh the expansion of community
of hope to relieve crowding into that
space
it demonstrates a construction of a
security station
it also potentially reorients
site entrances
and then demonstrates the expansion zone
for housing and other compatible uses
in terms of next steps uh we are
recommending that we amend the master
lease to include the new square footage
and the new
parcels of land that are acquired
a part of that would also include an
amendment to the planned unit
development
the pud the zoning so many of the
parcels are either
industrial residential or
have the pud designation so we would
just like one
consistent zoning
we would also like to do a survey and a
replat of the campus as part of that pud
we would evaluate with the non-profits
to prioritize and pursue capital
improvements
based on the master plan we are also
exploring some additional land
acquisition opportunities and then we
would evaluate and implement the other
recommendations within the master plan
and with that all stand for questions
and there's uh staff from the respective
nonprofits and facilities and land
management if you have any additional
questions
thank you natalie yeah mayor pro tem and
then councilor graham thank you mayor
thank you natalie for the presentation
very appreciative of the of this
happening i think
i've been talking about this for some
time
um so it's nice to have it right in a
format that we could easily read and
understand where the issue where the
strengths are where the issues are not
only in as it relates to the
recommendations that you have outlined
for us is there a time frame
to get
and i'm looking more specifically to the
changes in the lease and the lesser a
lot of dialogue around
the agencies not being familiar about
who's doing what
we're not consistent about maintaining
it seems like
or it appears i don't know that to be um
mr mayor mayor protege i anticipate that
master lease coming
for sure prior to march 2023 that's when
casa de peregrinos will move into their
or we anticipate them moving into their
new facility so they'll need to have a
lease in place so they can occupy the
new space so i anticipate those changes
coming
sooner than
later
and then the pud
and the survey replat staff has already
started that process
it's a lengthy process but again we
anticipate those happening within the
next six months
and then with the capital improvements
the agencies have already met many of
their projects are on the cip and the
icip and then we are also meeting with
our
grants office tomorrow to also evaluate
some of these capital improvements
so natalie more specifically the the
changes in the maintenance schedule and
utilizing um software to get set you
know to to manage that manage that
effectively i think those are
all very important and i want a time
frame i've been talking about this for
at least three years i know there's been
transition
uh folks but this is really important
and it behooves us to maintain our
facilities at the
the best
is there someone from facilities willing
to tell me what that looks like mr mayor
mayor protem i'm going to defer to
facilities administrator alex flores
mr mayor mayor pretemp good afternoon my
name is alex flores
um this is actually my first time
talking to you as a new welcome service
management administrator
currently we have been working
to get
maintenance
schedules not only for this facility but
for all of them facilities here at the
city
um
especially on this one
we're still in the transition
hearing new issues coming up trying to
resolve those
but as far as getting a schedule it's
going to take a little bit
for me to get to know you know what's
been going on
but hopefully within the next couple
months we should be able to
at least get something something going
and
hopefully
start getting those on the cip so they
can later on
uh be you know receive funding to
upgrade those systems that really need
the upgrades thank you alex for that
do you have
any
future
plans to look at software to assist you
in that process and if so is i don't i
don't know what sort of software is out
there but i imagine there's some very
good ones that will help you manage that
and so a couple or three months to sort
of manage that and come back with an
estimate if it's more than i'm sure it's
going to be
pricey to to
purchase
well in
mr mayor
and mayor protem
we currently do have the existing
software that we use
that do have that capability
and so we are exploring uh further that
software to be able to further utilize
it
okay all right um
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and and so when will you have
conversations with the um
the leases about the private um natalie
you mentioned the priorities like for
hvac and other
ada issues i mean what
what when will we you know
staff meet with the leasi to determine
what are the priorities moving forward
and how will we coordinate our efforts
to
lobby
the legislature for
upcoming capital outlay
mr mayor mayor portem the city meets
with each of the non-profits every year
as part of the capital improvement
process
many of the projects already identified
on this list are on our
icip list and then some of them are
actually moving forward as you'll see in
a further
resolution
as part of the master plan our hope is
that we will collaborate with the
non-profits to do some of those shared
activities like repaving the parking lot
some of them that aren't necessarily
agency specific but we do coordinate
with them on an annual basis to review
their their projects and then overall
campus projects okay thank you
and then my questions are more specific
to jardine de los ninos
very concerned about you know children
and safety
some of the the things that i read
are concerning to me
and those seem
a priority like
like 9-1-1 we should do something about
this immediately
are there any efforts
currently to speak specifically with dr
michelle adams
and
would it behoove us to look at
relocation
completely out of that area
and what are the thoughts around that
mr mayor mayor protest we are looking at
two
specific options one is to reorient the
the entrance and it would have its own
space
away from the other campus activities
although the ideal opportunity is in
this square to do a potential new
building
as a further
a resolution to two steps from now i'll
i can discuss an opportunity that we
have
to partner with a developer who would
then be able to do the daycare facility
and
a housing complex and so we are in
discussions with them but i'll also
defer to michelle if she wants to say
anything
good afternoon council miss michelle
adams and i'm the ceo at jardin de los
ninos
and i appreciate
mayor protam your concerns we do
find it concerning at times to be
located in our specific location however
we do recognize that as a community
we're working together
to establish the best plan of action
i do think that
what is being proposed today
and the steps that the city is taking to
address some of the concerns
is already in progress in helping us i
do recognize that there are moments
throughout the year where
[Music]
the campus experiences a little more
[Music]
activity that is sometimes
for our children it's difficult to
experience but i do recognize that we
are also working together as a
as a campus to combat and work together
to make sure that we're
preparing ourselves for
the growth that we're seeing because
across the campus we're seeing growth
we're seeing the needs that
we're meeting for the community but also
that there are several
more that we will be serving down the
road
and so i do think that we are already
making great strides
um
and i'm really hopeful that we can work
together
as a community to
really look at what the best plan of
action is for
not only harding because i do think that
we are definitely
in need of a larger building
to be able to serve more children but
also recognizing that all of our our
entire campus
is
serving more individuals
each month and so our growth is
with growth comes you know other things
on our campus i do want to commend
natalie and her team
because they have actually spent a lot
of time
meeting with us they understand our
needs and they actually listen to the
needs that we have and i commend all of
you because i know many of you have also
sat down and listened to some of the
concerns that we have
some of the needs that we experience
ideally a new building
where we can expand
would benefit our community
our dean could benefit
more families if we had a larger
setting
but that's probably going to be a few
years down the road so
whatever we can do as a community
to mitigate some of the immediate
concerns that we have
i think
could really benefit us
thank you dr alamos and with that said
can you talk to me more of what the
priority it talked about fencing
security things of that sort sort of
shielding the the children from some of
those crises that occur
um with our unhoused um
neighbors
is that are those is that the dialogue
that you're having very specifically to
kind of get tie you over into the new
building
um we are
we haven't specifically talked about
some of those that dial blog has not
specifically come up but we are we've
talked about
looking at maybe how we can utilize
our back area the
i think it's the south side of the
building
to really uh you know benefit from some
of that space that's not being utilized
to the playground where the playground
is it's actually behind our um
we have like a
[Music]
an outdoor space yes and there is just
um
unpaved area that could potentially you
know expand some space for us
but we've had many many discussions of
various options
because we are landlocked you know we
don't really have a lot of space behind
us to build out
so um
that might be challenging sure sure i
appreciate that i i just think
as we
continue to provide a safe space for our
children that that for me is number one
priority is addressing the safety and
the security with fencing and cameras i
know i've read a lot of a lot i read it
all so i made some a lot of notes here
and i'll leave it to you dr alames to
have those conversations with natalie i
would like and i'd recommend i'd like to
hear a quarterly report back
about where we are at with the
maintenance and the programming and
having one or two select maintenance
people out there specifically so they
understand you know from one month to
another what the maintenance is and the
schedule is it would be appropriate
thank you mayor
thank you thank you
we have councilor graham and then
councilor flores
thank you mayor
thank you natalie and everyone who put
so much work into
bringing this master plan before us and
presenting
and i just want to say
you know obviously we're discussing one
of the biggest challenges we're facing
as a city and i think the very
the very good rallying cry is okay what
are you doing what are the solutions um
here are some of the solutions that work
and here are some of the solutions in
the making
and i recognize that the wheels of
bureaucracy turn so so slowly but they
are turning and
it's really great to see
the plans
for the future
the primary question i had i think has
sort of been
brought out in the discussion with mayor
pro tem and that is
we can jump back to slide 10 please
natalie the
how we are funding all of this and mayor
pro-tem brought up state appropriations
you were talking about grant
possibilities natalie i know a lot of
the partners at community hope community
of hope has had
amazing success at bringing in grant
funding
the bezos foundation i believe kudos
director martinez i see you out there
i think the concern
is again understandably oh is this just
going to be completely funded by the
city and that sounds like
no
but natalie if you could just give us a
little more detail about the variety of
funding sources
mr mayor councillor graham so most of
the improvements to the campus have been
funded through capital outlay or through
grants that the non-profits have gone
after
there's two upcoming projects
those projects are going after capital
outlay projects
the amador health expansion which is a
pamela angel's project
used i believe two or three different
capital outlay projects and then they
were also very lucky to get a hersa
arpa grant and so many of the the
nonprofits have also used cdbg
uh funding so uh
facility improvement projects are
are also a way to fund these uh through
our cdbg program uh but most of the
improvements have been
agency-led and so with this master plan
it gives us the opportunity to not only
do agency-led projects but also lead as
a city in what we need for the overall
campus
okay great thank you so it sounds like
the entire collage federal state
city
foundational okay wonderful thank you
that's all i had mayor thank you
thank you councillor flores
i actually have a question for dr adamus
first of all thank you very much dr
adamus for the wonderful work you do for
our children
how many is there a waiting list for
children to be cared for
thank you councillor flotus thank you
mayor and the rest of the council
yes
at the moment unfortunately we are at
full capacity so what that means is
we do have children that are on a wait
list um
and we serve them
at this moment very of the various
programming that is
not necessarily within the building so
if we have programs that for example our
anti-hunger and wellness program
that is a program where we send food
boxes to our children and their families
that's a program that can we can serve
children that are not necessarily on
site
our infant mental health program we try
to work
in collaboration with our partners at
fyi plus to provide telehealth for some
of those children
but in the actual building
because we are a five-star early
childhood
program
our
teacher-to-child ratio is
smaller so we need
more classrooms for smaller ratios
so essentially
because of that we are full capacity and
unable to to serve
in particular we have a huge need for
our three-year-olds
we are one of few
early pre-k programs within a 10-mile
radius of community of hope campus
so therefore we have a large need to
fill
that particular
age group in servicing those children
how many excuse me how many children do
you have
so our classroom allows for us to have
eight children in that classroom
and we have about a classroom and a half
so about
a little over
10 children on the wait list
at the moment how many children do you
have
in the entire program yes we have
enrolled and of course because of the
high mobility it's a snapshot but
enrolled as of
i believe last week we had about 60
children 60.
you had 60 children it's not a very big
space i've been there several times but
thank you so much dr adonis i did have
another question
so
the children you say there's high
mobility
what do you mean by that what do you
mean by that so a family could be
enrolled in our program
for approximately three months and then
they might
not be there for a month and a half
they may come back
we may get new families in
so the snapshot is usually on a monthly
basis because we do have children
whose families might be
under high mobility circumstances where
they might be living
they may fall under our near homeless
designation where they may be with us at
one point and then they may move
outside county limits
they might be living in hatch they might
come back to las cruces proper it just
really depends on the makeup of the
family and what the circumstances are
do you do any follow-up or are you able
to do any follow-up with the children
who are
high mobility we do and we often
reach out to the families to see
if they are if and when they're ready to
come back or if we can help them
to find another location that's closer
to wherever they might be residing so if
a family does leave and disenroll from
jardine
and maybe they end up in chaparral or in
hatch then we'll work with our partners
to try to support them so that they're
not left without child
child care and early learning
opportunities given that you you're one
of the few
mental health
providers actually
for children in the state in the child
care setting
do you work with the entire family
so our infant mental health program does
focus on the entire family
we do partner with
our community partners like such as
amador health center
fyi plus who we actually contract all of
our therapists through
and they actually provide the services
in-house at hardeen
or at fyi plus
or via telehealth
great well i
just have to thank you from the bottom
of my heart for doing this wonderful
service and i
um
and it's open to a
different strata a socio-economic strata
of of our population
absolutely yes um our
zero to three program is primarily
children and families who are
in the extremely low poverty level level
our early pre-k and pre-k program is
open to all children
because it is doing our funding comes
through new mexico pre-k
and then our
school age classroom
is going to be children from k-12
grades and those children are often
families that can receive the early
childhood education and care department
subsidy program as well as we
support them through all of our other
programming that's available
and how
are how old is the youngest or are the
youngest what is the age span so our
licensing allows us to serve children
from the ages of six weeks to ten years
on site
great thank you so much again dr adamus
thank you good to see you thank you
thank you mr mayor thank you counselor
como thanks mayor dan thank you so much
natalie and obviously i you know i want
to extend
a huge gratitude to all the agencies on
the campus for all of the work that you
do it's um
it's incredible and we're very lucky to
have you in our community um
i just have a couple questions natalie
one mostly under jardin de los ninos
there are um
some condition and concerns that were
listed out that i feel like are not
necessarily these big ticket items right
things that
are going to take a lot of time huge
infrastructure needs they're things like
hvac controls are problematic and it's
unclear which thermostats control which
building
some trees need
landscaped so they you know
they
um are hazardous to the children there
are some
leaks right like there are some things
that i feel like um
are more minor even though i'm sure they
don't feel minor to the staff that
is there a plan to address those
soon quickly mr mayor councillor bancomo
some of those issues are already being
addressed i'm not sure if public works
wants to speak to any of those but
i know that
hvac controls they've been going out
regularly and working with johnson
controls to fix that stuff
as part of the licensing requirements
that
dr namas has
she regularly reports some of the issues
so we make sure that we're very
responsive
especially when those licensing visits
are going to come out
but we'll continue to work with them on
those our facilities and project
management staff does meet with the
alliance agencies every other month and
so we go over
some of those issues and we'll make sure
that that's being reported back to you
all okay great thank you for that i
imagine if johnson control
keeps their facilities as cold as this
one that they're all freezing so
and then just lastly my other question
natalie is
have the non-profits on campus is there
sort of a consensus around priorities
and and what should be
sort of going after first what's like
the you know the top of the list and
then sort of i know it's all important
but i'm curious if there has been those
discussions uh mr mayor councillor ben
cuomo as part of the cip process they do
have to prioritize their cip projects
and let us know every year which one are
their top priorities and so they do
on the alternate months that they don't
meet with city staff they meet with each
other and so i do know that they have
regular alliance meetings and go over
some of those items
okay thank you natalie i appreciate it
and thanks to all of you that are here
from the staff
i'm looking forward to my visit tomorrow
at the amador health center
okay thank you
no further comments from council about
members of the public do they have any
questions
lorenzo you want to come forward please
good afternoon mayor and city council my
name is lorenzo alva i'm the executive
director at casa peregrinos
when we were looking at this master plan
we had this community in mind not just
the campus
just so that you know that we had people
in mind human beings what we were
looking at we wanted to make part of the
community of hope
and it made it easy for us to think
about people instead of buildings
instead of added infrastructure but we
were actually thinking about human
beings what we were trying to figure out
what would be good for us and for this
campus
no we were talking about what would be
good for this community
those were the priorities that we took
when we looked at everything and then
the programming
i think it's really important that we go
ahead and adopt this and begin to move
forward
casa peregrinos has already got on your
cip less
add infrastructure to it
our goal is to begin to really beautify
the campus which should have been done a
long time ago but that's neither here
nor there
you know some decisions that were made
in the past aren't important anymore but
this one is super important
you can take full advantage of all the
hard work of ngos that are right there
on the campus
really trying to support this community
at the very heart of the problem here
which is poverty
you've already made decisions internally
on how you want to begin to eradicate
this issue in our community not an easy
thing to take on but it does begin in a
community like like this it begins
locally
we start doing the work locally
other leaders will take notice like
state leaders and the delegation in
washington and other communities will
take note
but it has to begin here and you begin
that work already
you've entrusted us with some pretty
important responsibilities and i think
we've all really come through for you
above and beyond everything we are
definitely the best bang for your buck
and what you're getting out of us
it's important to us that we move
forward on this plan just because we all
are excited about the work we can do
we know that this isn't a casa
peregrinos project or a community of
hope project or a jardin de los nino's
project this is
a community project city of las cruces
project
it's to serve the entire community
only good things will come out of this
and then you may not see the immediate
picture but in the long run we're going
to be a better
better city for it improving the quality
of life for citizens here and for the
people of this community more
importantly
i do want to thank you for
allowing me to speak in support of the
master plan it took a lot of work on
behalf of all of us and we made some
pretty important decisions and we're
beginning to move forward on some of
those things
thank you so much and if you have any
questions for me i'm glad to answer them
okay i have just one comment if you or
not free lauren's on do you want can you
put the screen back up
natalie right there so and this is
totally i just want to just throw this
out here we're on the on my left where
it says potential expansion area
and near
the armijo lateral established expansion
zone to provide opportunities for
compatible uses just something to think
about
you know sometimes we it's so hard to
judge our weather nowadays
that i don't know if we've even looked
at getting one of those
when it gets extremely cold i remember
there was a time when it got extremely
cold here and we were scrambling to help
those in need to provide some type of
shelter but i wonder if we could take a
look at a
one of those alaska structure type tents
if we need to
just during that particular time to
provide some shelter for
for our homeless who don't who
are out on the street and um
you know that would i think it'd be
better than being out in the elements so
that was all i was just gonna throw that
out there i think it i i would like to
in the next month or two have a work
session so that we can just devote it
only to this so that
the not only members of the council but
members of the public can see all the
moving parts and all the hard work that
our ngos do
and provide because i'm very supportive
of this i i believe that this is where
we need to
focus all of our our investment in and
and do our best to make this the best
campus in in
in the area in the region so
okay all right so nothing further
christine
this is on the motion to approve
resolution 23-021
councilor beta yes
counselor graham yes
counselor bencomo yes
counselor kran yes
counselor flotus yes counselor gandada
yes mayor yes
okay item 8.3 resolution 23-022
i need a motion second so move to aveda
second second
motion made by council beta second by
councillor flores
ruiz will be presenting
good afternoon mr mayor members of city
council my name is sergio ruiz policy
analyst for the record and today i'll be
presenting on landlord income
discriminate a resolution on the
landlord income discrimination of
tenants
the discrimination part of it is a
source of income of discrimination
contributes to the perpetuation of
racially segregated communities and
neighborhoods with concentrated poverty
it is an unlawful discriminatory
practice to deny directly or indirectly
any individuals the full and equal
enjoyment of housing including the
rental of a dwelling services facilities
and privileges based on their source of
income
landlord obligations a landlord may not
retaliate against a tenant for exercise
in tenant rights the landlord must keep
the unit in a habitable condition by
complying with housing cults materially
affecting health and safety
aggressively investigate and prosecute
landlords who refuse to rent attendance
legislative action the legislation and
municipal ordinances need to be
established that would prohibit
landlords from discriminating against
tenants based upon their economic status
the legislation shall prohibit
discrimination against tenants who are
recipients of social security income
disabled
veterans or recipients of section 8
housing vouchers
housing agencies advocates and
enforcement agencies should play a key
role in ongoing repeated communication
about the law's requirements to
landlords and
tenants and with that alibi city
council options and any questions that
you may have
so here i'm going to ask you a few
questions and i'm going to go to my my
colleagues here
so
i i take it that this was brought up in
the housing prc
uh
i mean i guess i know i wasn't here last
council meeting when the agenda was made
but i presume this
went through the housing prc
mr mayor it did not go through the house
in pa uh prc
sir i'll get to you in just a little bit
yeah okay it was proposed to go through
the housing prc
however um
the
um
the
council member that uh
that um initiated this uh this
resolution decided to bring it to city
council instead
i'm sorry can you repeat what you just
said
the
it was initially uh proposed to go to
house in prc but the city council member
decided to bring it to city council
instead so it hasn't gone to the house
it did not it did not go
to city uh to house and prc
okay
the reason why i say that is um
and these are just my own comments here
but i will say
that first off
and i have to i'll let brad
work on this while i'm just saying some
of the things that i have some questions
on
so there's uh
when state law
because i take it this would be
used to be sent to the state legislature
correct
so when state law conflicts with federal
guidelines because the federal
guidelines do i mean you can't
discriminate
but you are allowed to ask
for their ability to pay and and so i
think it's called the supremacy clause
and i don't know if brad wants to look
into that because because when when one
contradicts the other this is the
federal government
you know um overseas just like when we
ca like when there's been a time where
they say hey you can't ban uh
panhandling well the government
says that's not constitutional so you
know even though we may try to pass
something here so i i'm sure brad will
look into that
but what i'm trying to get at is this
now me personally
i will say i
you know i support uh
in fact during covid i think the ones
who were able to come up with their
a lot easier were those that were on
certain benefits i mean it was automatic
with them getting social security
disability
veterans benefits section 8.
but what my question is
is a lot of these that are in here
already exist in the new mexico landlord
tenant law i mean they they do but what
my question is is
what if someone has let's say they're
receiving social security
but it's not enough to make the rent
then it puts everything in the quandary
because it says
well you can't you can't use that as a
means of income
but let's say we are let's say that the
person is
but they don't have enough
then then they're going to say well you
go before who would you take you know i
guess this would be a state law but i
guess what i'm trying to say is there's
just a lot of ambiguity in this
and i
i was just wondering how this came about
but i think you answered that it did not
go to the housing prc which typically
uh resolutions do go to pr you know
the various prcs for vetting so that
other council members can see it
but you're saying it went that one
council member just
had you i guess draw this up
they had mr mayors they had me work on
this do some research on the
on the topic and
bring it to you okay
i i appreciate that
um
yeah i i think this is something where
i'll let my colleagues make their
comments and then um
members of the public but there's
i i understand the intent
but
um
you know i think it's also important
that
it be
um
you know vetted properly and a lot of
these things it's i don't think they
they mesh well so anyways i'll just let
my colleagues speak councillor
flores thank you
thank you mayor and thank you mr reece
for presenting this
i believe that the
having a
a resolution like this go up to the
state legislature i would
advance the
concept or i should say the practice of
landlords discriminating against
people who are
recipients of benefits because that that
does exist and
it would really be up to the state
legislature to
enact this and
while it's true that federal
the federal housing act protects buyers
and renters of housing from
discrimination
excuse me
there's no protection
there's no protection on the source of
income and that's what this is
addressing and this was discussed in the
housing prc
and i believe that
attorney vega brown
was present during those discussions
so it would
definitely be
as as written and presented i don't
think it there's any my humble opinion
well my opinion
is that
there's really no conflict
and any resolution that would be
submitted to the state legislature with
the request that it be considered for
legislation would necessarily have to
look at all the language
and
and some of this may or may not be
consistent with a fair housing act the
federal fair housing act
but the people of new mexico
need protections especially since a vast
majority
of the people who live here are
recipients of the benefits that are
enumerated in this resolution
and
perhaps brad our acting city attorney
can comment on that but
i really don't see
how
how this would be in any way
premature
and i think this is really quite clear
that
legislation municipal ordinances need to
be established that would prohibit
landlords from discriminating against
tenants based upon their economic status
and that's the gist of it
mr
attorney
thank you
mr mayor
council if i may
to to address
a few of the things that have been
spoken about
with regard to
federal law and state law
or municipal law that we deal with
the mayor is correct in in one sense
certainly that any time
there is a federal statute and a state
statute directly on point to conflict
with one another the supremacy clause
would
take effect and the federal statute
would preempt that state laws as you
know counselor however
in the case of protected class
protected classes is no small deal
to create a new protected class and
i know that the council is aware of that
and is considering that
with regard to creating a new protected
class as councillor flores has
eloquently stated already
what we would be doing here today would
be
a resolution
it would be up to our state legislature
and their staff attorneys to
review the legality of a new protected
class
and it's my understanding correct me if
i'm wrong
that
the resolution as it currently stands if
it were adopted by our legislature
without any changes
would not necessarily make
economic status a protected class but
rather more narrowly
sources of income could not be
discriminated against such as child
support
alimony a section 8 voucher veterans
benefits
and so on is that correct counselor
you're absolutely correct thank you
thank you
and thank you brad for that and council
flores what i was trying to get to be
more specific is how would
one how would this be handled if let's
say a recipient receives twelve hundred
and fifty dollars a month from social
security but rent is a thousand dollars
a month i understand uh your question uh
mr mayor but that isn't the question
that isn't what is the solution here
it's a question of someone receiving say
uh
whatever amount a person receives
on social security or
you know any other
maybe a veteran
it would be a question of
the landlord specifically saying
i need to see a paycheck i need to see
how you're paying me
that's the intent and that's the purpose
of this resolution
because
what happens is that
this is what happens what happens is
that a landlord may just decide that
a landlord landlady
may decide that they really don't want a
certain kind of
people
you know they don't want those people
um
and they can arbitrarily say i'm not
going to accept and they have and this
has been discussed in our
policy review committee on housing
that
the minute they they learn that the
source of income is social security
or disability social security disability
or retirement income
they deny
they deny that person irrespective of
the amount of the rent
so i think that someone
who has a source of income
that has been stated here
would
not try to uh
rent a house or an apartment that is
above their income level
and um
and and that's that it wouldn't be
it wouldn't be that you know someone
sees a house for
say two thousand dollars a month
would and has a twelve hundred dollar
income would even bother to to apply for
that and on that basis the the the on
the bait on the basis of
the the income level
the
landlord would be able to say well you
you don't have the money to qualify or
to pay me the rent so
and it wouldn't be based on the the
source of income and that's what the
intent of this is i think it's well
stated
[Music]
and and
did i make
that clear no i'm sorry if you let me
finish my example oh so that's okay so
let's say i thought you said it before
please interject here as chair of the
housing prc i'd like to say a couple
things before this gets any more
convoluted
go ahead counselor thank you
um
again as the chair of the housing prc i
was approached by councillor flores
about this type of resolution sending
something to the state legislature to
support some sort of
tenant landlord protections
i initially i said yes of course
but not until it made more sense to do
so like december january since we all
know
there is no state legislature currently
at the moment
that is meeting um and discussing
some of these issues however
there we are absolutely talking about
source of income discrimination policy
in our housing prc we are working with
legal to draft off an ordinance so folks
here are interested which i imagine many
of you are in providing feedback for
that you may absolutely do so
our hope is that my hope is that when
that ordinance is ready it will come to
city council for a work session and then
to city council for a full vote now
the city of albuquerque just did this
the city of santa fe is considering
doing this
as well and so this isn't out of the
realm of possibility and i think it's
important that we recognize that
resolutions like this
the truth is they have no teeth right
they're
symbolic
in many ways and telling the state
legislature how they should vote or or
not vote
which we have done in the past and so i
just wanted to clarify that mayor that
there will be an opportunity soon for
the entire council to discuss what this
means
a lot of the questions that you are
asking hopefully by experts in the field
in a work session that is the process we
are moving through for an actual
ordinance that's moving through the prc
and not this
resolution okay so if i may ask you a
question uh so counselor florida so if i
if an applicant makes 1250 a month on
social security but the rent is a
thousand dollars right and they get
turned down because they don't have
enough
the landlord doesn't feel that they can
afford that then they come to you and
say you know what i just got
discriminated because they don't want to
i i make more than what the rent is
how are we going to handle that
well first of all someone wouldn't come
to me but if they were to say they did
if someone who's denied they're going to
say because you voted for that so i
figured you want you you know well
that that's with all due respect um
mr mayor i you know i don't think that
i i
i know what you're trying to get at as
you say let me this is what i'm trying
to your your words are always
this is trying what i'm trying to get at
what i've stated is that someone who is
say getting a 1200 check from social
security disability or other
governmental assistance
and the landlord says well you're not
going to be able to meet
the payment because you don't have um
you know
that would just be a matter for the
courts to decide whether
there was any intent
based on what the but and not a judge
and um
it's possible that a court would say
exactly what i think the point you're
trying to make or trying to get at as
you say
that a judge would say well yes you have
twelve hundred dollars the rent is one
hundred uh one thousand dollars how are
you going to pay for the utilities and
everything you know renters insurance
um
and that's or you know food
and all that sort of stuff so um
it would be a fine line uh without a
doubt and it would be something i would
have to be weighed by the trier effect
um but just generally
i think
having
this
this kind of language either
in a resolution to go to the state
legislature to
entertain or to consider
this sort of
this sort of a statute
there aren't protections today as we
know them
and
that would be up to state legislature to
design it and then as
councilor bencomo has stated
we have been working in fact we've been
working on this since i first joined the
city council back in
and this is 2022.
so as councilor graham stated
the wheels of government turn slowly and
and while it may be symbolic it's
definitely
something that's very very important and
i just can't um
i mean i we'd have to and
so i this is very important and i think
that this is the first step in the right
direction and
and we'll come up with hopefully an
ordinance before i leave city council in
3.5 years i'm not counting but
less than 3.5 years
so
thank you again mr ruiz for putting this
together i appreciate it very much and
thank you mr mayor i i will say i find
it incredulous that no one counts i mean
that is
you couldn't get asked for anything
better it's automatic social security
payments or disability insurance
payments disability payments that's
automatic section 8 it's automatic i
find that incredulous that a landlord
would say i'm not going to count that
you want that that's what you you can't
decide if the person doesn't get a job
the next month but if you have this
automatically coming in and i i think it
could have been a select few that that
may have happened to regardless but
anyways i appreciate it
mr mayor with all due respect
the practice is prevalent and um we have
studied this approach this for at least
my tenure of you know over four years on
city council five years
so um
it does happen and um and we need people
like
because again the recipients of those
vouchers and and social security income
disabled veterans um there's
discrimination out there and and and as
we all know or should know
the majority of our veterans who have
been disabled and and um
and all that are minorities i mean most
of the i know very well that most of the
combat the the frontliners as they're
called in vietnam the majority were
blacks and mexicans or excuse me latinos
so uh or you know of hispanic origin so
um i just i just want to say that it's
been
a
yeah
i think that we can go on and on but
thank you
so i is it fair to say you have
testimony from people who came to the
to the uh prc committees and and you
have the you know the
list of some names i don't we didn't
have testimony your honor
we we do not have
proceedings such as taking testimony but
we did have
presentations of
practices
in throughout the state because we
during our prc's we do have
people throughout the state who are
very much
concerned about housing
so it isn't testimony but they are facts
and um as presented thank you okay we
have councillor beta and councilman
cuomo
thank you mayor uh and thank you mr ruiz
uh
for this presentation and thank you to
the sponsor for bringing this up i know
i think
all of us are concerned about um housing
and making sure that there are fair
practices with everything
um i was not aware that this hadn't gone
through a prc i know that we've been
trying to kind of work with our
this new system and the new function
with the prcs with that so
uh
i
i do understand uh resolutions are
mostly
um symbolic you know we are advocating
here and calling for our legislature to
look and develop these uh reform laws um
and so it does seem appropriate that
this would go through the prc perhaps
and then
if there is an ordinance that is being
developed then
and i would if we're hopeful that we're
doing things fast so that we can get
this done through your tenure
we can maybe add some of those specifics
to the resolution
and lay it out
right before january so
with that in mind i don't know if it
would be appropriate to table this type
of item for it to go through that
process and procedure
and maybe be able to get more input from
you know from the the residents
and from other interests
to kind of piece a collaborative uh
statement to send forth okay council if
you were going to make that motion if we
could wait until council has their say
and then maybe i think there's members
of the public who are here to speak
absolutely thank you mm-hmm
if i just have council been coming
i think we are not having a very
responsible discussion about this given
that
um
i won't repeat my earlier statements but
given that we are not having
an opportunity to this
language on here some of it is not in
the ordinance
some of the language about
aggressive
punitive measures in fact we have a
lengthy discussions about how do we work
with landlords and landlord mitigation
funds and we want more landlords to be
open to this process now why i say we
don't we're not having a responsible
discussion on this is because we have
not brought this through
a work session where the public can
fully see and understand there's a lot
of misinformation i heard it already
from some of the folks that came to
public comment
this discussion frankly um
was also not appropriate and so i think
that
because we all care about these things
that we
allow the process to unfold we will get
it through the prc soon we are working
with legal we're working with staff
which i might add staff is the uh
the way that we hear testimony through
them there's housing staff here at the
city who every single day are talking to
folks in our community who are
experiencing
discrimination on many types of basis
but certainly on income discrimination
that is absolutely happening in our
community and i think it's important i
would welcome a second i think
that we allow the process to unfold
through the prc because i want us to
have an open dialogue where
members of the community get to see
exactly what is in the ordinance because
again i think a lot of what was
presented here today a lot of what i
heard here today was a lot of
misinformation i want the the not only
the public to understand but all of you
um on the council to fully understand
what this ordinance is intended to do
mayor
thank you yes councilor flores um with
all due respect uh counselor ben como
the reason
i was a counselor who approached
mr reese to proceed on this is because
there's been a lot of stalling a lot of
railroading and a lot of
just things that just aren't getting
done that we should get done now if this
is something that wasn't clear
i did
i did run it by you you didn't say no
i ran it by the other prc member
mayor potem gandara
and a resolution is exactly that you
stated it beautifully in your email to
me it's symbolic
but a lot of our resolutions do get
enacted eventually
by the state legislature not just
because
we sent it up the city of las cruces but
because other cities throughout the
state are working on the same issue
so um yes we can you know
if you tend to be the to my fellow
counselors if you intend to be here
another five years and find out in five
years that nothing was done
be my guest but after sitting for five
years on that prc
and nothing getting done
i felt that it was imperative that we
have this and i think that it's
important to have a discussion whether
we agree or disagree this is a very
important topic otherwise i wouldn't
have wasted my time or the time of our
policy analyst who did a great job and
if i may clarify this is a resolution it
is not an ordinance
legal would have to come up with the
resolution with the ordinance legal
would have to cover the points that
brad covered our acting city attorney
here today
we are not a legislative body per se
we
become a legislative body when we vote
on something that our
city attorney has drafted and
and everything that's come out of the
city attorney's office has been
stellar i mean it's just a dynamite
and there have been
again there have been a lot of delays i
don't know why in our housing prc
and yes i agree with councillor
stevie that
excuse me beta that this should
that
should have gone through the prc but it
has gone through the prc for time
immemorial if people don't want to vote
on it that's their prerogative but i
think people have to understand that
things do not have to move as slowly as
they do if we would
be
dedicated and zeroed in on what we're
doing here as city councillors thank you
very much mr mayor
you're welcome
i just have to share one more thing and
then we'll go to the members of the
public i can't speak for the others but
i will tell you this i think
i wish every
house that was available for rent was
conformed to what section 8 wants you to
have it's very popular they require you
to have i know it sounds silly but the
windows have all of them have to work
the door everything and i think some
landlords might want not want to fix it
so they all they have to do is just not
fix it and then they disqualify it so
i'm just sharing with you
that there are there's there's always
something that's going on but
nonetheless let's just go to the members
of the public okay all right so how many
of you are here to speak on this issue i
i know this gentleman here i'm gonna let
him go first because he's been waiting
but keep your hands up please we've got
one two three four five six seven nine
ten
let's go three minutes each
so
sir if you want to come forward and then
the rest of you just will just start
since you all are pretty much in line
i'll just go row by row just need to
state your name sir and thank you for
waiting
for welcome mr mayor my name is michael
potts and uh lexted came here to talk
just a little bit about this resolution
and one of the things that i noticed
when i first read it is it says whereas
it's unlawful discriminatory
discriminatory practice to deny
directly or indirectly an individual a
full integral enjoyment of housing
including the rental of a dwelling
services facilities and privileges based
on the sorts of income of the individual
i wasn't able to find that in any of the
state statutes anywhere
i don't know where it was mr s
might have an idea where i can locate
that in regards to that i just ask you
to look at what i gave you information
wise and stuff that talks about the fair
housing act that's implemented
in 1988 it's also called the title eight
of the civil rights act of 68.
that's federal legislation that protects
individuals and families from
discrimination in the sale
rental financing or advertising of the
housing
it also goes in and tells you
that
the fair housing act provides buyers and
renters the housing from discrimination
by sellers landlords or financial
institutions and makes it unlawful for
those entities to refuse to rent
sell or provide financing for dwelling
based on factors
other than an individual's financial
resources
it says this is that's what the act says
if you turn the page over you'll see
that
last year there was h.r 68 which is a
bill
was
passed and it authorizes funds to
prevent housing discrimination to the
use of nationwide testing which follows
to hud
to the housing and urban development and
the secretary of housing and urban
development is supposed to
detect and document differences in the
treatment of persons seeking to rent or
purchase housing or obtain a refinance
their home mortgage loan or and measures
patterns of adverse treatment because of
race color religion sex familiar status
disability status or national origin
renters says nothing about
your income
or
financial resources this belongs to hud
and i'm afraid
that it might be just better for you to
turn around and table this and rediscuss
it within yourself and stuff come up
with something else that you're not
going to be in conflict with hud about
what you're doing
this is
congressional
bills and laws that you're not paying
attention to and you've had citizens
like myself have to come up here all
time
and
educate you about what you need to know
so this is rules and regulations federal
rules regulations it has nothing to do
with an individual's financial resources
thank you
mr mayor
may i ask a question of brad
of
brad brad
brad when there's federal legislation
such as title eight
title vii title one title ix anything
under the civil rights act
what is the judicial jurisdiction for
for such matters
with regard to protected classes
specifically is that what you're asking
regarding the civil rights act
of
well all of the civil rights act 1964
etc
so if i'm understanding your question
counselor
you'd like to know
when there is a question
involving
any violation
of the civil rights act where does
jurisdiction properly lie correct
well that would be a federal question
that's right and that's the question
here we have people who are
in state court
and
uh would be able to perhaps even go to
municipal court instead of going to
the federal jurisdiction
process and that's why so long as the
law is consistent
the law is consistent with the federal
statutes
there's no reason for a municipality or
a state to have that law
it would be a better access to the
resolution in a judicial setting thank
you brad and thank you mr mayor
okay so that was second row third row
anyone
yes ma'am
i just need you to state your name
please
stacy aguirre
mr mayor mayor pro tem and councilwoman
and councilman i can't see your names
because i
don't have my glasses on i'm not a
polished professional speaker
and in fact i'm very nervous up here
i
this whole thing is very confusing to me
as a first-time property owner i
own some apartments that i completely
gutted rehabbed the deed goes all the
way back to 1988 1888 excuse me
and
i think you
used councilman
flores as an example
that
obviously my intent
was to
create value
and return on my investment hopefully
one day when i decide to sell them
but if i can't establish that a person
in a reverse example to mr mayors
if i'm asking a thousand dollars for an
apartment
somebody comes to me and says i can only
pay 600
and i'm not able to
qualify them
i can't look i can't ask them for their
paychecks in other words
i'm not sure they're going to care for
my
for my
home
the way that they would care for their
house
and i'm probably not seeing this
appropriately but
it scares me that
you know
i i cannot qualify a tenant i have to
qualify my tenants i have to make sure
they have a job i have to make sure they
have good credit i have to make sure
they have good landlord references
and i just don't understand
this whole thing where it's coming from
where it's going
so i
maybe
should wait for clarification i don't
know
um
i just
i just don't know where this is coming
from and where it's going i guess it is
ambiguous and vague to me so
i don't know
if there's going to be
anybody wants to say anything further
about that or
that's it stacey the way i understand it
the way this resolution is wanting to
want the legislature to act is
um apparently there are some who like
just take your example if someone was to
come to you if i came to you and said
well i have i have social security and i
have uh i have a section 8 voucher and i
easily qualify
to rent an apartment from you and you
say i'm not going to take that i'm not
going to take section 8 and i'm not
going to take your social security
no i find that hard to believe but
apparently it happens that's why i
wanted to know who you know who has said
that this has happened because
gosh i mean that is that's automatic
you i don't know about you but that's
great to have no no that's not what i'm
saying i'm just saying
i would like to know
if they do yeah if section 8 hut i
understand all that disabilities i
understand all that i don't discriminate
against anything i just want to make
sure that my tenant has enough to pay
the rent it has enough to pay their get
their food you know to pay the utilities
things like that so
that's my concern
okay thank you
i'll sponsor
mayor and councilman
i just got off the uh
the roof when they i heard that this is
coming through i wasn't sure what it was
totally about
but i do see a problem with uh
any kind of resolution or anything
so isr for interrupting can you state i
think you said your name but can you
state your name
yeah
one of the problems that we're having
right now is actually rentals
i mean i've got three or four people
right now that are looking for houses
and they're just not there
so my wife being a realtor she
ex-realtor now she just hung her license
this year but she still called her
realtor friends and said we got three
friends and need housing
and so i started calling all my contacts
and the problem we're having right now
is that with so many problems with
resolutions in ordinances and
regulations and everything everybody's
turning to airbnb
so how is this going to affect us in the
future
if you put this kind of stuff together
even statewide are we going to have less
rentals i mean right now we're having
the same problem i know that i sold all
my rentals
because i just quit i just i was having
a hard time with it and i and my wife
and i most of our whole
life we did affordable housing and so at
this point we're just kind of just
staying away from everything so we got
to address how we're gonna how we're
gonna take care of
individuals because i mean houses are
just way up there you can't sell them so
rentals how are we the city at the same
time how are we going to is that going
to affect
more
our rental problems that's what my
concern is at this point thank you
thank you
sounds like it's raining okay that was
the fourth row anyone in the fifth row
yes this gentleman here and this lady
good afternoon kevin cardoza
mayor thank you very much for
for the invitation to speak um the
members of council thank you very much
for having this discussion uh
representative benkomo we want to i want
to thank you for extending the
invitation for the public to participate
in the discussion
of drafting this resolution and uh and
on behalf of the las cruces association
of realtors and the home builders we
would very much like to participate in
the process of addressing this issue
we know that this is a common concern
across the city and different
organizations and that is housing
affordability so we're trying to find a
good solution that will work for both
the tenant and also the landlords we
understand that government alone will
not be able to solve the problem and
also private sector alone will not be
able to will not be able to solve the
problem
so we would like to work with you all as
solutions are drafted and there are a
couple of things that that we that we
have been discussing like for example we
strongly believe that we're doing a
disservice to
uh section 8 voucher recipients because
we need to advocate on their behalf for
their vouchers to be
adjusted to current market rates i
believe the last adjustment was in 2015.
you know and market the market has
shifted quite a bit since 2015. so
that's part of the problem that we have
to address as we're as we're approaching
to solve this issue the other part is
that as as you
as you've stated from a political
strategic standpoint it would be far
more useful if we put a resolution as a
community and not just a city a
resolution towards december closer to
the beginning of the legislative session
and allow that time for both the public
and private sector to come together and
draft the legislative proposal and send
to state because as you may know you've
i've only been here for 16 years but in
those 16 years what i've learned is that
what may be good for albuquerque or las
cruces may not necessarily be good i'm
sorry
what may be good for santa fe and
albuquerque may not necessarily be good
for las cruces so from uh
from a standpoint of
the private sector we very much want to
find those solutions as well we look
forward to working with you guys there
are different programs that we would
like to take a look at for example
mimicking the low income housing tax
credit program to benefit the uh
voucher recipients and others
and other folks that are under protected
categories and like i said thank you
very much for extending that we strongly
support uh tabling this issue and we
look forward to working with you guys
mr mayor
i just wanted to add really quickly that
there is a member of the home builders
association represented on the housing
prc
thank you and we'll we'll work with you
all as we continue to move forward thank
you very much appreciate it
thank you thank you
next speaker
all right
good afternoon thank you mr mayor and
thank you council members my name is
kent simpson i'm also a realtor
but the reason that i'm here today
is i want to offer to the city council
to the prc
to the city of las cruces
the realtors support
and access to the programs and grants
that we have
that deal with fair housing that deal
with housing affordability that deal
with housing availability
this organization national association
of realtors
is massive we've got 1.6 million members
right now that fluctuates on a monthly
and market by market basis
but what we have at our fingertips
are the best practices
case studies what to do what not to do
what's been successful and what's been a
failure
we can learn from other people's
failures
i want to work with the city and let you
have the access to the same information
we have at our fingertips
we have grants available
to teach
and educate
the public
the council because you can't be experts
on everything
as well as our own members
landlords
we can create
these
meetings we can have
speakers come in
we can bring data sets
so when you're thinking about issues
having to do with housing
please remember reach out to us because
we've got a lot of resources that you
may not have at your fingertips
the prc can reach out to us and we may
be able to even fund
our own particular research just for las
cruces
tap into us
utilize us
together
we create a healthier community
and when housing is affordable and
housing is available
to a community
it's a better community
now kevin who spoke before me
mentioned that some of these housing
voucher programs have not been updated
they really need to be so if you're
going to send a resolution to the state
legislature
i would ask that you include in that
resolution
that the state an urge
that our legislature speak to washington
and urge those federal programs to
update their vouchers to today's economy
thank you for your time
thank you mr simpson
thank you
mr mayor and
counselors thank you for letting us
speak
my name is dolores dimers i'm a realtor
and i have been managing properties for
others for about 12 years
i have a lot of experience with
qualifying tenants
and
it's imperative when you're a property
manager managing properties for
investor owners
to try to do the best for what the
owners need
you do not put tenants in a house that
are that can't pay the rent
that is just very very bad
you want to make sure that the tenants
are able to pay their rent and utilities
groceries insurance medical bills
car payments it goes on and on and on
and so
i'm not aware
excuse me
i talked to a lot of other property
managers
weekly
i cannot imagine any property manager
that i know
who would purposely discriminate
discriminate against
someone collecting benefits
if they qualify for the house they're
probably going to be a good tenant
now in regards to people who are on
section 8 housing
the messiah valley public housing
authority needs to get his financial
house in order as well
that agency
has a lot of turnover
i've had a lot of tenants who are on
housing
and
sometimes
i will get notices from housing that say
oh you've over overpaid and i have to do
the audit for them and
and
prove to them
that i have not been overpaid
what was paid to me for my owners
was the exact amount that was owed
you know i shouldn't be doing their
financial work for them i don't get paid
to do their bookkeeping for them
i have a tenant right now
she was with me
like for
four years in one house then she
separated went to another house with a
different owner and then she came back
she was always a good tenant
right now her situation with housing is
so topsy-turvy they don't know what
their rules are and she's been through
like five
caseworkers in a period of 14 months
so the problem is much more nuanced than
someone saying oh i was discriminated
against
there is a problem with a lot of
low-income people in this community
we do need an expanded economy here so
that people can start making money and
being able to pay their rent and all
their other bills
but uh it's it's much more nuanced than
oh
people who are veterans or whatever are
not getting housing
thank you thank you mr mears
okay that was
one fifth row anyone else on that row
okay sixth row
seventh row okay yes man
and if you can restate your name again
please i'm sorry i didn't hear it the
first time
thank you um sorry i'm trying to compose
myself it's difficult for me as i said
before hello my name is marie o'connor
first of all i want to thank all of you
for the opportunity to speak and discuss
this matter and sharing our story
i am currently taking care of my mother
full time now she suffers with dementia
life can do you
i handle cards is not always what you
expect
we seem to have a streak of bad luck and
although we are extremely grateful and
blessed
it has been very difficult and stressful
to get back on our feet
we are not asking for a free meal ticket
but simply asking that it not be so
difficult to find a place to live in our
hometown under
our circumstances this has put us in
such a distressing state and it
shouldn't be this difficult for people
like us to find a home
and better our situation
we just need an opportunity we don't
want to live in fear of being homeless
my mom was in a situation where somebody
took advantage of her financially and
her credit is no longer up to par
and we've tried to find places to live
but are denied
because of that
we have
money
we just don't have a good credit score
sorry excuse me
trying to gather my thoughts
um
it's not that we don't have the money
the money is there
it's just that they're not allowing us
to
you know fulfill
these expectations
it shouldn't be this difficult
for people to find somewhere to live in
this town and we i've grown up here this
is my home
my house my mom will
should we move to another state
she doesn't want to this is where her
family is
and i want to take care of my mom and do
the best that i can for her
and i'm just under a lot of stress
trying to just
deal with everyday life and get through
all of this and it's been difficult
and i just don't know where to go and
who to ask and it just everyone sends me
here and there and i'm just so confused
about everything
and i'm just trying my best
it shouldn't be this hard to live
and i know wonder through the last few
years it's been difficult for everybody
group it really took a toll on us
we're just trying to survive
it shouldn't be this hard
we want to live just like everyone else
and we're not asking for a grand place
you know when we're not looking for a
place that's a thousand dollars we're
looking for
500 600 apartment apartments and two
bedrooms something decent you know
it shouldn't be this hard
thank you for your time and i appreciate
that you are listening to us in our
story
i'm glad i'm able to talk and share this
with you and i know
it's difficult for me to speak i have
public
fright and it's not easy for me
but i want to thank you all for
listening
amen god bless you all
thank you miss o'connor we appreciate
your
courage to come and share your story
with us
okay so that was the seventh row anyone
else on seventh row yeah
hello everybody city council mr mayor
thank you for allowing me to speak here
my name is ziko rodriguez i'm a state
representative
candidate
i'm also presiding over the uh
commission to uh for local politics and
crime and yeah i i
it seems like this is a much like more
complicated issue than just uh somewhat
punishing the the landlords um i do know
how i have some person that i know
downtown that during the lockdowns uh
they were renting out to somebody that
wasn't able to pay their rent they
didn't get any government support or
anything so they went about a year
without paying the rent but the person
who owned the property owned their own
house and they owned that property
across the street and
if they weren't going to pay their rent
they were going to lose that house
completely they're going to foreclose on
it and then of course that tenant would
have to leave and then the property
would get bought out probably some from
out of state and it'd be an airbnb and
then we'd lose yet another house that we
can rent out to locals so
protecting the landlords i think is
something that we should be focusing on
first and foremost um constitutionally
it does violate the 5th and 14th
amendment rights due process because
the government doesn't have any right to
utilize a public or private property
unless they get compensated and if
you're dictating what they can or can't
charge for a deposit that's essentially
them utilizing that private property so
i would be leery about doing something
of this caliber without looking at the
constitutional ramifications first and
then yeah that's my first point just to
look at this in terms of the private
property owner um having his own rights
and then secondly it's economic like
with the lady with the woman here that
just spoke it's like this is gonna get a
lot worse everybody it's this is just
the beginning so what are our plans to
do with housing in the near future
because a year from today
right now we're already shortage on two
bedroom houses two bedroom dwellings
townhomes um
so what are we going to do when it's
just not this this was one out here who
put your heart out here to us and it's
more and more people
okay so that's that's what scares me the
most not only that we're infringing on
on property owners constitutional rights
but also that we're not forging a plan
to deal with the coming rush of of
people who need housing that's already
dire we all know somebody i get called
every week to find two bedroom apartment
for somebody find a home for somebody
because i am in realty as well so um i i
just see what's coming and i hope that
the city council and the community at
large will hear me out and know that
this is going to get tremendously worse
and that one person up here putting
their heart out is going to be something
of the past and it's going to be more
and more and more people thank you all
for listening
okay thank you
anyone else on that row
okay
about the last row anyone else on my
left
okay uh turn to my right here first row
steps second third row staff fourth row
anyone
fifth row
sixth
seventh just yes sir all the way back
good afternoon mr mayor city council my
name is scott lynch i represent several
multifamily property owners in las
cruces and they have properties
throughout the state and the
different states as well i'm also a
member of the national apartment
association government affairs committee
and i agree with mr cardoza who spoke
earlier that the private and public
sector should be partners right so we
want to work with you guys to come up
with a
resolution or an ordinance that's going
to guarantee
whether both sides are happy so
i do acknowledge there is a housing
crisis
but if you look at all the
language and the resolution as far as
the veterans disability
no one really cares about that i'll be
honest so almost all the credit
screening by larger companies is done
blindly so people send out a link they
enter in their income
social security disability it's all
treated equally
if they're not even assigned the name
they're assigned a number right so you
set your minimum credit score or minimum
income all that sort of stuff and you
see your candidates ranked from top to
bottom
blindly
the
one issue people disagree on is the
section eight and that's because there's
so many hoops people have to jump
through so i think one priority would be
streamlining the process for section
eight
but you know this is not a a binary
decision it's not either we do this or
do that there's other solutions too so
i've seen other cities um
do things incentivize landlords to
participate so right now landlords have
a shortage of maintenance workers so
i've seen other states
do vocational training at their high
schools they'll train graduating seniors
be maintenance decks place them in jobs
at apartment complexes for reduced rents
right so it's a win-win situation so my
whole point is i would say instead of
trying to threaten the landlord to
prosecution try to come up with creative
solutions that will incentivize people
to participate you know a great analogy
is new mexico's film ministry so you
know there's so many films that are
taking place here in new mexico because
of your your great incentive program you
can find summer geography in arizona or
texas but they don't go there they come
here because your incentive program not
because you threaten to arrest them if
they don't come here right so incentives
work and i think threats of punishment
don't um so what's going to happen and
i'll be honest is the major developers
so las cruces is in a vulnerable
geographic location you're so close to
texas so like my clients would just
choose not to build there they'll go
somewhere else right so why would you
come to an environment where you're
being threatened with prosecution when
you can go
two miles down the road and
operate in the way you see fit so that
concludes my comments uh
any questions
thank you
okay i think that concludes all the
people who wanted to speak
and i'm going to turn it back to
counselor beta mayor can i just
two comments yes um
thank you to everyone i just wanted to
note
i didn't want to do it today because
again i think it needs to be done an
appropriate setting
in a work session that any future
ordinance is not going to prevent a
landlord
from setting your own
tenancy
procedures and
rules
or setting your own market rate
that's not what
any future ordinance will do it will
simply
not allow you
to
discriminate because someone has a
voucher which is happening i hate to
break it folks it is happening in our
community but we are not telling you
what rent to set we are just saying that
because we have seen discrimination that
folks say i have i have
the income to pay
this rent part of it includes a voucher
that people are being discriminated
against and i hope that i was heard
earlier when i said
that we are not seeking um we have had
countless discussions about incentives
and landlord mitigation funds there is
um
everything i do in council is
um to work collaborative to make sure
that people are not being criminalized
right we want to move away from punitive
measures into collaborative measures
that is absolutely what we are already
doing and discussing mayor i just wanted
to make those two points
okay thank you councilor beta
thank you um with that then i would like
to
move to table resolution 23-0
until the first council meeting in
december and i think that should give us
enough time to have a work session as
well and to provide comment from the
public
mayor i would just advise to cancel it
um or table indefinitely and bring back
a whole new resolution so that they have
time to work on it
then i can amend to table resolution
23-02 indefinitely
second gram okay emotion made by
counselor abeyta second by council
graham to table indefinitely
christine
this is on the motion to table
resolution 23-02
indefinitely counselor beta yes
councilor graham yes
counselor ben como yes
councillor koran yes councilor flores no
councillor gandada yes
mayor yes
okay so
thank you for those of you who shared
your testimonies with us we appreciate
it very much
next item 8.4 resolution 23-023
need a motion second so moved graham
second aveda motion baby council ground
second by councillor beta
natalie greene will be discussing good
afternoon mr mayor natalie green for the
record the resolution before you is the
selection of a development partner for
an affordable housing project
adjacent to the messiah valley community
hope campus
just a little bit of background in 2021
the city purchased a 4.8 acre parcel
that's zoned industrial located at 1101
west amador the purchase was in in
alignment with our affordable housing
land bank
goals uh and and other goals outlined
within our affordable housing plan
elevate
the council strategic plan our
consolidated plan and then again the
master plan
staff put out an rfq
the rfq
requested that developers be a qualified
grantee as required by the new mexico
mortgage finance authority and the new
mexico affordable housing state act we
ask that any respondent have experienced
capability in a complete development
team with low-income housing tax credits
we also requested that they have
experience with permanent supportive
housing or supportive housing models
we also evaluated quality
and design of their recent projects
and then
experience servicing the populations
that we were looking
to be served and then a commitment to
sustainability and energy efficiencies
which would be in alignment with the
city's electrification goals
there was a
recommending body made up of subject
matter experts
the affordable housing
land bank and
trust fund advisory committee
member
and they recommended that we partner
with chelsea investment corporation they
are an experienced low-income housing
tax developer they have approximately
120 developments
across the us are
and then about 13 000 units so they
mainly operate out of new mexico
california utah and arizona they have 10
developments in new mexico two in hobbs
one in artesia one in carlsbad one in
los lunas one in grants and then in the
last two years they've been recipients
of low-income housing tax credit awards
two of them
were in 2021 in belen and taos and then
last year they were a recipient of a
light tech in las cruces which will be
starting soon and they also receive one
for rio rancho
just some notable projects i only
included the projects that were specific
to permanent supportive housing and so
they have
extensive
experience working in california on a
permanent sport of have housing projects
for people experiencing homelessness
they have extended an invitation should
we so choose to see some of their
developments in san diego
and then
the weingarten tower is the one that's
currently under construction on skid row
in
los angeles
they have a couple of other ones
and
the one to know on this slide
is their collaborative partnership with
father joe's village it's very similar
to our campus model on the community
hope campus and so their homeless
services provider in san diego and they
partner with saint vincent de paul's
father jos
next steps is to work
should this resolution be approved today
to work with them over the next several
months to get ready for a low income
housing tax credit submission so we'll
be meeting with the stakeholders on the
campus
outlining those target populations and
target incomes
the development size the bedroom mix
what that partnership structure looks
like
we'll be working through the zoning
process again it's zone industrial so
we'll need to rezone
that to be ready for residential
we'll be
defining some of those supportive
services that would be provided again
based on the population income and then
staff and our development consultant
will be working to underwrite the
project and evaluate the subsidy
layering and so with that we will stand
for questions
thanks natalie
questions
members of the public
seeing none christine
this is on the motion to approve
resolution 23-023
counselor beta yes
cancer graham yes
counselor ben como yes
councilor koran
is absent
cancer flores yes
cancer gandara yes and mayor yes
okay
item eight point five resolution 23-024
so move kandara second
motion made by mayor pro tem granted by
councilman cuomo and sarah conduff will
be discussing
good afternoon mayor members of council
sarah cundiff management analyst for the
public works department
before you i have a resolution to amend
the cip or capital improvement program
i'm going to try to make this quick i
know we have a lock on the g on the
agenda today
one of the major items you're going to
see over and over reoccurring is just a
simple correction to ensure that the
project
noted can be eligible for icip
or legislative appropriation that does
include adding cocina de peregrinos as a
project to the cip it was a 22 request
we are adding it now as a 23 request
there are two transfers of
appropriations between projects both
from fiscal year 22 we're simply
bringing them into the 23 cip
none of these amendments have an
associated required budget adjustment
and lastly there's a few that are just
routine corrections for clerical errors
and typos again this is a lot of
items that were changed at the end of
fiscal year 22 they were simply
requiring to reflect them in 23 now that
we're open
so page one of the cip you will see the
downtown parking lots renovation we
added grants as a potential funding
source that is the indication to be
eligible for icip
or legislative appropriation
general facilities improvements we added
back in la casa maintenance and um
uh pardon the esperanzas the two parks
i'm sorry the park and the maintenance
that we added in late fy23 and we
mentioned those from the facilities
improvement program that got left off
the budget needed to be fixed so those
are a late fy 22 amendment that we are
simply adding into fy23
the following
i'm sorry merci valley community of hope
that cocina de peregrinos is an addition
it was an fy 22 request that we are
simply now adding into fy23
the next three projects are all again
adding grants as a potential funding
source so they may be eligible for
legislative appropriations
same for the first project on page five
you're going to see parks and rec
facility structure renovations again to
be eligible for
legislative appropriations
the next four projects are the go bonds
late fy22 we brought forth the extension
of the ecm contract and that funding for
all four projects again this is
correcting i'm sorry adding that late 22
amendment into fy23
on page seven we have a reallocation or
transfer
mcclure drainage improvements received a
hundred thousand dollars from the
mesquite tornillo drainage improvements
you see two projects down that was in
late 22
just to reiterate what was mentioned
last time the drainage
improvements project at mesquite tornio
the study came in under budget that
hundred thousand dollars was reallocated
to mcclure because the actual
infrastructure improvements are
determined on that study as well
you'll see mcphee from valley to first
that is simply a typographical error
that's being fixed
the last two projects here the chip sill
and the roadway maintenance we have
escalation in the cost of asphalt so 300
i'm sorry 38 750 is being reallocated
from the roadway maintenance program to
the chipseal program you will likely see
an amendment to the roadway program
later on in the fiscal year to ensure
that it has its funding in entirety
the last two projects here are adding
grants as a potential funding source
again so that they may be eligible for
legislative appropriations
and with that i will stand for questions
thanks sarah questions
does it look like any questions members
of the public
okay see none christine
this is on the motion to approve
resolution 23-024
counselor beta yes counselor graham yes
counselor ben como yes cancer quran yes
counselor flores yes counselor gandara
yes mayor yes
okay item eight point six council bill
number twenty three zero zero one
ordinance number three zero zero seven
indeed emotions move to approve second
aveda okay motion made by councillor
graham second by councillor beta
erica
will be presenting okay
good afternoon mayor city council erica
hawkins treasurer
the ordinance before you is authorizing
the issuance and sale of the state
shared gross receipts tax revenue bonds
series 2022
the bonds will be used to replace four
fire department engine trucks the amount
cannot exceed five million dollars and
the maturity date cannot exceed june
first twenty thirty four
twenty thirty four
the interest rate on the bonds cannot
exceed twelve percent per year
we have no reserve requirement unless
the city's credit rating is downgraded
below a
a2
the bonds are pledged with subordinate
lien on the state share gross receipt
taxes
the equipment being replaced has
exceeded industry standards
for time of service and maintenance cost
the bonds are to replace two aerial fire
trucks with an estimated cost of 1.6
million each
one of the replacements is 20 years old
and the other is 16 years old we're also
replacing two fire engines with an
estimated cost of 844 thousand both of
these replace replacements are 12 years
or older
and next we have a couple of pictures of
the fire engines that are being replaced
and here are your standard options i'm
available for any questions
okay thank you erica yes councilor
flores thank you mr mayor and thank you
miss hawkins for your presentation
i remember
a few years ago
our sister city and i think
[Music]
when when enriquez was the fire chief
we had a sister city interchange with
lerodo
in mexico
and
they asked to
receive the
fire
trucks or whatever
do you remember that
mr enriquez assistant city manager yeah
marion council what we had discussed
with laerda when they came over to visit
was some of the equipment and then
possible training at that point
we never really discussed apparatus
because it's just such a huge
item and then to transport all the way
over there but we did talk about
equipment and the possibility of them
even sending individuals over here for
some training through our academy
oh because i remember
the mayor the then mayor
um in in laerdal
said that
i i thought that was her ask but i don't
know what the agreement was
but
there's anyways anyway we can do that
for our sister city that would be great
i don't know what happens to trucks
ordinarily does it just go to heaven
somewhere
fire truck heaven
um
i
was hoping the fire chief was nearby
council photos i think they just get
sent i mean they go to auction and
they're sold
i okay
so anyway if we can have that option i
think that would be great
so
it's funny i don't know if they're
reading the
agenda but the mayor's office from
juarez said they wanted to buy uh these
our old vehicles i told them you know
the chief said they're really old they
can't find the parts they said they
don't care they'll take anything they're
so
there's you know but you know it's up to
council either but i think chief i mean
as an assistant city manager uh enrique
said
to get it there is one story i think
they would come if we sold it to him i
think they'd come pick him up but i i
don't know whatever council wants to do
if that's i don't know if we can just i
guess we could sell them at fair market
value
i have no idea all i remember i don't
think we can give them away though
oh
well okay
thank you
thank you miss hakkis thank you i i
don't know maybe the city attorney's
office can check into that but i don't
think we're allowed to just give away
property we have to sell it for
something mayor
sorry this is barbara de leon the other
you are correct um our assets need to be
disposed of at fair market value and
that's why we typically
utilize the auction process for that
there have been times when we have
entered into agreements with other
governmental entities but again the fair
market value is the important
consideration
council florida
maybe if if the fire department can come
up with a fair market value ask there
though first if they can afford it and
if not then ask city waters if they want
to buy them and if not then send it to
the boxing i guess well that's fair
enough because it is our sister city and
we want to keep those international
relations so thank you mr mayor and
thank you ms dillian and thank you chief
i mean uh mr and cliques
okay
any other questions
christine
this is on the motion to approve
ordinance three zero zero seven
counselor beta yes
councilor graham yes
counselor ben cuomo yes councillor koran
yes councilor flodes yes councillor
gandara yes mayor yes
okay next item 8.7 council bill number
23002 ordinance number 3008.
second
counselor abeyta make the motion and
counselor become okay
and catherine harrison rogers will be
discussing
good afternoon mr mayor members of city
council give me just a moment to start
the presentation
this particular item is a zone change
request from a single family medium
density residential zone to a
multi-family medium density zone
on mcguffey
currently the property is a little over
two and a half acres it's located in r1a
zone
that's our pretty standard single family
zone that you see mostly throughout the
city
the property is currently vacant and
encompasses a variety of residential
excuse me and is encompassed by a
variety of residential zoning districts
to the northwest and east
that contain single-family dwellings
there's also some multi-family
directly to the west and
some commercial and industrial zoning
turned further towards the south when
you get near bataan memorial
here is a
zoning map showing that particular
property you can see it right here
it's right along mcguffey street shadow
hills road
of course is nearby as well
again as i had mentioned before it is
vacant recently you did hear a zone
change on the property a bit to the
southwest of there also interested in
doing some multi-family
they're currently requesting this zone
change to expand that density and allow
for
multi-family development on that
particular lot riding right against
mcguffey
staff did analyze the proposed zone
change and it was consistent with
existing and nearby zoning
near the property
it's located along a roadway that's
recommended for a variety of different
residential land uses including those
low density multifamily
during our analysis we did look at
elevate las cruces and felt that the
expansion of multi-family properties
would be supported
by many policies outlined in that
document
again the purpose and intent statement
of the code and pnz's decision criteria
also supported the request
staff sent out reviews to all relevant
agencies all of those agencies and
departments were supportive of the zone
change and notice was also sent to
surrounding properties
there was a
a a nearby neighborhood did call they
had some concern about the access
to mcguffey and the increased traffic in
that area of course during the time of
any site-specific development
staff will look to see whether or not it
will trigger a tia or any other
improvements
along that roadway
and those improvements will be put into
action prior to the use of said property
if needed
the proposed zone change did go before
planning and zoning commission it was
recommended for approval
and again
when looking
at this
from from the pnc's perspective they did
feel it was supported by a number of
items of course listed here and and what
i recently um just stated
there was no public comment that was
provided during that time
and the vote was unanimous
uh there was one commissioner absent
however i would like to point that out
um your options today are to vote yes to
approve to vote no to deny vote to amend
or vote to table and i do believe that
the applicant is here if there are any
questions of them
so i do have a quick question so the r2
is that
duplexes and triplexes that's correct mr
mayor members of city council quadplex's
triplexes duplexes
what we consider more of that missing
middle housing
there is an opportunity to even do a
single family product in the r2 zone
yeah no this was what
former councillor vasquez talked about
and then i put in our my state of the
city i think this is an opportunity for
residents to
be able to have
you know build some generational wealth
if they can
own a duplex you know live in one
perhaps rent the other one out vice
versa maybe rent them both out i just
wanted to make sure i wasn't too sure i
hadn't seen r2 in a while we don't do
r2s that often so
no sir mr mayor you don't see them as
frequently as you see the r3s or the r4s
but this really is kind of that that
bridge between those more intense those
higher intense multi-family and then the
single family it's a good transition
from mcguffey to that single family
absolutely and the neighbors tend to be
you know a little bit more okay with
duplexes than a bunch of apartments but
yeah
yes thank you mayor thank you catherine
appreciate the
presentation um you mentioned a tia
what will trip that
if needed you said
absolutely i would i would love to point
that out explain that a little bit
further
ultimately
tias are are triggered when
one our
engineering staff specifically the
traffic engineer knows that maybe
there's some problems along a certain
roadway they can request certain
information and then there are also some
other triggers for example
i believe if it exceeds 100 trips than
what was normally there
if the density is increasing to a
certain amount it is um
in this particular instance uh
this particular project may not trigger
the need for a tiaa the one further
south that you did here a couple of
weeks ago it was a much larger
development is triggering the need for a
tia
but ultimately it'll be the the traffic
engineers decision in a situation like
this
thank you catherine so we're rezoning
specifically but maybe this process is
months and months maybe down the line
right
yes ma'am mayor pro tem members of city
council
yes this will this will take time to
come to fruition and to know ultimately
what's going to happen at that location
and and if it'll trigger any need to do
a tia or any improvements to that
roadway right right
okay that's all mayor thank you thank
you catherine you're welcome
members of the public
okay see none christine
this is on the motion to approve
ordinance 3008 councilor beta yes
councillor graham yes
counselor bencomo yes councillor koran
yes
councillor flores yes
councillor gandana yes and mayor yes yes
okay so that takes care of that now
board appointments looks like we just
have one
this is um
to the capital improvements advisory
committee
vincent garcia hess new appointment i'll
need a motion in a second
so moved to corin
second aveda
we should be able counselor corin
second by mayor pro tem gandera
christine
this is on the motion to appoint vincent
garcia hess to the ciac
councilor beta yes
councillor graham yes
councillor bencomo yes
councillor koran yes
councillor florence yes councillor
gandana yes mayor yes
okay next is notice of proposed
ordinances there'll be no public
discussion counselor may ask staff for
clarification on the proposed ordinance
first one 10.1 council bill number
23-003 ordinance number 3009
bring it forward okay bring it forward
next one 10.2 council bill
number
23-004 ordinance number 3010
bring it forward okay bring forward
next item is uh council member board
reports and comment
i
i don't i don't have any so
mayor pro tem thank you mayor um
over the weekend i attended
engages
karaoke event it was
quaint
there at the community foundation i
hadn't been
there yet for an event but it was
beautiful and they raised a lot of money
and jardine de los ninos ended up
winning so
the videos and
were so
cute
and some we have some real talent in our
non-profits
so that was saturday um like to
make the announcement that our faith
community faith leaders
will be meeting with counselor
bencomo and i and reverend carolyn
on august 25th at 1 30.
we have a lot of
great presentations requested by the
faith leaders one on the 988 our
mih
program and i'm spacing the third one
counselor bingo mo maybe you can help me
add that if you would
and with that i
those are all my
announcements thank you mayor okay thank
you councillor flotus
thank you mr mayor the only comment i
have is um
regarding a um
the housing resolution that was um
that didn't pass today
my only request
to the housing department our economic
development department
and
our housing committee not just the chair
or the members but the entire policy
review whoever might be listening out
there
i know that
covid threw a wrench into meetings
but even with attendance
being in person or meetings being in
person
the number of people showing up is um
just a fraction of what we used to have
so i um
but nonetheless would
hope that
that the council does address housing
discrimination and there are other
concerns regarding landlord tenant not
necessarily
for or pro or against one or the other
but
in terms of fine-tuning and again the
reason for this would be that people
would have access to our local courts
uh under a municipal ordinance so i i do
hope that we're able to move on that and
thank you mayor
thank you
council koran
thank you mayor
for the opportunity to speak i do want
to give a few quick updates those of you
who are following the tnr saga i just
saw a cat right outside in the front in
the front yard
the teenage coordinator position has
been will will appear shortly in the
in the hr thing so
thanks to you all for on your ongoing
support of thinking about tnr um trap
neuter return for those of you who
haven't been
uh here for those lengthy conversations
um so that's one update from the animal
services side of things i also just want
to put in a few notes about
the tsi prc i want to give a shout out
to the the staff who have helped
coordinate the tsi prc committee
meetings um they we've really been
working on focusing the tsi prc is
transportation sustainability and
infrastructure and we've really been
working on thinking about how to focus
this and how to make sure that we're all
working from a common definition of
of what's important to us collectively
as a community
and so i'm looking forward to our next
conversations where we'll be
talking about things like defining
sustainability in the context of
of
transportation and infrastructure and
what seeing what equity looks like when
we think about funding
transportation and infrastructure
projects so that conversation will be
taking place as it
does on the
uh
first tuesday of the month september 6th
at 8 30 a.m in 2007 a so i want to
invite folks to come to that
conversation about in particular
defining equity
and sustainability and things like
multimodal transit so
that's all i have for today
okay thank you councilman como thanks
mayor um just a couple things uh we have
actually housing prc scheduled for this
wednesday at 2 p.m on the second floor
and we will be talking about
income discrimination ordinance
there is a cannabis town hall on
thursday at 3 p.m that i'll be attending
and hopefully
some of my other colleagues can attend
as well
we have i think our third i don't think
cynthia's down here i think it's our
third if not our fourth
meeting
down west picacho i think it's our third
with west picacho businesses and we're
doing a lot of great things there as
well
if folks
want to join us that are business owners
or residents honestly
and then the last thing i wanted to know
was that
um at last week's um
utilities meeting
um delilah let us know very sad news for
us exciting news for her and so i just
wanted to publicly and here at council
delilah
extend my deepest gratitude for
literally leading a giant public utility
that is no easy thing and you deserve
all the accolades and people stealing
you from us um so she'll be going to a
freezing town so i expect her
to maybe return in a year or something i
don't know um no just kidding um so i
just wanted to say that delilah and i
don't know when your last meeting will
be it's not today it's not today is it
okay great so we will have more time to
give you proper
goodbyes and all of that but i just
wanted to let folks know
that's it man thank you councillor
graham
okay there we go
thank you mayor um
glad that the cat's out of the bag
the tnrd cat is out of the bag on
delilah leaving thank you so much
especially as a new counselor
the care that you took to help me orient
to
the city and to the immense undertaking
that utilities is in our community
yeah i mean we have great people and
that's the risk you run when you have
great people they move on to
other great things so thank you and glad
you'll be around through september
my only other
upcoming thing i'm going to have the
honor of speaking to some students at
lynn middle school coming up on
wednesday one of our amazing community
schools so
that will be me desperately trying to
look cool to sixth seventh and eighth
graders outlook not good but i'm really
excited and happy to be asked so
if i'm not booed off the stage i'll
probably report on it again if you don't
hear anything else
know that i was deemed a nerd so thank
you
okay thank you counselor
thank you
councilor graham i guess you can
you can
let me know if my children behave then
[Laughter]
thank you i have a few updates to to
share
we are going to have an oversight
committee meeting on wednesday at 10 a.m
and we are also hosting
a vaccine task force meeting
this wednesday at 3 30 and thank you to
mayor pro-tem gandra for leading that as
i have a conflicting appointment but the
task force meeting is just going to give
a little bit of a
overview of everything that's been
happening
our office of emergency management is
going to give some updated messaging and
include messaging um about monkey pox as
well so just uh to get a little bit of a
handle um you know over everything and
uh be proactive about that situation so
thank you mayor protem for that um
counselor
bencomo talked about our utilities board
meeting
we're also going to have a rate setting
training in september
and i do want to say congratulations to
jeremiah avery who did his signing last
week for his internship
very exciting there's so many resources
available for success for him over the
next few years and training i think it's
such a wonderful program so thank you
delilah and thank you to
mr enriquez who also spoke at that event
we're going to have a quality of life
prc meeting august 24th at 3 p.m
and then
tomorrow i will be going to a vida board
meeting where we're going to be looking
at some bylaw revisions and going over
the stakeholders survey results
and then this
last saturday i had the opportunity to
go to borrow college to look at their
medical student research day and look at
abstracts and hear
about some of the projects that the
students have been working on so it was
really wonderful and it's such an
impressive facility as well i had not
had the opportunity to
really look over there so it was very
exciting
and
i have asked
mr pili
to help me start working on a public
safety meeting for my district obviously
a lot of the recent events have occurred
in my district and i know i have a lot
of concerned regis residents so
i want the public to know that that is
in the work for us to talk about
building up neighborhoods and addressing
some of their concerns thank you mayor
thank you councillor before i give to uh
assistant manager enriquez i i was
remiss in not introducing and i just met
him for really the first time but i just
want to tell you brad
you're quick on your feet and i think
you did a great job today so i don't
even know your last name i just know you
as brad so if you want to share a little
bit about you with us and
i mean you're you're not a temp right
you're a city attorney well
if i'm a temp
nobody's told me or else they've
forgotten to fire me
now for everybody and i know quite a few
of you actually
i'm brad douglas
senior assistant city attorney i have
been here since june of last year
and
it was
an interesting experience to fill in for
city attorney vega today
this was kind of a last minute call up
if you will
so apologies for that but
thank you mr mayor council for being
patient and understanding with me
you did a great job and
also maybe you're going to touch on this
assist manager enriquez on is there
going to be any 911 911 comments there
yeah mayor and council thank you um i do
have some updates i i'm not sure what
the schedule is for the september 11th
but i'll make sure we get that out we'll
get that out exactly what the details
are we we normally do every year and we
will participate in that but i'll i'll
get the schedule
today this afternoon i do have some
really good news to update and some
great news uh the the good news is we
kicked off the block party for the lift
up and it was a huge success so now next
steps moving forward we're looking for
those tangible items that that we can
take care of as soon as possible and
that starts out with the streets public
works has already done a cap seal on
sacramento street and sacramento circle
next they'll be doing
a pavement replacement for cayo sosa
and also for north willow and those
streets fall between ash and mulberry
and those will be
done hopefully we're looking at starting
the construction in october
the other thing is the big street is the
madrid with a bike and pedestrian
improvements and those pre-construction
negotiations are going on right now with
the department of of new mexico
department of transportation
and the federal
government also to establish and
hopefully also start sometime in october
parks and rec is assessing all the
landscaping needs in that area for lift
up as well
and the great news we just notified
today that transit was awarded 7.9
million
in in grants so we will use
about 5.7 million to purchase seven more
buses and chargers and then 2.3 million
of that or 2.2 million of that will also
go to the build out for the transit
facility so that's great news kudos to
our grants department with amy and also
mike bartholomew transit and staff for
staying persistent with those grant
applications that's what i had mayor
thank you yeah that's great news can i
just ask yes
mr enriquez what is the source of the
grants federal or state yes it's a
federal through the fta
thank you
okay great no that is great news so
thank you very much for that and so if
there's nothing further entertainer
motion to adjourn
so move my floaters second beta okay
motion made by councillor florida second
by councillor beta that we adjourn
christine
this is on the motion to adjourn the
regular meeting counselor beta yes
councillor graham yes
councillor benkomo yes
councillor koran yes councillor flotus
yes councillor gandala yes mayor yes
okay it's 3 58 pm we are adjourned thank
you very much
you