foreign
you
[Music]
okay well good afternoon everybody
welcome to our work session of las vegas
city council
today is monday february 8 2021
it's approximately 1 p.m i'm gonna ask
for
as we say our pledge of allegiance
before a brief moment of silence for
officer darian jarrett who lost his life
as well as wishing a speedy recovery for
the two las cruces police
police officers who were injured last
week as well
please join me in the pledge by pledge
allegiance
to the flag of the united states of
america
and to the republic for which it stands
one nation
under god indivisible with liberty
and justice for all thank you
and now we're going to go to our pet
pets of the week that jennifer
martinez from our communications office
i believe has
that information yes i do can you see my
screen mayor
yes perfect good afternoon mayor and
council i'm jennifer martinez with the
city's communications office and today i
would like to introduce you to bougie
and neville first bougie is the queen
bee
she is very energetic she loves to go on
walks she
listens very well and loves other people
but she'd like to meet any other furry
friends that you have in your home
before anything becomes
official just to be sure and then we
have
neville neville is very calm very soft
and he is just a sweet boy who likes to
cuddle
he is the most easy going guy out there
he's ready to come home with you and to
be your crazy love
if you're interested in either bougie or
neville you can visit them
online at the animal service center at
ascmv.org
adoptions go ahead and look up their pet
number call 382-0018 to make an
appointment to meet with them
off-site adoption events are cancelled
until further notice and once again pet
licensing pets in-laws produces must be
registered and licensed and you can do
so through the animal service center of
the messiah valley right now they have
temporarily suspended those in-person
licenses
so you'll want to make that phone call
three eight two zero zero one eight
to go ahead and get that mailed to you
or to make arrangements for it
the fees are for the altered pets seven
dollars per year unaltered pets the cost
is fifty dollars per year and senior
citizens they can get a little bit of a
discount if they provide their proof
of age with valid photo id the cost
would be five dollars per year
um what's on everybody's mind right now
is the vaccine what you need to do to
get registered
you can go to vaccine nm.org or you can
go to our website lost
cruises or we just put up in our news
and announcements section a new
news release to just go ahead and get
people encouraged
to register so if you're interested you
can take a look at these two uh photos
that you see on the right they're gonna
give you some information on
um some of the questions that you might
have like who should get the vaccine are
they safe are there any side effects
are they required and what if you have
already had coveted go to vaccinen.org
to get those questions answered for
yourself
and mayor i thank you for your time have
a great monday okay thanks jennifer
okay now we're going to go to and you
have a great monday too we're going to
go to jobs of the week
and i believe darlene lopez i see her on
the
on the call so darlene
thank you mr mayor good afternoon uh
council members
darlene lopez for the record so for our
jobs of the week we have
uh gis um cad systems administrator
and that's with the city of las cruces
and also
uh in the town of macia oops sorry
messiah valley regional dispatch and
that closes on 2
22 of 21. we have a welder
and that's with david koenig enterprises
inc llc and that closes on 2 24 of 21.
we have construction labor apprentice
tierra del sol housing corp
and that closes on 224 of 21. we have a
registered nurse
for davida healthcare partners and that
closes on 4 27-21
and last we have cdl truck driver and
this is the commercial driving license
uh for uh thrust companies and that
close it oh thrust transportation and
that closes on 2 26 of 21
and for a full list of internships and
opportunities you can go to
employanem.com
and also to government jobs dot com
forward slash careers forward slash las
cruces and for any more information or
if you have
uh questions that you'd like to direct
specifically to the workforce
you can reach us at 575-52
thank you mr mayor okay thank you
okay so we have one agenda agenda item
which is called the great energy
transition
implications for municipalities and it's
by neil
calwey unfortunately he's having a
little trouble
signing on so we've got to um
he's here now oh you got it oh okay
green oh there you are
are you doing sir let me before i let me
introduce you
uh let's see here so um counselor sorg
introduced a resolution a few weeks ago
that called for a proactive planning to
meet our city climate goals
we thought it'd be good to provide
context for the meeting so
we invited mr neil colwe to talk about
the great energy transition
implications for municipalities he's
based in colorado mr colway
is industrial program director at the
southwest energy
efficiency project where he leads
programs to advance
energy efficiency in the industrial
sector
he has an undergraduate degree in
mechanical engineering and a master's
in environmental management and policy
he'll be joined by matt
fromer an architect and planner who is
the energy project's senior associate
for transportation
where he focuses on electric vehicle
policy
and ev grid integration so thank you for
joining us today
and i'm glad you were able to log on
thank you
there's matt here i don't see him yeah
how are you oh man
yeah so excuse me i'm sorry before
if i begin if you would mind when you go
back
and forth because we have someone who
transcribes the the minutes and they
don't watch the video just say
uh this is mad or or or this is uh neil
speaking that's it thanks okay
great well it's all yours so the speech
is what
you're doing on the whole agenda
all right can everybody see that no
it looks funny on my screen
it's just one strip that's what i see
too there it is
okay all right well thanks
for inviting us here today virtually
anyway
and um uh my title is industrial program
director but i also
do a lot of work with beneficial
electrification of buildings
which is kind of a long term and my
colleague matt
is going to talk about the
transportation part of this
so next slide
so just a brief word about sweep some of
you may not be familiar
we promote energy efficiency and clean
transportation
programs and policies in these six
states
including new mexico we have a colleague
tammy fueblecorn who lives in
albuquerque and leads our policy work in
new mexico
uh next slide
so we're going to talk a little bit in
general about what is
beneficial electrification how does it
help
help local and state governments achieve
their climate goals and then
some opportunities for less crusades in
the buildings area
and then matt's going to talk about
transportation
next slide one of the reasons that
that um we were invited to speak today
is that
um i spoke at this conference which was
in october
uh again a virtual conference of course
but um
uh it's an example of the movement
around the country
towards this beneficial electrification
transition and i'm
heavily involved in colorado's
chapter of the beneficial
electrification league and
uh anyway the conference was like like a
day long and there were sessions about
buildings and transportation
and i participated in the policy
discussions
and um as a result of that
became in contact with some of the
people associated with las cruces and
they invited us to speak to you today so
next slide so what is beneficial
electrification
basically it means that you're switching
from a fuel use
to electricity again that's in
transportation
or it's in buildings or or in industry
and for the purpose of these three
benefits
especially the first one reducing
greenhouse gas emissions and other air
pollutant emissions
helping decrease customer energy costs
or improving the utilization of grid
resources
and the classic definition that
the beneficial electrification league at
least likes to talk about is that
it should it should improve one of these
three without
adversely affecting the other two but um
for our purposes today let's just say
that you know
yes we want all these benefits but
especially the first one
of um helping to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions
so next slide
so there's an increasing awareness that
something funny is going on with our
climate
and there's a just horrible fires in the
last few years in california
and in colorado and of course
one of the main contributors to those
fires is climate change next slide
and at the same time we're seeing a lot
of floods because
uh long story short the
uh atmosphere holds more more moisture
so
there's like a drought for a while and
it's holding the moisture and then all
of a sudden you have
uh tremendous amounts of rain this
picture happens to be from the
philippines but
there have been some you know huge
storms in the u.s and
even in colorado seven years ago we had
a huge
flood in in the boulder area next slide
so what are we doing about that states
and
local governments and countries
are setting goals and new mexico has a
goal to achieve
45 percent reduction in greenhouse gas
emissions by 2030.
the energy transition act will help with
that requires
utilities to achieve 50
renewable power by 2030 and 80 by 2040
so that paves the way for
doing more with electrification
and then as you probably know you have a
goal las cruces has a goal of 20
reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by
2030 and 75
by 2050 and we are aware that equity is
also a very
important issue as it is for many
communities across the country
next slide
here's a look at the las cruces
greenhouse gas emissions as you can see
over half of it
is from transportation including
all the traffic through the city as well
as
of course the city has a fleet which
we'll talk about
and then you can see the residential and
commercial buildings being about 38
percent of the
emissions and these are direct emissions
from
fuel as opposed to indirect emissions
from electricity use
which is um appropriate way to look at
it
okay next slide
so how does the electrification
contribute
to achieving aggressive goals well first
of all
uh we always say you want to do as much
electricity
energy efficiency as possible first
because it's
generally the most cost effective way
and then secondly reducing the carbon
intensity of the electricity grid which
we just talked about with the
the new mexico legislation
and then then it makes more and more
sense to switch
fuel uses to electricity
and so again that's what we may be
talking about today there are also
opportunities in the industrial sector
and including oil and gas and then
some other pieces of the pie are some
other types of emissions not just energy
like methane from oil and gas
and emissions from agriculture and the
waste sectors but
the biggest piece is associated with
energy use
and so the first three bullets are are
key
next slide
uh many other cities across the world
and across the u.s
are addressing these challenges of
setting
aggressive climate goals and also
looking at
beneficial electrification this report
highlights examples of several
cities around the world it's by an
organization called c40.org so
just showing it here to show that you're
not alone there's a lot of cities who
are
pursuing these kinds of efforts
next slide
so for las cruces in particular um we
saw the
resolution by councilman council person
sorg and we're aware of the
opportunities in you have some
opportunities with related
with relation to building codes
educational efforts for new
construction some retrofits of existing
buildings
and we'll talk a little bit about the
gas utility
and then as i said matt's going to talk
about
everything associated with electric
vehicles so
next slide
so a little bit of background um just
briefly
what is a heat pump well everybody's
familiar with air conditioners
and basically a heat pump it just is
like an air conditioner
that can go both ways it's a
reversible so in the summer it works
like an air conditioner
transfers heat from inside the house to
the outside
and in the winter takes heat from
outside
compresses that heat concentrates the
heat
and moves it to inside and they can be
a ducted system as shown here like
working with
the furnace or the uh the ducts
like like a central air conditioning
system or a gas furnace would do
or there are also ductless systems which
we call
mini splits next slide
so some of the benefits of heat pumps
it's a
heating and air conditioning in one
system basically it costs about the same
amount to install
at least in a new home either with you
have one
heat pump system compared to installing
a separate
gas furnace and separate central air
conditioning system
compared to electric resistance heating
it's about three times as efficient
and compared to natural gas or propane
heating you get reduced air pollutant
emissions
and um depending what you have in the
existing home you get
improved comfort with a good heat pump
system
and you get improved safety and reduced
risks of
not having a flame of you know
burning burning natural gas in the home
next slide
uh briefly again what is a heat pump
water heater
this uh picture here shows you you know
very sexy
looks very much like an ordinary water
heater except it has
the heat pump unit on the top the red
area there is the heat pump unit
basically it brings in
air from surrounding the unit
and uses heat pump technology to heat
the water
and they always use uh um
they always have an electric resistance
backup and
supplementing the water the the heat
pump unit so that you
can get a a good recovery time so they
work very well they're very efficient
next slide
some of the benefits of heat pump water
heaters
they're very efficient there the
efficiency of water heaters
is measured with what we call the
uniform energy factor or uef
and for um a
efficient heat pump water heater you
have a
uef of about 3.4 versus about 0.95
for electric or about 0.7 for gas or
propane
so basically a heat pump water heater is
about
three and a half times as efficient as
electric and about
five times as efficient as the gas or
propane one
and depending on the fuel that will
lower the energy costs by about two
thirds compared to the electric
and about 75 savings
compared to propane and because natural
gas prices are so low
currently the annual cost would be about
the same as for a natural gas water
heater
next slide and what about the greenhouse
gas emissions benefits well
if you take like an average house and
you compare a heat pump
versus a gas furnace
and looking at new mexico's projected
emissions over the next 18 years
you get about 35 percent lower emissions
with the heat pump and that's roughly
equivalent to
if you drive a 30 mile per gallon car
like a subaru
impreza um you could drive that car 4
000 miles less a year and that would be
about the amount of
emission reductions you would get from
the heat pump
and the heat pump water heater versus a
gas
water heater is about 50 lower emissions
and that would translate to driving that
same
type of car about 2 000 miles less per
year so it's a significant benefit
next slide
so now i'm getting into the good part
what
are some suggestions for you all to
consider
so first of all we have a few
suggestions for new homes
including any new multi-family
homes in las cruces you can do stuff
with codes
which i'll talk about you could um
launch some programs to help educate the
developers and the architects of the
benefits
of new construction and
at least for city-owned buildings you
could potentially
just require them to be all electric
so we'll talk about that a little and
existing homes is a little more
challenging to make it cost effective
but you could look at some programs to
do retrofits
and um having incentives
would be very helpful and we'll talk a
little bit about that and also as kind
of a
first step you always want to consider
better insulation and sealing
as a sort of a foundation
and then to think about new more
efficient equipment
okay next slide
this is from a fact sheet that sweet put
together it's it's um
available for from our website
um all our stuff is free of course and
um
in a nutshell and all that electric new
home and this applies to
all electric multi-family as well uh
would generally have these three
benefits should be better for health and
safety
as i mentioned a little bit no open
flames no carbon monoxide oh i forgot to
say
the all-electric new home that means
you're having an efficient heat pump
and efficient heat pump water heater and
you're also using
electric induction cooking or maybe
if you want to save a little money like
the radiant electric
which is not as quite as cool as
induction but
um that's another option so you're
having electric cooking
and heating and water heating
better for the climate as i already
mentioned
and third one
is a little more challenging compared to
gas but let's just say
the new we think the new all-electric
home or multi-family is going to be
about the same
cost as a traditional gas furnace and
air conditioning setup and the annual
bills are also going to be
about the same so
i don't know if it's in some cases it
would be lower but um just to be safe
i would say for the sake of our
conversation today compared to gas
and for multi house multi-family it's
probably about the same
cost okay next slide
so with regard to building codes if you
want to consider
something to advance
all electric buildings we
recently wrote a report and we give a
menu of options you don't have to just
require electric only that's maybe going
too far
for some people so here's our menu and
we recommend
at least electric ready which means that
you have the
the house pre-wired with enough capacity
to add
the electric um heating space heating
and ev charging at some point
and electric preferred is also a good
option
and the city of boulder has basically
adopted that
and it's working very well there's a
very strongly electric preferred and
if you want to install gas the house has
to be super efficient
and then you can you can see the other
choices there and the last one being
electric only
and as you probably know um i
i forget the number i think it's up to
like 14 cities and california now
have a requirement that any new
construction at least in
residential or some cities like berkeley
is both
residential and commercial it has to be
electric only no fossil fuels allowed
next slide so again our recommendation
is
we like electric preferred it gives it
give some
some flexibility if people want that and
then at a minimum if you don't want to
go that far
at least we like the electric ready
option
so that the buildings are pre-wired to
have the capacity
as i said okay next slide
and this is just the cover of our report
which you can find on our website or i
can send you the link later if you're
interested and it includes
code language for all those uh spectrum
of options which you can take the
language and you know
run with it in your in your own codes
okay next slide
now we're going to talk a little bit
about existing buildings the most cost
effective
applications are first of all if any
homes or multi-family have
electric resistance heating then it's
going to be cost effective to
displace some or most of the electric
resistance heating
with like many split heat pumps
and then secondly if the homes uh have
gas um gas heating
you have two options uh if they have a
central air conditioning the next time
that
central air conditioner needs to be
replaced you can replace it with a heat
pump
and offset some of the gas consumption
for heating
and if the home has a gas heating but no
air conditioning then you can consider
adding some mini split
heat pumps to also offer cooling and
offset some of the gas heating
so for any of those uh utility
incentives are going to be helpful
and same for heat pump water heaters um
they make sense if you have enough
incentives so
um we recommend working with
el paso electric and supporting them in
bumping up their incentives for this and
sweep will be doing the same thing so we
we will be
collaborating with you on that hopefully
and uh their new plan is coming up in
april their new um dsm plan
so it's coming up and then and then as i
mentioned before
uh for existing buildings if you're
doing any sort of retrofits you should
always consider
um starting with making sure that the
home is well insulated
seal the leaks etc next slide
here's a example of a multi-family
retrofit this
comes from utah and
um you can see on the left is sort of
the before picture the window's in bad
shape and and after
is a picture of one of the indoor units
of a mini split
heat pump system so in this case the the
multi-family
uh uh housing 28 unit
had electric resistance heating and um
so they installed
ductless heat pumps while upgrading the
insulation installing some led lighting
and adding some
programmable thermostats so
in this case because they were work
they were replacing the electric heating
it ends up being cost effective with a
payback of five years after the utility
rebate so
very successful project and as i said
it's more challenging
if the multifamily
property has gas heating but um
you know there are ways to look at it
and with
utility help you know to to sort of make
it work
uh okay next slide
and finally this is my last slide uh
just some thoughts about
um this i know this is a more
complicated
issue but what are you going to do with
the gas utility
and um so we would suggest you know
consider
hiring a smart consultant to work with
you
work with the gas utility and come up
with a strategic plan for the next
10 15 20 years
you want to minimize investments in new
gas infrastructure if possible
you want to develop a plan for paying
off the debt of any
of the recent investments
and start to encourage them
to do more with weatherization and
perhaps add incentives
on top of the el paso electric
incentives for heat pumps and heat pump
water heaters
it's counter-intuitive for a gas utility
to do that but since you know it's owned
by the city you can
you can get them to do that and and with
el paso's incentives and maybe year
incentives on top of that you could
start to make
um retrofits look better
and some kind of a plan to gradually
sell less gas over time maybe
maybe with some goals and rewards for
hitting the goals like something
reasonable to start off with like a five
percent um
selling five percent gas five percent
less gas over the next ten years or
something like that
um because it takes a while to ramp up
these these programs so that
doesn't seem like a um
that's not a very steep goal and it
might be something
willing that they're willing to consider
um
yeah um so the next slide i think that's
all for my
building suggestions and then matt's
gonna
take over and talk about transportation
very good right
great and i guess we're going to hold
the questions till the end and we'll uh
answer them then during q a yes thank
you for the
great presentation neil so my name is
matt fromer i work
with neil at sweep i'm on the
transportation team so i do a lot of
work on
electric vehicles and on also on
multimodal transportation
today i want to talk about accelerating
electric transportation
in las cruces let's have i've been to
new mexico a couple times in
albuquerque santa fe and taos never made
it all the way down to las cruces but i
did
recently learned that my cousin moved
there to las cruces so i will be
visiting
soon looking forward to it
who's your cousin you know kim schupert
oh no i just want to make sure it wasn't
evil philly
our city manager it just it's not
no my cousin my cousin's a hairdresser
so i'm not sure if you know her
um but i can connect to you
so just to kick this off and talk about
electric vehicles and why they're
important for reducing air pollution and
also saving people money so
in terms of climate cutting carbon
emissions transportation is now the
largest source of greenhouse gas
emissions in the us you can see the
chart on the right there showing
transportation surpassing electricity
as a number one source of carbon
emissions in 2016
and those curves have since diverged
even further
as you replace coal and natural gas
power plants with renewables
and then on the transportation side you
know we're replacing
a lot of smaller cars with bigger suvs
and pickup trucks that
consume more gasoline and produce more
pollution so we've really got to solve
transportation in addition to the
climate benefits
evs reduce local air pollution i know
new mexico has
some air quality issues and not
attainment for ozone and i think pm10
and of course evs have zero tailpipe
emissions so they can be
an important tool for improving local
air quality and protecting public health
and the third thing is lowering the
costs of transportation
which is normally the second most
expensive thing
in in most people's lives a car runs
most households about nine thousand
dollars a year
um with evs though they're cheaper to
fuel they're cheaper to maintain
and they also when we plug them into the
grid and charge them
overnight they can also put downward
pressure on electricity rates
by improving grid efficiency i'll talk
about that a little bit
so first on the fuel cost side i
actually found this tool on el paso
electric's ev
website where you can input number of
miles driven per month you can input the
fuel efficiency of your current vehicle
the price of gasoline now and then
compare it to
the fuel costs of driving electric
vehicle so i put in
this is basically the average new
gasoline vehicle replaced by
uh the new nissan leaf which gets about
miles per gallon equivalent and you
could see the monthly savings about 72
dollars
over a year about 860 dollars
and that really adds up over time
on the maintenance side there's a report
recently from consumer reports showing
that ev owners spend about half
as much to repair and maintain their
vehicles as owners of gas powered
vehicles
and then on the right some some good
data we have from new york city's fleet
they're kind of early movers on fleet
electrification they've compared the
cost of maintaining
all electric vehicles versus plug-in
hybrid electrics
hybrids and then um gas vehicles and i
kind of broke it out by average at the
bottom you can see for all electric
it's around three hundred dollars a year
in maintenance costs versus gas vehicle
about fourteen hundred dollars a year
when we add this all up evs have a lower
total cost of ownership
and this is a graph from excel energy's
website comparing the total cost over
five years of owning a nissan leaf
versus a nissan rogue sport you can see
the green bar there is the upfront
cost of buying the vehicle it's a little
more expensive for the electric
there there is a 7 500 federal ev
tax credit so that does bring that cost
down
but then over five years you see there's
lower fuel costs there's lower
maintenance costs
and that makes it cheaper to drive an ev
compared to a comparable gas vehicle
the other point i want to make is that
electric vehicles are coming
and this is becoming more evident every
year um
part of it is these national commitments
all over the world so
united kingdom france china and india
all making commitments to phase out the
sale
of fossil fuel vehicles in the next 10
or 20 years
and then more recently we've had
commitments from california
massachusetts
to ban the sale of fossil fuel vehicles
in those states by 2035
in other words maybe 100 electric
vehicles
um there's also 12 or so states that
have adopted the zero emission vehicle
standard
and we expect new mexico actually to
move forward with that as well
as the government governor made that
commitment last year
and that puts new mexico on track to uh
sell more evs in the state every year
basically adopting the california ev
sales
standards and then lastly on the auto
industry side we're seeing more
uh commitments from the auto industry to
transition their fleets to electric
vehicles
got this slide here showing the
different auto makers and on the top row
there you could see which have a
sales band for gasoline vehicles
obviously tesla doesn't make gas
vehicles so that's today for them
they're
ev only but then honda by 2025
and then the big announcement over here
was general motors
um plans to sell 100 electric vehicles
starting in 2035 so they're
they're going to have i think they said
30 ev models by 2025 and then slowly
phase out
their gas and another diesel vehicles
so i guess a big question for las cruces
is what can local governments do to
accelerate
ev adoption and i'll just go through a
few things here
the first one is city fleet
electrification so
leading by example walking the walk
number two is increasing access to ev
charging stations
by building public charging stations
working with utilities
and then adopting ev ready building
codes
third we have ev education and awareness
so educating the community fourth
incentives and advocacy
for stronger state and federal policies
and then fifth is making the commitment
to 100
electric transportation
to start with fleet electrification so i
do most of my work in colorado and we
did a survey
last summer asking local governments
here how many evs they have
in their city fleets and you can see
there's over 260 as of last summer
that number now is over 300
and you could see denver here is really
a standout they've already got 150
electric vehicles in the fleet
we also want to note that it's a quite a
range not just sedan
evs but also crossovers and suvs on the
right there is a
photo of the mitsubishi plug-in hybrid
electric
and so that's got all-wheel drive it's
an suv
and it's electric and i know boulder and
denver each ordered about a dozen of
those last year and they're pretty happy
with them
on the bottom there we've got some
operating cost information from denver
the average cost for fuel and
maintenance for a gas vehicle and their
fleet is about 28 cents a mile versus
just nine cents a mile for electric
so how does that translate into ev fleet
procurement policies
and we've seen about a dozen or so
cities and counties in colorado
actually make commitments to electrify
their fleets
and the most common is to set a target
for new
new procurement so oftentimes we'll see
for sedans and suvs where
electric models are already available
today 100 of new purchases need to be
electric starting in 2021
and then for pickups where you know
we're going to see the first electric
pickups in 2022
we're pushing that date to 2023
we've also seen this ev first
procurement policy which basically sets
evs as the default purchase
option for departments and then they
basically have to explain
you know if it's the case why this ev
does not fit either within their budget
or for the purposes of that
that vehicle but basically prioritizing
evs making them the default option
um in terms of the purchasing decisions
we recommend
looking at the total cost of ownership
as i showed before so not just
the purchase price but also the fuel
costs and the maintenance costs
over time and for those cities who they
do have carbon
uh goals like las cruces we also include
the social cost of carbon
so 42 46 dollars per ton there
and then lastly committing to build out
the ev charging infrastructure to
support
a new electric fleet in coordination
with utilities like el paso electric
next i want to talk about charging and
basically in every survey we've seen
lack of access to charging is the number
one
barrier to evie adoption the reason
people don't um
are unwilling to switch out their gas
car for an eevee either they feel like
they don't have enough range with the
eevee and they're gonna get stuck on the
highway
which almost never happens or they don't
live they don't have access to charging
at home
because they may live in an apartment
building another multi-family housing
situation
so what are some strategies to increase
access to charging first
the city can build public charging and
also leverage
state and utility incentives that new
mexico has
allocated i think 15 of the volkswagen
settlement
for ev charging and so they're rolling
out those programs now to build out
level 2 and dc fast charging across the
state
and then i know el paso electric also
proposed a transportation
electrification plan with incentives for
charging stations second there is to
adopt
an ev readiness ordinance or update
local building codes to require
ev infrastructure for parking spaces in
new and residential and commercial
buildings so essentially requiring
at least the wiring and the conduit
between the panel
and the parking space so that it's easy
for someone to install a charging
station if they want to buy an ev
and i added this chart on the right here
showing the cost
of installing this ev charging
infrastructure during new construction
which is the little blue bar
versus doing it during a standalone
retrofit later
you can see it's like five or six times
more expensive
to do this uh later during a retrofit
than during
new construction so really important to
put these in the building code so that
we're
designing these buildings we're future
proofing them for evs
as of now over 50 cities and counties in
the us have adopted
these ev ready building codes and i
included a link at the bottom there to
our
ev building codes adoption toolkit if
you want more information
next i want to talk about ev education
and awareness
because there are a lot of
misconceptions around evs
and i'll just share a little bit of
information the results from a survey we
did in colorado
so more than half of coloradans don't
think they can charge an eevee
at home with a standard three-prong
electrical outlet
um it's true that you can you can see
the photo on the right there
that's a nissan leaf plugged into a 240
volt 40 amp outlet the same one you'd
use uh for a dryer in your home
and that'll give you a level one or
sorry level two charge where you could
fully recharge a vehicle overnight
some other misconceptions or actually
just
people being unaware i guess of the the
federal ev tax credit only 40 percent of
americans know that the federal
government offers
a 70 500 tax credit for the purchase of
of a new ev there is this perceived
range anxiety where people think that
evs don't have enough range
um to cover their daily travel needs
in truth most people only drive about 30
miles a day and the average
new ev has about 250 miles so
um plenty of range there to cover most
day to day and then when you do have
sort of a longer road trip that's what
the fat when the fast charging comes in
if you look at um plugshare.com you can
see a map
of all the fast chargers in new mexico
those are the yellow pins on the map
and there's quite a few and of course
more in the works
and the as utilities and the state plans
to expand that fast charging
infrastructure
and then lastly i just want to highlight
that p hebs are plug-in hybrid electric
vehicles these are vehicles that have
both an electric
motor and a gas engine so like a toyota
prius prime
so basically you have an electric motor
for say 20 30 40 miles
of range and then once you've exhausted
the battery it switches over to a gas
engine and you can drive it
as if it was a gas car there's another
300 miles of range
that way so for those with extreme range
anxiety
that p have is a great option
i want to talk about some incentives and
advocacy i mentioned working with el
paso electric
they have their new transportation
electrification plan with
ev charging rebates and incentives
also the vw settlement funds
not only for ev charging but also that
those vwc
settlement funds are available to
replace
older diesel and gas buses and trucks
with
new zero emission vehicle ones so we've
seen some of that funding used for
things like electric school buses
electric transit buses
electric airport equipment um there's
quite a
quite quite a few different use cases
there for fleet electrification i
recommend looking at the climate
mayor's purchasing collaborative that
basically
collected all of these ev procurements
in a bulk purchasing program
to negotiate lower costs for evs for
city fleets
and then lastly advocating for stronger
state and federal
eevee policies and incentives we know
the governor's
very supportive of climate action of
electric vehicles
um and she's an outsider she wants new
mexico to join the clean cars program
there are other sorts of policies that
other states have that new mexico should
be looking at that is included like the
advanced clean truck standard to replace
the dirty diesel trucks with uh clean
zero mission vehicle ones
and then also looking at some electric
vehicle and electric bike incentives
okay this next next slide is really
overwhelming but i just want to show
this chart from a campaign we've got
going in colorado called go ev city
but it's basically working with local
governments to make that commitment to a
hundred percent electric transportation
and we do that breaking up
transportation into these five
categories so
there's the municipal fleet transit
buses school buses
taxis and tncs which are uh
transportation network companies like
uber and lyft
and then the bottom row there's the
community wide evs and you can see
if boulder county for example their goal
is 30
of total vehicle registrations are
electric by 2030 and 100
by 2050 very ambitious goal there
this is something that las cruces might
look into
uh you know you set the goals and that
kind of creates a foundation for other
eevee supportive policies and programs
that's that's all i've got so um a
little bit up for
questions now for neil and i thank you
thanks matt
looks like we have counselor sore who
has a question
um thank you mayor um and
thank you neil and matt i
i appreciate you coming here you've
given us an
excellent summary of what i've been
saying for the last 10 years here in las
cruces
um i wish i had your presentation a few
years ago but anyway
um what you're saying is exactly right
uh this is what i've been trying to
advocate here in las cruces all along
um the um
the um part about
uh uh homes and and structures in the
city
that's a little newer um but i've been
talking about
electric vehicles now since night uh
2011 or 2012.
and so anyway um
[Music]
yeah i agree that we need to have our
homes uh
electric ready uh elec at least
electric prefer ready anyway
and the option a good option to have
electric up
preferred like you described um
but yeah our biggest problem here and
it's always a problem
and i speak from experience here is the
service is not big enough
um you got to have i i don't know what
the latest standards or codes are
for homes but um i i bought a house here
in las cruces that it was built in 1986
it had 100 amp service and so it
restricts me a lot
i i ca i can't have a water heater and i
i dare about put a a stove in and of
course not a furnace
that's electric um but i did put a whole
house air conditioner
and that's just pushed it right to the
limit
um so these homes have to be at least
200 amp services
um there again i speak from experience
my father was an electrical contractor
wired many houses with him and um
he built himself three different
electric homes in his lifetime
total electric homes and so when i moved
to montana to the ranch there
i decided i was wanting a total electric
home too of course we didn't have
natural gas
out in the boonies where i lived but uh
protein
propane was temporarily used in
temporary housing and that i knew for
sure i didn't want
so i built myself a total electric home
electric heat electric water heater
uh electric range everything and um
i started out with a 200 amp service and
i filled it up
i could barely get anything else in that
house that was elected then
that used a certain amount of
electricity so
um i know where we're coming from here
on this
uh i um
[Music]
i have i still struggle with the idea
that natural gas is too cheap
uh it's not competitive with electric
for say for heating water
except for the one that you mentioned
now that's something new that i never
heard about before um
could you explain a little bit more how
those heat pumps work on a water heater
how the heat pump water heater works
yeah
um do it one more time anyway
well let's see um well
i like there is a little video link
embedded in that slide
so um you can watch that later but
it's basically you have the heat pump in
the top of the water heater
and in this case it's transferring the
heat from the air
to a water circulating water loop that's
it's heating up the water and going into
the tank so
um but it's the same technology it's you
know it's using refrigerant
and um i don't know what else to say
uh but but they're very efficient and
like i said it's like three and a half
times as efficient as using
electric resistance you froze on me
oh sorry
um i was just saying that you know
they're very efficient it's still using
the refrigerant
system and in a nutshell it basically is
just
transferring the heat from from the air
to
water okay i see
that's uh that's pretty good i um
got myself a whole with the hotter
summers we're having here i got myself
a whole house uh uh air conditioning
for the house just uh year before last
and
um oh in fact it's a little just a
little over a year ago
now and um i'm just shocked how much
electricity that's taken even though i
use ground source
heat pump or geothermal as some people
call it
and um which of course brings it down i
guess
my problem is that there's members of my
house that like a little cooler than
than i think it should be um but getting
out but moving on to transportation
matt um thank you so much i just wonder
how many members of our council and in
fact
staff have ever driven a tesla maybe by
a show of hands
can you show me if you've driven a tesla
i don't see any hands going up it's
amazing
a truly amazing car to drive oh there's
one yeah councilman
i haven't i haven't driven one
i have been in a tesla and okay well
you've got to drive it to
fear well real i'll salivate too much if
i do that
you'll think i'm okay that's fine
and um but um
i'm not saying the shitty city should
buy tesla's however tesla
3 only costs uh 3 500 1 000
and so that's getting into the price
range where we could possibly
use one in the in the city here um but i
counted five other cars that
are are less than five thirty five
thousand dollars
and if we could find a way to get that
uh tax credit
uh pass it on to the say the dealer i
think there's ways in which we can do
that
and so that we could get it even cheaper
um
there's plenty of cars out there right
now we could use
then for certain parts of our city fleet
for sure um
then um i
am
i like the idea that you had when you
described about the local uh
electric vehicle fleet policy and in
procurement
i hope we can use that here in las
cruces
um that looks like an excellent uh way
of going about this
so anyway we'll be having the resolution
on this
on the on the transportation part coming
up next uh
council meeting it's uh in the schedule
so i'm looking forward to uh
doing some more so for now mr mayor
thank you
thank you councillor abeeta stevie
thank you mayor and thank you matt and
neil
um i have a few questions um some for
you and i think some for staff
too uh so i did want to kind of weigh in
um and get staff's opinion um
on what uh what
the current costs are right now for our
vehicles
and um and if they have already been
looking in
and obviously we're going to see a
resolution come first so i'm assuming
that they have some numbers perhaps that
they can share with us
on the different types of costs
associated
and i'm looking for also we noticed that
there was going to be cost reduction
for obviously gas
but i'm looking about repairs and
if we have the people that are qualified
to make the
correct repairs on these types of
vehicles and what those costs look like
um for individuals and for
municipalities
okay so counselor you're okay leanne
is gonna take that take the question
sure good afternoon mayor council land
damoche chief budget officer
for um as you know
i used to be administrator of fleet
several years ago
um actually counselor stevie i probably
will need to pull some data to find some
accurate
recent cost for you but i will say that
typically
okay typically um our replacement
we try to put in our vehicle acquisition
fund about one and a half million every
year for replacement of vehicles
i will tell you generally
we're probably needing to replace i
would
gander to say several several hundreds
okay we do have an older fleet
right now with the one and a half
million we
give the police department 18
replacements
that includes traffic and police
vehicles
it includes detective it includes codes
and we try to if we have the funding
for animal control as well and then
with any funding that is left over we
try to
provide vehicles for all of the other
departments
and unfortunately it takes
probably about maybe one or they get one
or two vehicles
per year um i will say that we try to go
out for
bonds or for loans for the fire
department because their apparatuses as
you know are very costly
as far as fuel we probably
i want to say spend about approximately
two
maybe two million a year or a little
less per year
on that it's a matter we just recently
went out for a new contract
we have uh contracts on that those and
they give us
particular rates we go by um
what the rate is for that week with the
company that we buy the fuel from
and then they give us a discount or they
either raise the price
a few pennies on us and typically it is
usually just a few pennies as far as
maintenance and repair
let's say the total fleet budget is
around
6 million per year so
pretty much right now we have we're
we're actually doing a transfer
into from the general fund into
the um fleet services that's about three
and a half million
it varies if we have a lot of expenses
during the year we may come back to you
closer to the end of the fiscal year
and ask for an adjustment there we're
trying not to do that actually the last
couple of years we've been
pretty good so three and a half million
and then
um the rest of it comes in the other
i'd say two and a half to three million
comes in from
maintenance and repair from those
departments that we consider chargeback
so that's anybody that
is an enterprise or an internal
or are on a grant they pay for that
so all together our expenses for the
year for
our fleet is about six and a half for
maintenance and fuel
and then for a replacement one and a
half million
and what i'll do is is i'll pull some
reports for you and send it out to all
of council for
uh the updated i'll try to get you the
fy 2020
because that's for a full year okay
thank you leanne um and matt
perhaps could you talk about um if
electric vehicles if it's more expensive
to do repairs on
those types of cars and if
you need to have qualified personnel
obviously you need to be have people
that specialize in caring for those
types of vehicles too
and how how do we rate here in southern
new mexico about having any of those
qualified
individuals mayor councillor stevie
i will say i was um at fleet probably
about three years ago and we did start
looking for electric vehicles
i will tell you that we do have two um
electric hybrids that are in the motor
pool
unfortunately they are not on charging
stations
uh because there are none well there's
two at city hall
but i think they mostly use um gasoline
unleaded gasoline for those
as far as at the time when i was at
fleet you have to remember this was
three three and a half years ago i did
look into
um i did look into
for um uh if if we had somebody that
could work on electric vehicles
and i think at that time the ford uh
company the local ford dealership had
told me that they were getting ready
to possibly try to send some of their
mechanics out for training for electric
vehicles
so i will but i will follow up with our
administrator richard dewitt to get him
to
reach out to them which i think he is
currently right now
and counselor looks like lisa larocca
put her hand up so maybe she has some
more information on the maintenance
portion or something
lisa yes thank you mayor
and counselor and um to neil and
matt for the great presentation i
know there is the great challenge with
the transition
and a couple other options that are
available another option that is
available through
the climate mayor's program is leasing
and in that context you are able the
the lisa the leasing company
is able to take advantage of the tax
credit and offer the maintenance
so that allows a city fleet to be able
to
to be more exposed to electric vehicles
but not have to have the
equipment or training at this juncture
to be able to do the maintenance
that's required of them and then at the
end of a certain period
like three years were able to
buy those vehicles at a depreciated
value so um we're still adding on to our
fleet
but starting out with a different
scenario where
those additional where those burdens of
uh
maintenance are not on there um and
uh and also you know that we have
uh a a clipper and a tesla
charger but at johnson park and by the
plaza
we're removing those and taking the
clipper chargers
and putting them at fleets so they will
have
uh they will have the capacity to
to use um the electric vehicle
uh charging facilities there and those
um
are are not um are would be
uh different than the ones that we're
going to be
putting in around the city we're going
to have it at eight different places
and those will be electric chargers dual
electric chargers level two
that we will collect funds for
that are related to the ev charging or
the ev rates that
el paso electric is going to set
great thank you um and i appreciate that
and i know uh matt you had yourself
unmuted right at the beginning so i do
want to
let you have a little bit of time if you
have anything additional
to add yeah i'll just be quick yeah so
thank you lisa she sent me over some
information earlier about how many evs
you have in the fleet it looks like
there's three
ford c-max evs i just wanted to point
out that the technology
has come a long way in the last few
years like they're they're i think
they've discontinued production of the
c-max
but just to demonstrate like the the
nissan leaf in 2017
got like 85 to 100 miles of range
the newer ones today are about 230
and then they're improving on that each
year to getting into the 300s
so i just i just wanted to point out
that you know this they're sort of like
first generation evs had really limited
range
and more issues being such a new
technology but just like
with solar panels we've seen them become
cheaper
more efficient higher performance over
time
and so the new ones are are a lot better
but what i was going to suggest
is maybe connecting with the nissan
dealership in las cruces
and asking whether you could borrow a
leaf for a month or two
and see what that's like i know we've
had some success that way in colorado
with the nissan dealerships here
you know about a third of the cars on
lot and the colorado nissan dealerships
are electric
a lot of leafs so they've got all the
staff on hand they
are experienced with the repairs and
maintenance
and i know the same is true for chevy
with the their bolt as well
great thank you um and then
moving on to homes um i'm
wondering did and forgive me if i
can't remember exactly did we have any
specific measurable goals within
our elevate plan about any um
electric changes that we'd like to see
at all
or is this all items that will be new
for us to look at
[Music]
and that'll be for staff probably
and i'm dr lisa might you know kelsey
what was your question again i'm sorry
if we have any um measures already
um located within elevate las cruces on
um on electric homes or any sort of
uh measures that we were going to look
at
within elevate
[Music]
when you say measures can you expand on
that specifically like
if we mentioned it anywhere within
elevate
actions actions codes actions
if we put in anything that's going to be
new conversations that we need to start
with our
homebuilders associations and everything
yeah we talked about renewable energy we
talked about um
of course uh the the
numbers that was discussed as far as
where we want to go in so many years but
i don't think we
zeroed it down into specifically homes
but i don't know all that
i don't know if lisa is aware of that or
yes
mayor counselors i um
there are some mentions about increasing
energy efficiency
and up and updating the codes that
relate to
uh relate to it in elevate there's also
a new state standard which is the
international energy efficiency
codes which are stricter and the city
will
will by association i mean by being part
of the state will have to adopt
will be adopting those so in that
context
that is also at play and the climate
action plan
uh specifically talks about
energy efficiency uh especially targeted
for
low and moderate income communities to
reduce their cost burden
so all those areas are already
in policy okay great thank you lisa
and we love you all my questions for now
thank you counselor uh counselor ben
cuomo
no i'm wait a minute yes i think
i can't yeah well go ahead
no i'm sorry i thought i had seen
counselor vasquez he did
and for some reason the line up here is
different than what i have down here so
counselor vasquez if
i'll do for the councilman como that's
fine i can go after him
okay i figured you'd do that
thank you and thank you very much for um
this important conversation we're having
today and
the presentation um yeah i just have a
couple questions and then i just
wanted to make some statements that are
that i think are important
um for this discussion um and
i think my questions may be for staff as
well
or at least my first one i'm curious
about
um i know that there is a um
weatherization
assistance program in new mexico i'm
curious about
um the kind of funds that come to las
cruces to support low-income families
and weatherizing their
homes and um and how we can
increase that assistance to home to
homeowners or even renters in las cruces
i don't know maybe lisa
their counselor ben cuomo i'm sure that
natalie's group can also address this
but
um one of there there are different
programs that are out there
to address weatherization
and el paso electric has a rebate
program
the problem is uh with with this
is that the there's not
a comprehensive program or funding
sources so there's
gaps in a lot of different things like
you'll qualify for
one thing if you have air conditioning
but not if you have an evaporative
cooler and different things like that
so um i
uh reading between the lines of your
your
question is that there is a strong need
to
scale up this work i think that everyone
is doing a great job
but is it's difficult to coordinate all
these efforts
because there is um
so much to do and um
and that is becoming a priority now
for a lot of different groups to come
together and figure out how to stack or
complement each other's work
so that's being done el paso electric
has reached out to us
sweeps um state representative has
is is talking with us so in that context
we are hoping to
accelerate the amount of weatherization
that goes on
and with the end goal of having um
the cost burdens reduced for everyone
right right thanks lisa for that i knew
you'd know i mean i think
um i'm glad you mentioned that and i
mean i think this is honestly one of
those like
not necessarily easy but this is a very
clear next step that i think we could
take as a city
and so supporting these kinds of efforts
are
important so i for sure support
something like that if it came
across city council
um lisa or anybody actually any of our
presenters
i'm curious with this new administration
at the federal level
if we expect to see major
efforts to support state and local
governments with
funding to do some of these major bold
um initiatives
uh you know like i said at the local
level are we expecting to see
any of that
i hope so
[Laughter]
yeah do do you know if so is there
nothing necessarily
that has been put out yet i i mean
yeah it's it's a it's early days for
sure
i think one thing we could probably
expect from the federal government is
some sort of zero emission vehicle
standard like we have at the state level
in addition to the current
cafe standards for gas vehicle fuel
efficiency
so and then also significant investment
in r d for electric vehicles and
batteries
um i know the biden administration also
has a goal of building
500 000 ev fast charging stations across
the country
um so funding that effort and then
the other thing i would say is that
they've done a nice job centering
environmental justice and equity early
on
there's this new like justice 40
initiative
where they plan to direct i think 40
percent of federal climate investments
toward
low income or disproportionately
impacted communities and so that's
certainly a big shift from what we've
seen the past four years um and some
exciting stuff on the horizon though we
don't have
too many details yet okay that was
matt fromer speaking sorry about that
yeah
sorry yeah okay um
yeah i was reading yesterday that our
new secretary of transportation
also has very big goals in terms of
climate change and transportation
and so you know one of my questions was
going to be around
moving city transportation to 100
percent
electric is probably very costly and
expensive and so i'm hoping that there
are resources from the federal
government to be able to do that
especially when
you know i don't want that burden of
cost to land on the consumer right to
land on our citizens and
you know i've mentioned in this to this
council before
and in our tsi um
prc that you know i would really like to
see the city provide
no cost transportation public
transportation to las cruces residents
and so
i certainly you know as we make that
shift to electric
public transportation i don't want like
i said that caused the burden to fall
back on the consumer
um i don't know if um matt if
you all had any suggestions in terms of
any of that or what you've seen in other
cities
yeah i'd say in terms of bus
electrification
i would look into the vw settlement
funds that the state
has been administering so they have i
don't know what new mexico's portion is
but it was whatever portion
of the volkswagen diesel emissions
scandal took place in new mexico so say
20 or 30 million dollars but you can use
some of that funding to replace old
diesel
buses with new electric ones and i think
albuquerque's taking advantage of that i
thought lisa mentioned that
um las cruces might be as well like five
electric buses if i'm right
yes yeah that is awesome
um great news and i would work with el
paso electric to figure out the charging
infrastructure on that as well
since they're starting off cool great
news
um and then i also just saw this morning
that in biden's
next covered relief bill he's got 30
billion dollars for transit
to try to rescue transit from
what's been that you know the impacts of
covid um so
that's a that's a positive step yes
thank you matt and mr mayor i see lisa's
hand is up again so i don't know if she
has something else to add lisa baroque
yes um thank you mayor and um councilman
cuomo i just wanted to add that on a
state level
uh right now they're trying uh the
legislators are trying to update the
sustainable building tax credit which
uh gives tax credits for any
for heat pumps for all of those
different things
that neil just presented and for low and
moderate income
households the tax credit is double and
they get it as a check
and not as a deduction on their income
taxes
so there are some uh
very uh innovative ways that they're
trying to
uh to encourage people to to be able to
switch over
great thanks lisa um those were all my
questions i think leslie i just wanted
to
name that i'm really glad we're having
this conversation and we'll continue to
because
um although i believe strongly that each
of us
has a important role to play in curving
the effects of
climate change i also don't i think
individuals statistically are blameless
for climate change and you know i think
governments and industry particularly
have
very key role to play actually in
in the way that we're going to see
climate change sort of come to be in the
next few decades and
and i think one of the biggest things we
can do as a municipal government
is really advocate for policies that
hold indus extractive industries
accountable for
um the kind of impacts that we are
seeing already across
the country and the world um i mean more
and more we're going to start seeing
um climate
migration right immigrants who leave
their their home countries because
of severe climate and so um i just think
these things are
um are really heavy and again as we
should do as much as possible as a local
government definitely
and we shouldn't only push for
policies that change individual behavior
even though it's important it's not
necessarily
going to change this isn't going to
change my individual actions alone
so um thank you councillor sorg for
bringing this to the conversation mr
mayor
yes i explained to
councilman como she brings up excellent
points i just
have some good news uh the the bill that
uh lisa larocque was saying is house
bill 15
follow that through the legislature
hopefully it'll pass that gives
credits for uh home building that is
environmental uh and we are really close
to all these things we've been talking
about here today that's not that far
away it's not that big of a
a shift in our paradigm here um the
costs for electric vehicles the cost for
electrifying houses
will be coming down as time goes on just
like the cost of computers went down
just like the cost of solar pv went down
it's all coming down and being very
competitive
i agree okay is that uh that it
councilman cuomo
yes so yeah okay counselor vasquez
thank you mayor uh yeah thank you
counselor bank of your comments uh
completely
agree with you um on all points there
and counselor sword for
for bringing this forward and continuing
uh to make this an important issue for
us to discuss and move forward on
um as well as to to matt and neil
for your presentation um you know i
think uh
matt neil you're you're talking to i
think a pretty supportive counsel on
this effort i think we
are hungry and looking for solutions to
move uh
move forward in this direction and so um
in particular the policy suggestions
that you
um have talked about are are things that
i don't want us to
forget about after this work session i
know counselor sorg you mentioned a
resolution coming forward
um uh that might include several
components of this but
i think there were some really important
ones included in this presentation like
the first
the first option uh piece about buying
new um electric vehicles
in our fleet and having having that be
the default
right and being able to look at you know
budgetarily
with the savings and with our current
age of our fleet
um what that would cost over the long
run if it's in
if it's a policy that we wanted to
implement this year
right um i think it'd be great for for
staff to work on an analysis of
you know as our um uh
gas fleet starts to age out
right so not getting rid of our gas cars
necessarily but every time we buy a new
one
what the life of those that fleet looks
like and what the cost would be to the
city is
that's a proposal i'd like to see so
that we could implement potentially that
that particular um policy
um and i think that's us getting really
you know serious about this
um so uh and just have
another question too as it relates to
our gas utility
i know there's not many uh municipal
municipalities out there that
that have their own gas utility i think
we're pretty unique in that sense from
my understanding
but i know our gas utility is one of
them
it brings in a lot of money to to really
power all of our collective enterprise
funds as part of our utilities
department
and so i don't know if miss walsh is on
or someone else
but i'm wondering um or some of our
utilities commissioners that are on
as well um you know considering that we
just
funded this big gas natural gas project
out in talavera
um and you know we're trying to add
customers
as it stands to our gas utility um what
are the conversations in our utilities
department
um around the future of that of that
utility and perhaps
um you know eventually being able to um
i don't know if the plan would be to
sell it to a private um to the private
sector or to continue managing it and
phasing it out but
wondering if anyone from our utilities
department or administration has any
thoughts on
what the phasing away of a gas utility
might look like
i see that delilah is on the meeting but
um i don't know if she has information
to discuss it just yet
yes mr mayor i'm sorry i was trying to
raise my hand and i couldn't get to that
fast enough screen's going on but
um that is our energy transition is a
commitment that the council made through
our climate action plan and that was
decarbonization of our natural gas
and you know looking at a true energy
transition plan for the city of las
cruces so that
that line or that effort will actually
be included in the resolution that
councilor sorg has requested so i've
actually come up with a draft
and that will hopefully i as i get
interrupted
throughout the day i'll have that draft
ready to send to lisa so we can work
with her
on moving that forward but regarding the
natural gas utilities of business it's
really something that we want to plan
well because we do have one of the more
affordable utilities in the southwest
it's very well run very efficient and it
does provide
a big boost to the operations of water
and
wastewater and even solid waste so i'll
give you an example
the natural gas utility right now pays
over 35
of shared services so that means it's
paying for our billers our customer
service reps
our accountants franchise fees to the
city administrative fees to the city
it pays over 35 percent of that chunk
and administrative fees
so that means we'll have to raise rates
over all other utilities if it doesn't
exist
in order to absorb those expenses
because those are fixed costs that will
exist no matter
what our customer size the other part of
it
is that we have to make sure we don't
burden
the affordability of energy to our
existing customers
so for example if you were to force
full electrification throughout this uh
entire city which is not at all what was
being proposed today was talking about
being electric ready and
being ready for renewables but if you
don't have those renewables in place you
can actually cause a regressive tax to
your lower income and middle-income
families and so that's another
consideration
also if we were to sell off the utility
for example
in today's world we have control over
the rates and those energy costs for our
citizens
and i for one don't want to let go of
that control because we've been very
responsible for 85 years we've managed
that
at a responsible manner and
affordability for our citizens so
i don't want to hand over to a private
investor
who may or may not share the same
climate action goals that we have as an
organization so
that's another consideration and then
lastly we don't want to harm
our industrial opportunities within the
city
so we've got large users such as nasa
nmsu even our latest land uh big tuna
that came through economic development
they need gas in order to do what
they're doing so again it just has to be
a reasonable plan
and that's what we're looking for it's
it's the planning part of it
so those are questions we're asking as a
matter of fact at our next board meeting
for lcu
we actually have added an energy
transition slide to start having those
discussions with our board
so i like what counselor sorg
recommended in december
is let's put a concrete plan together
let's look at that 30-year
outlook of the what-ifs and what can
happen without harming the affordability
to our citizens or even
the operations of our city so it's it is
a lot to think about but yes
to answer your question in a very long
broad way
that is something we are looking at and
considering
thank you miss walsh that's a really
thoughtful answer and i'm so
glad to hear that there's so much work
already going into thinking about this
in a in a way that really as you said
protects the consumer i think
that's you know at that moment where we
can actually level out cost to consumer
um and and actually you know
transitioning away
from uh perhaps what we're purchasing
now in terms of the volumes of gas that
we're acquiring
and more folks have access to this not
just in new homes but
there's that there's that social justice
piece of like
making sure that it's not just brand new
homes that have
you know great electric power both that
were able to retrofit existing homes
um as well i think we talked about that
with solar
quite a bit in the city and so we've
been pushing for community solar so that
we can you know get more folks on a
shared grid
as a solution and so um those are all
you know really good considerations
thanks again councillor storm for
thinking about
about that um i do have just one other
questions or maybe a comment but i don't
know if
folks will be able to answer this but um
i know a password electric you know
currently has several
coal-fired plants and so um there's just
this
you know as many electric utilities
still do
and so there's this there's this dynamic
about you know
continuing to rely on electricity that
is still being produced
by fossil fuels and so that um even
though we don't have the individual
perhaps
emitters right in like a in a bus or a
car
um those fossil fuels are still being
extracted to power
the very electric vehicles and so i
wonder if neil or matt if you have any
thoughts on that you know especially in
working with the utilities
if they have their own transition plans
to get off of coal-fired plants and that
and
actually get grids with you know with
the renewable energy that we are all
wanting to switch to anyway um so just
yeah any thoughts on that neil or matt
yeah this is neil um by the way matt had
to leave
uh to go to another meeting but if
anybody
has any more questions for matt i can
share his email address
i think it's on the last slide but um
anyway
um i don't know specifically what el
paso electric is thinking
but um i uh you know i did
share that there is the energy what's it
called
the the act that was passed
in the last couple years that does
require all the new mexico utilities to
have a plan
to go to 50 renewables by 2030
and um so that's a pretty aggressive
goal and uh that they have to hit that
so they will be
working on phasing out their their coal
plants i know that in colorado
um even the tri-state uh which owns
you know run runs a lot of um provides
power to
the co-ops in new mexico as well
tri-state now has a plan
to go to 80 percent um 80
reduction in its emissions by 2030 which
is very aggressive
and it's because um as you probably have
heard you know renewables are just
becoming so cost effective and
even um even compared to the cost of
operating an existing coal
plant in some cases it just makes sense
to shut the coal plant down and go ahead
and
transition to wind and solar so
it's happening and i
i don't know that we usually focus sweep
usually focuses more on
uh you know energy efficiency and clean
transportation but
there are a number of environmental
groups that are
you know working with uh clean energy
plans of utilities and trying to get
them to speed
up that transition so that that's all i
know i can't really say anything more
than that
and uh looks like delilah has another
comment or question
yes thank you mr mayor i'm sorry for the
record delilah walsh utilities director
and to sort of speak to what uh
councillor vasquez has said we also want
to be careful that we don't go to
electrification
only for the sake of electrification
because just as you said
epe will have to do something to
generate that new service and generate
that extra electricity and
in today's world they have to burn three
times as much gas
um to produce the same amount of energy
as if you were to light your stove
so if i turn on my gas fireplace if that
were an electric fireplace they have to
burn three times more natural gas
to give me that electricity so we want
to make sure our electrification really
is focused on the renewable component
thank you neil uh thank you delilah i'll
just finish by saying
uh that i'm definitely supportive thank
you again councillor sword
um and let's figure out you know what
what local
uh both the administrative policies and
resolutions um and in the future
ordinances we need to
enact to start getting here um and i see
this part of a
a much bigger effort on the city's park
um you know we've been talking about you
know the ban of single-use plastics
in um our tsi committee as well and so
there's a whole bunch of different
things that go into creating a more
sustainable
healthy uh clean environment for
everybody but this is certainly a big
part and as council raincombo mentioned
one of the biggest things we can do as a
city to really have a
majority impact a large impact here so
thank you so much
thanks counselor uh looks like mayor
potem
and and then i guess counselor sergey he
has a another oh and counselor flores
i'm sorry
thank you um mayor and
neil and um now see i've already
forgotten your partner's name
thanks so much for a really thoughtful
presentation
thank you counselor sork for really
pushing to bring this forward
been really proud of our sustainability
you know our policies within that
it's really not in my wheelhouse but
learning very quickly
um we all know the importance i'm
i guess i'm wanting to see what policies
or ordinances are being
are currently in the queue from
sustainability prc with the exception of
the
the banning the plastic waste
but related to some of those what i say
is long hand
um low hanging fruit those policies that
the development rate of new development
have this
um you know where we're very much
encouraging or or we want to have them
um wired right to move into that into
that
um arena i mean where are we at with
that and
um you know i know counselor
uh a bit just to be asked if it's
sitting in our
you know is it mentioned in our elevate
and i know to i mean i couldn't point to
it i was
trying to pull my elevate quickly to see
if i could find it
but i'm just just wanting to see um how
you know what sort of time frames i'm
hearing a lot of cool things happening
but
um we should probably get some time
frames together
um where we're developing these
ornaments so we see by the end of the
year that
that not only plans from utilities but
plans
from sustain you know from lisa and
others are in the
in the queue and ready for us to move
forward with
welcome i was going to say something to
that towards the end but since you
brought it up let me just
suggest this um i think i think one of
the
first steps we need to do is and we
probably need to give
our home builders at least a year
advanced notice is that perhaps in about
a year we're going to start requiring
that new home constructions
have at least wired for for that type of
electricity that if they were
to have an electric car they don't have
to have the home rewired or they don't
have to
have the home remodified and that's also
good because of as new subdivisions
come in el paso electric has to need to
know what the new load will be
because they have to be able to provide
that so i think that that would be
if we were to maybe send signal that
that in about a year or so we're going
to be looking at this resolution that
requires
new home construction to have those type
of of amenities
for those type of electric vehicles and
i'm thinking
um you know the ones that look like they
look like a big huge plug
you know that plugs into the car and i
know that you can use our
the current electricity but it takes
forever to do it and so it'll take a
different type of add-on and i think
that that's uh
you know good thinking on our part to
maybe look at doing something down the
road but i don't believe i'm almost
certain
we have nothing on the books yet and
that's something there that probably
larry nichols and his team can start
looking into
and then we can bring something forward
i i know we don't have it in the books
mayor but i'm
more about in the queue like in some of
these sustainability
prcs and hearing from delilah i'm happy
that it'll be a standing agenda item
for utilities to be discussing and i've
been hearing since dr garcia was
on board that you know they're having
these discussions and probably
looking to hiring a contractor or
consultant right to
to come in and i guess i'm trying to say
i've been hearing about it but where are
we at and
i know i i'm sensing there's some major
concern
about moving out of the natural gas and
into that and rightfully so because of
the load right she just said it it
it 30 you know that's her accountants
and other folks right
and so we have to think very
thoughtfully basically
thoughtfully empathetically about
training people
retraining people right to do something
different
um so i i just i just want to know that
that um that we're being
succinct and that there's some deadlines
that we're placing
um accountability for each other on
council
um because i know we've been talking
about this for some time
so and i'm i'm hearing all that and i
want to be
sensitive to staff and el paso electric
our housing
um our home builders association to all
but
lots of people have been participating
in that elevate they knew this was
coming
right so i like that time frame mayor
within a year
and i'm happy with that because then we
know that we're putting ourselves
okay this is the time frame something
has to be done moving forward
thank you mayor pretend if i may add
there's another and i appreciate
um neil's presentation because he gave
us a spectrum of building code options
and i i also like
where it and this is a good compromise
until we you know a good step as
in this good step forward electric
preferred
it says yes extra energy or renewable
requirements for new construction with
network natural gas so if they still
have that natural gas it's got to be
like really really energy efficient
and uh and and so that gives the
homeowner a little bit more like okay if
they're going to
upgrade it to so it's that energy
efficient then they have that natural
gas
so so mayor with that great points um
i really look i feel like for our
underserved for
our our folks that are in poverty that's
hugely unattainable right and i think
about our situation housing
right this is new construction not not
not expecting
our current houses to be retrofitted to
that
that'd be very difficult to do i mean
it'd be nice to have those grants and
available
because that'll save them money if we
can do that but i'm talking about new
construction i'm sorry i guess i
misunderstood you that you're talking
about no
no no no no no i i i so i
i know there's that part but then i'm
saying my next section of questions
is going to be around what do we do for
those
those folks right that that it's hugely
unattainable and so
i'm i'm thinking about what's currently
happening with our section eight
they're in the process of determining
they will do a total reconstruct of
their housing
stock and so if that happens mayor are
we
able as a locality to do a
um an incentive where we help them right
to be able to get to that point
not just preferred but i see that as new
build
or is it not sure but how can we be
able to put press some incentives put
some incentives together
or does that have to come from the state
per se
probably whoever can give out the
incentives but uh let's see
delilah has her hand up so so
mr mayor thank you again and council
yandere again delilah walsh for the
record utilities director
i i love the question you asked
counselor because we haven't answered
from the utility we have been talking
about it and working about on it
um actually is part and you don't know
this because we're still going through
the uca
process but as part of our latest rate
review on the gas rate review
remember we still have to take care of
this infrastructure we stop to make sure
it's safe it's reliable and it's
affordable that's our ultimate goal
but as part of this latest review
process we've actually asked our
consultant to add in a decarbonization
rider or an environmental writer
so we have a source or at least a
funding source where we can
fund such incentive programs or maybe we
have energy efficiency programs that we
offer and do that through this
decarbonization rider where we're
lowering the use of natural gas or we're
helping with
energy efficiency to other uh
lower income housing projects or
individuals so so that's one possibility
that we've been talking about that's
actually going to be coming to you as
part of our rates
when we come to council so we've added a
decarbonization rider
in addition to that um technical
services deputy
uh director carl clark has already been
working to identify consultants who can
help us with a transition plan
as well as an energy plan and then
as part of our changes and updates in
our strategic business plan
i don't know if you know it's counsel
but we've been notified as departments
that
it's time to update our plans we'll be
going to the utilities board to add
energy transition as one of our
identified
not missions but issues one of our issue
statements of how we're going to
put energy transition and efficiency
and that consideration within our
strategic business plan so
we have been talking a lot but this
month we're actually making quite a bit
of movement so i just wanted to let you
know that those things are coming
and you know i know i said this a lot
during our climate action plan work
groups but
i'm all about affordability and lower
income individuals to make sure we're
always addressing that part of our
citizens
and our our group here in los angeles i
come from a very poor community
and i know what that's like and i really
really that's a big focus for me just as
an individual and a leader of the
utility
i'm so glad to hear that delilah that
our our low-income folks
um are are not being um forgotten
and and drop as when we start talking
about this like
the affordability there there's no way
right that they would be able to afford
um on that and so i'm glad
you mentioned i don't mean to interrupt
but it looks like uh assist manager
enriquez had us hand up you maybe wanted
to add to the conversation
yes good afternoon mayor and uh mayor
pro tem gundam thank you for your
questions
uh larry nichols unfortunately is not
able to get on he's having some
technical difficulties
but i know that uh the international
code council uh the state has just
approved or mandated that we
also adopt the energy code through the
international code council
so those are some of the things that
we'll be working on with the home
builders association
we would hope to see incentives on the
federal level
no different than some of the things
that we've seen with solar panels and
solar energy
but this is uh fairly new with the code
council
and this is uh again a great opportunity
that we'll pursue
and hopefully with new builds we'll have
that in the code and then any retrofits
that may come later on so we are moving
in that direction
i also wanted to mention another staff
member that was having difficulties
getting on his mike bartholomew
with transit that we do have five
electric buses
uh under the rfp right now and they
should hopefully if everything goes
right by
september of 2022 have those
those on board with the stations being
built
and also the maintenance and repair uh
issues
corrected or addressed at that time just
wanted to share that thank you
i appreciate it thank you so much um
yeah and delilah the decarbonization
writer what would that consist of i
guess i
i'm you know i'm not into fight i'm not
a financial person so um i can
do my own personal checkbook but what
what does that entail
yes um uh counselor ganda mr mayor
delilah walsh utilities director
especially what would happen is let's
say we have a goal
of half a million dollars that we want
to collect for an energy efficiency
program or maybe an incentive program
that would translate to about 19 cents
per customer
so that rider would appear on your
utility bill so i just happen to know
after what um our our people have done
that
about 19 cents per customer would lead
to about a half million dollars to have
those programs
and support those programs so as we set
those goals you must have an actual
target an actual project you can't just
say i'm going to collect
20 cents and do with whatever with it
you actually have to have projects in
mind and targets in mind
and then you can add that rider to a
bill to a gas bill
now that's in addition to everything
else we're charging them correct so
you're going to pay for your cost of gas
and then as
far as our our rates which you all will
approve for
delivery of those services and
maintenance of the system plus
the rider is a usually a flat cost
meaning we're only going to charge 20
cents per customer or eight cents per
customer
and that money specifically goes to
identify projects
okay that that helps me thank you so
much and mayor lastly
um our our part as a city right um i
know that
um and hearing um leanne and sort of
all the the barriers there is in
regarding to our old fleet
and moving forward hearing that we have
a couple of
electric vehicles but they just run
specific on gas
i i just it's like why have an electric
vehicle right so
how do we move into ensuring that that's
that is being utilized utilized
effectively
and the only way that i see that is
coming up with a fleet plan
right get you know getting
having an understanding that every year
we're going to
say we're going to purchase these many
electric vehicles
trucks and you know all small
cars those kinds of things um and
and just keep keep increasing that um
moving forward and i don't know that
there is one um but i really like
my recommendation would be is to to um
to to do that and then um mary i think
we can do a lot to reduce our waste
um here um from plastic cups and
styrofoam cups and plastic forks
utensils those kinds of things
the things that um that we're using
internally um
i know that um when
we were meeting in in city hall
and we wanted to go and get some cup of
coffee there were styrofoam
you know just things like that that i
think we could really make a dent in
right just really
moving very very um slowly
out of some of these you know wasteful
products that don't do anything for our
environment
and and with that mayor thank you i
appreciate
um the information and i really look
forward to seeing all the change that
that is is coming about thank you sure
thank you so let me just talk a little
bit about what you just mentioned and i
have to admit i i like uh councillor
vasquez's idea
you know one of the things that of
course we're going to be looking at is
when
when leanne comes back with the amount
that we spend in
maintenance and and regarding the
vehicles and then of course the the
replacement vehicles
and i think that we're gonna just like
anything else so if we spend
um twenty five hundred dollars a year
per vehicle
what is the life of a vehicle of an
electric vehicle
i don't know um 15 years 10 years i have
no idea so that will give us an
opportunity to figure out that's how
much we're going to spend because
we'll be able to save the money we save
in maintenance and
and fuel and then of course the thing
that um
what lisa talked about the leasing
that's another
option you know if that's all we do is
just cover the leasing does that lease
payment
is does the money that we spend on gas
cover that lease payment
if it does that's great then then we can
move forward with that but if it doesn't
i think counselor vasquez's idea about
maybe like anything else when we're
going to start replacing vehicles maybe
just slowly
slowly integrate our fleet a little bit
at a time but i mean we buy sometimes we
buy
20 30 40 vehicles at a time and so
that's a nice little
um thing to you know get started with
and and the
electric vehicles as well so i think
that's that's good
i think on your plastic forks and and
such i think that's a i think we were
moving in that direction
until the pandemic head and you know
especially for the restaurants and stuff
you know you don't i don't know if you
want to
uh mandate that they can't be using that
because you know they then they
have to start washing a lot of you know
plastics i mean
washing a lot of metal silverware and
stuff and but i think we still need to
keep that on the forefront and within
the city mayor
within our own city structure
oh i'm not talking i mean i know the
those policies are coming for
for um plastics right banning plastics
but i'm talking about within our own
city structure
really looking at our usage of plastics
and
those types of things styrofoam and
moving away from doing that i mean
i think we have a lot of control within
our city and
and that's one of the things i'd like to
see happen people can do that
and overnight yeah you're saying just do
away with all plastic forks and go
right to metal forks yeah i don't see
why not we did that with uh
the water bottles remember when we tried
to we just said we're just gonna just
think out of uh that's how we got the
water fountains and just fill up you and
i are the only ones on the council
i don't remember that that water bottle
thing did oh yeah you know you're
exhausted
okay that's uh that's a good idea great
well
i still think i don't know i you know i
think that um it just happened a few
years ago but gosh i guess that happened
a long time ago ten years
yeah so all the years just sort of
blended in right there yeah they do i
remember counselor pedosis she's the one
that
oh yeah newly yeah
or i don't remember but mary i do want
to say that my commitment
i know councilor vasquez and i sit on
the south central solid waste authority
as you do
um this next year we'll be talking a lot
about recycling plants
what we do right just because of the
issues we've had
um um you know with our
our contractor um and so
i i know that i that we
that we have prioritized at least um
in talking with um executive director
peck
that was something that we we would be
looking into
moving forward so but yeah yeah no so
but getting back to
the the things that you want to do away
with i i it'd be nice to maybe
just take a look at it hold off and see
where exactly how this fits in with the
pandemic because
you know if we start going back to you
know handing people
cups of water right now instead of just
giving them a bottle
and or you know it's you know just
different things i guess what i'm trying
to say is just
probably let management take a look at
and see how they what they can implement
out right now
uh counselor flotus and and then i guess
counselor sorg if you have a follow-up
question
okay councilor flores i thank you mayor
and um thank you um
neil and matt for your presentation uh
sweep uh seems to be doing a fantastic
job if you've covered
a number what nine or ten states
throughout the southwest including my
wyoming thank you for your presentation
and for getting making sure that all our
resolutions
uh lead into uh perhaps
ordinances and um thank you also to my
colleagues and mayor for
um your insights and your vision
um as far as um
counselor beethoven's question uh
regarding
um the uh uh
you know how i what led me to think was
you know what are we really doing and
how are we going to make sure that
all of this happens and i know um
as uh mayor pro tem gandala mentioned
it'd be great if
um a lot of uh you know the builders get
a heads up on this and you mentioned
mayor that
um they need about a year but
prior to that and i have my big question
because usually i think it happens to
all of us you have a question and then
you get so involved with everybody's
questions and answers that you forget
what your own
uh question is but just uh to be on the
safe side
because a beta stewie asked about
counselor veda stewbe asked about
whether all of this was an elevate las
cruces
and yes everything that we're covering
now
um you know there's a ce to see this and
see that sections that you that you go
into
and um so all of it is
is covered it's woven into that uh most
of our prcs are driven by that and
and i think that our health prc which is
um headed uh chaired by councillor beta
stevie
and our housing prc which is
chaired by councillor um
johannes and como both of those we can
work
we can discuss resolutions regarding um
you know those respective areas it's all
tied in it's all like a beautiful
tapestry
of um having a good life
you know the quality of life is
throughout
and greatly improved but i what i would
like to ask of staff
i i may or you said that some of our
codes are in place already
um i i don't know uh what i would
ask of staff be it legal be it community
development
be it whoever maybe christopher dunn
also to review our codes
to see how it relates to our
our goals that we've discussed here and
i haven't seen the resolution
that was drafted um
by councillor sorg or presumably
finished by or whatever
uh fully drafted by mr dunn
but we we need to make sure that
all of our new buildings and we have a
lot of development out in the east mesa
you know homes are popping up every day
to make sure that all the codes are in
place and if it's going to take a year
understandably the builders have to
transition into this to make sure
because it would really be a service a
great service to a new home buyer to
get into a green home you know to get
everything going
i mean i'm sitting here thinking if i
had to do that in my house
i mean it would be a chunk of change and
um so hopefully there'll be some
incentives for those of us who
own older homes um
but um so can i ask that here uh mr
peeley mr mayor
of all staff to please review their
codes especially buildings mr
nicholls apparently isn't online right
now um
but um as it relates to uh building
requirements
especially and for our building
of homes and any other uh edifices that
are going up throughout the city you
know
be they new developments be they infill
projects uh you know just everywhere
throughout the city i think we need to
make sure
that our codes are making it an
ordinance
uh to do this thank you mr mayor
thank you councillor uh justice org
i didn't know i got surprised that
council flows
um finished there now and um
i i've been listening to a lot of the
comments that
the counselors have made and i think i
can add some
good information good insights as to
what this is all about um but i would
like to start out with
if mr uh kowi or
neil if you could put up the slide that
has the comparing of the uh costs of an
electric vehicle with a
internal combustion engine vehicle um
there is something there that i think we
might have missed that i think is really
important
counselor beta stevie was asking about
maintenance and it was clear on that
slide
can you do that
um i could do that if you give me a
second um i need to
i need a stall i need a 30 second
timeout while i find because matt didn't
um i need to just pull up the
presentation
just give me 30 seconds yeah just tell
me when you're ready
because i wanted to uh also mention that
um the departments
in las cruces here make a choice make
their choices for
buying new vehicles replacement vehicles
and
i uh i would just like to have this
resolution
uh supersede what they or or be
a part of their decision making uh when
they decide on a vehicle
and so um that needs to be in in the
part of the resolution part of what uh
the process or for procurement um
uh fact that we have an older fleet this
is great opportunity to uh
to replace those vehicles with something
that's more environmentally
sound um and then i wanted to ask
everybody if you saw
the general motors uh super bowl
commercial yesterday
um it was all about uh their electric
vehicle fleet that they're going to
bring out online
it was quite a quite a commercial uh and
it's all about the education that we
talked about earlier too
people need to be understanding that not
to be afraid of electric vehicles
in fact once you ride drive them as i
said i did once
uh you will be and have some enjoyable
pleasure
you're the only thing you're going to
miss is noise
and um for that you may want to go
someplace and do something else for
noise
is this it yes is this the one you were
looking for
yes that's it where you look closely at
the different colors though the cost of
the vehicles first there with
the v and then you have the electricity
used which is
in the kind of um
maroon color reddish color and then the
main
the m there is the maintenance notice
how much bigger the maintenance is for
the
uh gas car compared to the electric
vehicle
and then um finally the insurance
i don't tell do you know neil whether
the insurance is different
on an electric vehicle than it is on a
gas car
that is a good question it looks like
it's about the same here but i
don't i don't know i would have to i
would have to ask math that
yeah well for the meantime let's say
it's the same
and then of course the gasoline there a
large chunk of
with g there it's great so comparing the
g with the e
there's where your biggest savings is
but also savings in maintenance
i would say half the car maintenance of
a gasoline vehicle an electric
vehicle would have so that that's where
your big savings is going to be on this
and um then i have one last thing about
natural gas uh we all need to understand
something about natural gas
uh we're not going to get rid of it
completely uh there's going to be
other use there are other uses for
natural gas
besides heating and cooking and
for example we make fertilizer out of
natural gas
and that fertilizer goes to grow our
crops and
food and so forth so that's a big use of
it
so natural gas is always going to be
around there's going to be other smaller
uses
of natural gas too and the point is that
what we need to do is try to substitute
natural electricity for natural gas
where we can where it makes economic
sense and of course all the time not
letting it cause
any more inequity in fact if we can make
it cause
uh more equality that would be better
okay mayor i think um oh the rider uh
just so we understand what the writer is
that uh
miss walsh was talking about um those
those funds that come from a writer as
she
kind of hinted at they can provide
low-income homes
for more efficiency uh for using
their energy so saving them money in the
wrong long run
it's just like our water uh uh cost in
not las cruces so much um and that fact
not at all
what they'll do is charge more for water
but then you can use that money to buy
low flow fixtures and and other
water conservation devices so it
subsidizes the cost of those things
okay i think that covers everything oh
one last thing
one more thing uh there is an
organization called
and you guys took it away from me on my
screen i
called the center for climate integrity
uh and they're all about climate
accountability
and what primarily they are going after
the big
climate uh coming country countries
big climate corporations that
are responsible for our climate
uh and global warming
so there's that huge is a pretty good
size effort to do that
in the country okay mayor i think i've
said everything i need to say now
unless somebody talks about something
else
well um unfortunately neil had to jump
off
he didn't think it was going to go this
long uh he he doesn't know you guys so
uh
but uh anyways he he appreciated the
opportunity to
to discuss this with him obviously this
is something that's near and dear to his
heart
and so i just double checked counselor
flores you had your
hand up did you forget to put it down
okay good
um i i have a friend of mine that i bet
all the time and so far i usually win
the bet that you just
put it down so that's good oh wow you
mean i'm the subject of a bet
yeah so no more questions right
okay before i begin um i'll be fine
before i ask for a motion to adjourn
i just want to offer any of you if you'd
like
uh a moment to kind of express your
condolences to the family of officer
darian jarrett who he was this new
mexico state police officer
young man of 28 years old who
was uh attempting to stop a really
person on the loose and uh he got he got
killed
so i'll just start with um any of you if
you want to
raise your hand and you have anything
you'd like to say to the
to the parents will i'm sure we can
probably make sure that
we can get this over to them of course
thank you for bringing this up just to
be clear though he wasn't
a new mexico state police officer he was
a highway patrol
officer okay well there's a difference
um i'm pretty sure he was a new mexico
state police officer i've
i i've seen his uniform and it says new
mexico state police but
yeah he used to work it's the same as
highway patrol
it's same it's like well there is
actually a
transportation division i think he used
to work for them long time ago but he
he transitioned to the new mexico state
police
so i'll start with the top of the top
and i'll work my way down counselor
flotus
oh you muted thank you yeah thank you
mayor
and yes i would like to express my
deepest condolences
to um
to the late officer uh darian jarrett
and um i mean a 28 year old man
with a wife and and family young
children i think one on the way
um another one on the way is
is horrible so i just i just want to
extend my deep
heart belt condolences to that family
that loss and i i think it's a travesty
but uh thank you mr me
so thank you counselor uh mayor porter
oh
i'm sorry are we going to have consular
comments later
well no we don't have council comments
this is
thank you mayor um yes i'd like to
express my deepest condolences to his
wife
and his children to his colleagues at um
state police and um and to the community
um it was such a blow um
to hear chief speak um about him
um and just what a
kind and good individual he was
it this is definitely a blow to law
enforcement and so my deepest
condolences
to everybody involved thank you mayor
thank you councillor beta stewie
thank you mayor um heartfelt condolences
to the jarrett family um
this is one of the items that we talked
about within our own family
with the kids of the service and
sacrifice
that all of our officers make every day
and
the the very big challenges and
consequences that can come from it
um i know that there are many
fundraisers going out
for the family i always say please make
sure you're doing your due diligence
when looking um
and verifying these fundraisers but um
i know that our family ourselves donated
to one as well
to help because it's very difficult
raising a family
especially when so young and our
condolences go out to them
thank you thank you councillor
councillor vasquez
thank you mayor um yeah i think always
shocking and heartbreaking to see
um somebody lose their life especially
with something like a traffic stop right
something that
usually is pretty routine um so to the
jarrett family
um i know they're going to miss their
father um i know that
uh the wife of mr jarrett as well
um will will definitely have a hard time
um i'm sure processing this but
hopefully she feels in community and she
feels supported by
all those who are helping um to raise
funds and other types of support for the
family
um and so you know to sacrifice to be in
that uniform
and do this uh job when um things like
this could happen and so
um very sorry to see it and my
condolences go out to the family again
thank you mayor thank you councillor
councillor bin cuomo
thanks mayor thanks for um opening up
this space i definitely think it was a
very hard week for law enforcement last
week
um you know we got word of who are
of our own las cruces police officers
who are injured
um but absolutely my deepest and
sincerest condolences to
um the jarrett family i hope that they
are surrounded with
love and comfort during this time and um
just absolutely heartbreaking to think
about his kids and um
yes i'm glad counselor beta stewie
brought up the fundraisers i think
i i myself visited you know um
house of graphics on amador just this
morning to provide
some cash i know that they're gonna
deliver cash right as it is
um i know sometimes facebook um
fundraisers take a little bit of a
portion of that so i think
um i'm glad counselor made this to be
mentioned doing your due diligence if
you're going to be
supporting the family with some monetary
um assistance so
um really i really you know in these
moments i really find myself thankful
that we live in such a
supportive community thank you
councillor
um i just want to say to the family to
the parents of
officer jarrod as well as the mom of his
children
our deepest my deepest condolences
um i never had a chance to to meet
your son or the father of the children
but
i know people who know him and they
think he thought so highly of him um
it's a it's a travesty and and i just
want to tell you
your son is a hero and um
you know he put his life on the line to
protect those that
people he didn't even know and um we
can't thank him enough for that
and i i seem to recall and i hope it's
the case
um that when an officer is killed in the
line of duty and has children i believe
there's a
it's also in addition to the money
raised there's a fund set up for them
for education purposes
and so i hope that that's the case but
nonetheless
we can't thank you enough for allowing
your son to
provide and be and serve in law
enforcement you know it's
a tough uh it's a tough job and you know
it's a calling and and
i know that he i'm sure enjoyed
his time so well thank you very much
everyone thank you for at least sharing
that and i'm sure we'll
be able to let the family know that we
shared
and sent our condolences so i'm going to
go ahead and ask for
a motion a second to adjourn and we'll
join this work session
summer okay
motion made by councillor florida second
by councilman cuomo
christine will you call the role please
this is on the motion to adjourn the
world
counselor beta stevie yes
councilor vasquez yes
counselor ben como yes
counselor yes
concert flotus yes
cancer gandada
yes mayor
yes okay so we're adjourned it's 3
11 p.m um i'm going to stay on
so we can do our agenda setting meeting
but you're welcome to stay on but if not
thank you very much and we'll talk soon
okay mara i'm ready when you are
okay this is the agenda setting meeting
for a february 16
2021 city council meeting number one
non-consent
one non-consent two non-consent
two non-consents three non-consent
three non-consent for non-consent
for non-consent five non-consent
five non-consent six consent
six consent seven consent seven consent
eight consent eight consent
nine non-consent nine non-consent
and non-consent ten non-consent
non-consent eleven non-consent
twelve non-consent twelve non-consent
thirteen consent thirteen consent
and fourteen consent fourteen consent
thank you great thanks see you
bye
you