you
[Music]
okay good afternoon everybody and
welcome to the work session of the las
cruces city council today is monday
march 8th 2021 it's approximately 102 pm
before we begin if you please join me in
the pledge of allegiance please
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
[Music]
okay now we're gonna have uh
our pets of the week and i believe
holly wells is going to introduce those
pets
[Music]
can you all hear me
yes
okay so hello everybody
just wanted to let you know that our
pets of the week will start with
malphite which is a six-year-old six
years eight months male
his animal service center number is one
one eight two one
due to kovid this little guy's been in a
um foster home for
over a year because of the foster parent
and some cove issues as well as just
kind of falling through the cracks
so this little guy is looking for a
forever home he is not a huge fan of
kitty cats just saying
and then our cat of the week is going to
be lucky she is a one-year-old female
she's already been spayed
uh her animal service center number is
uh she has a bunch of different colors
going on in her fur and she's got a
wonderful personality she likes to purr
a lot
off-site events and far with the
farmer's market pico and petsmart
unfortunately are still cancelled
just kind of a
tip for the week um this is our lobby
cat his name is henry so here's some
tips on how to keep your pet engaged for
dogs
a snuffle mat or a puzzle toy those are
great to put treats or toys in so that
they can kind of
keep busy with trying to find them
the other thing would be a scavenger
hunt whether you do it in a room or
outside hide some goodies
and let the dog go out and try and find
them on their own as far as cats
uh lots of meals or treats or toys and
puzzle toys as well they do like to
attempt to get things out
and cats are very easily entertained
with the least expensive stuff so
boxes
paper shopping bags off you obviously
cut off the handles bottle caps or water
bottle caps and packing paper just be
careful if it's something that you've
received from
a big company sometimes they spray that
with a disinfectant so
if you have some stuff and you know
where it came from those are the best
best little boxes and packing paper to
use
and that's really all i have from for me
today so i appreciate you all
okay thank you holly this was holly
wells speaking right yes it was okay
good thank you sir
sure thank you
okay now we're gonna go to the jobs of
the week and i believe i see cindy
quinlan
is going to be
giving that that report
yes mayor good afternoon everyone
so for our jobs of the week we have with
our city of las cruces we have an
accounting technician
this position will be closing on march
the 19th of 2021
next we also have general laborers which
is with the employer by megas mobile
home service
there are three positions available and
this position closes on march the 25th
there's also an admin clerk wage subsidy
through the department of workforce
solutions
and this position closes on march the
28th
uh we have a flight rn
uh open
with air methods incorporated this
position closes on may the 25th of 2021
and we also
have a driver medical with rio medical
transport llc and this position closes
on march the 25th
uh we have also partnered up with the
u.s census bureau and we will be hosting
a virtual recruiting event
this friday march the 12th at 2 p.m
for more information on the on the
recruiting event and for a full list of
jobs internships and volunteer offer
opportunities you can visit us at
www.employee.com
or uh www.governmentjobs.com
careers
las cruces
uh for our local office here um in las
cruces uh you can contact us at 575
and our location is at 226 south alameda
boulevard
thank you everyone have a great
afternoon and a wonderful week
okay thank you thank you cindy
so next is going to be the covid 19
update by assistant city manager mr eric
enriquez
yes good afternoon mayor and council i
wanted to share again some updates on
the colbit task force report
um
well currently donate county is still in
the red
and we hope that
that will hopefully change this
wednesday as numbers are looking better
but currently the red status
as far as vaccine data is under our new
mexico vaccine.org dashboard it shows
dona county is currently at 32 000
vaccines which is about 18.6 percent i
want to share with uh
with you all with mayor and council that
the vaccine task force information that
we received uh in our last meeting from
the hospitals is the hospitals
themselves have vaccinated over 20 000
so not all the numbers that are being
presented on the dashboard are those
that uh
the hospital is doing as well so so
there is different providers that are
receiving the vaccine and doing some
vaccinations here so we're doing a
little bit better uh some of those
numbers may overlap but uh we definitely
are doing better in dona ana county now
and wanted to share with everyone that
the aging and long-term services event
at nmsu this saturday went very well
there was a thousand doses of the
johnson and johnson which was a single
dosage that was administered and
it ran smooth it ran very well
partners included city of las cruces
parks and rec department
quality of life la clinica was the
sponsor as a provider the national guard
was there burrell college the students
the student uh where we're doing a lot
of the vaccine administration um they
were ahead of schedule probably
uh an hour though the whole day and went
till about 5 p.m and were able to get a
thousand uh dosage out so very very
successful event
um as far as
the latest update from the department of
health uh a
press release came out this morning that
the department of health will now have
the k-12 and early child uh
child care professional providers uh
also being vaccinated starting this
month they will still continue with the
75 and older
those that are in the 1b but they are
moving up the educators uh this month
so registration campaign is still moving
along uh the report i got from scott was
at 284 contacts 75 uh registered this
week
constantly updating individuals are
stopping by and asking if they can see
where they're at on the on the
registration so a lot of interaction and
good visibility on getting registered is
taking place and again we are waiting
for the
uh
the application still the providership
is pending where the las cruces fire
department has submitted the application
and that's what we have thus far mayor
thank you
hey thank you
eric
okay so we've got three items on the
agenda
first one being the election process
review
and i believe we have the city clerk
christine rivera is gonna present
i sure am
you're not on the ballot right christine
i maybe
i'm sure there's some people who don't
realize you're appointed by the city
manager and the county clerk is the one
who's elected so
this is correct yeah okay just wanna
let the public know that
okay
there we go can you guys see that
yes
okay awesome
okay so mayor city council christine
rivera city clerk
so today i wanted to go over some
potential new changes to the way the
election process is run right now
um in 2019 we saw a change with the
local election act and us opting in and
changing to rcv and so i thought with um
the next election coming up in november
that there was some potential for some
changes to be made
so i'm just going to go over those with
you really quick
so some pre-election day changes that
i'm looking at making are some changes
to the packets not so much at what is in
the packet as to the form of the packet
as long as i've been in the clerk's
office which is almost 10 years we've
always done paper packets
and i just feel that this is 2021 and we
are going through a pandemic
and things need to be more electronic
for us it's easier for storage it's
easier to keep track of things um and so
i'm gonna open up a link for
to show you one
so this one is
with laser fish and it is in california
let me pull it down and this is what
they created as a form for candidates
and so this is something similar to what
i'm looking to create it would be
electronic although it can be printed
out because it will have to be filed at
the county clerk's office
but all this will be stored in a system
for me so i will have a copy of whatever
is taken to the county
it also creates a storage system for
other documents so
um disclosure statements the declaration
of candidacy etc that can all go in here
it this also creates easy access for the
public and so once it's put into laser
fish
um i can upload it and make it
um available for the publix which helps
with the transparency of the whole
process
so
go back to my powerpoint
so that's just one thing that i'm
looking at doing um the next thing would
be a robust ranked choice voting
education
so um in 2019 ranked choice voting of
course was new for everyone um a lot of
people still didn't understand the whole
process
um and the county really took the lead
on educating the public on that
um i feel very strongly that even though
the county is running our election that
we really should be the ones who take
the lead on educating the public as it
is our municipal election
so i've already spoken to mandy gus and
we're going to develop a
brand new campaign
in english and spanish
and then we're going to make sure that
it's available in every potential
format
so
facebook
newspaper i mean just everywhere we can
think of
so as soon as we come up with that plan
i'll let you guys know and keep you
updated
so next is filing day availability
um this year i plan to be on site at the
county on filing day that way if anybody
has any questions or if they have any
documents that need to be given to me
they can give them to me at that time
instead of running across town making
sure that all their documents are in by
five o'clock
the other thing i've been looking at is
a campaign finance software so
in 2019 we had
many more candidates than we've ever had
previously thanks to rank choice voting
and so it was a little difficult to
monitor everything that was going on by
myself
we also had
some
issues with
accounting errors
individuals not submitting on time so on
and so forth
so
i just wanted to show you
what albuquerque uses as their campaign
finance
and so
the really cool part about theirs is
that
do a quick search
i did by office and so i'm going to go i
want to look at everything for the mayor
search
and it pulls up everything that's in
their system for every mayoral candidate
who has ever applied so everything would
be done directly into the system all
your expenditures
and um
all your
um
campaign finance
documents would go into this
type of program can you click on that
manuel gonzalez the third
wilkinson is the third
yeah that right there
[Music]
so this is yeah it goes directly into
them
and then when it does it it creates and
you can see it has all their their
documentation
but after the stuff is
filed you can see that it creates a
statement
so the statement would be um available
to the public
and um it and the program would be
searchable
so that that's just one of the things
that i'm looking at as far as
uh modernizing the way we do our
elections
their election is november right of 2021
um yes there there's i believe is at the
same time as us so they're they're
rearing up for it
that that must be a new that person must
have just announced i guess you must
have um
said 2021 and none other statements were
filed so
yeah that's the sheriff bernalillo
county
oh nice i learned something well you
just you just uncovered something live
breaking news public
okay so along the lines of campaign
finance um i took a look at our campaign
finance ordinances and like i said last
time there were some issues with
documents being late documents not being
filed
um and so when i took a look at that
i also pulled up the secretary of
state's campaign finance to compare them
and there were some things that were
different
and so i wanted to kind of make them on
the same line
um
i did go back and look at our original
campaign finance ordinances so it was
first um
printed in the code in 1988 whenever the
first volumes came out then there was an
amendment to it in 2000
and then again in 2013
so hasn't been updated in almost eight
years and so some of the things that i
found were different were a couple of
the definitions um one of them that
wasn't in our code was in-kind
contributions which i thought was
important an important definition to add
the other things that were changed were
contribution limits so our contribution
limits right now are
25 for
um
anonymous donations and then a total of
2 300
per person
who donates
the secretary of state does a hundred
dollars anonymous and five thousand
total
when i went back and looked at our codes
it's been like that
since 2000 the 25
anonymous has been like that since 2000
the 2300 limit was in 2013 was
established in 2013.
so
um just something to think about if we
want to change that to be consistent
with the secretary of state um not only
that you know it's been almost 10 years
change
you know
so just something to think about
um the other thing that wasn't really
outlined in there was accountability
so
we have a stipulation in the code that
says we can find you
dollars a day for late fee up to a
thousand dollars
but what if you don't ever file your
last campaign report
well i decided that the best way to deal
with that is to say
this individual cannot run again until
all their stuff is closed out
and a good way to
decide if
something is closed out is to have the
individuals file affidavits right now we
just kind of do like a
end balance closed it out notarize but
if we could have some kind of affidavit
that
shows that they closed out their
accounts this will make them more
accountable and it can be notarized
similar to what we do now
um the other thing that wasn't defined
in our code but was in the secretary of
state was fundraising
and so i i pulled some of that um
language from the secretary of state
also to add to the code
now the changes that i'm proposing i did
attach to the packet for today so that
everyone could review them
um and and if
they are um statically with everyone
then i would like to go ahead and
try to bring it for first read in april
so that we can go ahead and have this um
pass before the next election
so the next two slides are just some
things to think about for the future not
not anything that i want to do by
november um because they will take some
time
so the petition process this was removed
whenever we adopted the local election
act and so the how the position process
previously worked was that you would
need to have 25 signatures
of registered voters in your district if
you were running for
a district seat
or 150 signatures of anybody in the city
to run for mayor
so we removed this
um
as you saw in the 2019 election when we
removed that we did have more candidates
who did
run for office
so
and the other thing is that i don't
store voter registration i don't have
any access to that whatsoever so i would
have to get access from the county and i
kind of was in discussions with them
about this they said that they would
have us do an mou with them so that i
could go over and use their software in
order to look at um the voter list
so that's just something to think about
in the future
and the last thing that um we noticed
was that campaign signs aren't really
prevalent in our code um they're in
chapter 36 of the development land use
code
which as we know is being reviewed right
now
by uh friso nichols i believe it is
the only requirements that it states in
the code is that they're 32 square feet
that you can put them up
no more than 90 days before the election
they must be taken down 10 days after
and that it's not preventing the line of
sight for vehicles
one thing to maybe think about
is to add it into the election section
of our muni code
where we could establish more rules and
guidance for candidates
every year or every election cycle it
becomes a constant question
and these are the only guidelines we
really have
and so before i open it up for
discussion i just want to let you know
that i've been working with rob caveo
and legal on some of these issues so if
you have any questions for him
he was involved in the local election
act process so he would be able to
answer those um more clearly than i
would
okay
you're finished
yes i am sorry yes
so we've got counselor beta studio
vasquez and flores
thank you mayor and thank you christine
um for this
um
i i really do appreciate all the work
that you and rob as well that
um have worked
a lot of this i feel is really
professionalizing
and um updating our systems to reflect
uh current trends and standards
um which i think is really beneficial
not only to
um candidates but to the public as well
uses
making sure that we're using current
technology
helps with transparency and better
timing
as
christine just said
when we're able to have those real time
uploads um we're able to uh be able to
put that out to the public a little bit
sooner as well so i think that's
something um to be
um
that we should uh definitely do
um
and then making sure that there's better
set and standards one item uh when we do
these types of reports by hand there is
always room and there's always going to
be human error issues and so that's
something that we have to consider but
they're less likely to happen when we're
doing them through a computer and
they're better to catch um and we won't
have the issue of handwriting as being
one of those reasons for human error
which you know it is that is a little
bit uh difficult um when you're getting
a lot of different candidates
and different treasurers and different
people doing those types of work so it's
it's a lot easier
um and now within
covid and other types of um
issues that we might see
being able to do these on the computer
allows for
i think better time management
and time management for our city clerk
so i i also appreciate that
so those are
fun so thank you christine um for
working on this and i'll reserve other
comments until after my colleagues have
a chance to speak thank you
also vasquez
thank you mayor thank you christine
thank you robert as well for all your
work on this
um just have maybe some clarifying
questions here
so
you mentioned the signature threshold
christine uh you said part of the local
election act
did away with that or is that something
that we locally decided to do uh to do
away with
um
mayor councillor vasquez i will defer
that to rob because he was the one who
wrote that section for us and so he
could better explain it than i could
thank you
during of afternoon mayor
councillor vasquez it's robert cabello
uh from legal
um one of the things with the local
election act if going back house bill
98 when it was passed in
march 18 2018.
um
that actually it obviously brought a lot
of uniformity to local elections in the
state
one of the things it did is it became
effective later that
year in july at some time
and we had a um kind of a deadline in
the sense not only do we we had a geo
bonds going up for election so we had to
kind of make those changes immediately
or relatively immediately
part of the process and was it it dealt
with petitions it excluded recall
petitions but it
it dealt with nominating petitions and i
actually had two teleconferences with uh
ivysotho which
was one of the primary drafters of house
bill 98 and so
at that time it did away with our
nominating petitions
now
maybe it's the timing of how it worked
because of those geo bonds that we had
elections later on the year um
there were a second set of changes in
2019 to the local election act and i
forgot the house bill that was that
but that brought back they gave back
local communities the petitioning
process however we're the only community
that actually made changes again because
of our geo bond election
and so one of the things that we had as
an option or
out after we opted in
and after we had the automatic um
i'm sorry
the automatic uh
gosh
um
christine
thank you i couldn't say the word on top
of my i'm sorry
so the automatic runoff one of the
things that had a requirement if
everybody could remember is we had to
have passed a conformance ordinance
conforming
all our changes
and also the changes that were just
inherent in the local election bill
house bill 98 into ours and so we
actually had to make those changes
um again it was we're kind of our head
was kind of forced by just the timing of
when it became effective in july and
also by those geo bonds um so
you know going back up the foot next
year they gave us back our ability to
have nominating petitions
and so that's something we can actually
redress if we want
the council want to make those changes
thank you thank you robert thank you
christine um
yeah you know i
uh maybe i'll come back to this but i am
a little torn on that one just because i
think
getting uh i thought 25 signatures for
city council race i think 100 for the
mayor but 25 for council was a pretty
um
pretty low threshold
you know i was just
investigating the process and i was kind
of like taken aback by just you know
just 25
however you know i realized after
collecting 25 signatures
myself and and i know some some of my
colleagues and others um uh
that it's that it takes effort it takes
time it takes commitment it takes get
you know going to knock on your
neighbor's doors or understand or you
know going to talk to folks in your
district and so even though it is a low
barrier to entry into a council election
i think for people that are serious
about it you know at least it's like
there's one process that you have to do
that may not take up a whole lot of time
but it shows some commitment there on
the part of the candidate that they are
serious about that and so um while i
definitely do want to make sure that
more candidates with more diverse points
of view um and what you know are able to
uh uh
you know easily enter an election
um for me i still think that that
that small signature threshold at least
um
perhaps we some of the folks out who are
serious versus some of the ones who
aren't um i know we don't have that much
of an issue with the ranked choice
voting and the runoff election and
having multiple candidates um i think
that system is perhaps designed to um
to kind of weed out the spoilers that
you might get in other tightly contested
races with folks taking a few votes away
um even if they don't campaign right
even if they don't if all they if all
they do is just put their name on a
ballot and don't
actually go out and and campaign um
the before ranked choice voting my worry
was always like well they're gonna take
x amount of votes just by sometimes
people just vote on a name right and so
um and it's a little unfair to the other
candidates who are out there campaigning
and and doing their due diligence to run
a race and represent their district and
so um i will leave that up for
discussion with my colleagues i'm
a little bit inclined to kind of say
maybe we should restore this those
signature um uh
gathering um requirement uh to be on the
ballot but um but i'm i'm could go
either way honestly um to hear other
arguments uh the other question i have
here is regarding the
uh the transparency portal with the
campaign finance reports christine did
you say that that's something that you
would be implementing before the next uh
our next local elections here or is that
something on the wish list for later on
mayor councillor vasquez i am actually
looking at software at the end of the
month
my goal is to have it implemented before
november the november election um i
can't guarantee it but it's my hope it's
my hope to have it done
well thank you christine and i would say
um to whatever degree possible
to our city manager and um you know that
i would like to see a system like that
definitely for this election or as soon
as possible i think
yeah transparency is just key people
expect it people want to search you know
obviously for those types of records um
it's important to see who's who who uh
you know just the the finance reports
are a really important part of that
campaign transparency piece and so i'm
excited that that is coming to the city
um christine do you know what the lag
time is i guess when you submit
a campaign finance report for a local
election and then the time that it gets
to the secretary of state's office
because am i correct in that that
information is eventually makes it to
the secretary of state's office but it's
not searchable or or how does that work
um mayor councillor vasquez i don't
believe ours goes to the secretary of
state um i don't know if
rob would have any information on that i
think it stays with us locally
okay um so if somebody
oh i see robert unmuted there okay
no i i i thought the information it did
go some sort of a copy to the secretary
of state but i didn't look at the
regulations to be sure
oh okay um well i think it's important
to yeah just to to get that information
up there i guess if somebody if a local
resident any one wanted to request a
copy of your campaign finance report uh
currently under our existing system
where it's not searchable
you have to go to the city clerk's
office and request the copy is that
correct christine
so mayor counselor vasquez i actually
have all the campaign finance uploaded
on the website
um it is a little more difficult to find
them you have to go through
several steps um so that that would be
the benefit definitely of having a
portal that is searchable and easy
access
okay thank you thank you um and yeah
again i fully support that and thank you
for thinking of that christina and being
proactive also the online enrollment or
application um to to for to hold local
office or to run for local office i also
think that that's
really needed right i think it's just
part of modernizing our system so thank
you so much
and then i have one other question here
i know during the
uh i guess when when when the the
ranking of the candidates is going to be
listed on the ballot um i think you call
in the candidates and they draw kind of
a name out of a hat or a number out of a
hat and then that's the way it's done is
there a way to perhaps do that
automatically as well so you don't have
to have candidates in the office doing
that or any thought to that
um
oh sorry my screen just went black um
so mayor councillor vasquez um whenever
we adopted the local election act and
the county started running our elections
for us
they actually um do it through the
secretary of state
and so um
during the 2019 election we didn't have
anybody coming to our office to draw
ballot positions
thank you although that was fun but
thank you um
um well thank you christine those are
all my questions for now appreciate the
update and support these changes and
thank you mayor
thank you councillor flores
thank you mayor
and thank you to my colleagues for their
excellent questions um
i i just i have a
question about the contributions and
thank you um miss rivera for uh taking
um
you know just taking the initiative to
uh change this
um things that thing problems that were
issues that probably existed before uh
ranked choice um
voting and certainly um
for updating wanting to update them
unicode so i have a question about i
have several questions one is what is
the contribution limits that you just
ran through
i just did you say twenty five hundred
twenty three hundred
is it twenty three 23.
currently it's 2300 as the max
right that's what i thought of state has
a max of 5 000.
okay but our local elections are 23
i heard the twenty three and the five
and i thought you were saying it was
twenty five so i just wanted to clarify
that
council flotus that was said a few years
back to mirror that of congress
but congress has now increased the 2800
i think so just thought i just thought
i'd share with you that history so it
was several years ago that the council
then wanted to put the max
the same limit of that of a
congressional candidate could receive
and it was 2300 way back then
so now it's 2800 so i just thought i'd
share that with you
are you saying it should go up
no no i'm just telling you so no i i
seriously doubt
very few people get 2 800 for a city
council or a mayor's race i mean there
are a few i'm sure
but
you know
okay all right thank you mayor for that
um and then the um affidavits um
that would be by the candidate himself
or herself correct
okay and um
as far as
um
oh wanting it wanting the campaign
science issue to go into the municipal
code
is there anything in the language either
in the muni code or in the
land use code
about the places where they can be
posted because
i mean there's nothing that you
mentioned here perhaps it's in the code
and i haven't read it that and private
property
and i know there was this big
brouhaha especially in the last election
where there were just signs all along um
[Music]
uh cal shore south telstra
uh where it uh
you know where it tease off into um for
spruce
i think it's spruce yeah spruce and just
signs galore and people saying it's
private property you can have that and
then also at the corner of trevis and
and spruce
so what's story on where they can be
located is earth or
not what's the story but do you know
whether there is uh language in
either the munich code or in the
campaigns uh in the uh land use code
about that
location
yeah mayor councillor flores um rob and
i actually were
part of that
south tel shore sign deal um so i
remember it clearly and
we couldn't i couldn't find anything in
the code that says where you can and
cannot other than sign um in the line of
traffic
um i don't know if rob remembers
anything different um but i couldn't
find anything
so then that means that you can just
put a sign up anywhere you could litter
the city all those empty lots
if i may interject um council fotus the
reason that sign on travis and and
spruce that you're talking about is on
city property
you can't have signs on city rights away
that's no you can't that's why they had
to be removed
they they were removed your honor
yeah they were
they were i guess they went up
right yeah
except one particular candidate
refused to remove hers and she said she
was gonna call the media and say that
someone else had reported it but
for the most part they all removed them
they did because that's city property
well next election i'm gonna drive by
every day 24 hours a day to make sure
you're right okay so um thank you so
much for um
for for doing this uh this over
all you uh attorney cabello
um
and uh thank you so much and i hope we
have a good read in april
thanks again mr vienna thank you mayor
thank you councillor ben cuomo
thank you mayor and yes thank you so
much um city clerk christine
i think we are very lucky to have you um
and these are excellent recommendations
and suggestions um i especially love
the online tools and platforms i
definitely think we're
running some outdated elections in the
city for being such an awesome city i
think it's a little outdated so
um i think those online platforms are
really incredible and honestly i think
that definitely to the transparency of
elections which i believe should be
fully transparent
um i do have a couple questions and
thoughts just on the on the since we
were on the conversation of signatures
i
deeply believe that
um honestly for a really long time
elections have been very exclusive
they've been really reserved for
um
historically across the country
wealthier
people
um and
honestly i don't necessarily think that
um
a candidate being able to collect a
certain amount of signatures says
whether they're more committed or not i
think sometimes it could say you raise
more money and you hired more people to
collect signatures for you right
so i also i really so
i don't actually think that um
a signature requirement to get on the
ballot is
necessary um i think if you want to get
on the ballot you should be able to the
hard work comes after that anyway right
i do particularly for council meetings
right for council positions um
obviously i don't we don't get to have a
say on larger uh elected positions but
for the city
i honestly would be open to potentially
for the mayor's
um position to have because they're at
large but honestly i'm okay if it
doesn't i really believe that it could
exclude a lot of people
um and i don't actually think it's a
matter i do think it's a matter of
fairness but sort of on the on the other
end um as to who should be able to get
on a ballot and frankly anybody should
unless of course
um to my second question and point is
the issue of accountability
and um i really appreciated you bringing
that up because i don't think it's
something that we often think about
um
but in terms of those accountability
pieces christine
how do you
imagine that process to look like i
don't imagine that the county clerk is
the sort of enforcement authority on
this it would be ultimately your office
right so what or perhaps with legal what
would that look like what what's the
follow-up look like with candidates who
don't turn in certain things what is the
reporting look like what so sort of can
you have you thought about that process
and what it would look like
um mayor councillor bencomo
right now it's a lot of me emailing and
calling
candidates
which is time consuming um
and i don't always get a response either
so that's the difficult part um
the portal would be
so helpful because i can set up
reminders in there i can set up um late
fees i can set up um where if you don't
have all this stuff then you can't file
it you know that that's really where
it's going to be helpful as far as the
accountability
um the other thing is um
if if you don't
close out your stuff in a timely manner
i mean you can't run again
i mean
we we did look at other potential
accountability
um factors and and i can let rob go into
that but it's much more difficult to try
to govern people that way um i mean we
do have late fees
doesn't mean that they're necessarily
going to get paid
so um but i don't know if rob wants to
speak to the fact that we
did look at
you know um
some kind of court action but that's
really not feasible
okay um robert did you want to chime in
or
or no
we might have lost him
um
as far as like the
some of the questions went out can
somebody repeat the question for me i
need some bed with issues i'm sorry
that's okay robert i was just asking
christine in terms of
um the process for accountability and
how um you all have thought about
what that will look like
well i think one of the things we're
looking at is going
for sanctions that are definitely not
criminal
because to have that
i'm able to have that i mean let's say
if it's a citation i mean you have to
prove that beyond reasonable doubt it
becomes more complicated you have to
provide
the opposing once it goes to trial or
even goes to the litigation of that
process you have to give them witness
interviews it becomes more of a hassle
for the clerk
it sort of
it's something better to handle through
the process of all you prevent them from
running again which i think is kind of
fair
um perhaps it's even more fair because i
mean
there's a question about why do you
there's another question about do you
want to criminalize something like this
right at least a whole different other
set of questions do you want to do that
when you could have a number of other
sanctions that are just probably just
probably more effective
getting what you want regarding the
accountability part let's see if we can
get videos yeah no i definitely agree
with that robert and i i mean i think it
also just caused the question of
transparency if you can't be transparent
during the campaign
then i don't know there might be some
issues after you get elected so um no i
totally agree i think that's super fair
i was just curious in terms of
internally then what that would look
like for you all but it seems like
christina's saying that
online platforms would
um
really support
those
efforts um actually and then my last
question
is really back on the signature
if that if we did implement that again
well christine what does that mean for
you in terms of verifying signatures
right i would imagine that you would
have to do that as well
mayor councillor ben como
previously we only had about a week to
verify signatures
which with
for example last election 20 candidates
that's a lot of signatures that we have
to um go through we also have to um
take time to go to the county and look
at their their voter list um on top of
that when we're going through the voter
list if they're not registered under the
correct name
then that also becomes a problem
um and and that had did happen to us
before in a previous election
so it's time consuming it can be done
i'm not saying it can be done and i
don't want to discourage it um but it is
a time consuming process
okay thank you that's super helpful to
understand on your end as well
um thanks again christine for bringing
this forward
yeah let you know i'm gonna have to just
jump in on the petition
so
you know christine you can also change
the dates right it doesn't have to be
one week to verify you can you can yeah
you can have let me tell you why
you know
and and um
i think there was nine candidates
two of
two candidates
one spent zero dollars and one spent a
hundred dollars you don't need to spend
money to go get signatures you can go
with a clipboard you don't even need a
card you can just have a you you know
you want to put one of those hey hi my
name is and and you know but if you want
to talk about transparency you can you
don't even have to know the media the
public doesn't even know who's running
for office until the day they show up
which we i think there was one that did
that
so
um
you know 100 signatures
does does show some commitment and
instead if you just have some person who
just wakes up that morning and says yeah
i think i'm going to run for city
council or i think i'm going to run for
mayor
you know i um
in fact there were so many that that the
the media when they're holding these
these uh candidate forms there's so many
you can't even get your
i mean it's good for the incumbent it
doesn't help the challengers any
not that i'm here to help challengers
but it doesn't help the challengers any
because they can't get their word in
edgewise because there's so many that
they can that have to go through it and
half of them three four a fourth of them
aren't even serious candidates
there's maybe it was on their bucket
list to do and then that's it
so i think having signatures i would
support it i think that the 25
for council and 100
for mayor is fine in fact i think a lot
of you may not even know this but if we
didn't have that i don't i don't think i
would have won an 07
because there was a candidate there was
another person who ran but got
disqualified because their their
signatures were weren't city residents
and thank goodness for that because they
would have been on the ballot and you
know i don't think i would have won so i
just wanted to say that can i
say something to that mayor yeah sure i
mean yes i guess this would get
discussed out with the entire council i
just don't necessarily think that
um
you being able to gather signatures or
sorry can you hear my dogs i think the
mailman is here apologies for that
um you'd think that after a whole year
they'd be used to it um
what was i saying okay yes so i don't
necessarily think that um you being able
to gather 25 signatures means that
you're going to be a serious candidate
or not and i think we're adding a whole
bunch of additional work for the city
clerk
um that definitely um
well there while there will be a ton of
more work that has to be done you still
have to meet deadlines you still have to
do certain amount of things to be able
to um
to get across the finish line that
doesn't have to do anything with
financial reports or any of that right
like the work is really
um after you get on the ballot and so um
i don't know i don't necessarily think
um it's a fair system for
um people who might not who
are like i don't know just somebody
who's passionate about city government
and wants to get on the ballot and
maybe doesn't know that much i i think
if you want to get on the ballot you
should be able to get on the ballot yeah
get on the ballot and get get some
signatures go knock on some doors go
have your friends get them to make sure
they're legit
it's going to take more than a day
because a good candidate is going to
gather three times that amount they need
25 get 75 because you know some aren't
going to match but and it doesn't cost
any money i'm sorry it's free you don't
need that and so i don't want you know
you wanna if you really like government
that much then go knock on some doors
and show that you are serious because uh
you look at the candidates who spent
zero dollars you really think you're
gonna win the mayor's race spending zero
dollars you're gonna do that i mean
i know the only one i know who can do
that is leticia benavidez
you know she's incredible who spends
nothing and gets elected which
i don't know she's writing a book we
didn't have a signature requirement in
and it didn't prevent me from knocking
on probably
every single door in district 4. so i
just don't think
you being able to gather signatures is
incumbent upon how serious of a
candidate you will be or not
i have to disagree
okay so i just wanted to jump in on
there so it looks like we have uh
counselor abita stevie and the mayor pro
tem
thank you mayor um
and actually uh thank you counselor ben
como for a couple of the questions that
you
you asked and i think it just kind of
circles back with some of the items here
that i think actually are helpful
um and when we're talking about the
accountability
and as christine mentioned that uh
financial repercussions aren't exactly
always the best measure to make that
accountability happen and so
just asking for those types of reports
and closeouts before a candidate would
run again i think really helps establish
that type of accountability and perhaps
is a is a better way to go because um as
you pointed out um
anybody in this position i think should
be an advocate for that type of
transparency um
including in the process before we're
even elected that helps demonstrate i'm
i think our echoes and how we are as
candidates so i think those are good
things to have
um
and i also tend
to um fluctuate on
if i feel
that signatures are a good
um
measure of getting on the ballot as well
um when i talked with christine about
this i went back and forth
on one hand i do think it does show
commitment um and perhaps more of a
community connection which is always
helpful for
your actual election but at the same
time i really am a person i
i honestly think if anybody wants to be
on the bell you should be and there
should not be those barriers to that
access and you get a chance to have
perhaps very different types of
candidates
without
um any sort of barrier so you do get an
opportunity to have somebody from a
different
age group or
background uh
you know economically perhaps somebody
who has
a disability that um going out and about
what is not as easy or accessible for
them so it leaves a lot more opportunity
to have everybody
um be able to put their name on that
ballot and then of course there is hard
work and that's going to come and you're
going to have to prove um why you would
be the best representation but that uh
barrier is not there to begin with and
so
um
if there is i i do think um that perhaps
proposed
um
signatures um they don't seem excessive
um if there is something if the council
as a fool decides to do something like
that we don't want to make those
excessive but i do think it'd be better
to
have it open and then candidates do have
to stand on their own
and showcase who they are and if there's
a lot then it's going to be a lot harder
work but that's a challenge that i think
a lot of people are willing to take
so
so thank you and thank you christine
so i can't counsel i didn't quite
understand so are you for signatures or
not for signatures
no
in the end
in the end no because i think candidates
still need to
they are still having to stand on their
own um and i think
they
we don't need to have any sort of
barriers for the access to just be on
the ballot
that we need to have that access and
then if it does make it more challenging
then it just makes everybody i think
work a little bit harder and they're
going to have to showcase themselves in
a much stronger way or more unique ways
okay mayor protem
thanks mayor first let me just
i'm very thankful christine that he took
the initiative
i definitely agree about
coming into the 21st century with
electronic packets i think that is going
to be um really helpful
um in terms of
you know campaign finance ordinance
changes i i agree i think we need to to
mirror similarly what the secretary of
state i can't even imagine
how difficult right that
that it could be having you know two or
three different
systems and and whatnot so
um
in inter in terms of accountability uh
absolutely i think that needs to happen
and the affidavits would be
you know i often have felt like
asking my campaign manager that's it
just close out the
the you know close out the the fund if
you will and it just felt sort of
there was a missing piece if you will
and i always err on i want
people to
feel like i was transparent and and and
i would
if
if they asked what you know does my
campaign finances look like be happy to
give them that information but i think
being able to do that electronically
having
you know people have that access is
going to be really important and then
when i first when i got elected and we
looked at the changes right um
that robert was mentioning i was a huge
proponent of increasing the signatures i
thought 25 was
pretty limiting you know i didn't think
it was enough um
and i still feel that way i i i really i
understand what counselor um bingo and
cancer abit this duvet is you know of
course we want as many and different a
diverse group of folks
interested
um
um you know should should do that but i
i also feel the signatures is a piece of
it when you look at any state and
federal
um positions you're you're being asked
to to fill out positions i mean excuse
me signatures you feel you're you're
asking for signatures and i don't think
it should be different from a
municipality standpoint to include the
commissioners i believe they have to get
signatures as well
um and so i i i agree and i'm i'm
you know i'd like to reinstate it at 25
and i'm sort of i'm back and forth um
like counselor vasquez maybe it needs to
be increased some as well
um
let's see
campaign signs yeah i know there's
always a big issue i always like made
sure
um
i think that's really important and
um
i think if we had um
um
something that was more definitive right
that defined it better
i don't i don't think you would get the
kind of questions right christine i
think that you get um which is an
enormous amount and and then i love that
you're going to take more of a
um
you know going to the county building
and being there so that we didn't have
to go back and forth i we did that the
first time right and
um even the second time i believe right
i think i had to go back and make sure
we submitted um the paperwork um to the
the city clerk and that's a lot of it's
a lot of work right for everybody
involved um it's already when you're new
to the process stressful enough and and
so you being there welcoming people if
anybody has any questions i just love
that you're taking more of the
initiative and a real responsibility in
terms of educating the community about
ranked choice voting and
um you know
making sure that people wanna
um
you know um
be on the ballot or the voting all those
things that i think are super super
important and i i love that the
coronation and collaboration christine
that you want to sort of keep
um you know moving forward with the
county clerk's office so thank you so
much i hope that was helpful
okay um you know what let me just say a
couple comments here because i i've been
waiting for everyone at least have their
one say and then i'm going to turn the
council ben cuomo and vasquez if if they
may
so
because they may answer some of these
questions so let me start with a couple
of them that i wrote down uh christine
so on
i i can applaud you and you wanted to do
a robust campaign on on
getting how ranked choice voting works i
just want to make sure that you're not
going to use any particular race as an
example you know you know that means
highlighting a particular race and using
those names over and over you're going
to use something that's different okay
good just want to make sure about that
uh
i already addressed the campaign limit
it makes no difference to me with 2300
2800 i just wanted the council to know
how that you know that's kind of an odd
number right 2300 well that's why it
happened because that's what it used to
be a long time ago when congress was
there
uh we already talked about the petition
signatures and
you know um
yeah i i've i've had to do 25 when i was
a city councilor and 100 for mayor and
um i think they're i think that's okay
mayor put tim i you know if you go if
council wants to go higher well okay but
i think now that's you know 25 like i
said you really should do 75 if it's 25
because there's always going to be some
that don't live in the county i mean
they live in the county they're not
registered they maybe used to be
registered 10 years ago and they're no
longer registered so i'm okay with that
but if there was
if there wasn't support for signatures
and i was thinking there needs to be
some way to identify who these people
are so maybe like two weeks
you you stop sending out um packets two
weeks before the filing date so that so
that whoever signed up you just signed
up hey i want to pack it then you're we
know you're going to be a candidate or
at least perceived to be
okay and and i i think unless things
have changed the county commissioners
all they had to do is pay 50 bucks to
get on the ballot i don't think they had
to get a signature on the county i'll
unless this change i i don't
uh the signs
the 32 square feet basically means
the four by eight
but what i would like to see addressed
is there was this one candidate and i
forgot what he ran for he ran for one
office didn't win they ran for senate he
didn't win
and he wears this uh black hat and black
outfit and he's on a mobile home he's on
a motor home
right and even one of the candidates for
mayor la in 2019 had it on their own
vehicle
and it was bigger than 32 square feet so
i think those need to be addressed
because that puts an unfair advantage to
those
and i don't i i didn't hear that talked
about i also uh think and kind of along
the lines of councillor flores it'd be
nice i'm sure the city can provide a map
of our city rights of way and let them
know no signs are to be loud on city
rights away or they will be removed
that way they can't candidates can't use
the vile threat well i'm going to report
you because i know you called the the
city on me and now you're you're in the
right of way and you can't be using
those those that's if we don't allow the
public to use city property for their
own benefit we can't use them to benefit
for a city sign either
and
that's the way i look at it
and i think that's oh yeah and then the
notification system you know what when
you may email it out i think the
the media the public's whoever needs to
know these have been nailed down because
there's a good chance they're going to
be a candidate
so that's all i had to say um
okay now i'll go to
counselor income
thanks mayor um
yes definitely agree on some of those
points um
i just have to circle back to the
signature requirement because to me this
really is an issue of equity and
actually mayor pro tem
on the federal level i think it's even
more flawed that there is a signature
requirement for
um for candidates to go on a ballot
because really to me that's a matter of
power privilege and money at the end of
the day if if you're a federal if you're
a candidate running for federal office
and you have more money and potentially
more power or influence than someone who
is in a smaller party
um perhaps you're not one of the two
main parties system whatever i think it
actually creates an even
more
inequitable system for people who are
deeply connected to their community and
deeply care about their community but
perhaps don't have
the resources that some other people
have to for you to be able to get on the
ballot and that shouldn't exclude you if
you have less money that should not be
an automatic disqualifier for
running for public office that's that's
exactly where this whole system is
deeply flawed so
um again i think it's problematic to
think that
um if you're able to get a hundred
signatures that somehow you're more
connected to the community i don't
necessarily think that's true
um if we do if we have this
and again i don't want people to think
like well she just doesn't want to do
the work because trust me when i ran
i did the work i'm a community organizer
i could get 25 signatures i could get
100 signatures in a couple of days
frankly it's not a matter of that it's a
matter of if we're going to have open
and fair elections then we should be
able to ensure that
we can't control what state does we
can't control what federal government
does but we can control what we do here
in our city and we can definitely make a
more transparent and more fair and
equitable system for people to be able
to run for office and i don't think
adding
um additional um barriers for that makes
that system possible
you know thank you counselor if i may
jump to larry nichols and jennifer vega
brown so let's go with larry real quick
and then jennifer
maybe they had something to do on the
signs yes uh thank you mayor larry
nichols community development for the
record
i'll just make a brief comment
regarding the this sign the political
signs
uh it is as christine
mentioned we are in a review on the
zoning ordinance which the signs are
part of the zoning ordinance update but
basically there are some very
clear
uh provisions in our code that govern
political signs uh one of the things
that we do have a challenge is that at
the end of campaigns
and the signs uh being removed
uh we we have to work in coordination
with the code enforcement folks
to have that accomplished but
we we certainly know
uh the the code and the regulations on
it
and we pursue that after every election
uh just a few comments mayor thank you
very much
yeah usually the waiters get their signs
out because they don't want to get
deemed that they have not removed them
within so much time a lot of times the
losers that's something whatever i lost
that's true
okay uh jennifer you have a comment
thank you mayor and council um this is
jennifer vega brown your city attorney i
just want to kind of
mirror what larry is saying one of the
things that we have to look very
carefully at
is our sign ordinance and make sure that
we are aligned with
reed versus the city of gilbert arizona
that
case changed every city in this country
it has drastically changed many things
that we do
and the progeny of cases that have come
after that
from everything from signs to
panhandling to sleeping in the streets
um that is a very important case so we
just need to make sure before anything
um that we are aligned with that it's
it's ever-changing but um we'll make
sure that we do that
so what did it change uh on the campaign
political campaign sign you know the
main point
um
generally
it had to it's been a while since i've
read that case it generally had to do
with um real estate directional science
and
um it content based in
no political science we already know
this though this was this is
well-established law
that um first amendment doesn't allow
for content based it has to be neutral
and so
um if you have a rule or law that only
pertains to political signs you're going
to run into a first amendment problem so
everything has to be neutral and
not content-based
okay
since we're on the subject of signs let
me just ask christine real quick or you
or larry so christine i've seen one
candidate do this
pretty interestingly
he took a four foot
eight foot by two foot which is 16
square feet
but he he he stacked him one on top of
the other so there's like three big
signs
so does our does which would make it
48 square feet instead of 32 does our
ordinance say
not just the sign because he can easily
argue hey my sign is less than 32 square
feet but when you stack them one on top
of the other which i have to say look
pretty impressive because you drive
around and you see three sides on top of
each other it gets your attention but
that was 48 square feet does our
ordinance say the total square footage
the sign can't be x amount and the total
square footage can be a certain amount
mayor um i believe there is something in
the code i'll defer to larry but i
believe that it can't be at a certain
height level
i've only i've only seen that done once
in
my 20 30 28 years 30 years
you know i've seen that one one election
he's no longer in office but he was in
office for an awful long time
and um and that was a pretty impressive
move that he did
okay jennifer did you have anything else
no okay uh counselor vasquez
thank you man um thank you yeah good
discussion i appreciate everybody's
thoughts here um i think you know i
think i said i was i could go either way
on the signatures and
um yeah some good arguments for and
against i think
for me um
really what i wanted to get to the
bottom of on this is like
that somebody doesn't purposefully take
an election by putting forth false
candidates and then like screwing up the
election because i could see somebody
potentially doing that um
and i know again i think with the ring
choice voting system hopefully that gets
eliminated right but like it would just
be awful to see somebody
you know put 10 people up to to sign up
essentially that aren't really um just
for the purposes of like messing with
the odds or something like that um so
christine have you given any thought to
that or if that is possible even with
our ranked choice system because if it's
not then i don't see
a strong reason to have the signatures
there
mayor concert vasquez
um i know that in
when ranked choice voting first came up
we did discuss um a cap of the number of
candidates that could run
but i don't know if that was something
that was legally viable
um i'll defer to rob because i know that
we had discussed that at one time
does
i'm sorry does jennifer want to speak
i saw her shaking her head
or jennifer i defer to either
erin castle this is jennifer vega brown
um
i certainly wouldn't
advise um that we would limit the number
of candidates
that would have to be very very uh
carefully considered before we
determined to do that
thank thank you christine thank you
jennifer um yeah so i'll just say you
know i don't uh i don't think it's a big
deal hopefully it doesn't happen i don't
think it happened um but i just i know
that in other elections that that has
been the political strategy of the of
the
of the um
uh
oftentimes the dominating party or or
whoever it might be to like put a one or
two or three however many candidates in
there to mess with the odds enough to
where
um it's really kind of creates an
artificial um
election in a way that um uh you know
you don't really have folks honestly
looking to to attain that office um
but that that might be a far-fetched
thing uh for for local elections here so
i will uh yeah i will concur and um i
think uh
yeah let's not let's not require
signatures um it seems like that's the
consensus here and so let's move forward
with that and um appreciate the
questions on all the signs i think
it's always gonna be tough the way i see
it there's always gonna be violations
year after year people are opportunistic
um i know everyone's looking for those
those lots and all those friendly places
to put signs up and oftentimes
you know there are some
violations that happen
one thing to consider and i don't know
maybe this could be on the county
clerk's office or on the city clerk's
office's uh website as well but
oftentimes i know people are searching
for
ownership of a particular lot or a
particular corner or property and so i
don't know if there would be like an
easy to search
property ownership records on the city
clerk's website perhaps where
if somebody is looking for the ownership
of a particular address so that they can
determine if it's private city or county
that they're able that that candidate is
able to get that information
um because i know i get asked all the
time like hey do you know who owns this
lot do you
like do you know if it's safe to put a
sign here
and i have an app on my phone that shows
me all the properties of ownerships and
so i usually do use that but
that might help with some of the
confusion or at least offer that as a
resource on the city clerk's website
so
thank you christine thank you mayor
so let me ask council do any of you ever
heard of the name joseph larusso
probably not
so when jfk
ran for congress joseph kennedy found
that he was running against a guy named
joseph larusso he found another joseph
larusso so there were two joseph
larusso's one and two and that's how gfk
got elected to congress so
um but
uh yeah no true story really and so but
counselor florida's i mean councilor
vazquez i haven't really heard from
councillor sorg
and counselor flotus on the on the
petition signatures i don't know i mean
i i still think that 25 isn't that much
really um i think it's got a lot of a
lot of credibility
to it to you know really
you know like i said or or do the
the two-week advance either one i think
the whole key is
let the cat let the person know let the
public know who's running for that seat
and if they don't do the signatures okay
then i think about how do you feel about
uh uh
you know there's a certain time limit
the packets won't be sent out anymore it
won't be email you have to have your
name on there and then after that then
two weeks later then we know who the who
the candidate is you know that way there
that's a compromise you know if you
don't want signatures and but i think
i think it's important not to um
not to have someone just wake up that
day and just say i think i'm going to
run
you know i really do i i mean that
that's happened twice that i'm aware of
they wake up that day and say i think
i'm just going to run for
county commission or i then would run
for another seat
so counselor flores and counselor beta
studio
well thank you mayor and again thank you
christine and robert um attorney caveo
and uh jennifer for your input here um
i um
i'm not i don't have any problems with
the signatures i i don't understand i
mean i totally respect um
a beta student counselor beta stewie and
counselor juana bencomo
their
equity issues
uh
to a point but i don't think that
i think requiring someone to get those
signatures i think is a first step to
really it's like you know putting you
know your toe into the water
and i think it is a sense of commitment
i think that um
i mean i
i you know i haven't run across
that issue in my
you know i've worked on campaigns
i worked on john kennedy's campaign
and by the way i have a gift for you mr
mayor
so you didn't know who joseph larussa
was or are you talking about his uh oh
you know we're talking about junk head
yeah yeah i'm saying i'm saying you know
i worked on local elections because you
know my dad was active and stuff like
that
and and um you know we we never ran into
those sorts of problems and all the you
know many many many many countless
campaigns i've worked on over the
decades and but to me it's like
you know when i know when um
yeah i you know i know when you know
some of my friends have run for office
and they say you'll collect these
signatures
um
it's really you know it's really nice
because you go out there and you meet
people that you know and and and you
find out what their feelings might be
and it's also a a weather vein to see
how maybe the incumbent is doing at
least that was my
you know my experience um
so i and and i understand that there may
be some people you know i wish we had
diana mudio trujillo
paraplegic and
has won successful races as mayor of
anthony and now on the county commission
to see how she
fared and how
all that and i don't even know if they
require signatures in those areas but
anyway um i you know i really don't no i
i don't i don't see it as an issue
of depriving someone of their right to
run for uh public office
i i i don't and i and i think that um
you know i i just you know
i i just don't
so um i think
that i think the signatures
uh christine did you say that it it's
difficult to um
it's difficult to verify all those
signatures in terms of
uh you know so say a person like there's
another i think there's one or two other
yvonne flores is in the city of las
cruces i don't know
it was a professor who uh
who retired about
three years ago i think her middle
initial is r
and a friend of mine said i didn't know
you were stat you know you were a
professor at nmsu and i said no i'm not
but um
so is there
do you have problems in verifying those
signatures
once you know once you get to the 25
mark i mean is it hard to find 25 people
are kosher
um mayor counselor florida's no it's not
difficult at all the only difficulty is
when they go by a nickname
um we verify the name by the address so
that has to match up on the voter
registration
it's not difficult at all it's just it
takes a lot of time and that's it but
it's not difficult
and then you you also ran into a lot a
lot of time uh consuming efforts with
the rvc
or rcb
up with ranchos was because it opened up
the
uh
especially in one particular race there
were so many people i'm not going to
mention that race but there were so many
people it's you know without due respect
um no it was wonderful it was wonderful
to have that diversity up there it
really was
yeah but um
okay all right and then i have another
question and and it's sort of a
companion question to all of this
um how does it affect recall elections
is there any is there any uh
any
fallout as a result or a potential
fallout
the recall
petitions i remember i worked on um
i worked on the campaigns
of war gill and nathan and olega
you know
back when
what happens then do they need what do
those people do when they want to recall
an elected official
years ago
yeah american vasquez we actually
changed that in the chart that's
counselor flores
i've been calling worse it's okay
um we actually did change that a couple
years ago um and actually was the one
who worked on that so for specifics i
can differ for him on that
who worked on it gail
rob cavale oh rob worked on it rob
do you
remember councillor flores
without knowing all those i don't
remember all the specific details but we
did and i'll do some quick research
right now we did make changes we went to
the actually went to the electorate to
make those changes do we have to make
changes in the uh
to our charter
and
rob i think the biggest change was you
couldn't just recall and on a whim
you actually had to have oh yes it's an
office and that's where they were going
after gill and and olga and nathan
they were just because of the minimum
wage but now it has to be more substance
you know they would have to really mess
up an office and
do some things that i think it mirrors
the school board i think that's what we
use as a
mirror you're crazy
i apologize
no that was the major change was that it
was enumerated as for what like there
had been malfeasance or some sort of a
abuse of the office
and then from there it was an enumerated
process
and it was um
that was actually what would
okay i recall that now thank you very
much mr cabello thank you uh christine
and thank you mayor
councillor uh beta stewie
thank you mayor
um
going back um just one time um this if
there is an agreement um
for those that are in favor of
making signatures um a requirement later
on i was just going to suggest that
rather than making changes to packet
times
that might
actually
uh when packets could be
handed out to candidates that might
actually change different types of thing
uh timelines
that
um within the campaign that we may or
not be able to do so if we're
giving different deadlines for
um
you know information that may
require other uh
a look at the county um rules and or
state rules um beyond just our municipal
stuff so if there was an issue i was
gonna suggest that doing the signatures
was a better option than the packets
okay
okay okay
i'm sorry
nope let's go right ahead no no no i
don't know when you whenever you finish
no that
was it
thank you all right kel all right
councillor sorg you are the man of the
hour it looks like right now we need to
know what you're thinking here
signatures or no signatures
which i don't think you've ever run
without having to do signatures you've
always had to get signatures which i
don't think has been very difficult
yeah getting signatures isn't that i
think we ought to have a hundred
signatures
a hundred for a city council seat
yep
why don't you just go back to the way it
was at 25
i i just you know it's just something i
mean you could theoretically do it in a
day you know really you could sure you
can yeah and you know i had no problem i
would get 200 signatures i know it's
easy
we turn in 500 but you know 25 is
nothing but it's something it takes them
at least a day or two at least the media
the public knows hey this person is
campaigning here you know the word gets
out hey someone says running you know
you don't you don't want them waking up
that day so
yeah 225 is okay
all right
oh well looks like the majority would
like signatures 25 signatures city
council 100 for mayor
that's good i think that's good i really
do it's not that good
and i think it's good you know just it's
good all the way around it
so
all right
anything else on your
oh and then you're going to look into
those signs i mean i really think that
that's kind of unfair because this guy
what was his name black hat black
clothes he said over there on spruce and
this big huge motor home
yeah yeah
yeah yeah i think we all know who you're
talking about the guy
harvard law graduate and then you wonder
okay but yeah and he also lives on
spruce and so his house
oh
that might be a little bit different
especially with coconut there's nothing
else to do but you know take a tour of
the city
seriously yeah he so what happens when
it's on their property and he has you
know his big huge huge uh motor home
um in front of his house
it's on his private property i don't
know that might change jennifer
what do you think
does it change or not change oh robert
i'm sorry you're here
i forgot either one of you i guess
i'll defer to the city attorney
marion council i i believe that person
has already vacated that premises
but
is that not going to run
it's not there anymore but now in the
future
in the future though
yeah in the future well i think the
question i think the question comes down
to whether or not that
that was an actual sign because it was
on the side of a motor home so there was
probably a loophole somewhere that that
didn't qualify as an official sign so
um we'll take a look at that
okay
all right
okay is that it christine
um yes mira i'll go ahead and work with
rob on bringing something back on the
petitions and then i'll be bringing
forward the changes to the campaign
finance ordinance next month
okay thanks
thank you thanks everyone
thank you
all right so now we're going to go to
the animal service center merci valley
as
cmv ordinance review and mr clint
thacker i believe is going to be making
the discussion
excuse me mayor
i'm sorry this is eric enriquez
assistant city manager i'll be
introducing this one okay uh this this
is a uh ordinance um
revision on the animal ordinance because
the animal ordinance is so huge
we have a
gino jimenez animal control officer that
will be
doing the presentation on how the
significant changes affect animal
control and then we'll have mr clint
docker speak on how those changes affect
the animals uh service center
and since one of the items that's very
huge in this revision is community cats
the animal task force has um a subject
matter expert athena huckabee that she
will also give a presentation on that
and then everyone will be available at
the end for any questions that council
may have so with that i'll turn it over
to animal control officer
uh
gino jimenez
if you can share his screen and get
started
thanks eric you bet
good afternoon mayor city council
if i may give me a second to share my
screen
is it all visible to everybody right
here yes
very good
thank you again for the record my name
is gino jimenez i am the animal control
supervisor for the city of las cruces
as many of the counselors know we as a
task force have been working on this
revision to the ordinance for about the
last two years
um finally you know there's been a
little bit of delays and we've tried to
get uh together best we could during
this covet times
and
i think we've come to something that we
can present to council and um
get some good feedback from council and
see where we go from there
um what i'm going to present to you
initially are some major points of
interest
that are
big changes to the
current ordinance um after that uh mr
thacker will talk about the changes to
the ordinance that affect the animal
service center uh um
exclusively and then ms huckabee will
speak about the um
the community cat presentation or issue
so with that if i may begin
absolutely
so here are some significant changes um
sections uh the whole
ordinance is chapter 7 of the municipal
code
so number one and i'm going in numerical
order and these are just ones that have
gotten a lot of revision or a lot of
input
um
so section 7-1 is the microchip
requirement the current ordinance states
that an animal over the three the
age of three months or older
must be vaccinated against rabies have a
current pet license
and in implanted microchip working
implanted microchip
the proposed ordinance would change that
to steal the vaccinations
but in 7-11 it would only allow or
require
a working implanted microchip
now clint and i talked about this in
discussions in the past
the reason for this change is because
we've noticed that there hasn't been a
great deal of participation
from uh pet owners as far as licensing
their pets
however on the flip side we have noticed
that there has been a tremendous amount
of participation in microchipping
um so
if we can
keep going with that and keep that trend
um headed forward
that that's also always going to be a
good one because a microchip cannot be
lost
um like a collar or a tag a microchip is
going to be there inside that animal for
the remainder of its life
and that way if the officers the animal
control officers come upon
an animal that it's microchipped we can
actually
do our due diligence
to contact the registered dog owner and
take it back home rather than take it to
the animal service center
so that's one change
moving on to 7-18
is the public nuisance barking section
now this is more evil procedural change
than it is um as changes into the
ordinance it's still going to say the
10-minute consecutive barking nuisance
barking
um however procedurally what we'd like
to do
is change this into a three-step process
number one if a citizen complains
about a barking dog the complaint will
either go through central dispatch or
into our office
we will then send a certified letter
to the dog owner letting them know that
a complaint has been registered a
barking complaint has been registered
and to correct it then the best means
that they know how at that time
if it continues then a second
a second complaint is fielded
then we would reach out the officer
would actually go out to the dog owner
and make some contact there
and let them know that a second
complaint was made
and for them to remedy it the best that
they possibly could and give them some
education on how to fix it whether it's
socialization training or even um bark
callers
finally
if we receive a third complaint
then we would sit down the animal
control officer would sit down with the
dog owner
and the complainant as a mediation
session
and we get to sit down and work this out
between the dog owner and the
complainant
at that time then all the documentation
would be turned over to either party and
a civil uh case could be moved forward
with at that time with that
documentation that's been gathered by
animal control
moving on to section 31 a special animal
permits this actually goes with the hen
permit
it would now include drakes
now drakes are the male
duck
now if we go back and we
we remember why we started this special
animal permit is exclusively for the
hens
was for allow to allow citizens
to um
produce eggs
allow the chickens to produce eggs as we
all know roosters are not necessary for
hands to produce eggs
neither are drakes
um however
drakes do not have that same noise
factor
that roosters do um they're not as vocal
as roosters
so this proposal would allow drinks
to be held in with the ducks and still
keep it at that six
um number
pigeons um
pigeons was a very wordy section of the
previous ordinance
and to be honest with you mayor and
council i have no idea why that section
was so large
um so all it really did was define
sporting pigeons
and a um racing pigeons in definitions
and then put
um
the specific sec the specific
requirements
for pigeons in that 7-31
next moving on
we go to section
7-section 7-s-42 which is the
enforcement authority and processes
don't know why
but
it was
it was addressing barking again so it
was kind of a redundant
um wording the exact wording in 718
where that pertains to barking was also
put in 7-42
as it pertains to barking
now moving on
so the one that's really really took a
lot of our attention and a lot of our
focus was
the 7-31 special animal permit
this is highlighted as the community
cats
so
the current ordinance a sunset clause
took effect uh july 1st of 2020
and that
ordinance
allowed for
free roaming colony cap feral cats
as long as there was a feral cat
caretaker that was registered with
animal control
we only had one
um
applicant
that had a permitted
colony feral cat colony
she had eight cats
um since that time she all those eight
cats have been adopted or placed in
different homes
since that time we've had one more well
let me back up
so late in 2019
we had a
rush of individuals that wanted to
become colony caretakers
and they started kind of late in the
year
october november december knowing that
the sunset clause was going to take
effect january 1st
um the majority of them did not meet the
requirements whether it was getting all
of their animals together to spay and
neuter or getting them together for
vaccinating or ear tipping
whatever the situation was they could
not
come completely in compliance
then the um sunset close clause took
effect so there was no longer any permit
allowed for free roaming feral cat
colonies
however the ordinance still allows for
enclosed feral colonies
and we have one of those she currently
has um
eight cats in her colony
and because of covid and this is across
the board with all animal caregivers or
agencies right now
it's really hard to be placing animals
at this time so she's happy to hold on
to her eight and she's doing the best to
reach out to other agencies to help to
see if they can help her place her eight
but she's happy with that and she
doesn't want to increase the number of
her colony
so moving forward
the community cat
permit
would allow for
unowned
um
cats to be free roaming um so
the ordinance right now would uh ask
that these colony care cakers
work with animal control in order to
either register them or so we have a
notification of where they are in case
we trap them we can call that colony cat
caretaker and
return their cat to them
now what i've done mayor and i'll move
on to my next slide
is i firs
because data has always been collected
and i know that in conversation uh that
i heard with uh councillor vasquez
earlier a couple either last year or the
year before
wanted data on the community cats
so what we started doing is mapping
um all the date all the information that
we could have cats that were impounded
throughout the city
um this is just a map of it i'm going to
zoom in a little bit
let me
share my screen again i'm going to share
a different screen
all i know uh gino is that i get all
kinds of calls that there's just a bunch
of stray cats in their yard
yes sir just it seems like just getting
more and more as the year i mean they're
all over
they're all over and mayor and yes and
it's gotten i can say
that over the last year
is probably when we've seen the majority
of our cat complaints
and
i don't want to say this one hundred
percent but
i believe it's all because of covid you
know we've had to cut down on our
services because of covid
we didn't want to
expose citizens to
us we don't know if we have
so we didn't want to expose the citizens
to something that we didn't know and
vice versa we didn't want uh citizens to
expose staff to the possibility of
covert so that was one program that
we've cut
during this covet time
i really see the need for us to getting
back into it but before we do that um
[Music]
i think we need to address this at the
council now
so sir
if i may this is a map
of the city
and it's color-coded per districts
council districts
so what i'd like to do is focus in on
just a couple of what i call hot spots
for each council district if i may
so
i will start right here
and also mayor and council this map
is available
on the clc webpage
um
it's only a read only on the web page
but you can do exactly what i'm doing
right here is zooming in on um
districts
um i only have permission to input
but if we go to district one which is
council gander mayor pro tem gandalas
um
here is an address
that you can see the number of cats that
were picked up in the last two years
wow
that's amazing
and if i move a little bit more south
and i'm only going to pick a couple per
district mayor unless you want me to do
more um but
i i no no no that's actually kind of
cool
i have a tremendous list and you know i
don't want to take up all of council's
time on this
so if you you zoom in and out
and over here on the top left portion of
the screen i can actually type in the
address
and so can you
so here is one that has gotten a lot of
attention
i believe from mayor pro tem gandara
and it's also got a lot of attention
from uh her constituents about the
number of cats in that in that area
that's that's amazing i didn't know that
so if you zoom out you'll see where it's
highlighted and the the dots look a lot
bigger
um then you can
pinpoint it and come back in
and that's just reported right yes sir
it's probably even more
when you take those they either get
tired of calling in or
or you know they were there for a little
bit and they take off so
yes sir and if i i'm going to move on to
council district 2 which is council
aveita stevie now here's one that we she
and i have talked about this
um you'll see the number of cats that
have been picked up here
that's one
and then i will move on
to a different address
if i'm going to quickly please let me
know and i can slow down
do you know this is over the last two
years you said
i
uh
excuse me whoever jumps in talking
please identify yourself i'm sorry clint
thacker director of adam sarah center
okay thank you mayor
junior is this over the past two years i
think you said
uh mayor uh mr thacker yes sir this is
from january 1st of 2019 to february 28
2021.
so here's another address
that had quite a few impounds
and now i will i'm trying to move
quickly because i don't want to take a
lot of council's time i will move into
councillor vasquez district
and then
right across the street there
there's a couple in this in this one
little corridor
there's a couple of addresses that have
a lot of
impounds
okay
then i will move on to
council bencomos
this is one that's really
concerning to us
because this is a
community vote
if we move over here this is a 1751 west
hadley a mobile home community
so you have quite a bit here on this
street and then on this street
and then there was another cluster
right over here
this is the sunny acres rv park
now i'm going to zoom out and move on to
counselor sorgs and counselor flotuses
because those are kind of far
again if i'm moving too fast please let
me know and i will slow down
so there's quite a few right here off of
jimmy lane
and then
right down the street
on alba
now i'll move on to
counselor flores
and the majority of these are up on the
east mesa in
council district six
this is council flotus's district
there's this one off of munoz
and there was a couple right over here
off of jefferson
and a big one off of grooms
if i can
zoom in on it
i think that's where she lives
so with that mayor um i am done with my
presentation i will stand for any
questions i don't know if we want to do
this as a panel with um myself
uh mr thacker and athena at the end or
if we want to answer do a question and
answer right now on my slide alone
okay looks like we have counselor
florida's councilor vasquez
councilor flores
uh thank you mayor and thank you geno
thank you um officer uh jimenez
um did you explain i had to get up cause
my dog was uh barking oh so you didn't
you didn't hear
you didn't hear it
i did hear most of it but edie was
barking no no about we showed you where
your house is and you have all these
cats
yeah yeah yeah i heard that yeah yeah
yeah
um
yeah
gino uh would you did you uh explain to
people that those little yellow dots um
don't just represent one cat but many
many many cats and then um
did you also zero in and show us how
they turn into red dots and sometimes
one one yellow dot uh produces i mean
it'll like when you show the the red
dots
shows uh
did you do that gino
a mayor council flores um
she is absolutely correct
every dot on here does not represent a
single cat
there could be multiple cats um let me
just click on it so if you click on this
one
it tells you
what was picked up there let me zoom in
a little bit more
so again everybody has access to this on
the clc webpage
and if you click on a dot
it will give you the information of what
was picked up there
come on now let me close this up now
here we go
unless i
and mayor i believe what counselor uh
loris was talking about in this
filter or this funnel here you can
actually change it
so you can look at either cats that have
been impounded for us in a particular
time frame
dogs or others
so the dogs are going to be represented
in blue
the others are going to be represented
in red
but for the purpose of this
presentation
i only did it
for cats
thank you gino thank you mayor you're
welcome now
thank you council muskets
thank you mayor and uh mayor is it
correct that we were just talking about
trying to
ask questions here about the map and
about gino's presentation we'll have a
larger discussion that's right okay
i'll keep my questions to that then
thank you mayor thank you you know um i
really appreciate this you went above
and beyond uh i think when we last had
this conversation uh part of the reason
for having this map built was just some
concern about um the density of cats in
in a couple of particular districts and
i think you know part of what i was
trying to say is that you know where
there's
where there's low to mid income housing
is where you have the most cap feral cat
problems and so
i always thought that a policy
addressing feral cats should be fair and
that we don't continue to see
concentrations of feral cats in places
that are you know lower income or more
affordable housing um because i just
don't think that's fair right especially
if we're going to have trap neutral
releases like where are we releasing
them to are we all releasing them back
into these same neighborhoods because
that's where i get the complaints you
know i get complaints from homeowners um
about you know does anyone care you know
these the cats are doing property damage
they're you know a lot of them are
scratching at their screen doors or some
of them obviously they urinate and and
so they tend to cause a lot of issues
related to that or um
and then you know i think our our
response to them in the past has been
well you gotta trap the cat yourself or
you know um you know you all these i
think
hoops that they had to jump through that
that seemed pretty unreasonable i
thought for somebody that just needs the
cat population controlled so um
just to verify this because i'm trying
to do i'm trying to look at the the the
dot on the map and draw correlation here
um and it seems honestly they're pretty
evenly split here between um like
districts one through four at least uh
but
uh gino would you say would you care how
would you characterize where you find
most of the feral cats um would you say
that that's an accurate assessment that
they're mostly in in districts one
through four
mayor uh councillor vasquez absolutely
um you'll see that in counselor uh this
councilor swords and councillor flores
you have a lot especially in councillor
flores district this area right here is
still undeveloped
so therefore she's going to have less
of a community cap or a feral cat
problem here
um if you move up into counselor sores
district
this area um north or between thurman
road and red hawk golf course is still
under development even though that
there's a tremendous amount of homes
going up there they're not all um
they don't have residents in them yet
but they're still being built
so if we drop down into
one two three and four
that's where you will see the majority
or the bigger concentration of our
fapped cats
absolutely
thank you gina i appreciate that um and
then a question for you just in terms of
the protocol um
you said these dots represent um maybe
not just one cat but an instance where
you had to go
uh perhaps and and trap a cat maybe a
series of cats
um
and so what what is the procedure there
gino when when you make these when you
get a call or you go pick up a cat to um
uh
to spare neuter it or whatever it is you
might do what what is that process like
do you document if if this is
you know the like i'm assuming you do
because you have this map here but if
it's like a problem household in which
there's multiple resident cats and
there's no current cat colony caretaker
there um what kind of report do you file
i guess i should say when whenever you
get called into these calls
mayor uh council vasquez so right now
let's just say
a complaint is made that a citizen has
caught a cat in a trap the officer will
go out there and transfer that animal
from that trap to a carrier and then
transport the cat to the animal service
center
they'll provide all the necessary
documentation
for the um asc to make a
um recommendation of how that animal is
going to be housed where it's going to
be housed and such
at that point we are done uh animal
control's responsibility
has been met
then it will become the asc's discretion
as to whether that animal is adopted
um space i mean um fostered
um euthanized or whatever disposition
they choose
if we go back
um
we have been getting complaints about
the same cat being caught
i just caught this cat yesterday it's
back today
that is probably one of the hardest
things for us to prove right now
because
but that's something that's going to
happen with the community cats
because we're trying to reduce the
number of euthanasia at the animal
service
center these cats may come back to the
same community or the same household
where it was picked up two or three days
earlier
so that may be something that we look
into down the road
um i hope that answers your question sir
uh thank you gino that's yeah that's
fine i have more questions and more
comments but i wanted to reserve them
just to this map itself um
one other quick question i just want to
make sure i heard you right so
the cat colony caretaker
uh ordinance that we've had in the books
uh how long is that how long has that
been active do you know
uh the ordinance was written in 2017 i
believe uh the last
change
um it the sunset clause took effect in
january of 20 january 1st of 2020
so colony caretakers and community
feral cat colonies are no longer
permitted
unless they are enclosed as of this
point they must be enclosed and those
colony caretakers must register with the
animal control office
okay and you said you only received one
application during that entire uh period
of time is that
we received several applications um
mayor
councillor vasquez i'm sorry about me
skipping protocol
um
we had mrs denise chavez
she's well known within the city um she
was the very first one that ever got a
feral cat colony permit with us and i
think she even advocated for us in
council when we still had it at chambers
how well the the program ran as far as
she was concerned
we had many many um that had tried but
for some reason they couldn't meet all
the requirements because it is
financially burdensome on somebody who's
trying to do
um so they couldn't do it at the time
because either they couldn't get all
their animals spayed couldn't get them
all vaccinated couldn't get them all
chipped or whatever they just
financially couldn't do it
um so they never followed through with
the entire process
then we had one that um
she got her license late last year
and she's happy with her in close colony
right now
so technically on the books
we've had one permitted
that was mrs chavez and we have one that
is currently permitted
thank you gino i i appreciate that and i
think um it's just good for reference
right in terms of how well the policy
worked or or what the what the burdens
there were for citizens to do that you
mentioned costs and
um
uh so i
just for me just hearing that i mean
definitely want to
make sure we perhaps don't go back to
that model because i think there's a lot
of well-meaning people out there who
probably you know in their right heart
definitely want to be able to take care
and claim responsibility for any number
of cats in their neighborhood or
in their backyard but clearly it's it's
a it's a hurdle financially and um
seeing these dots on the map maybe
hasn't worked too great but um thank you
gino i appreciate that and i look
forward to continuing this discussion
thank you mayor you're welcome sir
thanks uh counselor beta stewie
uh thank you
mayor and uh thank you gino um
part of being on the animal service
center board we get to see those these
numbers every month and i've really
appreciated it and you know taking the
time
we
in my district i definitely have
some
neighborhoods that have seen these
increased amounts and
coming back and honestly and it's very
heartbreaking for the owners
um that are facing these sort of issues
from cats um you know we have we have a
few really powerful stories in our
district about you know um the damage
that cats are done
um two homes um
and i am an avid cat lover i have them
i always joke i'm one cat shy of being a
full cat lady but um
you know that this is something that we
we have to take into consideration so i
have comments about section two um but i
also wanted to say thank you for some of
the other items that you presented today
um especially with uh the dog barking
ordinances and changes i think that's
going to be very helpful
and oftentimes i'm sure when you show up
to these
different calls about the ordinances the
dogs aren't barking at those time and
it's hard to be able to view all these
things so the new approach i think will
be better and then at the end um a
mediation and getting the neighbors
together to talk about the problems um
hopefully can
uh resolve some conflicts some issues or
lead to greater um you know awareness
within neighbors and neighborhoods about
stuff so i do want to say thank you and
i appreciate that and thank you again
for the hard work that you've done
especially with making these types of
uh
you know programs for us to be able to
view and then relay that out to any of
our constituents as well and thank you
mayor thank you mal
okay
mayor pro tem
yeah thank you mayor thank you to my
colleagues i know how difficult uh
you know this is we've gone
we've spent a lot of time as geno um
commented on the
the community cap portion community cat
caregiver
and so
gino i i know that you had indicated
initially there was one
um
registered cat colony but i thought
um that
thereafter there we got a slew of people
registered
um because some information education
went out um some rumors right about we
were going to euthanize all these cats
and whatnot so very quickly people
started um to to do that and then we had
the sunset claws which
you know i'm glad that we're speaking to
this but it's sort of in my mind um
a slanted view of really what's
happening because of coven um and i
think we could all agree that covet has
we've experienced probably each of us
several
calls and i i say this often i get
several calls a week
related to colonies or roaming cats and
and so
it's it's really hard to
to
i think to pinpoint what really is the
issues when all of these things happen
in sequential right we had the
we had that rumor if you will and then
we we had um the sunset clause and then
covet hit so
um which prevented i think gino's group
going you know codes going out there
animal codes
animal codes officers acos yes i had to
stop there and say yes um you know from
from really getting out there and and
helping communities and then that um
there's just not the necessary funding
and programming available um that i
think um there needs to be and then i
think all of us have hit the nail in the
head that have had comments
um
we didn't have a system that that
incorporated data
so that at the end of the day we could
say
okay from this sunset clause tnr really
did work right or the this this idea of
what we were trying to do
um and so i think you'll be happy and
and i i'll reserve you know the rest of
my comments um because i know athena
clint have i have um
presentations but i just i just wanted
to
to just confirm gino
we did have the one
registered
cat colony but then there was a slew of
them right that sort of came into the
fold
um
later
um after you know some education if you
will or the rumor mill getting going
about what would happen to these cats
yes uh mayor pro mayor protester you are
absolutely correct um
i don't know if it was the rumor or it
was the urgency knowing that the sunset
clause was coming into effect
so late in 2019
like i said october november december i
had an influx of people wanting to get
feral cat colony permits
and at the time we had because we wanted
to collect data to be able to present
council with some strong
information
at the time we waived the permitting fee
and i had something like 12 different
applicants that came in working with
them trying to get their um animals
vaccinated all the requirements that
were necessary and i know that some of
them have worked with the humane society
of southern new mexico to get their
animals spayed and neutered i don't know
why
but none of them followed through
and no none of them followed through
and the sunset clause took effect and it
was basically like we lost touch with
them
and it ended right there
so
there is some interest
there there is some interest out there
from the community that want to do this
it's just that follow-up it's that
finished
uh
continue to finish what you started
okay thank you gino i really appreciate
i just wanted to make mention that
um you know there is some genuine
interest there as you'll see and you
probably receive numerous emails like i
did related to establishing a tnr
program
and you're going to see from the task
force perspective we wanted to separate
the
community cat and we have a resolution
ready to go but we wanted
to to to present this and get your
feedback because we really believe right
now um you know the ordinance is gonna
based on whatever council's decision is
moving forward we think that we could
save a lot of cats
um if we separate and get a ca a
resolution to establish tnr program
um until we can get this
other um ordnance um
we get the feedback from council and you
know have the
first and second reading um moving
forward and and so
um just wanted to say that and and
publicly i want to thank all the folks
that have worked on the task force it
was it's been a long
long process two years of meeting um
you know on on
fridays right late in the afternoon to
to to really um
you know make sure that we got the
public's um
input
and those advocates that that believe so
so much in the and the vision that we
have for our animals here so um thank
you geno for your work um
i appreciate it welcome thanks mayor
mr flores did you have another question
you did
no sir oh okay
okay gino um was there another part to
the
you're done with your part i guess and
mr mayor yes sir i am done with my part
however i've got the um mr thacker's
presentation and miss athena's
presentation all i'm gonna do
is start sharing their presentations on
my screen and i'll be their
clicker excuse me mr mayor
yes counselor thank you
um so i just wanted to um
uh
counselor vasquez referred to feral cats
and for purposes of
what we have here in our city
there are definitions
and a feral cat is distinguished from a
community cat
and a feral cat
is a domesticated
uh animal or domesticated species that
is not behaviorally compatible with
humans
and um
so it's a and and just for purposes of
everyone's knowledge
um feral cats are put to sleep at the
animal services center
um of the messiah valley um so
it's um a good idea to look at um
community cat which is different
and um
and not confuse the two or not use a
term interchangeably
um
and
so a feral cat wouldn't be subject to
the community cat bonnie thank you mr
mayor
thank you counselor
okay so
clint you're up
thank you mayor city council appreciate
this opportunity to talk to you today
about the las cruces ordinance uh next
slide you know
clint i just need you to state your name
please i mean i know i called you clint
hunter executive director animal source
center in the city of valley thank you
sir thanks
uh the two major things that that affect
the
animal service center in this ordinance
are the microchips and also community
cat those are the two i'm going to focus
on today
in section 711 as you heard geno talk
about the microchip requirements can be
changed to remove the license
requirement now licenses are are have
always been around for been around for a
long time and what they're there for is
to regulate the rabies vaccine
so you have to get a license but the
only time you can get a license if is if
you have a current rabies vaccine they
kind of played hand in hand
well
now people are starting to question what
do i get out of my license and the
answer really is
maybe another form of id is what we get
out of it because the actual rabies is
still required by law
so what we're stating is if you could
take and remove the license part out of
it and have the microchip and still the
animal control officers would still be
able to enforce not having a rabies
so there wouldn't be any added there
everybody continues to implant
microchips and then all of the rabies
information would be sent to the animal
service in our messiah valley we'd kind
of be the hub
of that information
so
before
about a year and a half or so ago when
david dalhan reported to the city what
we did is we him and i went out to three
of veterinarians here in the city and we
asked them and their staff would you be
willing to report
the rabies vaccines
or the microchips
to the animal service center mercia
valley and at that point we didn't
really care how they got them to us by
email by fax you know they can print it
they can mail it to us they can bring it
in by hand
and it's even a few they could just call
us that was fine
we also talked about the future of
getting
some type of website set up that will be
integrated either with the ascmv so we
could do a download each day and enter
the information in or maybe even
connect it with our shelter software
where it could just be downloaded and go
in that way but and that would not
change anything that we currently have
because we have a system that you can
put an animal
owner in and then you can also put all
the animals that
are owned by that person and then what
vaccines those animals have so no added
software is going to be needed just to
originally track that
uh one thing it is going to have to have
some action by the city is in this
ordinance there's an unsterilized
microchip fee so it's separated so
that's something that the board i'm
sorry the city council is going to have
to talk about and agree on a price for
unsterilized microchip
next slide please
the next one we're talking about is
community cats
now just a quick rundown of the
community cat athena's going to get into
this more
is a community cat is a cat that shows
no sign of ownership
so when uh
councilwoman flores said there's a
difference between a feral and a
community cat the answer is yes whereas
the community cat is kind of the big
picture
and because not all cats that qualify
for a community cat are going to be
feral there may be some that are nice
but there's still no sign of ownership
this cat still lives outside
with no collar no no tags
no microchip and so on
so
just a quick crack a crackdown a rundown
of a community cat program is
let's say an area can sustain a certain
number of cats and it also can can
sustain a certain number of people of
wildlife whatever so we'll say it's 10
cats well if we take three cats and we
bring them into the center and right now
we euthanize them that leaves three
spots open for
cats to come in because cats are being
born they need place to go they're
pushed out of areas so they fill up that
tent
then a community cap program is when we
take and we
bring those three cats in but instead of
euthanizing them we sterilize them we
vaccinate them we microchip them
and then we clip just the first third
top of their ear off so we know they've
been have all these gone through i've
been through the program and then we
sent them back out to the area
about the exact place with the area of
where they were in so they go back in so
those three places are now filled with a
sterilized
healthy vaccinated cat
and the idea is to continue to do this
trap in return until all 10 animals
or all the animals in the area for a
large percentage of them
are
vaccinated
so how this is going to affect next
slide please
the euthanasia breakdown for 2020
is 321 cats were euthanized for being
feral
uh
again 321
that's the only reason why they're
euthanized is that um they were unhappy
and they were feral the next highest to
that is medical issues general for both
dog and cat
do you know next slide
now this is the total intake from the
city of las cruces in 2020 notice the
cats were brought in
by animal control that's your highest
type of intake right there
were cats now those were not all feral
cats those were not all community cats
they were all tame cats i understand
that
uh but that was our highest type of of
impound so there as gino has established
before there are a lot of cats
in las cruces city area and we need to
do something uh to address this
next slide
this is a pie chart i threw in just so
you can see that we currently are doing
community cats this is not a new program
to the city or i'm sorry to the ascmv
the county has a program that allows us
to do it so six point four percent of
our total outcome was community cats
into the county areas at 401
and then we euthanized
1026 animals and again the highest
number in that euthanasia is that 321
for community or for feral cats
next slide
this is our live release rate what that
is is uh this is shows the percentage of
animals leaving the shelter alive
for the entire year so in 2019 you'll
see the cats the green the green one was
79 percent
of animals leaving the shelter alive i'm
sorry of cats leaving the center alive
in 2020 it did down to 73.8 well 2019
the city was i'm sorry the ascmv was
participating in the city
and uh trap new to return
we were doing it
and
then uh at that time uh towards the
later end of 2019 we were told we had to
stop
because we weren't doing it correctly
which is fine we stopped and that was
the influx of
um the rumors that we're going to
euthanize and the cats that were coming
in and that was the influx of
applications that animal control
received for community cats
was for that reason is we were no longer
going to do it so we were going to
euthanize cats and that message went out
and people responded by a day again as
we know they didn't follow all the way
through
so
in 2020 our live release went down
that's partly because of the
cats that we had to euthanize when they
came into the center
well
i don't think it's the only reason but i
know that in 2020 there was an increase
in cat calls
sorry that was funny
i was going to say cat calls to the
council
but increased number of um calls related
to community cats or feral cats to the
council now this could have been
uh because of kovid where there's more
people home
spending time it could be that there's
uh the ordinance was more visual to the
public it was coming more to a public
point of view and it could also be that
we were no longer doing trap duty
returns so the number of cats was coming
up
people were seeing more of them
my professional opinion is it was a
combination of all three of course we
had we have all those things going on
made a difference but our live release
rate did go down in 73.8
uh in 2020
and that is the end of my presentation
i'll open up to any questions
thanks clint
and your other comment was funny i
appreciate that thank you
any questions
well how about think about it and we'll
go to athena
and then circle back and then questions
for everybody i guess oh counselor sword
yeah i could ask one here
i want to know how many um
cats in 2020
did you uh
trap neuter and release
how am i in the year before that
a year before that i have to look in my
book right here to get that i can get it
for you
[Music]
well that's that's okay
um so you
neuterized
404 different cats
or
wherever any of these cats already
neuterized when you collected them
that i do not know
yeah
so what you're asking is if any of them
were impounded twice
what's the cost of
the
neuter and
and uh vaccinations and so forth for
these cats how much does it cost per cat
uh i'd probably say
we we pay a veterinarian thirty dollars
uh per animal to sterilize and then
there's some staff time in that
there's some stay for the animal because
we don't always get it the next day
and then the vaccine the rabies vaccine
that we give them is i believe it's
around a dollar or so maybe two dollars
so probably around fifty dollars fifty
to sixty dollars
per cat
around that yes sir
how much does it cost to euthanize a cat
um
[Applause]
well it's probably
euthanasia is
very very cheap
and they but the difference is they have
to stay for the three days
so i probably say it's around the same
because the
the stay is what costs the most
staff's time to clean the shelter clean
the cage food
and then after the three-day stay
they're brought in
so you saying a tnr
cat then is all this is done in one day
and it's back out on the street then
after that that's the ideal time frame
yes this is a quick turnaround
okay
thank you
yes sir
thanks counselor
okay so uh athena
my name is athena huckabee
i am a resident of las cruces district
one
and i am a public health professional i
hold a master's degree in public health
also known as an mph
this advanced degree track included
training in the health of populations
biostatistics
epidemiology especially as it applies to
infectious disease community health and
health policy
my uh major was actually in um
health policy and administration from a
health perspective
um first i want you to know that when i
first volunteered to sit on the animal
care task force in september um not to
that slide yet gino but thank you
appreciate you
um
when i first volunteered to sit on the
animal care task force in september of
2018 i was told that it would probably
be a 90-day commitment as we worked
together on a new and more workable
animal ordinance
standing or sitting
zooming before you in march of 2020 2021
the road has been much longer than that
the ordinance is a result of tireless
work not just by one or two people but
by all of us that sat on the task force
including not only las cruces and dona
ana county animal control
animal services center of the messiah
valley staff
joe ruprecht phd who works with ducks
and rabbits as well as other animals and
holds a phd in human psychology and
animal ecology
marcy scott a well-known wildlife
advocate and murderer
representatives from the coalition for
pets and people action program for
animals and many other professionals who
gave up their time and working hours to
sit in a two-hour meeting taking place
on friday afternoons
through much give and take much
compromise and many line edits we've
come forward with a workable enforceable
functional ordinance that all can live
with
i want to emphasize that all sides made
compromises and came together to create
this ordinance
um
and then we can go to the next slide
thank you gino
of note our whole program of companion
animal management here in the city of
las cruces is reactionary by nature
we function using a complaint driven
rather than a proactive system
without a proactive holistic approach
that is data driven
the straight companion animal issue in
las cruces and the larger county will
never be resolved
this ordinance does lay the groundwork
for us to move forward and towards a
more proactive data-driven system
one of the most controversial parts of
this ordinance is the addition of the
allowance of tnr or trap neuter return
of community cats mayor mayor pro tem
city councillors you probably already
have an opinion on this topic
i would ask that you suspend for a
moment that carefully formed opinion
and consider that we as a city function
on a spectrum of responses to the
community cat issue
shown here in this slide
please keep in mind that this ordinance
does not take us from a 100 percent
euthanasia response to a 100 percent
trap neuter return response it simply
moves us i would argue a small amount
along this spectrum
euthanasia is not being removed as a
tool that is available to us if needed
please keep in mind that the goal of
everyone on the task force and the city
of las cruces more largely is to reduce
the free roaming cat population
literally no one is saying that we want
or need to create a larger population of
free roaming cats
mayor mayor pro tem and counselors you
have had many people over the years
stand in front of you um
with slogans like cats threaten bird
populations or
tnr works
i am not here to represent a polarizing
view to you all today this presentation
is not about trap neuter return versus
trap and kill
it's clear that we need both approaches
nor is it about cat advocates versus
wildlife advocates
nor about old school approaches to
animal control versus new school
approaches it's about demonstrating to
you that any animal care ordinance
exists on a spectrum from reactive to
proactive
the fact that free roaming cats do kill
native bird populations is undeniable
and also to reduce the free roaming cat
population here in las cruces we need
access to all of the tools available to
us and that includes trap neuter return
where appropriate
the importance that all of you have
placed on data cannot be overstated and
it's also appropriate of course for you
all to think in this way
if we want to move toward proactive
holistic data-driven solutions there
must be a provision for data collection
in the implementation piece to this
ordinance
many groups have gotten up in the past
to show you information on tnr data and
i have seen that data that is not from
our area is often not seen as relevant
for this reason i do have data on a
current well-known program the feral cat
management program or fcamp at nmsu
next slide please
as you can see this program began in
2002 at nmsu campus
the initial estimated population was 250
to 200 cats
tnr best practices were used so cats
were not only spayed and neutered and
returned um i'm sorry spayed neutered
microchip vaccinated ear tips and then
returned the kittens that were able to
be socialized were removed from the
colony and adopted out
over 350 cats in total were tnr during
the time period from 2002 to 2014 and
homes were found for over 100 kittens
the most recent litter born to this
colony was in 2010.
the current population in 2021
currently right now is around 35 adult
cats and most are 35 years um i'm sorry
most are five years old or older
the cost for this intervention and this
speaks to um counselor sword's question
um ranged from about ninety dollars for
males
about 125 dollars for females and around
thirty thousand dollars total was spent
all monies were raised by donation
including big sales cam drives and
private donors there was no financial
support from nmsu
no grant funding was accessed no city
funds were used
to go back
quickly and i'm wrapping up it's the
implementation of this ordinance that is
crucial um next slide please
for this ordinance to function well and
to move last cruises towards proactive
holistic data-driven solutions
implementation must include certain key
elements
these include a data collection piece in
which we engage with researchers to
estimate the number of free roaming cats
in the area and see how that number
changes over time
free and low-cost spay and neuter
programs i think this speaks to the
piece that was mentioned several times
in other presentations about how people
didn't follow through the cost for an
individual to neuter and spay these cats
is very high especially if we're talking
about low income areas so if i wanted to
spay or neuter 10 cats and i'm paying 50
a cat that's five hundred dollars out of
my pocket which people in higher income
places can afford but not in lower
income places so again free low-cost
spay neuter programs must be a part
funding for a bank of deterrence which
the community can access to help keep
unwanted cats out of their yards
this way we have a solution for people
besides just trap the cat and or do this
or do that how about if the city gives
you for example a um motion activated
water scarecrow that sprays the cat with
water when it enters your yard this is
just one example of a deterrent that
could be cheaply purchased and available
in the community
resources for community cat caretakers
so that they're aware of best practices
like courses on how to manage a feral
cat colonies such as i took through the
humane society for example
mentorship resources
um i have been a mentor for these
programs in the past
next slide please
sorry getting a little dry there
also to consider are funding
opportunities for feral cat caretakers
to build cat enclosures or catios which
do not allow birds to predate on native
i'm sorry which do not allow cats to
predate on native bird species i think
this idea may also be helpful in some of
the problem areas that we've mentioned
in various districts
there could be funding for a trap bank
which the community can access for pnr
projects they'd like to complete
and certainly widespread well-studied
and thought-out public education
campaigns about not letting cats
outdoors for many reasons including
impacts on wildlife the importance on
spaying and neutering cats the
importance of not feeding free roaming
cats unless a trapping plant plan is in
place and other targeted messaging and
positive encouragement to comply with
these campaigns will be crucial
also to consider it's a sort of pipe
dream to throw out there we could hire a
full-time person who does nothing but
assist with community cats pnr
implementation and mentorship education
and data collection coordination along
with cat owner and cat complainant
education
through passing and implementing this
ordinance tnr will be able to be used in
communities where it makes sense and is
effective and will be able to be used in
conjunction with tools like enclosures
where those make sense and finally can
be used in conjunction with euthanasia
when necessary
two final points
please
do not let your well-placed concerns
about data-driven solutions which we are
all so hungry for delay the passing of
this ordinance all players agree that
the current ordinance is unworkable the
new ordinance lays the groundwork for us
to move forward with a data collection
piece and towards data-driven solutions
i want to once again emphasize that this
ordinance has been compromised on and
agreed to by city legal staff city
animal codes the animal shelter director
the animal care task force with its wide
range of voices and health professionals
previously mentioned and positive public
comment which was widely positive at the
last public comment that was um taken
the goal of reducing the free roaming
cat population moving toward proactive
holistic data-driven animal control
solutions and improving overall quality
of life for less christians and their
families can be achieved and is within
our reach so mayor protem counselors
thank you again for your time this
afternoon i'm happy to answer any
questions
thank you athena council vasquez
uh thank you miss huckabee so much for
your presentation thank you also to mr
thacker
uh i'm glad that we're finally here um
thank you so much for all your time and
your work that you put in as well as
other members of the task force
um i i know you guys have been working
at this for quite some time and
perhaps not what you signed up for uh
but i've i find that things
usually tend to move a little bit slower
than uh than we want to on in local
government often so thank you um i have
a question a couple questions but my
first is around the cat carrying
capacity uh i think you mentioned the
ordinance determines uh essentially how
many uh cats a certain area or region
can hold and and that determines whether
you can release more cats into that area
can you talk a little bit more about the
science behind that and how this
ordinance addresses
finding the accurate numbers of any
given number of cats in an area
sure
um actually this ordinance does not
address cat carrying capacity what i was
saying is that solutions must be data
driven and i think that clint just used
that as an example
the what it does do is not allow for
release of cats around certain distances
from arroyos
from public parks and from other areas
that um marcy scott again who is an avid
birder was very active with this
ordinance
and um
it's it's in the ordinance certain
distances from natural features which
birds tend to congregate at so that is
part of it and then also
there's just some flexibility you know
that allows for
euthanasia and tnr to both be used there
is also a much um
argued about and compromised on strikes
rule so that if a certain cat for
example is picked up by animal control a
certain number of times it is considered
a nuisance cat and can be euthanized
moved to an indoor colony moved to a
barn program
adopted to a rescue or in some other way
removed from that area so i hope that's
clear
thank you miss huckabee and did you say
that that uh the three strikes or what x
amount of strikes rule is currently in
in this draft ordinance or it's or it's
not it is
okay and that's three strikes for uh a
calf
through many i'm sorry marin uh
counselor vasquez uh through much
compromise we agreed on four with the
first one actually being the first time
that the cat is trapped neutered
fixed vaccinated etc and then the the
three following being the problematic
calls
so it's important
thank you for that miss huckabee um and
mr mr thacker uh how how are you gonna
track the strikes you you can i'm
assuming the
you'll be able to identify the cat um
time after time
mayor and councilor vasquez yes they are
all microchipped and so the animal
control officer will be able to scan it
right there look it up on the computer
in our software and they can tell
what
how many times it's been impounded at
that time
thank you mr thacker
and so i do just i i do continue to
worry that we'll
that we will continue to concentrate a
large number of community cats in one
area or a couple areas of the city um
uh you know for
for what it's worth like i said i i'm
sure other counselors get lots of
complaints but um i have heard concerns
to the
uh to the tone of you know that perhaps
the city doesn't care about the
residents in a particular neighborhood
as much that it that it won't address
the cat problem and so they say you know
we just the cats are here no one cares
about us our roads are not good you know
there's a whole thing that comes with
living in a built environment um where
i'm sure residents don't necessarily
think that having a bunch of community
cats is the best thing for their kids or
for their pets or for whatever it might
be um so
how does this ordinance specifically
address the issue of not concentrating
cats that are trapped neutered released
into the same neighborhood um
ms huckabee or mr thacker whoever wants
to take that
i'm happy to take this mr becker if you
unless you have something no go ahead
uh mayor councillor vasquez um i would
say two things i would say number one
that as a public health professional
what you're saying is not falling on
deaf ears we know that um your zip code
predicts your life expectancy right and
that low income communities low income
areas suffer in many ways and i see you
pointing towards the um the community
cat issue as well i think that it's a
question of resources often already
available to those communities people
want to care for animals but often
because of our lack currently there is
absolutely nowhere in the city of las
cruces to get a low-cost spay neuter at
all
many people are going to el paso
the animal service center as i am aware
is only spaying and neutering animals
that are within
that are uh fostered or you know in its
facility um so you know it's
it's very expensive it's out of people's
reach
um i think that making access to low
cost spay neuter will reduce the problem
even without the community cat piece and
i also think that
again that the implementation of the
ordinance is so important and that you
city councillors and mayor have control
over how it is implemented and so
perhaps in areas where people want to
care for cats but and there are many
cats but it's not as good for the
community might be a great place to help
that community build an enclosure might
be a great place to offer deterrence for
people that are not interested in having
those cats for example in their child
sandbox or other things so i think again
just to emphasize that it may not all be
spelled out in the ordinance and so the
implementation is going to be key
thank you miss huckabee um and can i
just a follow-up question on that what
is the regular cost of a spay or neuter
for a cat and what would you say is a
low low cost option for that
mr thacker would you uh feel comfortable
answering that i can give a ballpark but
your numbers might be a little better we
don't i'd have to get back with you on a
low cost because we haven't done public
spay and neuters for several years
here at the center because of our high
numbers that we're trying to catch up on
but i can tell you this i can tell you
that
we
in our last year's budget or i'm sorry
this year's budget we were given money
to get another veterinarian uh to plan
to do these so that will free up some
surgery time
talking with our current medical
director that we we do want to start to
do low-cost spay and neuter for the
public again
our numbers co has really helped us out
in that area as far as the number of
animals coming in
as lowered so we're able to do other
surgeries going up
and then i also can tell you that best
friend's animal society
has
given or has promised one thousand
dollars in education material and also
deterrence
that we can build a bank on and get
information now and education is
everything about this i mean this is the
animal control officers come into play
where they can have the information in
hand they can give it to the individual
that is having these issues do a little
education
so i mean that's the one thing that i'm
big on is the education part but i can
get those numbers to you i i also i
can't tell you that snap um here is the
kind of the authority on the low-cost
spay and neuter and they go by hud
standards
so i'd have to get the amount of money
that they charge if you qualify for that
you know what looks like gino uh jimenez
has his hand up maybe he wanted to jump
in real quick
yes mr mayor thank you and i just wanted
to follow up on a question that
counselor vasquez had uh asked earlier
so the the proposed ordinance would
restrict releasing these animals back to
within 150 feet of any day care
any city owned park
any city owned facility
or a
public school
and the reason for that and that's not
to say
that this colony
caretaker would release it right here
150 feet away and it runs right to that
park
but we're going to do the best that we
can to reduce that that attraction to
the park so let's say in your district
specifically uh young park where they
would have tremendous access to water
let's just say
to
some lunches being thrown out into the
the trash something like that they have
food available
but 150 feet would be kind of like up
the street at the
at these those apartments on nevada
so
but there's nothing to say that it's not
going to run right to young park and
start its own
home there but that's where the res
those restrictions would come in
thank you
um
i apologize mayor uh city councilors
mayor pro tem um just a quick google
search tells me that the average cost of
a spay neuter starts at around a hundred
dollars
um
when you know done by a private vet i
have been quoted here in las cruces as
much as 300
for a spay for a cat so you can see that
these types of costs are out of reach
for much of our community
thank you miss huckabee um
yeah i think i think having
a well-resourced
spay and neuter program especially one
that was income based perhaps
to qualify for that somehow uh would be
a good idea to implement along with this
ordinance and so mr thacker
you mentioned you had a new vet
veterinarian coming on board
does that mean that frees up
that allows you to create an east bay
low-income spay neuter program at the
animal services center in conjunction
with this ordinance or would you need
additional resources to be able to do
that
i think we can start off with what we
have
um if the program blows up and becomes
huge then we will need some more
financial support yes
well i'd like us to consider that i
think that would be the smartest
approach
in implementing this that way
if we do implement this then we have
that option for those residents because
i know
you know even with trap neuter release
there's going to be there's going to
continue to be resident cats that aren't
part of the tnr program there's going to
continue to be cats brought from outside
of the community right el paso other
places
so those cats will keep coming into our
community that are not part of the tnr
program so having
having that spay at low low cost pay
option perhaps offer to the city
you know for low-income residents is
going to be
i think part of the solution especially
in some of those areas that we're
talking about with heavy cat population
so
uh mr thacker is that is that something
you'd commit to starting that program
along with this ordinance
uh mr mayor and uh councillor vasquez
yes you're just talking my language what
we plan on doing with the animal service
center the existing building is to turn
it into a high
capacity
spay and neuter facility because where
if you remember in 2022 we're going to
be getting a new center right here next
to us
so that is the dream for me for this
center to become something where people
can come to
whether it be free or low cost for
certain
certain qualifying measures i've also
talked with with snap here in the area
and just said hey what are your thoughts
about you handling the paperwork for
qualification
and they come to us to get it sterilized
and they're like thumbs up we love it so
there's already been a lot of talk and
discussion for something like that to be
happening
but yeah it all takes that pretty penny
you know to get things going in the
center obviously on honestly the center
is going to have to have some remodeling
we have one surgical table right now
that's all it was one
so we're going to need some some
remodeling done here but absolutely
we're on it
thank you so much mr thack i appreciate
that i think um yeah i think those those
two approaches are really really um
prudent to to go along with each other
um
i do have another question here on the
task force uh um
process
um so um ms huckabee you mentioned you
had um an avid birder on your task force
which um thank you for
for doing that and i know former um
assistant city manager david dalahan
helped lead a lot of these discussions
and hopefully got some of the right
folks on this task force
um
but but there there does i i think
continue to be a concern um you know
about just the number of
uh both birds and mammals and reptiles
right that um
that community cats or unowned cats um
predate and kill um just not in not just
in las cruces but everywhere around the
world where there's community cats
um i think something
i forgot how many millions of birds they
killed um but it's like 14 15 percent of
the world's
bird population has been you know
wiped out by community cats that's
pretty significant and so i'm just
wondering what other discussions you had
at the task force related to
are there any other methods to reduce
the predation of birds and other native
wildlife here by community cats as they
live out their life
if you could give any insight into those
conversations that would be helpful as
well
absolutely i'm happy to do that thank
you uh
so mayor and counselor vasquez um
marcy scott uh joined our conversations
and we actually turned out to be great
allies and um
are very respectful and responsive of
one another it turns out we have many
things in common and she was a pleasure
to work with on the task force um she
and i talked a lot about um patios and
enclosures and how there should be
funding for that
um of some kind um you know i know um
and mr becker i don't know if you can
comment on this but um for example the
animal service center of the messiah
valley recently posted a very
interesting position of a full-time
grant writer
we talked about trying to possibly even
mercy and i miss ms scott writing a
grant together to try to access funds so
that people can build
these enclosures which can be very
helpful um
other conversations that were had were
the the four strikes out rule as
mentioned that not being close to
natural features and parks as mentioned
and and also just a real focus on
wanting to work together to reduce the
cat population so um moving again from
reactive to proactive approaches
a um
a system i mean many many kudos and
things to mr jimenez and all of the
animal control officers and all of the
good work they do
but a reactive system will never get
control of the cat population it has to
be more proactive and if we don't want
to end up in a situation like australia
is in which i mentioned in my continuum
of responses right then we need to get a
handle on this situation and that was
agreed upon also by marcy and the rest
of the folks and i think where we came
to on tnr is that it's a tool in the
toolbox and that we need to use it while
we continue to do work to move towards
more proactive
holistic solutions
thank you ms huckabee and
i think that's yeah that's a great
that's a great point that you make
regarding um a tool different tools and
different solutions i think what i would
hate to see perhaps is that this tnr
ordinance gets implemented and then we
don't have the other resources or the
other tools to really impact the cat
population in a significant way
um because then i don't want to blame if
we have if we end up having more
community cats next year i don't want to
blame it on tnr right if we didn't do
the work to actually get that low inc
low that spay neuter program to get
funding for catios to get funding for
you mentioned the cat repellents and
those different things i'd like us to
roll all of that stuff out at the same
time so that we can truly say okay we're
using all the tools we can to control
this um
this this issue um and at the same time
uh you know reducing the mortality rates
of cats inside the shelter right because
nobody wants i don't think anyone here
wants to see that either so um
i i don't know if you have a set of
recommendations but we are in our
budgeting process and so figuring out
where we need to allocate resources to
make this a more holistic um community
cat program right other than just tnr as
perhaps has been suggested by the task
force would be something um that'd be
interest that i'd be interested in
seeing
thank you uh mayor and councillor
vasquez i would be happy to have you
know additional conversations about this
as i'm sure others would um the current
list of
uh
ideas that we had is in the powerpoint
as far as funding for low-cost spay
neuter funding for you know all of that
is outlined um
certainly there may be more solutions
that we're not thinking of and could
brainstorm around and i'm sure mr becker
would be happy to participate in that
conversation as well
thank you miss heikelbe um
uh yes so that's just one request for me
what other tools in the toolbox do we
have when we bring this ordinance back
that can help um you know
to help with this community cat issue in
the most humane but smart way um because
it is it is an issue i mean true that 20
of the calls slash emails
i get that are complaints are about cats
or barking dogs honestly so um it's it's
an important issue to our community and
people are obviously vocal enough feel
vocal enough to to reach out to us about
this issue uh one last question here
and this is just about measures of
success uh what kind of what kind of
measures of success are you thinking of
mr thacker
or miss huckabee in terms of reviewing
this program right i'd love to come back
a year two years i don't know how long
it would take to really
get solid measures but i i would like to
to review this program um and and have a
chance to at least see its its impact in
our community um and so any thoughts
around the measures of success and and
uh just accountability for this program
well mr mayor councilman squish yes
immediately we're going to see a big
jump in the number of animals euthanized
is going to go down i mean that's the
first big measure you're going to see
also the number of complaints is also
going to start to
um they'll go up and increase until we
get the education and the information
out there and we get people on board and
then they'll level off
honestly i've heard people say that it
takes three to five years before we
start seeing really solid results of a
trap neuter return program
whereas kitten kitten litters going down
coming in
you know the impounds start going down
but that
so those are the metrics that we'd be
looking at immediately
okay thank you mr packer well i i mean
it would be great just to have a set of
you know things that we can bring back
to the council in a year and um i see
miss mr jimenez gino i don't know if you
wanted to respond to that
yes sir i could
i couldn't get my my head raised quick
enough uh mr mayor councillor vasquez
and and i agree with clint it's going to
take some considerable time for us to
know whether tnr is going to be
successful and i think one of the
hardest parts about
um tracking it or um
[Music]
is going to be to know exactly how many
cats we started with
that's going to be the hardest part from
there
um i'm sure that mr thacker can say that
his euthanasia rate went down
he was able to spay and neuter and tnr
i'm just gonna throw a number ten
thousand cats
back out into the community
the hardest part for all of us
is going to have to know how many did we
start with
and so uh mayor and councillor vasquez i
have a uh
solution to that also which is that in
the animal care task force we worked
with a wildlife biologist at nmsu who
stated he would be happy to partner on
doing a study which i would also be
happy to partner on with my uh masters
in public health um and work with him on
this to do a point in time estimate of
how many feral cats we have in the city
of las cruces which has never been done
right um so i think we should do that
and that that should be part of the
implementation
and if that is done then we can do
follow-up studies later
and see what that point-in-time estimate
is then
um you know and perhaps do that yearly
along with these other
uh
solutions
miss hackability
well thank you miss huckabee was dr
romer
was that dr romer
thank you councillor flores i was
frantically looking through my notes
doctor
yes
you're welcome and by the way everybody
um there were was a question as to the
composition of the animal um ordinance
task force and uh the composition was uh
it was comprised of many and varied
people with with different points of
view so i think that miss huckabee
achieved it was a big step
to towards success in in meeting with uh
with ms scott and becoming
friendly and willing to work together um
believe me those those meetings were not
um
they were hard work so i just want to
communicate that to everybody and thank
you miss huckabee thank you mr mayor
thank you mayor um i think those are
about all my questions i'll just leave
uh finish off by saying it uh i think if
we have the the
uh spay program spay neuter program
offered to low-income residents at the
animal shelter to me that's kind of i
have to have i i would want to see that
in conjunction with tnr because
i just think we need to be able to offer
that service uh the other is you know i
want to watch closely where these cats
are being returned and you know if tnr
in the next three years means that my
district gets overrun with more cats
it's going to be hard for me to justify
that to my constituents
because that's ultimately that's who we
represent is the the folks in the at
least for me in that district so um we
just want to make sure that that that
doesn't cause in the short term and undo
you know explosion of cats in my
district that already has
i think a significant cat problem
and then the other tools that you
mentioned miss huckabee and mr thacker i
think too is uh figuring out how
we institutionalize the use of some of
those tools especially as alternates for
homeowners who are having cat problems
right that we as the city or the animal
services center says hey here's a couple
of solutions and you can come pick up x
and y at this animal services center or
something similar to that so that when
we get complaints we also can say you
know we can point to a solution or a
potential repellent um that a homeowner
might get or a business owner might get
um because actually a lot of the a lot
of the complaints i've gotten is about
business business folks in my district
too so um with that i just want to thank
you all again for your hard work on this
i know
people love their animals and and
it's a contentious issue often um and
and this is this is never an easy
conversation in any city i'm sure it's
been played out in municipalities across
the nation that have cat issues um but i
i think we're doing it the right way so
thank you thank you mayor mm-hmm
thank you counselor beta stubby
um thank you mayor um and thank you
clint and thank you athena um
and for a great presentation and
especially athena i really uh
enjoyed the thoroughness um and the data
driven um presentation that you had
uh
i think that councilor vasquez answered
a lot of the questions that i did have
and kind of the concerns and i'm glad to
hear that this approach is not an all or
nothing for either side and i think
that's been a lot of the concerns that
i've had from constituents really seem
to feel like it's going to be all one
way or or nothing
and
i think um there is room especially for
those problem houses that we have that
have somehow attracted cats to come into
their yard and we know once in once a
cat spray somewhere it's really hard to
get those smells out to get that to turn
out and so it's much more likely they're
going to be targeted again and so i
think if we can use all the tools
together that and work on having
deterrence for those types of homes and
having relief for those types of owners
as well then it can be a more successful
program um
you know i
just this last week i got one about a
person in my uh district they're sprayed
all the outdoor patio cushions
and so that's
you know honestly i told her i said i'm
really sorry but that probably is not
gonna come out it's almost best to
bring in new cushions at that point
um but if there's ways that we can um
take those animals back out you know the
four strike rule i think is still
it might feel a little excessive to
those people that are having to deal
with these reoccurring animals but at
least there are those other options
available too i think that's going to be
beneficial
i do wonder uh and perhaps i missed it
do we have an estimated
cost
of implementation for this program right
away for it to be successful
if we were to do this tomorrow what are
all
the tools that we need to start out
strong with this program
madam mr mayor and uh council members to
eight we don't
have in place i should say
the the
the individuals to get a demo we have
the framework like i said we have um
best friends has promised us a thousand
dollars to get a start off on education
education material and also uh
deterrence we have we already have staff
that are running animals or cats out
returning them to the county areas so we
would just incorporate the the city into
those routes
we have individuals that are coming on
brand new at the shelter that would also
start taking on those those
responsibilities
we have yet to get our veterinarian
position cleared through hr so we're
waiting for that to be done once that is
we already have somebody in mind
that just needs to apply for us we're
just waiting for that to get done as
soon as they're on
surgeries can start
so
like i said the framework's there the
personnel is just lacking and i also
know
mr jimenez might want to comment too
that he would not be able to start
tomorrow if we were to do that
there would have to be some training
there there would have to be edge
education materials
given to him and his officers to get it
out but yes
great thank you that's uh good to know
um
one idea for tracking um uh council
roscoe is that we can also look at um
with
what mr jimenez uh
was able to show us you know we have
those problem areas in those tracking
and i i would be curious later on to see
if
um we're still getting the same types of
calls in the same areas the same
neighborhoods if we're starting to see
any shifts
with that
and those the amount of calls so i'm i'm
thinking that's one way we can utilize
that data that we're already collecting
to see where
we're what's happening and
um
my research before coming to this
meeting i looked up a lot of different
areas the positives the negatives um i
looked a lot into the nmsu program as
well and to see how that was able to be
a pretty successful item going from the
200 300 cats down to about in the
research i said about 35 to 40 that they
have on campus and i think the main goal
with all of this is for that reduction
of cats i don't think anybody wants to
have outdoor cats um
and so
and one of the items even with just with
the euthanasia was taking them out well
then it's still unclaimed territory and
if you have a lot of cats in the
neighborhood well another cat is just
going to claim that territory and so
we're not necessarily
reducing the problem by taking away that
one cat if there's still so many around
so if this is a program that can help
eventually reduce that amount of cats
that we're seeing
especially with kittens and everything
building you know that's something that
i think might be
very successful if we can use it
together but i do still think that needs
to be those other tools
if we do have nuisance cats if we are
having certain problematic areas
um
you know that we have to have all those
pieces together but i think this is a
step in the right direction
as long as we work with all the pieces
together so thank you mayor and thank
you pencil
all right um tim
thanks
thanks mayor um thanks everybody athena
great presentation um
really appreciate
everything that you put that you put
into it um
just as the chair of the task force um
you know we've been working on this for
quite some time and and former chair of
the animal services center board i
really had a vision and that was to
improve the services
moving forward related to the animal
services center so thankfully the voters
voted you know for the geo bond for the
new building
using that
um older building as uh the hub for
spade and neuter i mean a lot of the
public feels that it's necessary to do
that and at a low cost or no cost
um
you know
is is going to be helpful and and i do
have to say that the county has really
taken the initiative to provide funding
to do
to do that so we're very behind the
eight ball related to the spade and
neuter or providing funding you know for
that um the other thing was
get you know building capacity within
the center by pushing to hire a grant
writer another veteran
veteran another it could be a veteran
yes but a veterinarian
to ensure that we were doing you know
the the necessary things
um
and so i'm really encouraging management
from the city of las cruces
um to get that paperwork
completed to get the hire for the
veterinarian we've been talking about
this for some time now um and i know in
my specific conversations with the city
manager mr pealey it has been
related to where are we at with the
paperwork um
it shouldn't take that long
um and so really pushing stop to get
that get that moving so we can be
prepared um the other thing is please
don't forget
this is about responsible pet ownership
we seem to be throwing a lot of blame at
all you all here that is working on this
in a reactionary way but at the end of
the day this has to do with
irresponsible pet owners or people
who are feeding those cats that's why
you've seen if you haven't and i
really want to impress upon you to
become a um facebook um clint is seeing
doing him and his staff are doing some
phenomenal things on social media
platforms related to educating the
community about cats community cats if
you see a litter of cats what to do what
not to do all those things are super
important but at the end of the day we
have to put where the problem is and
that's because we have irresponsible
people or people thinking that they're
doing right by feeding these cats
right or not getting your your
your animals spayed and neutered
and we really have to push that so with
that there has to be a very robust
educational campaign and i know clint is
is is working on that we also have to
have a coordinated effort with all our
advocates there's many in our community
that have
participated
consistently in our task force to
include people who had issues like some
of concerbuscus's
and other um constituents that would
come and really remark you know with
written letters and statements to the
group like
pressing us pushing us to do the right
things
um so that also means giving the tools
necessary to our acos i think that is
super important their hands are tied
many times because we've only given a
certain amount of money
um
you know for these tools or the
deterrence that athena has mentioned
they need to have those in their toolbox
so to speak so that when we do have
these issues they're out there and
they're providing not only the education
but the tools necessary
um let's see
i wrote a bunch of stuff
and then um the other the other thing
that i think is really important is is
paying for um dr ramen to do this data
um
this data you know establishing the
performance measures and that probably
will mean
um clan i think and and those of us that
continue to to be on the task force i
would really love for us to establish
with our advocates some performance
measures that i think because it affects
everybody right and i think we need to
do that but i also think that the city
of las cruces
um needs to pay for um
someone to collect the data so we can
really understand
um
you know where we're at where we're
failing
and not only that but establishing some
of these closed patio areas the barn a
barnyard program i think i'm not saying
that correctly i don't think it's called
the barnyard program but
you know what i mean um
i think those are important um um
um
performance measures or strategies
moving forward um
and so um with that mayor again i i
appreciate everybody's um
time um
i know there's a lot happening here and
then and then lastly i would recommend
and i'd love to pull this tnr this
community kind of cats portion out and
get this on the books rather quickly
i know um mr andre is on the call and
has done the work and he just told me
earlier today that there is a resolution
i'd love to get the nod and the go ahead
to do this so we could start
implementing this program right away
because we're very behind
and that would be my recommendation is
pulling that portion on getting this
going while you know we make the
additional um
changes to the ordinance um because
after all we're you know we're losing uh
you know we're euthanizing i mean and
here's the other thing clint isn't some
of your performance measures based on
live release rates
i mean it just it just doesn't
it it's counterintuitive right that we
have these performance measures for
clint's executive directorship
and and then we have all these issues
we're not helping the matter it just
seems
again counterproductive so
he's nodding his head yes for the record
um
mayor
um that his performance measure has to
do with what his live release rates are
so again
we have some you know some measures here
that are is not helpful at all thank you
mayor
thank you and um i forgot who asked how
much it cost i think i remember a few
years back we had when we were looking
at tnr we were thinking at the minimum
at least half a million dollars so
whatever it's worth
counselor flotus
thank you mayor and again thank you miss
huggaby
huckabee and thank you uh mr thacker and
um
officer jimenez for presenting uh i'm
not sure i followed what you just said
uh mayor pro tem
um gandara i um
i think that
did you say to pull out the tnr uh
language in this or
to
what did you mean by
mayor if i may or she
concert lotus it's what we decided at
the last task force meeting that we
would remember the resolution that we
would be pulling out that and putting it
because of the the amount of time that
it would take to get this ordinance
moving the resolution is a little faster
moving
um
not pulling it out like and not
incorporating it into the ordinance but
having a separate resolution specific to
what community cats and tnr program
oh i think this would get the project
moving forward
okay but we wouldn't get uh the tnr
would still be in the ordinance oh
absolutely oh okay when you said taking
it out i just
okay but um
so
i
you know i
i don't know if the resolution
would really um
having that language in the resolution
would it anyway hinder
anything
i mean i that's just what i think but i
you know i'm not
so long as we have that tnr in the
ordinance
um
counselor i think mayor patel was
wanting to maybe fast track that move on
that one quickly and in case there were
some other things that
that needed to be still studied okay but
just to kind of use if if need be turn
this into a separate resolution and just
get going on it i think that's what
you're trying to get
yes but then
fast track yes yeah but the tnr language
wouldn't be in the um
in there well just the tnr move that one
quickly you know if we have to you know
like let's say it takes another three or
four months to look at the whole thing
instead of doing that just take the tnr
out and just like she said fast track it
let's just get it ready to roll here you
mean the other parts of the ordinance
that we looked at
yeah because i think i think i think
it's
been real kind saying two years i think
it's been like three years it's been a
while working on this thing and it's
just just takes
no no no
nothing for clint because he's done a
good job i think since he's taken over
but prior to that it's just been so long
trying to get these things moving
yes it's it's been uh you know slower
than the last
you know what counselor looks like eric
enriquez
wanted to say a couple words and maybe
yes uh mrs council yeah eric enrique is
a sensitivity manager yeah what we're
proposing to do uh as next steps would
to
bring a resolution of
the community cats portion because the
whole animal ordinance is so huge
that um bringing
that component with the ordinance to
council
could could really complicate things so
it's it's not only fast track as you
stated but it's also to clean it up
better so we would bring a resolution
identifying the community cats portion
of it and bring that and if council has
any changes at that point we can
make those happen and bring a clean
version to the ordinance when we bring
the ordinance later
okay i see so then uh mr enriquez when
do you uh
so we did we just get this resolution
before us on next monday
i'm not sure how soon we can get it but
we definitely
uh get it in as soon as we can for a
first read and then for uh
an action item and then we could move
with the animal ordinance after that
i see and and by the time we get to the
animal ordinance we'll have everything
that we've worked on in reviewing the
ordinance all together we'll have all
that language there
okay
i just want to make sure and because
just there's been a lot a lot of work
and um
and a lot of dedication from everybody
involved i i really really commend the
animal task force um
uh
the animal
uh animal ordinance task force for their
commitment
um and there was a lot of a lot of
commitment there all around and a lot of
intelligence and a lot of you know a lot
of love so um i just want to make sure
um so my question for mr thacker is
say for example well you have already a
thousand dollar commitment from best
friends
and um
and then hopefully we'll get a grant
right well with a thousand dollar right
now say our ordinance passed
say
you know maybe this is being too
optimistic but say
it passes in april or may um with that
thousand dollars that the best friends
has given
uh probably earmarked uh for um
for uh spay or neuter do you
do you think you could start doing that
as soon as the ordinance passes or how
soon after the ordinance passes and then
also by then we might have a great grant
writer at the center
and then um
and maybe some money will come in after
that right
mr mayor and council morris yes
the answer is so the thousand dollars
they they gave us is
earmarked for deterrence and education
so i mean i could start if resolution
looks good i'm going to pass it i can
start purchasing those items immediately
and you know stockpile them therefore i
don't control to give out for us to give
out if needed
and then
yes the grant writer will be coming on
these things i've asked for an update on
that also for the vet position so
um
the answer is yes
now keep in mind i'm i'm kind of in a
in a spot because
um i am not a member of the city and i'm
not a member of the county and so it
would i don't know if it's appropriate
for me to
help enforce this ordinance by having
those deterrents i don't know if the
city
should
best friend should purchase those items
for the city
uh to hold on to that's something for
you guys to talk about i guess
well i'm gonna throw the ball right back
at you mr thacker and you've been
dealing with this strange bureaucracy of
uh being you know kind of like the child
in limbo that doesn't know you know
which parent to go to and you have the
board and hopefully our jpa will be
resolved that issue will be resolved but
i think in the meantime you can well no
i shouldn't speak maybe mr mayor mayor
pro tem should speak to
um how you should proceed on that i mean
i have ideas
but it may be the wrong way to go yeah i
think our legal team should probably get
with ifo and clinton and share with them
their ideas on how to receive and
disperse what they do
right that's good so so there
thank you thank you clint thank you mr
mayor
council vasquez
thank you mayor um yeah so i'm just i'm
just trying to clarify what we've come
to here it sounds like a resolution for
community cats before the full ordinance
is that what
the task force wants to do
and maybe that's a question for mayor
pro 10
yes counselor vasquez we talked about um
pulling the resolution and getting it
fast tracked
um so that we can begin this work
because as you know we don't have
anything
in the books anymore because it's
sunsetted so
being able to do that quickly and start
to work you know we all have the vision
there's already work with the
local partners the advocacy groups uh
uh financial commitment from
best friends
um and and i i think it would behoove us
to do that because i don't know how long
it's gonna take to get the or this
ordinance
probably another couple of months i
think the way we and we look we had mr
enriquez and others sort of it might not
be till may because we still have to do
the first reading right we have to
advertise first reading that kind of
thing
so
okay thank you mayor pro 10 um yeah i
you know i just i'm concerned about not
having those resources to go with the
rollout i guess of the of the activation
of this resolution um
again i would want to make sure that
there's a resource to low income
communities to have their pets their
cats or dogs spayed or neutered as soon
as tnr goes into effect i think
i think we have to have that as a
solution
and and so if if we can have that
at the same time that the resolution
passes in a couple of weeks or whatever
then i think that's fine
um
and then just the other resources that
um
that were mentioned that there's a plan
with deadlines to get those out to our
community i think would be really
helpful because again what what i what i
fear is just that you know we we get a
lot more cats back out into the same
neighborhoods without any resources to
deal with it um on the constituent end
of things
and so we're just going to see you know
our constituents probably get pretty
angry at us if they
if we don't have solutions to offer when
they're calling us and telling us that
there's more cats in their neighborhood
now so i just want to make sure we're
we're dealing with that issue adequately
um otherwise i'm i'm fine with whatever
the task force proposes is i think as
long as we have some of those solutions
to point to
uh thank you mayor thank you mayor
thanks counselor jennifer let me just
ask you a question
do you think if um
this would qualify for our lower
uh income residents if we use some of
the um telstra fund monies not a whole
lot but some
to for this tnr for
on a health and safety
a reason
that we could you know 25 000 or so 50
to help get these um
cats
trap tnr and um you know like i said
it's a it's really a safe health and
safety issue and if they
and if they qualifying income wise could
we could we use that
um i will look at that more closely
okay
i appreciate it
okay so anything else gino
or athena
you're familiar with
i i believe that was the end of our
presentations and
you know we were standing for questions
okay so uh eric so you've got the
direction to go ahead and
remove this portion out of it and and do
your best to kind of get it going
quicker
as opposed to the whole
revision but this this tnr part
yes sir mayor thank you thank you mayor
and council for all your support all
right good very good
so we can have all those emails stop
that we get
we've got two 300 of them at least okay
so next is going to be the industrial
park master plan
and uh
celicia viegas i think is going to give
us the update
good afternoon mayor city council my
name is celincia villegas with economic
development
so i was here just a couple of weeks ago
discussing all the marketing initiatives
for the
newly branded innovation and investment
parts
today
we're back to give you an update on the
master plan efforts
so the park is about 39 years old and
the master plan was adopted in 1996
so this update is much needed
as well as the regulatory framework in
order to develop strategies to stimulate
business development and to be
competitive in today's market
the city's consulting firm decker parish
navitini has put extensive work into the
master plan along with those with needed
regulations
and
city staff now pertinent departments
have been able to review and provide
input
they have closely been working with
community development as a
airport administrator and they've also
i'm sorry
i can't hear there's a lot of background
and i think there's several people that
need to be muted
yes
okay
let's give it a shot
okay sorry
so this this draft has been brought to a
pnz work session as well as a public
outreach
and i would like to introduce will
gleeson principal of decker parish
sabatini and his team who will be
presenting
thank you
thank you selesia
good afternoon counselor mayor
counselors uh i admire your stamina it's
been a long afternoon for you i know
excuse me sir i apologize i know she
addressed you but can you state your
name and and the company you're with
please yes
my name is will gleeson i am a principal
with decker park sabatini a
multi-disciplinary design firm that has
office in las cruces as well as
albuquerque
thank you
so um
good afternoon and i i don't think that
our session will take as long as the cat
session but
i i do think it's an important part of
your future and i know you all uh care
deeply about this as well
so as celesi has said we've been working
uh diligently on the master plan update
for what's now the las cruces innovation
industrial park so for the next 15
minutes or so we just like to give you a
brief overview of what we have um
developed
and i'm going to present along with dan
gimon from economic and planning systems
so um so this is just a very
brief outline of what we'll we'll cover
here
mostly about the plan itself and the
regulatory framework the two pieces that
you will be
reviewing for
adoption
and this has been our team it's it's
really been a great a great uh
collaboration with the city of las
cruces with andy hume and with
uh selesia
and um
and uh and a number of other people from
the city as well so um especially
griselda so it's been really very active
uh collaboration here and um
and francisco as well so
um so our scope was to develop a new
master plan update the framework
and really figure out how to tie the
park into the airport as well and to
figure out how to build upon the parks
strains while seeking some diversif
diversification
of uses in the park
and we really you know the
the park is one of number of places that
people look to locate new businesses and
so we're really looking to figure out
how to help you make the park more
competitive
improve its image and visibility
and
and leverage some of the existing
partnerships that you all uh have within
the the city the county and the in the
region
so i'm going to turn it over to dan
gimon who's going to talk a little bit
about the market and real estate
analysis that economic and planning
systems did
thank you will again mayor members of
council
my name is dan giemond and i'm with
economic and planning systems
and we were a
economic and real estate consultant
as a sub-consultant to
decker parish sabatini
so we completed a
a market in real estate analysis for
uh las cruces and for the industrial
park
looking 20 years into the future in
terms of what industrial demand is and
what would be supportable
in the way of capturing space at the
park
we estimate the potential for
approximately a little over a hundred
thousand square feet of industrial space
a year
uh can be captured in
las cruces and
uh
the
industrial park is primarily the one
location for that development we would
expect
most if not all of the development be
located there
this would uh
basically require approximately
200 acres of industrial land over the
next 20 years to
accommodate this projected growth
and as will mentioned uh the industrial
park is
is over 1800 acres and
and probably somewhere around 1200 acres
of that is undeveloped at this point so
there's plenty of land to accommodate
the future industrial growth of the city
over over the foreseeable future
um as you probably are aware
the city
hired a
firm back in 2019 to do an economic
analysis of
the las cruces uh employment market
and to determine what the priorities for
development should be at the airport and
the industrial park
and that market street report identified
three high priority
industries to be targeted for future
development going forward so those three
industries are
aviation aerospace and defense and
that's primarily
uas type vehicles
value-added agriculture
and then the third category is advanced
manufacturing
next slide
um
[Music]
so
they were
the highest priority industries
to to target in terms of future
marketing and promotion for the park
uh our analysis focusing on again the
real estate
side of the equation uh
we determined that it's still important
for the city to
pursue multiple industrial sectors in
order to be able to
achieve its economic development goals
as well as its uh real estate
development goals for the for the park
itself
one of our recommendations in terms of
providing input into the land use master
plan
was for the park to be configured
in separate districts
uh that are that are sort of
defined for or targeted for these
various industry sectors
and for the city to provide what we
would call shovel-ready lots
uh so lots that are more ready for
immediate development than is currently
present out there there's a lot of
vacant land but in many cases there is
an adequate
roads or utilities uh
approximate to those lit laws we made
some recommendations about some
infrastructure investments
so that a greater number of lots would
be available
uh to be marketed for development by
providing
some road extensions some utility
extensions and the extension of
broadband fiber
to support the targeted development
um
the in terms of
the recommendations of
the master plan uh will is going to go
through the physical
layout of the master plan and our
recommendations on the implementation
component of the project
we recommended a development strategy
that includes a more proactive sales and
marketing program for the park that has
been done in the past
uh we've recommended a full-time
property and sales manager who
um
silesia
uh viegas has been um
designated as that person
we've recommended a streamlined sales
process and that the city eliminate um
some of the more burdensome steps of the
sales process that require
up to nine months for a transaction to
be completed including
uh currently the requirement for two
appraisals and a city ordinance approval
prior to a sale of over 50 000 dollars
in in monetary value
uh
we recommended that
that target industry brochures be
developed for the three targeted
industries that
that are recommended to be pursued
um that a
a
specific website be developed for the
park is currently if somebody's looking
for development if they're not coming
through mevita or
the borderplex it's you know it's very
hard for them to really determine
who the right person is to contact and
what the process is for
uh for acquiring property and as well as
getting information on what economic
development incentives are available
and then finally we recommended that the
park
uh include a branding strategy a number
of the components of which will is going
to cover now
thanks dan
so um
to
this is just a preview of what you will
be reviewing and uh adopting
um and we hope to be back before you in
june with our final report um but we
really our work has two pieces one is
the master plan which will be adopted
um as policy and then a framework which
is really the zoning which will be
adopted as ordinance
so this is just giving you a i just want
to give you a sense of what the draft
looks like um
and we are going back through and
updating it now with the new name
and the new branding so um that's
hopefully worse we're working diligently
to get that done so that we can get to
pnz and and to you all
um in the june in your june hearing so
it's a fairly um detailed master plan a
lot about existing conditions
opportunities constraints
actual plan itself and then some
implementation measures
so and this is uh this is the one of the
primary exhibits for the master plan
and what this is showing is that we're
proposing to
give a little more
granular detail to the land uses in the
park and so as you can all see this is
i-10 running through the
the top third of the site more or less
of the this is about 1800 acres all
together and these yellow parcels are
are what we're we're encouraging that
these parcels be used for airport
related uses so when this is the airport
here on the top of your screen
and then
and then going down crawford across i-10
to the south that the purple is really
more focused on
advanced manufacturing
and then the greener color down here is
more focused on value-added agriculture
so that because before the park really
does not have a real um
a real kind of coherent
design or structure to it and so this is
this is our uh recommendation for
just creating a little more structure in
terms of where land users are encouraged
to go and we're not saying that thou
shalt not put
advanced manufacturing on this green
parcel but we are strongly encouraging
that those uses congregate in a in a in
the similar area and that we have
basically similar uses
along with some uh designated commercial
pads
near the interchange itself
so that's one kind of major push on the
change on the from the prior master plan
and then we're also
proposing some additional measures in
terms of things like circulation and
landscape
and for instance this here is showing a
a future potential transit circulator
route throughout the park of course we
need more users in the park this is
assuming that you're going to get
more employees working there but we do
think that this is a way to
to provide access to the park without
everything being dependent upon a single
occupancy vehicle
and this does uh this does coincide well
with some of the recommendations in
elevate las cruces
and in the transit department's
strategic plans
and then this is a an illustrative
exhibit just
showing what that build out could look
like and so you know you can imagine
that each of these boxes
represents
dozens if not uh hundreds of jobs so
so this is our this is more of a
marketing uh piece than uh
a zoning piece but this is a way of
showing
potential tenants and existing tenants
what the future build out of the park
could look like
and so we see this as something that
will help contribute to the identity and
character of the park
and your marketing efforts going forward
so this is i'm not going to go through
all the this whole table but this is
showing the some of the implementation
measures that we're proposing
a the the top part is for short term one
to five years the bottom part for
uh five to ten year horizon
some of these have very little cost to
them like dan alluded to we think that
upgrading improving the process for
doing land transactions having silesia
as a point person and and being really
proactive in terms of following up on
leads we think those those measures
alone can really help to attract more
investment in the park
and the and the actual upgrading of the
zoning and the development standards
that you'll see in a moment here
we think can also help and then we have
some
measures in terms of um do you want to
have a kind of pre-approved building
spec that will fast help fast-track
uh new development in the park
and then there's some proposals in the
longer term for extending infrastructure
to make more uh development ready pad
sites there
so
so then the second part of our work is
really what you will
adopt as ordinance and that is
regulatory framework so the park has a
right now has an overlay it's an overlay
district it's a special district that
way
and that will continue but we're trying
to you know we went through some of the
design standards that were originally in
the park and they had crazy things like
you know that you shall build in a
pueblo or a
territorial style and we really didn't
think that was appropriate for
industrial type development so we have
up upgraded the development standards to
be more reflective of what people are
building now
and incorporated some sustainability
measures that we think are are low cost
but can help to make the park improve
the park's appearance
and the overall sustainability of the
park
so um so this is what we uh
will be bringing what we will be
bringing before you in june
we've reviewed it with pnz we've had
we had a public meeting last week we had
input
from
tenants early on in the process
so we're really trying to strike that
balance between something that will
improve the overall character the park
and not impose additional burden upon um
people that are
investing money in the park
um we're going to revise this we're
proposing to revise his own districts to
show these these areas that i talked
about before
and to um to sort of broaden the the use
categories so they're not so specific
and to
simplify development standards with
really that focus on some
pretty practical common sense measures
like directing storm water to landscape
so that you can augment the irrigation
that's probably there already and to
focus a little bit on the public spaces
and create a better pedestrian network
and landscape and a lot of that is
focused on
crawford that kind of sequence of entry
from
i-10 to the airport into the southern
part of the park
so our next steps are to make our final
revisions
go through pnz and hopefully be back
before you in june with a for final
adoption
and with that i will stand for questions
okay thank you looks pretty good guys
spent a lot of time on it
i'm very impressed um
you know trying to transform that
industrial park
to this new innovation and an innovation
park is really
um a great a great thing
counselor ben coleman
thanks mayor yes thank you so much um mr
gleeson and and
uh gimmind i i've appreciated speaking
with all of you throughout this
um whole process and um this looks
really exciting
i just have one follow-up question um i
loved the map you showed us on um
that was color-coded
yellow purple green i think it was um
i'm curious about
um
is this did you touch is this something
that was sort of developed with
stakeholder input i just want to make
sure that it's something that
that this is like something that will
work for the user right the end user and
we're not just saying yeah this sort of
look this could potentially work and
that you know we're talking to
stakeholders about
um particularly this
type of
zone districts
uh mayor council of bencomo um we did
get some input in our meeting
last week and we we did get some initial
input um and from the meeting that we
had last week
we heard that uh a lot of encouragement
to
align the the airport kind of the
interest in the airport with the park
itself
um and so i'd say that's the that's the
major
thrust of the input that we've gotten i
don't know dan if you had any other um
any other
input
well like um
like will was saying we
it was really sort of an affirmation
that our
our designation or encouragement for the
aviation aerospace uses to
locate on the north side of
i-10 closer to the airport to
take advantage of the synergy with the
airport whether or not they're using the
runways or not is
one thing we heard
the other designations are
as will mentioned earlier i think it's
more a suggestion on how to try and
organize the uses in a in a way that
sort of responds to the lot sizes that
are there you know the value-added
agricultural stuff that's shown on the
south side are the bigger lots that are
in the park
the more advanced manufacturing closer
in uh includes uh a range of lot sizes
but you know from from six to eight
acres up to 15 to 20 acres so we're
trying to anticipate the kind of users
that would happen
it's not to suggest that if if if uh
agricultural use wanted something in the
manufacturing zone um it's not
prohibited you know it's not
this is not
this part of the plan is not zoning it's
not being baked in stone but we're just
trying to provide an organ organizing
principle for the park
thank you i love that i was gonna follow
up with something similar to that so
thank you for that clarifying question
that it's not because i love the
organizational part of it i really do
and but i was just curious if
it
you know it didn't end up working for
someone who wanted to you know
um set up shop there if that was going
to be flexible yep exactly
yes
okay well thank you i really appreciate
all the work that you've done on this
and i'm i'm excited for the final
product
thank you counselor
thank you councillor vasquez
thank you mayor um yeah i just have a
question about next steps um
uh with the master plan here um so i'm
assuming that our uh consultants here
will
perhaps
their contract will end
i don't want to assume that but just
wondering if you're going to have any
continued involvement in this project
after this master plan is finished
um mayor councillor vasquez
we hope to have continued involvement
and we'd love to have continuing
involvement in the in the project
um as you probably as you may know deca
parish abettini does quite a bit of
commercial development and so um and we
would love to just to help you find uh
people to and companies that are willing
to invest in the park so
um we hope that we are more than just a
kind of passive
uh consultant in the park but that we
can help
make the park be more successful
i don't know if that's a good question
or not yeah no i'm just wondering if
this is essentially the end of your
contract here and this is your like
final deliverable um
right before
moving forward uh just in in terms of
the next steps for the city um i think
it's super exciting to have silesia at
the helm uh of this of this project now
but making sure maybe this is a question
for cd shower for dr martinez but
um
that this that we can that staff feels
like they can successfully implement
this plan because this you know this is
going to be a lot of work moving forward
to get us to where we need to be and um
so maybe it's more of a question for
staff of what what the plan is moving
forward after this master plan is
adopted
um what silesia's new role will be
and
how we fulfill the vision here that's
been created by
by our consultants
i think i would turn that over to uh
sleazy or dr martinez
i see your hand up there
yeah she's i was going to call on her
with them since you called out with
cynthia
yeah dr martinez you there
okay
so celicia you want to step in
sure thank you mayor
um
yes i i think that um
will and and the team provided us
a great implementation strategy um he
he had that on one of his slides there
four next steps as
guidelines and um
yeah we we uh
we would like you know that's a
possibility that to to get them uh
involved in the future
um but he does have short-term uh
action items as well as long-term
and they've they've really outlined
uh those next steps for us
and uh
mayor i don't want to speak for dr
martinez but
um she
has been we've been working with her
in terms of
um sort of identifying some of the
projects that potentially could be uh
financed through additional grant
funding through the economic development
and administration
and that is
uh that is a logical next step for a
project of this type that is where the
master plan was was funded by eda but
they very often are
are willing to invest in public works
improvements that
that implement the priorities of the
master plan
thank you so much oh i appreciate that
and i think uh just the question around
making sure that this plan is put to
full use and the resources we've
expended to get um to where we are
which is terrific i think with the
rebranding and and the master plan are
are all executed on
well in a way that you know we
um
i don't think we lost either counselor
well you don't solve the plan and then
you know kind of
can you hear me
yeah you want to repeat what you just
said we probably lost three four same
sir
my comment was just to make sure that we
as a city had the resources to implement
the master plan it's important
considering the vision that that we have
and uh the the time to
spend on it so i just wanted to make
sure we had that process in place to
follow up but i think ceditia said you
know some short items that help get us
to where we need to go um
uh and and i'll just i'll put one more
pitch in here for this
agriculture i think um in terms of
setting up these sectors for
for growth uh you know i still think
that that um
you know that recreational cannabis
production could be a huge opportunity
for that value-added agriculture uh to
go into the industrial park and i think
in honestly probably a pretty place
considering it's away from the city but
i'll throw my two cents in for that um
before i sign off here thank you mate
all right thank you
um
[Music]
okay
that's it
anybody else
okay so you all are gonna go ahead and
move forward
staff has
looks like it looks looks good so i
guess you'll do what you need to do to
bring it forward to the city council for
final approval
yeah we have a little more work to do
but we will be
doing that over the next couple of
months and hopefully be back in front of
you in june
perfect okay
well great well i appreciate it very
much
thank you mayor thank you counselors
okay thanks
uh i believe that's it is that right ifo
we're done
that's correct thank you
okay so i'm going to go ahead and
get a motion a second to adjourn i'll
still stay on to do the agenda setting
meeting but the rest of you are welcome
to
leave after the vote so i need a motion
a second please don't move gandala
second by flores
motion
that we adjourn christine
this is on the motion to adjourn the
work session counselor beta stevie
yes
counselor vasquez yes
counselor ben como
yes
cancer sororic
yes
cancer flores
yes
councillor gandara yes
mayor
yes okay so we're adjourned it's 4 54
p.m
thank you and um i'll just stick around
christine for the agenda setting
see you later
thank you bear
thank you
okay i'm ready when you are
okay
so
number one this is for the agenda
setting meeting for the um
march
15th city council meeting
okay number one consent
one consent two non-consent
two non-consent three non-consent
three non-consents for non-consent
for non-consent
five non-consent
five non-consents
six consent
six consents
seven consent seven consents
eight consent
eight consents
nine consent
and non-consent
ten non-consent
eleven non-consent
on consent
12 non-consent
13 consent
13 consents and 14 non-consent
14 non-consent
great all right thank you have a good
night okay thanks hey good night