[Music]
okay well welcome back now we're going
to start part two of our work
afternoon meetings it's going to be the
work session of las cruces city council
today is monday october 26
2020 it's approximately 2 25 p.m
so the first item is going to be our pet
of the week and this jennifer
martinez from our communications office
is going to introduce
our bet all right thank you mayor um let
me share my screen with you first of all
let's see here you're able to see the
screen
okay well good afternoon council i'm
jennifer martinez with the city's
communications office and today i would
like to introduce you to
kai kai is energetic and enthusiastic
and he is searching for an outgoing
family
that can match his youthful energy he is
adventurous and curious
constantly finding himself in fun and
exciting situations
and then we have pinky pinkie is a bit
shy when she meets new people but that
changes when she spends more time with
you
pinky loves walks and is great on a
leash she's very gentle especially with
treats
and she hopes to find a family that is
willing to shower her with love
ear scratches and much more and you can
meet both of those at the animal service
center of the
messiah valley the hours of operation
are monday through friday noon to 6 p.m
and on saturday and sunday noon to 5 pm
you will be asked to call the number on
the bottom of the screen
3820018 to make an appointment to meet
with those animals
uh right now off-site adoption events
are still canceled until further notice
but if you're interested in adoptions
you can go online ascmv.org adoptions
the cost per animal is 25
you'll go ahead and look for that animal
number call to make an appointment and
voila
you can go meet your next family member
right now the animal service center
is looking for donations of kennels or
crates right now dog sweaters
blankets those without filling and no
sleeping bags please collars leashes and
towels
and you can drop off those items during
normal hours of operation or
at the door if they are closed and the
communications office takes this
opportunity to discuss covet 19 related
items today
in addition to encouraging you to wear
your mask in light of record positive
numbers in our county
i want to help the community engagement
office help families to learn about ways
to celebrate
halloween safely you can learn about
spooky las cruces which is
this saturday october 31st there's a
series of events
at 10 am you can pick up activity kits
at the museums on main street on the
main street entrance
a virtual facebook event at two o'clock
and then a drive-through trick-or-treat
that takes place from five to eight pm
with las cruces police department
in the parking lot of the messiah valley
mall you can get more information at los
dashcruces.org halloween thank you very
much mayor have a great afternoon
pinky what
what pinky okay well there you go so
jennifer can you deliver pinkie to uh
airport mv.org adoptions
make an appointment no you don't want to
do that you get when you have someone
who wants it right now
we'll just make sure you just drop drop
by
saying that she's one of that type of
pet huh
mr mayor yes david this is david allen
for the record i just wanted to correct
one thing
um due to a positive test or positive
exposure at the animal service center
that happened today they've had to close
down the facility to the public and are
working on rescheduling appointments and
are cleaning the facility again
they are going to be contacting current
appointee holders and working to
reschedule them to a later date
so that's the things that we lived in
and that just came out
late this afternoon so i wanted the
public to be aware that that they aren't
taking
uh and seeing the public today and
they'll issue a new press release when
they're back to
the new normal operations thank you okay
thanks for that update david i
appreciate it
okay so next we're gonna go to jobs of
the week and miss darlene lopez will
give us that information mr mayor this
is francisco payette for the record
economic development department
unfortunately ms darling lopez will not
be able to provide it today
uh since the the meeting started a bit
later but i will be here
introducing today's jobs of the week we
have
a position open at the city of las
cruces hiring a deputy city clerk
and there's one position available and
that one closes on november the 4th
we also have mine maintenance
technicians and
these are being hired by intuitive
staffing there's four positions
available this will be closing on
november 21st
we have one physical therapist and one
um
registered nurse with tresco uh this
position
will be closing these positions will be
closing on the 20th of november
we also have landscaper with gna
landscaping there is one position
available this one will be closing on
november 15th
we have technical riders machinists
sewing machine pullers and operators at
alaska structures and there's
10 positions available right now so
these will be
remaining open until filled for a full
list of jobs internships and volunteer
opportunities
please visit employeenm.com and you can
also visit
governmentjobs.com forward slash careers
forward slash las cruces and for more
information with regards to workforce
connections
the phone number is 575-524-6250
located at 226 south alameda boulevard
and again the webpagesemployername.com
thank you very much mr mayor thank you
dr payadis
okay we have three items on the agenda
uh first one is going to be our let 2021
legislative priorities and capital
outlay
requests and we're going to have amy
johnson
and larry horan our
lobbyist discuss who starts out first
good afternoon council uh mayor
councillors
amy johnson basford grants administrator
um larry herron our lobbyist will be uh
co-presenting today
let me share the screen i'll be managing
our
presentation during it and hopefully i
can
get this open here for us okay
can you see the um see the screen
yes yes great so today we are going to
be presenting
um the 2021 legislative session
priorities
through for your consideration and to
provide direction
to the city staff the legislative
priorities are traditionally broken into
two areas of focus the policy priorities
which
larry will be discussing with you a
little bit and the capital outline
outlay priorities which will make up the
bulk of our presentation today
policy priorities are brought before
council in a resolution form
which states what the city's position is
regarding a particular issue
we received direction from council and
the city manager's office
on the items to be placed in those
resolutions
and generally those resolutions are
put together by the city manager's
office in the past by our policy analyst
but
i believe other staff members in the
city manager's office will be doing
those this year
until we have a new policy analyst they
are then provided to the city's
legislative representatives as well as
the governor
our capital outlay priorities these are
brought before council
in one resolution this year we are
scheduling that for december
7th this is used to submit the request
through the legislative council service
and during the session then the lobby
our lobbyist
counselors and other key staff work with
the legislators to
encourage funding of our priorities
one a note i want to make uh for the
council this year
is a new uh process that was put in
place
last year by the legislative council
service for community organizations
those organizations must notify the
city's grants administration office
if they are looking to seek legislative
funding
in the upcoming session and provide
required documentation
the legislative council service is now
having two requirements be
in place for these community
organizations prior
to the start of the legislative session
and that is that a current
fiscal agent agreement is in place with
the city
which defines um that we are willing to
be the legislative or the
i'm sorry the fiscal agent for that
legislative appropriation
and that um the project that is being
requested for funding
meets anti-donation
criteria as well as will provide a
public benefit
it also requires that the city or
municipality that they are requesting
this from
is willing to accept ownership of any
improvements that will be
created in the city by that community
organization's capital outlay
those requests also have to be on the
state icip list for the 21
2021 legislative session and i'll
discuss that in a little bit
council will be presented with these
requests prior to the start of the
session
most likely the second meeting of
december possibly the first meeting of
january
to confirm that these organizations have
met the above criteria
that does not mean that they become
priorities for the city as such but that
the city is willing to
be the fiscal agent and accept the
responsibilities that go along with that
so this year i'm going to have larry
discuss the next couple of slides about
what he foresees as as happening in the
2021 legislative session
larry if you'll go ahead uh sure good
afternoon mayor members of the council
um it's good to be in front of you
unfortunately still virtually look
forward to next time i get to come see
you down in
the city council chambers this
this upcoming session is a 60-day
legislative session meaning
the legislators can introduce
legislation on any topic
sorry for interrupting i just need you
to state your name please i know we
introduced you buddy
i apologize mayor by larry horan
lobbyist for the city of las cruces
so going into this session although i
think we're all probably excited for the
election season to be over next week
we're really waiting
to determine what it's going to how it's
going to impact the state legislature
because
all 112 legislators are already up are
up for
re-election or election this year and so
we're really waiting to see what happens
with the make up for both the senate and
the house
both political makeup and then also
leadership make up
because there's some significant changes
as we discussed in
in meetings we've had with you earlier
including the chairman of the
finance committee will be new as will
the president pro tem of the senate and
so
it's it's really difficult to figure out
exactly what kind of big policy issues
are going to come up because you mix
that in
with what's going on with covid and the
legislators have not really decided how
they're going to
how they are going to convene in january
when they had their special session
in june it was a virtual session
as far as access by any of the public
was concerned but legislators
participated in a combination of
virtually and in person
and so with the 60-day session and and
we'll go down into some of these
big policy issues that they're going to
consider they're going to have to
determine how they're going to allow for
interaction
that doesn't violate the public health
order that will be in place at the time
as well as deal with legislative issues
and some of these issues are really big
policy changes
and so the public and interested parties
are
really going to want to be able to
participate in some manner and so
at this point everything is really up in
the air and we'll talk a little bit
about budget because that has a big
impact on it
as we talked before because of the
probit crisis and the oil
on the plunging of consumption and also
cost of oil
the state's really looking at a
potential budget deficit although the
range of
of revenues is swinging from around and
a half billion to seven point three
billion
just depending on what happens with
covet and what happens at the federal
level
so we we we're really going in on more
blind than normal even at this time of
year
um so big policy issues
and i know we've already had we've had a
couple of resolutions that have already
passed
including local regulation of tobacco um
products um that a resolution has
already been passed
that the city council has already taken
a position on on funding
the study on water management of the rio
grande
and there was a pilot there was some
funding received for a pilot project in
the last session
it was cut in the in the special session
but we did receive funding for
um to look at that issue for a pilot
project legalization of cannabis
certainly will be on the legislators
agenda
um i to get the most up-to-date
information i touch base with the
lobbyists for drug policy alliance today
they do not have a draft
that is yet ready for prime time but
they do anticipate
that there will be appetite in both the
house and the senate
um for consideration of the
cannabis legislation will be similar to
what it was last time but but there will
be some changes and some of those could
impact
um us at the local level meaning how
much funding local governments get
local governments get and then whether
or not there's a determination or a
um an area of funding that they would
like to have
from those tax revenues but the tort
reform and civil rights commission
recommendations kind of go hand in hand
the civil rights commission is meeting
every two weeks
to make recommendations for the
legislature related to a creation
of a new cause of action for a civil
rights violation by public
employees most of the focus is on law
enforcement
and and law enforcement civil rights
violations but
it's possible that that recommendation
will include any civil rights violation
by any public employee and it would
allow that
a cause of action to be brought in state
court of particular
um a particular concern just for
monitoring to make to determine how it's
going to impact local governments is
there's discussion of inclusion of
punitive damages
an elimination or an expanding of the
torque claims cap
or compensatory damages and also
possible attorneys fees so
if that happens if we have uh a civil
rights cause of action um
and a bad outcome for one of our
citizens it's it's gonna have an impact
on
on the city's budget and also how the
city is gonna manage that risk and so
that's something we're keeping
a close eye on and then also trying to
determine what's the best
stance to take because there's lots of
ways you can that we can help make the
system better
along with the potential civil rights
cause of action
that we may want to that we may want to
consider in the coming legislative
session
um elimination of tax income tax on
social security
um for for retirees that i i would
imagine that will come up again it's
going to be very hard in a
session where we have a budget shortfall
to
create any new or eliminate any tax
revenue
although this is a popular topic
for legislators and also for many people
throughout the state
it's it's a tough tough road to hoe when
when you have a budget
gap and you're looking to reduce tax
revenue for the state
and then the resolution for the
coalition coalition of sustainable
communities
recommendations i do see that the
council passed a resolution in support
of that and i think there may be one
more slide amy
yes capital funding
availability we still don't know as
we've talked before
when you have a year with with budget
shortfalls
the legislature has handled capital
outlay in lots of ways
we've had years where they have had no
funding available for any capital outlay
projects
they've also determined that they'll
only fund statewide
or state capital projects and so
individual legislators do not have
any funding available or we could just
see a dramatic reduction
in capital outlay funding that's
available during the legislative session
so based upon that and the discussions
we've had
the recommend the recommendation is we
try and identify what we consider to be
true infrastructure projects
public safety public health water those
type of areas for funding in the event
that there is any capital outlay funding
available
i look back at the the latest revenue
estimates or just released
to the legislator and the legislative
finance committee and
capital outlay comes from the severance
tax permanent fund and the revenue that
comes from there
and currently oil production is down
anywhere between 70 and 75 percent
this year over last year and the rig
counts are down so we don't have
consumption and we don't
have very many very many oil rigs
operating and so
we may have um very little or it's
entirely possible we'll have no funding
available for
capital outlay although it's always good
for us to identify our capital funding
priorities because
no matter if it's for this year or next
year it's good to have
legislators continue to have the
discussion with us about what we're
trying to do with our
with our infrastructure funding in our
capital and so even though it may seem
be frustrating if there's no funding
available it's still good for us to go
through the exercise
so we can continue to work towards
funding of some of these projects
through the out years
and
the staff and council has always been
very good in helping
to engage in conversations with
legislators about what our
priorities are and every year we try and
have at least the las cruces
day lunch where the city of las cruces
sponsors lunch for legislators
i don't know this may be the first year
we're not able to do that if we're in a
virtual session
but we will what we will do is we will
work to engage
counsel as as appropriate and as also as
to your desired um you know role indeed
and speaking with legislators and staff
to answer questions and
and push for our priorities but um
although
las cruces is it's a it's a long haul to
get to santa fe we've had really good
um we have had very good success when we
have staff
and um counselors come up and just visit
with legislators during the session and
we always try and do it
at a time where the timing makes sense
meaning they've already learned about
our priorities and they're about to
to about to fund our request and so we
try and hit them at the right time
and i know that's kind of a quick
snapshot of what we're looking at this
session the other thing that to be
concerned about is
is um and we've had some discussions
with about discussion with the new city
manager and staff
is to to adopt a general policy uh
resolution from the city
that would include things like um um
you know monitor legislation that may
create an unfunded mandate to the city
or
would um anything that would you know
deteriorate our home rule authority
protect local revenues um things like
that because
in the time when we when the state's at
a budget shortfall we have to be careful
that they don't
try and tap into some of the revenues
that local governments have and use use
our revenues um
to balance their uh balanced estate
budget and most recently we we have been
seeing that
as it relates to hold harmless
distributions to local government
nothing nothing has happened to indicate
that they're going to do that
but it's always something that that we
have to be wary of and watch for
and i'll kick it back to you amy and as
always i'm happy to answer any questions
thank you larry amy johnson basford
grants administrator
again excuse me before you go on let me
um
looks like councillor vasquez has a
quick question and counselor flotus
they may have a question of larry haran
councillor vasquez uh thank you mayor
yes i do have a question here for larry
i also have a question that i can save
for later for amy
uh but i'll start with with larry um
larry are you are you aware of
the estimated percentage of legal
cannabis revenues
that would come to to the state um
perhaps in the first year projection
mayor councillor vasquez no that's part
of what when i was having a discussion
with
with the representative from drug policy
lines today that's part of what
they're still um that is still in
in draft form on the legislation so they
have not said what the
um amount percentage-wise of revenue
that would go to local governments or
how they would spend because
in previous legislation it had a
percentage and it also
um it had a particular programs that had
to be funded on
that had to be funded with that revenue
that's what they are still
determining as as they draft their
legislation so as soon as we have that
and have the legislation i'll be able to
give you a much better um
answer to that question okay thank you
larry um
uh follow-up question to that but first
to your point i think
uh if there's an opportunity for us to
advocate for a specific percentage for a
municipal
um uh set aside on the on the taxes
collected on
legal cannabis it seems like that's
maybe a conversation we should be
involved in now um and
the second uh follow-up question to that
is in terms of total
total revenue um to the state from
legalized cannabis uh do you have
a specific number on the total revenue
and like you know x amount million of
dollars from
you know enacting this legislation in
the first year it would bring x amount
of dollars to new mexico
uh mayor council vasquez i don't have
that now but um i
i'll be happy to follow up on that and
see if they have
those preliminary projections yet um
based on what
what their revenue percentage would be
and as a follow-up
to your first question i would presume
um but
but that's why i ask because i'd like to
get direction from council is
that we want as high of a percentage as
as possible and then also
local control meaning the council would
have control over
where those revenues were spent less
prescriptive
as related to uh as related to where the
funds are spent but also as
higher percentages we can get but i do
pose that as a question just to make
sure
that i'm on the right track
great thank you uh thank you for that
larry i appreciate that um
you know i did hear one really
interesting um
statistic that i want to share with with
the council and with you larry
in terms of the where that revenue
would come from um because there's been
a lot of talk about
well you know if we if all that revenue
comes from inside of the state
you know essentially we're not
generating those economic based dollars
that folks are just re-prioritizing what
they're spending money on
to spend money on legal cannabis for
recreational use then
um you know it kind of the the the
conversation around economic impact gets
a little bit different
but in the study that i um that i heard
during the tax in rev
uh state legislative committee
uh just a couple of weeks ago they're
projecting that 40
of cannabis sales would be attributed to
the state of texas
so people from texas would amount to
forty percent of the market which of
course would be out of state
dollars being generated and spent here
in our community
and you know i want to say that because
we talked about this
i think in the last two years at least
that i've been on the council and
have voted in favor as a body to to
support this at the state level
um and 40 you know considering how the
population of texas
um and also considering a small
percentage perhaps out on the
southeast part or the eastern part of
the state but really el paso
is going to be the largest driver of of
the market for cannabis which means
um donyana county stands to have
probably the largest
if not one of the largest percentage of
revenue generated from legal cannabis
which is significant to us here in las
cruces
so that's a lot of money of course the
law would dictate that folks would have
to consume the product here in state
but because the governor has prioritized
this and has talked about this
numerous times this year the makeup of
the senate has changed
and that some of the i think opponents
to this
um will no longer be in the session some
key opponents to this will no longer be
uh in the legislature you know there's
i'm sensing there's a real
possibility of finally getting this done
and so
um you know i think whether we agree
with it or not or folks agree with it or
not philosophically
being prepared for that windfall of an
economic development opportunity and
revenue
is really important because we don't
want to miss that boat
if it's going to happen you know i think
we need to be prepared
and so you know i think um one of the
things i'd like us to consider
doing if the council agrees um
is to bring back another resolution in
support of this
um to to indicate the council support if
if
indeed there is support majority support
on the council for this
and and again to really you know start
thinking about this as an economic
development opportunity
because that i don't know what what
millions of dollars that
amounts to but in terms of generating
jobs generating local grt i mean of
course sunland park is going to be doing
probably pretty good um mayor perez
should be
like the spokesperson for this if
he's in agreement with it just because
of its proximity to el paso but
las cruces stands to gain really big
from cannabis legalization
and so um you know i just want us to
kind of
start thinking about that in terms of
the impact if it's going to happen
anyway
um like i said whether you oppose it or
support it being ready
to have those job creators not just that
but the production
you know we gave recently those leader
funds to
420 um uh gosh i forget the
the yeah 420 valley um
which although they are producing you
know obviously commercial grade cbd
i think really the business plan there
is they're waiting for cannabis
legalization
to to start producing that which is
going to make more revenue
for them but you know as we talk about
transitioning to
lower water use crops or you know
figuring out what we do with our
agriculture industry in the face of
water scarcity
i think we also have this a huge
opportunity to also lead in the
production
and so again if it's going to happen
anyway we could be a real state leader
in this
and we could really have a lot of
dollars coming into our community and so
thinking about that is going to be
important
so just some general comments on on that
um
uh larry anything anything that you
might want to add just on the potential
for this to pass in this legislative
session the way that you're reading the
politics in santa fe
uh thank you mayor councillor vasquez
and just as a follow-up what
while uh i was able to reach out uh to
the
drug policy representative just ask him
that question we do not yet know
current um potential revenues that's
something they have not been able to
determine so i'll keep
up on that as soon as we have any kind
of potential or preliminary numbers
i'll be sure to to provide that
information to you so just as a
follow-up they don't have it yet
um because they're in preliminary stages
but counselor i
i think your assessment is accurate
about the legislature and the makeup
the only thing that is um
although i don't know how much of an
impact it would be depending on who you
talk to in the senate
the republicans think they're going to
gain seats and if they gain seats and it
makes it close
that could have an impact on
legalization although i'm not sure how
how many seats they would be able to
gain they have 20 it's 26 to 16.
and some of those contested seats that
are now currently held by republicans in
albuquerque
they are actually thinking they split to
the democrats so the numbers may not be
much different than they are now
and just based on the nature of the
legislature those who aren't going to be
there anymore
i think there is a very good chance that
legalization
will pass this session and if it does
that it would be signed
by the governor great thank you larry
and one more quick question for you
or maybe just a consideration to to
think about in lieu of not
being able to lobby in santa fe this
year um and and probably
little to no capital outlay dollars uh
but
certainly perhaps some policy priorities
that we might have on the council
you know if there's ever an opportunity
to join to have
counselors join you in those meetings
with legislators
especially if we're talking about
projects that overlap
in legislative districts with city
council districts
i think that might be a good thing to
consider doing
and you know i think something that
we've kind of i've started informally
doing as counselors um
starting at least a couple years back
when you know i started
reaching out to folks um whose districts
overlapped with mine to talk about
capital outlay and
kind of some mutual projects that we
could both support um
you know if that's a strategy that is
helpful that you think is helpful larry
i think
might be something good for us to
consider um in lieu of perhaps going up
there
you know to do to do one-on-one meetings
in person so
just a thought on that thank you mayor
and counselor and actually um
what i will say is is although i
interact with legislators regularly and
provide them with a lot of information
they still prefer to hear from from you
all as members of the council and from
their constituents so it's very helpful
and the more and part of what we tried
to do with our
with our strategy this year and we
always continue to try and refine the
more we can
have collaborative project development
between the city council and the
legislators
so it's a project that you want it's a
project that the legislators want and
it's good for the constituents
it's a much easier sell and that's also
true
as related to to policy issues so i'm
i'm always happy to help facilitate your
participation in those discussions
and it it carries a lot of weight it's
even more weight when it's in person
because
because for for you to come visit with
him in santa fe really takes
a time commitment and a commitment and
your other priorities
but um we're learning that there's lots
of different ways to communicate because
of coveton so i think that's a
that's a great um that's a that's a
great idea
it's something that we've had some
discussions with we're also going to
have some new legislators in las cruces
and so having some of those
introductory meetings is a good way for
us to continually talk to them about the
priorities of the city and
the city council so thank you for that i
appreciate it
thank you larry uh and the last thing uh
mayor is if possible before we wrap up
this item
um we'd just like to see if there's
consensus in the council to have
a resolution brought forward um that
supports uh
legalized recreational cannabis in the
2021 legislative
session so that uh perhaps you can start
working on that if there is consensus
thank you mayor thank you larry okay
counselor yeah i'm sure there is of
course you know i'll be
against it but you guys have me
outnumbered um counselor
counselor flotus
thank you mayor and thank you uh mr
haran um
so i just i just when you said that
that we should these i think
almost verbatim um this is a verbatim
quote almost
i think um to adopt it that the
city council you recommended that the
city council adopt a general policy to
protect
local revenue and our home
rule authority
and also to have one that was an add-on
but um that was almost the direct quote
um and then for my scribbly handwriting
and then you also added that there
should be
we should also adopt a policy
to have less prescriptive
directives from from this from the
legislature as to
where revenues are spent and what
prompts you to say that
i mean does it look that scary either
trying to take
our money away or how could would it be
retrospective prospective what
what all did you mean by that thank you
uh mayor
and council flores so as a general rule
and we'll run into
we'll run into issues um and and
i can i can think of a few specific off
the top of my head but one of the most
um one somewhat recent one where we're
talking about home rule authority so as
a whole
municipality unless the legislature um
prohibits us from exercising the power
the city council
has the authority to make determinations
on how to utilize
your your general powers of governance
and so
for one one um example would be
as a home rule municipality you can
adopt your own procurement code
versus having to follow the state's
procurement code and the city of las
cruces has done that
so in the past they've had legislation
that would prescribe to the city
certain areas within the procurement
code that you would have to follow the
state code rather than
having the city council maintain that
authority and so
that's why so when we're talking about
protecting home rule authority
generally for home rule municipalities
you want to maintain as much of that
authority as you can
at the local level rather than having
the legislature prescribe that for you
and so
that's one of those those issues because
in a 60-day session
when there's less money there's less
legislation but when there's a lot of
money you can have upwards of
2000 or 2500 pieces of legislation and a
lot of those can have an impact
on a city government because not only
are you a local government or city
government but you're also a large
employer
you have to deal with workers comp
issues torque claims etc
so i generally recommend a policy
statement from
from the council to protect your
authority and then you can make a
decision
how you think that certain policies
should be implemented
and also a protection of local revenue
sources because
when we're talking about things like um
like cannabis for
for instance it's a good argument from
local governments to say we're going to
have to deal with a lot of the
um a lot of the impacts both positive
and negative
with cannabis legalization and so
that's going to create a cost to the
city your planning and zoning
your code enforcement if you're going to
have to issue business licenses et
cetera and so you want to have
a fair share of that revenue and so um
and also what has happened in the past
with the state is if
if they're needing to find revenue
they'll look at local revenue sources
that you're
getting either a portion of the gross
receipts tax
for instance when they when they
repealed the
food tax whether that not saying whether
that was a good
decision or not but what they did was
they took
that local tax revenue that's why they
had to create those hold harmless
payments because you had no
ability to decide hey what are you going
to do with a big portion of our revenue
and so i generally recommend to uh to a
governing body
and so to the city council that you
adopt a resolution just to give
direction on how you want those kind of
issues dealt with during the session
um and so those are usually the three
that come to mind the most
what concerns me mr iran is um if the
um if the legislature decides
to take our home rule authority
wouldn't that be wouldn't that supersede
any of or preempt any resolution we
might pass about how we
think would it would preempt a policy
measure
am i the whole thing baffles me
uh thank you mayor and counselor if they
actually passed and enacted the
legislation yes then you would lose
the authority over whatever that
particular aspect would be
but when you're adopting policy
resolutions you're signaling to the
legislature as an elected body
that you generally are going to not like
you know you generally are going to want
to maintain your home rule authority you
would prefer to keep that
decision making at your level and you're
saying instead of you doing that to us
let us make those decisions um as we
best
as we see best to govern so yes if they
do preempt you for instance
you would be preempted much as the
states would be with federally
um but it gives direction to the
legislators so then we can represent and
say we don't want you to do this because
we think you're infringing on on what we
think should be local authority
so it's more of a direction from council
and true um
[Music]
so say the legislature was
to uh pass such a uh statute
that takes away our homeworld authority
and
other things that you've mentioned um
the governor let's see well they would
have to pass something that would yeah
that would yeah okay now i'm just
yeah i'm just wondering if the governor
has any superpowers in this regard
do you know mr haran
uh mayor and cancer no it would have to
be enacted through legislation
but that would give the direction to to
make a decision on what position to take
on any of that particular legislation
i'll go back to the procurement example
because this was a real
example we opposed at the time
the legislation that would have imposed
a particular restriction on us
on how we dealt with architectural
services
primarily and the city opposed it
because
it would have eroded your home rule
authority but
but we enacted a similar provision in
our own procurement code
because the city thought it was it was a
good policy idea but they didn't
think it was a good idea for it to be
prescribed by the state
and so no there's no particular
they could they cannot do it to us
without legislation that is passed by
both houses and signed by the governor
but i i think what concerns me mr harad
is that it sounds as if you've heard
something
you know some rumblings of signs so it
sounds like
you're saying let's be you know
proactive instead of reactive
is there some sort of talk about that
uh mayor and council no there's nothing
specific
that is on the horizon now when i'm
talking about
things that could happen like when we're
talking about budget budget issues and
hold harmless
i bring those up because when we've been
in similar times
in the past several years we've had
those threats to
um our our ability to maintain our
revenues and also our authority so it's
more of
using like a historical perspective to
see issues that could arise
i see thank you thank you very much for
the explanation that really helps me see
the whole picture
thank you thank you mr ryan and thank
you mr mayor
counselor bait the stooby
thank you mayor and thank you larry um
i'm got just a couple questions
uh here one of them as you noted
um we will be seeing um changes in
different types of
leadership throughout both of
the reps and for senators
with that in mind what
kind of suggestions would you have or
things that we ought to consider um to
make sure
that las cruces and you know southern
new mexico
um continues to have strong a strong
voice
especially when we do have to compete
against
albuquerque and they have they have us
on numbers for
everything so um what what type of
things do you think we need to consider
well thank you counselor and american
councillor
aveda stewart first um first thing we do
and what i would suggest and we've had
some of these discussions is as soon as
we know
for sure who these who the new
legislators are going to be from
from the las cruces area that we set up
um
and depending on what the best way is
small meetings with them
and myself counselors as appropriate
and also city staff so that they can
learn about municipal issues learn about
the city's issues and our priorities
and take that as a good opportunity
between next tuesday and the beginning
of the legislative session
to start having those conversations and
have those dialogues because what you
really want to have
is as something comes up you want them
to think of us and reach out to
to whomever they want to talk to with
the city to find out what our position
is on those issues and so we want to
we definitely want to start to develop
those relationships with our new
legislators as quickly as
possible and then the tricky thing with
leadership is
is those leadership decisions aren't
going to be made until
really the first day of the session
although we'll have a good sense of
what's going to happen
things can change all the way up into
that first week of the session and so
that's a little tougher but we need to
continue with those who we do anticipate
are going to be in leadership
start having those conversations and i
think another way that we can do it and
i think you may have had some good
conversations with this
with with organizations like the
municipal league
is is increase our participation with
those associations because
when with the city's active
participation like with the municipal
league
you're getting the benefit of all 106
municipalities helping you
on some of these bigger policies issues
that doesn't help you on the money
or the competition for capital outlay
dollars but it does help us
in in those big um big policy fights
because
sometimes they like to hear from the
bigger cities some they really don't
like to hear from albuquerque and santa
fe as much because of the rio grande
corridor
most of the legislators would prefer um
to hear from their constituents and so
using things like the municipal league
and having active participation and the
ability to help set those policies at
the league
that will help us a lot and it gives us
much more of a voice than just dealing
with our
own legislators and so those are a few
things that we can do to kind of help
um help increase our
our ability and our sway with
legislators
thank you um and with that in mind i do
want to
point out i know that our our
legislators have done so well
with really uh communicating with each
other partnering up
um to do what's best and right for our
community and making
um every dollar stretch as much as it
can for our communities
and so you know looking forward um to
any new members i'm sure they'll be
um working together just as well
to make sure that we're able to get the
needed
services or infrastructure for our
community
um one item that and
i've kind of heard about that poses a
bit of a concern for me
is that of um perhaps increasing claim
caps
um from municipalities um and so that's
an item that i just
think needs to be on our radar um and
like i said
uh causes me a bit of a pause as well
um have you heard much about that item
mayor and counselor beta stupa yes and
it's it's concerning
um the civil rights commission's meeting
about every two weeks
and um i've been going through in any of
those i haven't seen him and going back
through the presentations and looking at
the makeup of the commission
um i think the i think the
recommendation that will come out is
likely to include a creation of that new
cause of action for a civil rights
violation
which depending on how they do it will
have an increase in caps and also an
increase in probably damages
and attorneys fees and so um i've been
very active with with both the
with the league and also had discussions
with the association of counties
on how they're responding to that um the
tricky thing
is is i think that i also think that we
may
be able to come up with some
recommendations for improvements
um in in how uh local governments and
and law enforcement and in particular
are providing the services to the
community
that that help alleviate any potential
civil rights cause of action because if
you have if you don't have the potential
violation then you don't have
you know you don't have the risk of
hitting the cap or having attorney's
fees and so
um a lot of the discussion we've been
having kind of behind the scenes is are
there ways we can improve the overall
system
so that we are holding bad actors
accountable we know who they are
they're able to be taken out of the
system so that they're not
working for you know a municipality or
counter they're not
you know some law enforcement officers
will move around to have
something bad happen if they're working
for las cruces and they'll go to a
smaller community and then you can have
another incident
and you know there's discussions about
the law enforcement academy boards or
ways
that can be improved and so i think what
we're fleshing out now is
is what are some of those positive
changes that we can advocate for to help
improve the system overall
so that people are still held
accountable victims are
are compensated appropriately as the
courts decide but also in a way that's
going to be responsible to the local
governments and
and your funding sources and so there's
a lot going on with that and it's they
have not made their recommendations yet
so we don't know what the answer is
going to be but
um we're all very nervous about what it
you know what it may look like
okay um thank you and as
we move forward um i know i had one
other item
that i was gonna chat about uh but it
escapes me at this moment
um i want to just thank you i know that
we had a really robust conversation
together
um and i do appreciate that i think
there's a lot
um that we can do and and work with um
obviously this is going to be a very
different year
on how everything looks like
especially when working remotely
i know that there was even some you know
internet access issues for some
legislators
i'm assuming that all of our people have
the right equipment
tools are being you know
given equal opportunities for that
access
when it comes to computers internet
everything like that that is needed for
those types of sessions
because like i said i know that there
was some significant issues
um even during the interims that um if
you get disconnected or can't be there
for
a vote and so that's um just something
that i think
is uh just a concern and i know that our
our people do the best that they can but
what types of
um perhaps improvements or processes
changes are happening at the legislator
to help with that thank you mayor and
counselor and
unfortunately i'm not sure a lot has
changed since they tried to do it during
the special session where
not only did they have issues with
voting but the the website crashed a
couple of times they had to switch to
facebook
they're having a hard time even with the
press conferences and so
um the reality is their focus right now
is on the
the election season um i i would
anticipate they'll have much more robust
discussions about
exactly how they're going to have the
session happen
after next tuesday but that is a concern
and i'm very i'm concerned about it i
mean
i've i've had the the opportunity to be
on a few of these meetings with the city
and you all do a very good job of making
sure the public has access everybody can
see it it doesn't crash
legislature isn't so good and so i know
that a lot of people are concerned about
that
in fact chairwoman lindstrom who's chair
of the house appropriations committee
has even indicated that
they should consider just passing a
budget and then adjourning and not
considering any big policy issues until
they can meet in person and so i don't
think that will happen because there's
112 of them and
they're going to want to be making some
policy decisions
but i but i would imagine that would be
some of the scope of what they're
talking about but legislators are still
worried about it as well
so unfortunately i don't have a great
answer for you
i know that they're going to have to
tackle that but that's something that
they haven't
made any significant strides on as of
yet
thank you and um as much as i want there
to be
tons of capital outlay funding i know
what the reality looks like
when we talked i know i had divided
things into a wants first needs
um and and i think that's kind of an
approach that i will take
um as we move forward to see what what's
happening
and what is absolutely necessary that we
need for me it was a bunch of it was
infrastructure items you know
and flooding maintenance those types of
items that i think have to be addressed
um but it's just something to consider
and so thank you for all the work that
you've done and thank you mayor
thank you and let's see next we have is
um
airport gundra thank you mary
um thank you larry for your presentation
i know we touched briefly about the
municipal league and the importance of
participating right the strength and
numbers kind of thing but did
did i miss you stating what the
priorities were for the league
uh mayor council no you didn't i don't
think that they
that they've been set yet no you did not
miss that and i'll provide those once we
have them
okay have an idea what that might look
like
um mayor and counselor really what
they're focused on is kind of what
counselor betas do they just we just
discussed is
is the participation in the civil rights
commission that's what a lot of the
focus has been on
um just because that's what happened in
the special session and we know we're
going to be dealing with it
um here in the in the 60-day session
sure
sure and i think that's really important
i you know around the civil
rights discussion i think um some of
that
and i've heard from at least a couple of
folks in law enforcement um and
from some attorneys um is the
whole camera issue and the way it was
written
how it just sort of lumped everybody in
and
you know the idea of having to have the
camera turned on when you're
in interviewing victims victims of rape
and
um or um folks that are undercover
that all that could blow their cover and
i wondered if there had been
any dialogue or discussion related
specifically to that
thank you mayor and council there was
some discussion during the special
session about those concerns
although they weren't they weren't to
the level that we could get the
language changed in the legislation
because there was an effort
to to address some of those issues and
either try and put it off
or um or to make some of those changes
in the special session and we were not
able to get any
make any headway with that so um i would
not be surprised if some of that comes
up as a fix
during the 60-day some of those i want
to call
more logistical issues meaning there's
not really an objection saying hey we
should use lice cameras
is that there are some ways we need to
deal with um
how do you utilize them appropriately
and effectively so i think we could
i wouldn't be surprised if we have some
of those discussions this session
i don't know that we'll make any headway
i don't know if we'll do any better
um but we will i would anticipate we'll
make a run at it
sure yeah larry you know being a social
worker and working with victims of crime
um specifically you know rape i i just
ha
you know the system doesn't do a very
good job of
of protecting we re-victimize um
you know folks and i see that as a huge
issue
um and i'd like to have a little more
dialogue about that and i didn't know if
having those conversations specifically
um
when the elections you know um
are settled that we would have um a
conversation with the sponsor
um which is senator
um cervantes yes cervantes
i don't know why i said sorry senators
um
so i'd i'd like to have some of those
conversations
the other thing is i didn't notice
the mental health hospital
component that we have done the last
couple of years i'd like to continue to
see that
i know we we we're looking at having a
more robust conversation with the county
and
mmc related to that but i think having
the governor larry you in involved in
those conversations
is going to be necessary because we will
need some funding i think moving forward
so
um i i doubt on that point if i may
mayor councillor um i've actually
reached out as you and i talked i
reached out to the governor's office
have a meeting set with the governor's
health policy advisor to figure out
what's the most appropriate or what
group that the
the administration thinks they could
bring to have that conversation with us
it actually had been scheduled and then
got rescheduled to later this week so
hopefully i will have something for you
very soon on that ongoing conversation
to have
with the administration to discuss that
issue
excellent larry thank you so much for
following up on that i know it's
it's a a priority for me and others on
council
and specifically for this region really
that we address that
accordingly um um let me see let me make
sure that i
have all my questions oh larry
do you know and maybe this is more for
staff
um over the course of um the four years
that i've been now
fifth year on council we've had a number
of resolutions
brought forth and presented to our
legislature
what what work has been done to pull
those and look at
what we've done what has passed what
hasn't and those that haven't
or that we continue to be um making
headway um what are they and will we
have
any of that in front of us to weigh in
on
uh mayor and counselor i was kind of
waiting to see if um i don't and i don't
know if staff
has done that i know from the past few
years what they are
um and what they have been and i think
most of those ones that we did that
you've done over the last couple of
years are
on the list again kind of a legalization
of cannabis
the um when you look and and i don't
have it's on the previous slide but the
the um if amy if you could go back to
the previous so the coalition of
sustainable community recommendations
a lot of those ones were on that we had
legislation on last year and you had
some specifics
related to that um i think the tobacco
products
may be a new one yes um that's new to
this year
and the funding i don't know if we had a
resolution on the funding of the water
management
but we did have um there that that's
that pilot project i talked about and so
i
had spoken um with dr garcia
and others about the funding of that and
we worked on that but the others are
are on here because most of the sustain
coalition and sustainable communities
those didn't
that legislation did not pass in the
previous session
and then um it's i don't know it's been
a while since we've had a general
legislative resolution like we talked
about and i had the
the conversation with council flores
about that's something that i
that i would just i just recommend so
you have an idea on kind of a broader
policy
yeah um platform of what you know what
you what you want us
what you want me and what what you would
like staff to do but i don't know that
there have been many others i'm sorry
the social security again that's a
that's a re i don't say a redo
it's one that did not pass and so it
that's continued from previous years
sure um i i um larry i guess
you know there have been times when
things have been brought to us
um but we don't have like the previous
bill
or what might be the current status and
so
i just want to make sure that with staff
and maybe it's
um um um
[Music]
david dalahan or others that are keeping
a list
and just keeping us informed and that we
that we're keeping you know track of
this
and and not i just find often it's a you
know the last minute
and i don't have enough time to really
research and review this and so
i just want to make sure that there's a
process that we're keeping track
and of all these items in the last um
you know four or five years um and it's
helpful
because we have new council and members
right
and and so we just need to to be mindful
and thoughtful moving forward not i'm
not saying that we're not but just
more mindful to to that so maybe amy
do you have i don't know who is the
person that
keeps track of all this staff wise
mayor councillor um gandra amy
johnson-basford grants administrator
um i believe that there was previously
the policy analyst in the city manager's
office who tracked those things
uh i'm not sure who in the city
manager's office is working on those
this year
but i will certainly um if barbara or
david are not available to answer i will
get with them following this meeting to
make sure
we have some kind of a process in place
for you and get you that information
thank you amy and councillor gone that i
i apologize this is barbara
deleon i'm a coast of this meeting so i
can't raise my hand
so that's why in my hand but yes i
wanted to jump in to say that
um amy is correct the policy analyst and
the policy analyst
reports the chief of staff so that's
currently amber vaughn
keeping track of the policy
resolutions that have come before you
over the previous years so that we can
make sure that they are included with
the legislative priorities
and that we're tracking any um action
that comes forward
you know i've mentioned um previously
that we are
in the process of onboarding our new
policy analyst and that person is going
to
uh be doing a lot of required reading
and um and uh review of the
documentation for these policies and i'm
in
in coordination with amber vaughn to
ensure that we will be putting together
um the consolidated resolution for
policy items that
mr haran uh recommends uh prior to the
legislative session so that we can have
one
consolidated resolution for that i
appreciate that so will council know
shortly or what's the time frame on them
um starting i believe that we want to
bring that
resolution forward to you by the first
meeting of december
that is when you will also be receiving
the resolution
regarding the capital priorities
so we would want to have them come
forward at the same session
barbara i appreciate the time frame in
terms of the legislative priorities the
capital outlay but what i meant
was the policy analysts oh
i apologize yes yes with respect to the
policy analyst
that person is will be on boarding uh
in the month of november hopefully in
early
november we need to just schedule with
um hrv orientation
and then amber vaughn and i are working
on the
list of items for that person to help
bring them up to speed
and certainly one of the first things
that they're going to be
doing is making outreach to you all to
introduce themselves make themselves
available for questions and inputs
etc um and then working on this december
resolution
perfect thank you barbara for that i
appreciate it so much
um and then finally the capital outlay i
i agree with council rebate the suvi
that
we have our needs and wants and any
infrastructure flooding anything of that
sort that
requires um you know
funding we should really prioritize
moving forward
[Music]
and that's it mayor thank you all right
thank you mayor councillor uh gandra
amy johnson basford i do have many
slides
left in this presentation regarding the
capital and so we'll we'll tackle that
unless there's
any additional comments on policy all of
you counselors will have the opportunity
to
bring up other policy issues as we move
forward uh larry herron will be staying
on the presentation with us so
as we get to the end of it if you think
of other policy issues you'd like to
discuss
we will be able to discuss those uh as
well
okay
all right if there are no further
questions of larry
at this time i want to kind of go
through um how we got to the process
where we are today
and um as many of you know we've been
refining this over the last
couple of years the grant department
myself
and one of my grant specialists aaron
sharat while i was on leave
met with each of you as well as the city
manager and the city
lobbyist and other members of city
manager's office for your priorities
what your
your big needs were with the outlook of
sticking to those things that were
really geared towards public health
safety
and that type of thing then the grants
office
met and public and the public works
department met with each department
regarding those priorities as well as
priorities that they had
the items were then compared to the
approved state icip and i'll talk about
the icip here in a couple minutes
the estimated costs were added for each
item and the status of any current
activities
around that project were evaluated
and and added to our our list
so the project selection um comes down
to
a couple of really critical things um
last year
the legislative council service who is
the keeper of all
requests for everything that goes before
the legislature
made an effort to automate the
capital outlay process and what they did
was they took the state icip that was
approved
last year which is the one that we'll be
dealing with for
2021 and put that
in an automated format so when i went in
to set up the
priorities that we had what happened was
i would put in the icip number that it's
assigned by the state
and whatever we had put into the icip as
that project was then
put in as the project we were the
portion of the project we were wanting
to
fund this caused a lot of
issues in that we have some
icip items that we call buckets where we
are putting general facilities
improvements park improvements those
type of things
that we can use as issues come up um
really was difficult then to bring it
back down to the low
the level that we wanted to specifically
have funded
so that's why i say it has to be on the
state icip and we are working diligently
to make sure that
the wording and the project description
on the icip
is flexible for us to be able to discuss
very specific areas that as a council
you decide
are the projects that need to be funded
at this time
so we we start with that requirement
um then we look at project readiness as
a consideration
on whether it should go on the priority
list we look at the amount of funding
that's needed to complete the project
and how much we already have
and we can we compare that somewhat to
what larry um
forecasts for us and says you know
they're they're going to be able to fund
large things they're going to be able to
fund small things they're going to be
able to
they're just going to look at water and
health and and roads and infrastructure
whatever he kind of gives us a little
bit of guidance on that he
has um in his crystal ball at this time
uh pending the election let's say um
we kind of we kind of pick that we put
that against the projects and then we
look at whether or not the project can
be faced and this is important
for both myself and larry when we are
getting called during the session
by legislators about our projects
if they don't have the whole amount can
we come up can they give us a portion
that will get the project started
can we do something of significance with
the amount
they're able to give us so it's
important that we can
phase the project then we want to look
at it in
comparison with the state strategic plan
as well as the
many other plans that the city approves
but we
primarily look at the city strategic
plan that you all as a council developed
for us and then they must have be a
capital improvement
and that's really important this money
is for capital improvements
it's not for operating it's not for
small
purchases with the exception of possibly
the public safety arena we try and keep
away from really small purchases that
don't have a useful life
of at least 10 years so that's what we
look at
when we're trying to come up with the
projects that we bring before you
um that could be top priority for
priorities excuse me um we're look i've
got about nine projects on the list
um in discussions that i know many of
you had with larry
um the goal is really to get to three to
five um
and perhaps at the end larry can again
discuss um why that
that's a goal for us um but that's our
that's what i i'm hoping to have you all
come
out with giving us direction on which
you'd like to see brought forward in
that resolution that we'll be bringing
in december
okay so to start our projects
as i said i've got about nine of them
that i'm going to present to you that
met the considerations that
meet the other criteria that we put
forward of course
this one is always on our list and will
be
for the foreseeable future the septic
tank replacement projects
from areas that the city has acquired
that were on
septic tanks previously this is
3.8 million dollars total
this is based on priority areas that was
established by a study done in 2008 when
we acquired
the majority of these unincorporated
areas that
became a part of the city that were
primarily on septic systems
and um those two and the amount that we
could do
um to get that done that overall project
that was uh developed in 2008 is about a
20 million dollar project
and i uh i've got uh both carl clark and
delilah on
a delilah walsh on from utilities that
can discuss
how far we are along in getting that
project completed
but the 3.8 million dollars that we're
bringing to you today
would be utilized in district 2 for the
remaining
portions of brittany estates that need
to be done as well as to begin to work
in the estados sorenos area
and then also in district 6 the
continuation of hacienda acres phase 3.
then we have our street and flood
control projects which are always
uh top of mind again they're always a
priority because
roads and drainage are so critical to
our citizens
for their safety their health their
welfare
their accessibility to services
this the 1.25 million
is for project which includes land
acquisitions designs
right-of-ways and construction
and the priorities that will be
accomplished with this funding
are dependent on a recent drain stud
drainage study that was completed so
some of the things may be acquiring
land for drainage programs or drainage
projects in order to be able to
in the future develop roads there's
quite a bit of
recommendations in that drainage study
and i do have public works
available to discuss that if that if
there are questions
the other top priority in streets and
and flood control projects is the madrid
extension
extending madrid avenue from martha to
travis
this is becoming more and more important
as
we continue to have construction from
nmdot around our city particularly
as we move from the east side to the
west or the west to the east
you know they the um other
access roads are becoming much more
traveled and need to be
um to be managed in anticipation of that
um under public safety we have two items
um for the one for the police department
which is police mobile data terminals
20 000 this replaces existing data
terminals that have met their useful
life they are in the vehicles of police
all of the police vehicles so that
officers have
connectivity for information
out on the street while they're
conducting stops while they're working
with
our citizenry and this would replace
about 50 of the terminals
and this is a phased project that we
replace
50 terminals every year as they meet
their useful life
and then the second item under public
safety is a renovation for fire station
1 of 350 000
this is a remodel of the front office
area to meet ada requirements and
security needs
um particularly as more citizens come
into the
fire department to request assistance
and this is a critical need that they've
identified
for their department and then also under
public safety this has been a project
that we have discussed for many years
now
it seems like it's always on the top of
our list and that's the communications
equipment and infrastructure to make the
city
uh p25 compatible which is a federal law
that we need to become p
compatib p 25 compatible in order for
both fire police um to work with other
regional um public safety
response organizations when there are
major
issues that affect many areas
and that are of regional nature and so
to complete this project we need a total
of
844 thousand dollars this is to upgrade
and replace police radios of
approximately three hundred and sixty
thousand
uh the police department right now has
an overall completion rate at about 85
percent so
they need a small amount of mobile
radios i believe
to bring them to full compatibility
upgrade and replace fire radios again
they are approximately 86 percent
in overall completion they need about
120 000
to complete some additional mobile
radios
that are out of compliance and then
finally
our it department needs infrastructure
for the p25 communications
and this includes upgrades at a mountain
for repeaters that will actually make
the whole thing be
functional with other regional um
municipalities and public safety
organizations
and that is 364 000 so all together
that's a 844 000
project now we have a couple building
projects that are of critical need uh
as well we have the brannigan cultural
center this is
uh a historic building um probably one
of the major historic buildings on the
city's
inventory of buildings that is being
used
on a regular basis and that is in
extreme need of
repair to in order to save those
items that are of a historic signa
significance on this building inclusion
at the end of this of which ones are
your primary
priorities thank you
uh thanks amy um and mayor councillors
um when we had the discussions with you
it
it kind of um ended up morphing into
what were kind of top priorities and
then i think it's
counselor beta steve said kind of needs
versus once
and so in a time like this the
recommendation is this the shorter the
list the better just because
if they're not going to have much
funding available um
if if our list is too long and we go in
with a long
uh a long list then it looks like we're
kind of out of touch with for lack of a
better word with what what's going on at
the state level and what they're
available for funding so
my recommendation is always to keep it
as short as possible so i mean there's
no magic number
last year we had a top 10 although they
had a lot more funding available
that's why we kind of came with the
three to five that if you can really
narrow them down
um we we have a chance of being more
successful if they do have some funding
available but
when times are tough it's just you know
the the more streamlined of a list we
can give them the better
and things that are on this list um
septic replacement is always
i hate to say sold well we've always
been very successful with the that
ongoing project
um and public safety communications is
always a struggle and it's always
something that that we can usually get
support from and maybe even from the
administration and then
um others are on there because when
we're talking about roads and drainage
that's
again legislators and and council
typically that's something you all
typically like to get fixed in your uh
in your districts and so we're just
trying to keep it as little as
small as possible just so we can try and
be as as realistic as we can
coming into this kind of lean session so
that's kind of the background for
for the discussions we've had so i
appreciate it
and available for any questions thank
you larry so we've got councillor flores
vasquez and a beta stewie thank you mr
mayor
and thank you um hold on a second can
you hear me
yes oh thank you oh here we go
so um thank you so much
um miss uh john miss
amy thank you so much for your
presentation thank you again larry
um for for uh for the information you
present
uh i just want to say amy um you
indicated that
um at the beginning when you said there
were nine projects
and that they will you know we should
whittle it down to four or five
on the septic tanks uh you indicated
that the project was developed in 2008
so there are one comment and then a
question
the comment uh you said that right
around the time
that it was incorporated by the city i
believe you said that
and if i if you didn't say that forgive
me
um but uh for not hearing correctly
but the city was um east mesa
the one that we're talking about here
the east mesa south of 70
was actually incorporated in 1986 so
i don't know what the city did between
86 and 2008
um so but i just want to say that
somehow someone fell asleep at the wheel
and um the septic tanks replacement
uh you know i mean i'm glad that we have
it and i'm glad that we'll be able to
hopefully be able to implement it
because it's just not the
septic tank replacement issue but it's a
connection
issue and and we can get some funds or
grants or something where property
owners can
actually have uh get rid of the septic
tanks because when they replace the
septic tank they also have to take care
of the cleanup
and that must be you know that must be a
pretty penny there too
um so i i hope um
you know i hope that we we we take care
of that in the east mesa
um and i just i just want to say that
um the people i've spoken with
out in the uh uh part of town have
have expressed not you know some of them
really don't want
the and i'm talking about the equestrian
area out there there that's like east of
dunn and there's a pocket there that is
part of the city
they they like their roads the way they
are and they also maintain them they
maintain them beautifully
and it's like you know the beautiful
desert
and you know horses and all that
beautiful stuff
but uh west of that um you know some of
the roads are
less than um i mean i
i think that um it's surprising to see
and i know that some people think that
that's how people want it
but i i've spoken to constituents there
who have expressed the need for
roads because when it rains um
it's just a deep puddle and most of them
i guess do carry boots in their in their
cars and trucks when it rains
but um so i just i just want to say that
that
um that that part of the city was
incorporated in 1986 so we're going
close 35 years and 2008
the project was developed so my question
to you amy or to
who the powers that be in the city
perhaps david dalahan would be the one
donalhon would be the one with the with
the uh
institutional remember memory on this so
the project was developed in 2008 and
what happened
did it just sit there um here
mayor flores if i may
amy johnson so uh councillor flores
uh i apologize if i misspoke the project
was
uh the process of incorporating
those areas onto the city sewer system
not that that's when it was incorporated
by the city
but i utilized that word incorporating
as bringing it into the city's
uh steward system so that's what was
developed in 2008 and
uh for many years now we have been
receiving small amounts of funding
every year sometimes a little over a
million sometimes 500 000
um to move this project forward and the
utilities department has a list
of the areas that they will
go through and they've prioritized those
uh based on
uh recommendations from from the the
community and as they develop
uh areas on which ones they will um
uh tackle next uh for lack of a better
word
so i have i do have carl clark on the
uh call as well as delaila walsh from
utilities
um that they may be able to discuss more
of what's happened
since 2008 to now but as i said we've
received small amounts of funding every
year
for this project and it is a large 20
million dollar project so it will take
us
many years to get this fully completed
uh if carl or delilah wants to add
anything to that i'd appreciate that
hello mr mayor madam councillor
this is delilah walsh the utilities
director
and i can't speak to what happened back
in 2008 obviously but
i can tell you that we have completed
for the
hacienda acres homestead acres the first
phase was completing the designs for
those sewer change outs and
doing the system hookup and all the
engineering plans that i believe
we've completed and so in that sense
that was the first step and what we did
is we did not use any of the legislative
funding for the design portion
we did that through utilities funding
and then we'll be coming in using the
legislative money to do those change
outs so
really it comes down just a matter of
funding
and expanding the system and planning
for that every year
the legislative outlay the capital
outlay has been the best
solution simply because it's supporting
that sewer change out
and not having the full expense of a
sewer hookup so for example if i had to
bring in a full sewer hookup to your
neighborhood
it could be anywhere from five thousand
to fifteen thousand dollars
to run those lines by having the capital
outlay it
subsidizes that expense for the consumer
and the end user
and so what it does it helps us make it
affordable
and really that's the bottom line the
utility can't just donate
um the expense of doing so we have to
have some sort of offsetting funding and
the capital outlay has been able to do
that
obviously the residents can't afford or
are don't choose not to i i know i
wouldn't if i had a septic tank
uh to expand those sewer systems and
replace their septic unless you
absolutely have to because of the
expense and so the capital outweigh
lay is the best way for us to do that
and subsidize that cost
for the consumer
ms welsh why would um
why would the homeowner or the resident
um have to bear the
uh expense of um
of the sewer you just mentioned
something that
um i'm sorry got distracted
um why would the resident be
incurring any cost in that in this
regard and what you just said
mr mayor madam councillor it's like
every part of the utility system just as
a developer would have to pay for
utility lines to be laid into a
subdivision
a single homeowner has to pay the
infrastructure cost of bringing those
lines
to your home and so if i don't have city
water right now
and i don't have city sewer city gas if
those lines aren't already available as
a stub out
i have to pay for that infrastructure in
a subdivision
a developer typically does that they pay
for us to come in and install
the lines the utility does not install
service lines to your home
that's something that developers
typically do so if you live in a home
where there's
um no sewer or water and you want to get
into the city system
you do have to pay for that connection
that is a burden of the end user and not
of the utility as a whole
[Music]
and if i may if i may counselor and
delilah so the a further reason
councilor florida says we're not allowed
to pay for that hookup
because it's a violation anti-donation
clause but i will tell you
but i understand that the the value and
we very rarely have residents that have
a problem with the pain of the hookup
because
the money they'll save not only in
septic tanks uh cleaning and fees and
and
having to replace it but the value of
their home the increase because now
they're on city utilities is
far outweighs the connection price okay
well then hopefully we can have a good
campaign going
to uh educate them because that there is
a resistance out there about that so
it's kind of like
well we're gonna have a quote septic uh
capability excuse me
removal capabilities but then there's
a huge price to pay for that but
counselor do you mind it looks like
larry haran wants to say something maybe
on this issue
larry did you have something you wanted
to say uh thank you marin counselor in
my recollection when this started in
what what started it was there was a
change in the regulation
um i believe i believe it's the um the
environment department i may be wrong it
may be
our office of state engineer there was a
change in the size of your lot
so if you had a a lot that was less than
half an
acre you you were not able to replace
your septic system
and so that's what started this that's
what created the requirement so it
wasn't something the city did
it was actually a change at the state
level and so if you're on one of those
smaller lots you needed to redo your
leech field
you wouldn't be able to get a permit and
so you have a whole bunch of people
who are going to be forced to to move
into a sewer system
which is why we started this effort back
in 2008 and have been doing it every
year so it wasn't really anything that
the city had done
great thank you mr herman thank you mr
mayor if i
could add to that mr hands correct it
was changed to a three quarter acre
where a lot of
lots were subdivided to one half acre to
start out with
and then enemy d did increase the
requirement to three quarter acre
[Music]
in fact i think when i was a
commissioner back in 1990 it was a
quarter of an acre then it went to half
acre and then three quarters but we also
did it to protect our water source as
well
okay uh counselor vasquez oh are you
done council photos
yes i am thank you very much miss mayor
and ms uh
walsh and mr iran thank you mr vasquez
thank you mayor um yeah so i'm gonna
just
ask here about the madrid road extension
um
you know i guess i'm trying to look at
the impact the these projects would have
to
the largest amount of people in terms of
quality of life
and um you know i think i fully support
really all of these
but thinking about madrid road extension
um
what what phase of the madrid road
extension with this
fund essentially and with 400 000
maybe being on the lower end of these
requests uh
is this something potentially that we
can find with our budget to do soon or
is this something pressing as part of
our overall plan
to unclog the congestion right there on
madrid
avenue and eventually i think get it get
an underpass maybe
under the freeway there mayor uh
councillor vasquez i will defer
to uh tony trevino from the public works
department about this
project hello mayor councillor vasquez
this is tony trevino again
with uh public works interim deputy
director
um so madrid right now as we've dug in
we're digging into the design
and we've had discussions with nmdot um
the the plan and the future kind of
outlook for an underpass there is kind
of what is our biggest
um i guess you can say con concern right
now
so with that being said looking at
impacts on the east side of highway 70
of
i-25 we're gonna have to realign madrid
a little bit
so we are planning ahead for that future
underpass
um other items that we're looking at is
a traffic signal
at madrid in travis and the
landscaping and any kind of tie-ins and
connections into that development of the
vmware dam so with this funding here
and i believe we have about 300 000 of
city funding into the project
we're still a little short with the
plans but at least this gives us a big
step
for the construction so i believe with
this 400 000 will put us at
700 000 total on the project which is
about an estimate of 100 about 1.3
million for the entire project
which includes traffic signals um
or actually so with that we're
anticipating that the traffic signal is
there
but as we get into further design we're
gonna actually do the study to see if
it's required but
we are taking worst case scenario that
those would be required so
okay thank you tony so this this 400 000
here then
is is for infrastructure and not
necessarily for planning
is that right uh
[Music]
if i may it looks like david wants to
jump in and say that you do you mind if
he uh
responds maybe he had something he
wanted to add to what tony said oh sure
david thank you mayor uh i would like to
let tony finish his
uh comment with mr vasquez and then i'll
add to
the discussion thank you america sure
thank you
yeah so mayor councillor vasquez i
believe your question was if this money
was for
construction or design uh we are doing
the entire design in-house
with engineering and architecture staff
the only outsource to apply you do
is the traffic signal study
uh at the intersection so it is all
being done in house with staff
so all this money will be used toward
construction
all right great thank you um yeah well
that's very helpful
um david uh before i comment or ask
questions further if you would like to
uh comment yes thank you
mayor councillor vasquez david savio
interim public works director
i'd also like to add that this portion
that we included
for madrid would also finish other
improvements that we will be doing in
the area
so this is a portion from anita over to
travis that'll help us finish a corridor
improvement along madrid
that is incorporated with other projects
in the cip
so we felt that this small portion of
roadway
would also benefit not only the
connection but
give that complete street design all the
way through
madrid and basically
finish a corridor without leaving
certain portions unfinished
so it not only does in improve the items
that mr trevino
announced but it also completes an area
along with elevate las cruces and the
active transportation plan
to complete a portion here that we're
not left with segments
to come back in and improve at later
times that's why it was also included as
there
it is a small cost but that was the
other factor that we looked at
in including this in the priorities
thank you
thank you david thank you tony um well
yeah this is the one i'll advocate for
um it's in my district but also i think
in terms of public benefit um currently
that section of madrid that connects to
trevise
which was a valuable connection for us
to open up many years ago
also will provide i think that the
sidewalks that that we really need i
think along madrid i see
often a lot of folks walking along the
side of madrid there's currently no
sidewalks there
and can get kind of kind of dangerous
especially because people are using the
vietnam dam area as a park
um already and so i i see often people
walking their dogs and
going for jogs or whatever it is to
connect to the trevis path
on there and so i think having having
that street finish would have
a good public safety benefit but would
also help
set a border um you know a buffer area i
guess but between the the actual
vmware dam area and and madrid uh and
then
you know eventually get us ready to add
another
uh east to west connection um from the
you know in the city that i think is
just really badly needed as well
for to accommodate for for existing and
future growth and so
um but other than that all these other
projects are just really important as
well and so
you know i don't know what if we if
we're trying to narrow it down to five
or or what the magic number is
um so i'll advocate for for that one but
but certainly if there if there are
other really important projects you know
i'm also happy to
to narrow it down as we need to even if
this is not included
thank you thank you mayor
thank you mayor had to step away so i'll
be taking over the meeting
um thank you councillor vasquez i'm
sorry in terms of the lineup
i didn't know is it gil or a counselor's
org or
thank you ameritem um and yes thanks for
the presentation everyone and for
all my colleagues questions um sort of
for my own understanding
um given this is really my first go
around at this
um when you say narrow down to five
in terms of are we more concerned about
the
price tag on the end of the
list or just in terms of
um we shouldn't go or just in terms of
like
we should just pick five so that it's
easier pill to swallow
or is it both mayor pro tem councillor
ben como
amy johnson bowser grants administrator
it is a a little bit of both i will say
i may have larry kind of come in since
we don't have a really good idea of what
income they may have available to them
this year
uh we've done a mix of high and low cost
ones
so really your guiding principle today
should be these are the most important
things for the city
to get done infrastructure wise and
these are the things that we feel
very strongly are critical to
moving the city forward as you all
believe should be done
um and that that's kind of what should
be the guiding principle
um we will always we will keep all of
these in reserve so if they have a bunch
of extra money we can move
we can throw those out there to them but
as larry mentioned we don't anticipate
that's going to be happening
and we want to keep it a small enough
list
that they don't feel the need to to
if there are if there is some money
available they've got they've got things
to fund
um but we also want to be very cautious
if they don't have any money available
that we aren't asking for so much that
they want to consider
um not funding anything yeah does that
make sense
i want to give them something that's
manageable got it
thanks amy that's super helpful um okay
and then amy can you go back to
the brannigan cultural center pieces i
feel like
i feel like what i heard you say was
mostly
uh somebody has their is unmuted um
i'm sorry can you ask your question ben
come on
um in terms of the running and cultural
center i feel like what i
mostly heard from you was more like
superficial type
projects um is that right
sorry mayor uh mayor pro tem councillor
uh been coma i'm challenged with my mute
button here
um they are no these are
very fundamental uh parts of the
building
that are beginning to deteriorate and
are causing the building to deteriorate
further
they are considered the historical
elements of the
the building but they are very integral
to the infrastructure of the building
the exterior stucco is in several areas
completely coming away from the building
leaving the underside exposed to
the elements and causing damage the
original windows
some of those are our stained glass
windows um and they are
are like kind of held in by hook and
crook over there
uh so they don't fall out um several of
the interior and exterior wood elements
are beginning to seriously deteriorate
which
then causes further deterioration of the
windows or the
doorways i do have a rebecca
slaughter and lynn gallagher from the
quality of life
on the line and if they would like to
speak uh further about
how these um these issues are impacting
the building i would appreciate that
okay good afternoon mayor
tim gander and councilor benkoma rebecca
slaughter deputy
director for quality of life for the
record uh and amy is correct
the problem is the longer the building
goes without
being fixed the worse the damage is
going to get
if you go over into the courtyard of the
cultural center
the wood vegas over the windows are just
rotting away and the more we get
moisture
just like what's gonna maybe happen
tomorrow that gets behind the stucco
and water damage gets in to
um under the paint and under the stucco
and it does more and more damage
as you look if you walk especially
behind the building between
the stall building and the brannigan
cultural center you can see a lot of
damage
to the stucco unfortunately in
probably the 80s the building
had elastomeric paint put on top of it
which is the worst thing you can do
for the kind of stucco that is over the
building
and so that is coming apart and the
stucco
as amy alluded to earlier is a lot more
sand than you would expect
and also i'm assuming many people look
at that building and assume
that it's an adobe structure building
and it is not it's actually a clay tile
building
so you have a lot of different elements
working against each other and the more
moisture you get into the building
the worse and worse it gets so the
longer time we go
um the more damage there's going to be
and then one of the interesting things
about that building is
the carving that's in the stucco it's
called
banana um
the striking into the the person who did
that there's only a few buildings
in las cruces that have that particular
type of stucco decoration
and of course the person who did that is
no longer with us but his grandson is
still in
in town and so one of the things that we
would love to do as we repair the
building is have his grandson not only
teach
us how to do it but also hold
community meetings and community
education programs so that we can learn
about this very
las cruces dona county type of stucco
process so that we don't lose that
heritage that we have
from um our region
um great thank you miss slaughter i
appreciate that context
um and then amy can you go back to the
full list again please
or i'm sorry whoever's controlling the
powerpoint
um that is me okay
what happens to like for example i'm
gonna call them like like the lower
ticket items if if you know we move
forward
today so personally i'm inclined to
um you know support some of the bigger
ticket items
like that to me feel incredibly
necessary particularly
in a moment of financial crisis for the
state like what feels
especially necessary septic roads to me
is always
like top of the list um obviously the
airport
expansion i feel like we are happy we
are in a critical moment
in the conversation towards um you know
living into that aspiration of what the
airport could look like obviously
i'm gonna advocate for that as well um
but so what happens with like some of
the
these other like 120 000 like if we're
they're not
funded this year um but are
you know more critical as well what's
what's the plan um great question
mayor pro tem councillor ben cuomo so
the items that are not selected
uh as priorities for you we do still
have
we keep those on the icip um
they if there is additional funding or
if for
some reason a legislator has a little
bit of funding left over and they really
want to do something for fire or they
really want to do something for
youth we can bring these forward to them
and say
you know these were also priorities that
you could you know
and then we'll work with the department
on figuring out what dollar
amount matches what they have available
what could be done
and so they don't go away completely but
they are not in the resolution of the
top
five um that we present to the
legislators
there is a lot of back and forth during
session and so
some of these may rise back up to the
level of being
being actually funded even if it's not
one of your
selected items but then what happens is
that as they
uh public works moves through the
current cip process
these things remain on the cip list and
are
integrated into that um for the icip
for next year so they don't go away they
just keep moving along on the icip and
the cip
program okay okay that's great to hear
amy
and then my last question can you talk
more about
p25 i feel like i don't i'm not entirely
sure what that means still
okay so um i'll i'll have to call on
um either um chief henriquez or debbie
or
interim chief uh dominguez to to give me
the exact date but um
several years ago i think i want to say
five or more years ago
the federal government passed a law that
all
um public safety agencies needed to be
have an interconnect ability
so that they could communicate together
in large-scale
emergencies so an emergency like that
for our area could be
a wildfire could be what happened in el
paso
last year could be some of the other
major things that might close down the
highways or the freeways
and they need to be able to talk to each
other and so
that is a law that was passed by the
federal government because every
department was
buying their own stuff and sometimes
they buy it
new that some department that had a lot
of finding would buy really new stuff
and other departments that didn't have a
lot of funding well they just kept what
they had 20 years ago
and so they couldn't talk to anybody our
departments do have some challenges with
the sheriff's department as well as
border patrol
and um the state police department in
interconnect ability
and i can have one of those two
gentlemen i mentioned
speak to that but it's been a goal for
the city for the last several years to
get ourselves 100
compliant with p25 and p25
is a um a technical lingo for
being able to regardless of the type of
of
communication system you have that you
can communicate with other people
regardless of the type of communication
system they have
so if um chief enriquez or
interim chief dominguez would like to
add to that that would be great
i think they're both on the line uh
mayor
councillor or mayor pro tem uh uh
councillor vancouver
uh amy's correct there's it's a mandate
uh p25 it's a it's a digital format
uh so what we're trying to do is get all
radios um
on on the uh 800 megahertz system
uh the p25 speaks to uh digital
right now all of our radios are in
analog mode
as soon as we get compliant uh and have
all the infrastructure we can all go
to digital in our in our case as far as
the police department's
uh concerned we're asking we
saved some money uh years back when we
purchased some other vehicles by
putting in analog radios but to bring
them up to compliance we have to replace
those with
digital the other radios that we do have
our digi or the newer radios that we do
have our digital
and analog both uh so what we're trying
to do is get them all
digital thank you chief what's the
consequence maybe the longer we're not
on
this system
so there's uh there's no i mean it's a
mandate
for interoperability just like amy had
had uh advised
there's uh there's a set date that we
have to all comply with
uh the date has not been a drop dead
date they know that there's some
funding issues with everybody but the it
speaks to
in our interoperability so they haven't
come out with
with anything saying that you're gonna
be uh
penalized for not being part of it but
it is a mandate
okay all right thank you chief i i
appreciate that
and that was all my questions amy i i
appreciate
um your rare thorough responses thank
you mayor
tim oh okay i'm well i'm back so thank
you counselor
uh we've got councillor sorg abate the
stevie
and gandala next thank you mayor wait
wait a minute counselor
scott moore just jumped on scott do you
have something you want to say
oh i guess he did okay no i am mr mayor
this is scott mart rit director
i did have something i wanted to just
add to the comments on the p25
uh radio question uh
for counselor ben como the other aspect
of it is our current system
is no longer in production and
replacement parts are getting very
difficult to obtain
so we're having to go to secondary
markets when we have to replace parts
we can no longer buy them directly from
the manufacturer
so that's the other aspect of this it's
the longer we push this out the more
our current infrastructure is aging and
becoming less supportable
thanks for that youth mr maher
okay sorry about that counselor sword
that's okay
that's good information to know i'd like
to add some more information about the
east mesa roads and drainage
uh as amy said this uh these are the
roads that are
in the same condition they were uh back
in 1986 when the
areas were annexed into the city and
told that uh their roads would be
brought up to city standards uh they
haven't
um these are mostly dirt roads i'd say
not more than 10
of various lengths um
and and i would say there's four to five
roads that are pretty
serious problems the main thing is that
this is a
part of our city that has some of the
poorest people
in the city and uh this would really
help with
their equity uh in the uh on the city's
uh population so i think this is
is the time we need to keep going on
these streets there's been a few
that have been brought up to city
standards but
uh there's some stubborn ones that are a
problem and
we need to have some funding in order to
finish it out
so i just wanted to add that into the
conversation today about our project
list
thank you mayor thank you uh
let's see her account slurpee to stewie
thank you mayor um
and and thank you amy as well um i did
have
a lot of my questions have actually
already been answered um
if i'm gonna do like a top two right now
obviously um septic
system replacement would be very
important and i think the public safety
communications upgrades
are also in my top sector
i did want to ask about the police
mobile
data terminals um with that in mind
is this just kind of a scheduled
replacement that we're trying to do to
get everybody up with these new systems
or are we having like significant
failures
right this moment with these terminals
thank you um mayor and councillor beta
stevie
as i understand from police and um
interim
chief dominguez is on the phone and can
correct me if i
say anything wrong um these are
um like any other computer system they
get to a point where they are out of
date
and they've met their useful life and so
the police department has developed a
schedule of replacement of these
um on a regular basis and so this is a
project that comes up
pretty much every year that there are
certain ones that are just
technologically out of date they don't
meet the current standards of what we're
using
uh the terminals for and they need to be
replaced
and that that's kind of why we bring it
a little bit at a time because
each year some of them fall out of the
you know fall out of the the
the time frame that they should be used
in and um i will defer to interim
chief dominguez if he has any other
comments on this
mayor comes for a big suite amy is very
uh
is correct on that uh it's old
technology that we're replacing as well
as the uh
the new academy that graduates uh on on
a yearly basis
it's to replace and to add uh at those
computers
okay thank you um and if there is one
that has
a failure mid-year
um do we do we have other options for
funding to make sure that
that can be replaced or do you wait kind
of the once a year to see
what can happen
may your concert beta uh that's we do we
do have uh we use
uh general funds if we if we have an
emergency or somebody's breaks or
as well gets water damage or
or something like that we do replace
them on a yearly basis once
ones and twos but a big chunk like this
we always ask for money so we can get
funding okay okay thank you um just
with going with these obviously that
needs to be done
um and i'm trying to think of that's you
know do we go for the big ticket items
the smaller ones
but if there's with some of the smaller
items if there are other creative ways
that we can
try to see how to fund it um if you know
that would be a need
you know not just want but a need um how
we could
make sure to get that taken care of
perhaps in a different way if it can't
be funded
um during this list um
and like i said i know uh the septic
system is really important
um changing that out is very cost
prohibitive
for a lot of the residents on their own
and so it's very useful um
with the youth services building
improvements
i did have one question i know when i
had my chats
we talked about the papen center and
actually about the dining area
improvements that needed to be done but
i wasn't sure what
the basement repair
was going to be inclusive of uh thank
you mayor
uh councillor beta steube so yes we
looked at
what your list was and that did discuss
the dining area
at um the payment center for senior
programs
senior programs is on a separate state
icip list and the way that we get funded
for
those items is we have to submit an
actual grant application
about a year and a half in advance uh
for them to vet
out what projects are necessary they do
have a small amount of funding
um that they have available throughout
the the years in between the general
elections
because all funding for senior programs
co or senior capital improvements comes
through
the um election question the bond
question that's on all of our election
ballots this year
for seniors libraries and uh education
so
the the funding for those kind of things
comes out of that general
election bond they do maintain a small
amount of money for
if there is a critical need that is
endangering the safety or health of the
participants
that we could get some of that funding
um those projects
paid for that way but what we were doing
with the ones that were brought forward
this session is that those will be
applied for this spring
um because we missed the the previous
application deadline was in the spring
usually april and we will put if those
haven't been put on the
application list we will put those in
application this coming spring
for funding by the le new mexico aging
and long term services division
so what we did with the youth services
is these were
from parks this was actually one of the
park's priorities is to maintain these
buildings
the basement at the pavement center uh i
understand i have never been in the
basement there so i am
i am going off the word of of some some
folks who actually have been in the
basement
um is that there is a
an issue with flooding and drainage um
from the outside when it rains
comes into the basement we do have a
sump pump to remove it from the basement
um but what um is the best solution to
it
in light of the the fact it's also a
historic building
is to re is to fill the basement in so
that it completely eliminates
um the opportunity for water to get into
the basement
cause mold and other issues that may
affect
the folks that use it all the time which
is primarily
the youth services in that area of the
building
i do have sonia delgado on the line as
well as david sedillo
that might speak to the building's
current situation that may give you some
more information
if one of you all can join in
good afternoon sony delgado director of
parks and recreation uh
mayor and counselor steve the piping
center currently houses
two parts of our section which is a
youth services we have our teen program
there and then we also have a recreation
programming unit that is
is also housed in the same facility and
as amy discussed we do have some
flooding issues that happen in the
basement every time it rains
uh we get moisture down there we do have
a sump pump in there
right now to help us get the water out
but that is not um
very sufficient at the moment nor
efficient because
we can get some of that water out but we
still have some moisture in there and
this has been going on for a couple of
years now
and so we're expecting to have some
moisture in there after the next couple
of days
so we do have quite a few individuals
that go through it and of course we also
share that building with senior programs
thank you and you know that whole area
actually of town has a lot of
drainage issues um and so i don't see
that
um problem correcting itself anytime
soon
so important okay thank you mayor
thank you uh let's see next mayor potem
candidate
thanks mayor thank you
um
always a tough situation having to
prioritize but
um i just want to say ah of very quickly
um the septic system replacement is
important to me the s
eastmaster roads and drainage of course
the madrid road extension
um but i had some questions amy about
that
um and i didn't hear it
specifically but um i i think it
important
to um especially as we are
rehabbing um all the renovations right
that the park is is undergoing
um the possibility of development at the
three crosses
um area um near the hospital
it's really important to update the
madrid road
um and and so would that entail
the complete streets everything that
elevate has
um is looking at creating that buffer as
concerbuscus
indicated i'm just updating um
specifically
and and to include the traffic i think
the light
the hawk system um has been um
um i know a conversation that i've had
in the past um with david dalahan and
with david maestas but i don't want to
lose sight of that there's
some accidents that occur over there i'm
really concerned with the property
across the street um
warden's sons um he sees a lot of
speeding
and people across the street from
miravista
you know are lots of them walk or bike
and then we have an older a senior
population
as well disabled population so i just
want to make sure that we're considering
the hawk system when we're looking at
that traffic
light and all the other additions that i
think is going to be important to
slowing down
traffic question counselor
uh mayor councillor gandra amy johnson
basford for the record
um this particular extension is
specifically from
martha east to travis
so um from kind of the end of the
of madrid um to through the villa more
dam area
to travis to include uh looking at the
need for
a um light at the trevis
and madrid uh intersection there um
some of the areas that you mentioned
have other projects happening in them
and
if tony trevino or david sedillo are
still on the phone if they
i can defer to those um those questions
to them
yes thank you amy uh mayor mary protein
gandala this is tony tedino with public
works
um amy is right this project that we are
talking about for
uh legislative appropriations is from
martha to the east
however we currently have an nmdot grant
and federal grant a tap grant
going on that's going to continue some
of the
active transportation plan bike routes
that we have done from
walnut and hadley uh to spruce
that will connect spruce through kilmore
evelyn and then through madrid and
madrid all the way to solano
these would be a combination of buffered
bike lanes
bike boulevards and shared bike lanes
um yeah shared bike lanes
this is going to complete this it will
continue the
first map grant that we had on um walnut
from loman
griggs to hadley and then continue
north to spruce and continue this whole
leg of that active transportation plan
um for that area that you were talking
that you had mentioned for the hawks
signal what we are going to be doing is
um we followed what the outlook
blueprint had for a cross section
but for the bike lanes and so forth so
we are going to do a pavement
replacement in that area a mill an
overlay and then do some striping
at that interim but we will definitely
look into the future for any kind of
crossing mechanisms in that area thank
you tony i really appreciate it
i just know that entire street is is
affected from
traffic um but also so
amy and tony this the area that you're
talking about
counselor vasquez and i had a joint
meeting with many
um constituents related to that area is
that the same thing where
we're looking at um sort of a path
lighting um those kinds of things to
mitigate the traffic and the
the what's happening there um currently
it's it's pretty dangerous um we really
had
um a lot of folks um reach out to us
um specific to that four-way stop being
taken out
is is that part of that that discussion
is that am i right when you talk about
this madrid extension
yes what we're looking at is this is
going to include that four-way stop that
was
created there we'll discuss with traffic
uh what are some of the possibilities we
can do there if needed
um as well as the traffic signal study
at the intersection of chavis and madrid
but
from that segment between martha and
travis we are going to look at um
there's no sidewalks there right now
that is just a uh
mill and overlay uh just a recycled
asphalt road with some
oil on top so we're gonna plan on doing
um sidewalks
um street lighting uh landscaping so
we're gonna design a
full complete street cross section in
that area
and that's where the budget is at right
now and that's what we're shooting for
i appreciate that i think that's an
important one that should be in
on our priority list the
other um is um
for me the well
for the p25 the the
the communication between um the law
enforcement
and you know their security public
safety i guess
um what have we done
to speak to the
federal delegation related to
funding of some sort from either public
safety or
or other other departments um
and maybe it's time to not only
if this goes through to
send a resolution specific to our
federal delegation related to
funding um you know that we really
basically you pass this law
and and it's it feels like it's an
unfunded mandate correct
um mayor uh councillor gong ronda gandra
sorry my my speaking is failing as we go
on
um you're right it was an unfunded
mandate from the federal government uh i
believe initially there was probably
a limited amount of funds for some of
the larger
agencies to to convert to this
perhaps interim chief dominguez might
speak to it
a little more i don't know that we have
ever made an outreach to our federal
legislators about this but that
certainly is a great idea
that if they can help us identify a
grant program
at the federal level that we could apply
for for this
or if they know of anticipated funding
that they
can bring forward as a policy
directive in the next session that they
are working in or the next budget
session that they start working on
uh chief deming interim chief dominguez
if you have other comments or if you
have a history
any kind of knowledge of our history of
reaching out to the federal
legislators
mayor mayor pro tem gandala i have i
don't have any history of looking into
any type of grant
funding or anything but uh we definitely
will uh reach out and see if we can find
some grant
funding to to cover that cost
thank you thank you lastly um
around the oh mayor i think jason smith
has his hand uh
probably has some history okay uh dc
smith
hi good afternoon mayor airport tim
ganda
um deputy jason smith i'm here with
chief enriquez and we have on the the
fireside applied for
uh several grants over the years uh fema
through the afg the assistance the
firefighters grant
gives us funding opportunities and most
recently
just in the last year and a half two
years we received legislative funding
from
one of our legislators here in new
mexico close to 700 thousand dollars for
upgrading our handheld radios
to p25 phase two compliant
thank you um dc smith i appreciate that
i i think that
that um moving forward we should really
prioritize this i hear this year after
year
um and maybe we can get um
our funding our partners um in el paso
insight to help us
really craft a great um grant
um so that we can get some additional
funding so that we are making a dent on
on on this moving forward i think it's
critical
that our law enforcement have the empire
have the ability to
communicate with each other um you know
the different partners
moving forward
amy can you go back to the original list
i just want to make
sure that i'm yeah um
can i ask from put the public safety
from els
um lcpd what
or maybe this goes to bud budget um
from year to year is there still funding
left
in your in your budget that is turned
back
to the general fund and if so
could we identify that funding
to to
to address the issue of the purchasing
of the mobile police mobile data
terminals
mayor councillor gondra i will defer
that question to either leanne
demush our chief budget officer or
interim
chief dominguez
mayor mayor pro-tem gandara there
we typically do give back some money
last year for example we gave back in
the neighborhood of
uh 70 thousand dollars but that was
operating and the only reason we gave
that back was because the
items that we had ordered could not be
received within a certain time before
january 30
to be specific uh other uh other monies
that are turned back
are typically uh cost savings due to
salaries
salary savings so chief could there be a
budget adjustment
and in earlier on before the end of
fiscal year
to purchase those the data terminals
moving forward when you anticipate those
budget
um or the cost savings related to
vacancies or whatever other issues that
come up
mayor mayor proclaiming that i would
have to uh
uh reach out to uh city management and
uh
city manager and uh see if we can uh
ask for those funds the the uh the
salary savings
uh as far as the other funds are
operating funds pretty much
already encumbered uh it's just uh
we're keeping our fingers crossed so we
get the items that we actually ordered
uh to get to get those those funds spent
thank you chief um mayor i think leanne
has uh
her hand up thanks april tim uh leanne
yes mayor and mayor pro team gandala
um our interim police chief miguel
dominguez is correct he did leave
some operating budget very little on the
table
he is correct uh they do leave
uh quite a bit of funding in the
personnel however
i want to remind council that when we
adopted our last or the the budget that
we're
currently in right now one of the line
items that we put in there
is what we call open uh open position
savings and some of that open position
saving that's in our budget comes from
you know the police department and also
because of fire
you know have people that retire
then they have some turnover but we i
will tell you that
uh very very soon usually about mid-year
we start running projections on what we
think
the open salary savings will be and
start working with every single
department especially since we're in the
middle of the
process to see what is going to be
filled
what vacancies will be filled and how
soon they'll be filled so we can make
our
you know a great projection so anything
that is over the open position
savings of course we can we can you know
through um our new city manager mr pele
or it's
you know city management we can we can
budget those
as well thank you liam i appreciate that
um i know i said lastly i think but i
wanted to ask
on the brennan cultural center
improvements
how many people i know right now um
it's different with covid but
if we have some structural damage and
it may be unsafe
i i don't know that that's that that's
correct but if that's the case i guess
i'm looking at
you know how many folks of our community
frequent that
um at any given time and maybe some of
the more popular
exhibits and if it you know it might be
a safety issue
so i'm i'm thinking we need to to manage
that
um could i get sort of an idea of what
the numbers of people that frequent that
and if in fact it's a safety issue
mayor councillor gandra johnson basford
i will defer that off to rebecca
slaughter who i'm sure has those numbers
that she can speak to when we are not in
covet
closure uh how many people come through
that building and how many people work
in that building
right thank you amy mayor mayor pro-tem
this is rebecca slaughter deputy
director of quality of life
um so we get about a hundred thousand
visitors to all four museums per year
we're not quite there yet
and we were hoping to break that that
number
before covet hit so
i would probably say about 30 to 40 000
of those go to the brand again every
year
right now it's not a structural issue
there is some structural damage to the
inside of the building
and we have current plans with the
current legislative
money to fix that in february
but we had a structural engineer come in
and work with public works to
to assess that it's not a critical
structural
issue so it was safe for the staff and
for the public to go in
but the problem is yes as more and more
time goes by it will get to the point
where
um it could become critical but when we
do these big kinds of projects like
we're going to do in february
we're actually going to close from
february to june
and move the staff and all the public
and anything
that might be damaged out of the
building because we're going to actually
redo all the electrical which is still
from 1935
um a lot of it and redo the ceiling and
the security all at the same time
public works has been really great about
working with us to schedule this
also um it does the minimum amount of
of um displacement to the public and to
the staff
so we really really try to schedule
these things for that kind of thing but
yes the more
time goes on and the more water gets in
behind that stucco
it could start to to damage the actual
structure
of the building luckily the public works
was able to work and get some of the
to get the roof leaks fixed and that was
what's causing the actual structure
structural damage that we have now so
you are correct right now we're okay
but it is something that we are keeping
an eye on um
and we have um through public works had
structural engineers come in
and look and fix those things that are
our immediate issues
um where walls have started to separate
and those kind of things
right right thank you for that um i
appreciate that
i know that that's uh the utmost concern
of staff and
you're doing everything that you can and
the minute you feel that that there's
something
you know not right could be unsafe you
know you're notifying
um us the public staff that kind of
thing
so i think it's important that this be a
part of
that um that priority list for sure
because we'll have um
you know a a bad situation turn worse
and i
know that all of it we don't want to see
that um the other thing is
since we're talking about historic
buildings and whatnot i just want to
make sure
that the wia building gets a part of
this
um as well there's they're showing
outside but also in
critical issues related to the
infrastructure
um i know that we've had a detailed
conversations we had someone come out
with robert cruz and
heather pollard and such to look that
has a significant amount of expertise
related to the historic properties and
so i i don't want to lose sight of that
just want to make sure that that's a
part of the conversation moving forward
and lastly i agree with cancer bencomo
we're such at a pivotal critical time
with the airport
terminal and i want to see that as part
of of this
priority list thank you mayor
thank you mayor councillor gandra i will
have
public works provide you with an update
outside of this meeting
where the wai building is
and what what the plans are for it in
the future
thank you okay
great um anything else
uh mayor councillors if no other
comments
from a from a very brief fast writing
that i've done here it looks like the
top priorities are the septic system
replacement
the east mesa roads and drainage the
madrid road extension
um the communication upgrades and the
airport tim
terminal are top on the list and then
followed by the branigan cultural center
what we can do from here is uh put
together the resolution
that we will bring forward on december
7th
for you to discuss of course at that
time council may remove items
or uh change that resolution if there
are
other comments that you uh have
regarding this list
if you can share them with our city
manager
so that he can inform us how we should
move forward with the resolution
i will take that kind of as the
directive for us to go forward
unless there are any other comments on
that and then we will
begin to prepare the legislative
requests in time for larry to have them
for our legislatures legislators
newly elected legislators after november
3rd
uh hopefully we can get that to them
shortly after that december 7th meeting
if there are no other comments that is
all that we have
uh for you today okay
great well i appreciate that very much
and i believe
uh barbara did we we're going to
postpone 3.3
correct mayor we're going to with
um if you would like to remove that from
the agenda today we could
accommodate that presentation at the
second november work session
okay i think that'd be fine um
yeah go ahead and do that and then um we
have the agenda study meeting and then
okay okay if there's nothing further
then entertain a motion to adjourn
mayor yes we we still have one other
we do
yeah well okay so i'm going to step out
for a minute the mayor protem is going
to run the meeting i've got to do a
couple things
be sure to check your email and remember
it's only for seven days
okay let me approach and turn it over to
you
i love how you got that in there mayor
love it love it
um next on the agenda is
um am i correct the mobile integrated
health
no excuse me i'm sorry i'm sorry
revitalization strategies
and tools to support it dr martinez and
cecilia vegas
sorry
and amy this is barbara deleon if you
can stop sharing your screen please
good afternoon um can you all hear me
we can okay i don't know if priscilla
wanted to talk
first
grace halda she
uh see it celicia she's saying go ahead
she's having like trouble
okay sounds good she told me she wanted
to speak first so so you see i'm so
sorry i butchered your name
oh that's okay no problem i'm sorry
thank you good afternoon mayor and city
council
my name is felicia villegas i'm with
economic development
today i bring forth revitalization
strategies and supporting tools
now mayor and council you should have
received a list
via email of some enactment
acronyms along with some links for
additional information just for your
reference
dr martinez has her hand up dr martinez
did you want to say something
yes can you hear me we can
okay thank you i'm having technical
issues so i switched quickly to my phone
so before uh we hear silesia i want to
give you a little bit of
um history of how this item came about
um first of all uh cilicia's assistance
on redevelopment revitalization it's a
new item
that we incorporated in our strategic
plans of the
start of this fiscal year and that was
an effort to better align our strategic
plan with elevate las cruces
so now we have a specific point of
contact
and somebody with um the the knowledge
and expertise
and also focal point uh for us to
um entertain the conversations of how
we're going to approach
revitalization and so that's that's a
really exciting
opportunity that i see for our community
and although silesia silesia's
background was not necessarily
on revitalization or redevelopment she
has demonstrated
um interest knowledge and passion to
understand this complex topic
so what you're gonna see here is
background information on the tools that
exist but also we have
dena belser she is with strategic
economics
and she will be speaking to best
practices in the second part of the
presentation so
um with that uh mayor patem i'll pass it
back on to cilicia thank you
thank you dr martinez okay celestia
thank you
you're on thank you crusader thank you
pro tim the city's role in
revitalization
is to stimulate activity when the
private market
is not providing sufficient capital and
economic
activity to achieve the desired level of
improvement
the objectives from our community
standpoint is that we need
infrastructure and amenities
citizens need opportunities for
advancement
businesses need investment for job
creation
and overall we need economic prosperity
the city's role is only one piece of
this puzzle
developers businesses communities and
citizens all play a role in this effort
today we will summarize some of the
common new mexico tools in the city
the city can use to encourage
revitalization
and assist in bringing projects to
fruition
the district-based tools we will be
looking at today
are the metropolitan redevelopment area
or mra
which can include tax increment
financing districts or tiffs
and metropolitan redevelopment bonds or
mrbs
next we have the tax increment
development districts or tids
and special districts including special
assessment districts or seds
public improvement districts pids and
business
improvement districts bids
other tools would include industrial
revenue bonds or irbs
the gross receipts investment program or
grip
and land use and policy tools such as
zoning and overlay districts
the first tool we will go over is the
metropolitan redevelopment area or
mra the purpose of this statute is to
rehabilitate and redevelop
areas that are deteriorated blighted or
underutilized to stimulate economic
development
and community well-being pausing here
briefly off the slide i would like to
note that albuquerque has 24 designated
mras the city of las cruces has one in
downtown
and there are several others throughout
the state
one of the reasons the mra is widely
used in new mexico for redevelopment
is it provides relief from the
anti-donation clause in a couple of ways
it does this by declaring that
individual benefits are incidental
and that the benefit to the public as a
whole far
outweighs this it also allows for fair
value
which is the negotiated price agreed
upon by the parties
rather than the typical appraised value
going back to our slide this relief
allows for more flexibility
and opens additional opportunities in
areas such as public private
partnerships or p3s
which i will discuss a little later
loans grants and other incentive
programs
such as small scale funds like our
renovate main street program
as well as other larger scale loans for
utility work or larger
building improvements public
infrastructure
within the mra the city may provide
small-scale city assets or
infrastructure improvements to owners
using the fair value provision without
the complexities of a p3 development
agreement
this can be done through mousse or
easement agreements
provided that there is an equal public
benefit
zoning there is a provision to allow the
city to create
zoning code ordinances amendments and
exceptions that will apply to only the
mra
which can be tailored to address
revitalization needs and provide
incentives to rehab or improve
properties examples would be reduced
setbacks
increased building heights and reduced
on-site parking requirements
they can also include building safety
and maintenance ordinances
to improve vacant buildings and
discourage them to be used for storage
there are also federal state funding and
financial programs that can be used in
conjunction with these incentives
here's the process to designate an mra
there is an initial assessment of the
area a formal designation process
development of the required mra plan and
project development
and finally implementation
i would like to go back to
public-private partnerships or p3s and
explain a little before going into
some examples as we know in
redevelopment areas
infrastructure is often in disrepair or
the buildings are not in conformance
the costs and risks are far are often
too high for the city alone
or the private sector to take on
projects
individually p3s would be the principal
means in this case
p3 projects can be complicated and
difficult
in the best of situations however in new
mexico
it is particularly challenging without
this relief from the anti-donation
clause
the development agreement is a crucial
part in a p3
it strengthens the planning process by
encouraging private
participation and revitalization and
reduces the economic costs of
development
it defines a project's rules regulations
commitments and policies for a specific
period
by doing this it reduces the risk
associated with the development
overall these agreements should ensure
that the community benefits from the p3
arrangement
and promotes goals identified in the mra
plan
or other policy documents
so some examples of some p3s in the
state
is the livington drylands brewery in
which the city owned a two-acre vacant
lot
they sold to drylands brewing on a fair
value of one hundred dollars
in exchange the developer built the pub
and obligated to create 10 manufacturing
jobs and 20 service jobs
supported by the new brewing and canning
operation
additional development planning was
provided through funding from the new
mexico
resiliency alliance and drylands also
received
a hundred thousand dollars in state
leader funds for the expand
expansion as well as local leader
funding
next is the santa rosa elfeld warehouse
adaptive reuse
this historic warehouse owned by the
city
will be repurposed to include uses such
as the visitor center
route 66 museum affordable housing
and a business incubator through a p-3
using a development agreement with
private entities such as non-profits
retail users or developers the city
negotiated
with guadalupe county development
corporation to employ an economic
development director
to coordinate all these projects in turn
the city will provide the warehouse and
funds to employ the director
the corporation is also leasing office
space and the city agreed to allow them
to sub-lease a portion of the warehouse
using the fair value definition the city
provides for the first 12 months only
a rent fee of one dollar per month after
this time
both parties agreed to discuss the new
rate
fee with consideration of potential
revenue sharing
lastly the old albuquerque heights lofts
the city purchased the property in 1996
after it had sat vacant for 22 years
the city received funding from the state
and epa for cleanup of the site as a
brownfield
and entered into a development agreement
with a private developer in two thousand
one
the this development agreement helped
transform the site into a mixed use
creative reuse project with apartments
condos
retail and office space including the
fat pipe co-working space
although the project took over 25 years
to come to fruition it is now part of a
larger innovation district
in albuquerque which catalyzed
development of additional mixed use
buildings to the north and the adjacent
unm
rainforest innovate albuquerque campus
the next type of tool we will go over
are tax allocation tools
the tif or tax increment financing
district requires an adopted mra plan
it collects local property tax for the
increment and it uses
it for the revenue stream the tid
or tax increment development district
does not require the blight designation
and it can also use gross receipts tax
increment as the revenue stream
so unlike tiff's tits can be used in
areas including greenfield
developments and downtowns
here is a table comparing some of the
attributes of tiffs and tids
the state statute defines the purpose of
a tiff
as to eliminate or prevent slum and
blight where the purpose of the tid
is to finance public infrastructure to
support economic development and job
creation
tiff's use of funds are grants and loans
where tids are for
publicly owned infrastructure a tif can
be up to 20 years where a tid
is up to 25. the benefit of a tif
is a hundred percent in incremental
property taxes where a tid is up to 75
percent
in incremental property and gross
receipts taxes
the mra receives and manages the funds
in a tiff
where the tip board manages the funds
for a tip
council approves both tiffs and tids
however there is an election at year 5
for a tid
the tid can also impose a property tax
with the property owner's vote
some examples of tiffs and tids is the
silver city downtown
tiff the town approved a tif district
for
their entire mra plan area
the tiff district is comprised of 350
commercial parcels
the baseline was established in 2016 and
the first year's increment was 1800.
the total the tiff is expected to
generate approximately 500 000
over the course of its 20-year term
although it's a small amount of funds
generated and may seem low the funds
will potentially provide the matching
and gaap funding needed to finance
smaller improvement projects in the
district
next is the south valley main street
tiff
the bridge and isleta revitalization
created a tif in 2016.
it includes 1.3 million ineligible
projects
including the south valley economic
development center property
streetscape projects historic
preservation and agricultural
preservation projects
the dolores huerta gateway park and west
side community center improvements
funds have been used for several
redevelopment projects including
property acquisition roadway realignment
utility relocation mixed-use retail and
housing projects and public parking
and last but not least is our own
downtown tid
which uses the incremental from provided
by property taxes and gross receipts
tax projects were first identified in
the 2006
downtown mra plan the city negotiated
with the state of new mexico to receive
its portion of increment
revenue and dona county re increment
since formation the tid has been has
provided funding for projects such as
streetscape
improvements on main street the
racetrack
and funds to construct the plaza and
much more
the tid has generated more revenue
for the district than originally
projected with more than half of the
revenue coming from the grt
increment in contrast to the property
tax increment
the addition of the state and counties
portion have
contributed greatly in revenue generated
by the tid
and have created a larger pool of
redevelopment funds that can be utilized
for projects
in downtown the success of the tid
can be attributed to the construction of
larger scale redevelopment and tip
projects that have led to
a significant increase in assessed
property values
and increased grt revenue
[Applause]
next we have tax abatement tools
the metropolitan redevelopment
redevelopment bond or mrb
is a financing mechanism to support
projects within an mra
the city does not provide financing for
these bonds and the applicant is solely
responsible for identifying the bond
purchaser and negotiating the terms
these bonds are also taxable albuquerque
is currently the only city in new mexico
that has set up a process for developers
to apply for these benefits
and the process is similar to an
industrial revenue bond process
the industrial revenue bond or irb is
used to secure tax exemptions for larger
scale
economic development projects
the uh i'm sorry it can be used to
incentivize development however retail
or residential uses are not allowed in
the city
counties can do retail but not
residential
for example albuquerque does not use
irbs to incentivize for retail but
bernalillo county can
here is another comparison chart the
purpose of
mrb is to eliminate or prevent slum and
blight
where an irb is to induce manufacturing
industrial and commercial enterprises to
locate or expand for
eligible economic development projects
the mrb can only be used in an mra
where an irb can be used anywhere in the
city within
15 miles of the boundary the mrb
can be for any project that meets the
goals of the
mra plan where the irb is for projects
in
the specified industries the mrb is only
up to seven years where the irb
is up to 20. the benefit of the mrb
is one hundred percent abatement of the
incremental property taxes
where the irb benefit is a hundred
percent of real and personal property
taxes which includes base taxes
so an example of an irb say a company
wants to build a 10 million dollar plant
and buy 15 million dollars in equipment
the city issues a 25 million dollar bond
for 20 years
during this period the company will
repay the bond
the company gets a break on property
taxes for land and building of 2.96
million over 20 years
a break on equipment property of 886
000 over seven years plus 769 000
compensating tax exemption on equipment
purchased
special taxing districts are another
form of tool
special assessment districts or sads
have been a traditional way to finance
infrastructure improvements
they can be created by the provisional
method or by the petition method
some examples the city of las cruces
passed resolution 1020 which was a
special assessment district for north
sonoma ranch boulevard
infrastructure and utility improvements
council also passed a vad or voluntary
assessment district for the metro verde
development which was which is a
variation of assad
albuquerque approved assad for the
volcano cliffs community
which was 72 acres of site work
public improvement districts or pids are
basically a modernized
and streamlined version of the sad
process and they
they can be created through a petition
like this ad it is a way to finance
infrastructure
and both sads and pids assess a fee or
tax against the properties involved
there are currently 10 pids in
albuquerque as well as others in the
state
and special levy revenue bonds were
issued for them
business improvement districts or bids
are formed to receive
enhanced services to improve the
business climate
a fee is assessed on either the
properties or the businesses
they are required to be managed by a
committee that is appointed by council
and they're formed by petition from the
property and business owners
typical bid activities are marketing and
promotion
maintenance and cleaning security policy
advocacy
and small scale capital improvements
other districts can assist in
revitalization
such as infill development overlay
districts
which provide a streamlined review
process for development of vacant and
underutilized
parcels or those ready for redevelopment
historical districts preserve the
original character of buildings and
streets while welcoming growth and
innovation within those
spaces arts and cultural districts are
directed toward place-based economic
development focusing on the unique
cultural and art assets of each district
and planned unit developments can also
provide flexibility
and assist in revitalization
oh what happened here
sorry
how do i go back
sorry about that the last tool we will
go over today as
is the gross receipts investment program
or grip
grip allows businesses to recover their
gross receipts over a predetermined
amount of time
in exchange for investing in public
infrastructure
the purpose of grip is to facilitate the
attraction of large-scale retail
or targeted commercial developments of
businesses
it allows for an expedited permitting
process
and 75 percent of the city's grt is
directly
attributable to sales from the new
business
and for approved approved public
infrastructure
council does need to review and adopt
all
grid projects
so looking at current efforts there has
been targeted efforts such as the
downtown tid
and mra various community plans
and the infill historic and arts and
cultural districts
elevate las cruces has identified
priority areas such as al paseo
solano amador proximo and apodaca
in summary as you can see some of the
tools we cover today require extensive
analysis to properly pair
them with a focused area and the
potential for layering them with other
tools
we are confident that by collaborating
with our experts in the planning
department
and community partners the city can
accomplish
this and assist in revitalizing areas
needed throughout las cruces
potential recommendations for next steps
would be to create a citywide plan
in line with elevate las cruces and our
economic strategic plan
to prioritize areas create individual
implementation plans which define goals
and list
the tools best suited for the area as
well as other resources to prep
provide awareness to the public lastly
create a maintenance plan to keep our
toolkit up to date
with new or changing incentives
to speak more on implementation i will
turn it over to our guest speaker and
subject expert
dina bowser president of strategic
economics incorporated
thank you thank you very much celesia
i am now going to share my screen
let's see
[Music]
i'm sorry but can you state your name
please my name is dina belzer
and i am the president of strategic
economics
uh we are an urban economics consulting
firm
based in berkeley california actually so
i'm
zooming in from california um
and i've been working with your staff uh
since
july when i did do some work with uh
griselda on the royal crossings
tid so you all have uh seen a memo that
i wrote for you and now you're seeing me
in person
oh okay yeah sure i've seen the name i
was right
nice right there right so
you did a good job oh thank you very
much well
i hope i can be helpful um here today
also can y'all you all can see my screen
you said okay great okay so um celicia
and criselda
asked me to speak today
to add kind of a broader context around
best practices
in the use of implementation tools and
let's see before before you begin
uh yeah dina yes okay looks like
counselor ben como has a question
do you have a question counselor you
know what i do
mayor and i can wait till the end of
this presentation i might just have to
run before the end of this but
but i'm going to stick around as long as
i can are you sure you don't want to ask
your question now
counselor if you don't mind i don't
yeah absolutely um
and honestly maybe you would cover this
but i i wonder
oh sorry about that i am you know i
loved that
that you know uh alicia that you had the
the list of priorities of two
two questions are really where are we in
the process of getting the team
the group for the el paseo solano
corridor
together i feel like that's that's a
huge you know um
you know part of my district and i know
a thing this
project that we keep talking about so
i'm wondering where that's at
you know when we're going to bring that
group of people together to decide which
of these tools best fits
and then my other question was really
around how would i
as a counselor um put so like i
you know to be really transparent i
really have
an eye on picacho avenue and
revitalizing um a pretty you know
sizable chunk of picacho avenue there's
some really great stuff happening with
some local artists
um that are really trying to grow um
some excitement down there
and and i think the city has you know
plays a key role in supporting some of
that
so how would i go about saying i think
this is important and then
you know the economic development
department taking it on and saying yes
let's do
an analysis or whatnot
thank you thank you councilor vancomo um
el paseo i excuse me cecilia or
i'm sorry how do you pronounce your name
can you speak your name please i
apologize the person who's doing our
the minutes they can't they don't really
watch the video so
understood sorry felicia villegas for
the record
um i might have to defer that uh the
alpaseo
um where where the stance is um
on the ad hoc committee to david weir i
don't know if he's on
um but i know that we have been
appointing
some committee members
doesn't look like david is is here okay
um larry's here
did you i don't know if larry is aware
of what
where the progress is on that right um i
could i can get back with you
counselor um yeah yeah i'm just curious
if there's a date set
and and you know i really i think we
really want to move
yes while rolling on that for sure
definitely
and and as far as the process i think
this is our first
you know um stab at it we you know i
don't know if griselda
wants to chime in on um processes that's
what we have dina here for is how do we
begin this
implementation and set those priorities
yes as soon as i read her her title i
thought
my second question might be answered
thank you so much you're welcome
okay should i continue
yes ma'am please okay great okay so
again this is dina belzer from strategic
economics speaking
and i'm i'll be presenting today on how
to use implementation tools
so i put this slide in because when we
talk about implementation
without having some kind of a plan what
we're often doing is putting
the cart before the horse and i know
this might seem
simplistic but as in celesi's excellent
presentation she just went through
a very dense amount of information very
quickly it was very very clear
but when you dig down under any of those
individual tools the actual application
of those tools is very complex
and so having an overarching plan or
strategy
is really a necessary ingredient
or what happens is we say that
you start to have a tool in search of a
plan and sometimes we get tools applied
to places or we start chasing tools that
aren't really the right tool for the
right
place so tools are as i say only
effective if they follow a plan and
they're targeted to specific areas this
is i think one of the reasons why
celicia spent so much time
talking about the metropolitan
redevelopment area is because it's an
area where these tools are targeted
implementation is something that takes
time and effort and energy
and you rarely apply one tool to an
entire
community because it won't be equally
effective
everywhere so you want to really begin
to think about different areas or
sub-areas so this gets to
counselor benecoma's question about when
will we be able to bring forward this
particular area and i don't have a
specific question about
answer to that but to say that i have an
area i want to target
makes a lot of sense because then that
you begin to focus on that
so uh around the country we often talk
of these in terms of
area plans now what celisia just talked
about was doing a citywide
implementation revitalization strategy
but within that the first step would be
to target which areas would get
the attention or would be the focus and
then once you identify specific
areas that you want to really focus on
you want to be able to think about how
you can
address these multiple dimensions to
understand
what's going on there today and then how
do the conditions in the area
begin to really match up with what we
will think of as an implementation
plan which is really about the
intersection of our existing conditions
in the place we are our goals for that
place
and then which tools are going to be
best suited to joining our existing
conditions with our goals or our desired
outcomes for the future
so in this planning process the kinds of
factors that are generally considered
are often the existing
land use pattern uh transportation and
mobility
how does traffic factor in access
all these kinds of questions when we
talk about mobility we also are thinking
about active transportation so it's not
just about
vehicles but also about bicycles walking
scooters other things and then
other infrastructure investments this is
very germane to the conversation you
were just having about when you might
want to bring in
um sewer improvements or when you might
need to
work on storm water improvements or you
might need to improve
water systems any of the above
housing and business support are very
important and
particularly in areas that we're looking
to revitalize
often what we see is that as we begin to
improve an
area that might seem like it's been
losing value over time
the public sector investment starts to
spur private sector investment and then
the private sector investment sometimes
creates pressure for existing residents
or existing businesses
and they can no longer afford to stay in
the area
so uh more and more i'm advocating for
really
understanding the condition of existing
housing existing households
and existing businesses so that when we
begin to implement
a plan we're really looking to support
the people and the businesses that are
already in the place
not just to focus on bringing in new
people and new investment
and then finally to think about what
future investment looks like
and what the ongoing roles between the
public and the private sector
will be and again this varies
considerably
again celicia did a really excellent job
of describing the complexity of the p3
the public-private partnerships
in the new mexico context and then when
we begin to think about what an actual
implementation plan will look like the
phasing the timing
uh and the duration of
the steps and stages that are involved
will be an important consideration
i'll talk more about this in a minute
so again las cruces already has three
of these community blueprint area plans
that are sort of the beginning of
targeting
areas these are the three that are in
elevate las cruces
um i know that elevate los cruces was
adopted relatively recently but it
sounds like there might be
a desire to go back and revisit some of
these things the
apodaca blueprint is uh related to the
area where the royal
crossings proposal was already proposed
so that area
is i think sort of in progress i don't
really know what's going on with amador
proximo
but i do know that about the el paseo
corridor the
the steering committee that or the ad
hoc committee
that is in process and now there's a lot
there's some conversation about pairing
a study
of the el paseo corridor with the study
of solano corridor and perhaps looking
at a
larger geography in the center part of
the city which would also
make sense um
it's important to keep in mind also that
these plans
were completed at different points in
time and
for example the el paseo corridor
community blueprint has almost
no detail to it it doesn't have a land
use map
the first strategy or action that it
recommends is to update the
uh the zoning or to do a form-based code
well in order to do that you would need
to look at the existing land use
and you would need to understand where
you might want to change the zoning in
order to facilitate
future development
so and then the apodaca blueprint which
was the is the most recent plan has much
more detail to it
but it has nothing a very limited
uh implementation thinking uh
and there's there's very little
connecting of what the tools are
with what the conditions are to begin to
really think about how to advance the
goals that were put forward in that plan
so are these plans implementable not yet
and these are the kinds of information
that we would want to look to i i just
started to talk about this like
is is there zoning in place and some of
them there is some of them
are not but there's really this question
about whether or not the real estate
market is
active and interested in these locations
because the
uh private investment
excuse me which is represented
by revitalization um
it is not always the first thing to
happen
sometimes the public sector needs to
step in and make various kinds of
infrastructure improvements uh that
begin to leverage
uh the private sector and so
then again as i've been saying we want
to know how we can match the existing
tools
to match the existing conditions and we
also want to look for other partnerships
again this was in the case study that
one of the case studies that lisia
mentioned earlier where an economic
development corporation stepped
in and began really running the
revitalization
process for the city but it partnered
with the city
partnering with community-based
organizations and i'm going to come back
to this
point about partnerships in a minute
so the next step would be for these
three areas at least would be to start
to think about what a detailed
implementation plan would be
or to step back and think about as a
city uh do we have the right
set of priority areas that we want to
really want to focus on
do we want to change up what our
priority areas are
and we also need to keep in mind that
some of the area planning documents that
we have are
established for a timeline that's really
10 to 20 years so for example
the apodaca blueprint which is adopted
only two years ago
with some checking in with the community
you could find that the goals and the
kind of broad outcomes
the community is looking for and that
are articulated in that plan
are still valid but what's really
missing is a short-term
implementation strategy that looks
really only at two to five years
and again because implementation often
ties
specifically to market conditions and to
the actual tools that are available
which change you know
legislation change state legislation
changes
federal legislation changes grant
programs change
um and so the implementation strategy
needs to be much more up
opportunistic and tied into the actual
tools that are available
so the implementation strategies are
often much more short term than the
longer term
again they're market driven they're
opportunistic depending on what's
available
you you want to take the big implement
improvement projects that are listed in
an
area plan and
break them down into smaller parts often
plans will say we need to redo the
streetscape
everywhere in the entire planning area
but the cost of that is millions of
dollars
so in a phasing plan you might break
that down to a two-block
area and ask yourselves what can we
afford and start small
and then build on that incrementally
again the existing conditions in every
area are not conducive to using every
tool
and finally you want to be able to use
multiple tools
together to really layer these tools to
work together to support each other
when we think about implementation
strategies we think about
implementation strategies that are in
areas where the market is very strong
that's where private development leads
and then there's public sector financing
often for infrastructure
to produce the amenities and then there
are places where the real estate market
is not so
active and this is where these public
improvements and strategies
leading to better infrastructure and
amenities are then going to leverage
private development both strategies work
and both strat cities can have both
conditions present
but not in the same place in the city so
right now it seems like downtown might
be some place where the private after
code or
before coven not right this minute maybe
but downtown
is a place where private development was
starting to take off
um and where some investment
could public investment could now
leverage that whereas in other places
you might need to lead with the public
sector
of financing and funding first
i'm going to talk very briefly about a
case study from
this bergamot area plan in santa monica
california
and i know that santa monica probably
seems
like a far cry from las cruces i
understand that
um but i had there is method to my
madness here
here's the city of santa monica here's
the bergamot
area the city adopted its
comprehensive plan similar to elevate
las cruces
and the bergamot station area was
identified
uh as an area and then the city went
through a much more detailed planning
process
for this area it happened to have a new
rail line that was being built through
it and a new station
that was going to be in this area so the
introduction of new transit into this
area was one of the reasons for
selecting this particular area for the
plan
but i don't want to talk about any it's
a it's a really long plan it's like 256
pages and it has a lot of good stuff in
it but
um we don't need to go through all that
my only point about this
is that they did think very carefully
about
implementation and phasing and in their
first phase of implementation they had
very specific action items that you see
are broken down into relatively small
pieces they're numbered
here you can see where each one is
um and then they began to really work
through
which of these already were could be uh
funded through committed projects
and then began to look for other ways to
to fund the other kind of half of the
projects
but they're not looking to deliver the
entire plan
they're looking in their first phase
again for the highest priority projects
that they thought would really leverage
or open up the opportunity from other
development
and then i know this matrix is hard to
read but you can see this
there's a list i'll just tell you these
are the list of all the
kinds of improvement projects that
they're looking for
uh and then here are all the different
kinds of implementation
mechanisms that could be applied and you
can see for some of these
actions or activities every one of these
tools can be applied
for some of them there's only one tool
and for others there are different
combinations of tools so the only
point that i want to make here again is
the different combinations of tools
match with different kinds of activities
and then
also different combinations of tools
will match with different kinds of
places within the city but we we don't
want to forget this idea of layering all
these financing tools together
so just in starting to wrap up here the
most effective ways to implement these
area plans or these priority
areas where you really want to get some
implementation going
is first you have to work with your
community on your plan
the community's engagement and input
their articulation of their vision
will be very important and it sets an
important message for
future investors private investors who
will come into this area
they want to know that the community is
on board with them that the community is
not going to fight
or resist the projects that they would
do and this actually creates
greater certainty and diminishes risk
for the development community which is
an important
uh implementation tool in and of itself
second you want to fully understand the
existing conditions
including real estate market conditions
i think i've already
talked about this setting priorities is
really
important again phasing knowing what you
want to get done first what you want to
get done second
identifying improvements that address
these priorities these are the
i'm sorry the priorities are the goals
of the community what does the community
want to see first
and then how do we think about
improvements that can be made
that can really deliver the community's
priorities not all of these can be
delivered or need to be delivered
through financial investments
some of that can be delivered through
policy changes like a change in zoning
and the city might not deliver all of
these improvements again there might be
other partners who would do this
we have to remember the change is slow
so we have to
be prepared to work at an incremental
place
pace i'm sorry especially when we're
thinking about implementation
again relying on partners and
partnerships and then finally dedicating
staff resources to proactively move
implementation forward particularly in
revitalization
areas where there are a lot of
complicated moving parts
having staff who are tasked with
keeping sure that the ball is rolling is
an important um
dedication of public resources
so finally having the tools alone are
not going to get you there so knowing
what the tools are
is valuable um you also need your
blueprint
and you also need your team so it takes
both your plan your tools and your team
to get you to where you want to go
thank you very much i'm going to stop
there
okay thank you
who's uh councillor vasquez you have a
question
counselor vasquez oh thank you mayor
thank you dina and cilicia and dr
martinez
um this is a really exciting uh
presentation i think you know we've all
seen some of these plans
give us excitement and give us hope for
these redevelopments
uh opportunities in the in in las cruces
in particular for me i'm excited about
the el paseo
uh corridor uh dina and i had a chance
to chat before this presentation
and talked about the nuts and bolts of
implementation on something like the
you know the elf the picturing el paseo
uh
plan that's that's about more than 10
years old now
and so um i think part of the process
piece that's really important to talk
about here for me
in the momentum that we built for the
redevelopment of el paseo and now
south solano is to have this ad hoc
committee
perhaps be the body that works with a
consultant
that helps essentially choose the best
um uh opportunities through these
different types of redevelopment
um uh strategies and so the
um you know certainly to me it seems
like the uh
the metropolitan redevelopment area that
can really encompass
and and kind of house some of the other
redevelopment strategies like tiff's
within it
is is would be ideal um but i think we
talked also about drawing those lines
around a map
that would really help define what those
projects would include that would be the
priority
and and really what helps you know help
us better understand what what would
work best at tiff
um you know what type of incentives what
areas we really want to focus on and so
um mayor that's one of the things i i
really want to to get moving is get this
ad hoc committee to work with a
consultant
to draw the lines around a map and then
to start
prioritizing the selection of a
redevelopment tool um
and projects that are that are possible
uh so that that i think we can get
moving with that project
um sooner than later and so um i'm super
excited about that
also with with counselor ben como and
she mentioned the picacho
uh area i think that's also a prime
candidate
where you already have the you know the
infrastructure and you already have the
traffic and you have
the existing retail areas where you're
not building from the ground up you're
not necessarily
courting a developer or recruiting new
businesses but you have existing
businesses there that could just use
a little bit of help and a little bit of
you know reinvestment from the city in
that particular area
that i think makes those opportunities
just able to come to fruition a lot
faster than building out
um something like the amador proximo
which
which don't get me wrong i think that's
an awesome plan but you know in terms of
what's ready to go and where we can make
an impact i think those are two
you know really great areas for us to
start on um
so i guess my question um i just have
one question really for you dina and
that is
um what would you suggest in terms of
process
for a place like the el paseo and solano
corridors
um to get to that narrow level of like
project selection
um you know from here until the next i
don't know you know however long it
might take us to do that but
in terms of process what are some
logical next steps that you think the
city could take
to move that move that forward right
well i think as as i uh so this is dina
belzer again
and um i did have the opportunity to
chat with
um counselor vasquez about the um
uh el paseo corridor a couple of weeks
ago and
um i think what we discussed then and i
i think would be really great would be
to look at
what geography you think would be best
suited to meet the needs of both el
paseo
and if you wanted to bring uh the south
solano corridor in and consider doing an
area plan for the central core
of the city um and then
once you've identified the geography
then to
sort of start to move forward with
thinking about what that existing
conditions assessment would look like
how are you going to engage the
community how are you going to set
a vision and a set of outcomes that the
community is really
looking for and and then how do you
begin to match together
the the tools that you have the partners
that you have
um and the conditions that you have to
look to
moving towards your goals so it sounds
simple
maybe when i say it but it's actually a
lot a lot to cover
thank you dina you know and so i'm
thinking
for this particular group of folks and
and what
their where their input would be most
valuable knowing that they are not all
going to be planning experts nor zoning
experts or economic development experts
but certainly know that they have you
know this group will have certain things
that they might like to see or want to
see
like um you know what type of businesses
we want to see there
what type of character this you know
this particular corridor could have
and then obviously delineating kind of
those lines on the map um how could that
group
how do you envision a group like that
working with a consultant
um to decide those things and what would
those what would the ideal roles be i
guess because i think we're
deciding what that might be right so um
that the um in my experience
uh cities often appoint some kind of a
steering committee a public
committee composed of citizens like
you're looking for for your ad hoc
committee and they're often appointed by
city council members
so similar to the structure that you're
already looking at
and then that body becomes uh the sort
of decision making body almost like a
miniature planning commission or a city
council for
guiding the decisions that need to be
made by the plan
so for the plan so the big decisions and
the approval of the plan
or the implementation strategy does go
back through the planning commission and
to the city council but the decisions
about
um uh what what are the specific
boundaries how are we going to engage
the community are we satisfied with the
analysis that we've done sort of the
the moving of the of the process forward
and giving that kind of policy input
could be done by this ad hoc
committee so um that would make a lot of
sense
great well thank you dina um i i know
that maybe
other counselors run away in and we're
running a little late here today so
um i will stop there but um i just want
to thank you for
um i want to thank you for
um uh your work on this and you know i
think it's past time that the city
starts using some of these tools
um not just on el paseo but really
taking advantage of
some of these opportunities to create
some economic development some vibrancy
and really to reinvest i think in our
infill areas in addition to
um you know big projects like the royal
crossing and envisioning what the right
tool is for that
for that particular property but um
thank you so much i appreciate dina
and uh thank you mayor all right thank
you um airport
gandera
thank you mayor thank you tina i
appreciate
all your expertise and um i've already
re uh read your report on the
royal crossing a couple of times at
least so i'm glad
to meet you in person even though it's
virtual
um questions are around um
you know i as i look at the city and all
of us are
i think jocking into position because we
each area that we
like right to see revitalized
well my question is about um
what factors play into prioritizing
these
areas i'm assuming it's some that you've
mentioned like
in market you know trends
transportation those kinds of things but
those
um all or or there are other
factors that we should be we should be
looking at
uh so this is dina belzer and you asked
a really great question
um because um this is not an analog
there's not an analytic
answer to this question the question has
to emerge out of the community's
priorities and the community's values
um so it's really uh a question
for you the counselors for
you know your broader constituency to
decide what is
what are the areas you want to target
and
i brought forward the um the three uh
community blueprint areas that are
identified because
those those um emerged up out of the
well
those three plans were sort of in
process prior to the
two of them were in process prior to the
elevate las cruces and then it looks
like the apodopa blueprint was
added later and then there are some
other kind of focus areas that are also
in the plan
so i i would think that what you would
want to do would be to go back and
revisit
what's already in elevate las cruces and
see
if the if it's the right set of
community plans
and or if you want to add in or
focus in on the other priority areas
which are much smaller areas some of
them look like they're just like
corridors um uh and decide where you
want to focus
and again i think this is what um
criselda and felicia were suggesting was
that you sort of go back
as a city look at the whole city decide
which areas you really want to focus in
on
and um and what you could do is create a
phasing plan like you would say this
year we're going to focus on these two
areas next year we're going to focus on
these two areas
the year after we're going to focus on
those and the reasons for those could be
could depend on you know again many
many things i'm i'm working in
buffalo new york of all places i was
there via zoom this morning it's really
fun to go to new york in
the morning in mexico in the afternoon
from california
um um but um there the
the city is very focused on um
the lowest income most disinvested part
of the city
and they're really thinking about how
they can bring that and there's like
no you know the way we think about
market investment there's very little
market driven activity there um
and yet there's a lot of there are a lot
of options and opportunities to do some
really interesting and great things so i
think that but that's a community
priority it's not
the consultants didn't yeah i i
appreciate that
um that answer i i think so many times
right
it's con consultant or city staff driven
and
although we get a public i'm really
proud of the
the times you know all those plans have
had rich
public input right so that right we've
gotten
recognized for that awards you know for
those
of um um
participation so i i
you know we have a lot of assets in this
community for sure
and um i all
i love this city and i i think i would
like to see infill
right more emphasis on infill and using
these tools is i
think with it's a really important thing
and i think you asked my
answered my second question that is have
you seen cities that
will do two or more projects
in a year that that's possible it
doesn't drain
right the city so to speak um
staff and otherwise i think so
it's good to know that that is a
possible scenario because i think
there's a couple of things that we can
do and i would especially
want to to initiate um
you know projects that include housing
um
council ben como and flores and i sit on
our housing policy review committee and
we're in great need of affordable
housing
right i think if we don't focus on that
all the other
is going to be
emu at this point so
i i really like to to see that
as part of this um process i mean
you threw a lot of acronyms examples at
us
and um you know i'm not a planner but
i'm really
interested in in in really learning more
about this so
i will get into you know really um and i
read some
you know to prepare for today i
appreciated dr martinez sending the
information to us prior to
last week so that we could take the time
to
to read that um but you're right it's so
complex it's not
black and white there's so many layers
to it and so
i i appreciate that um you know all that
you've been able to do
and and i i guess i like that focusing
on the lower
income um you know and
honestly the al paseo that corridor
connected to
the three of our country bengalman eyes
district would probably be um
a good place to start obviously to
include the royal crossing i think we
want something there
and prime and we've had people coming
back
you know um um zach and company
um come back to us they're interested
let's find a tool
right yeah well i i do want to caution
you
on being too aggressive um
on the one hand there's a lot of urgency
to get moving quickly
on the other hand i do want to point out
that the bergamot area plan that i
showed you
took two years three years to implement
to because there's a lot of research and
analysis that goes
insurance things and so i think
the this is probably also sort of a part
of the conversation you as a city
council and staff want to have is how
you want to allocate resources
and how you want to prioritize those
things because you could do some things
in a year you could or what you could do
is say the first year we're going to do
the prioritization
and we're going to pick which plan we're
going to do first which one next
and then give yourself some time
so i i want to be careful about setting
expectations appropriately
no i i appreciate that dina also i guess
lastly
my last question is about our geo bonds
i know you're
i think you're familiar with that we
have bonds out
you know i see this working very nicely
and when we're completing these we're
going to be seeing some completed
projects
that could be an opportunity for us to
move
in that direction and incorporating
some of these projects it do you see
that often from municipalities or places
that you work that they use that
i didn't see that as part of the tool
tool um uh we do we see that
um all the time where we see but what
what often happens is if you do an area
plan like um
uh and it's interesting about the
trade-off between working at the area
level and working at the city level
because geo bonds as you know
are for the entire city and so sometimes
what a plan will do
is it will set specific priorities for
certain kinds of
investments and then those will go into
the geo bond
you know the capital improvements
planning cycle that comes
next comes up next or
in the case where affordable housing is
a big um
priority uh sometimes city pa
cities pass bond measures just for
affordable housing
um um and and that
often emerges out of doing area planning
like this so there's sort of a give and
take
between the local area planning and the
city-wide
planning i appreciate they're not
mutually exclusive but they're not
always sequential in one coming first
and one coming second
yeah no no i appreciate that dina thank
you so much um
for spending time with us and your
expertise that will
be it mayor thank you thank you um
counselor flores
thank you mayor and thank you dina for
your presentation
it was quite elevating um
i i think it's good it's good i um i
lived in los angeles for many years just
next just the east of santa monica just
uh very familiar with bergamot station
and
uh it actually i don't know when it was
finally
when the end product dude what was the
date of the uh
that project was
i want to say it was 2018 2018
well the move to get it going was
in the uh i think 2000 early on
i want to say i you know what i'm going
to go back and check on that i think it
was
um maybe even because
it was before that yeah it was probably
2016.
oh it was yeah but yeah there was a
movement the fire
yeah the expo line was being opposed to
people from beverly hills were adamantly
opposed to it and it finally went in
after i moved here so and i and i've
been here for eight years so
i mean permanently here um
in 2005 but um but anyway i just wanna
i think it's very good that you caution
us not to move too quickly on these
things because they just don't move that
quickly
and i think with bergamot station i
guess you got on
in 2016 and there was such a drive
already such community drive
and right now we are i'm in the process
of seeking
one representative on that al paseo
corridor
uh panel in community and it's hard to
find somebody
um and and and so it isn't like
i think that the the corridor plan
paseo corridor plan um was
pretty much started i might be wrong
mayor
can correct me on this by sharon thomas
and it did take some community but it
was it's been really people and she's uh
mayor pro tem emeritus at this point
um so it you know it
somehow i feel that because you you
picked bergamot so now i can
actually speak to that because i lived
there i saw it i saw people talking
so um i think that um
the difference between bergamot and las
cruces
is like you know
there's a significant difference as to
what drove it to happen what propelled
it
right we have people the city planners
you know city officials you know the
elected officials
who um have vision want to see certain
things done
but it's not really coming from
community per se i mean
all of us are from quote the community
but not really so
anyway yes i think it's going to be a
slow process to really get it going
and one one thing to keep in mind is
that
if the ad hoc committee if you can't
find people to serve
enough people to serve on the ad hoc
committee but you still
it's still a priority of the council to
get moving
start with the people you do have and
work on a broader engagement
process so that more people have more of
an idea of what
why they would want to be involved and
what would be
at stake for them and then you might see
the momentum build
so um i'm just suggesting that
um that you might not have to wait until
you can fill every slot
on that ad hoc committee to get started
good idea thank you so much dina thank
you
i'm glad bergamot resonated with
somebody yeah and i lived in the bay
area in san francisco oh nice
yeah a lot of demonstrations there in
the day yeah
okay um thank you
dina was there more
not for me no um
let's just go home then
no i'm just kidding that was the end of
our presentation
i i will i will say mayor that uh
having worked all over the country i
have really enjoyed working with your
staff and with the community members
that i have met
and i feel like you all have just a
really wonderful
resource in terms of who you all are
and i really appreciate being invited to
be part of that so thank you for
having me today you're welcome
thank you we may be calling you back uh
for another
presentation on your
analysis of the royal crossings tid
okay so uh celicia
was that's it we're yep okay
okay well um then if there's nothing
further
barbara or david then we'll go ahead and
call for uh
to adjourn this meeting and then we'll
do the agenda setting
made the motion cassandra okay airport
made the motion second by councillor
flotus that we adjourn i was in favor of
singapore by saying oh that's right
christine
and you gotta call him that's one thing
i learned in that open meetings act so
right good to know good to know
this is on the motion to adjourn the
work session
counselor aveda stevie
yes cancer flores
yes cancer yes
mayor yes and uh
gina are you still there or she left
i was gonna say i've heard of uh the car
before the horse but i've never seen a
picture of it so that was pretty cool
okay so we're not gonna i'm gonna stick
around
for um christine you guys are welcome to
do the agenda setting meeting and
then we're done thank you mayor good
night
good night good night mara
good night thank you
i'm ready when you are you are okay so
this is the agenda setting meeting for
the november 2nd
2020 city council meeting number one
non-consent
one non-consensus two consent two
consents
three consent three consents
for non-consent for non-consent five
consent five consent
six not consent six non-consent
thank you have a good night