let's
okay good morning you are live good
morning
everybody and welcome to our budget
planning session this morning it's
january 25th
and we're a few minutes after nine um
i'd like to um start with the pledge um
counselor bing bin could you lead us in
the pledge please
i pledge allegiance to the flag of the
united states of america
and to the flag which it stands
one nation under god indivisible with
physical
liberty and justice for you thank you
apologies mayor program i was on mute
no worries concert bin como um
i i think there is a bit of confusion
this morning about who should be on this
meeting
um and i appreciate that
um i'm going to um
[Music]
to hand this over to leanne
um i see leanne here so thank you leanne
mayor pro team counselors thank you so
much for meeting with us this morning
this is our fy 2022
budget kickoff our budget retreat
let me share with you my screen
hopefully this will work
okay
okay do you see the full screen we do
leanne
great thank you so much mayor
i'm going to jump right in because we
have a very
full schedule for you we're excited
about today we hope that
um you will be as excited as we are
um we of course right now we're doing
our greeting and introductions and i'd
like to introduce you
into the team uh
i of course will be doing revenue
projections in the end of the year
along with me is my team as you know my
senior
analyst which is matt signs my other
budget analysts uh
shirelle de la cruz and william
blanchard
as you well know uh we also have
shirjana bassinet
who um i did
sorry somebody was asking me if i
started the slideshow and i
i think i did you do see it correct
okay great okay i want to introduce
all good surgeon who will be talking
about
elevate las cruces and a big shout out
and thank you to
david weir as well and larry nichols
also we have a guest speaker today he is
from strong township
who um shirjana will be introducing
we're very excited about him joining
with us and then of course our capital
improvement program
which is david sedillo which is our
public works director and a big shout
out to his deputy
interim deputy tony trevino and his
management analyst sarah cundiff
and then of course we hope to leave a
little bit of time for discussion as
well
i wanted to give you um the
budget timeline excuse me as you know in
october
mayor president i my apologies for
interrupting lee and this is councilor
bancomo i don't think your life slides
are moving
if you're moving them we're on the first
light still okay
hang on let me hit escape
see if i can get out of them and let me
see if i can reshare it thank you so
much counselor for letting me know
leanne you should just be able to hit f5
sorry this is barbara deleon
to start this show f5 uh-huh
okay i hit f5 control f5
yes okay hang on
there you go if they're moving now if
you're
intending them to move okay hang on
uh-huh no worries leanne you take your
time okay i'm just gonna leave them like
this if this is okay with you i know it
doesn't give
if i give the full screen for some
reason i have three screens up
and it just are they progressing now
yes yes we're on okay
[Music]
okay as you can see back in october we
met with
you on the state legislation as you know
the state
has you know they're in the middle of
the legislation right now
uh you met with larry haran and with the
grants
we brought to you a work session and of
course a resolution for those capital
improvements
um then in november uh david sedillo
myself and staff met with
each of you individually to go over your
budget priority meeting
and we will have a slide showing uh what
came out of those
budget priority meetings as well and
then of course today is our budget
retreat
so moving forward this is what we have
to uh for you
um you should start seeing some
invitations
popping up around march the 8th through
the 12th
we want to set up again with you
individual budget meetings
um and we'll look at your schedule and
work with the net to set those up
and then march the 22nd which is
actually earlier than
we typically have but we will be
bringing a work session
uh to council um part of our charter
states that we have to bring to council
60 days before
we start the new fiscal year this is a
little bit earlier but that's okay
we want to bring to you what we have at
march the 22nd
and that will be after the individual
meetings that we have with you
and then april 26 we have to have a
public hearing that's part of our
charter as well
and typically what we do is we have the
public meeting before work session
we'll do be doing a full presentation
um and then on may 24th we will be
bringing
resolution to you two resolutions one
for the budget
one for the cip for adoption
of our fy 22 budget
i also wanted to point out here
counselors that at any time
if you need to meet with um you know
david on the cip or myself
we can set up those meetings if there's
additional information that you want
please reach out to us for you know for
anything
if we don't have the answer trust me we
will find it we definitely will you know
that about us we work very hard
and we just want to give all the
information that we can
for you to make the best decisions
okay you've seen this um slide you saw
it friday at our strategic
meeting um that was uh from our vendor
management management partners
um i think one of the things i want to
stress in here is that
i took over the budget in 2018 in the
middle of the year
we do use an econometric statistical
econometric modeling i am conservative
um as you can see our budget
um versus actuals for 2020.
uh our actuals were a little bit higher
you know yay
uh we had five and a half months of
covid
during this time and during that time we
saw a lot of construction going on
that was one of the um essential things
that the governor said could
continue so we we see a lot of uh
construction and housing
that was been very apparent in the
reports that
larry nichols gives in his community
development
report we also saw
a very high upshift in food and medical
in the hold harmless and as you know in
the hold harmless
every year our hold harmless is going
down somewhere between
six and seven percent so uh there was a
lot of people during these five and a
half months buying a lot of groceries
i think that we all saw that at the
grocery store when we went
and there was a up shift in the medical
as well
now this slide was not in the
presentation on friday
this is where budget feels that we will
be ending
fiscal year 2022. as you can see we do
not
anticipate our gross receipts tax going
down
shared services just a little bit so
what what is shared services
on this particular graft
is license plates
we do receive money from license plates
and
i did reach out to the motor vehicle
department they told me
that people are not there they're
speculating
that people are not driving so they're
not registering their vehicles
and so what will happen is that probably
next year you're going to see it
up uh an increase in the shared services
for license plates
and i say next year because hopefully
we'll be out of coven
everything will go back to normal and
everybody will be back on the street
keeping my fingers crossed okay so um
wishful thinking then i know
positiveness you know
positive thinking right so um
really what i wanted to point out to you
is the investment income
um i think i brought this to you on
friday you will see a budget adjustment
coming to you for the mid-year
february the first by the way uh matt
will be bringing that forward to you
there's lots of information in that
resolution if you have any questions
please reach out to us
however one of the things that we will
be
um showing giving a budget adjustment on
is investment income our rate of return
as you know has not been very strong
and of course this budget was prepared
before
covet we went ahead and adopted if you
remember we went ahead and adopted
our 21 we did not go in there and adjust
anything for 21 and covet
and it was sort of a good thing because
we didn't know how it was going to react
and as you know francisco and i worked
with the state
we thought that it was really just going
to be terrible and it it wasn't
it it hasn't been let's put it that way
we also see
fees going down in parks and rec but as
you know there's
uh no baseball games going on i sort of
missed that when you drive down hadley
you know typically you see lots of
crowds out
it's nobody's there it's very
um you know all the fields are sitting
there
being an ex-baseball player i sort of
miss that
missing watching the games and stuff
like that but when we get back to normal
you start seeing all those again we also
see a decrease in police and muni court
fees
um you know due to not um
the police chief due to not uh wanting
to
get exposure for the police officers
there we just don't see a lot of fines
and fees coming from the police
department
we also do not see warrant fees and fees
coming from uni court as well
i will tell you i've reached out to the
police department next week i have a
or this week i have a meeting with them
to discuss their fines and fees
and hopefully get some additional
information so if you're wondering about
that once we have our meetings i can
reach
out to you and give you that information
as well so
and then of course our other revenue is
like our museums
and our libraries and of course we're
going to see some of this other revenue
coming down
but not not really bad you know because
we
we still have operations going on right
now
in those areas so we just anticipate
maybe a little bit of a decrease there
and of course we will be bringing to you
a budget adjustment around march and
april for all of these
to fix the revenues and what we're
anticipating is that
we will end the fiscal year with about
100.1 instead of 102.8.
excuse me um this was a
slide that i presented to you on friday
this is our general fund revenue
forecast
as you can see the main point that i
want to
give to council is that you'll see that
our revenues throughout the next five
years is very
uh static it's a you know status quo
it's very even
but you have to remember every year our
hold harmless is going down somewhere
between six and seven percent
so our own economy okay the city's
economy
is actually matching that decrease in
the hold harmless
so while this looks flat it really isn't
i mean we should
you know we we're not seeing our
revenues going down
we're actually seeing a slight increase
so as we keep having you know
uh businesses come in you know you're
gonna start seeing hopefully some leeda
you know coming in here new businesses
bringing in new jobs
that is the growth that we need to help
us with that hold harmless
okay this is a very busy slide and i
apologize for that
um this last column where it says
council priorities
these are the priorities that you gave
me in november i'm not going to go
through the slide you know
line by line council i apologize for
that i
will want you to know that i am going to
send you this pdf
uh i mean this uh presentation after the
meeting
uh it was recommended by barbara that i
send this to you and i should have sent
it to you beforehand and i apologize
but one of the things i really wanted to
stress in this was
um i wanted to on friday's meeting
you um you haven't adopted because this
is not going to
counsel that you have come out of the
strategic
planning on friday with some strategic
themes
and so as you can see there's a legend
below there with those themes
i sort of did some acronyms and i
apologize for that
but i really think that what's important
here
is that you've got these strategic
themes we have now
put those short-term priorities that are
in elevate together with those themes
okay and they met with the november
council priority meetings so that last
column that you see counselors
that's what we're going to be using work
budget is going to be using
this powerpoint this particular slide
to be working on our budget for fiscal
year 2022
and that is one of the other reasons why
we want to have those individual
meetings with you
to make sure that we're picking up or
trying to budget
everything that we possibly can during
those priority meetings
and so with that i'm going to ask um
i think sure shawna vesnett is going to
try to take over the screen so she can
control and talk about elevate las
cruces sure janna
thank you leanne good morning sir jenna
good morning mayor pro tem city
councilors
i'm just going to share my screen
actually leanne
[Music]
and get the um
did i stop sharing yes you did thank you
all right does everybody see this
i can see it we can see it yes okay
that's great yes
so um srijana basmet senior planner with
the community development department
as you know the city's comprehensive
plan
elevate las cruces was adopted
by this city council to create a
collective vision and move us towards
sustainable growth for the next
25 years we are now in the process
of implementing our plan while elevate
provides guidance for growth and
development
other even more detailed plans and
policies like
the active transportation plan or the
parks and rec master plan
can help us you know further those
larger goals in elevate
ultimately though we need to use various
implementation tools to ensure that
ideas and policies
translate into on-the-ground actions my
purpose today
is to give you a brief overview of
elevate and touch on how the city's
budget and capital improvement program
will be critical to the success of the
plan
while the vision framework provides the
big picture of what we want to be as a
city and a community
the policy framework contains the goals
policies and actions and here's an
example of that structure
using the goal of balanced growth
a need-based annexation policy and the
related action
to develop a fiscal impact analysis tool
which
would be used to figure out the cost and
benefits associated with any
potential annexations
okay um and for every goal as you all
know there are several policies
and actions um in fact there are more
than 500 actions recommended
in the elevate work program this work
program is in a table format
and for each action it identifies the
main department
leading or coordinating that item and
the potential partners
both internal and external to the
organization
it also identifies what type of action
is required
whether it's a new capital or
operational expenditure
a new or modified program process or
policy it can also be a regulatory
action
requiring ordinance changes or simply an
action
identifying the need for further study
to take place before the best solution
can be pursued finally elevate
goes beyond any of our past
comprehensive plans
and actually lets us know which actions
should be initiated sooner rather than
later
some actions already in progress and
identify it as
ongoing and everything else is either
short
mid or long term the short term work
program
is a list of actions identified through
several rounds of stakeholder input
and those would ideally be initiated or
supported
in the next one to three years
this is where the strategic plan will
ideally play a role
since most strategic plans focus on the
near term
and they guide which projects
actions or programs should receive
funding and resource allocation
most items on the strategic plan have a
natural connection to the elevate work
program
but the strategic plan can also contain
items that city council has called for
to other lower level or more specific
plans and policies
okay so the budget is tied very closely
to the city's strategic plan
and the various departments strategic
business plans
these plans in turn should be aligned
with the elevate las cruces work program
and the overall policy framework so they
are working in concert with each other
and are not undermining efforts or
stretching the organization
too thin i modified one of leanne's
slides that she likes to share with you
on aligning elevate
with performance-based budgeting one of
the objectives
of budgeting tied to expected results is
better accountability
going even further than that is the
performance reporting
where success is measured and tracked
over time
the face the the first baseline
performance report for elevate loss
cruises
was completed last year and forwarded to
the city council by
the planning and zoning commission
continuous monitoring and reporting will
play a role
in ensuring goals are achieved in a
timely and predicted manner
it also forces us to realize when
something's not working
or is not having the impact that we
thought it would
and it allows us to tweak or modify our
actions
this creates an environment for both
successful implementation
and resiliency
moving on to the physical framework of
elevate
there is a direct relationship between
the future development program and
elevate
and how we invest in our communities
infrastructure
so article 6.03 of the city charter
states
that the comprehensive plan shall serve
as a guide for all
future city actions concerning land use
and development
the financing and location of capital
improvements
before taking any action
the city council shall cause a finding
and report to be made
which demonstrates that relationship in
past comprehensive plans
we did not have what is called a future
land use map which is typical of most
comprehensive plans
however elevate not only recognizes the
shortcomings of conventional land use
planning it goes several steps further
it provides a physical framework which
includes a future development program
and a future thoroughfare program
so this is one of the maps that is in
in elevate las cruces the future
development
the future development map or the fdm as
we call it
um was based on the consensus growth
scenario developed by the city council
and the comprehensive plan advisory
committee which included members of the
planning and zoning commission
if you all recall we had that exercise
during the process
of planning this scenario was selected
because
we believe in balanced growth providing
enough room to grow
while also directing reinvestment into
the heart of our city
the fdm also has place type overlays
where specific areas or corridors are
identified as
major investment areas the idea is to
direct resources
or capital investment in places that can
have a greater
return on our investment or catalyze
development
or redevelopment it also lends itself to
the creation or enhancement of
neighborhood and town centers and
mixed-use corridors
corridor transportation planning through
the future thoroughfare program
and map as shown right now is also
directly tied to future decision making
on capital investments
we can't have beautiful safe vibrant and
healthy neighborhoods
without addressing what kind of streets
run through them and connect them to
each other
and to other amenities in the city as
you all know the city
has an active transportation plan short
and long-range transportation plans
a parks and rec master plan and other
policies that guide the development
of what could be a world-class
transportation and recreational network
in las cruces
when we recognize that people need
places with both meaning and
value we can build and sustain places
that people love
so with that note and i do see that mr
mayor has joined us i don't know if um
mayor should i pause
yeah um yes mayor has joined us
um are you done sir tonight do you have
more to discuss
this is my last slide i'll conclude
with that note i'll just conclude by
reiterating my two main points today
the two most effective tools to
implement our city's comprehensive plan
are the operational budget that
resources programs and
provides appropriate staffing levels to
get things done
and the capital budget that funds
projects that can make or break our
community in the long run
finally elevate loss cruises not only
challenges the way
we prioritize our cip projects but
recommends that when we evaluate our
projects
community benefit be given equal weight
to operational criteria
change takes time but our comprehensive
plan identifies
ways in which the cip process can in the
future
align better or more with the city's uh
physical framework by doing so it will
support
more clearly the city council and
communities goals
for a sustainable city
and with that uh mayor pertam mr mayor
and city councilors i conclude my part
of the presentation
and would like to introduce mr chuck
marone founder and president of strong
towns
a 501 c 3 non-profit
chuck is an author professional engineer
and land use planner
he has presented strong towns concepts
in hundreds of cities and towns
across north america and was named one
of the 10 most influential urbanists
of all time biplane edison mr marin city
councillors
through several recent planning efforts
we've explored concepts like walkability
financial stewardship placemaking
community prosperity
chuck has a way of expanding on these
and other related topics that make us
rethink or reaffirm some of our own
practices
please welcome mr chuck marone
mayor mayor pretend this is land i don't
think
we had invited mr marone to join us at 9
we're a little bit ahead of our schedule
i apologize for that
um however i did send him a text message
asking him to sign in so he should be
hopefully trying to get on
right now i'm looking through the
participants and do not see him yet
so maybe what we might want to do at
this time is
if you have some questions for maybe
myself and my team
and also with shirzhana we can do that
until mr moran gets online
thanks leanne well good morning
everybody apologize for my
my mix up um i
i just took it for granted that what i
had down was uh the
continuation of our of our meeting on
friday so um
anyway so who's asked questions of uh
the presentation that was just given
all right counselor ben cuomo i am for
some reason i can't
raise my hand is anyone else having that
issue
um i did have a question though um
thank you for that presentation it's
very thorough i actually my questions
have to do specifically with your
presentation i just wondered
well it does um i wondered about
um leanne you had on one of your lines
the
sort of budget for municipal court i
mean this is just sort of for my
curiosity
i um what is that relationship between
council
and municipal core i feel like it's been
a year and i
i'm just now realizing that i know very
little about
that relationship and how we function
and um
is it more like we're fiscal sponsors
like what is that
and um do we is it appropriate for me to
ask for a work session to understand
more about it and their needs or is that
not necessarily in our preview
per view so mayor
um counselor bing pullman that's a
really great question
in our i'm going to use our
organizational chart i'm also going to
ask
maybe barbara and ifo to help me a
little bit as well
if you look at and jennifer is online
thank you jennifer can really explain it
but if you look at our organizational
chart
it gives a really great diagram but i'm
gonna i'm going to let jennifer explain
that to you even more detailed
she really knows
good morning council good morning mayor
um
the relationship with municipal court is
defined by law
and particularly there's a case called
um
i'm really bad some of this mauer v city
of albuquerque
and in that case it determined that the
branch the judicial branch of government
is completely separate
than the executive and legislative
so what the city council does is give
and determine
a budget and the judge and
can determine how that budget is
allocated
they can determine their own personnel
rules they can
make all determinations on their own
independent of the city
the the interesting part of that is um
you determine the city council
determines the budget however
it in the event that somebody within the
city
municipal court is sued the city is
named
so we are still responsible we don't we
we're still responsible for personnel
and things that happen
however the the municipal court judges
is in charge of how that is allocated i
think we have a good relationship with
our municipal court
um judge there's some communication
there but um there is
independence there ever
jennifer an opportunity for us as a
council to meet with
that the judge to discuss like i
i have these needs i have this these
goals
um or is that not necessarily um
allowed or appropriate
um mayor and city council it is
appropriate there i've been
in other cities where the municipal
court judge will make a budget
presentation
it's just a request and
so that can be handled in many different
ways you all can determine
the the judge can determine that she
would like to make a presentation to the
city council
um that's entirely up to the judge
but right now we have one presiding
judge and then we have
another position also so but that that's
entirely up to the judge and the city
council can
put that on their agenda as well or they
don't
have to but it's it's up to you
okay thank you jennifer that's very
helpful and
did anyone figure out the hand thing
a mayor uh counselor it's not working
for me either
no me neither not working for me either
so my hand is up well i guess you could
theoretically
use those little hand um where it has
the
reactions and i'll just kind of yeah
there you go
and i'll i'll just try to do it that way
if that's okay
so counselor sword you have a let me if
if i may just kind of chime in
along what jennifer says so councilman
cuomo you know you bring up a good
question i think for years the
council always knew about the separation
between the judicial side and the
executive side which were considered
uh for the most part
we just give them a certain amount for
the budget and they just handle their
their things now
if they were to lose a judge then um
with consent of counsel i get to appoint
that
that judge um or if we need to have an
additional judge and then you know and
then but that's really about it that's
to the extent of it
i think these last two judges that we've
had i think we've had a
good relationship with them which in the
past i'm not saying that we never had
it's just it was really hands-off back
then
we never really even knew a whole lot
about it and so
i think it was until recently when we
were discussing
future courthouses that we started to
get a little bit more
response or a little bit more meetings
with the
with the city judges so
okay counselor sword thank you mr mayor
this is a question for
sir janna um could you say
in in a couple sentences uh what
uh the implementing of el elevate las
cruces
is going to need in the budget and what
are the cip policy functions that are
going to be needed uh going forward
miss mayor council sorg could you repeat
the first part of your question please
i will what what are you going to need
telephone doesn't work sometimes um
what what are we going to need in the
budget to
implement the elevate las cruces we'll
start with that
so the budget itself um you know sort of
is
is the city manager's um way of
establishing
his um direction uh for city staff
but really uh what kind of happens is it
kind of comes both ways with you know
the city council's policy direction
um staff will ensure that those projects
or action items or programs
are part of their departmental asks um
and so they'll
they'll request things in the budget um
to make sure that they can
conduct the work that is required to
achieve some of those goals right
um and then ultimately the city city
manager will present that to you
um as as the city council um and
and your role would be to just make sure
that you know everything you want to
accomplish
um has been accounted for and
resourced through the budget um so
that's like a
a very brief way to explain that um of
course there's a lot of detail that goes
into the department's strategic plans
and their programming and their staffing
but really the budget is one way to look
at operational uh
operationalizing you know some of these
policies
so if we were to say that we want to
implement elevate las cruces as fast as
possible
then the city manager would implement a
bug budget that would uh
try to do that correct i
i would let the city manager answer that
question himself but
okay okay that's good i'm sure he would
say that too
um so uh what does the cip
uh policy direction have to do with
elevate last cruises or does it not
so it does um and as i
explained earlier what what exists in
the city charter
is this requirement to tie the cip
directly to the comprehensive plan so
the city council
is required to have a findings and a
report
uh to support every aspect of the cip
because that is how policy translates
into investment
right um so so that's your connection
uh because um elevate las cruces is this
you know overarching plan it's got
more than 500 action items in it uh
we'll be utilizing your strategic plan
to really
focus on some of those right um and then
that gets translated
into budget cip etc so
overall all of these need to work in
concert with each other
um it does need to reflect those
overarching values
okay i understand that that's awesome um
and um mr mayor um sorry i was late
i uh had to have a covert 19 test
for some further medical uh procedures
coming up this week
and when the medical profession asks you
to do something i guess i have to do it
so that's why i was late thank you just
just try not to let it happen again but
just kidding
mayor this is leanne i'm sorry to
interrupt sir but i've just noticed that
our uh guest speaker
uh chuck marone is on the line um i'm
going to turn it over and let
shana sort of introduce him again sounds
good thanks
um i think i already mentioned chuck is
you know a lanyard's planner and a pe
and founder and president of strong
towns uh
i will let chuck uh get right to his
uh what will be i hope a wonderful
presentation
fantastic thank you and thanks for the
invitation it's very nice to be here and
it's very nice to see you all
uh we've gotten used to uh doing things
this way
but that doesn't change the fact that it
would be very nice to be with you and
hopefully we can do that at some point
here too
uh thanks for the opportunity to share
some ideas i know you're in
a master planning process excuse me sir
i'm sorry to interrupt but and i know we
already introduced you but can you state
your name please and
you're fine in fact uh i was trying to
change my name on my screen but it won't
let me
uh my name is chuck marone i am a
planner and an engineer with the
organization called strong
towns we work
to try to advocate for a model of
development that allows our cities
to become financially strong and
resilient i started a blog back in 2008
and uh it has grown into
an international movement of people with
thousands of members and uh and millions
of people in our audience
who are trying to share the message that
i'm going to take some time and go over
with you today
as was said i'm a licensed engineer i'm
a professional planner
and i'm happy to be here with you
so if you don't mind i will uh i will
i will start where i i wanted to share
this with you
off the bat because i i think sometimes
uh
strategic planning processes or master
plan processes are
difficult ones i want to throw this idea
out there because i think it's important
in terms of what comes next uh
there's a there's a saying that we have
at strong towns the more people involved
in implementing a plan
the simpler that plan needs to be uh
contrasting
uh the fewer people involved in
implementing a plan the more complicated
it can be i think when we're doing city
planning when we're doing master
planning
uh we tend often to look at it like a
ikea uh type of of instruction manual
uh not really acknowledging the fact
that there's many many many people that
are going to be involved in implementing
this
uh the best plans that i've seen the
best plans that i've
been around are the ones that recognize
the sheer complexity of what we're doing
and simplify it down to first principles
so
our organization is about a model of
development that allows our cities to
become financially strong
and resilient i i want to start my
conversation with you
by talking about complexity and complex
adaptive systems
when we think about a rainforest we're
looking at a system that
is complex one where there's many
different
flora fauna they interact in novel ways
when we look at a rainforest
we know that despite the order that is
apparent that order
is emergent it's not imposed or planned
we recognize these as complex adaptive
systems what we
often fail to recognize is that this is
also a complex adaptive system
many individual actors acting
independently of their own volition
coming together in an order that is not
necessarily planned but
but emerges from all of these complex
interactions
complex adaptive systems are resilient
they're adaptable
and they are strong this is different
from systems that are merely
complicated systems that are complicated
have
uh lots of things going on this is a
rube goldberg machine the
the novelty of a rube goldberg machine
is that it is very complicated
but if we think about a rube goldberg
machine if we cut one of these strings
or move one of these blocks or or change
one of these systems the system doesn't
adapt and evolve
and change it simply stops working it
simply breaks
this is the the fundamental difference
between a system that is complex and
adaptable
and a system that is merely complicated
when we look at
uh the the a rainforest and we contrast
that to a corn field
uh we're looking at the difference
between a system that will evolve and
adapt
and one that is designed with a
different premise in mind if we
give a rainforest too much rain or too
much sun in a certain cycle
it doesn't fail it doesn't fall apart it
doesn't collapse it may evolve and
change in novel ways
when we do that to a corn field when we
give it too much rain or too much sun it
doesn't
start to become soybeans it doesn't grow
into wheat
or barley it simply fails as corn
we see the same type of behavior in
human habitat when we have
systems that are complex and adaptable
when they act
in iterative incremental ways what we
see is that they're able to adapt and
change to stress and opportunity over
time
when we build cities in ways that are
merely complicated when we take that
complexity out and we try to simplify
them down
to be just complicated systems we wind
up with systems that are fragile
they lack the capacity to adapt and
in a word they lack strength
if we go back and we study cities for
thousands and thousands of years we see
a very
simple pattern of development one that
has changed radically over
the last century but one that has
thousands of years
of precedent this is actually my
hometown i'm speaking to you from
brainerd minnesota it is
15 degrees out today for some context
there's lots of
snow on the ground it's a slightly
different environment than all of you
live in
this is what my hometown would have
looked like back in 1870
a series of little pop-up shacks some
hopes and some dreams about what the
future would become i i know your city
at one point looked this way as well in
fact every city that was ever built in
all of human history began
uh with a series of little pop-up shacks
just like this
for a variety of reasons uh people would
come together and they would build
places like this
many many of them would fail when they
would fail
you know people would salvage the
materials they would move on to the next
place
but when they would succeed what you
would see is that they would start to
grow in a very simple way they would
start to grow incrementally up
incrementally out and become
incrementally more intense think of a
culture growing in a petri dish this is
the way all
complex adaptive systems grow and change
over time
so after a period of 30 years
this street here would grow to look
something like this this is the exact
same street from roughly the same spot
about three decades later and as
uh land values would continue to rise as
more and more people would move to this
place as more energy would
would coalesce around here the
development pattern would continue to
grow
in this complex adaptive way
incrementally up
incrementally out and become
incrementally more intense
and you would wind up with a street that
looked like this these two and
three-story wood structures would become
buildings of brick
and granite this is the way complex
adaptive systems
grow and evolve and change beginning
in the great depression and then
accelerating after world war ii
we began to treat our cities not as
complex adaptive systems but as systems
that were merely complicated as ones we
could sit down
and master plan and design and lay out
where the pipe would go where the roads
would go where the buildings would go
and we could in a sense use our capital
and our might
to kind of impose a vision on what
otherwise would be a complex adaptive
system that's certainly
what my city did and what thousands of
cities across north america have done
this exact same street today looks like
this uh
this is essentially a shot taken from
this location uh this is what this
street looks like now
and the the thrust of the conversation i
want to have with you today
about uh the financial health of cities
about return on investment about how we
build places that are strong and
successful
starts with an understanding that
there's a half million dollars of public
infrastructure
in this little stretch of street right
here where is the tax base that will
sustain that
public investment where is the wealth
that is going to allow us to go out and
fix that street
fix that sidewalk fix that pipe maintain
all this infrastructure not just
tomorrow but decades and decades into
the future
it used to be there we used to have it
we don't have it anymore why and how do
we adapt to this
it's important to grasp how radical a
change this was
going through the great depression going
through world war ii uh
was a transformative time obviously for
the united states a transformative time
for north america
it's important to understand that at the
end of this there was this sense at the
end of the war
that with millions of troops coming home
with
businesses and industry kind of ramping
down from war production
that what was the most likely outcome
was that our economy was going to slide
right back into depression
there was nothing fundamentally
different about our economy in 1945
than there was in 1935 without all the
war spending without all the war
employment
economists at the time thought we were
just going to slide right back into
the depths of the depression of course
that's not what happened right
what happened is we took all of this
this tools we had we took all of this
mite we had
and we redirected it into creating a new
version of america we recreated
uh we we took this uh power and capacity
we had and said we are going to go out
and solve
the many many problems historically of
the city by building this new version
of what america could be i i want to
show you what this looks like because
this was
incredibly successful we still
nostalgize today
the growth the job creation the powerful
middle class
the things that came about because of
this and i want to show you
in in in time how this changed
radically cities and how we approach
their development this is
the city of fresno i use fresno because
we have great maps of fresno but really
uh every city in north america that was
existing at the time
went through very similar things
post-world war two this is the
city limits of fresno in 1897. watch how
it changes over time
here's 1909 here's 1922.
now we've got 1934 and then up to the
end of world war ii you can see that
incremental pattern of development that
incremental growing up incremental
growing out and incrementally becoming
more intense
now we create a an approach to kinetic
growth
where our goal is not necessarily to
mature cities as a culture growing in a
petri dish
kind of harmonizing all those complex
variables our goal is
merely to grow how do we resist going
back into depression how do we grow as
quickly as possible and what we see is
that
this pattern of development after world
war ii uh creates explosive levels of
growth we are able to grow our cities
very quickly
we were able to create a lot of jobs a
lot of opportunities
and you can see this reflected in the
pattern of development the pattern of
development became
out no longer with an increment of up
and no longer with an increment of
increased intensity this is fresno
in 2010. uh and if you think about this
like for me
i look at my hometown of brainerd
minnesota
we are roughly 14 000 people today
back at the end of world war ii we were
roughly 14 000
people my city has not grown in
population
in uh nearly 80 years yet the size of my
community
has grown 10 times there's 10 times
as much road there's 10 times as much
sewer and water
infrastructure there's 10 times as much
area to police and provide fire
protection to
with essentially the same number of
people
this is some data we have from lafayette
louisiana that shows
this trade-off of this dichotomy that we
deal with at the end of world war ii
lafayette had a population of a little
over 33 000 today
it's a little over 120 000 it's a three
and a half times
increase it's a huge amount of growth in
a very short period of time
yeah when we go back to the end of world
war ii we recognize that it took five
feet of pipe per person
to provide water service to the city to
the to the people who lived in lafayette
today
it takes 50 feet of pipe per person a 10
times increase
uh at the end of world war ii it took
2.4 hydrants for a thousand people to
provide
the city of lafayette the people who
live there fire protection
today it takes 21 times that amount so
we can look and we can say yes
we've experienced incredible amounts of
growth and if we measure our success
in terms of growth lafayette has had it
they've increased their population by
three and a half times
it's taken 10 times and 20 times the
liabilities in order to do that
is the city of lafayette better off are
the people they're better off
when we step back and look what we
recognize is that while we can grow
our population very quickly it requires
us to grow our
liabilities very very quickly we're not
growing our wealth
nearly as quickly what we see in the
city of lafayette is what we see in
cities all over north america
our family incomes are up only a small
fraction of the percent
our net worth as a community is down
dramatically
our families are taking on more debt uh
they have less
disposable income this pattern of
development is not
actually building wealth within our
communities it's creating a lot of
transactions a lot of growth a lot of
velocity of money in our economy
but it's not actually making our places
better off
the mechanism here is is rather easy to
understand and i'm going to go through
a series of three uh case studies to
walk you through
the financial transactions of post-war
development so that you can see
how this would apply this this is a
dead-end cul-de-sac this is just a a
residential
style of development when this was built
uh the city went in and paved the road
and the city paid for
half the cost of this road while the
residents along it paid the other half
we took a look at the amount of tax
revenue the city collects
from the people who live along this road
understand it's a dead-end cul-de-sac
there's no through traffic there's no
commercial traffic
the only reason this road exists is to
serve the people along it
we asked the question based on the taxes
the city collects from the people who
live on this road
how long is it going to take the city to
recoup the amount of money they spent to
build it the answer
was 37 years now the roads aren't going
to last 37 years but it's going to take
the city 37 years
to break even when the road falls apart
100 of the cost becomes the cities now
where is that revenue going to come from
not from this development here's another
development
this one was built in the early 1980s
when this was built the developer went
out and paid for the cost of all the
road
all the other infrastructure built all
the
homes sold those homes off of course the
cost
for building all that infrastructure was
wrapped into the sale price of the homes
the value of the homes
people have been paying their mortgages
for years they've been paying their
taxes for this
to the city for years under the idea
that when this fell apart the city would
go out and fix it
that happened the city went out and
fixed
the roadway uh the cost was 354 thousand
dollars again we asked the question
this is a dead-end loop dead-end
cul-de-sac no through traffic no
commercial traffic
the only reason this road's here is to
serve just these properties
based on the revenue the city collects
from these property owners
how long is it going to take the city to
recoup what they just spent to fix the
road the answer is 79 years
if the city wanted to try to collect
enough money from these property hours
between now
and the time the road fell apart what
would that mean it would mean they would
need to do an immediate
46 increase in property taxes
with annual increases of 3 percent over
inflation every year for the next 25
years
with all that money going just to
maintain the roadway and understand
that the sewer the water the storm sewer
all the other systems
are vastly more expensive this is just
for the roadway
surface itself sometimes
uh people will say okay chuck we get it
we know we lose money on residential
property we make it up on commercial
commercial is our cash cow
i point out i don't know any corporation
that loses money on ninety percent of
what it does and tries to make it up on
the last 10 percent
i don't know why a municipal corporation
would think that was a good business
strategy
nonetheless we've kind of convinced
ourselves that if we just build uh
enough industrial enough residential
enough commercial or enough commercial
type
of development will be okay this is a
business park
uh when this one was built the idea was
that the city would go in
build the road put in the sewer and the
water the drainage systems make all this
investment
and then they would be able to attract
uh people that come in and open up
commercial businesses here
that happened that project was a by that
metric
a complete success the city built this
uh people came
they opened up buildings and this park
is completely built out
the city felt this was so successful
they wanted to do the same exact thing
on property they own
right next door so take this and build a
mere image of it on property they own
right next door we ask the question if
we could do that for the same amount of
money
and get the same amount of investment
would this actually be a good
project the cost is 2.1 million
the amount of investment that has been
made assesses out at 6.6
million now pause for a second because
in the existing
uh park for the lots belong to a church
our communities need churches but the
church doesn't pay any taxes
to the city two of the lots belong to
the school district
again we need school district the school
district is very important
but the school district bus maintenance
facility doesn't pay any taxes
to the city one of the lots is a county
maintenance building
one of the lots is a city maintenance
building again a very important
structures but not paying any taxes
to the community of the remaining lots
uh the ones that theoretically would be
private taxpayers who would pay money to
the city
every single one was given a tax subsidy
somewhere between 8
and 25 years in order to attract them to
move into this park
we ran the numbers based on the current
park and it never made sense it never
even paid the interest on the debt
the only way we were able to make this
part cash flow
is if we assume the following that
within one year of the new
commercial park being opened every
single lot would be built upon
by a full taxpaying non-subsidized
entity and that every penny of new
revenue would go to retiring that debt
if that happened it would still take the
city almost
three decades 29 years to retire that
debt to break even
that's 29 years where everyone else's
taxes are going to have to go up
to maintain the streets provide police
protection fire protection all the other
service and maintenance
that's required and that's in an
insanely optimistic
scenario let me walk you through what's
going on because it's actually very
simple to understand once you see it
this is a cash flow diagram let's
pretend that a developer comes in to our
community and says you know i have this
piece of property i would like to build
upon
i'm not asking for any subsidies or
handouts
i will go out and at my expense build
all the residential homes and all the
commercial businesses
i'll put in all the pipes and the pumps
and the valves and the meters and the
roads and the streets and the curb
i'll do that all to your standards the
only thing that i'm asking as a
developer is that when i finish making
this large investment in your community
that you
the city the the public the the the
people who live in this community
you agree that you will take over the
long-term cost
of providing service and maintenance
what would we say
well we would say fantastic right you're
following all of our rules
you're meeting all of our regulations
you're not asking for any subsidies any
handouts
uh you're making all this investment it
costs us nothing
this is this is fantastic let's say
though that we're
smart prudent people we've heard of this
strong town stuff we want to do what's
right
so what we're going to do is when the
money from this new development comes in
we're going to take the portion that
would normally get siphoned off and
spent
on different parts of maintenance
throughout the community we're just
going to set that aside
every year when that money comes in
we're going to set that aside because we
know
a generation from now we're going to
have to make good on that promise that
we will
provide service and maintenance we will
go out and take care of this stuff
here's what this looks like from a cash
flow standpoint
in year one everything is brand new
hasn't cost you anything
the money comes in and you you take that
portion and you set it aside
in year two you add to what you had in
year one
in year three you add a little bit more
and you're four year five and on and on
and on and you can see
a five-year-old road isn't costing you
anything a ten-year-old pipe isn't
costing you
anything a fifteen-year-old sidewalk
isn't costing you anything so year after
year after year you have all this money
coming in
you get out a couple decades you're
feeling very very rich you've got a big
pot of money sitting there
the problem happens when you have to
actually make good on this promise that
was made a generation ago
and what you find is that the cumulative
amount of revenue
is insufficient and from a cash flow
standpoint you run
far into the negative
now cities aren't one development right
cities are a collection of developments
a series of neighborhoods and so let's
say that our developer comes back in
a couple years after that first
development says you know that worked
really well for you that worked really
well for me i would like to do a similar
size
development and every other year from
this point forward the developer comes
in and says you know
i would like to do a similar size
development in other words the ideal
scenario for any city nice steady
continuous growth
and we take that money coming in and we
set it aside and we save it for the day
when we have to make good on all these
promises we're making
as we continue to grow here's what this
looks like
in year one you've got your first
development it pays in for the entire 25
years shown here
in year three you add another and you're
five and you're seven and on and on and
what you see
is that not only do you not have any
expenses in these early years
but you're having growth upon growth
upon growth you're
you you're adding cash flow at an
accelerating rate your cash actually
starts to
accelerate upwards and when you get to
year 25
that you have to make good on that very
first promise from that very first
development yeah
you have to spend a little bit of money
but it's not a big deal right
you've had all this growth the growth
creates what we call the illusion
of wealth because as we all intuitively
understand if you
make money if you lose money on every
transaction you don't
make it up in volume if you lose money
on every project
that you do the further you go out in
time the more downward pressure
there is on your budget
this is how cities can have decades and
decades of growth and still not have any
cash
this is how we can be growing robustly
for generations
yet turn around and say we don't have
the money to maintain our streets we
don't have the money to maintain our
sewer system we don't have the money
to maintain our basic systems it's not
that we are not experiencing growth
we are experiencing ample amounts of
growth it's that our growth is not
productive
the growth is actually costing us more
over the long term
in real dollars and cents than it's
creating in wealth and tax base and
prosperity
for our community we get back to
this this analog between complex systems
and systems that are merely complicated
we've lost the feedback loops the
internal feedback loops
and we've just dedicated ourselves in a
very complicated way to one strategy and
one approach
let me let me show you on a
site-specific way what this
looks like uh because this is something
we've systematically done throughout all
of our neighborhoods
uh in in communities across the entire
continent
i want you to focus on these two blocks
here these are
two blocks in my hometown they're right
up the street here from where i'm
sitting right now
you'll see that the exact same size the
exact same
area they have the exact same amount of
public infrastructure they essentially
cost
us the same to provide ongoing service
and maintenance to
that block on the left we've called the
old and blighted block
city did a master planning process and
we labeled these blocks
as blight what you're looking at in the
left
is the pop-up shack of the 1920s if you
think of the community growing
incrementally up incrementally out to
becoming incrementally more intense
this was the next increment of out these
three blocks here
in the 1920s were on the far edge of
town and what people
were hoping at the time is that you know
we'll get started with a small little
pop-up
uh over time as things would continue to
grow as the neighborhood would continue
to prosper
these buildings would eventually get
second third stories they'd become more
ornate
of course that's not what happened these
were built in the 1920s
we had the 1930s and the great
depression we had world war ii and then
we had a new style development that just
skipped right over these three blocks
and started building out on the edge
these three blocks have stagnated for
almost 100 years the block on the right
used to look just like the one on the
left we got it torn down
and now we have the new uh taco johns
i recognize that you don't have taco
john's
taco john's you can think of as
norwegian mexican food
very popular up here
some mild cheddar cheese uh with uh
colored nacho chips
it's it is ridiculously popular if you
ever make it up here
uh i would say give it a try but but
yeah maybe not um on the right we have
our taco john's
here's the thing about taco john's
everyone loved this project
we got rid of blight it met the parking
requirements it met the cyanortis i'm at
the floor area ratio
it has a sprinkler system it has 88
compliant bathrooms
uh we even got a little bit of green
space we got them to put in a segment of
sidewalk
we got some natural plants in the storm
water area if you go through our
checklist
for what we said a great development is
we checked every single box on this
development
here's the underlying problem that old
and bloody block
on the left has a total value of 1.1
million dollars
add up all those buildings add up all
their worth you get a block that's worth
1.1 million
on the right that shiny and new block
the taco john's it's the same size area
it's the same amount of public
infrastructure it's the same
cost to us to provide ongoing service
and maintenance
if the value is only six hundred
thousand dollars
that old and blighted block in its
rundown dilapidated state
is providing the city 78 percent more
taxes
than the block on the right this is a
pattern we see repeated
over and over and over again uh
there's a there's a group out of
asheville north carolina called urban 3
that we're very close with
they have done modeling on hundreds of
cities around the world
and what we have discovered with that
modeling
is is a pattern that's repeated in city
after city
what i'm going to show you right now is
financial productivity
you can think of a farmer going out and
spreading seed across a field and
the parts of the field that grow up the
most robustly we say that is
the most productive part of the farm
field that's where we get the most
bushels per acre
what i'm going to show you right now is
value per acre where do we have the most
productive parts of the community this
is buffalo new york
i happen to like buffalo new york it's a
nice place i feel bad for their football
team
having lost last night but that's kind
of the way it goes
buffalo is a place that has suffered
decades of decline
since world war ii buffalo has lost
population
every single year so it's been a
downward stretch if you go to buffalo
you will see the decline you will see
the neglect it's all over
yet when we step back and we say where
is the most productive parts of buffalo
new york can you point to where the
traditional downtown is can you point to
where that pre-great depression
pre-world war ii style of development is
it's right in the core
and not only is it this repository of
wealth
despite the decline despite the neglect
it outperforms
everything that we've built subsequent
this is a pattern that we see repeated
over and over again
in cities of all sizes in cities of all
geographies
we can go to cities that are northern
cities cities that are southern cities
cities that are very large mid-sized
small we can go to cities on the coast
we can go to cities that are inland
and we see the same pattern everywhere
where we have pre
great depression styles of development
this complex adaptive system
what we see is that we get high levels
of financial productivity
we get a a system that is highly
adaptive highly flexible
and financially very productive
everywhere where we go to post
world war ii development especially the
further out we go
the less financially productive we get
the more costly it becomes
and the lower our return on investment
is
um this is lafayette louisiana again
i'm going to come back to this one uh
unlike
the the sequence of maps i just showed
you uh these financial productivity maps
this map is slightly different it looks
very similar and that's because
there's a high correlation here but what
you're looking at here you can think of
not as a revenue map where's the most
wealth producing or
or revenue producing places what this is
actually is a profit and loss map
what we were invited to do along with
urban three in lafayette louisiana was
go in and look at
all of the city's sources of revenue
sales tax property tax utility fees
all of their ongoing sources and map
those out we came up with a bunch of
different maps that showed where those
were
we then looked at all of their expenses
where are their road maintenance costs
where are their sewer and water
maintenance costs whereas the police
protection fire protection
buildings what have you and we mapped
all of these
up as different and then at the end we
mashed
all these maps together into this map
which you can think of as a profit and
loss map everywhere where you see
a parcel in blue what you are seeing is
a property that
pays more in taxes on an annual basis
than it requires an ongoing service and
maintenance
every place where you see red it's the
exact opposite these are places that
require
more capital more money to provide
ongoing service and maintenance than
they generate
in revenue for the community the higher
the line goes
the more that disparity is so what are
we looking at here
in the very middle uh that is the core
downtown of lafayette
uh to the right of that to the east of
that there's a crescent
of blue that runs through there you can
see that crescent
uh those are some of the older poorest
neighborhoods of the community here's a
a snapshot of what these look like the
the top photo here
is the downtown core of lafayette again
i happen to like lafayette i've spent
quite a bit of time there
you can listen to some good zydeco music
and get a taco for about a buck
uh it's a really nice place but in terms
of the eye test
uh not a place that exudes prosperity
not a place that
looks like it's doing great financially
when we run the numbers
it's doing amazing it's creating
enormous amounts of revenue
spare cash flow for the community uh but
the eye test
it it looks like it's struggling below
that
uh you see one of those neighborhoods in
that blue crescent
obviously from an eye test this place
looks like it's struggling and it is
let me just verify here
what we have done in our analysis is
assume
that the city would go out and maintain
and take care of
all of these properties so when we
evaluated the costs
if there was a road there we assumed the
city would maintain that roadway
the fact that the city is not
maintaining that roadway not maintaining
those ditches not providing the level of
service
uh simply means that the disparity is
even greater that blue line would be
even higher
in real life than what we show it in
theoretical on the map
these are neighborhoods that are clearly
struggling but from a cash flow
standpoint
really are supporting the rest of the
community they're generating far more
revenue
than they have in ongoing service and
maintenance
all that stuff in red then that's stuff
that is familiar to us
those are the big box stores the malls
the strip malls the gas stations the
franchise restaurants
uh the the curvy cul de sac streets with
the
the big houses that's what you're seeing
out in that red area
right now in the city of lafayette the
median family pays 1
500 a year in taxes to the city in order
for the city to maintain everything
that they've said they would take care
of in order for them to make good on all
the promises that they've made to
provide
ongoing service and maintenance median
taxes
would need to go from one thousand five
hundred dollars a year to
nine thousand two hundred a year one out
of every five dollars a family makes we
need to get sent back to the city
just to maintain what they already have
this won't happen and this like
physically can't happen like it
it it's not possible for this to happen
and so at
some point the city of lafayette is
going to have to make some really
difficult decisions and they've actually
made
some of these now by default uh what
street are we going to repair
what street are we going to allow to
fall apart what pipe are we going to fix
what pipe are we going to abandon what
neighborhood
will we keep what neighborhood would we
walk away from
if this sounds like a community that
you've heard of that's because
detroit has gone through very similar
things
uh oftentimes when i talk to people
about detroit they will say things like
well my city is nothing like detroit
here's all the ways detroit is different
than our city we don't have anything
that we can learn from detroit
yet when i look at detroit i see a city
that was the pioneer of this approach
as the otto city they were the first
city in north america
to really really lean into the idea that
we should have growth by horizontal
expansion
that we could be better off by walking
away from our core neighborhoods
walking away from our core downtown we
could generate lots and lots of growth
detroit was the model that we all copied
and detroit's development pattern is two
three
four decades ahead of everybody else
they're not some strange anomaly they're
just early right
and the math here is showing us that
i want to point out uh there's a there's
a number of things and i
if i had a longer talk we often i often
get the question
to go in depth on this map and explain
it explain
why you have these blue areas and why
you have these red and my my my
first explanation is always
dissatisfactory to people i say
it's complex right you know what's going
on in lafayette
we see repeated in city after city after
city you can't just pick out and say
well the people of lafayette are
different or they did this or they did
that
there's a lot of different things that
add up in cities
to a similar pattern despite the
different ingredients
i will point out one little thing in
lafayette that i think we can learn from
if you think about people moving to a
city
pre-great depression and building a
house and a neighborhood
what they knew and understood in a way
that we
don't ponder is that in order for
their block their neighborhood their
community to be
viable the wealth and the productivity
generated by their investment had to be
sufficient
at a minimum like the base minimum to
maintain
the stuff right in front of their house
if them and their neighbors
couldn't go out with shovels and ranks
and take care of the street
no one was going to take care of the
street if the taxes they paid
were not enough to maintain the street
in front of their house
no one was going to maintain the street
in front of their house this was not
something that they pondered
this just was something that was and it
was because this is the way things have
always been
if you understand this how do you build
your house
well you build your house narrow and
deep
you build your house narrow and deep
because then the burden of
sharing that that you know that that
burden
uh was shared amongst many many
different properties
you had many many different neighbors
that would share that burden with you
let's say that now we don't care about
this
all we care about is how quickly we can
grow how fast we can grow
we don't have this complex feedback
telling us we can't afford this
we were able to put that off through
debt through grants through loans
through
new growth or what have you all we're
worried about is how do we get the next
transaction what
what happens to this house the house
just rotates
right instead of becoming narrow and
deep a very productive
style of development it becomes wide and
shallow
this is how you go from five feet of
pipe per person to 50 feet of pipe per
person without really
increasing anyone's prosperity or wealth
it's the same exact
house it's just figured on a lot
differently
i want to show you a couple
styles of development because i think it
will help illuminate
uh what we can do now today that is
different than what we have been doing
that will allow us to become more
productive more
uh financially successful more
prosperous here's a kmart at 384 000 an
acre
here's a walmart at 967 000. these are
in north carolina but really these
numbers
kind of translate everywhere this is
these are pretty standard types of
productivity uh if we go to the core
downtown
uh here's a separate club that or a
warehouse that was abandoned that now is
a supper club
five million dollars an acre and my
favorite
uh jimmy's pizza house restaurant 3.4
million dollars an acre 10 times the
productivity of kmart
uh three and a half times the
productivity of walmart
when we look at jimmy's pizza house what
we kind of reflexively
see is something that is beneath us
when we're thinking about a master plan
process
and all the great things we can do and
accomplish when we're thinking about
uh the future of our community and all
the stuff that we want to create and
bring
jimmy seems lesser than that it seems
beneath us it seems
not worthy of our time and attention
yet when we look at jimmy's pizza house
what we see is something that
financially is incredibly productive it
requires
very little amount of our resources yet
comparatively speaking
produces a lot of wealth and not only
that
who owns jimmy's pizza jimmy owns
jimmy's pizza and who is jimmy
well jimmy is our neighbor he lives up
the street his kids go to school with
our kids
he goes to the same church that we do he
he
buys his stuff locally he banks at a
local bank he uses a local attorney
he uses a local accountant he's part of
our economic ecosystem
when we look at jimmy's pizza we
shouldn't be seeing something that is
beneath us we
should be seeing something that is the
building block
of success it's the foundational block
of how we start to build wealth within
our communities how we start to fill in
those gaps
create opportunity uh create great
places
and and and start to actually create a
certain level
of wealth and productivity that doesn't
exist
so i want to leave you with a few
thoughts about things that we can do
right now and then
i'd like to take your questions and have
a dialogue
there are a few things that we tell all
cities because all cities can benefit
from this the first one is that we need
to allow the next increment
of development intensity by right
if we want to get back to that complex
adaptive framework that growing stronger
over time
what we have to do is we have to from a
regulatory environment
allow that next increment of growth to
occur we have to allow that petri dish
style of development
to thicken up our communities fill in
the gaps when i say
by right what i mean is you should be
able to walk in with a completed permit
application at 9am
and walk out by noon with a permit it
should be that easy to do the next thing
what is the next thing uh if you're
talking about a single
family neighborhood the next thing looks
like converting some of those homes to
duplexes
or allowing accessory apartments or
other buildings there
uh if you're talking about a commercial
development the next increment means
adding a second story or subdividing
into
multiple structures these things should
be very very simple very very easy to do
we should allow the next increment of
growth
by right everywhere
along with that we have the saying at
strong towns
no neighborhood should experience
radical change but no neighborhood
should be
exempt from change we have struck this
bargain
in many of our communities that we will
allow our neighborhoods to be
under glass to be frozen in amber to be
museum pieces
uh but we will pick a handful of
neighborhoods where we are going to have
radical transformation where they
overnight in very short periods of time
become completely unrecognizable radical
levels
of change this is a very unhealthy way
to grow
it's a very unhealthy way not only for
the dislocation
and the economic turmoil in those chosen
neighborhoods
but it's not healthy for the other
neighborhoods to pretend that they can
be exempt from change we need to have
modest levels
of of of uh of of change and growth and
evolution going on
through all neighborhoods at all times
to get there
we need to lower the bar of entry these
are the little pop-up shacks
from my hometown and the fascinating
thing about this style of development is
that it allowed people to start with
nothing
and end up with something by their own
work
we have for many many reasons raised the
bar of entry
today and what that means is that
there's a whole lot of people
who don't get to play the game who don't
get to participate in the
building of our society what does
lowering the bar of entry look like
um this building here in my hometown
is called a tiny house our
ancestors the people who originally
built my city
would have called this a house the
reason why we put the idea tiny on the
front of it is unclear
the the in order to build this house
today you have to meet all the
requirements of a house
plus you have to meet requirements you
know a through subpart
m of the tiny house you have to go beg
your neighbors for permission
you have to go genuflect in front of a
planning board you have to get council
approval
why are we doing this for what is really
just a starter home
in all of human history people built
small houses
and when they acquired a little bit more
money they would do an addition they
would add on when they had a kid they
put on a second story
when they got a little money saved up
they would put a little edition on the
back
this is how we allow people to start
with very modest amounts
of resources and build something
we should be allowing these not putting
these through extra ringers
here's what this looks like from a
commercial standpoint this is from the
city of muskegon
muskegon michigan had lots of population
loss
they had a downtown full of vacant
commercial buildings they were having a
difficult time getting people to move in
there
and fill those spots they recognized
that the bar of entry was too high
if you were an entrepreneur going in you
were going to have to put in a new
sprinkler system
new ada compliant bathrooms do all these
things that are very very important
um but but but would turn an
entrepreneur with a crazy idea for how
they could be of service
to other people in the community into a
property developer which is not what
they're good at
so what the city of muskegon did is they
bought a bunch of storage sheds they
went out
they filled a gap in their streetscape
uh they painted up these funky buildings
and they rent them out cheaply to start
up entrepreneurs
they don't require long-term leases they
don't require all the stuff
that that our hang-ups they said we want
you to come in try out your idea
see if you can figure out a way to be of
service to the community to your
neighbors
and make a living doing it and here's
the amazing thing
when by lowering the bar to entry they
allowed more people to get started
and they now have a downtown full of
businesses and a lot of those businesses
have graduated from these storage sheds
once they got proof of concept
once they figured out their business
model once they figured out how they
could make a living
finally when we're especially when we're
doing master planning and this is why i
started with those early slides about
the the complexity we put in our plans
are they going to be like an ikea manual
or are they going to be like a vision
statement
how many people are going to be
responsible for implementing them
i i lean more towards a vision statement
with less complication because
what we need to do right now from a
capital investment standpoint from a
public investment standpoint
is radically shift the way we spend our
public dollars
um instead of planning out the next
increment of growth the next big project
we're going to do the next place we can
run
sewer and water or roadway the next big
development we can do
we actually need to go in and thicken up
our communities we actually need to
increase our productivity
get better use out of what we have and
the thing is
that development style is very different
that investment style is very different
and and in order to do it right we need
to base it
off of an understanding of where people
are struggling to use the community
as it has been built we actually need to
look at
and respond to how people are currently
using
the city as we have constructed it at
strong towns
we actually have a four-step process for
doing this and it is very simple
but it's incredibly powerful so this is
our process for making
public investments the first step is to
go out and humbly observe
where people in the community are
struggling
where are people having a difficult time
using the city
as we have built it i'm going to
emphasize humility here
the idea is to go out and uh not
have a preconceived notion of what
you're going to see what the solution
should be what you're going to find
not to have an idea in mind that you go
out and try to find
the problem that you have the ideal
solution to the idea is here to
literally go out and with as much
humility as we can bring to the table
walk a mile with people not in their
shoes walk
next to them and understand where the
city that we've built
is difficult for people to use the
second step then is to ask a question
the question is this what is the next
smallest thing we can do right now
to address this struggle we've humbly
identified a struggle
what is the smallest thing we can do to
address that now
um not what is the grant we can get from
the state
that will fix this not what is the big
program we can do
not is the you know what is the thing
that will fix this forever
what is the thing we can do with straw
bales and duct tape
and paint that will make this a little
bit better right now
the third step then is to do that thing
do it right now
don't have a committee don't study it
for months don't
sit around and debate it's just a small
little thing you can go out and undo it
if you want
if it doesn't work out but just go do it
build some momentum start creating
responses to problems and step number
four is to repeat this process repeat it
over
and over and over again
jane jacobs the the great author uh who
wrote
extensively about cities for decades
called cities
co-creations things we build together
and in complex adaptive systems that's
what we see
we see that cities are things where
someone does something other people
respond other people respond to that and
and these responses
drive our behaviors they drive our
future responses
what we have become in our complicated
way
is cities who listen sure we'll have
surveys
sure we'll have public hearings and
meetings okay we'll have visioning
sessions perhaps
listening sessions but what we've done
is we act in
large blocks we act in very large chunks
we do very big projects
what we're not very good at is filling
in the details making things actually
work for people
getting back to that co-creation this is
the process for doing that this is the
process for putting meat on the bones
this is the process for making our
cities and our neighborhoods
more financially productive and
successful
we can continue to go down a route like
this this is lawton oklahoma
and i don't mean to pick on them i like
them very much i was able to spend some
time there
uh there's a lot of people there who
care very deeply
but there was a federal program for
streetscapes
they had gone there and seen another
city that they thought was successful
they had a really nice streetscape and
they said you know what if we had a
streetscape we'd be successful too
and so they got the money and they went
out and they did a streetscape and guess
what
they're not successful because that's
not where their people were struggling
that's not the thing that they needed
that's the solution that they had but
it's not their struggle
or we can take our cues from a place
like memphis tennessee
where you had a little brock a block
broad avenue
uh a couple blocks of a former streetcar
stop that was struggling
where the residents humbled themselves
to look around and say all right
where are people struggling and what is
the next smallest thing we can do
and they went out with buckets of paints
and brooms and they cleaned things up
and they swept things up
what they did was not flashy was not
spectacular
but the returns that they've seen on
that investment are enormous
including a number of buildings that
have been recaptured and renovated
uh increase in desirability of the
neighborhood
new businesses that have been started
and throughout the neighborhood now
millions of dollars of investment that
have come about
because of a very simple simple project
to make a place better
these photos are about five years old if
you went out there today
you'll actually see that this has become
so successful based on this little
intervention
that the city has gone and done the next
increment uh which is to take some of
these things and make them permanent
and so now you have permanent raised
curb in here you've got permanent
lighting in here
you've got the next step of intensity
and if you go out a couple blocks from
here what do you see
you see places where they've used straw
bales and cones and paint
to start to recapture those
neighborhoods too and make those places
better
we could see huge return on investment
see enormous amounts back for our
capital
if we're willing to take small humble
steps
we can see our places becoming more
prosperous and
and wealthier at the same time that we
can see people's lives
improve and that's the essence of a
strong town's approach
how do we make sound investments that
give us a growing level of wealth and
prosperity
while at the same time making people's
lives better
this is our website strongtowns.org we
publish
two three articles a day we've got three
different podcast streams
we do a lot of video our stuff is all
about communicating this message
this year we started something called
the action lab which is designed to help
you help people implement strong towns
ideas
in their community uh i welcome you to
to to visit our site often to be part of
our conversation
to learn from people there who are
interacting and also to add
to that knowledge base because i know
there's things that people can learn
from you
so thank you for that uh i feel like we
did i did all right on time
and uh if there's any questions i'm more
than happy to take the time to
to talk through them thank you so much
mr morin
um mayor had to step out for a few
minutes
and so are there any questions or
feedback
um yes consort bethesduvie
thank you um you can't okay
i had my hand up but that's okay well
your picture isn't on
get on and then i'll acknowledge you
counseling
thank you
and thank you mr um i
really appreciate uh this presentation
and it's gotten
um i like the approach and it's gotten i
think the wheels turning on
a lot of projects that we have going on
here especially when we're
looking at the revitalization of the el
paseo
espino corridors which is very much
an older infrastructure part of our town
that needs attention and has a lot of
opportunity i think
for that revitalization
as you were presenting um as well i was
taking a look at
some of the strong towns documents that
you have different articles
and i saw a little tiny bit you didn't
touch upon it today but i
wanted to ask your thoughts and you had
some
comments about um transit and
traffic in that approach and i was
wondering if you could comment on that
um for us please uh yeah we
we could we could talk a long time about
transit um
i i actually have a book coming out in
november about transportation and
there's a big section in there on
transit and i i think i can summarize
that by saying
that transit is uh in a sense a
productivity multiplier
um the best transit connects
particularly within a city
connects places people want to be to
other places that people want to be
and when we're looking at things like
widening up roads adding lanes adding
corridors
a far more effective approach
is to actually build places and connect
them with transit
when i look at my city we just got done
changing a two-lane shortcut into a
four-lane road with
roundabouts and what have you again i'll
point out
we haven't had any growth in population
for 80 years yet somehow we have growth
in traffic
who are all these people where are they
driving you know like what what
what good is it if i could walk three
blocks and get
the food i need now i have to drive two
miles to get it
oh my gosh now there's more people
driving two miles so we need to add more
lanes
the reality is that a a system
of public transit can
be in the in the geometry of a street
the way to get people places to move
them around
and and also to leverage those places so
that
they build wealth over time i
i struggle sometimes when we talk about
transit
uh as and i'm gonna this is not your
language but this is language
that i i see in other places uh as a
charitable overlay
of our current transportation system in
other words we've built this auto system
and all the people who get to
participate participate in with
automobile and the people who don't get
to participate in automobile
will have this charitable overlay of a
transit system so that they can have
like a modest existence within this
system that everybody else has kind of
built for them
this system is bankrupting our cities
like this system doesn't make any sense
and providing a charitable overlay in
within
a system that is financially insolvent
is doubly ridiculous
if we want to build great transit it
needs to actually serve
places and so the key to having great
transit is to build
great places great places are going to
include
people people of all income levels
people of all
commercial endeavors of all
distributions
when we can connect them and allow them
the option then the automobile becomes
an overlay to that system
sure you can drive but you don't have to
drive you can also take transit
you can also walk and bike you can also
get around by other means
and so the automobile becomes an option
in that type of a system
that's the way that i would think of
transit think of it as a
a wealth multiplier and you will never
have a conversation about
are budgets tight how do we cut transit
thank you i really appreciate that um
and
thank you mayor pro tem those are all my
questions for now
thank you councillor bethesda um council
sword
thank you mayor tim um
i just wanted to say i've been a
follower of strong towns now for a few
years and uh
um especially this past year with the
kova 19
uh there's been a lot of emails i get
your emails now
for several years and this
reminds me of a many new urbanism
congress that
council forest would understand for sure
because she's been to one of the new
urbanism
congresses here a couple years ago and
um
now this is the thing we need to do um
i'm strongly in favor of the strong
towns
programs and advocacies and and so forth
so i just wanted to add that thank you
mayor
thank you john
thank you counselors for council bengal
thank you mr protem um thank you so much
for your presentation
mr moran i am i really appreciated that
and
and i really um
i think i really connected with that one
of those last slides you had about
um you know humbly observing where
people are struggling and then asking
um ourselves what can we do right now
and i'm totally of the same mindset that
we get stuck often and let's do another
study and let's
and that i'm uh i'm i'm new to the
council and that's probably been
one of the things i've noticed the most
right and and the reality is that often
we don't need
to study you just need to see and and
that it'll tell you plenty um counselor
make this duty
and council vasquez and i are both on an
ad hoc committee
um to revitalize two big corridors
in our community el paseo and solano
which are really struggling and honestly
they look a lot like
that picture you showed um of the taco
taco or whatever big parking lots in the
front
right um take up a lot of space and now
there's a lot of empty buildings
um and so as you were talking i i really
had a lot of wheels
turning um when you know as you were
speaking about that
um i did sort of want to ask though
about
any more recommendations or advice or
resources where i can go
um or we can go look more into
how to really work with developers to
who might not want to focus on infill
right who want to focus where the money
is yes
that's in the outer parts of this city
and
um you know but i also you know took
note of what you said about
um the bar of entry right and
understanding that perhaps there are a
lot of barriers for developers who might
not think it's who might think it's cost
prohibitive
to work on infill um but i also want to
make sure it's fair
right that there is a fair um bar for
who gets to participate and develop in
in those particular
places and so do you have any thoughts
uh further thoughts about that
yes um i'm gonna try sharing my screen
again yes so i a couple a couple very
quick things
first if you go on our website you'll
see an events tab up here
there's a thing called the locomotive
tour that we're doing uh this is a
series of
of uh of how to courses and there's one
down here uh about uh
small developers where is this one um
how to clear a path for small-scale
developers in your town
derrick avery is amazing uh core
holdings he's out of dallas
he is the kind of guy who said i grew up
in this neighborhood i love this
neighborhood
i want to make this neighborhood work
and
he is kind of the quintessential small
scale developer
uh i would i would i would try to get
into that group
um because he is you know the stuff that
he's going to share is fantastic
um i think it's important to draw
a distinction because as you said the
developers want to go where the money is
i that is that is a very common thing
that's a very uh understandable thing
and i don't even
i don't even lament that i think it's
important to understand that there's a
venn diagram of
where developers can make money where
the city
does well find where the community does
well financially
there's an overlap there uh most of the
stuff out on the edge
works really well for the developers but
there's no overlap between it working
well for the community
the problem is that because all of the
systems whether we're talking about
fannie freddie
or wall street financing uh whether
we're talking about
programs through the federal government
they're they all do really well
promoting this stuff out
on the edge it's a lot harder there's a
lot
different programs and the programs get
kind of crowded out
for the small scale developer we have to
actually as communities be very
intentionable
intentional intentional about growing
our own
small-scale developer communities
there's a group called the incremental
developers alliance
uh incremental development alliance is
is what you want to look up
and they have a program to try to help
you
train your own small-scale developers
people who have been sidelined
who have a difficult time maybe they're
pounding nails for one of the big
developers
and they could be their own contractor
they
they they help communities unleash that
capacity
and i think it's really important
because the neighborhood that you've
described the corridor you're trying to
redevelop and you say it looks like the
taco john's area
what i find in that neighborhood with
the taco johns is that it's
full of entrepreneurial people who have
been sidelined
it's full of people who work for other
people who would like to
uh do carpentry work and do sheetrock
work and do insulation work and
and rehab homes but but but the tools
are not set up for them
we can create space for that and if we
do
what we'll see is that those investments
we're seeking
that the current developers say they
can't do or they won't do or they're
outside of their expertise
people will start doing them they'll
start making money and then guess what
the other developers will start to join
them because that's where the money and
the action is
that's great thank you so much i will
definitely check out a couple of these
resources i really appreciate it
thank you
um can you see me um can you hear me
i can see you and i can hear you i
thought maybe
might want to say something counselors
and
mayor is back turn it over
oh so should i wait to recognize me
yeah you do you do look a little
familiar
um no i i won't first of all i want to
thank you so
much mr um marone um
and i will be going to your website
um yes i am counselor flores and
um and my raised hand thing isn't
working it just froze so that's why i'm
waving oh yeah just i'll let you know
adrian was working on this he checked
with zoom and they
it is a something that's going on with
yeah
you know it was working initially and
then all of a sudden oh well
but at any rate uh thank you so much yes
uh counselor
uh counselor uh mayor
at the time it was mayor pro tem um and
the head of the um planning and zoning
commission
sharon thomas who's also a mayor of tim
emeritus
we're very fortunate to attend scnu
and um in savannah
and and it was uh a week long
it's like seven days it's really it was
i was there yeah
you were there oh i spoke so familiar
yeah i spoke like
three different times so yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah um
yeah so well it's great to see you again
nice to see you
thank you yeah yeah and um
and it's interesting how you focus on
the the uh lot in oklahoma
the rush hour where that street is empty
but they got the money so let's build it
but the problem was that that wasn't
where this people struggle was
um and i feel like i'm talking out of
the 70s you know power to the people and
all that sort of stuff
um but broad avenue memphis tennessee
uh with people out there with you know
their bank they look like
that now can you elaborate on that who
was it
the people out there was that the
community how struggle
um identified our entire city
uh faces struggles economic struggles
and
um so i i like also i'd like to thank uh
councillor
aveda stooby for bringing up the transit
um
you know component uh which is really
utterly important but
um so how did you identify or how did
they identify
how is the struggle identified and then
how who were the people who were out
there with the paint buckets and drawing
all these lines and what are the
complexities what are the details in
doing that
and what was the end result i mean what
what happened as a result of that did
you just have more people
out did you have people becoming
entrepreneurs or
what what happened there yeah
i i would i would i'm not able to to do
chat function on here
which i'm i'm guessing was disabled
because of your
meeting laws or what have you but uh
there's this story here
called this is what we can do together
and if you just search for that on
google
strong towns this is what we can do
together you will get this story
uh that goes through this and what what
you saw
in broad avenue uh is you saw
a group of people outside of the
governmental structure
uh taking ownership of their
neighborhood in memphis tennessee
things are difficult and
oftentimes uh neighborhoods are
completely neglected and then
in the absence of someone telling you to
say no
one of the beautiful things that has
happened in memphis that that doesn't
happen in all struggling places
is that the people of memphis have often
stepped up and said yes
and so you know you can go to places in
detroit and i see a lot of desperation
uh you can go to other midwestern cities
like erie pennsylvania or buffalo
where people are let me just say a
little more orderly or or
structured and they don't do these
things but you go to memphis
and people in memphis are like well this
is this is dumb like i want to fix this
and they actually go and start doing it
and if you did that in my city the city
would show up and
try to stop you because they're like
this is not something citizens should be
doing
but in memphis the culture is such and
the lack of kind of institutional
capacity is such
that people can actually go out and do
things and so what you see is that
they have this history in their
neighborhoods of people kind of taking
ownership of them
okay on broad avenue people went out
and they literally with brooms swept up
the vacant buildings they work with the
people who owned the buildings but they
got them swept up
uh they painted a little mural they
painted uh
the crosswalks and the bike lanes and
then they
hosted a street party they invited
people in from around the community and
they said we're gonna have a block party
here they
they shut off the two blocks they didn't
ask for permission they didn't go get a
a permit to have a block party they just
did and the thing is is that they
invited council members too they're like
hey come out to our block party
so the council members showed up and
they're like this is great like this
block has been dilapidated for decades
this looks really nice this is a lot of
fun wow all my constituents are here
they're having a great time
and they're like yeah but we're breaking
like a lot of laws
um you know let's how about we repeal
some of those rules how about we repeal
some of those laws
that was the mechanism that they use to
kind of get attention of the authorities
here's here's what we're doing after
that
uh people saw like this place can
actually be cool
there's people in this neighborhood who
we can actually provide service to
and you start to see a little bit at a
time businesses started to fill in there
uh people started to make a go of it i
was there in 2015.
uh it was you know a lit like half full
uh last in 2019 so a little like a year
and a half ago i was there
everything was full and they were like i
said moving a couple blocks down in
different directions
the city went in after that initial
project was done by the residents
and said this was very good you pointed
out something that
we would not have come up with on our
own what we're going to do is not let it
go back
so they went out and when the paint they
got from the local hardware store washed
away
they went out and put permanent 3m nice
paint down uh
when the plants started to die uh they
went out and put in
healthier plants and and kept them up uh
they did this
to kind of say you established this now
we're not gonna let it go back
but then they started to look and said
okay there's other things that we can do
for example
we have a bike lane that we're working
on that's a regional bike lane that's
going to go in four blocks from here
let's reroute that and bring it through
this neighborhood and so they did they
rerouted the bike lane like four blocks
had it go right past this street and
basically said we're going to be
spending the money anyway let's
reinforce
these good things that are going on
they're redoing the street that was a
block away behind broad avenue that was
really difficult to cross
it's kind of the thing that killed the
neighborhood was this highway they ran
right through the middle of it
they were they were doing that at the
time and they said let's stop
and let's change the design of this
street so that
at least in these two blocks that street
has more
uh ability to cross so people can get
across easier and get from the
neighborhood to this
broad avenue eventually they went in and
they took broad avenue and they said
there's enough going on here where we
can take it to the next step
and so they took out the paint and they
took out the stuff that was there
temporarily
and they put in permanent curb they
actually have raised curb now
trees planted in the middle nice grass
nice benches
they took it to the next step but they
followed the lead of the neighborhood
each step of the way and i think that's
the most important lesson
from broad avenue is that it wasn't the
city hiring a consultant
and coming in with a vision for how the
neighborhood could be it was a city
watching the neighborhood evolve and
grow
giving them room to kind of shape it
themselves and then helping reinforce
those gains
so that it didn't fall back into
dilapidation or neglect
it's a beautiful story is a great place
yeah it is there's a there's a book
and uh i should have recommended it
earlier there's a
there's a book called the tactical
urbanism uh written by a couple friends
of mine mike lydon
and anthony garcia and they describe
how projects like this can be used how
these temporary projects can be used to
create
long-term change as a as an engineer
i'm very used to the process where we
put on an rfp
and we get a 200 000 study and it tells
us three options and nobody really likes
three options but that's what we have to
do the technical urbanist approach would
say
instead of spending 200 000 on a study
spend 50 000
on a temporary set of options
so that people can experience them you
can see what happens how people react
and use that as a way to inform yourself
on alternatives
as opposed to something more theoretical
thank you so much mr marone thank you
thank you very much thank you thank you
uh mr maron uh mayor pro tem gandera has
a question to ask you or
comment thank you mayor um thank you mr
marone for your presentation i'm so
excited to hear
of um um strong towns um yes sponsor
stork has been talking about this for
several years and i was like why does
this remind me
why is this familiar and and we've had
these conversations
um before so i have a couple of
questions and then some comments
um it appears like you have to have a
membership right
to or or you're not
have to but does the city have a
membership
um well no we we are
let me let me say one thing off the bat
thank you for smiling during my
presentation
it's really hard to do these uh talk for
an hour
you know and it's nice to see your faces
now and this nice two-way conversation
um but at first i'm like i don't know if
these people hate me or like me and then
you kept smiling and it's like okay i
feel better about this
um strong towns
organization we're a 501c3 and so what
we have done
is said if you want to donate to us we
call you a member of our movement
we you don't have to donate to get
access to our materials
you don't have to donate to read our
stuff you don't have to donate
if you would like to support us
financially uh that's how you do it you
are
paying me for this and so part of that
is also
a donation to us that helps support what
we do so i deeply appreciate that as
well
but if you you know people who want to
donate to us
it's very kind thing and we obviously uh
helps us spread this message so thank
you for that
mr maroon so if you if you are a
membership what does that
get you so to speak and um
would we i i'm assuming as you said
we're paying you
and so we have you um for
an hour or so of your time and i'm not
sure
what um next steps would be but i would
recommend that we belong
to this you know as a member and and
really advocate and recommend that you
come back and
um conduct a more thorough work session
so we can
sort of understand from from our
strategic planning session now to our
budget um you know planning session
um we're in the process of of
um connecting the dots so to speak with
our elevate las cruces
but i have a lot of interest in in
what you're saying and um and so what
what would the membership
get you um thank you
let's let's focus on those two things
separately um
the first one about follow-up uh
michelle has been my staff has been in
in contact with your staff
and we will certainly talk about ways to
do that i'm getting on a plane on
wednesday and going to uh
dallas texas to do a similar workshop
and we do those all the time
obviously more difficult a little bit of
a struggle during
the pandemic hopefully we can get to a
point where we can schedule that and do
that
at some point in the future but we would
love to help you think through these
things
um that that would be separate from a
membership and i
you know we don't even for us a
membership
is really the way we have individuals
donate to us uh to help us
uh with our mission and so if any of you
as individuals are
interested in that uh but we don't do
like
consulting or services in that way like
i'm never going to write a plan
we can help you get connected to people
who will
but i am happy to do things like this
where we can help you think through
and talk about we also have something
called the strong towns academy that we
launched
last year that is a series of online
courses to help you
kind of go through this we can do those
in person we can do those as supplements
uh to those courses or you can do that
we would like to help you and we would
like to help really every community in
north america
think about how they can transition from
the approach they're using right now
to something that would build better
prosperity for people within the
community
and do it financially so that you're
you're stronger and have more options
yeah i i really appreciate that and i i
really
want to recommend to staff that we think
about
you know get our creative hats on and
think about how we can utilize
strong towns moving forward and we all
i can think of many opportunities in
each one of our districts that
could could really benefit from this
kind of thinking
i'm very interested in building local
wealth
and um and especially here
um now with covet you know when i hear
people of color
um you know latinx communities
are really struggling to get you know
it's going to take us longer right to
to regain um our our wealth if you will
and so anything that you can do i think
would be
um really really helpful um and since
you mentioned the urban
tacticalist tactilism we have our own
forms of those through dona communities
united
and beloved community they often have
invited me and
others to do safety walks to to talk
about
what just a bucket of paint can do right
to slow traffic down and
and those kinds of things and and so
there's a lot of of that happening in
our community
um today um and and so thank you
i i'm i'm i'm just so interested in in
this and
and i think we really again um i'd like
to recommend the council to have you
come back
and help you know sort of solidify
some of our ideas moving forward
with connecting the dots related to our
comprehensive plan
so thank you so much thank you i would
enjoy that
thank you now i'll echo her comment
america tim's comments chuck uh your
presentation
was very well received and really
interesting and uh
anytime you want to come back just let
us know i would love that
let's plan on it um as soon as we can
travel i would i would very much like to
make it down there and meet all of you
in person and
walk your neighborhoods and have a
really nice conversation with you about
how we uh
how we help yeah send a picture of those
color tostadas or to
our chips
i will swedish i'll do that norwegian
mexican food yeah
my um the the
the thing that taco john's is most known
for is something
called the potato olay which is
a tater tot dipped in mild nacho cheese
so uh
i'm not claiming i'm not claiming that
it's i'm not claiming that it's
authentic but it does taste good
yeah you must have been very hungry
you talked about tacos and pizza
yeah it's noon here so i'm gonna go get
a bite to eat now
yeah okay we love to share our cuisine
with you chuck i love that yes you have
some wonderful
um food here and you'll be
red or green what's your you know our
new mexico question red or green or
christmas
and so be thinking about that i will
i will thank you know the chile capital
of the world is only 30 miles north of
us here
so seriously 40 million yeah hatch new
mexico
see i'm i'm i'm from central minnesota
and ketchup is a spice here so
you know
when you have better than calling it a
vegetable yes you have a chance you can
go to
new mexico state university and they'll
show you a chili
literally so hot no human can eat it
it's used for commercial purposes to to
make a whole vat
of whatever it is that they want to make
it hot i mean actually
they they they made it it's handmade you
know they
did whatever they need to do and it it's
uh it's hot
i mean just the smell of it is yeah burn
your wow yeah well
i will do my best okay good we will we
will plan on it and you all can get a
a chuckle at me struggling with uh hot
spicy stuff
okay uh it looks kind of cruel to have
you eat some hot chilis
[Laughter]
we'll see i'll be okay thank you
everybody
sounds good thank you take care mr mayor
yes i wanted to tell chuck that um i'm
also from minnesota
oh wonderful norwegian mexican food is
i'm
familiar with taco john's i never liked
it up there even
it's so much better down here yeah i'm
i'm positive of that
cool i'm looking forward that we
implement all the strong town
uh ideas uh in our city asap wonderful
thank you gil you better you're welcome
i thought you were from montana
come on come on i didn't tell this story
i did live in my mind i'm just quite a
few years i'm just like it's almost
the same as minnesota it's roughly the
same i'm just missing
okay mr mayor the raised hand feature is
missing so i'm i'm trying to oh
okay go ahead thank you mr mayor
city councillors i just wanted to
[Music]
mention to you that almost everything
that chuck
talked about in terms of how we invest
in our infrastructure
and incremental development
elevate through that document you have
you know along with our community
stakeholders have really
coalesced um and and agreed that this
is the the path we want to go down um or
road you know we want to go down no pun
intended
um but um
we're here today to talk about the cip
as well so i do want to um hand over to
mr
david sedillo um and but real quickly
before that i do want to mention
uh mayor pro tem mentioned el paseo and
i know
you know council ben cuomo counselor
aveda stevie
as well as counselor vasquez are really
um
on the el paseo solano ad hoc committee
and we have an intention to bring chuck
to that committee um so we're already
kind of working along those lines
and also the in incremental development
alliance that he mentioned that we've
already you know reached out to them
so that's also um part of the game plan
and so uh with that i really uh will
just hand over to to david's video thank
you all
thank you thank you srijana and good
morning mayor
councillors david sidiou public works
director and i'll be going over the
capital improvement program with you as
part of this retreat
before i start can everyone see the full
screen of the presentation
yes excellent excellent so we'll go
ahead and get started
so i know we've gone through this before
and people say well why do we have a cip
well we have a cip for multiple reasons
uh one of the main ones is that it's in
the city charter
and specifically in section 5.05
now what this states is that the city
manager has to prepare and submit
to council for approval as part of the
budget
a five-year capital improvement program
but
there are also some other important
items
for us to recognize and why we do that
number one is it is required by the
department of
finance authority to participate in the
2022 legislative sessions or any session
for that
it is required to obtain those types of
fundings with
grants federal legislative and lastly
it actually helps us move forward with
those initiatives that council has set
forth for the organization
and the community as we move forward so
with that
in peak performance which
aligns with the council approved
initiatives
we're able to measure our results from
elevating osprucis
we're able to be proactive and look at
those things in the future
such as the active transportation plan
and lastly we want to make sure that
we're predictable
by ensuring that the plans that we've
set out for that sustainable growth
aligns with those department master
plans
which also coincide with elevate las
cruces
now a quick overview of it is
essentially it is what the cip
is a balancing act with what our needs
are
council's priorities and our community
needs
with the resources that we have so the
program
gives us that ability to use it as a
guide to work on those things that we've
mentioned before and those priorities
that have been set out
we want to make sure that we're taking
care of not only the stuff that
new assets that we need but also what we
already have in place
this provides us that road map to be
able to do that
and it also involves a lot of things
from the community financing and
coordination
and it allows us to make sure that we're
able to work
on those items that are needed
now just a refresher i know we've seen
this before but the cip
has four major parts and if you notice
here
they're based on the projects the funded
capital
projects the infrastructure improvement
plan
and then lastly the funding sources so
again
just to re-highlight the funded projects
are those projects that have the
available funding during that fiscal
year
the next five years are those that
are in line but have not been funded yet
and so i'll go ahead and go over what
that schedule is as we go through that
process
many of you are well aware that this is
a cyclical process
and i want to touch base on a couple of
things that leanne touched
on her presentation earlier uh but i
think it's very very important
and one of those things is that we've
added a step to the process
so that step that we're adding is a
review with
council in march prior to
the public hearing and then ultimately
the adoption in may
so what does this do this gives that
opportunity based on
feedback that we've received from
council city manager's office and we
take all that information through this
process that starts in october november
we go through that we collect that in
internally we'll meet as a committee and
we'll rank those projects
and you'll see further on in the matrix
how that's how that's done
but we take those and we prioritize them
to be able to prepare a draft
and once we come into the budget season
in january we create that draft and
there's that new step
in march where we'll come back and we'll
review that with council
and again we'll proceed through the
following steps of having the public
hearing in april
approval in may and then the next part
of that process
is that we will have to enter that
approved
the projects from the cip that are going
to be eligible
for submission into the icip database
now it's very important i'll follow up
on a next slide of what the difference
is between those two the cip and the icp
but those projects have to be entered
into the state's
web database by september
and again to align with that we will
begin our meetings
with council for the next legislative
priority session
and identifying those and then
ultimately that following january
is the legislative session so i
mentioned that
i was going to go over what those
differences are between the cip
and icip uh in the past there have been
some
questions on what is the cip and what is
the icip well as i mentioned before
the cip is a six-year program one that's
funded
and five years of unfunded projects
that is managed by public works and is
continuous and when i say public works i
don't mean myself
that goes a lot of credit to our
management analyst
sarah cundiff but as you have seen
as of late over the past year
there have been amendments that come to
council in a monthly
cycle to report on any of those changes
through budget
now for the icip that is a database
that's housed
in the new mexico department of finance
authority
in the local government division
now that is the five-year plan if you
recall back on
on the last screen it's those five years
that are not funded and those projects
are eligible to be submitted
and considered for additional funding
either through appropriations grants
federal dollars and that's why it's
important to have them on the
cip and lastly to make any changes to
that
if the project was not on the cip or
submitted by september
the only way that can get on is through
special permissions from the state
department of finance authority once
they give that
approval then a project may be added
for consideration coming into the next
legislative session
so what are some of those funding
sources that we
have available to us as a mechanism for
the cip
we have bonds and loans which
comprise of our street and flood
utilities hhgrt
the vad that we have currently have
right now which is a voluntary
assessment district
and new mexico finance authority loans
we also have local taxes with our two
mill levy
quarter percent grt and our
environmental
grt we have state and federal
this is can be seen as cdbg funds state
and
federal monies as well as state
appropriations
and lastly fees and services in the
forms of utility rates or impact fees
as we've discussed and gone through the
process we've
we've all recognized that input from
stakeholders is very important
uh we gathered that input from city
council
from the public departments as we go
through
the city manager's office and also
non-profit organizations
but one thing that i really wanted to
highlight was infrastructure assessments
now it's great to have
a lot of input and information we also
need to take into consideration those
infrastructure assessments that'll help
us
guide that road to our priorities
and recognize that we address those a
lot of discussion was just held with
you know with what are the needs of our
community
having those assessments through
infrastructure will help us recognize
and gather and make sure we have a
roadmap for that
next i want to go ahead and go over the
matrix
this is part of the cip process
that departments and
nonprofit groups will go over and as if
you've noticed over the years this has
evolved
it has changed well it's no different
this year
uh this year we really recognize and
when i say we
a lot of people within the organization
city managers office
city council the public they they
gave us feedback that said we need to
look at how we're ranking these projects
and giving them value
so with that an internal committee
of volunteers got together to to move
forward with this
and the product that we're going to see
here is really
that acceptance of council's plan with
elevate las cruces
so i want to point out the system or
basically the mechanism is the same
but i want to highlight some of those
changes that we've done
so if you can see on the screen and i do
apologize if it's a little
small but it will be provided in in the
packet or
or the presentation you can come back to
that but one of those things that we
wanted to recognize to be able to give
those projects weighted value is these
criteria over here on the left
now if you recognize there there are
some that are rank higher
and that's because we feel as a com as a
committee and with the adoption of
elevate las cruces that would give the
biggest
priority ranking on how we want to move
forward some of those are
community benefit which help improve
those living standards
she which is safety health environmental
and emergency factors
planning alignment this goes towards
that
elevate las cruces the sustainability
action plan the active transportation
plan
and that segways right into the one down
below with sustainability and water
conservation
external capital funding
budgetary impacts what how is your
project
either positively affecting
impacts to the budget or negative
negatively affecting those
scheduling are those projects ready to
go and then lastly
external requirements again that could
be anything
that's a mandate a great example is is
the house bill that was passed requiring
officers to require body cams
and then lastly i just want to point out
based on the weighted averages as you go
through in ranked projects
you'll get a score that'll depict
whether your score is in the low
medium and high range that'll help
departments as they go through their
projects
be able to prioritize them and move
those forward for consideration
and now i just want to show you what the
final product is uh
all of you guys are very well aware but
again has that those four major parts
the projects the funded column the icip
or those outer five years and then
lastly
the funding sources now i really want to
highlight
and uh make sure that we also recognize
is that this right here is where those
rankings will go
based on council review non-profits
and departments that's where the
rankings will be provided
as we move forward with the finalized
list
i also wanted to touch base on when we
do
accept funding or we recognize that we
are going to be having some funding but
have not yet
received it into the city's coffers
and is eligible for spending a great
example of those are
legislative appropriations and any bond
cycles that we have as an organization
those are listed out in the first outer
year
and then once council approves a
resolution to accept those monies
we move them into the funded column and
then can start expending those
and then lastly just the legend down at
the bottom
i want to go over just a few key
projects that
the organization has been working on and
will get through
here the first project that we have is
the las cruces police department solar
array
best project was completed in august of
so it did provide a shade canopy
along with solar panels that
are producing electricity that has been
used
at the police department's main building
on spruce
the next project is the travis water and
gas
improvements and the reason we wanted to
highlight this project is
i don't know if people can tell but this
is
adjacent to and incorporated in as part
of the i-25
university project that nmdot is moving
forward with
in conjunction also in collaboration
with nmsu
the utilities department was able to use
their own forces
to improve the water and gas along
travis
uh many of you may know that this is
being developed
and two roundabouts are being put to
have an underpass
under university so this project
and i do want to highlight the work the
utility work was completed in december
and that is 100 complete
not nmdot's project this is just the
utility improvements that
uh the utility department was able to do
in conjunction
and coordination with nmdot and nmsu
next we have the 60 1965
foothills land excavation project uh
many of you may not recognize or
the project as this but this is where
the east loman development
site is going to move forward with these
are the efforts that utilities
is moving forward with removing the
waste in that area or the identified
waste
at this point in time that project's 95
percent complete and should be completed
by the end of
february one of the amazing things
though i don't want to pass on though
is if you look at the end of january
i'm sorry december there was 26 282
tons of waste removed from that site
thus far
next we have landscaping bond median
improvement phase
one this is a project from our parks
and rec department that project
currently right now is at 84 percent
complete
it should be completed in february here
the next month
and as you can see this project
addressed those medians that were bare
didn't have any improvements one other
important thing
is that this project phase one had at
least one site within each district
uh that was improved as part of the
medians
the next project i want to highlight is
the brannigan library ada
improvements this is really
a great example of that public
input that we received based
on issues that
patrons saw with the existing conditions
and i'd like to draw your attention down
here to this photo
in the right bottom corner
the way it was before is there was two
pathways
that were divided by a a rail and then
the entire usable space was limited
so although the slopes met ada
they were still based on the distance
uh really hard for some patrons to be
able to come up and down
what the final product was is we were
able to remove those barriers from the
middle
we were able to flatten those slopes and
make it a more gradual
and easier access into the facility
and then lastly at the bottom we were
able to incorporate
a drainage catchment which was there and
be able to capture
any of that storm water runoff or
anything that came through and
push it over and utilize it over in the
landscape to area just
north of the facility
the next project we have here is a is a
roadway project
it is teshiro drive it's the widening
project
and it is located between motel
boulevard and valley drive
and i really wanted to showcase this
project because
there was a lot of coordination with
different projects and different
entities
if you can see or you can see my pointer
we have a lateral and see a drain that
comes through here
that is going to be a connection point
with our go
bond trail system so during the design
incorporated and coordinated in those
efforts we also
had a major coordination effort with the
las cruces public schools as
you can see here it does affect
properties that they have
so we coordinated with them during the
design and with public input
because we didn't know how we were going
to interact with those
football games baseball games so we
worked out through those details
but there was major coordination with
this here
there was also some right-of-way
items that we were able to work out with
the school system as well
and then lastly some just some
improvements for everyone to
know is this intersection at motel and
teshiro will be
signalized with the project currently
right now
they have installed storm drain and
they're currently installing water
line they're about 30 complete
and then lastly i just wanted to bring
this forward to council
to recognize that this project has
started it was a big initiative with our
sustainability aspect as we move forward
right now the project is at twenty
percent complete it is estimated to be
completed
by the end of november this year
currently right now they are doing
number one of the four items addressed
as part of this contract
which they're improving lighting and
replacing those systems with led
lighting
and with that that concludes that
portion of it
and both leanne srijana and i
are available to answer any questions
that may or council may have
thanks david you're welcome so let's see
who's
has their hand up i can only see like
three of you
two of you so i got to keep scrolling
the screen why don't i just do this i'll
just start
i'll just go over down the line council
made a pro tem gandara flores sword then
como
get the stewie how about that and then
i'll rotate it the other way
okay and if you don't have anything then
just say i don't have anything
so american i don't have anything there
okay
counselor flotus thank you mr mayor
i and thank you uh mr cedillo for your
excellent presentation
i'm sorry i was called away for a little
emergency
um so i missed um the part out
some of it which is okay because i uh
anyway
um can you go back and i think it was
slide 33
um 32 33 34
the medians your discussion about the
medians
good morning mayor councillor flores
david cedillo public works director
are you ready at 32.
yes i can see this screen well and i
just saw that 30 uh
32 would also be uh very helpful
so i hate to burden everybody but if
you'd be so kind
as to review 32 and 33 again i'd
appreciate it thank you
not a problem not a problem counselor
david cedillo public works director
and councilor flotus here on this slide
we have the
1960 pre-1965 foothills land x
landfill exploration this is where
utilities is removing the waste
which is going to be the east loman
development area
so this is the area across from
the hospital which is mountain view
and this is the remediation that they're
doing
at that site they should be done by the
end of next month and currently they're
at about 95 percent complete
you have any questions on this slide no
i don't
much the next one is part of the
landscape bond meeting improvement
phase one project and these are some
of the finished product in medians where
there were
bare no improvements but most
most importantly is that at least one
median within each council district
has a site as part of this project
uh mr cedillo was that was that part of
the
where the city council it was before i
was on city council i believe
um well definitely not during
where monies were allocated uh based on
um
a fund or was that a there was a bond
and then the city uh counselors decided
to divide that evenly
um among the districts and that's why
the districts
um at least one there's at least one um
in each uh district the project
there's going to be there is a project
within each
discount mayor councillor flores let me
see if i can attempt to answer
because it looks like you have a couple
of questions there so the
funding for this did come from a bond
based on that bond and the amount it was
received
there was enough money to include
13 different sites under this first
phase
out of those 13 sites there are at least
one site within each council district
have those all those sites been
identified mr cedillo
yes ma'am i believe for phase two parks
and rec is working on those additional
sites but these sites here
yes ma'am no i don't have a course oh
i'm sorry uh yes these sites here were
identified
based on need and then the second phase
is going through the same
process and
uh parks and rec is doing that yes ma'am
thank you very much mr cedillo thank you
mr mayor
thank you uh counselor serge you have a
question
yeah just one real quick one if mr
sedillo could uh
go back live that was entitled input
continued
projects capital of price prioritization
yeah that's it
um partly because we barely can read
what's in here
but but also i didn't hear and i might
have missed it
where the city council comes into this
making these prior
prior prioritizing projects
at what point and where does the city
council
be part of this process
mayor councillor sorg thank you for the
question to answer that
this matrix is the matrix that staff
uses
to move and rank their projects we will
be meeting
with councils separately budget and
public works
will be meeting with you and others
individually
in march prior to a work session to
discuss the cip
and those projects that have been
brought forward
also with those ones that you have
identified in our prior meetings
back in october november
okay um
now my memory isn't all that great i
don't remember october
and november uh at that well but
um it looks like it looks like these
prioritizations are very already um
done before it comes to the city council
am i wrong on that
mayor councillor sword these are part of
the cip
process and when we get information from
city council
on those types of projects city staff
will be
excuse me let me get back to that city
staff will be
filling out the forms for those projects
that have been identified
so city staff will be doing that work
based on those priorities that council
is bringing forward as part of our
meetings
so give me an example say a city
counselor gives you a project
what happens to that project in a uh
process mayor counselor
that's an excellent question how we
would handle that
as we move forward is we would get
information
from you or any other council member
to move forward with the project and we
will ask questions based on
these criteria that'll help us rank that
project
to give it a weighted value that
weighted value
we can then rank it as either a low
range medium range and high range
that's just an initial range ranking
but when we develop the cip it is always
council's opportunity to move
projects that may be of a medium range
and not a high range
up further into the acceptance of that
project
to be included in the cip so what we
would do is get that information for
from you or any other counselor and we
would ask all these questions that way
we could fill that form out for you
so how would some a project get this uh
weight of eight in the community benefit
um
what what aspects or
what parts of this process or aspects of
the project i should say
would give it a eight i can barely read
it here
yes sir yes sir so the weighted value
is eight based on where it falls within
the
criteria value which is either a 0
a 1 a 2 or a 3 based on
how it matches with the project criteria
that is a multiplier so the eight gives
it
say you rank it a three on this line and
you give it an
eight well then that weighted value is
24 for that line
of community benefit so as you go
through you multiply you multiply
two numbers your multiplier yes sir yeah
okay got it
um so who's decided whether the project
has significant community benefit for
residents
and end users who decides that should be
a three
mayor councillor sorg that is going to
be
the department the council or city
manager whoever is
having that project come forward to be
considered
they are the ones who are giving and are
assigning
what that weighted value is or that
criteria value is
so it could be the city manager or it
could be staff
yes it could be it could be departments
with their projects and their priorities
and their department plans that align
with the city's strategic goals these
are also ranked by our non-profit
organizations as well too
yeah okay okay it's it's complex i
understand
but at what point would you give it a
three if a
city councilor said this is really
important
would you ever give it a three if just
the city counselor said it was real
important
mayor councillor sword i would say that
we would have to make sure that it meets
within those criteria
yeah that's the thing who decides what
the criteria is
those inputters of the project correct
yeah but that
for council that's going to be that
information that we get
from you and we'll ask those questions
if it meets these
and we'll give you that feedback oh yeah
i would be good to get
uh questions asked and answered good
yes sir i started to understand a little
bit more i i
when you have problems um when you come
to
us as as individuals in the council
um i it would be a good idea if you had
all the possible projects from the least
valuable to the most valuable and
everything in between
lists given to us so we could look it
over a few days ahead of time
at least and try to figure out you know
what we would rank them
at i don't recall doing that in the past
but
it might have been done but it seems to
me when it was done it was like
10 plus years ago but it wasn't done
like this
it was a ranking that the council did
um in a different way and i
i agree there's there's maybe no wrong
or right way to do this but
um and this could be a much better way
to do it in fact in some ways i can see
it is
but i would like to see a list of every
project that
not only the city councilor is talking
about but other counselors and
and the community etc etc etc um
so if that could be done when it comes
to us in march
i'd appreciate that thank you thank you
mayor
thank you counselor sorg thank you
counselor sore counselor beta stewie
i don't have any extra questions thank
you me or prayer time
okay anybody else have any additional
questions
yes counselor binko mall thank you mr
porteman thanks so much david
can you go back to um the
slide where you had cap and icip
sort of laid out differently
there we go um
are the i guess maybe i should have
asked a long time ago
are the funding sources for both of
these the same funding sources
mayor councillor ben como they can be
they can be
when i say they can be is because the
projects that are in the icip and those
outer unfunded years are part of the cip
so so yes whenever we identify those for
the icip they are part of the cip so
they can be but they don't necessarily
have to be
okay so icip is basically projects that
are take it's like a sub layer to the
cip
no it they are but it's also
other projects from departments that
have a plan on working
on their other initiatives that they
have or
priorities from council okay
okay all right thank you david that's
helpful to understand that's my only
question mayor
tim you're welcome counselor okay so i'm
back sorry about that so
i'm sorry did counselor beta stevie you
were asked you didn't have any questions
no i'm good thank you mayor okay great
okay so
david who's who's next on the present
presentation
mayor as a matter of fact we don't have
anyone next
uh we're we're good to go if if uh you
guys are ready
however i will turn it over to leanne
for any closing remarks
oh mayor um council this is land damage
chief budget officer for the record
um just want to give a great thank you
for being with us today for our budget
retreat
uh this is something that we don't you
know we do once a year but this year
as you can see we are really trying to
integrate the mayor and the council into
our budget
so um you know hopefully we won't pester
you a lot but you'll
you will be seeing meetings popping up
on your invitations
uh on your calendar and if
again i'd like to stress if you have any
questions after
you know after this presentation that
come up please reach out to us that's
what we're here for
is to help you um i have sent out an
email to all of you
it contained the powerpoint that we
presented it also had a link to strong
town
please look that over we're glad that
you enjoyed it and
i just want to thank everybody that
helped us with today
and we just really appreciate
you supporting us like you do thank you
so much mayor
thanks leanne thank you all for your
presentations and uh
great meeting and so if there's nothing
further
then entertain a motion to adjourn thank
you leanne
by council ben cuomo christine call the
rule please
yes this is on the motion to adjourn the
budget retreat
conservative stevie yes
counselor vasquez is absent
counselor bencomo yes
counselor sorek yes counselor flores
yes yes
mayor yes okay we're adjourned it's 11
44 a.m see you all in about um
74 minutes okay
bye