from
that's exactly right
good to see you
why should they make me
you
um
you
[Music]
so
[Music]
thank you dominic good afternoon
everybody
welcome to our work session it is one
o'clock
i will be facilitating the meeting this
afternoon for about an
hour mayor is unavailable
and so with that will you please rise so
we can say the pledge of allegiance
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
okay thank you next up is our pet of the
week is vanessa around
hello hey guys hey vanessa all right
um so first we have elios
um he's our dog of the week he is a
three-year-old male
um he is neutered already um here's a
little bit about him
you can't see the vanessa yes it's not
it's not up if you've
shown a picture you can have it let me
try again
thank you counselor pencomo all right do
you see it now
we don't no
all right let's try again here we go
vanessa there we go
all right um all right
so um here's a little bit about him
i'm a very active fun loving boy i am
affectionate and want your attention
i've been told i'm a good at learning
commands but i don't like
being left alone outside i need your
company
um let's go
on to the cat of the week um this is
renee
she is a two-year-old female i'm a
little bit about her i'm renee i'm shy
but i have a heart of gold
i love ear scratches and oh sorry about
that
um ear scratches and love in my kennel
i'm a little nervous but i'm looking for
a perfect home that will let me in and
just get comfortable
on my own terms a little fun fact
of this week animal service center is
returning back to the farmers market
starting may 22nd will be our first day
and um just want to say thank you guys
so much and hope you all have a good day
thanks so much vanessa good to hear that
you'll be back at the farmer's market
yes we're certainly excited yeah
very good thank you so much next up is
our jobs of the week
it's either darlene lopez or i think i
saw
cindy on the line
good afternoon miraprotem this is cindy
quillen
good afternoon everyone um
so for today our jobs of the week we
have a construction inspector
through the city of las cruces this
position will be closing
on may the 18th of 2021 next we have
a quality assurance food service
coordinator
this is through discovery child
development daycare
this position closes may 27th
there's also a mechanic position open
with pet boys
this position closes on july 26th
and they're also seeking graduate nurses
uh through the medic surgical department
at memorial medical center
also there is a housekeeper position
available
with rehabilitation hospital of southern
new mexico incorporated and this
position
closes on may the 27th we do
have some upcoming events this coming
week tomorrow
tuesday may 11th there is a caliche's
frozen custard recruitment fair
that is that starts at 11 a.m
and there's also on friday may the 14th
a u.s census bureau recruitment event
which begins
at 2 p.m for further information
regarding these events and a full list
of jobs
internships and volunteer opportunities
you can visit our
website at www.employnewmexico.com
and at www.governmentjobs.com
career slash las cruces uh for our local
uh department of workforce connections
office
you can reach us at our phone number at
575-524-6250
we are located at 226 south alameda
boulevard las cruces new mexico
thank you everyone and have a wonderful
afternoon and a great week
thank you so much cindy i know you're
going to get a slew of people at your
job fair with kalichi's there i we are
doing our best
we're doing our best well thank you
so we'll make sure that we get that out
that kalichi's will be there
that's exciting so thank you so much for
being here you're welcome
yes next on our agenda
is um our coveted 19
update and eric enriquez
okay good afternoon mayor pro tem and
council eric enriquez assistant city
manager to give a
coca-19 task force uh report
so donate county is uh
now in the turquoise uh that's great
news
it'll it'll stay in that effect for
about four weeks
and then they'll reevaluate right now
our positivity rate
is at 3.63 this
fully vaccinated rate is 43.6 percent
and that was as of friday they hadn't
posted earlier today
but it should go up meaning that we have
500 uh residents in dona county that
have been fully vaccinated
the pan american sorry the pan american
center
event uh went well this week there was
over 1900
that received their second dose of the
pfizer vaccine this past saturday so
that
will up our fully vaccinated percentage
rate
and those numbers should go up as well
things that are taking place now as the
department of health portal is working
on scheduling
group events with this ability to do
group
events uh businesses non-profits
religious organizations schools others
are able to schedule an event and that
we can try to go
and and um
and administer the vaccine at their
locations these are some of the things
that the department of health is doing
in their portal to help us to register
groups now
uh after hours and weekend vaccinations
are still in the plans and starting to
work we've already extended those
on thursday evenings at the convention
center and we'll start looking at
saturdays as well
with that radio and tv commercials are
going to be aired soon
to encourage vaccinations uh waiting
still
for the fda approval on pfizer for the
12 and 15 years of age plans have
already been made
with las cruces public school district
and the hatch public school district as
well
for vaccinating those that are 12 to 15
years of age
uh with the asylum refugees um
you know still a lot of capacity and
space in el paso that the annunciation
there with reuben
is even taking refugees from tucson that
are being flown in
because of the space they have there so
the el paso port
is doing well and there's a lot of space
there with the annunciation center
i'll stand for any questions
thank you eric for you the update
any questions
yes counselor beta stevie thank you
um mr enriquez can we remind
um parents that they
do need to register their kids on the
app
as well and any other information that
we have that could
make sure that they're prepared whenever
that registration
or whenever the authorization comes out
for pfizer
yes uh mayor uh pro tem gander and
counselor stewie yeah we will do that
with our communications good point
uh also what i've seen is that there
have been over ten thousand in the state
of new mexico
twelve to fifteen that have already
registered so we need to continue with
that push as well thank you for that
thank you and thank you mayor pro tem
thank you councillor beta stevie and
eric eric i just have a
a comment um let's see friday
eve morning i met with an individual
that lives up in the
um east mesa um and
she was commenting about
just how difficult it is um being
out in terms of of
you know with transportation maybe being
a barrier
and lack of information for the area
especially for the spanish speakers and
i know we've done a lot of
a lot um you know around that and
i told her look it's on radio tv
telemundo
there's different different avenues that
we're trying to get the word
out but she um indicated that
it's very difficult um for people to
come into las cruces
to get the vaccine right so what um
what availability might there be um
particularly for our elderly
and our um um
you know for folks that might be
disabled what what is
the um what might be solutions for
strategies that we
that we can impose to help people
well thank you uh mayor pro tem gundam
uh you're absolutely correct there is
still a lull and there
still are some challenges and obstacles
especially in the rural areas
so what what's taking place now are some
mobile units
uh trying to develop some mobile units
to go out and then with the group
portal that's uh scheduling is going to
be another opportunity
but la clinica is one of those
organizations with their staff
and their resources to reach out to the
areas in the county that are available
like clinica does have a mobile unit
and that's one of the things that is
being put in the process that we can all
work together for those rural areas
thank you eric so they could they could
conceivably take their mobile unit out
there maybe at the
dona or excuse me the east mesa
um department of health i think hat they
have a substation out there
i don't know how um you know if they're
if they're seeing folks there for
vaccines and different things and
other other programs or services that
may
are available for department of health
but i'm wondering if
eric you can talk to them about
scheduling something very specific in
that
area she lives past
um i think
onyate and maybe in that oregon area
so anything that we can do to help bring
that community
um forward especially that she felt like
there was
a real issue getting information and
people to to las cruces that would be
really helpful
okay and we'll be doing that as i
mentioned with our communications with
the radio announcements
and and television as well that we can
start getting some sites
as i mentioned some of the non-profit
organizations and even religious
organizations
i know there's several large churches on
the east side
that may be willing to host a location
that we can do that and make it
available even on a saturday when
uh it would be more available we're also
looking at seeing how we can utilize
transit
in some of the areas for transportation
thank you eric really appreciate all the
work that you and staff are doing
and the fire department thank you so
much thank you
okay next on our agenda is 4.1
introduction of police auditors the oir
group viola perea good afternoon
everyone mayor pro tem and counselors
i'm viola perea with internal audit
and today i'd like to introduce our
police auditors the oir group to our
city council work session today they
have prepared a powerpoint presentation
for you so i will turn this over to
michael janako and his team
with the oir group
thank you viola um hello council
it's great to be with you this afternoon
and um my name is michael chanako and i
am a principal of oer group
and we look forward uh to engaging with
you and
starting our project as the city's
independent police
monitor um what i would like to do
if uh if i can is just introduce the
other members of our team and ask them
to say just a bit about themselves and
their background
and maybe we can start with julie rulin
julie
yes good afternoon and thanks for uh for
having us here today
my name is julie rulin and uh i am
an attorney by training so um
since about 2004 i left the practice of
law and have been doing
full-time monitoring and oversight of
law enforcement agencies i started out
doing that work
with the police assessment resource
center and was fortunate to
get into that because a partner at my
law firm
was the individual who had worked
for the los angeles county as a special
counsel
and and left our law practice
to start the police assessment resource
center and
i was able to go with him and join him
in that work
and which suited me very well because
litigation
i had quickly learned my legal practice
had been doing little
litigation some criminal defense work
some civil rights work
but the uh the fighting with others and
the posture of litigation didn't suit me
and so working in this field has been
much more personally rewarding for me
and
i was fortunate in 2006 to join
mike and steve with the office of
independent review
in los angeles county where we monitored
the la county sheriff's department
reviewing uses of force
and deputy involved shootings and a
number of issues involving the local
county jails
so that is we've then started and and
you'll hear more about it as we go
through our program
working with a number of agencies
outside of los angeles county
and have built our built our practice
doing oversight work
since then so i will be
looking forward to hearing any of your
questions later but for now i think i'll
i'll move it on to steve connolly to
introduce himself
thank you julie steve thank you very
much
and good afternoon everybody thank you
for having us uh as julie said i'm steve
conley with
oir group and i actually went to law
school
in the los angeles area in the late 90s
when there was a lot of focus
on the la police department and
the whole idea of oversight and reform
in the aftermath of the
the rodney king case and some other kind
of large-scale
scandals that that had come to light
during that time period so
i was very uh interested in the in the
field from the time that i was still a
law student and had
you know was very happy to have the
opportunity to begin working
uh full-time in the field of oversight
of law enforcement starting in 2001.
so it's it's hard for me to believe but
it's been 20 years now uh
of of doing this kind of work
exclusively and
we as julie said we've worked in a lot
of different jurisdictions and
and with um police agencies of different
sizes
and and different contexts there
certainly are some best practices and
some concepts that that
we think apply to all the different
places that we work with
but we've also come to recognize and
really uh find
energizing all the distinctive features
of of each jurisdiction
as well we know that that each community
has its own
history and its own issues and its own
background and its own relationship with
the police and we're very much looking
forward to
getting to know las cruces quite a bit
better and serving the community in this
new capacity so thank you for having us
and and i'm going to turn it over to
theresa magula
thank you steve teresa
well i'm running the powerpoint
and um i am actually the only non-lawyer
in our group
which i think is exceptional but
others might not agree um i have a
degree
in public policy with an emphasis on
crime policy
and that quickly took me into the space
of law enforcement oversight
i was working with the lapd's office of
the inspector general
reviewing complaints that citizens were
making against
the lapd as well as then focusing on
specific uses of force and reviewing
those cases
i was able to join oir group
thanks to some connections with the
oversight the national oversight agency
that we all belong to
and have been working with this team for
about five years now
it has been a very rewarding experience
because we're able to go
as steve said and look across the
country look across
various jurisdictions to see what kind
of best practices are occurring
what the kind of national dialogue is
and and that has certainly been very
rewarding
beyond simply working with one
jurisdiction
and so i am grateful to be here i am
excited to start
our work here in las cruces and i look
forward to
meeting all of you i'll turn it back
over to mike
so that he can tell people about us
thank you hi michael
thank you very much um so this is just a
very
um one slide bullet on on some of the
work that we have done
um i think in the introductions you've
already heard of it
um theresa you just go back that to that
slide for a minute
um so as as is indicated we have been in
this uh business this isn't our first
rodeo if you will um but we have been in
this business for a number of years
doing this type of work
that being said uh the policing of today
is a new challenge um certainly
um there has been a lot of discussion
about police reform
and more community engagement more
oversight particularly since the
murder of george floyd a year ago and
while
we have certainly seen an uptick in
interest of the kind of work that we do
we are pleased and understand that
your city has been ahead of of that
trend and has had
auditors and monitors in the past and i
think that's a testament to
some foresight on your behalf that um
you did already have already been
through this process to some degree
we look forward as teresa has indicated
julie and steve for working with you
we have already uh started in the sense
that we had
a kickoff meeting with your city manager
uh
with viola with your city auditor um we
had a chance to meet with your chief
and uh the lieutenant in charge of
uh internal affairs investigations and
um
we um also had a chance to meet with
your city attorney
one of the interesting features that we
think is a good feature in the scope of
work that's been
provided to us is that we have a chance
to take a look at
claims or lawsuits that come in through
the other door
and and we see those as
just like civilian complaints but
there's a price tag attached to them so
we appreciate that we'll have an
opportunity to be reviewing
those those cases as well we look
forward to
engaging with you and sending public
reports to you
transparency is one of the things that
we think is most important for any
effective oversight program to have
and we appreciate that it's been built
into the scope of work
we know that the city has taken some
care in defining the scope of work
and we think it does provide an
opportunity for robust reporting for
transparency
and for us to be able to tell you tell
the story
about what what is being received by the
department in the way of complaints
how the department is handling them and
any suggestions on ways for improvement
one of the things we have learned in the
work that we've done
is that while law enforcement
generally is pretty good at sharing
um best practices in a number of areas
like uh disaster readiness
um active shooters and a number of other
concepts the idea of an internal
investigation is because of their
confidentiality
nature there isn't as much sharing so
what we have found is
when we learn that something has worked
well in one of our other
assignments we can then take that
concept and
export it out to others for which we are
engaged
theresa if you go to the next slide
these are examples of similar size
cities although every city has their own
challenges and has their own
certainly personality and culture these
are
examples of other cities in which we are
performing essentially the same type of
work
every scope of work is a little
different
but we have been working with these
cities for
some of them for as long as a decade but
others are relatively new
members of of our assignment so
um as i was indicating i may stop you
there i think counselor florence has a
question
of course actually it's just a comment
uh michael um
[Music]
the mid-1990s following the rodney
uh killing excuse me rodney king uh
beating uh i was president of the
mexican-american bar association of
los angeles county and um remember that
yes yeah and so we met with uh
we met with your boss deval patrick at
the time
and then i we made several trips back
there and then
you all came out to los angeles county
so excuse me the city of los angeles and
we went to harry's bar i don't know if
you remember that part
you probably don't but um at any rate i
just wanted to laud you to
uh really say that you did a great job
as the attorney
and the attorney general's office us
attorney general's office coming out to
los
angeles and we can see some of that work
now
um so i i'm so happy to see you here and
i'm so happy i'm a city councilor now
here in las gruses i moved i retired
from the practice of law in los angeles
and we got here
so i just want to say a personal hello
and a personal welcome
and a personal just laud the work you've
been doing
and we really need your help here
and i'm glad you said that we are ahead
of the curve so
again welcome michael and thank you
madam chair for allowing me to
interrupt absolutely count
counselor voters thank you and madam
chair may i respond to council member
flores please
you can absolutely it's good to get
reacquainted with an old friend
council member flores and i do remember
harry's bar now that you've reminded me
so
um those are the days right and things
were tough and we were at that time
prosecuting
an lapd officer for sort of the same
conduct we didn't even have a video
though so
um it was it was tough but the work that
you had already done the groundwork that
your association had done
was extremely helpful in the partnership
that we developed i think was terrific
and
we look to have that kind same kind of
relationship with you all as we get
started in this new project so
thank you for uh taking me down memory
lane
yes no no kidding huh thank you so much
michael
no yeah and then the other thing of
course what we
hope and expect to do is once this
pandemic is lifted and we can actually
meet with people again
uh well we look forward to that instead
of
having to view you all through these
little hollywood squares so
um that is going to be something that i
am very much looking forward to i am
over zoom quite frankly and we'll look
forward to the time when we can have
meetings in person um so
the rest of the presentation i think you
you've heard it um theresa you just want
to go through the slides very quickly
just buzz through them
and this is only to show that every
scope of work is a bit different
but they really are intended to sort of
accomplish the same goals which is
to provide a level of transparency
because
internal investigations and complaints
have to be handled
you know as confidential investigations
um
many cities do never many cities uh
city communities do not have a good
grasp on what's going on because they
receive no information about what's
going on
um but you all have empowered us through
our public reporting responsibility
to balancing the interest and
confidentiality and the
privacy interests that you know officers
should have in our view
there is still an ability to tell the
story about what it is that's
you know being alleged about officers
what it is that officers
are doing that's getting them into
trouble or at least under investigation
and what it is that we can suggest as
far as improving that process
so that there is increased trust in
policing
increased trust and accountability and
increased trust in
the interest that you all as overseers
of the larger cities
responsibilities have placed on us to do
this work so
we look forward to uh to continuing as i
said we just got started
may 1 was our kick off day and so we
look forward to coming back perhaps
towards the end of the year and
giving you a progress report you know
unless there are any additional
questions or comments
uh madam chair um i think that concludes
our
presentation at this point thank you
michael
um councilor flores gay um counselor
vasquez councillor bin cuomo
i'm a damn chair i left my hand up i
have no friends
okay thank you okay mr vasquez
uh thank you thank you mayor pro tem um
and thank you to miss
uh mr gennaco and your your whole team
today i appreciate you all taking the
time to be here with us and introducing
yourself
um we are excited to have you on board
and have been uh without a police
auditor for some time so you're filling
a much needed service
for our uh community in our city so
thank you again
um i do have just a few questions here
today
um some you may not have answers to and
that's okay
um some of this may have been included
in the scope of work and so i apologize
if these are
repeat questions but i just want to get
them on the record um
mr gennako um in our previous
um relationship with our police auditor
uh the presentations to counsel um i
would
i would say left a little bit to be
desired in terms of identifying the
trends of
um just the types of complaints and and
whether they were substantiated or
unsubstantiated
um uh you know developing more of a
narrative
of what citizen complaints actually were
um
identifying trends if we had for example
a particular
issue um with a uh with a particular
function of the police department or
um you know in the fut or or even you
know particular
staff or or things like that um so how
how
are you planning on reporting back um i
guess your findings from
uh your periodic audits um and will
those help to identify trends that just
go beyond the data
of um of reports and what's
substantiated and what's not
well absolutely so councilmember vasquez
thank you for that question
and appreciate your uh concern that's
already exhibited by your question so
yeah we we hope to have um a
a more robust feedback loop to you all
to identify trends and also to tell the
story about what it is that we're seeing
you know what kind
i think we can tell the story without
violating any confidentiality
as long as we don't name the officers
and just give you a better
um understanding of what it is that
is being alleged by your community what
it is that's getting into the system
and then maybe as importantly how the
department is handling it
is it a thorough investigation it is an
objective investigation
are there gaps in the investigation and
if so what what are they
and then finally uh councilmember
vasquez with the idea that it's
all about getting better what are our
suggestions with regard to rooms for
improvement uh whether that's better
guidance to officers
whether that's better investigative
procedures
uh or whether it's more analysis with
regard to outcomes
all of those areas are things that we'll
be commenting on so
um i i hope and expect that when you see
our report you will see it
to be more granular to be more specific
and to provide you more insight
at the same time protecting
confidentiality concerns
that you know the officers and the
department have i think we can
thread that needle though quite
effectively so thank you for that
thank you michael if i can interject sir
vasquez i see
um jennifer vega brown's hand up and
maybe she has
additional feedback
absolutely thank you mayor pro tem
councilor vasquez um city council
i just want to point out and in response
to counselor
question in the scope of work
there are a couple of very important
elements in there one of them
in review of the tort claim notices and
the
statistical and trend analysis one of
the things that we added
was that um
the statistical and trend analysis and
the tort review
shall include but not be limited to
offender and victim demographics
location of incidents criminal charges
associated with the incidents
disposition of cases policy violations
and dispositions
police officer demographics and other
statistics related to the complaint
so those are we're breaking it down so
that we can follow if
there are trends um that will happen
with all the other notices and in
addition just to let you know
the reports will be reported within 30
days that's included in the scope of
services
there will be a semi-annual
um reporting which it will have that
high level of detail
and we also included that it would
comply
with the accountability and government
ordinance
so that reporting is going to comply
with that
and that would include a notification to
the oversight committee as well
so those are some level of detail that
are quite
different from the last auditor
auditing firm that we had i just wanted
to make sure that you were aware
there's going to be a lot a lot more
detail than what you're accustomed to
thank you thank you so much jennifer
thank you mayor pro tem um
that sounds amazing i think that is the
level
of um detail in terms of the demographic
data
um from both the offender and and the
law enforcement side
um that could really help to identify
trends especially as
as we know as it pertains to any type of
potential racial profiling issues or
other types of um
discrimination that may exist as a trend
uh
or could be identified for further um uh
investigation and i think uh that's data
that i would really like to have
but in addition i think our residents
deserve to have as well
um especially in times like these today
when uh obviously we're having a
national conversation
about these types of things uh within
different police departments
so thank you um another question for you
mr geneco
in in terms of and i think you mentioned
this but just briefly here but
in terms of reporting back to provide
advice or best practices
or communication with with council and
city management
and our police department leadership
will those be offered in in the form of
reports
in terms of perhaps the first audit that
you
undertake is that then also accompanied
by
a list of recommendations that that you
would provide
to correct any measures that you see as
being
deficient or needing some work yeah um
we'll work with your uh department
leadership with your city attorney and
your city auditor on the way in which we
report back but i think
it is important to provide um one first
the
police leadership an opportunity to take
a look at our recommendations talk with
us about them
but i also think it is important to the
degree we have recommendations to report
back
and out on unto what degree the
department has agreed with the
recommendations that is something we
generally do and all of the other
assignments we have and we would look
for a way to do that here too
thank you mr gennako and i appreciate
that and i think these types of
um these these types of recommendations
in my opinion
to the degree possible especially to
protect protecting confidentiality
um and personnel issues um i think need
to be seen by the public because the
public really needs to see that
that we are doing the work that our uh
police department is doing the work that
city management our attorney's office
and and
the auditor is doing the work to to um
to create a safer community so
to whatever degree we could turn those
recommendations
uh also into public-facing opportunities
for communication
um i think that that would just be
really appreciated to
to think about how we structure that um
and then in terms of the first audit uh
results and report to the to the council
um do you know i have a timeline for
that yet mr gennako
yeah the the overarching uh report would
be um
you know you'd be looking forward
towards the end of the year since
as i indicated may 1 was our operative
date
and we have semi-annual reports uh you
know to the public and to you also
um you know sometime around thanksgiving
and
when we're all uh free from this
pandemic fingers crossed
um will be when we'd be expecting to
report back to you
thank you mr yanuko um and then in terms
of sharing those recommendations and
perhaps best practices
given that you do have experience along
long
cadre of experience especially within
your team and the other clients that you
have
could we assume that maybe you'll be
sharing best practices from other
municipalities or other departments
especially as it you know pertains to
any
complaints or or you know specific
litigation or deficiencies
um is that something you usually do
yeah it is something that we do in order
to sometimes in order to persuade the
police leadership that others are doing
this and doing it well
we often will present them with policies
from other
cities or we'll ask them to talk to
you know other departments to to see how
they do it so that is something that we
um
we do do we do do quite frequently
council member
thank you mr geneco i have two more
questions here uh one is
in terms of um an excessive number
or what would be considered by by our
standards and maybe other standards
as an excessive number of complaints or
a chronic perhaps issue
related to a particular individual or
individuals
again being very sensitive about
personnel issues and certainly letting
our police leadership do their job
as well as our city management i do get
concerned just about
missing those opportunities when we see
them
in terms of if there is a problematic um
uh activity that is happening
consistently amongst an officer that we
that we take care of that before it you
know it gets out of control
i'm not saying that that happens here
but that's something to me very
important to avoid especially those
costly lawsuits later
um so how do you handle those types of
issues in your audit reports
oh we're handling one right now in
another jurisdiction that will remain
nameless
um but um because it's not out yet but
but um yeah the the the certainly
the that one one data point that's
really important
is whether or not a particular officer
has an
inordinate number of complaints compared
to
other officers that are working similar
assignments are on the same shift
and in addition to ensuring that those
complaints are fully and thoroughly
investigated
it's also important when this happens
that the police leadership
consider other remedial action and not
necessarily discipline
but finding ways to um remediate the
situation through mentoring through
training
through other kinds of counseling or
other kinds of interventions
so that we don't get into a situation in
which
an officer then
continues along this path in an
unproductive way
regarding your your overall comment
about
numbers of complaints and whether they
should go up or go down
that's an interesting stat because in
our experience sometimes
uh when complaints go up it's actually a
good thing because
what we have seen is that
agencies that have a history of very few
complaints
may have a history of very few
complaints because when they don't take
every complaint
or alternatively their public is not
confident in the system and is not
confident that they will get a fair
shake
and therefore they don't make complaints
and just some simply do not take
advantage of the complaint system
not to say that's going on in your city
but that's why
that number uh can go up or down
depending on the trust that you know
community has in the process
that's a great point thank you mr
gennako um and based on
on the your initial report
um you know as you were scrolling
through some of the
scope of work that you have with other
uh municipalities or other communities
did notice some interesting services in
there that we don't have i believe in
our scope of work
and so i love to figure out if there are
certain functions or services
that you would recommend to increase
transparency and i think a model of
community policing that
i think the council here just really
strongly supports
um is transparency communication and
community policing and so
if there are things that we could be
doing better even outside of the police
department
what caught my eye i think was you serve
you you served in an office capacity for
intake i guess
you had office hours listed for one of
your clients
so just wondering what innovative things
we could continue to do
um to uh just to continue to be more
um transparent um communicative and and
foster
an environment of of community policing
um so we'd love to see that
um i think yeah and and what we'd like
to do is take a lap around the field for
for a few months but um certainly um
those kinds of discussions we're
obviously open to
um one thing that we know is that
policing challenges of today
are going to be different than the ones
of tomorrow
and so in in the same way that police
departments need to continue to
reevaluate
the way in which they provide public
safety our services
continually need to be re-evaluated in
the way we provide oversight so we're
open to any of that
and look forward to those future
discussions councilmember
thank you so much i'll just say i think
you'll enjoy working
um with our new police chief um he has
been here for quite some time on the
force and as a resident
and local community member and i have
um full faith he'll work with you
fully to to make sure that this is a
productive um service that we offer to
our community and
and to the police department and uh as
well um
as well as working with our our
wonderful new city manager um so welcome
again mr gennako to you and your team
thank you and thank you mayor pro tem
thank you councillor vasquez councillor
ben como
thank you mayor pro tem um thank you so
much everyone it's really uh nice to
meet you we're happy to have you all
here
um and mr gyneco am i saying that right
please correct me if i'm saying your
last name wrong well it's janako
but it that's not too bad um janako is
actually the way to say it thank you i
have to ask people pronounce my name
wrong all the time so i like to
give you that courtesy um
mr janako thank you um yes i have some
um
more specific questions and then some
more general questions for you
um but i'm really glad to have you all
here today i mean just given
the heavenly heaviness of policing
conversations in the last year really
probably for a long time but especially
in the last year
um las cruces has certainly not been
immune to
um to that reality and so um you know
we're very
glad that you're here and um we're
excited about
um what you'll will you'll be able to
provide for us
as a city um i'm curious about can you
walk us
through the process of between now and
the first time we and the next time we
see you
um what does that look like i i heard
you say that you already began having
those conversations with city manager
and
city attorney and our new police chief
um so those are some of the first things
what kind of information did you ask for
right like what happens in
this next month and then two months um
oh absolutely so uh as
as uh guided through the scope of work
so
ordinarily um what we do is we receive
cases um after they've been completed
and then we evaluate them
and provide an annual or semi-annual
report
on what we're finding and that means
we're looking at the strength of the
investigation
we're looking at whether the decision
was based on
evidence and was principled and whether
the investigation was thorough
um and then reporting back
um you know in a public report
this scope of work was a little
different and i think
your city attorney commented on it and i
think this is new
but uh instead of waiting for that six
month period to
send it all back to the department for
review uh this scope of work actually
has us receive investigations as they're
completed
and then return them within 30 days to
the department
and the advantage of that process is it
gives
feedback in a more timely way to the
department
rather than the end of you know several
months period
and we're then able to have some
conversation if needed on
explaining our our views and so to the
degree that this is about
improvement and feedback as you know
um the best way to improve conduct or
behavior is through
immediate feedback and so this is going
to be more immediate
and i think that will improve the
process when all is said and done as
your city attorney indicated
in reading off the scope of work there
will be a
robust report that will then be
presented to you all
and an opportunity for feedback
and further guidance great
thank you um for just laying that out
for me once more
um what's your what kind of work do you
do with
um i was reading through your website
and i know that you um listed on there
um engaging with community and i'm
curious of
if that is something that you'll be
doing as part of our contract and
and what does that look like yeah it's a
good question
um we um you know as i said every city
is different
and some of the cities um have review
boards or police commissions
etc that have been set up and so in
those cases we work
with the commission and review board to
have sort of a public facing
piece to our work um you know and then
there are others that don't like
have that out facing report like palo
alto does not so
in that case we report directly to
council as opposed to a commission or
review board
certainly we are available should
any member of the community want to be
interested in the process we can talk
about the process
we certainly aren't hiding from them
with regard to
providing information about what our
responsibilities are and we'll be uh
able to do that as well
so we have that opportunity and
people who want to talk with us about
the process or
their own individual complaints while
we're not supposed to really be intake
we don't do our investigations we can
facilitate some knowledge
and information uh for those who may not
feel the safe talking to your police
department they can certainly call us
and we can
have a conversation about that that's
good to know that
those we do not have some sort of
citizen oversight committee
specifically as it relates to uh the
police department and so
to me that feels really important and i
i feel really really strongly about
change happen transformation and change
happening in very public way
and not just behind closed doors and so
um to have that line of communication
open with community particularly
those that are directly impacted feels
really important to me
for sure um
um gaza vasquez asked a lot of my
questions as well so let me just get
through my list here
on i think honestly my last question for
now is
um i'm just curious in terms of um the
oirs group
sort of general philosophy about
um your work and how the last year has
changed that if if at all if it has i'm
curious how you all are approaching
what you do now in the light of what's
happened in the last year especially
with um you know calls from a lot of
community members around you know really
rethinking public safety and what that
looks like and
and that's something that i've been
trying to push that conversation here on
council and so i'm curious about
to hear from you all your thoughts on
that
absolutely um the year has been quite a
year
and so many different ways you know it
kind of started when the pandemic hadn't
shut us down
so we've had to learn to try to um
continue to engage with the various um
cities that we work with
in different ways right so i'm sure you
all have
had that same challenge it's a
some ways more efficient to have zoom
calls but not as effective in my view
but
um that's one and then and then
at the end of may when george floyd was
murdered um you know there
our work has changed in in several ways
one is
there are many many cities that have had
no monitoring have had no kind of
oversight whatsoever
we now recognize the interest and the
need in doing so
so we're helping various cities try to
craft some
kind of monitoring program or auditing
program
uh in some ways similar to what you
already have
um the uh broader
discussion and national narrative about
reinventing reimagining
of policing is certainly something that
we are engaged in
and um have been talking uh in various
cities and counties about
uh as part of uh as part of our working
as part of our conversa
conversations that we've been asked to
facilitate
in fact we have facilitated a number of
conversations
uh you know for communities and for
cities in that regard
and uh we think that you know it's uh
it shows uh one uh the importance in
having
um more engagement and also
it has challenged us in different ways
to rethink
you know what public safety should look
like is there are there better ways to
perform that service
can other social service um
uh support be part of that solution
does the cop need to be the one showing
up with regard to all houseless issues
or can that be supplanted through other
mechanisms what about mental health
calls so
there's a lot going on with regard to
your question councilmember about
philosophy we
um do not throw nuclear bombs
we try to be collaborative in all that
we do with whoever we engage with
and and that's been our philosophy we
have found that
we are more effective if we have uh
developed a collaborative collaborative
relationship
so long as we can continue to get the
confidential information we need the
full access we need
and the ability to be heard and finally
the ability to tell our
tell various publics what we are finding
so
with those essential qualities we do and
tend to be collaborative that
that's the way we enroll thank you i
really appreciate that and that was a
great answer right
i thank you very much for that and thank
you uh mayor prypton
thank you councillor bin como next up is
councillor zork
i didn't think i was next i thought beta
stubby was but anyway
um let me begin by saying thank you all
thank you for all the information the
presentation and introduction
to uh this service for the city of las
cruces
um i would like to start out by saying
where is the
scope of the the scope of work for this
uh
contract i have been looking through all
my documents i cannot find it anywhere
um did i miss it somehow
who sent it to us and and so on
where is it period
this is for staff of course
i saw jennifer vega brown
um the original scope of service was
contained in your
when you approved the contract it was an
attachment when you approved the
contract and we can resend that to you
okay yeah the packet today did not have
anything with it
so i was looking for something along
those lines
okay thank you uh for sending for
sending that
um i would like to ask mr
uh zaneco uh
if uh jenico at that
if you say we're kind of ahead of the
curve
what do you mean by that can you give me
examples
sure uh council member there are 15
000 police departments in this country
more or less
that's a lot right yeah um and and of
those 15
000 i think 14
500 have no monitoring and i've never
had any monitoring
but with regard to the way in which the
police perform internal investigations
and handle complaints and so what i
meant was you're one of the 500
that have had some level of monitoring
and i know that there
has been an interest as a council member
vasquez said in
improving that process and making it
more robust and
i think this scope of work as explained
by your city attorney is intended to do
that
but my only point in saying that was
that you are
not coming from zero uh there has been
some work in the past and so at least
your department has had
some history of working with an outside
group
the in the past few years and most
departments
most cities do not have anything and
they still do not have anything
i see but as far as our practices go
um that doesn't include
practices that the city police
department uh
is doing compared to other police
departments across the country
how do we compare there or does it at
all um
since uh we've only gotten started for
nine days i really can't answer that
question
okay i think i think i'll be i'll answer
that question better at the end of uh
at the end of the year when we have our
first report okay
understood yeah um one last question
though
can a citizen of las cruces uh file or
give you a complaint directly without
having to go through the police
department itself
i think that um we can do that um as
long as the complainant understands that
the investigative machinery
is still going to be performed by the
department um
and and we can make that clear and have
made that clear in other jurisdictions
what it does do is it allows us to have
our antennas up that a complaint is
coming in
um if in fact there's an outreach to us
so i think
in the same way that your department
is progressive in this sense and that it
accepts all complaints no matter how
they come in which is a good thing
um you know whether it comes in through
us i think
i think that's that's viable and doable
okay well thank you very much i
appreciate that thank you
uh madam chair uh
thank you counselor counselor of
business dubi
thank you mayor preston and thank you
all for
being here today and for my counselors
for giving such great questions so i
only have about three left
um i do want to take a moment to thank
members of our oversight committee for
being here today we have chair judge
ryan
and former counselor uh mr ekman here
um no there's one more but i don't think
the other member is on but i do want to
take a moment
um to thank you for joining us since you
will be part of these processes
um and mr jeannette ko um
how far may you please explain um how
far back
will your scope will work include again
just for my
notes sure and i know there has been a
gap in service and if
the city wants us to look at some of
those cases that were completed during
that gap we can
we can do that but what we told the the
chief in our meeting last week i think
it was last week
or maybe the week before that we would
start
may 1 and that anything that is closed
out
after may 1 is supposed to be sent to us
for
you know a review and then a 30-day
turnaround
okay and with any of the documents that
you end up requesting i know
that there is usually a time span that
you ask for those in
if those documents are not given to you
within that requested time frame
who do you report to to let them know
yeah we'll we'll our first um
stop is with the department right so
we'll talk with the chief and see what
it is that's that's not there
and i assume and and usually in fact
of the six other clients that i provided
to you in the
on our slide we've never had an issue
with regard to that
um if we need to have further relief for
further exploitation
we can obviously work through your city
auditor or your city manager
in order to get the information we need
but i don't expect that's going to be an
issue
having had a chance to talk with your
chief already
okay great thank you oh sarah bethesda b
um jennifer vega brown has her hand up i
imagine she has some additional
information
thank you mayor putin thank you mayor
pretend councillor betha stewie just to
um just to reassure you in the
accountability and government ordinance
our in
our city auditor has subpoena power and
so if that
if it ever escalated to that which i
cannot perceive that it would
um they could work with our auditor and
get any of those documents that they
need okay fantastic thank you
and last question with that um looking
at most of the the scope or that
of work that you do is with current
issues
um obviously i think everybody performs
at their peak level when they know that
they're being reviewed
um how does your agency
kind of gather the history of problems
in the past
versus the stuff that you are presented
that's a good good question the
historical context is certainly
something
we have already researched a bit um and
you're probably not going to be
surprised that
individuals who have felt that there
have been some
issues in the past have already reached
out to us
um so we're getting their historical
perspective and we certainly have the
ability and will
you know take a look at media reports
and some of the you know controversial
times in the past in order to prepare us
for
for this assignment we've already done
some of that work but we'll continue to
be doing that
as we move forward thank you very much
and thank you mayor pro-tem those are
all my questions
thank you thank you counselor abate this
to be i see mayor
miyagashima is on i'll give it to him
um everybody has asked questions mayor
with the exception of me and i'd like to
go next if i may
we're still on number one yes okay
um thank you michael and and company
really appreciate you being here today
and hearing
your philosophy and sort of the other
entities that you're working with um i
am excited that that you're here i think
it's something that really needs to
happen and i thought i'd like to
advocate for that gap year and a half
maybe two years that
you know some reports be sent to you if
not all
to really get an idea of of
you know where where we're at um
i i'm no stranger to having reviews uh
auditors in my in my previous position
so
i understand you know what i'm asking is
a huge lift
um but i think it it important
um that we that we do that um to get
going on it if you will
because you're may 1st and right or
you'll be receiving those cases as
they're completed so
there's at least 30 to 45 days that you
won't
right there's going to be cases that our
local
our law enforcement officers will be
handling and trying to complete so
i would say that you could you know hit
the ground running by
by um reviewing those past cases
and you know how difficult would that be
um michael and jennifer
to add that to the scope of work
mayor um we would have to adjust the
scope of work
and probably um add an amendment to the
contract
which would have to be agreeable oir
it's not impossible it can be done i
think
once we look at what
what the case load if you will case load
is
that could be better determined okay
thank you for that jennifer um
yeah i i agree with my colleagues um
we're a real proponent we support
community policing
um i think we we'd like to work
collaboratively
with our law enforcement officers we had
a
sort of community mitigations team that
met council vasquez
mayor mehgashima i would meet with
our chief deputy chiefs and discuss
any issues that because we were seeing
so much that was happening
related to covet our property crime up
or
domestic you know our violence our
violent crimes are
are have increased and so it was a way
to
discuss those issues and come up with
strategies and solutions
um moving forward um we haven't met in
about a month because we have a police
um i think we're calling it oversight
committee
i don't recall the terminology but um
public safety publicly we're gonna we're
gonna transition to a public safety prc
basically
yeah that thank you mayor for that
i see jennifer has her um mike unmuted i
don't know if you want to say something
jennifer
um it it thank you mayor pro tem and and
mayor miyajima it is
a select committee there you go
i was looking for that word yes public
safety select committee
um you know i found it helpful on
michael to have those conversations um
you know
i think we're having them twice a month
but but frankly um a bit frustrated
um i i i always feel um
that there's maybe a lack of trust
or why are we here i certainly don't
want to waste
time um and so i and i don't want to
waste chief's time
and and they're they're they're busy
they're kind they're generous with their
time
i'm thoughtful but i often have
have felt like um there
have been times where um you know
we're sort of dragging dragging um
people along and and i don't want to
feel that way
and frankly that's how i'm feeling and i
think the way
i feel is very parallel to what our
community is feeling
in terms of of sort of this reimagining
police public safety if you will
so how do you work from that you know
standpoint when um you know
maybe there's um
an attitude that we're not all in this
together and we really
want to you know help our community but
also
help our police
be successful frankly
no um mayor pro tem those are all great
questions
um and there's no perfect solution but
but
a couple of things one is that um excuse
me sir i'm sorry for just jumping in
like this but
and i don't know how mayor protem is
doing this but we just need you to state
your name every time you talk
so that the transcriber can because they
don't really watch the video and they
just know who you can just say michael
thank you for that order of protocol
mayor michael chanako here
how's that that's perfect i'm also glad
that i got your name right right off
the bat uh mayor pro tem
um your question um i would i would
answer it two ways one is that
um our our our discussions with the
department will be a little different
than sort of the philosophical
discussions about reinvention etc at
least
they will initially because we'll be
talking about actual cases
we'll be talking about actual complaints
we'll be talking about
you know actual investigations and so um
to the degree we have um suggestions
feedback or questions
or recommendations relating to them
they'll be more tangible uh with regard
to the
bigger issue um you know i think that
can get frustrating um you know in the
sense that
people seem to on so many issues in this
country these days seem to have sort of
gone to their corners
and and even to the point where they're
not even interested in hearing the other
perspective
and so one of the things we try to do is
provide that kind of
opportunity to have a discussions that
seem to
to make more sense and instead of
you know all or nothing defunding or
nothing there is there's some common
ground
in which we can redefine public safety
and we try to have those discussions and
when we
i think frame the question that way i
think we end up with a more productive
conversation
and and some actual results that we are
seeing in other cities
i appreciate that um i really do i just
want this to be a meaningful
um productive um experience for
everybody involved and
and i know that we have our police
officers are doing their best
under the circumstances and it's been a
difficult time for them as well so i
i want to make sure that that that
they are in trusting trusting engaging
in relationship building with you in
order to get the best
right um situation
um so michael do you
i noticed that in the scope or as
jennifer was reading up the scope of
work
the deliverables you will be looking at
past litigation
um when you do that is that going to be
um reading through i guess
let me ask you what is the process what
what will you be what will you be doing
with those and then how will you be
reporting back into whom
um we'll be reporting back
with regard to those that review to you
all
at the same time we'll be reporting back
to the more traditional complaints
but with regard to tort claims or
lawsuits so
um obviously there is the liability
issue and then there's a potential
payout the damages and all of that and
it sometimes
depending on on what's happening
sometimes you're asked to weigh in as
public elected officials
on you know settling and things like
that but
but apart from dealing with a lawsuit
and you've got you know
lawyers that are going to be doing that
um in our view when a lawsuit comes in
it's sort of a wake-up call or should be
a wake-up call that
somebody is aggrieved enough to find a
lawyer
and and then file a lawsuit which is you
know
um quite a lot as opposed to someone
showing up at the
at the desk of the department and and
filling out a complaint form
there's a lot more process and a lot
more work and a lot more motivation
behind the lawsuit so with that being
said
in addition to dealing with the defense
of the lawsuit
in our view there ought to be a separate
track
to investigate the allegations for a
couple reasons
one is it puts your lawyers in a better
position to figure out
did we do anything wrong here were there
any issues here
what is it that motivated the
complainant to file
the lawsuit and also
it allows the department to evaluate the
complaint
independent of the legal stream to see
whether or not there
is some need for accountability there is
a need for further direction or guidance
to officers through policy improvement
or there is a need to train officers
better
and all of those questions
if they're not looked at through the
litigation cycle
are forfeited and the department doesn't
benefit
from the filing of the lawsuit or the
claim and what
what this is intended to do is ensure
that there is
an opportunity for a learning experience
so that it will reduce the likelihood of
further claims and lawsuits coming in
which is important
but maybe and more importantly that
there isn't reoffensing reoffending
there isn't re-aggravation
by officers who either are um
unknowing of what the you know law is
need for their training need for their
guidance or
some accountability thank you michael
thank you mayor those are all my
questions for now
thank you mayor pro tem well jennifer
you had a your hand up
thank you mayor um and just to follow up
um airport tim
the the scope of services is going to be
a little bit different when we're
dealing with torque claims and torque
claim notices
because um the thing the matters that
are going to be reviewed
um it's it's specific to matters that
have been litigated or disposed and are
no longer pending so there is going to
be a time delay just because we
we can't talk about ongoing litigation
there will be a time delay
i think it was important for us to put
this in this in
the because it's
it's hard to circle back as you know
sometimes litigation
lasts a couple of years and it's still
important to circle back even when it
lasts that period of time because we
still need to make sure that we're
addressing the issue that came up to
begin with if there was an issue
and so it's better than
not not reviewing it at all but there
will be some there could be some lag
in that information being provided to
oir
sure i understand that and and i'm
completely fine
with that i i just wanted to know what
their process was
so thank you i think uh former counselor
jack eckman
would like to ask a question is that
right counselor
it is correct mr mayor and i thank you
so much and it's good to see all my
friends here today this is wonderful
even by zoom
um mr jadako a great presentation
i thoroughly understand i believe your
methodology
and the process that you're using
and much like the oversight committee uh
very reliant on what has already
happened
and what has already transpired i wonder
in your visit without your other clients
you have clients that utilize a
real-time dashboard
on what may or may not be imminent
problems
as they happen has anything like that
been developed at this time in the
practice of
public safety
um you know that's a great question
a counselor and what i would say is that
um
departments um are getting better at
sort of keeping track of things in real
time
but there's a long way to go um
there are some programs that if if
carefully maintained and populated
can give the leadership of any
organization of any police agency that
information
but what we've seen more often is
unfortunately that information
isn't as easily accessible to leadership
as it should be
as we move forward through this project
that's something that we will be looking
at
with regard to your city thank you so
much
we on the oversight committee serve at
the pleasure of the city council
as a select committee and uh
and we're doing that as we can to
help them very much in their roles
they're very busy people
doing everything and then we can have
just a
very small view of what is happening um
in my ride-alongs with police officers
in the city uh those have been very
educational to me
and to give you a little orientation
on those occasions 90 percent
of the calls are behavioral health
related
in our city we
lack behavioral health services to a
great degree
and it affects everything of city life
our economy
our culture everything is affected by
that
and so in seeing the very difficult
job of our police officers i'm concerned
about them at this time
have you ever worked your process
alongside
a professional assessment of
how they believe they are professionally
satisfied in their positions
yes again we have taken a look at police
culture
and officer satisfaction and morale and
well-being
and wellness issues um you know
for example we are talking tomorrow with
santa monica city council
on the police response to protest
activity last year
and one of the things that is featured
in that report
is our concern about the wellness issue
of
officers who felt overwhelmed by the
events of last summer
and perhaps not enough attention being
placed on it by the city
so those are issues that we certainly
are aware of um and to your point about
um individuals of mental health health
crisis being a large part of the police
officer's responsibility
it is because unfortunately
in my view we haven't spent enough time
uh relying on
other social science social
worker infrastructure to assist the
police
in in performing that re that
responsibility
that was uh michael janako speaking oh
yes it was michael janako mayor i'm
going to have to get used to this that's
okay no problem
and mr mayor i thank you for this
opportunity uh
our chair of the oversight committee is
also here i'm curious to know if he
might have a question
judge kieran ryan thank you mr mayor
judge judge you're uh you're mutant
you're still muted
and you're still muted i i cannot mute
you i don't think
nice we can't hear you judge
mayor the host of the there we go can
you hear me
there you go okay thank you
sorry about that thank you uh it's uh
karen ryan
the chairman of the committee for
oversight
and um my question would be to mr
giannako is that our
cities that have oversight committees
today
that help to incorporate the oversight
committee
as well into the process of your
investigation
uh going forward
judge if i may did you do you mean a
citizens oversight committee or do you
mean a committee such as the oir group
uh i mean the citizens oversight
committee i mean is that uh
does uh getting their input into the
um anything that they've observed by way
of
oversight does that help in their
investigations
um judge ryan this is michael chanako
responding
yes how'd i do mayor perfect
um uh yeah yeah the answer to your
question
is uh for those that have those kinds of
commissions and review boards what we
end up doing
is we will be reporting to them on what
we're finding so we provide
you know that that insight that we're
learning but because they are
representative
of the community or the city uh and we
don't live there
uh we end up gaining their insight and
perspective so we find that
to be helpful in the same way that i
think when we
report uh to you all
in a different way that your feedback as
representatives
and residents of the city will be
extremely helpful to our work and we
find that
uh be that uh that to be a very
symbiotic relationship
okay thank you mr gennako i don't have
any
further questions thank you before i get
to council bencomo and mayor portem
what's interesting uh uh ladies and
gentlemen uh of oir group is
so the first time we ever used an
outside auditor
was perf that was in 2008
2009 and and they had both
academic experience but also police
experience but just looking through your
your backgrounds of almost every one of
you here
you do have that experience but not
necessarily from the police department
but more from the litigation side
so i think that's going to be uh
good so that we can you can make sure
that you know look and see some of the
various policies that have
that have arisen that that might be able
to prevent us from that happening again
but one of the things that i guess and
it's fair and i and i know you see this
around
the country i know i see several clients
you know right now it's it's difficult
it's got to be extremely
difficult to be a police officer um
i know just one of my cousins two of
them just in the last three months are
retired
now this is a difficult job right now
and and the public expects a lot of them
and i think what happens is you you know
what's being highlighted i mean there's
some bad characters out there
really bad and some yeah they deserve to
go to jail
but but but the majority of police
officers
uh and and i may be biased you know that
i like to think to them as my my
children you know they they don't mess
up your your
it's yours that mess up you know but um
you know we we it's a difficult task
here and i'm glad that
that we're slowly having this discussion
because we we expect police officers to
know how to deal with the homeless and
know how to deal with the mental
health uh know how to deal with uh other
social problems
that we're slowly trying to get some
remedies to help them
and so i think this what you bring to
the table
is uh you know we have a very well-run
department
and it's good to be able just to check
have that those checks and balances not
only what our current
uh rules or regulations are but then
what what suggestions that you've seen
from best practices from around the
country and and be able to hopefully
incorporate that
and i think uh but but again i want to
say based on what i read
you about you all are about as close as
a professional
citizens oversight board that you could
get so
you know i think that that that's good
and i know that
uh one time counselor bin como and i
were on a on a
i wouldn't say a talk show but a show
and
and you know there's a lot of things to
really be a true
citizen's oversight you have to have a
lot of legal powers to subpoena people
to do these things that you know we
we just don't have and so uh that's why
i think you all
are gonna play a crucial role in helping
the public know that you know what
you've got professionals here that work
both from the u.s attorney side
to uh the mayor's side there in los
angeles
uh you worked seemed like you worked a
lot with lapd which
what has what ten thousand officers
there i mean that's that's an incredible
uh
amount of experience you can bring so
i'm looking forward to that i'm sorry i
was late
uh but i'm interested to see how things
continue to roll and
thank you for being here we've got
council ben como mayor for them and then
counselor
councilman cuomo thanks mayor um
yes thank you just one more question um
that i thought of as we were
as mr aikman was talking about mental
health and
even including and and especially for
police officers which is huge i think
that's a really big conversation to be
having
with our firefighters definitely right
there's really high
rates of suicide um which is just
heartbreaking but definitely
mental health within police departments
and we had this conversation a while ago
in a work session
and that was one of the things that
popped up as well we'd have to take that
back to the police union and i'm curious
what kind of work you do um with how you
navigate the relationship with the
police unions as well
yeah thank you for the question um we
understand that the association the
speaker michael gennako responding to
the counselor's question
so um we we recognize the association or
the union
um has an important role to play in
representing the interests of their
membership
and and because of that importance uh we
do
um reach out to the union and
association
um for a couple reasons one to get their
perspective and insight but also
to um to make sure that if they have any
questions or concerns
about our role we are certainly able to
respond to those
kinds of questions and give them a
better understanding of of how we
perform our responsibilities
okay thank you thank you counselor
mayor potem yeah thank you mayor
um i
um i don't know how in terms of a time
frame
how long ago this is done but
the the city police department has
undergone
peak performance and they've they have
priorities and
and certain metrics that they'd like to
meet i wasn't sure if you had seen
anything like that
and then as a result of this peak
performance
and deliverable setting they done a
survey
um that probably now is two years old i
think chief dominguez is on the line and
he could probably
um say how long ago that survey was but
i'm i'm bringing these up because i
think these are really important aspects
that you
um that i'd like for you to look at as
part of your
analysis if you will moving forward
um is though are those documents um
have they been shared with you michael
mayor this is michael janako responding
um
the um documents i'm
not familiar with but i'm sure that the
chief would provide them and
i think for purposes of context it would
be
uh helpful to see absolutely that's
great that's great so
um late january um and and my last
question and comment really
is in late january i did a public safety
meeting
um for my district but very specific to
an area that was seeing
an increase in crime and and more
specifically
um from chief's perspective just not
um in an area that um
that i think is limited in terms of
relationship right with
law enforcement and so we had that we
had very few people
attend it was via zoom um i i just want
to say
i i'm going to have another meeting at
the mesquite historic
area at the end of the month as well but
i'll be having
some of these meetings and really posing
you know some questions about
attitudes and reimagining
police and sort of what we will do
moving forward
in relation to just building
relationship
with law enforcement are there do you
have
um um
experience with um other counselors or
counsels that might do that in tandem
with what you're doing now and that is
having you know you're in your initial
phases of assessment and
relationship building but i i guess i'm
i'm
wanting to hear from you um
you know how i might collaborate
coronate
you know to really um build
um what we're trying to do here and that
is um
you know just just gaining you know a
better
better system in place for our law
enforcement so i i guess i'm i'm saying
that out loud because i want people to
know that that's what i'm going to be up
to
and want you to be aware of that as well
but um if you have any suggestions in
terms of
of sort of questions that i might pose
to the public related to that i'm happy
you know to take that
this is michael janako responding to the
mayor pro tems question
um i um would be happy to
um to hear you know what you are
are planning and and and one of the asks
that we would have
is that if there is a way in which you
are collecting feedback
uh whether that information could be fed
back to us
i think would be very again contextually
very helpful to have
okay thank you thank you for that
thank you mayor before i get the
counselor store michael
you have to have the best uh response
that i've heard in a long time from our
yes thank you uh councillor sword
thank you mr mayor thank you mr janako
uh follow your answers the council has
asked many fine questions and made many
fine things said i just tried to
fill in a few blanks that uh i find
in in this whole auditing process and
one of them
is you mentioned that uh
people in the in the community can uh
connect
or can uh make complaints directly to
you so i need to know
how they do it is an email address a
phone call or what
um this is michael janako responding to
council member sword
uh council member um yeah they can reach
out to us
all kinds of ways uh after our call i
will
um work perhaps with your city auditor
to make sure that you all have that
information
um but you know we'll find ways to make
that information available to your
to your city residents okay thank you so
much
i look forward to seeing you again
with good news too thank you mr mayor
thank you okay well again thank you
again for
your presentation i'm sorry i wasn't
able to hear it all but i'll watch it on
the on the rerun
or on the video i'll check it out and uh
good to have you on
on board like i said you come with
tremendous extensive experience so we're
we're hoping that our investment in in
your
firm is gonna reap 10 times that and
and other benefits to the city so thank
you for that and and thank you for
all that you all going to provide thank
you mayor this is michael janako on
behalf of oer group responding to your
uh nice comments so thank you absolutely
yes sir
okay well thanks again um we'll all talk
another time probably in
six months or so so um enjoy the rest of
your day
bye-bye thank you michael take care
bye-bye you too okay so next we're going
to go
to the geobond projects the overall
update
and i'm going to presume david sedillo
is going to
kind of start this off
yes good afternoon mayor you're correct
i will be starting the
the presentation
for council can everyone see the
presentation at this time
yes excellent well good afternoon
uh my name is david seville the public
works director and i'll be going
over your geo bond program update this
afternoon so
just a little bit of background as
council's aware the go bonds were
approved by voters back in august of
for 35.6 million it included four
questions
uh as part of those question number one
had multiple
areas that were within that question
those being
park improvements dog parks sports
fields
the hadley avenue reconstruction complex
only the playground and splash pad
we also had sports courts and park
rehabilitation
as mentioned before the dog parks and
the east mesa public wreck
complex in question two we had the
animal service center
for 9.8 million fire station number
three
as part of question number three that
one was for 6.2 million
and question four which had the walking
jogging and biking trail improvements at
2.7
again all of these projects are to be
completed and will be completed
by the end of calendar year 2020.
now with that we'll go into the updates
that we have
for question number one excuse me
uh we have approximately
completed 89 of the project
the estimated completion date is october
8th we do have
part of those projects here listed that
we've completed
mag ball field for example has been
completed
and now is open for use we have jim
hardy ballfield
we had the punch list walk through last
week
on the 6th we're estimating that
completion be done by the 15th
of this month
also as part of the hadley recreational
complex we have paws
ball field the contract at this point is
still
doing the replacements of the light
fixtures
the lights are up they're working on the
wiring for those
at this point in time the contractor has
completed the door restoration
and we have received a past inspections
from
our construction industries division for
the structural
portion up on the decking
for paws park we also have windows and
louvers that have been installed
and we're at about 30 percent complete
on installing the siding
along the crow's nest up at the top
along with that we also have run gaia
t-ball fields
the lighting there will be completed
once the contractor has completed the
improvements at
pause also at ron gaia ballfield we they
have completed the irrigation
improvements on those fields
here you'll be able to see the
construction schedule
from the contractor that they've
submitted and as you can see we have
some of those
items listed as being complete
and those that still remain on some of
these portions
that we have there as noted you can see
the completion of the irrigation at
rongaya
we also have mag that has been completed
and the percentages for those other
parks at this time
here in this graph here we have two
graphs
the one on the left the cylinder graph
that you're seeing
are those billings that the contractor
has submitted to the city for payment
based on time or the contract time
allowed for the contractor
as you can see we're well ahead in
billing
as opposed to contract time the graph on
the right
you will see the red actually represents
the amount of actual completion on the
project
as opposed to the estimated planned
completion
that was provided before construction
began
as you can see we're well ahead of of
that with
the amount that is due to the cost of
the lighting itself
so as we get closer to completion you
will see that flatten out
we also have here the other portion
of question number one which
we have for sports and parks
we are approximately 52 complete
an estimated completion date of the end
of this calendar year
december 31st we do have completion
of the desert trails community park and
we're also
at this point i'm working on apolaka
park which includes the pickleball court
and at this time they're working on the
perimeter fence they have installed
the concrete expansion and they've also
installed the court lighting
contractors also working on the shade
structure which is adjacent to
the pickleball court at the playground
and lastly the surfacing for the court
itself
is scheduled to begin by the end of may
also as part of the parks and sports
courts we have benavidez
center this is the replacement of the
basketball court
which you can see in your upper
left-hand picture of the grid
at this point in time the contract has
demolished and installed the new one as
you can see in the photo
they've also done the work there with
the joints and installed the basketball
goals and
included the striping this one is almost
nearing completion
and once it is accepted we will be
opening that
up to the public next we also have a
young
park we do have footing and slab
completion that has happened as part of
that project
on a 20 by 60 16 by 16 and 12 by 12
shade structure foundations you can see
one
up there at the top right hand corner
illustrating the footings
and the slab has been placed on there as
well
and then over at young park as well we
do
have the improvements to the tennis
courts at this point in time the
contractor has removed the old surface
they've repaired the cracks and as you
can tell here in the bottom left photo
they have already started that finish on
the court
here again is the schedule for the parks
and sports courts by the contractor as
noted in a previous
update lions park is 100 complete desert
trails
now has reached 100 percent during since
that update
and we also have the percentages as some
of these others move along
as you can see we're nearly complete
with benavi the center at this time
here again you'll have those same graphs
as we did for
the previous project here again on the
left you will see the billing
from the contractor as opposed to the
contract time
that is ahead of schedule as you can see
the graph on the right however is those
percentage or those improvements
completed
with the estimated line of completion
before construction
we are a little bit low but as we get
some of these projects completed
those lines were will parallel and start
to meet up here fairly soon
excuse me next we have unidath park
the construction drawings have been
submitted to the construction industries
division
and new mexico environment department
for review
and then move forward to permitting at
this point in time
the city is ready to select a date
for the request for proposals as that
draft is ready for that review
also as part of question one we have the
east mesa public rec complex
here in phase one we do have the request
for po
for proposals that is was advertised
last
friday we do have a scheduled pre-bid
conference scheduled for may 20th
and then bid openings scheduled for june
8th
on this project
next we have the dog parks also as part
of question one
as council's aware these two
projects are being incorporated with the
construction of the animal services
center
the messiah valley that contract was
approved by council on april 19th
and the notice to proceed will be issued
to the contractor this
week staff did have a pre-construction
site visit with el paso electric last
week
as there will be some relocation of
overhead lines
as part of this project
next here we have question 2 which is
the animal services center
and this update it mirrors exactly what
we just saw on the previous slide
with the dates and those items that are
occurring at this time
for fire station number three the
replacement
uh the project is approximately 25
complete there is an the completion date
of january 20th
2022 at this point in time the
foundation construction is approximately
95 percent
along with the floor slab of about 75
percent
i do want to note that we did receive
the structural steel that was one of the
items
that had a long lead time and we were
able to get those materials in which is
great
because now since they've been delivered
they started the erection of the
building itself
and here are a few photos of the site
itself
as we've gone through as you can tell in
the photos down in the bottom you can
see the erection of that structural
steel for the building as we go on
we also have photos of the foundation
as it was being placed during the
construction of
the building
here we have the project schedule for
the fire station
and i did mention to to everyone that
the completion date for the contract
is january 28th of 2022.
however the contractor has submitted a
construction schedule
and they're proposing based on if
everything
goes as planned they should be
completing the project
somewhere around late october possibly
early november
again we have the same graphs here on
both
money and time and also percentage
complete
we are a little low on the billing for
the time
but as we move along and more work
continues
we will start to see that gain and
possibly surpass
again with those percentages complete on
the graph there
you see we are below that however the
contractor has
estimated that they should have a
shorter time
frame for construction we should be
meeting up with that line
relatively soon
next we have the walking and jogging
trails
that project started april 12th we have
an estimated finish date of april 27
2022 for the messiah drain elephant
butte irrigation district approved the
100 construction plans
and the contractor has started on that
portion of the trail
at this point in time we are working
with
el paso elephant butte
irrigation district as they required
some modifications to the construction
drawings
the consultant is working on those and
we'll be submitting those shortly for
review again by
evid
and here we have all the program
schedules
side by side on top if council recalls
the top portion is that that was
outlined
by the program the line below
dictates and shows the actual time frame
that has taken on each individual
project
of the go bond again i would like to
note that all of these projects
will be completed before december 2022
next here we have the program budget
this outlines those budgets
allocated to each program now
as mentioned before question one does
have various sites
so that does include east mesa unidad
east hadley wreck complex park and
sports courts
and the dog parks all of those
are under question number one
lastly here we have the overall progress
of the geobond projects
as you've noted in the graphs before
again this is
estimating the planned completion to the
actual
as you can tell we had some projects
that were exceeding
their estimated times and we had some
that were a little low
on average we're right on track right
there with with the go
bonds as a whole and as a program
with that i do have staff available
if council has any questions it would be
happy to answer those for you
thanks david that was really good a lot
of good information
a lot of good timetables and i'm sure
and i know mayor potem mentioned this
once upon a time when she was responding
to somebody
but i'm sure you all have seen and heard
about the skyrocketing costs of steel
lumber contractors i mean it's just very
difficult
one of them here just the article that
came out a couple weeks ago
price is 20 percent higher and it's just
that there's just so much
downtime because there's not even
drivers to move the material so
uh in light of everything i think i
think we're doing good
of course you know there's there's
always going to be someone who wants it
done yesterday but it's
you know we're considering what we've
just gone through this last
12 15 months i have to commend
your team david uh for a job well done
thank you councilman cuomo counselor
beta stewie
yes i absolutely agree with you mayor
thank you so much david cedillo i think
this
honestly all of these things are just
incredibly exciting and
the fact that some of them are this far
along already
is great i drove off valley yesterday
and i saw the
um like the structure for the firehouse
going up already
um i feel like we were just there
yesterday digging up dirt so that's
pretty
um pretty incredible i just have one
question david i'm curious if you could
address
i i last at last week's council meeting
there was
a big concern posed by the folks from
the dog parks regarding
some of the perceived changes could you
address those
here in this public setting um for folks
listening in terms of
i've been getting some emails too with
folks concerned that
um the new contract eliminated lighting
and drinking water facilities and a
restroom which
um i didn't recall but i want to make
sure that
people understand sort of moving forward
with the project
why why some things may change the
timeliness of it
why we don't want to go over the time
and money allocated to us right can you
just address some of those concerns for
folks
yes ma'am thank you councillor ben cuomo
mayor david seville public works
director
and there was there was quite a few that
were brought up i will address
some of them that you have mentioned
here uh so some of the lighting that we
have
for the parks that they were talking
about the dog parks
are actually designated as dawn to dusk
parks as such lighting will not be
installed
as part of those as part of those
projects there was also a question about
the
elimination of a restroom at the
rinconada site
now that was eliminated through value
engineering
with the costs that were received
however
the city is looking into possible
funding sources to be able to place that
back
into these projects so we are
although right now they are eliminated
we are looking at ways to
incorporate incorporating those back
into the project
great so did oh sorry i thought you were
no
no and and just lastly uh there was a
letter submitted to the city with
with several questions uh we did provide
answers to those questions and that has
gone back out to
the resident that submitted those okay
thank you i really appreciate that
because i think that person might have
been
sort of a lead in the dog park community
so they can distribute that information
um so then just one quick follow-up um
this is also just from my understanding
so
the language that was in the original go
bond
um ballot right so it came to us we
voted on it
um it's not necessarily
guaranteed that everything that was in
the in the language will stay
given the cost of things given
some of what you said the value-based
engineering like some of those things
right like it's not
necessarily guarantee that what was
there will continue
councillor bencomo a mayor councillor
ben como you're
you're correct however when the question
came out it just included
a two acre dog park
there was no specifics so through the
public input that's where we garnered
that information
put them into the design and then when
we got the cost
based on the best ranked uh
vendor to move forward with the project
that's where we proceeded to go through
and value engineer the project to bring
it
within the construction budget that's
actually super helpful and exactly what
i needed to hear david thank you and
thank you mayor
thank you all right you're welcome
counselor beta stewie
thank you mayor thank you david so much
i
am really excited to see these projects
come to light i think they're going to
be so helpful for our community
and then of course looking forward to
see what else we could perhaps
bring in um counselor ben cuomo did have
one of my questions with the dog parks
we have been getting quite a
bit of uh emails and and concerned
uh people for that um the only other
question
i had mayor touched upon it briefly was
that of the costs of items
um do you think now that we are at a
place
where some of those rising costs are
starting to level at all or do we still
anticipate the need to
adjust for potential increases
council rebecca stubby mayor david
sevilla for the record
uh we're not seeing any leveling off at
this point in time right now
as such as we move forward we are
anticipating
and trying to work through those costs
for future projects as well so one of
the big things that we do
have is those other projects that are
not under contract we're moving as
quickly as possible
to get them under contract that way we
don't feel the effect of those
costs as much thank you i i think that's
really
important for us to know and then
moving forward with those contracts that
we have secured
i'm assuming there it's probably written
in if
um costs go for the raw materials go
above a certain thing we will still have
to adjust for those
council rebecca mayor there are
provisions in the contract that do allow
us to entertain those costs
okay okay thank you so much and thank
you for all the work on this and for
your team
thank you before i get to councillor
vasquez let me just read to the bond
the actual language on the actual bond
election
so number one was shall the city issue
general obligation bonds payable from
property taxes in an amount
up to sixteen million nine hundred
thousand dollars to construct
improvements
the parks including sports fields and
other related facilities
approved by fifty seven percent number
two shall the city issue general
obligation bonds payable from property
taxes in an amount up to nine thousand
nine million eight hundred thousand
to construct a new animal shelter
facility and related
improvements approved sixty-seven
percent so it was very broad
i mean it you know so staff was doing
their best to try to bring in
all this together and then like i said
you know with the
cause covered everything just kind of
coming to a head you know
doing the best we can but um and like
david said that the city's looking at
some
different additional monies to come up
with at least the restroom
and i didn't know about the donda dusk
on the dark park that makes sense
uh let's see who's next councilor
vasquez
thank you mayor thank you mr cedillo
i too want to compliment uh you and your
team
the whole staff on the progress thus far
especially given the increases in
supplies and the shortage of
uh perhaps labor and contractors and
subcontractors as we know
um i'm sure the the housing industry is
taking up a lot of um business right now
and so
i'm sure it's not easy to get good folks
but um
i really appreciate um your presentation
today
and seeing the progress to date um i do
have just two quick
questions um uh one is around
um the signage
um i think we had talked maybe gosh
maybe about this time last year
about getting some signs up at the
construction sites
that identified these projects as geo
bond projects and
perhaps and say hey you know this is
your geo bond dollars at work
um i think it'd just be great if if
we're not doing that currently
um maybe we are to just to showcase that
to the public as
as they do drive by i know we've done
that with previous
oh is that
is that me or you that froze i'm not
frozen
okay we'll we'll circle back to him so
we'll go to you counselor flotus and
then go back to council mosques
thank you mr mayor um thank you so much
david
cedillo for your presentation and
uh yeah uh sitting on the city art board
tony
uh trellino um presented because
the city art board gets a percentage of
the cost of building
and um and is able to then do some
public
art and the
a.s the animal service center
originally had a higher ceiling but
because of the cost of
lumber which is extraordinarily high
um coming from canada um
the that the idea of the
potential artwork um had to be revisited
so it's absolutely true that cobit has
had a horrible horrible impact
but you know in in or a horrible
yeah impact on our costs uh from lumber
and stuff but
um but i do know that there are some
uh the uh treaty between canada mexico
and the united states the united states
was
it replaces nafta the north american
free trade agreement
but it's very similar and um and so
it makes me think of procurement i know
this is tangential mr mayor forgive me
but um but i'm just thinking in terms of
procurement
um if there's anything in our contracts
that we can
say that uh say an act of god
uh such as covid would
maybe shelter us from escalating prices
um and so um but i i think
all that being said i'm putting it out
there just because i know that our staff
listen to
our our meetings and sometimes maybe
what is said in maybe like a board
meeting doesn't necessarily
uh get to everybody on staff
in administration but i do want to say
that
i've had questions about the dog park
david and i don't know
if you or sonia can answer this people
want to make sure
um i've had several constituents in
district 6 who actually go out to the
dog park on hadley
want to make sure that the park is still
going to have
big dogs little dogs and and one
constituent said
well it'd be nice if we also had um a
place
for uh large dogs and and small dogs to
uh co-mingle so i mean you get it all
over you know you get the
entire spectrum there so could you
answer that question
um in terms of the design of the park at
this point david or is that within your
your parameters you know your your field
yes ma'am thank you councillor flores uh
mayor
and there is separation at each site
for small dogs and large dogs there is
separation with the fence
however there isn't a co-mingled area
as this was designed with input and the
majority would like to see
a small dog area in a large dog area
great thank you thank you mr city you
and then another question i have for you
mr mayor
and for our entire administration
um maybe the city manager or whatever
um there there's been
a question as to uh
well i'll i'll ask this question later
it's really not
even tangential to what mr well it is
somewhat tangential it's it's all
tangential because it's all city
uh business but uh thank you much mr uh
very much mr cedillo and thank you mayor
thank you counselor let's see if
counselor vasquez is back yet
he has his hand up so that's a good sign
yeah yeah can you hear me mayor sorry
about that um okay i
got some connection issues here now and
then uh
yeah so the question uh mr sevilla was
around the signage
um uh geo bomb project signs um i think
it'd be
a great way to showcase uh that these
are you know deal bond
dollars at work um at some of these
various sites we've talked about
that in the past and if i remember
correctly i think we were going to
recycle some of the
signs that we had up for a previous cip
uh projects around the city so wondering
if if those signs are up or if there's
still plan to put those up at
geo bomb sites councilor vasquez
mayor yes we do have one we do have a
sign
up since for example we have the hadley
avenue sports complex
there is a sign right in front of mag
before the entrance that has the
information that we talked about with
the go
bond logo on it the other projects
since they are very scattered
sometimes not seen very well by the
driving public
for for this instance where we put up
one sign to hit all of them
we're still working to see if we can
find some smaller ones
but again as we move forward with each
uh site say like the animal services
center
we'd be able to put one up there let me
check on the one for the fire station
because i believe
uh that one should be up but we'll
double check with staff
hey david yes tony
mayor comes to vasquez this is tony
trevino the deputy director of public
works
we do have um smaller ones like david
had mentioned at the parks
instead of uh four by eight full signs
where we have multiple
multiple sites we have some four by four
signs put together for all the
individual parks
as well as the trails there will be
about four to five signs along the trail
at major inter sections of roadways to
depict where these trails are going to
be
occurring that's terrific thank you um
tony and david
i think that's great and uh to be honest
i think
if we can um and they're not a public
safety issue or hazard we should leave
some of those up
i think for um some a period of time
after these projects are completed
because when the public does get to
interact with these new facilities
um as you mentioned maybe they can't see
them now because of the construction or
they're out of the way but
um you know we just want to make sure
that uh the public knows that these
facilities were constructed using their
geo bond
i think that's part of the strategy in
getting a future geo bond
um on the books here for additional
projects so thank you
and then the other comment i had david
apart from just praising you and your
team
for the wonderful work that you've done
to get us here um it is around the dog
park as well
and um one of the concerns that i think
we haven't addressed yet but we should
really think about for the future
uh is the dust or dantel dust policy
um uh or dust hill dawn policy because
in the winter hours
um i do agree that you know when the sun
sets around
as early as probably 4 30 5 o'clock you
know and folks um
aren't out of work yet uh they
essentially don't get to use the dog
park
during the day um right because the sun
goes down
so early in the winter hours and so
having light so that we can
we can open up those dog parks
especially in the winter
you know from a reasonable time uh five
o'clock to eight o'clock or five o'clock
to nine o'clock
is it is really important i think
otherwise um the working class of folks
from eight to five
um won't get to use the dog park at all
um unless they go very early in the
morning and so
uh i just want to put that out there for
consideration in terms of future
improvements to the park
i really do think we should have some
lights and perhaps extend that policy a
little bit in the winter
so uh thank you mayor thank you tony and
david
thank you counselor all right thank you
counselor all right
counselor
yes thank you mr mayor
um well to pick up on what council
vasquez says
um the lights in the dog park
shouldn't have to be very big um
just a couple lights there at the
entrance and then
shining them over to the park is a small
park
uh we shouldn't have to pay a lot of
money for a minimal amount of lights
there
so yeah it would be good to have
something like that
but i really want to emphasize the fact
that we need
signage on these projects if uh those
that were on the council at the time
when we passed the whole harmless grt we
had
several projects across the city that
that
hold harmless grt was paying for and um
that was really a good look for the city
to have good signage out for all the
projects that we
we did then uh half a dozen or more
um so i strongly suggest we get
some kind of signage at each project and
like
concert vasquez said keep it up for a
while after it's
it's all built um
i i i don't have any questions i
i just have um i'll call it a concern
um i've got on my screen here the plans
for the animal service
center i've been looking it over uh
as much as i can tell from the
uh plans that were sent to us by
jamie rickman today or was it yesterday
um i'm quite uh
impressed of course for nine million
dollars i would expect some
uh super duper kind of facility
but uh it brings to mind uh
a few years ago when
former mayor pro tem emeritus greg smith
and i attended a
national league of cities convention in
austin texas
and we did several tours of some new
things that they were doing
and one of the tours uh was to
their animal service center or maybe
they call it the adoption center too
um and you know i can't say
for sure obviously looking at plans
comparing to what i saw
several years ago but boy i tell you
what
i don't think there's a huge difference
between the two
uh what i saw in austin texas and what
we have here in front of us
um i'm sure it was
it could certainly have been a little
bit more but not a lot
than what we have here and if you look
up the population of austin texas it's
uh um
gosh almost a million people that live
there
uh and so what brings
comes to my mind when i see these this
the comparison here
is um where's the equity in this uh what
we're doing here
with this animal's shelter um
does it really promote equity amongst
the people in the city here
i could see it produce equity amongst
pets in the city
the animals that we have but um
i just i'm curious to know what uh
um what this means to las cruces
will having this animal shelter like
this costing nine million dollars
lower our poverty numbers in the city i
always want to look and see what we're
doing and how it affects
things like equity and poverty that we
have in the city
and so i mean this is what the people
voted for
we'll have to give it to him of course
but i i i just
wonder sometimes what uh we're doing
sometimes when we
do things like this it's going to be a
nice animal shelter and we do need
uh pet parks for sure uh because every
time you walk out
in neighborhoods you're always seeing
pet waste on the sidewalks
or in areas because people don't pick it
up so i just wanted to point that out
it's just my take on this and um
that's all and by the way david and your
your whole crew there and public works
in the in the city as a whole
good job for all the work you're doing
here i agree
with that thank you mr mayor thank you
counselor
uh mayor uh at this point in time
there's there's been a lot of
of uh gratitude and thanks towards
myself as
as part of this however i do want to let
this be known
that it's staff that has produced all
the hard work for this geo bond as we
move forward
so and not only in public works we have
other departments as well
fire parks and rec we also have
other departments involved that have
helped through this so i would like to
extend
my gratitude to them to helping make
this a success as we move forward
thank you councillor sword yo thank you
thank you mr mayor and just a correction
uh councillor sword
greg smith is not a mayor pro-time
emeritus who's a mayor of tam but not
emeritus
just for the correction councillors
flores
thank you mr mayor so um you know i
i just want to i wanted to uh say that
um
gabe brought up the issue of the uh dust
uh to light excuse me dawn to dusk
lighting in the parks
and i thought it was tangential but
perhaps it isn't and i
and i know that we received and just for
the very same reasons
that um that gabe expressed uh i
received letters
from constituents who
had those concerns about the use of the
park and it applies really to other
uh age groups as well um
you want lighting in the parks of course
where people have eight to five you know
eight to five jobs
because in the winter fall winter and
early spring
we still have very short days so um
light daylight um so
i don't know you know and i think it is
a safety issue for parks to have
lighting um you know 24 7.
it probably invites a lot of uh you know
potential problem i don't know but it's
definitely something that we should look
at
perhaps we can i don't know if it'll
require an ordinance mr mayor i don't
know if it'll require
um parks taking administrative measures
um but it definitely comes up
it's all tangential it's all howard
and excuse me
you probably heard me scream at her all
the way from my house
no barking edie um so
um but the other uh but but um
i mean uh with all due respect mr sword
counselor sorek
um i um your question about equity
and yes it's absolutely true that the
money that was voted on by the
by by the voters by the uh people who
live here in las cruces who pay
taxes they voted on this because
the things that we vote everything we
voted on makes the quality of our life
better
and so i mean is the 9.6 million dollars
going to feed people or
give us better schools well probably
yes or maybe not but but it's all about
how we treat um everyone that we
live amongst our animals and the the
beauty of the
new center going up is that the old
center is going to be a spay and neuter
center
and um and the budget has already been
allocated for a new veterinarian
um to help out with that and so we're
going to have a humane
liter i mean a humane society that cares
about its animals
and um and clint thacker has been
doing a fantastic job and uh the boards
that have served
in conjunction with the county the jpa
passports not just the current one that
tessa excuse me counselor obey
suvian mayor pro and i serve
on now um this is all
this all goes to the kind of a city that
we
want to be and it's the quality of life
for everybody counselor sword so
um it's very good for the city
it's very good for this city and we have
to look out for
those that can't look out for themselves
and um
so that's to answer your question but um
thank you everybody thank you staff for
the fantastic work you do and
making our city a better place and thank
you again mayor
are you going to feed edie now because
she's probably hungry
she's already been fed she had her
dinner
okay she's she's done for the day okay
but thank you for asking i'm glad you
care about her as much as i do thank you
counselor bait the student
uh thank you mayor um and just to
address
uh counselor sort i think concerns over
this type of project um you know
coming in uh after these were already
voted on
um from the community but i will say
i know that there was a rigorous process
of getting information on what even
projects
were going to be submitted to voters to
consider on so that was step one
and then the voters had to decide on
those so phase two
and then looking um at
what the projects will do as counselor
flora says this is also a quality of
life issue
when we have extra space for more spay
and neuterings then we can
do things like with our new potentially
new
ordinances on the track neuter and
release programs so we can make sure
we're being effective
with those types of items and others so
it all kind of can tie in together
and then it is using that voice of the
community it is their will
in their projects and so looking forward
we'll be able to do the same
sort of community outreach to get what
they would like to see in their
community
thank you mayor absolutely
joseph flores you just didn't put your
hand down i guess
uh no i'm sorry just that edie's been
barking thank you
i i don't have a question thank you
blame everything i'm for edie
okay edie it's everything's her fault it
used to be my mom's fault no it's her
fault anyway
all right uh so that's it david that's
it for the update
anything else no sir that was it thank
you mayor
very good okay thank you again for this
information it's good stuff
all right so last we're going to go to
the annual las cruces city art board
update and it looks like cece
will be presenting
that is correct so let me just get my
screen
shared
there can everybody see my screen
yes okay perfect perfect so good
afternoon
mayor and city council my name is ceci
vasconcelos
and i am the art program coordinator
under the quality of life department
thank you for inviting us to present an
update on the city of las cruces public
art program
we also have a special presentation by
city art board member
saud ramirez titled public art and civic
spaces
i will present first and allow for
questions then i will introduce mix
ramirez
who will follow with their presentation
since it's been a little while i'll
begin with information you may already
know
but that serves as a reminder that
public art can be part of much of the
work that we do for our community
what is public art it can be elements of
a public place that are
designed by a professional artist or
artist team
public art can be permanent
temporary and or functional it can be
standalone or integrated into the
architecture
landscape or infrastructure such as
public buildings bridges and parts
public art can be the sole creation of
the artist and it may
or it may result from a design team
approach
in which artists work on project teams
with architects engineers
landscape architects and others to
design and create public places
for the purposes of the city of las
cruces public art program
it is also defined as art and city-owned
publicly accessible buildings
and other city-owned public spaces
i included a few photos here a public
art that are part of the city collection
you can see our iconic road runner and
the water towers murals
there's the path next to thomas bradican
memorial library
so just a few examples and these are
some of the
murals around town that are also
considered part of the city art public
art collection
in 2013 city council established the
city art board to buy a city council on
matters related to public art
making clear that public art was a
priority for las cruces
the volunteer board serves in an
advisory capacity to the city council
and assist staff in the development of
guidelines programming and
administration
of policies rules and regulations
recommendations for new art related
projects and programs
it participates in the organization and
administration of the city public art
collections
and it makes formal recommendations to
the city council relative to the
acquisition
and commissioning of public art
installations
as the art program coordinator i serve
as the liaison between the city art
board
and the city to help them carry out
their duties
our current city art board members are
christina bellew
the chair alyssa grayson albach
vice chair katrina chandler secretary
salut ramirez member and chantal yazzie
martin
member this zoom photo was taken in
early march for an article about the
board featured in the las cruces
bulletin on march 19th
susan frary who's pictured here has
since stepped off the board
due to term limits and i wanted to take
this opportunity to thank her for her
years of service
and i'm sure she will be very involved
in
future public art activities
as interest in public art continued to
grow in las cruces and the board was
tasked with establishing a dedicated
funding source for the solicitation of
artists
and the procurement installation and
maintenance of current
and future pieces of public art it
became apparent that a master plan was
needed to guide the program
the las cruces public art master plan
which guides the las cruces public art
program
or lcpa was approved by city council
in early 2020
the lcpa master plan provides guidance
that will ensure
sustainable funding sources for public
art make the most of the city's
resources
and ensure that the public the city's
public art activities
make an impact on las cruces and respond
to the community's needs
it is meant to be a valuable and often
consulted tool for the city art board
city staff council and anyone interested
in collaborating with the city on public
art
it establishes a vision and provides
administrative and programic
recommendations to guide the work of
building and maintaining the city's
public art collection
the lcpa master plan is digital
digitally
available on the city's website at last
cruise
lost cruises dot org forward slash
public art
i have also provided hard copies of the
plan for each of
the council members and i delivered them
to your offices
recently and i'm working on getting more
hard copies for anyone else who
who would like one
the master plan outlines the lcpa goals
as
elevate loss cruises as the arts capital
of southern new mexico
add visual interest and beauty to the
city activate
public spaces improve visual identity
and make art art and culture a way of
life
to accomplish these goals now cpa should
develop an annual public art
work plan according to the lcpa master
plan
the plan should provide a detailed
description of lcpa priorities and
anticipated income
and expenditures for the coming fiscal
year and projections for the following
five fiscal years
it should list projects that are
expected to begin in the coming fiscal
year
and projects that are carrying over from
previous years and special projects
there should also be an annual
evaluation of the previous and current
fiscal year to date to collect data
to describe program achievements
it also informs lcpa's annual budget
request which will include percent for
art funds in the capital improvement
program in the near future
and funds for operations programs and
communications in the general fund
the city art board beginning draft of
their first annual plan for fiscal year
to 2020 but due to the pandemic most of
the plan was delayed and carried over
to this fiscal year 2020 2021.
this slide shows that what the plan
looks like and we'll
i will talk about some of the projects
listed here in their status
the theater sagrada library mural
cruises creatives a local non-profit
organization collaborated with the city
art board and thomas ranigan memorial
library
to complete this colorful mural located
on the wall behind the library
amphitheater
the project was done with funding from
grants and over 300 community members
participated in painting the project the
theme of fieras sagrada
which means sacred earth is agriculture
and the environment and thanks to a
paint by numbers approach
people of all ages and artistic
abilities were able to participate
the mural was completed in december 2019
the alameda arroyo multi-use trail
tunnel was another collaborative
mural project between the parks and
recreation department las cruces public
art
keep las cruces beautiful and grant
funds from new mexico conservation corps
for this project klcb posted an
employment opportunity
and applicants went through the hiring
process
her grant requirements project
participants had to be between the ages
of 16 to 20 years
old a local artist was hired to be the
facilitator of the project
and the team only had 60 days to
conceptualize
design and paint the mural the tunnel
has 10 foot high walls and is about 60
feet long
and it was winter not to mention we were
in the midst of a global pandemic
but they did it and the mural was
completed in december 2020.
art was included in the cayabuello
neighborhood park master plan and the
city art board used
seventy five hundred dollars from their
capital improvement program art budget
to purchase tree of knowledge by jeffy
brewer
which was part of the art and public
places new mexico arts catalog
it was chosen by the city art board and
an ad hoc selection committee
the art piece was installed in september
the city art board presented the
recommended art design for the city hall
lobby art
project to council in december 2019
the design by tile artist debbie
dickinson was approved
and installation was expected to be
completed by early 2021
the project was postponed due to the
pandemic but we are back on track to
installing this piece
by the end of june if not sooner
fire station number three public art
project
fire station number three the new
station being built on valley drive
will have artwork attached to the
building itself
we posted a call for entry in fall 2020.
107 applications were received
and currently the selection committee is
in the finalist phase of the selection
process
budget for this project is forty
thousand dollars and the schematic shows
where
the art will be located in the yellow
area
right up here
another new facility that will include
art is the animal service center of the
messiah valley
the call for artists was posted for four
weeks and closed march 31st 2021
we received 139 submissions through the
cafe platform which we use
the call was nationwide but we also ran
an ad on the city social media targeting
locally or local and regional artists
in southern new mexico and el paso the
selection committee
is currently in phase two of judging
this piece is for a free-standing
sculpture which
will stand in the yellow highlighted
area that you see there in the picture
the budget for this is 68 000.
the munsten senior center had a thirty
four hundred dollar art budget allocated
to the
site from new mexico arts art and public
places
or a ipp program the funding was one
percent of two cyber improvement
projects paid for by go bonds
two our pieces were chosen by the
selection committee from the new mexico
arts juried collection
happiness is the path by kathy hayth and
blue corn by juliana kerwin
installation is scheduled for may 2021
and i'm happy to report that last week
we did actually install
blue corn which is the lower picture
there
and it looks beautiful so you'll have to
um once the center opens you'll have to
go by and take a look at it in person
the earth and cosmos mosaic repair the
mosaic located in la placita downtown
was damaged
in december 2020 when a water line broke
beneath it
we are working with the artist to
formulate a plan to do what is best for
the repair restoration of the mosaic
it's a delicate and complicated process
which could take at least a year
to complete the short term plan
is to map the broken piece then move it
to a temporary location until we have a
plan and contract in place to begin work
the damaged area in the pavement will be
temporarily backfilled
and barricaded for public safety
other projects that have carried over
are the annual plan
for klein park project our project the
city art board has a committee in
progress
the committee will develop a plan for
artwork to be placed in the park
aligned with the klein park master plan
representatives from the neighborhood
community the arts and cultural district
and indigenous tribal families from the
area have been invited to be on the
committee
refuge which is the purple sculpture
there is a
lcpa maintenance project we are working
with the artist to contract his services
to repair and clean the sculpture
located in lions park community park
ongoing work the city art board has
created committees to help reach the
goals as outlined in the past
in the lcpa master plan committee
committees include the communications
committee that will help with creating
content for lcpa social media and
provide input for website improvements
for starters
the research and development committee
which will assist with networking and
gathering data
public outreach committee which plan
community engagement events and artists
workshops
smaller projects being developed for
approval include
a rotating art project which if approved
may incorporate road runner bus shelters
for temporary art
installations another project if
approved
is a qr code interpretive storytelling
collaborative project
which proposes using qr codes selected
public art locations
that will link to a recording of the
story behind the artwork
we will also be considering other art
and public places
artwork opportunities
the proposed percent for art ordinance
is the conversion of the current
resolution to ordinance this ordinance
will provide funding
for the acquisition of public art
related to the city's capital
improvement
program the ordinance aims to be
purpose-based
rather than project-based it will also
include a percent designated for
continuous maintenance of public art
assets
as recommended by industry best
practices
it is taking longer than anticipated to
complete the draft but we want it to be
thorough
thoughtful and diligent about how the
las cruces public art program will be
funded
in order to write an ordinance that
aligns the developing program for years
to come
and i can report that the current draft
is now with the bond board
for review so hopefully we'll be able to
move
much quicker through that process once
we get their
their feedback
so that is my presentation and i will
stand for questions
thank you cece it looks like um
sir beta stewie counselor vasquez have
questions
thank you mayor and thank you ceci for
this presentation
um i'm really looking forward to uh
seeing the upcoming ordinances i know
that they will be passing through
our quality of life prc once you all get
through them
so i do look forward to seeing that um
one of the items if you could go back to
pay
slide 10 please sure
thank you there we go when
looking at all these projects then you
even mentioned it
a bit on the information that you gave
me to my office
there is not a ton of opportunities
listed here in district 2
and so this is more for my my fellow
counselors
we had this issue coming up with parks
as well there haven't been any
new items for district 2. it seems like
this with the public art
and i just want to make a a bit of a
you know an ask for consideration
for that equity especially since our
district
is one of our aging infrastructure areas
and could
really use a lot of these wonderful
things
and something um new and something that
the the public
and the community can help um work on
together
i think a lot of the public art pieces
that have been um
like at the library where the community
got to come and participate together
it's really it builds the community and
really can help change how people view
an area so i do appreciate that um
[Music]
i have a question on the art
installation
um that is supposed to go to city hall
um i know that there have been the
extensions due to covet for it
however uh do you you all do
indicate that it will be finalized um
by may or june is that
mayor and counselor this is cece asking
tell us for the record
yes we extended her contract until the
end of june
we do not anticipate needing to extend
that any longer than that
i have been in contact with the artist
and she has
sent me pictures to show her progress
and they are so close
um they are looking they were last i
spoke to them they were looking into
making arrangements for travel
and looking for um a date that they
could uh
they could schedule that for so it's
it's going to happen
okay great and was it the travel portion
that was the hold up because i would say
um if she had like a and i don't know if
there was a private studio or how you
would be able to work
um do work from home for art um but i
was just wondering
what what that um issue really was for
that
extension um mayor and counselor uh
ceci again for the record um i'm not
exactly sure what the issues were they
indicated that it was more
of a pandemic situation where they
couldn't travel
possibly not being able to get the
supplies they needed because businesses
were closed
um i believe she lives in washington
state
so she would need to travel from there
um
and so these were some of the the
situations that were holding them from
from doing this and she does have her
her own studio there and that's where
she's been working from
they will transport the pieces that
they've completed in the studio but
they're not
they're not put together it's kind of
like a puzzle it looks like a puzzle
um and um so they'll bring the pieces
they'll do
some of the work here on site to
complete the project
okay great thank you sassy i do want to
say
thank you um you mentioned on slide 19
um with the um potential of including
some art in klein park
that you were bringing in indigenous
voices um within our quality of life
uh committee we talked a lot about the
very unique history that las cruces has
with different um tribes and making sure
that when we're telling the story
of those tribes that we're getting their
voice and their perspective
on how they want to share that story and
that's a valuable part of that
art so i do want to thank you for that
inclusion
okay thank you that's all the questions
i have
okay thank you council vasquez thank you
mayor um thank you ceci
i really like what the public uh what
the city art board
is doing um i like that we have um
some new perspectives on the board some
new members
that can help to continue i think the
amazing public service that previous
board members have contributed to
growing this program and creating the
art the public art master plan
i'm especially excited about things like
the rotating
artwork on the bus stops that could tell
a qr code story
um i think that's the kind of innovation
in public art
that i like to see right because it goes
beyond
something at a bus stop to an actual
storytelling feature that someone can
pull up on their phone
um and i think that really just enriches
um
what um what this like two-dimensional
art can actually do
um so i encourage uh more of that um
i did have a question around the um
the the inventory of uh public property
that could be used for future art
projects
um i know we've talked in the past about
things that that are as simple as
utility
boxes um uh sprinkler boxes
at our um parks
our existing infrastructure i'm thinking
some of our city wells some of our older
city wells
that don't look uh perhaps as as new as
they once did
i think those could all be great
candidates for
you know public art and wouldn't cost us
really much besides the cost of the
paint and a contract to an artist and so
um cece do you know um if
that inventory has been con has been
done
or if the city art board is working on
on that
at all uh mayor
and councillor vasquez um cessy for cece
vasquez for the record
um we well
we are putting together an inventory of
of
public art assets but we're also looking
um
that would fall more under probably
special projects and
and looking at what locations and
and possibilities are there so um
we're it's on it's part of the master
plan
and so we're definitely it'll happen
um i i think that's a really good way to
address
um the the um
lack of public art in some of these
districts that don't have cip
programs attached to them usually so
which is where we get our funding so um
so these
would be considered special projects so
yeah we that is definitely something we
will consider
thank you cece and um maybe this can be
a topic of discussion for a future
quality of of
i think you froze again yeah looking
frozen again
i think he was trying to say a future
topic for the quality of life
discussions so of course the chairperson
is counselor beethoven
yeah so um okay
uh anything else assessing
uh mayor that is all for me oh
if um there aren't any other questions
i would now like to introduce
city art board members saud ramirez mix
ramirez
is an artist an art historian from el
paso
and juarez whose work is a
multi-disciplinary
research practice focused on
decolonization
and more recently on civics so
this is for his special presentation let
me stop s
sharing my screen
here we go hi um mayor and council i'd
like to go ahead and just share my
screen here real quick
um
all righty this is gonna be
um i am so ramirez and i'm here to
present to you guys my
um research that i've done on public art
and civic spaces for this city
um i would like to begin today by
acknowledging the long and historic
presence of the
piro manto tiwa tribe uh here in the
town of messiah valley and i acknowledge
the
rightful sovereignty uh over the over
this landscape now occupied by the city
of las cruces and
the governments of new mexico we're
going to acknowledge and show respect to
their independent political presence
for which they're still fighting to be
federally recognized i also acknowledge
their long cultural and ancestral ties
to the people southeastern el paso
as well to the people north in the
pueblos
as well as to many other relative
nations from across the continent
i acknowledge a long generosity in the
tribe in welcoming a global community
here
which is a generosity they've shown
since the days of the spanish
and which they still show today in the
wonderful presence of our of our
university community and our u.s mexico
border
i acknowledge their long and unending
work in the maintaining
of their communities and in protecting
their environmental integrity of the
landscape from the dangers of abuse and
exploitation
that has been here since the earliest
days of colonization i acknowledge the
challenges that they face
maintaining their political integrity
and independence
amidst the violence of war cultural
erasers genocide and economic
disenfranchisements which have
characterized the bulk of colonial
relations
now my presentation in general is about
acknowledgments
and as an artist and an art historian i
know that my work
is a work of acknowledging the world
whether it be in my visual mode of
representation
as well as in my interpretive
methodological practices
in research which i call my historical
practice
these are really two sides of the same
goal for me which is to
properly express my world and my
community
proper choices depend on having proper
pictures and every act of representation
takes on this important task today
mathematical and scientific
uh figurations are prioritized in public
and professional fields because of the
certainty which these fields provide
but as we have seen over the past decade
we have actually seen
a great defunding of the arts and the
state keeps continually defunding them
for uh in preference of stem fields
uh in schools and implicitly in our
economy
this is actually a decade-long pattern
in which uh
faith and has been lost in the capacity
for art to
change to shape our world and our
communities
now las cruces has always been
a crossroads and las cruces historian
gordon owens suggests that this may be
one of the reasons we're named laskosis
there has always been a great activity
of movement in and out of this area
and there has it has always been tied to
the history of el paso as a passage
to the west between arizona and texas
all the way up north to colorado as well
as passages south into mexico
this landscape has always been
intrinsically connected to the comings
and goings of various global communities
which call this place home now this is
the reason that in 1853 the president of
a south carolina railroad company named
james gadsden purchased the land in
order of president of the confederacy
james davis
after the arrival of confederate
soldiers like john robert baylor
the tragic namesake of our own baylor
canyon as well as union soldiers like
colonel james carlton
we see them make the messiah valley
played an important role in establishing
statehood of new mexico as an extension
of civil war politics
once a part of the confederate territory
of arizona under the invasion of the
secessionist in the 1860s it is here in
the messiah valley that the u.s mexico
border was negotiated in that gadsden
in search of railroad passages west also
sought to expand the slave economy
it was even known that people used to be
able to cross from las cruces over to
messilla
to escape the united states into freedom
this began the battle between the union
and the confederacy which the local
people of this town came to pay for in
the forms of property confiscation
from both union and confederate forces
as political tools to win their wars
as historian jerry dean thompson tells
us perhaps nowhere in new mexico
was the military as oppressive and as
big a burden as the local population in
the messiah valley
now historian paul h hein or paul l hein
says that uh
here in new mexico there's been a long
history of political economic and social
institutions that keep being super
imposed on the native cultures
by which he means native american
culture and in the spanish cultures that
were here
it was a slow process when the americans
came uh because new mexico did not have
the attractions of wealth that might
bring forth of the anglo-american
settlers as he says
but once the railroads did cross we were
flooded from the east
and the and and american politics came
to dominate the majority of new mexico's
government
felico felipe gonzalez a sociologist
from unm
shows that there's a complex political
history in the state that is defined by
series of violent political
dispossessions
there are early they're really uh
uncertain there was an early uncertainty
in local
novo mexicanos as he says um about the
annexation into statehood and at the end
of the 19th century
there was a motivated aggressive
european political politicians arrived
and took hold of a newly established
republican party
and uh used it mostly in the interest of
themselves
and their euro-american allies to the
point of statehood
now i use this history here to framework
uh some questions and some challenges
which i like to post to my city and to
my community
about what the future of this
development in this town should look
like
given our past i really want to ask us
what our civic duties are and what
responsibilities are
and to ask the ways in which we can
reimagine redevelop
re-imagine development i will highlight
the important relationship between art
and between history
and to ask exactly what role we could be
playing
in the in the future development of our
town now
uh there is a term that our historian
jerry sweeney uses
uh to define this aesthetic movement
very popular in new mexico called cowboy
art which underlines the
which is underlined as he says by a
racial and economic pressures
which are used to tell narratives about
colonization and about this type of art
when this type of art has actually been
assidiously marketed
throughout the state's uh history he
says and that his essay
is specifically concerned with an
american fantasy of history that first
emerged in the late 19th century
and is perpetuated by an association of
contemporary painters known as the
cowboy artists of
america it is a style of work that is
defined by its romanticism
and by its themes of the of the west as
untamed land
as violent and lawless often depicting
the glorified representation of european
people's
uh conquest as heartbreakers of
civilization
originally written for the catalog of an
exhibition that happened in albuquerque
in 1992
it was from a collection of nat of the
national cowboy hall of fame
and museum in oklahoma city but the
museum actually
removed the essay for being too
unpatriotic and threatening to pull the
exhibition altogether
and from this i hope to really
acknowledge just
the great political nature that art
carries and also suggests the subtlety
and vast implications of it and our
responsibility
and begin to suggest what our
responsibilities to them should be
now there are very works across our
galleries and in our collection that
follow this aesthetic type of
dispossession
as well as historical dispossessions
such as the works of anthony pennock
which often depict romanticized images
of new mexico landscape against settler
settlers narratives of the colonization
of by the spanish
land specifically depicts months of
people doing the snake dance
which is actually both incorrect in
content and in representation
it is a great shame that even after
leaders from the hiro manso tiwa tribe
reached out to pennock about their
inaccurate representations
the request to remove it was actually
ignored this is tragic because it does
not just character
characterize the general attitudes
between european institutions
and indigen and our indigenous hosts but
it also glorifies the entrance of a
spanish into a region
sanitized into an image of gen of
colonization and genocide
that is both physical and cultural which
are hidden beneath its aesthetic appeal
and here are also some images of his
water towers which follow some of the
same scenes
now although i don't i think this is a
much more complicated issue than just
saying taking them down
we should really consider what it means
to when we're assessing our collection
i would like this moment to actually
point out other problematic patterns in
how we purchase art in the city which
includes this recent accession of
debbie dickinson's artwork for the city
hall which is actually going to include
a
zia symbol from our state's flag this is
not only problematic because in the 90s
the zia pueblo demanded 70 million
dollars as compensation for the
unauthorized use of their symbol on our
flag
but also because they have continually
expressed their discontent at its use
and unauthorized commercial products
furthermore i want to really ask what
the benefit there is in exporting over
32 000
of our money into outside from our
community
and who to someone who not just has
little knowledge of our own history here
but will likely not put the money back
into our economy
um i would like to acknowledge from this
that art is always a matter of civic
responsibility and of power because art
is a matter of civics
civics is ultimately a matter of dealing
with the social debt that is left to us
by our fellow citizens
and it is how we take care of each other
art as an active representation takes up
the role of the city and of the states
which is to represent their communities
art exists somewhere between the public
and the private as this place
where we can communicate and express and
in this instance
public art becomes a common realm of
civic duty between civil
between the city and its citizens
and from this i really want to ask
ourselves like what
public art really is in our master plan
although wonderfully detailed it
actually fails to provide any clear
definitions or functions to public art
and what it should actually fulfill
although there are common themes that it
touches on throughout
woven into various parts of the plan
including improving quality of life
beautifying our city and improving the
city's investments
it is also mentioned that
it is mentioned that public art is
mostly city on city property
but as uh i like to point at
uh norma
sorry i'm trying to remember her last
name chaitis
from our museum from our proper las
cruces museum here
yes uh thank you um
she actually says that uh as leader of
the
also of the las cruces of the murals of
las cruces project
she uses this uh term to say that it's
any
uh art in uh in the public right of way
and by this i'd like to uh say that also
like the most explicit definition that
is given in the
public art plan is in relation to the
less las cruces public arts
program which is responsible for which
it's as it
quoted in the master plan it is a
program responsible for building and
caring for the city of las cruces public
arts collection
and so uh it it is
uh talked about as being a mechanism
which i believe it is a mechanism of
care um and so when we're talking about
art in the public right-of-way
and talking about like the care that it
takes to uh
to to to participate in public art i am
really asking questions about
civic duty and i want to ask what it
means here when our town has actually
had a history of removing artworks
uh specifically within murals and norma
herself actually documents this with
murals of las cruces
uh and she documents it in her wonderful
presentation that she gave at the
brannigan cultural center which i
suggest everybody should watch
and i actually provide a link in my in
my powerpoint
she points out with great clarity the
modes in which our murals have often
been subject
to removal for reasons cited being as
either too political or too
controversial
but in light of the refusal to remove
the image of the snake dance from land
rada
i would really like to ask controversial
to who and also too political for whom
if it is our responsibility in the art
board to care for the city's collection
we must ask whose art are we collecting
are we caring for and are we preserving
and what stories does
this tell it is the city's duty to
represent its communities and that
includes the labor of inscribing and
interpreting histories
duties of archiving and conservation
which are modes by which the city
actually acknowledges its citizens
there is a responsibility of the state
because the state's responsibility is to
represent all of us
and it takes the responsibility of the
lives of every citizen
what matters most in the civic
contemplation is that the power of the
state
has in recognizing individuals as
citizens and giving them
and giving them are making them rightful
inheritors of the state's care
and support of their human rights and
the responsibility that the hit
the city has to honor them public art
like a democratic government
is a place of acknowledgement a place
where all the lives are honored
with representation especially those who
have been systematically and
historically denied those means to be
represented
for the state to protect people who
already have power and representation
is always an injustice
as an extension of art movements over
the last decades uh
often called either relational
aesthetics or social or social art or
what claire bishop
turned the social turn in art back in
much art has developed into explicit
political and socially engaged practices
nancy atahania explores in her essay
which is actually in this book here and
her essay is titled the 13th place in
the 11th question
where she asks in contemporary art what
the job of an artist is
which she talks about it being the job
of representing citizenry by expressing
it and by performing it
by being collaborators that help us
imagine new modes of relating with each
other
the artist citizen is usually involved
in the act of empowerment which as she
says
implies that the artist citizen can help
those lacking economic and cultural or
political opportunities and entitlements
but because this often implies that the
artist does not give up any of their own
privileges when doing so
atahanya prefers the term called
devolution instead
which implicates that the artist citizen
is substantially and viscerally in the
act of giving
and it implies that as a precondition to
the development of a more equitable
social relationship
the artist will give up some of their
privileges and
claims to expertise that reside in her
under the unequitable system
and transfer these to colleagues who
lack them essentially an
act of redistribution it really brings
into question
what are the roles of artists in our
communities and what do we expect from
our artists as well as what do artists
expect from us
although artists are not politicians uh
art i do believe art
should do the work of opening up civic
spaces to citizens who often don't have
access to those spaces
new mexican institutions are ultimately
the results of colonization
and we must ask ask ourselves how these
early institutions intent were intended
who they were intended to help when they
were constructed in the first place
and as michael p todaro and steven c
smith
show in their book economic development
economics they say
colonization has had a deep impact on
the development of those nations
subjected to
colonization because of the little
incentive they have to uphold property
rights encourage investments or even
allow broad access to economic
opportunities
or political participation to those that
they colonized
they acknowledged that in development
economics in addition to just being
concerned with inefficient allocation of
existing or scarce or idle productive
resources
and their sustained growth over time it
must also actually deal with social
political and institutional mechanisms
both public and private
necessary to bring about rapid and large
scale improvements of level of living
and i'd like to quote here irene gomez
franco from her
sustainable integrational justice and
its end in which he says
it is imperative to recognize the
excessive emphasis that many economists
place on economic growth as the only
driving force for development
and the corresponding belief that growth
automatically results in the benefit of
all population sectors
and so by this i want to really ask what
we might mean by development
because despite massive leaps in
technology and improvement in quality of
life
smith and todaro actually show that uh
that that poverty continues to be a big
problem
and the traditional modes of
classification
for development in countries are
centered around stock and bond markets
but
they are actually very limited in
telling us how prosperous a community is
or in telling us what a community needs
so when we're actually talking about las
cruces
growing um we often
mean in these industries up here and as
wonderful as many of these industries
are
i i we must really be asking ourselves
also who benefit from these industries
and to what extent will our community
actually benefit from them
how many locals will see will actually
fill in the highest paying positions in
these jobs
and how many experts will we actually be
importing into our community
uh how many uh in our community will
just become minimum wage laborers
uh beneath these companies when we ask
ourselves in terms of other
other than just gdp what development
means we must ask what opportunities are
actually being offered to our
communities
and ask ourselves who has access to
development all together
as todaro and smith say that some of the
most important challenges of our
of the 21st century are that many people
who have just come out of poverty
remain vulnerable and that the natural
environment is actually deteriorating
and national economic growth remains
uncertain and so from this we see that
development is actually doesn't happen
equally and art can
offer creative ways to address some of
these issues it is capable of
representing
problems and offering solutions in
imaginative ways it can be serious and
it can also be playful like any
good parent should be and i can engage
and it can be engaging and educational
disparity and inequity define for us the
different gaps between people's
experience of progress
and development and it brings me to ask
how cities are developed and who
actually develops those cities
but more importantly what impact does
the city design have on its population
what resources do our citizens available
to construct and make decisions about
their own city's design
i can only think about our own city's
heavy dependence on roads and vehicles
reinforced by reinforcing an
underdeveloped transportation system
that has made it hard for me to even
engage with public art
and over the past few weeks i've had to
learn the kind of work it takes to
access them
how can citizens how exit how citizens
can have better access to public art
remains a challenge which if solved
could have actually many
unimagined social benefits from a sense
of pride
to a sense of kinship and ability to
move through our landscape
which are all necessary and thriving
communities it is important that we heal
the relationship between civic
institutions and their citizenry
as well as with their landscapes i
challenge a challenge which is truly
global in scale
and we must ask how we want to
participate locally in this global
economy
and as a result of wealth disparity we
actually have seen development
development projects all over the world
uh
described by this world by this word
gentrification which is
uh summed up by some of paul goldberg's
theories
back in the 80s who was the senior
architecture
critic of new york times and he actually
championed
uh these development projects that
depended on the destruction of low
income property
and cuts to various social services it
is a pattern which the human impact
partners documented and published in
in a study of gentrification of santa fe
which actually found that by the 1980s
this type of urban and suburban
development that was championed by
goldberg created new subdivisions
throughout santa fe
dispossessing many of their homes we
must recognize the signs of
gentrification which led to this and not
believe that we're exempt from this
pattern
as they show in their study one example
of this came from a lifetime santa fe
resident who
was quoted saying my cousin's family
lived on a west alto street for a
generation
for generations then their house was
condemned by the city
bought out and now it's a casita bnb
they all
now live on the west side
so when we're talking about our
community when uh talk about our
communities we know that
uh it is a city that a city's choices
where to put infrastructure
transit affordable housing and other
resources significantly influences the
shifts of population
which can occur unequally across income
across rates across
age and other demographic
characteristics where people live
whether by individual choice or
influenced by resource allocations
has serious long-lasting impacts on the
health and well-being of a community
and in acknowledging all these new
challenges which we are confronted with
today
it is important to acknowledge the value
of various community functions
including the arts which can play an
important role in meeting these
challenges creatively
defining and representing our
communities accurately and communicating
what they may need from their city
it'll help us to answer questions like
how we talk about our communities
and how we identify appropriate
responses to their histories
what do we uh what stories do we
actually tell and
uh what tell what stories are we using
to justify development
and whose stories are being listened to
and in what ways can
these shape our city and what can public
art do
in this endeavor i understand that as a
community we will all play our roles in
development
and i acknowledge that it is a very
difficult task i ask our leaders today
here to join me in this important work
that is acknowledgment
to acknowledge the important role that
public art plays in knowing and in
shaping our community
art speaks to many people and it allows
many people to speak
in a democratic system there is still
rarely a chance for citizens to express
their needs directly to their government
and to therefore truly practice their
citizenry i acknowledge my privilege to
be given the time and space to
speak before you all and the privilege
of being heard seriously in a public
institution
a privilege i may have worked hard for
but it is a privilege nonetheless
and we must acknowledge all the
different hurdles which must be overcome
every day by each of us to perform our
citizenry
i believe that this begins with the
proper and ethical representation
necessary in opening up any democratic
process
thank you here's some of my
bibliographies
and some further readings if you guys
are interested in other
research and really that i might not
have cited directly
okay well thank you so uh we have a
couple
counselors who have some comments
counselor pincomo councillor vasquez
tristan mayor and thank you so much so
that was
honestly really powerful and i think a
really important conversation
that you brought to city council for
sure
um i'm really excited that you're on the
city art board i think it was definitely
um i'm excited to see younger
more people of color in our committees i
know that's been a conversation we've
been having for a long time and
i know it's hard sometimes but i'm very
very glad that you're
you're representative of the city art
board thank you for being here
um i do have a couple questions for you
and thank you so much ceci for the
presentation as well
um so you mentioned um i'm
really glad that you mentioned the the
city hall project that was out
outsourced to an outside artist i think
um you know this was a really big piece
topic of
conversation when the city um master
plan
came to us last year and i'm curious
for you ceci as well if we've seen that
shift if we've
if we've made that priority actually
into action in terms of ensuring that
we're prioritizing local
artists for any of the projects that are
happening right now
um i still think that as as of now it
doesn't seem like there's an effective
way that we figured it out right now
we're still using mostly cafe which is
uh usually goes out to national calls of
art
and it's actually as i remember as being
from being a student
it's not always the easiest tool to use
to apply
to these uh residencies and such and uh
and to apply to these sports and i
actually have started
an application for the city hall piece
myself when
i was still a student when the call
first went out but i do remember
having like specifically because i was a
student at the time there was a lot of
things that got in the way of me
seriously
submitting something for that project
and i think that's very true to very for
various
uh local artists here that like we
actually um
as as the city moves along and does its
things and makes his
choices for art artists uh aren't aware
aren't fully aware and aren't fully
plugged into those processes and so
it is often very specific people who get
the chance to apply
and usually artists will already have
training uh in that kind of
grant writing and that sort of
application uh
thing which is actually is is a skill
that not every artist is going to have
and i don't think every artist should
have it to have that chance
yeah so i absolutely agree with you cece
do you have any thoughts on that and i'm
curious about this cafe um portal
and if there's and if that's something
that has been
looked at in terms of accessibility and
other options that we may be able to use
yes um mayor and council councillor ben
como
um cece vasconcellos for the record
um yes this is definitely something that
has been coming up
regularly we we one of the committees
one of the
city art board committees
will be looking into creating workshops
and having
like presentations that will give
local artists more of an insight and
maybe
some tools that they can use so that
when these projects do come up on the
cafe platform they'll have a better idea
of
excuse me of how to apply for them and
i believe um in looking at cafe and
learning more about it
since i've been on board um you can
make the calls for entry specific to
your
region and really limit who sees the
calls and and who applies
so we can as as our local artists
start to learn these tools and and get a
better
handle on how to apply for these call
for entries
um that is definitely a direction we can
go in
um instead of sending these calls out
nationally
um yeah jesse have there been resources
put into place to help our local artists
get familiar with the cafe
platform thank you for that question
yes actually cafe puts together webinars
that are very short and and
are really helpful to learn how to
navigate their platform so they're
really good about doing that
so we've provided links on the website
that artists can go to the webinars
um they're very easy to follow
and like i said they're short so they
just need to look at that
and you know if they have questions they
can always contact
me and i'll find out the information for
them
cool great cessy thank you that's a
funny conversation because my cafe is
very
different if you all know what i mean
yeah
um and then so back to you i'm curious
about
um i'm really glad that you brought up
the entrada
um artwork that is at um
albert johnson park right and i'm
curious about
the process of when that when did that
happen
that um the tribe tried to get that
removed what that process was like and
if
there's been calls for i guess maybe my
question is more
is does the city art board have a
recommendation
for us in terms of how to move forward
with that piece of art because
i finally find it highly problematic i
actually
even um just recently um as part of the
conversation we had
um a few months ago
um i'm forgetting the the name of the
street now
um they shoot the zoning issue we had
recently
up on on sonoma ranch i started looking
at the neighborhood and found that
there's a street called
mountain road which is incredibly
offensive and problematic and
you know i was told that if that street
name came to us now we probably wouldn't
approve it
um but that is incredibly difficult to
try to remove
a street sign and a street name um
although i believe that when it's this
deeply
problematic and offensive it should be a
lot easier to to get rid of some of
these things so i'm curious also
if you if the city airport has
recommendations on this particular piece
of art
yeah so the airport we actually haven't
got the chance to really discuss
processes of accession and dx session i
think like those are still things that
we're trying to figure out
um but i do think like uh
it's important to know what's at stake
in these sort of situations uh
the city has had a history of like of
also i said right removing artwork for
being controversial there is actually
you know one of i believe in one of the
anthony pennock and i'd have to double
check when this happened but
one of the anthony penna water murals a
while back
i believe contained images of the native
americans in chains
and that was actually brought to the
attention of the city
by i believe a high school from outside
of the town
that was here playing a game they
brought the attention to them complained
about it and it was
removed they'd have to double check on
when that happened but i do know that
it's
happened before where the city has paid
to fix
an artwork um i know it was i believe it
was the ed
roybal who who specifically made the
complaint
i can't tell you formally when that
complaint was made i'd have to also
look into the specifics of when when all
those things happened
uh but that is a conversation i have had
with people from the
from the tribe as well about like
essentially
the tribal presence is i think very
absent often in these conversations and
i am happy that lately we've been trying
to include some more but i do think that
uh they need to be given much more
leadership roles rather than just
uh consultation roles i think they need
to be uh
the main voices we listen to when making
decisions about
what kind of art and what kind of
monuments we need to be putting up in
our town because essentially that's what
public art
will be it's a monument and essentially
an acknowledgement of
a public uh reality
thank you so i would definitely love to
see as a representative of the city
airport here i would definitely love to
see
the city art board um come up with some
recommendations
for us in terms of how we i don't know
what the word you used for i
don't know dx session thank you um
when it comes to you know whatever
whether it's
highly problematic or offensive art that
i you know
like or inaccurate art that's like the
the people
that i would love to see recommendations
from you all in terms of how we
um move forward with that that is you
know both respectful and effective and
meaningful so um thank you those are all
my questions and again i'm really glad
you were here that was a really powerful
presentation
thank you okay councilor vasquez
uh thank you mayor thank you so thank
you so much
um for your presentation um i think
council rank almost said wow that was
powerful
um i think it was needed i think having
you
and your perspective on the city art
board um is just gonna
hopefully uh be the catalyst to create
new public art that's just more
representative
of our community before i got kicked off
here
again i apologize for that um we were
talking about how we could use city
property
and existing places um across districts
to actually use for public art and i
think
uh specifically looking at different
neighborhoods in different communities
um that have different stories to tell
um where
different local artists um perhaps have
long histories or have a connection or
tied to the area
i would love to you know develop like a
like community art plans right where
those
communities are represented especially
leveraging first the
public assets that we have in city
buildings and bus stops and
um uh utility boxes and wells and all
kinds of things so
um so i think that'd be a terrific way
to
um to help instill that sense of
authentic cultural identity into our
neighborhoods and so um
i you know i think following your
framework right of who's leading on
these projects
um would be a really um powerful way to
do that so so thank you so
um and then the other um uh
well first i just mentioned uh one of
the reasons i
opposed the naming of pat garrett
boulevard um or renaming of motel
boulevard to pat garrett boulevard uh it
was for so many of the reasons that you
outlined here
right because of the the types of
histories that we
really romanticize and glorify um you
know
have come and have developed i think
from popular western culture
um that is like predominantly from told
from the european side of things
and so we didn't end up renaming that
street um
and and and part of it was i i think me
and several members of the council just
thought you know we needed to be
something more representative of our
indigenous community of our native
community or our spinal community so
um i think you have a supportive council
in terms of
what type of work that the city art
board can continue to do to promote
local artists
i do have one question for you because
this has been on my mind since
attorney our city attorney informed us
of this but
i know one of the challenges in getting
more local artists
to uh participate in in city commission
projects is also
the insurance requirement i believe you
have to have i think it's up to a
million dollars
in liability insurance uh to do
something is pick up a paintbrush and
paint on a city wall
right and so i think for um those local
artists who may be left out of those
opportunities
that that seems to me like a challenge
or a barrier
um what are your thoughts on that um so
yeah
well i definitely uh feel like from
my point of view has always been that
especially with the art board and with
any public art
project i think a heavy influence should
always be education and i think working
with teachers and with schools
especially because teachers already have
access so much access to our communities
they know exactly what's going on with
families directly with kids they have
really
close access to the problems that our
community faces we should really be
thinking about
um yeah like the kind of like middle
people between our civic institutions
and then our citizens that we're
actually trying to reach out to and sort
of like including our artists who
may be hired for jobs for the city but
are ultimately our citizens and we
should also be thinking of them as
other citizens that we're concerned with
not just as laborers or workers that are
going to come in and
give us an artwork right because i think
that that makes it so much easier for us
to just
uh reach out to anybody and try to find
the the most professional artist
out there to try to represent our city
which that's not the case we're not even
necessarily i wouldn't even necessarily
say that
the most beautiful art in our culture
here in las cruces comes out of a
professionalized art framework you know
i think there's so many different types
of art happening a lot of
uh you know uh artists who are
releasing uh zines having pop-ups uh
talking about
just having conversations and poetry
poetry nights right pope
uh like uh sharing poetry and i think
the city art board and the city
should be putting money into those sort
of events and those sort of like
gatherings where like people are sharing
culture
not just thinking about buying an
artwork or one object that is going to
give us this capital at the end of the
day um
you know art especi public art at least
shouldn't depreciate you know it's not
it's not something that depreciates
but if we create public art that doesn't
represent our community
it really can't depreciate our whole
entire community it can really
misrepresent it
and i think that we've been seeing over
the last couple of years
things such as confederate monuments
being vandalized and taken down in other
states
and i think we really need to think
about like uh what's the trajectory that
our state is going to take in
acknowledging
uh those kinds of histories and
acknowledging our communities and what
they're actually wanting to do right
like we need to look at the artists in
our community and say what do they want
to do
and then offer them those opportunities
rather than just
imagine ourselves what we want art to
look like in the city i don't think that
should be
not even the board's uh job i think the
art board should be
um as much as much as possible uh a
middle
middle ground between our actual artists
and our
our city thank you so um
and i agree with uh i agree with all you
said there i think we need to revisit
that to be honest
just because i think it is a barrier for
local artists to participate
in city commission projects and uh our
attorney um jennifer vega brown had told
us in the past that we could waive that
you know that's that it's not a hard and
fast rule in terms of that liability
that the city council through
an ordinance can waive liability
requirements for
certain types of local art projects and
if that helps to produce more local
folks
um uh participating in city projects
uh i'd like to do that because hopefully
that addresses perhaps some of what
um you mentioned in terms of the
disparity of um
some of the contracts that have been
awarded to to out of state artists
um through through this um system that
the city uses so hopefully
hopefully that's something that maybe we
can revisit um
uh and i'll just propose it again for
that quality of life policy review
committee
um uh counselor bait this dude since you
chair that maybe that's also
a good topic of discussion for the
future as well as something
maybe for the art board to talk about so
um so so thank you again
um i i don't have too many more
questions um
that i can think of now i just do want
to say um
uh hugely supportive of uh the narrative
that you provided to us here and how
that shapes our public art
for you know decades to come i will say
i think we have uh some really amazing
growth
in our local art community um that is
not reflected within
the city public art program um that i
would love for the city to also
embrace you know i think on our public
art map
that we have at the city um it's it's
it's relegated to i believe only city
properties but
there's ton great um uh public art out
there
um including in councilman como's
district in my district
um that i think you know we should as
you mentioned embrace as a city
um and and put those locations on the
map
um uh so i think that that'd be great to
do but um
so by any chance do you live in district
three
um i'd have to double check on that
actually
all right we'll get back i'm right on
the edge of two districts
i'd have to double check well get back
to me because i
think you'd make a great city counselor
here
um hey well thank you so much salad i
appreciate
um uh your discourse and thank you mayor
thank you
mayor if i may say just a quick thing
um this is cece bas gonzalez for the
record
in regards to the insurance i just
recently worked with two artists
on on on getting weighed
waivers for them on some parts of the
insurance that didn't apply to them so
there's definitely uh we are definitely
able to work with the artist in
in terms of the insurance and um
and also getting back to um to
what to do about uh existing artwork
a big part of why we put together the
master plan
was to address issues like this so there
are some very good processes in there
and and we will definitely
follow those processes when we're
looking to
either take down existing art or or
maybe change things
in whatever way is is being requested so
just wanted to add that yeah and if i
may add actually
um yeah i think the the master plan does
have some some suggestions for how we
can do it i think it's also a matter of
uh us in the art board as a collective
all a lot of our new
we're also just learning the ropes and a
lot of us are actually new to
city and bureaucratic processes like
these and i think there's also
going to be like i think it's also
important to uh
close those gaps as well because i think
that's also like
something that the art board is
struggling with right now is uh staying
organized in terms of like
every a lot of us have other jobs
families uh we're just doing this out of
our free time
and so like all this i just did myself
whenever i wasn't working and working on
my own stuff you know and so
um that is it is a lot of there's a lot
of i think
also gaps there and like how effectively
we can do our work
okay counselor flores
uh thank you mayor and thank you so much
sawyer for
your presentation it was just uh as
powerful as it was the first time you
presented
uh at the city of board and um
and i really want to thank the mayor and
um
city manager for being receptive
um when i said the email about you being
here today
um i think so that with you and the
progressive
not progressive i don't like to use that
word um
and the uh perspective you and the
perspective that other new board members
me uh bring
to the board going to change
the face of uh literally and
figuratively
the face of art in the city so i want to
thank you again salud
for doing this it's it's it's amazing
because
you um you came to the intersections of
life humanity and
society culture history
and i don't think i've ever
had a professor like in social
anthropology
be as succinct as you were and i think
that the message that you're conveying
is that art is very powerful and that
it's educational and
again thank you soon and uh and and i
think
i know that the art board is blessed to
have you
and along with elisa grayson and yazi
um
[Music]
at the helm and the other board members
so i
i and i think that there's other there's
other
uh ways to have uh
art of local artists uh pro
featured
i don't think that all the art that can
be featured by a local artist has
i don't think it has to go through the
city art board i think that there are
other means of doing that
because public because city because a
city art board
deals with the public art and it's
really related
in many ways to the cip
um so it it's so i and they're not
exclusive
so thank you again
gracias yesterday
thank you mayor thank you saul and ceci
um yeah really impressive um
i'm trying to find you i i um hold on
let me
yes i feel better when i i'm actually
looking at you when i'm talking to you
um but thank you so much for your
presentation this it was powerful
and all the while i'm thinking
um i'm thinking about
how clear i felt counsel then
was and i think we are still the same
council that approved that master plan
right how clear we were about being as
inclusive as we can related to our
giving
our local artists of of all shape
sizes ages cultures and opportunity
right and so
when i received the master plan um when
was it last week i guess
i looked through it i read it i i
saw the the various pictures and whatnot
and i looked through
um okay well who are these people where
were they commissioned
it felt like they were a lot of
out-of-state people
a lot of folks that um
you know are a caucasian if you will um
and and maybe one or two so very
disproportionately
right um
are our ver our people of color right um
represented and so
i i wanted to say that that it concerns
me because we were very clear that we
wanted to
um you know collect a directory of folks
that
easily we can pull from
for these sorts of things and it may not
be
these large large large projects but
the smaller from the small ones to the
larger projects
and i'm not sure that that's happened
but i distinctly remember
i'm speaking to that registry um you
know
making making sure and i maybe it's the
cafe one i'm not sure
um because i'm not familiar with this
process per se
um kind of like you all starting right
in your in your board and starting out
and and really trying to understand the
bureaucracy and what
it what certain things um how certain
things are laid out
if you will but um and so cece
i i want to make sure that that there is
that registry that all
sorts of people from different you know
um
i guess exp experiences and expertise
has an opportunity find themselves on on
that registry
is has that happened and if not when can
we
um well i i i don't know that it's
specific to the
to the master plan but i'd really love
to see that because i think it would
help us
immensely as we move through you know
this process
in in selecting you know the public
artists
uh mayor and counselor gandara thank you
for that question i
i have not seen it um
you know i i came on in january so we've
been working on
on the larger projects and things that
need to move along
but um i know that it it is definitely
on the um
um definitely something that the art
board has discussed
and that we we will be working on
so jesse thank you and and do you have a
time frame and i'm pushing just a
little bit
with all due respect i'm pushing it just
a little bit because
you know honestly i'm very proud of of
of
although limited the work that we've
done thus far
but i think you see that this console is
very supportive of public art
and and um and we want to see more of it
and you know when we get like for
example the ac dude
is doing the the electrical boxes and
i've gotten so many positive you know
compliments
on that that you know people want to see
more of that
um and it's really exciting so
i i i don't want to lose sight of it
because i think that's where we get
we get lost right those people that
might might not ever have an opportunity
um i we want to make sure and that
and and i think you understand ceci
because you've done a lot of work with
jamie
how we want to be representative of
each of our boards and commissions and
we want it to be representative of our
community and so many times it isn't and
i think
um solomon you know hit the nail on the
head it's like we're so busy just
um living our life right taking care of
our kids working doing all these other
things that it's very difficult to get
people that normally don't sit at
this table right a part of that and i
know you've been a
big help in trying to engage people in
different ways
right right so uh mayor and counselor
gandalf
ce baskatos for the record um yes
definitely
it is something that we can work i think
consecutively with some of
the other projects that we have on my
end i'm working on
creating an inventory of all the city
art collections public art collections
and with along with the maintenance
schedule but i think in doing that
i can i'm probably going to come up with
with um
get connected with artists from you know
that have worked on projects
or and also um i'm excited about this
city art board because i think through
their connections
we're going to find more of those
artists as well because
um they're they're their peers
and um so so yes this is definitely a
priority and
and um i can't give you a definite
timeline but know that we are
working on it um continuously yes
thank you cece i really appreciate that
and then last i
i just want to say that our master plan
is a guide it's not the bible
right it's just a guide for us and so
and so we should um we should definitely
if there needs to be clear definitions
um so um
even if there's resolutions right and or
something
that can come to counsel that we clearly
define public art
and all the other things that you've
indicated that are concerning
in that master plan please um you know
we can we can do that
um and and you all are considered
experts and
in my in my mind in my estimate and so
we'd love even if it meant
updating that master plan just a bit
right to incorporate some of those
things i
i don't think that's a problem well for
me anyway
for me anyway um and then i have
appreciate you bringing up lyandra
and and the issues um surrounding that
as unfortunate as it is i i do want to
say and i i want to publicly
you know apologize to mr roy ballen and
and
and the tribe i know they felt ignored
but i do want to say
that there was a couple of opportunities
we brought them to the table
i connected a group and and um
that included a former city manager
um and the assistant city manager um
david dalahan
and the group to to and the artists to
sit and have a conversation
at the table right to really hear from
both perspectives
and such and i was a part of the first
meeting
um very uncomfortable a difficult
dialogue to have
challenging at um for sure but but a
necessary one
and then i wasn't invited to the second
or third
you know meetings and and well since
then we've had three
or different managers right and it's
sort of like what you're finding
yourself at the art board
you're all new relatively new with ceci
being the newest coordinator like she
said i just started in january
right so if that needs to be um
re-examined explored further please
let let me know um i'll tell you that
there was some very strong
convictions on both sides about
why that was and and i have to say i
mean i'm mexican
and my great-grandmother was a
full-blooded native american
and i have spanish blood so i have that
whole
you know um um
i totally understand it's like uh inside
just a
a fight right to understand what our
history is and
and and where we land and how we view
things and and whatnot so
it's one of those things that i think
that that is really
important to me and i want our folks to
be represented and feel like they're
heard and not ignored and so
i i wanted to say that i that because i
think it's important
um for the rest of council it's probably
been
um we had
so we're a fairly new council with
councillor uh bethesda via cuomo
and so there's been some work but
obviously it wasn't
um you know a positive outcome
right so i i really like the idea of
of sharing um the art board's
perspective
as concern como asked i thought of
helping us sort of what are those
processes that need to be in place in
order to
um you know take down art or offensive
bar that that kind of thing um and
and what would that look like so i don't
know if you have any
comments related to that um because
there's a lot to do
and i i get it totally understand
well on that end i think there's a lot
of research that really needs to be done
i think what's really important for the
art board is to also like
be very collaborative i think uh working
with our historic
uh our our actual like uh local
historians directly and i also think of
course that's why i also think
not talking to the tribe because many
other tribe members are often historians
and
keepers of the story of their histories
and that'll keep and and that's really
just a matter of uh
keeping our presentation honest and the
the accession doesn't always think has
to be removal i think sometimes
it has to sometimes it can be done in
public conversations about the things
that we have
and making putting a plaque next to it
that
that that'll that'll address it at least
temporarily that could be a good
fix right i think there's many ways
about educating our community
about what the images are and then maybe
letting the community at large make
those choices later
uh which i think is similar to like what
happened with dionya
the school right i think it's really
about giving our community the
opportunity to be heard the opportunity
to have their voices heard
and i think often there's a very limited
number of voices that
get their voices heard in these kinds of
uh environments and
um yeah and i think there's many
different issues that need to be uh that
that come up there i think it's uh
never an easy one and i think and it
will always
uh suggest like collaboration i think
from every at every level
i i appreciate that soul i'm definitely
a collaborator
and um i i am
and it it i really appreciate the
the suggestions the ideas as you say the
accession what that means
right what what does that mean to
everybody
and um i i i'd love to have more
conversation about that
with you that's an important thing you
were really impressive soho
and thanks so much for being here today
thank you ceci as well and i look
forward to hearing more from the art
board and you so
take care thank you mayor thank you
counselor beta stevie
thank you mayor and thank you sarah for
your presentation
um most of my questions have already
been asked but i do want to say thank
you very much for
having us remember um to acknowledge
um that were here before us and those
stories that we need to make sure that
we're being as inclusive as possible
as it's been mentioned i am sharing the
quality of life uh prc
and there have been many suggestions by
my fellow counselors today so i've been
taking notes
um and if you don't mind so i'd love to
be able to connect with you
after this as well and so we can have a
little bit of conversation
and perhaps um it might be time for
uh me to connect perhaps with other
members of the art board too to make
sure
that we are watching any sort of
communication issues
okay so thank you so much and have it
thank you mayor thank you councilor
flores
do you have another comment yes sir
thank you mayor
you know i want to stress that um the
city
artboard has a certain function and
what saul brought to us was um
within with as a member of the board
he's bringing that
his perspective of um the city awkward
and the city art board i think
the uh master plan pretty much uh lays
out
the function and the the issues that
that shawwood hasn't necessarily raised
today
and the ones we're addressing um aren't
uh
we can proceed with um having
representative art
um outside of
city art board i mean the city art court
isn't going to
dictate all the art that's going to go
up in the city
i mean it just uh it has a certain
function so i just want almost to keep
that
in mind um
but i really but again sally i want to
thank you
um and i and i i think that um
it's important for uh
i think it's important thank you so much
uh councillor vega suvi
it's really uh a function also of
the museum system um
you know there's there's a lot of stuff
going on
um i don't mean stuff going on
let me find a word that's more
appropriate um
we need our museums system to
look at um history and
keep our history they you know can do
anthropological or archaeological or
whatever kind of art but not at the
expense of
who we are as a people and um
and we need to make sure that the
preservation of the
the original people uh of
of this part of the world um either we
were forced to be here
we were forced you know brought over or
we were colonized
but we have to keep that in perspective
because um
it's our history it's who we are and if
we put that away
we're taking it away from our children
and following generations
so i just i just want to let people know
that
the city art board has a certain
function
and it functions under certain
parameters
that now take in a turn with new members
such as saloon and
lisa and chantal and there's another
number too there's most of that and the
thing that's really wonderful is all due
respect to people in my age group
it's really really wonderful to have
young
people on that board and a lot of energy
a lot of wisdom
it's amazing you know from the babes
what is it from the mouths of babes
and um you know all this love and
and and very talented people so
um so thank you again and i i
will be uh hopefully working with you
and and uh norma
uh
the chinese future getting together as
um
councilor vegas suvi uh has suggested
um so again thank you and thank you
mayor
the counselors let me ask you some are
you using a desktop
you you have a laptop
yeah is it a city laptop
yeah you want it back it doesn't work oh
no yeah we need to exchange it because
you're the i i know i joke with you but
every word you said was almost it was
all
it's crumbled the the speaker is is
really bad so
we probably need to have that replaced
because you know what
really badness this little baby has been
in the quote
shocked so many times
[Music]
one of my first directives was throw
this thing off the window there you go
needs to be thrown out yes okay
okay good here comes efo he wants to say
something look at that he
turned on his camera
was he a ghost because i don't see him
struggling with our
laptops yvonne and i yeah yeah
cassandra and i got we got the lemons
okay maybe you guys
but then you couldn't hear anything i
said you didn't hear any of me no no i
heard no no really we heard don't know
i still understand
thank you mr mayor i simply wanted to
say that i agree with my colleagues
uh all that they said about the art
board and the presentation especially so
your awesome presentation um very
impressive
and i just wanted to add my uh
agreement with the rest of the council
that's all
thank you very much yeah very good um
tim you have uh
i do man i'm sorry i you know i i
am i think we're starting with an idea
and i want to just
um name it and and thank you counselor
flores and others
you know the art board has a very
specific um function
if you will and we keep we're flirting
with ideas of inclusion and equity
and um um and we all believe it i think
for sure but but it isn't i mean
and i think it's so definitely the art
board can help in that function but to
be
the board that helps us right
navigate these waters is is is probably
not
not the
not the way to do it and and i'd really
like to recommend that we have
um you know some equity and inclusion
board or
um you know hopefully move into
one day having a department and a unit
that deals very specifically with these
with these things because you know over
the weekend
i received a very alarming tick tock
video and then several others
related to lcpd and we have so
many microaggressions so many implicit
bias
so many things that are going on
that when i see the
the picture saul that you had there
of folks you know you know hanging out
if you will
very tastefully done um you know
we as each other we don't see each other
in that way we
we see as us and them and
and and it's um it's
it's so much more disturbing to me as
as i continue to get complaints about
what was seen over the weekend
um and i
i think it's it's it's probably
out of the art board's um
you know role and responsibility
although they play a part for sure i
think that
we need to really have a conversation
about
um how we as staff and departments and
council how we see people how we're how
what how our policies are affecting
everyday people
um because i think it's it's just going
to continue to get more challenging
as as we move as we move on and so
um that's what i'm asking for is is
is a a department uh a board of some
sort that looks at
it looks at this um and really gives us
recommendations so that we can
we can make you know make good on it
in my in my opinion so thank you mayor
okay well thank you and and so everybody
said
and and i do too thank you very much for
your presentation and learn an awful lot
today
here as well and just keep up with
the work thank you okay
okay well i think that pretty much
concludes our work session and so
um thank you everyone thank you for your
participation and i'll
entertain a motion to adjourn i'll stay
on because i have a gender setting
meeting
but i need a motionless move to adjourn
second who made the second avedas tv
okay
counselor sword made the motion
counselor beta suvi second to adjourn
christine
this is on the motion to adjourn the
work session
oh oh you froze
yeah can you i can hear you can you hear
me christine or did i freeze
i i i can hear you um i can't hear
christine though
yeah that's okay i'll go ahead and oh
did she freeze
maybe she's moving she's moving look you
see her
she did her hair am i there
there you are here
well it was me
sorry my dog counselor beta stupi yes
yes yes
uh yes i think you caught me
i did my sorry i'm trying to distract my
dog
no that's okay thank you
yes
cancer sorg yes
cancer flores yes
answer gandara yes
mayor yes so let the record reflect that
all
members voted in the affirmative we are
adjourned it's 4 50 p.m
and um i'll stick around there
bye bye everybody