[Music]
okay good afternoon everybody welcome to
the work session of Las Cruces City
Council today is Monday March 9th 2020
it's approximately 1 p.m. before we
began if you please join me in the
pledge of allegiance please thank you
and now unlv Hill will introduce our pet
of the week from our communications
office Thank You mayor city council
jennifer Martinez has the afternoon off
that's why you're stuck with me
but I am happy to do it because our pet
of the week is his princess and this
little cutie has honey colored eyes if
you look closely you can see the colors
of her eyes and she's got a great poise
and great demeanor which makes her a
great canine companion and you can meet
princess who's almost eight years old at
the animal service center of the Mesilla
Valley hours are weekdays noon to 6
weekend's noon to 5 they're located at 3
3551 Bataan memorial West and their
phone number is 5 7 5 3 8 2 0 0 1 8
off-site adoption events this weekend
Saturday farmers market at the north end
of the downtown mall 9:00 a.m. to noon
and nissan of las cruces 11 a.m. to 3
p.m. reporting ordinance violations from
involving animals what we ask you to do
is call central dispatch which is the
non-emergency number at five to six zero
seven nine five and use option number
six provide the following information a
location of the infraction the type of
offence that it is a description of the
animals involved and your contact
information including your name and
phone number
thank you very much and have a great
work session great thank you you don't
appreciate it okay we have four items on
the agenda first one being the corona
virus preparedness
and I believe fire chief Enrique's will
be making that presentation and there's
going to be a few others from the
community that are going to be able to
kind of share with us what their what
they're doing as well and a nice hello
former accounts - Jack Ekman in the back
thanks
we have a couple seats here empty you
like to actually Mayor Pro Tem ganda net
will be here around 2:00 and councilor
sorg is out of town in Washington and
councillor Vasquez
coming down with the cold and he didn't
want to get anyone sick so that's why
he's staying home so thanks to Kelso
vaska's for that what we don't want him
to endanger himself even further
good afternoon mayor and council Eric
and Rick is fire chief for city of Las
Cruces today we have a presentation on
the corona virus preparedness what we
have as a Claudia Alexander and her
assistant will come up and give a
presentation from the Department of
Health and then we have dr. Boles
remaining msu clinic to say a few words
and then we'll bring our ems coordinator
Shane Lachey to talk about some of the
things with El CFD and what our response
will be with the corona virus in
anticipation we also have other members
from the community here from Mountain
View Hospital and also from White Sands
Missile Range but the presentation will
start with Claudia Alexander Thank You
chief Thank You Claudia for coming here
today
thank you for having us and giving us
this opportunity to come and talk about
what the Department of Health is
currently doing excuse me can I have you
state your name please I'm sorry oh yes
I was getting to that sir
my name is Claudia Alexander I'm the
Southwest Region emergency preparedness
specialist with Department of Health
Public Health Division and along with my
counterpart of Bernadette Gutierrez
southwest region at the nurse
epidemiologist we'll be presenting you
today about corona virus some of the
topics that we'll cover during this
presentation include what corona virus
is symptoms associated with the disease
transmission a current situation update
prevention of more towards gearing on
non-pharmaceutical measures that the
community and our partners can do so it
is important to disclose that a lot of
the information that is in this
presentation has already changed it is
also important to read
Department of Health is the lead state
agency that will be coordinating
response efforts with regional local
partners and I know we've we've all
heard about coronavirus it has been a
very and in in the mode if you want to
call it like that but I think in order
for us to address some of the issue of
the responses that Department of Health
has it is important to have a solid
background with information that has
been obtained from CDC and World Health
Organization
therefore coronaviruses are a large
family of viruses which include which
may cause illness to humans or animals
the new strain or novel coronavirus
immersed in the Linda late November
early December 2019 and they was first
identified in persons that visited a
animal and seafood market in wuhan hubei
province in china and these individuals
experience viral pneumonia
so before coronavirus we knew that there
were seven different type of strange of
corona viruses four of these strains
have the capability of giving common or
mild symptoms then we have Merson SARS
which were identified later on and these
type of strange have the potential of
causing more serious illness with corona
with corona virus we are still uncertain
because as we have seen there's people
that develop mile a mild form of the
disease and there's other people that
develop of severe pneumonia a lot of the
symptoms associated with cope in
nineteen are pretty much what we can
experience when we have a common cold or
the flu but the key is if we have a dry
cough have shortness of breath
and it spike in temperature and of
course if we have traveled or if we've
been around people that have been
confirmed with koban 19 this might raise
a little red flag for us these symptoms
usually are mild but then begin to
progress
most people will recover without meeting
hospitalization however we are learning
that older people and people with
chronic health conditions are at risk of
developing a serious a more serious type
of illness so how is coping 19
transmitted well it's transmitted person
to person of your droplet especially
when when we're close to the person that
has been confirmed with corona virus
guidance from CDC and Department of
Health do recommend using airborne
precaution
to include eye protection the incubation
period for this strain ranges from 2 to
14 days and as mentioned before the
situation keeps evolving as of this
information was as of March 7 we now
know that this has changed over a
hundred countries including the US US
had confirmed cases of corona virus
right now as of March 8 there are 423
total cases 322 under our under
investigation and 35 states including
District of Columbia have reported cases
from these we know that 49 positive
confirmed tests have been from people
that have been repatriated 72 are
related to travel and 29% to person we
now know that more states are being
affected or at least more states are
doing more testing to confirm or
the possibility of coronavirus we know
that Washington California and New York
are the stage that have taken the most
of the cases in New Mexico we have zero
confirmed cases which is nice to know
but in addition as of March 7 46 people
underwent testing for corona virus from
those 46 cases that were reported all of
them were negative and because we know
that this is a new strain of virus or at
least a virus that now has jumped in to
infecting a human we don't necessarily
know how it will react we don't have a
vaccine the in order for us to receive
that vaccine it's going to take some
time maybe 12 18 months just because
there's a lot of trials that have to
undergo prior implementing a vaccine
regimen therefore what we could do is
have non-pharmaceutical measures that
can keep us safe and not only for COBIT
19 but also other diseases such as the
flu if someone is sick please make sure
that you they are saying 6 feet apart
you try to stay within that space if
you're sick please try not touching your
eyes your nose and mouth also if you
feel like you're sick please take care
of yourself stay at home take care of
your of your other your other co-workers
if you sneeze or cough make sure you
have the proper cosmetic kit cover it if
you're using a tissue make sure that you
dispose that tissue immediately and wash
your hands clean and disinfect the
objects and surfaces you see regular
household cleaning supplies as of now we
don't know
how long the virus has the potential of
stayin on surfaces so it's just always
good practice to just go ahead and wipe
our surfaces once we're done the most
important takeaway here is wash your
hands for 20 seconds thank you for that
Alexandria the regional nurse I'm gonna
talk on where Claudia left off here
about the laboratory testing and the
vaccine which she touched on briefly so
here in the state of New Mexico don't
know if you guys read it in the news or
not we do have the capability to test
for corona virus as of now the testing
still being done at the state lab in
Albuquerque once those samples are
collected and sent to the state lab they
are also sent to CDC for for
confirmatory testing it's my
understanding this week that we should
be getting the okay for commercial labs
to do testing hopefully that'll be
pretty quick so the ones that we have
around town quest Diagnostics tricor
some of the main labs will be able to do
coronavirus testing I don't know if
you've all had a chance to look at the
CDC website as Claudia mentioned the
information on there's changing rapidly
so they're developing guideline and
updating guidance for clinicians labs
health professionals anybody that's
gonna have it have to deal with the
public schools and they also have
special resources for hand out and
prevention and posters okay
nm do H has a preparedness and response
and as you can see it's divided into
three categories so the first one for
communication so Department of Health
has been sending out weekly and/or
Health Alert networks to all our
providers and hospitals in the event
that this new information needs to be
distributed regarding patient treatment
management and reporting they are also
giving weekly press releases and nmda
weights also developed a web page or a
frequently asked question web page on
our website and anybody can go there and
access information about coalbed 19 the
preparedness response in the middle and
the blue as doah is currently revising
their pandemic influenza plan for kovat
19 and i don't know if you all remember
in 2009 during the h1n1 outbreak the
plan is based and we're up to using it
and updating it for co vid 19 part of
the preparedness doah is doing is we're
contacting our hospitals and clinics
weekly to check on beds and personal
protective equipment and supply and
we're also meeting regularly with our
hospitals schools EMS and other local
agencies to help coordinate the response
the epidemiology and testing available
right now as I mentioned we are
currently monitoring people who have
traveled to any of those high-risk
countries for 14 days we have
established an epi hotlines of any of
the providers or hospitals identify a
person anywhere in New Mexico they
suspect of having corona virus they can
call this number and get information
regarding testing and management for
that patient right now if we do have
people that present with kovat 19 and
they are not ill enough to be
hospitalized we're recommending the home
containment for those patients that they
stay home until they're well we're also
contacting at-risk travelers screening
home
and asking them daily to monitor
themselves and we're checking in for
respiratory symptoms okay so these are
people who have traveled to the
high-risk areas and then as Claudia
mentioned before current at risk travels
include travel to China Korea Iran and
Italy that's it thank you
Thank You Bernadette do you have any
questions Council of either Bernadette
or Claudia Alexandria oh yes thank you
mr. Marin and Thank You Bernadette and
Thank You Alexandria so as far as the
Health Alert notices its websites
newspapers and I'm wondering about I
mean New Mexico has its population
scattered throughout and I'm wondering
if people who perhaps do not subscribe
to a newspaper or do not have a computer
how are they receiving that that import
the information as it comes and then as
far as monitoring only those who excuse
me only those who are returning from
those four targeted countries Iran China
South Korea and Italy how what about
people I've canceled all my flights but
in fact I was writing a note to I left
one out
I'm counting all my flights through
through August just because and some are
domestic but in domestic flights like
Denver flying to Denver and then
connecting to another because we out of
this part of the world here in El Paso
we take ALP a so and every flight has a
connection I mean the only flight design
is direct flight to Denver but you get
to Denver and Denver if any of you have
been there it's wide open
so people who
from all different parts of the world
for Munich or London or whatever are and
of course eunuch especially is very
close to Italy and then the European
Union you have one passport you don't
have to nobody is there aren't any
borders in that regard so are we
is there any alert as to that kind of
travel or domestic travel I know that
mister
dr. Landon I think was here Friday yes
and he was saying that flights have
dropped and if you go online to get a
flight with their dirt-cheap turning
them down so those hospital because
they're actually interviewed by my
department I'm an employee of dr.
Landon's that's what I do but we
identify somebody that has flown like
that we actually contact the CDC
quarantine station and what we do is we
work in collaboration with them to
actually contact those patients or those
other people on that flight to let them
know that we may have a suspect and/or a
confirmed case of somebody that had
coronavirus is it a very real
possibility right because we have people
that are travelling from other infected
states right all over the United States
so as part of New Mexico's case
investigation when those people are
identified we do talk with them we do
gather all that information and any
subsequent contacts or people that need
to be notified our offices in charge of
doing that right so that way we can tell
them hey you need to be under quarantine
or if you develop this kind of illness
then you need to see your provider for
an evaluation and what about our
outlying communities I'm sorry our
outlying communities or people who don't
have access to a newspaper or write to
that question it is important to note
that CDC does have 20 different
quarantine stations
throughout the US and that is whatever
they are doing right now they have
different teams being deployed to the
different to the biggest airport and
they're screaming for people right now
so anybody that's incoming in from an
international flight will get screamed
and will be placed on self containment
if it is required but that goes across
the across the u.s. to answer the first
question we are doing a lot of community
outreach one of my job is to reach out
to emergency managers from from the
different eight-count
from the counties that I am assigned to
and we are going to give them
presentation to talk more about what
they can do to protect themselves for
example on Friday we will be going to
Anthony and will be talking to our
promotoras this presentation will be
completely disseminated in Spanish it
will be this image you want kind of talk
in front of the mic you need that
there's a kind of infrared little so
those are the efforts that Department of
Health is doing we're in constant
communication with our hospital
emergency managers our emergency
managers for each County and then they
are the ones that are gathering these
people so that we go and reach out to
them thank you thank you very much
Thank You Claudia incorrectly called you
Alexandria so only this is the counselor
I just listened to counselor Florida she
said Alexandria so any other questions
that no yes Kelsey Bencomo caster of
APIs to be obeyed the CV in the whole
Thank You meryt Thank You mr. Gutierrez
and Alexander um I have a few questions
starting out when somebody is suspected
that they have this virus or we also
know it's still flu season correct RSV
those
yeah how long is it taking say somebody
in our own community gets it from the
time they get tested to the time machine
with the results back on if it's a
confirmed case or not my understanding
it's been 24 to 48 hours but there's a
couple of different levels of
coordination we got to do in depending
on which route you go so let's just say
that you're acutely ill and you show up
to the hospital right now the testing is
only being done at the state lab so once
that person's at the hospital we those
specimens get collected and then they
get shipped up to the state lab usually
in state lab gets them by that evening
and then the testing commences that
morning and then usually by that
afternoon we typically have the test
results by that time okay and when we
start or when or if it starts that we're
able to do testing locally what do you
think that timeframe will look like that
I think it's actually gonna be way
shorter and if we have more commercial
labs
I think that's gonna ease the burden off
the state lab and I think we ought to be
getting labs pretty quickly on those
individuals okay thank you
and when we take a look at our at-risk
communities those with the chronic
conditions perhaps the elderly are we
seeing that this co fit 19 is acting far
far different than it does similarly to
like the flu for these populations or is
it sort of in line with what's going on
it's actually sort of in morbidities or
other health issues your immune systems
not working properly and so flu or any
virus or any bacterial infections gonna
take advantage of that and I think for
our listeners what would you say are
kind of those top risks that people need
to watch out for if they still if they
have these like if you have asthma heart
condition what are those top ones do you
think that they need to be aware of yes
just because the way the virus attack
system it goes and produces a lower
respiratory tract infection causing the
pneumonia so you want to make sure that
if you have asthma history of allergies
you want to make sure you take care of
those people with heart conditions also
have been identified as high risk
individuals and you can find more of
that information under World Health
Organization situation update with
coronavirus and you'll find all of them
the criteria but yet anybody that may
have respiratory issues heart issues are
more at risk it is uncertain how this
virus will attack people that live with
diabetes and other chronic health
conditions and how long do we think
somebody might be a carrier for I know I
think our chief Enriquez has talked to
me about it a little bit when we have
some of our first-line responders going
in and out of different facilities they
may be a carrier and how long do you
think that might be in their system for
I actually got us with the question this
morning in to be honest with you there's
not enough research yet for us to give
you that answer we do know people even a
few weeks out are still shedding virus
and the CDC and World Health
Organization's some of these other
people are still testing that so I I
can't really say that we have a definite
answer for you the peak time like
Claudia mentioned earlier in her slides
usually 2 to 14 days when we see people
being most I guess contagious just
that's a word I'm looking for but we
don't know enough yet afterwards because
we still see people that are shedding
virus it might be at a lower level and
so but that doesn't mean you're not
infectious either okay thank you and
another one you touched upon it briefly
about the PPE
and are we in constant communication
with our local hospitals make sure that
we have the needed resources I know
people are stockpiling things and so
could you just talk more about that
please
so the brew of health emergency
management every week requests all the
hospitals of other regions for the whole
state to provide an update on the
hospitals of their beds their PPE
anything that will be used for a
response
so that has been as a matter of fact I
have to submit for our Southwest Region
our local public health office we have
to submit an inventory of what we have
available in the event that we need to
respond we are ready to go okay and I
know maybe for later if one of the
hospitals would like to comment on that
what they're doing and I have one final
question for you all we've talked a lot
about how it's affecting children
differently would you care to expand a
little bit upon that and why they think
it is so far we looked at the CDC
literature this morning about that issue
and I don't think that they know why
it's not affecting children typically
usually children are classified in that
high-risk population that we just talked
about with heart disease diabetes but
for some reason they're not I think
that's what they're taking it closer
let's find out why children are not
getting as ill from them okay thank you
thank you Mary thank you
Cal Stefano's Thank You mr. mayor and
thank you again as far as the testing
goes I know that we heard I heard
several things over the weekend on CNN
with our spokesperson at the White House
known as the president saying that
that testing is available you want to
take a test go ahead and then his VP
saying well actually we don't have
enough whatever to do the testing so and
then I don't know who or maybe it was
another commentary and I turned away but
or maybe I was having a nightmare that
it cost three thousand dollars to have a
test so there's stuff like that
circulating so is there enough excuse me
so do we have the capacity here in New
Mexico to to perform the testing and and
is it going to cost people because a lot
of people do not seek any help
whatsoever a lot of people maybe think
is just a bad cop or a bad you know
they're just having some guff or
something in their lungs and not seek it
out because they might not have health
care coverage or that sort of stuff so
is there anything that's going out there
encouraging people to go and get tested
and or see a doctor there is the
capability right now as I mentioned
through the state lab for people to be
tested so if we do have people that show
up to the hospital or they're identified
by their doctor and we think that they
meet the criteria that testing can be
done through the state lab and when
we're requesting the testing that
testing is usually free okay once the
commercial lab opened up for testing to
be honest with you I haven't looked or
heard how much the cost of a corona
virus test would be met I wouldn't be
surprised if you're telling me it's
three thousand dollars it wouldn't be
surprised and that's going to be up to
those companies to decide how much
they're going to charge what we've been
hearing likely is that may or may not be
covered through insurance pretty much
just like any other flu test or things
like that but I think that'd still be to
be determined at this point so did I
answer your question
okay yes you did thank you very much yes
councilman : thank you and thank you
both so much for your presentation you
mentioned non-pharmaceutical
interventions could you expand on that
like what can the city be doing to
minimize fear but also minimize in
pre-med Brenda this weekend I received
an email that says if you're an elder or
if you have any chronic conditions avoid
any gatherings lab now it is important
to realize that New Mexico does not have
any cases which is good for us but some
of the measures that you are seeing
implemented in other states such as
Washington are because they have
community spread and that makes it a
little bit more complicated avoiding
mass gatherings is one and just the
personal hygiene hand-washing that
doesn't like I mentioned earlier on that
person necessarily only happened with
coca at 19 but it with almost all of the
diseases washing our hands for 20 20
seconds
having the cough etiquette that has been
implemented I think for the longest time
and it was brought up during h1n1 a lot
also just blowing our nose make sure
that you dispose of that tissue
immediately and immediately wash your
hands if you're sick
just avoid going out if you're sick
enough to where you feel like you have
some of the symptoms and you do meet
this criteria where you have been either
with living with a person with Kovan 19
or have traveled to these regions by all
means I would suggest contacting your
doctor calling Department of Health for
further guidance they will be the ones
that will guide you through the whole
process if you are a
fact like my Bernadette mentioned you
will be monitored and if you're not
sticking up to where you need to be
hospitalized you will be told please
stay at your home CDC was providing or I
believe they're still are providing the
the travel kits and basically they
record their temperature and if they
have any symptoms associated if they are
suspect they do it for 14 days and if
everything is fine then then they give
them further guidance it's the same
principle that Department of Health is
currently doing okay thank you that's
really helpful
in you know and I hope we don't get here
in New Mexico certainly but in the event
that there is a confirmed case is the
Department of Health prepared to release
a different kind of preparedness plan at
that point regarding events schools
those kinds of things
yes actually in my department is we're
actually working close above those
agencies so it's gonna depend on on a
case-by-case basis right and the number
of people that we see ill the number of
contacts things like that we do work
very closely with your with all the
hospitals with the schools pretty much
everybody and so we have any of those
agencies contacting us or vice versa so
that we can give them some more guidance
that's great what we're going to do as
far as school closures and things like
that
great so if if an individual is
experiencing some sort of I mean these
are really common right symptoms if
someone is experiencing them are you
encouraging them to go to Urgent Care to
go to the doctor um we're actually
encouraging them to go see their doctor
we'd like them to call the doctor
especially if they have that history
that she was just talking about it okay
and around somebody that had kovat 19 or
they've traveled to a high-risk area we
don't want them walking into an ER right
we want to know that they're gonna come
so we can make the appropriate
arrangements to move them to an area
where they're not going to be exposing
everybody and the same thing with the
doctor's office do we want to coordinate
that with the doctor's office you know
they're seeing other patients as well in
their clinic and we don't want to be
exposed
so our goal would be to educate somebody
to know that they should call first
before they come in and visit reiki yeah
great that's a good thing to say for
folks listening at home I don't know who
this question belongs to if it's you or
perhaps chief Enriquez I'm really
concerned about in the again hopefully
it doesn't happen but in the event of a
confirmed case or even outbreak do we
have protocols from the Border Patrol
regarding checkpoints regarding access
to medical care for people outside of
the checkpoint that are closer to
medical facilities and Las Cruces and
enforcement can we check with somebody
on that I would be really interested in
ensuring that people that the priority
is that people get access to medical
care before enforcement we can do that
great that would be really good um I
think that's it for me thank you so much
for everything you do and for putting
out all this information thank you okay
great any members of the public have any
specific questions ask these two ladies
okay chief so the next one up is I guess
dr. Robles from msu yes yes Parent
Council next we'll hear from dr. Boles
from NMSU health clinic good afternoon
my name is dr. Judy mold I'm the medical
director at the M
Aggie health and wellness center on
campus at the New Mexico State
University I thank you mr. mayor and
council for the opportunity to be
included in this forum with 14,000 plus
students we are a little city in our
bigger city and it's nice to be included
we are a very international community we
have a large population of students
studying on our campus from many
different countries in the world at any
given moment we have our own students
staff and faculty who are coming and
going in international travel as well as
domestic domestic travel we have an
extensive study abroad program for our
students and that present we have 30 and
MSU students who are out and at other
parts of the world three of them were in
Italy and at the recommendation of our
international office two of them have
come home and have been under voluntary
14 day quarantine in their homes one in
El Paso and one in Truth or Consequences
today they do not have any symptoms of
the corona virus presently we have four
students studying in South Korea we have
not advised them yet to come home but
our travel office is working with them
every day keeping them abreast on the
current recommendations for that country
our international office is also looking
at for large student trips that are
planned for the very first part of the
summer to various parts of the world
including Italy and our will be as the
virus evolves making recommendations
whether those groups will be going or
not so we have a very international
community our philosophy on campus is
calm anticipation with a focus on
prevention and preparedness NMSU has an
all-hazards emergency operation plan
this plan has been in place on campus at
least since the h1n1 days it deals with
all types of emergencies and now we are
applying it to the Cova 19 virus it
encompasses smaller plans within it for
all departments including Housing and
Dining athletics classes and academics
travel as I mentioned human resources
and activities and events it's divided
into three levels level 1 2 & 3 right
now the University of level
meaning we have not found a case of
coronavirus meaning the state hasn't had
a case of girl coronavirus so at present
it's business as usual we've not
cancelled basketball we not canceled
concerts or any classes and we're just
trying to do our regular business we
have a communicable disease resource
planning committee which have met made
sure everybody's plans over under the
emergency plan is intact and we'll be
meeting monthly or more often if we need
to as we address coronavirus we also
have cart which is our campus
administrative response team which is an
advisors Oriole committee to the
president and we met last week to put
preparation and prevention into place at
the Aggie health and wellness center Oh
with all the media information in news
we've just opted like these
representatives from Department of
Health have said to follow the
recommendations of the CDC the World
Health Organization and the Department
of Health I evaluated for students
myself last week who had medical
symptoms consistent with coronavirus in
a soft travel history and I can testify
that our Department of Health was right
there when I caught them and we're very
helpful in giving me advice and counsel
on helping these students at our Center
itself our nursing supervisor and I
working for a larger bureaucracy tried
to put together a policy of what how we
were going to manage coronavirus and
it's very difficult to make a static
policy on a dynamic virus we have our
regular sanitizing cleaning procedures
into place the university has added to
our armamentarium the sanitizing misters
that now come and clean all of our
chairs and surfaces in our exam rooms
and our lobbies we have our PPE and
we're working with our supplies on that
for the
Department of Health our Aggie Health
and Wellness Center has put front and
center on our homepage on our website
coronavirus it has links to
communications frequently asked
questions travel information prevention
including hand-washing infection control
and links to those agencies for our
students we too are encouraging people
to call us before they walk through our
doors all of our front desk personnel
and our nursing staff have been trained
in telephone triage to handle and refer
as necessary or for us to see the ones
that we can we're providing education to
committees classes students and patients
we're monitoring and updating our staff
daily and our practitioners on any
recommendations for coronavirus and it's
business as usual until we're told from
the experts something different thank
you so much for the opportunity to talk
Thank You dr. Boles any questions that
counselor about the student thank you
thank you dr. Wolfe
my question for you is regarding if
quarantines have to happen and you have
on students on campus I have to be
quarantined
what sort of does that look like and
thinking of like their basic resources
of getting food and that sort of thing
if you could explain a little bit more
about that process I asked that very
question to the Department of Health
last week and I said what if their homes
are a dorm and since then I've met with
the housing director and we have some
freestanding homes that are empty at
present and it could be and are being
getting ready for quarantine we're
working with our dining and our food
services to make sure that appropriate
people garbed appropriately in PPE could
be able to deliver meals so hopefully
we're planning to quarantine our
students on our campus okay thank you
thank you Mary
thank you okay well thank you very much
dr. Boles thank you for your
presentation
yeah members of the public have any
questions of dr. Boles okay okay next
chief yes mayor and council we also have
a representative from Memorial Medical
Center Twyla Anderson she's an
infectious control and would like to say
a few words thank you good afternoon
everyone
thank you very much for allowed me to
have a few comments coronavirus good
night to see them can you state your
name please
I'm sorry Twilight Anderson thank you
and there's a little image a little
button there switch if you want to push
it down and if you want to okay
lower the podium so we can see you does
that work I can see you now all right
good afternoon finally under some
Memorial Medical Center and the
infection Preventionist there and so
again thank you for allowing me a few
minutes to speak about the hospital and
what we're doing in preparing for kovat
19 as the Department of Health has told
you we don't have any cases in New
Mexico but that doesn't mean that we're
not preparing that we're not drilling
that we're not looking at all of our
supplies talking to our staff working
with our er providers because we know
the ER is the Gateway to our community
and also coming in and if we're going to
see a patient it's likely going to be
through our ER so we have been planning
and looking at pandemics and preparing
for this for years and so influenza has
always sort of been our target as the
pathogen so Co vid 19 it's very much
like in the influenza if you look at the
strengthen symptoms it very much mimics
flu and so what we are able to do at the
hospital is to rule out other viruses so
we have a rapid diagnostic test that we
can run that looks at 22 different
targets
me of viruses and that we can rule that
out for that patient and then we start
working is there a high probability it
might be covet 19 and we are partners
with the Department of Health we work
with them I work with them every single
day we are surveillance or facility for
influenza so I work with the influence
of surveillance officer every single
year for flu and so we are monitoring
and doing surveillance all the time in
particularly in the winter months we
know that we're going to see a higher
influx of patients for all of these
virals syndromes and so we have the
surge of patients every winter and we've
had it this winter and we still have
quite a search with children coming in
with these normal viruses that we see
each and every winter and so we're
prepared
we have ventilators we have PPE the the
PPE that we have to use is no different
than the PPE that we normally use for
patients in isolation and we have
negative pressure rooms our facility has
19 negative pressure rooms that we can
accommodate we're actually looking at
that we have a wing on our Hospital that
we can completely quarantine and house
up to 48 patients if we had to and so
we're very unique in that way of being
able to manage a large influx if we had
to the other thing that we have done
very very well over the years should we
get a CO Vidor a corona virus vaccine is
we do the boot to the flu and we do a
community-wide influenza vaccine event
each and every year so we call that a
point of distribution and so we know how
to get people vaccinated in 2009 we did
that for the h1n1 vaccine we were the
facility we did I believe about four
different community events we opened up
after hours we had the public come in
and we know how to give back feed so we
have those resources we know how to run
those drills we know how to take care of
our staff we know how to take care of
the patient we have the facilities and
the PPE and everything to do that what
questions do you have of me
councilman come on counsel Flores thank
you so much I'm glad that you mentioned
that you know there's it's like a muscle
right where you practice it and so I'm
glad that you're mentioning that you can
have be that point of contact for you
know if and when a vaccine is needed to
be given in terms of that though do we
will it be free will it be available for
free will people have to pay for the
vaccine sure in h1 when we had the h1n1
yes that's when the CDC and the
government they sent us all the supplies
the vaccine and we gave the back seat
that's great thank you so much I'm glad
you're here you're making me feel better
oh you're welcome counselor Flores thank
you Miss Mary and thank you Miss
Andersen as far as I explained what a
negative pressure ocean is it's how we
balance the airflow in the room so if we
took the Chamber's here and made it
negative pressure when we opened the
doors the air from the hallway would
actually come into this chamber rather
than the air flowing outside of this
room into the hallway and so it's how we
balance the system the HVAC systems to
circulate the air and so in those rooms
we keep the door closed and when they
open the door the air flows into the
room it's exhausted out through special
filters and actually up through the roof
and outdoors but it's filtered and this
is what we use for other pathogens so
for chickenpox for TB if we had measles
we would put patients in what we call
negative pressure rooms so that's what
again we have lots of those rooms and we
are prepared I think for any influx that
might come our way
are those the 48 rooms you mentioned are
those all that we would make the whole
wing negative pressure or you can make
the entire wing because of subducting
and yep
it has this independent HVAC system and
so we're testing that right now to make
sure we can do that and be able to
quarantine so you mentioned 48 that
can accommodate for the patients in that
one wing okay thank you thank you very
much you're welcome yeah I feel a lot
better too okay you're welcome anything
else any members of the public
councillor Eggman you want to come
forward please all right he has a
question right practice you don't mind
he has some pretty tough questions so be
prepared good afternoon I'm Jack Eggman
mr. Baer city council administrative
staff
I commend our local hospitals on their
planning in this area hospitals have a
at least a 30 40 year history of
excellent planning and all these things
mainly because of the accreditation
standards that they are under and so I
believe they are fully prepared I have
more of a comment than a question and
this excellent infection control nurse
that's not the one that's really
directed to it's directed to the
administration of our general hospitals
in the city and it's based on the fact
of our workforce we have a delicate
workforce balance in health care in the
city of Las Cruces
we have nursing shortages we have
physician primary care provider
shortages we have pharmacy shortages and
if there's any time to take care of our
employees and our physician staff this
is it from what I read the people who
are being affected by this are male and
they're senior citizens and we have
quite a few of those in our primary care
community and we should be looking out
for their health sometimes they just put
their head down and they work until they
drop and this is not the time for that
because they could be susceptible to
this kovat 19 virus themselves so as a
City Council whatever you can do to
encourage our local health community to
take care of their own at this special
time
none of us want this to come into the
state of New Mexico or to Las Cruces but
just looking at what's happening around
the world I attended the Arts Festival
this weekend and there were people there
from Colorado and Washington and many of
the hot areas that now are having that
so that is a daily experience here we're
gonna have that around us and so the
possibility exists but everybody stay
calm what's your hands and it's going to
be just fine but encourage our health
care administration this is a good time
to make sure that staff takes care of
themselves
thank you thank you counselor
I can't follow up on that just a little
bit because there is a strategy that we
use for our health care team so when
infectious diseases are if co fed 19
emerges here if we do and we will limit
the amount of staff that will be
interacting with that patient or
patients or that wing we will probably
designate a group of us and I'll be part
of that coordination and that we
minimize the exposure to the health care
team because we are a precious resource
and we want to be able to continue
services be able to take care of the
public but also take care of these
individuals with this virus and so what
by limiting that and monitoring those
health care workers then we can keep
operations going on the other part of
the hospital and so that is very
important to us that's why we were going
to wear full PPE and do everything we
can to minimize any type of exposure to
our staff and so we call it you know
break the chain of infection so
everything that you see can are seen PPE
anything that we can do to break that
possibility of transmitting that
organism that's what we need to do so I
just want to commend that you know the
grocery stores you know for years
they've had the wipes for us to wipe
down our carts and we should you know
always be watching our hands at every
opportunity that we can but again a
virus has to be present for it to be
transferred
and so if we just take care of our
hygiene ourselves get plenty of rest eat
right and or sore hands I think we're
gonna all be okay thank you we
appreciate that thank you
yep of Marin councillor
we'd like to conclude with a few words
from our EMS coordinator battalion chief
Shane Lachey but before we get to Shane
there are some other agencies and
departments that were invited they came
to show their concern and also to gather
as much information as possible and I
want to get back to a question that
councillor Bencomo had answered I was
informed that the Department of Homeland
Security does meet on a weekly basis and
gathers the information if there's
anything going on at the borders and
we'll get to the appropriate agencies
all right thanks and with that here's
Shane good afternoon mayor council my
name is Shane mache I'm the battalion
chief of EMS for the Las Cruces fire
department we're here to talk
specifically about the Las Cruces Fire
Department's response plan luckily right
now because there's no confirmed cases
because there's an epidemic going on at
the moment we've had a little bit of
time to discuss not only internally both
our external partners and that starts
with our dispatch entity merv des so
right now that plan starts there it
comes to the call takers call takers are
going to be screening these calls when
they based on the criteria that it's set
from Public Health from CDC obviously a
person traveling out current flu-like
symptoms was going to be red flags our
response we're trying to re-emphasize to
our own personnel because that
information comes across our MDT to read
the notes to get clearly get an idea of
what that is going to be before we get
there our normal response based on the
apparatus is going to be kind is between
two and four people so we want to limit
how many people so if it is a
high-risk response based on those call
notes we don't want to expose all of our
personnel right at once we've wanted to
limit it to one person we have currently
right now a decent stock of personal
protective equipment hypertech's and
gloves clown m95 masks that person
certainly would be we're going to
encourage them to keep a six-foot
distance if they can obviously you're
gonna have to touch that person so these
things are not something that we don't
do normally we're in all hazard response
organization we do a lot of training all
year to treat every response as if it's
a danger whether that be biological
danger or a physical danger and this is
just reinforcing those things to our
crews there ninety-five masked you know
obviously if you come into a large group
of people you could use them more than
once up to five times if the people had
no symptoms but at some point and you
get rid of them I will tell you right
now we have a good supply I don't know
if I could get any more right now so
we're gonna have to be cautious about
what which calls we use we couldn't use
them on all the calls we go on because
we would just to use them all the
supplies immediately after the call the
important thing is to really not cross
contaminate so a lot of what we're
trying to do is convince and
re-emphasize the importance of not only
unseen there's an ax sink generally
right therefore they can wash their
hands but to quickly decontaminate what
they can some calves aside wipes various
cleaning to clean up the equipment and
to get back to the station and quickly
decontaminate washing their hands
whether they had gloves on washing
laundering their equipment their uniform
if they have that is one good thing that
we have is we have facilities to do
those things we have an extra uniform we
have things of that sort at our disposal
staffing right now we don't have to make
any immediate changes we just finished
Academy we're actually pretty well
staffed so we have a little bit of depth
we do have the ability to force higher
call people back if this was to escalate
right now there isn't any need of that
at the moment we are encouraging people
to if they are sick though to call in to
not come to work we look at it more
right now because of the health and age
of our responders they're probably not
the type or the category that is as risk
to contracting kovat 19 and getting
really ill but we're very concerned
about them passing that on to others so
those are some of our concentration
efforts other than that as I said the
normal D decontamination of our
equipment and our apparatus those are
where efforts are going to call in when
you're sick and documenting when we come
back to try and so at least we can start
formulating a paper trail if this does
get so we could know which one of these
were actually coded 19 as opposed to any
other of our medical responses and with
that I'll stand for any questions Thank
You Shane thank you dying chief
questions from Council members of the
public okay thank you yes I know sir
about this do we yes and and this one
actually may go to our department help
as well if we do run into supply
shortages would you be able to help
assist with that or how does that work
yes for PPE
so for our hospitals we do have what is
called the coalition cash and the
borough of health emergency management
is the one responsible for it so they
would let them know and we would
coordinate to see what their needs are
and that's why as mentioned before that
is why one of the reasons why they
constantly have to be sending in their
available PPE the number of beds because
they want to make sure they have all of
this into account to go and check their
and stockpile to make sure that in the
event of an outbreak
are we ready to respond in that
extension to our image or fire police
officers we would have to coordinate
with age anybody that's not part of this
coalition would have to coordinate with
us so that we could get them to the
right track I believe there are some
other ways but they would have to come
to us and then we would coordinate the
efforts and so for the city to be able
to be part of this conversation what
would that step or process look like
then for us
well last week I believe I sent an email
to all of my hospital emergency managers
my emergency managers for each of the
counties and I was requesting some sort
of inventory just to make sure where
they're standing and how how we can
assess if there is if there is a
shortage as of now we have not had any
reports I know that the borough of
health emergency medicine has supplied
for hospitals and that's why I reached
out to my emergency managers because
they are the ones that know my fire
my law enforcement anything that has to
deal with public response they will be
reaching back and will be collecting
that information okay thank you I just I
think that'll be important to make sure
that we continue that conversation to
make sure that our our first responders
are protected and then they also see a
lot of different patients and our
at-risk populations first so I think
it's going to be very important
should we have you know a pandemic that
they are protected and they're offering
that same protection to the people that
they be and we will make sure that they
will be well taken care of thank you
thank you okay thank you
timing chief appreciate it thank you
mayor council we also have CEO Derek
Lincoln would like to say a few words
good afternoon my name is derek cuenca
I'm CEO of Mountain View Regional
Medical Center not quite sure there's
much I can add other than to reiterate
the state of preparedness that our
hospital will stay in in this treatment
color eluded to our credentialing
process or accreditation process
Mountain View c-can't is a long history
of preparing as well as every hospital
in the country that's accredited to deal
with viruses
measles including new viruses that come
to the table ongoing preparation is
constantly happening and we're taking
this opportunity not just to we're
sending out internal memos and
re-education not only our staff but also
the medical staff within the entire
community in terms of what we're doing
this Mountain View and making sure it's
getting into those offices which
oftentimes could be the frontline to a
patient entering the system with that we
also work with virtual sponsor
responders within the city on a regular
basis in terms of our drilling process
that way they're part of that drill and
they know what's happening with in
Mountain View as things come up we've
started Reed railing
I think we're drilling in almost every
day also we're in diligently with
Department of Health and making sure
that that communication as they change
or things change that we're getting that
communication not only to our staff but
also to the physicians and nurse
practitioners advanced practitioners
that are seeing patients on a daily
basis so thank you thank you any
questions as the public okay I just want
to thank you for sharing that
information it has a calming effect
thank you
now mayor and council that was it just
want to say I appreciate you allowing
this work session we've got one more
yeah I didn't know if they're gonna go
before her Colonel I was gonna ask if
the colonel could share Cibola no
absolutely okay I'm sorry chief I didn't
know
okay so Colonel Ward
the garrison commander White Sands
Missile Range thank you for coming on
such a short notice colonel and and I
know that the there was a big event here
in the city within a week and a couple
questions as of today I think it's still
moving forward and then if so if you
could share with the community what
safeguards you have in place as well
sure Thank You mayor and city council
again I'm Colonel Chris Ward garrix
commander of White Sands Missile Range
I'm here to talk about Batala morale
Death March and the mitigations we are
putting in place currently in accordance
with CDC guidance and guidelines so
right now our overall assessment today
and this is a very fluid dynamic change
in situation but with the facts that we
know today our overall risk to the
population our population being the
workforce our community both the white
sands community the community the
surrounding areas our marches and
volunteers is low at this time from an
operational standpoint with additional
mitigations we are currently put in a
place we'll be ready and we plan to
execute this event just let me brief
quickly allow me to explain from the
mitigations out we are working on every
effort right now is being made to pre
identify people coming from the CDC
category level three countries being
Iran Iran South Korea China and Italy we
are we have emailed each marker that we
have asking them where to confirm their
point of origin or if they've even done
any traveling in the last 14 days from
one of these four countries we've been
pretty successful with this we
identified two marchers originating from
Italy we have confirmed with them that
they will not be joining us this year
for the March so as of today right now
we
have no marchers coming from a category
level three country we are continuing to
monitor the registration list our
registration is still open and matter of
fact this morning we had I think 26 new
registrants just this morning so the
concern you can see what people have
varies from individuals but right now we
still have an active registration and
people are still signing up so we got
scrubbing our lists using Colonel
somehow we lost you but your commanding
voice was alright so we are continually
monitoring the registration list and
ensuring no new marchers are signing up
from one of the category 3 level
countries now there's a thing called
category level 2 countries right now
there's one of those and that is Japan I
can confirm today right now we don't
have anyone registered from the country
of Japan as we are meeting today we have
notified and we're recommending to
participants if they exhibit any
flu-like symptoms to follow the CDC
guidance and we recommend they do not
travel and bottom line no not not only
because of the corona buyers in our
current environment but it's a betal
memorial death march this event is hard
enough when you're 100% healthy so if
you're not feeling good and it's not
because of coronavirus we're
recommending you go ahead and take it
you know err on the side of caution and
recommend we're not traveling and
execute and participate in our event
this year we're going to continue to
tribute health messages of unco bid 19
we have fliers and handouts which like
you've heard from the speakers prior to
me that we'll put in each in every
marker bag and we'll have medical
personnel there at the convention center
helping us a pre-screen and ask everyone
so additionally to you know trying to
get ahead of everyone before they travel
as they come in and pick up the
registration packet they will be asked
one of two questions one have you been
outside the United States in the last 14
days yes or no yes you have has one of
those countries been one of the four
countries or whatever number of
countries it is by the time we actually
start handing out packets starting on
Thursday afternoon yes or no again if
the answer is yes they have been we're
going to tell them thank you for
participating your interest this year
we're not going to lie
Marx this year we have eight medical
stations throughout the course that are
manned by civilian and military
personnel civilian monetary volunteers
including our medical professionals both
civilian and army we have added an
additional 108 hand-washing stations and
sanitizing stations along our course for
a total of 124 which is more or less in
which it's not more than us it is in
guide in accordance with OSHA standards
and we have put out and contracted for
additional cleaning of our restroom and
sanitation type areas and we also have
stepped up our sanitation efforts and
our eateries are bowling alleys food
courts our club etc etc we are
coordinating with both local hospitals
local hospitals being Memorial Medical
Center and the Army Hospital at Memoriam
Beaumont
but for military for both facilities are
aware and made internal preparations
some of that which you have heard two
responses back to cases today as we're
speaking we have what we call a tabletop
exercise with our medical team over at
white sands with the memorial medical
team and what that joint response is
going to be and what that's going to
look like as we have teammates for our
memorial actually at the Convention
Center with us throughout the weekend
and then if we identify someone who's
exhibiting signs symptoms why our
response is going to be and how we
handle that patient care from where we
locate it to being a civilian to
Memorial Hospital or a military
personnel to William Beaumont in the
Fort Bliss Texas bottom line we
encourage each individual families you
make your own assessments we've provided
information and the facts and we don't
know everyone's personal medical history
so if there's something whether it's
age-related or decreased immunity for
various reasons we're encouraging
everyone that's going to plan to be part
of our event to make those assessments
for themselves and take precautionary
measures whether that's to travel not to
travel to wear additional supplies
gloves or handkerchiefs mask glasses
there's a lot of good information out
there right now and how you as an
individual can protect yourself if you
have a concern at this time is there any
questions I can take from the council
members of the public colonel is a
question I want to thank you for always
taking my emails
you could tell my concern back and forth
and you've been very forthright and
always answering them and sharing with
me this information I can't thank you
enough and this is really good that we
have this on video as well so that
members of the public can can see your
responses and I think could hopefully
take that assessment as to what that you
all have this and you know and you said
something that made a lot of sense to do
this this this March you have to be in
pretty good shape and you probably can't
have any problems with your breathing so
absolutely correct so thank you for that
and and I joke with you about this but
this is probably you're looking at a
future four-star general here this is a
this is a great soldier and really proud
to have you in the United States
I appreciate that much more horses yeah
he's only like 28 years old probably
general when he's 40 hey so I just want
to rest assure everyone you know it is
planned to go and be executed today as
information changes over the coming days
if something comes on to our radar
guidance changes from the CDC we will
take all of that into account and
reassess our decisions all the way up to
execution so this is not a done deal
today and as new information presents
itself but with information we have the
current assessment is low and we are
we're planning to mitigate as best we
know how with effects that we have and
go forward from there I think counselor
Florida said something go I just want to
thank you
Colonel Ward for your service and your
presentation was very upbeat actually
yes
thank you for all that energy and if you
put that into defending our country
we're in good hands thank you yeah thank
you
Thank You colonel yes sir okay I guess
that's it chief
I appreciate you putting this together
and getting everyone involved and being
able to share with us of these concerns
I think this is a good opportunity for
as I mentioned those that are have some
concerns they can come on watch the
video and hopefully address a lot of
their their concerns and answers No
thank you mayor and council for allowing
this to take place and get the
information out to the public we really
appreciate it and a special thank you to
our guests the Department of Health and
the other speakers yes absolutely okay
thank you okay next item is gonna be a
overview of the Mesilla Valley public
housing authority presented by the
directaire director mr. Wong and Letta
Oh actually I'm just helping one out
with loading his presentation
good afternoon mayor and city council
and city staff when or where I'm the
security director oh let me see about a
public housing authority and today I'm
just gonna give you a quick overview
what is the housing authority the
housing authority of the city Las Cruces
was created in 1961 this had neither
housing authority there was another
housing authority was was a junior Ana
County Housing Authority in 2012 the two
housing authorities mirrors and created
what is now the Mesilla Valley College
Housing Authority the mission of the
housing authorities to lead the public
after ever in providing safe affordable
housing an Associated service to provide
opportunities to the legible person see
the city of Las Cruces in Dona Ana
County the housing authority is governed
by a five-member board of commissioners
of which two are appointed by the mayor
of the city Las Cruces and the other two
by the Dona Ana County Commissioners the
fifth member is a resident commissioner
and the racing Commissioner is appointed
by both the county and the city there
are points for a five-year terms which
are staggered and they provide service
without pay
currently mr. Marcus Montez is the
chairman in
she was appointed by the county and his
term is sparse in 2020
fellows Cordero's about chairman and was
just reappointed by the mayor early this
year so his terms goes into 2025 and we
have mr. Joseph Figueroa which is a
restaurant commissioners and this term
salsa spies this year we have two vacant
positions one from the city one from the
county the one for the city has been
vacant since last year so we need your
assistance in finding a commissioner and
one of the things it is critical is
because in order to have for right now
we only have three commissioners if one
of them is not available we cannot have
four so we cannot really take any
actions unless do we have for the county
also has a vacant position that goes
back to 2018 so two years old
we tried we've been working with the
county also trying to fill this position
one can I interrupt for a second sure so
do we on the on the on the city they
have to live within the city they have
the city they have to live within the
city limits the county they have to live
in the county they cannot live in the
city okay and do we have like a like a
Job Description something that that say
perhaps some of us or all of us could
put in our social media avenues and
advertise it as such
yeah I could provide you a gym with
something that I have okay provided
before but you know I'm saying that but
the application comes to the city the
application comes to the city doesn't
come to us
Christine says she has it great
I'm sorry about that I will find you one
no that's okay
I know you you and I have been talking
about this for a long time but we need
the counselors also they have they
represent their constituents they they
could find someone from the constituency
and you see later one of the reasons
that is important for the counselors to
be involved right thank you
the housing authority currently we have
25 employees I'm the only employee of
the board the rest of the employees
report to me we have two hundred and
forty-eight of the housing units we have
forty section a new construction unit
which is multifamily we have 650 tasks
where as a rental assistant universe we
have 1642 House choice in vouchers those
include seventy bars bathrooms we are
providing housing for over 6000 knowing
of how cinemas are and olivarium budget
is about nine million dollars also I
would like to introduce mr. Rene Rivera
is the deputy director
what was her first name exam Loreena
lorina Oliveira about me I've been here
five years and as a matter fact today is
my anniversary thank you previously I
was a director of development and
capital project for the housing
authority of the cities of a so I
basically manage the capital fund
program would start up at 8 million
dollars a year
I developed a Python ring community
which we apply for a 15 million dollar
we received eight point five million
from has it was a comparative branch
this community is a net zero community
is a LEED Platinum certified no fossil
fuels 73 public housing or supply for
this nine percent has first basically
generate fifty three million dollars for
affordable housing projects within a hop
six project which was also about fifty
five million dollars and we developed
new house public housing units 317 and I
also was responsible for the maintenance
of about 60 100 polygons community I
have a master's in engineering and
management industrial engineers from
Stanford University and a Bachelor of
Science in chemical engineering from the
Monterey Institute of Technology in
Monterey Mexico
what is slow rent public housing the
Housing Act of 1937 basically created
the Federal Housing Program then in 1965
the Department of Housing and Urban
Development created halfa cabinets live
level pages there's some other
information that I don't want to repeat
what is there but if you had any
questions I'd be happy to answer again
this is kind of a little history about
the public housing and what has
developed the public housing was
reformed in 1998 through what is called
the Guara and it reduces the
concentration of overseen public housing
protect protect the access to housing
assistance for the poorest family is
raising the performance standard for
public housing we have measures of
performance they have what is called the
public housing assessment system so
every year they come into physical
inspection and they measured other
indicators so based on that performance
I will give a serrated new high
performance on a performer or travel
performer
we have for public housing locations
with 248 low range of the housing we
have treasure Holies which is 64 units
multifamily it was built in 1963 some
pezzo three units elderly disabled or
source of the 1963 wondergrove ninety
nine units multifamily in built in 1972
and hardiness a legless with 47 units
what they also didn't say was built in
1971 as you can see our sausage all we
need to do something about this and I
will talk later about what it's a hard
basically directive and you can see here
their location you can see that two of
them are located in district 3 one is
located in Council of in commerce which
before and one is located in consulate
under
then we have what is the voucher program
this was basically created in 1974 and
he has evolved initially was like a
certificate program in lately 1997 he
changed to a debaucher program the
certificate program was basically face
it out by a October 2001 so now the only
problem is like city's Housing Choice
Voucher program so what is this the
Housing Choice Voucher program basically
in a few words what we do is we provide
about sure to very low income families
elderly and disabled so they can go look
for housing but this housing is in the
private market so we have landlords that
basically are registered with the
housing authority and the tenants take
that vouchers that we provide them and
go and find a place to live so in what
we pay is basically the difference of
what the the individual with the voucher
temper which is limited to 30 percent of
their income they cannot say more in
their own brain
so the voucher would say it as
difference so let's say the rent is $500
the tenant can only pay a hundred so
she's limited the voucher will pay the
difference in average we pay seven point
seven million dollars a year to Delano's
for that rental assistance
and we have over 500 none of those 1642
vouchers we have 75 sponsors these
vouchers are very important because
basically is to serve the homeless
veterans when I started we had 50
vouchers so every year we have been able
to increase the pouches we have to apply
to hurt but we need the support of the
VA the VA that we partner with the VA
for puzzle
so so far they have been very responsive
we have 40 family unification vouchers
we have non-elderly disabled we have a
hundred vouchers currently we have
thirteen homeownership vouchers which
basically when the tenant qualified we
they what we pay rental assistance now
is a fortune of diaries used to pay for
the mortgage and the difference is 14 19
which is just regular bounces they see
section 8 new construction is a
multi-family program they assist Housing
Authority of private landlords so they
basically were providing the assistance
has has basically stopped this program
since 1983
but the province of our pros continue to
receive the subsea
now I'm gonna talk about the low-income
housing tax credits this was created by
the Tax Reform Act in 1986 of the
section 42 of Internal Revenue so hard
was not involved in this this program is
administered by the state finance
agencies indication Mexico is a New
Mexico bonus Finance Authority also
known as MFA and what result is reduces
the borrowing need and debt for the
project they provide a annual credit
which is goes for ten years and what the
investors do they receive dollar per
dollar credit against their federal tax
liability so the way this works is who
applies for the tax credits in get those
cars then they will go and sell it to a
pool of investors so when you sell those
tax credits the developer that money's
everything is not dead
so that's that's one of the main I will
say beauties of the program because you
get inequity so that's why do you reduce
your that makes a project more
affordable in order to serve to serve
the glowing on a very low-income
population the units are you develop
through this problem they have to remain
affordable for a minimum of thirty years
these tax credits are awarded annually
to a competitive application in
accordance with what is called the
qualifying location plan which is issue
by MSA
we are general partner in a desperate
development with a total of six on the
unit's we have two properties in in
Antony New Mexico and we have four in
Las Cruces we have disciplines Montana
senior village one senior to Saurus five
Robledo race in Stone Mountain and also
we have falconry enhanced we have three
affordable housing properties these
properties are non subsidize their own
by the housing authority and basically
mentoring with eighteen units of street
with with 22 units and this operator
basically we have partnered with Mesilla
Valley community of hope we provided a
community center of his face etc so they
provide services and that this property
has been basically useful to house the
homeless better and we provide most of
them have our Vash vouchers and we have
the Pecos apartments with twenty units
and I'll talk a little bit more about
them in a few minutes so this is the
location of our Casper a population of
affordable housing properties we have
three in consumer baskets to
incarceration common one in counselor
evasion
so let's talk about the Fairhope
apartments their shuffle performance is
a 9% low-income house in size very
project this project started about two
years ago basically the New Mexico
coalition to end homelessness develop a
training program to develop permanent
supportive housing so they contacted
Nicole Martinez and invited her to put a
team together to participate in this
training so Nicole invited the housing
authority generous halls in the city to
be part of this thing at the end
basically the team was just the Housing
Authority a community of community hope
in the city of Las Cruces the Housing
Authority is a wonderful illustrated is
the owner of the property will develop
the property and also manage the
property the materiality community hope
will be the lead service provided we
will have also a community center with
occasions in laundry room offices
accessor the serious process has been
very supportive on this project
basically the mayor and the council has
mentioned everywhere responsively
provided conference and also additional
funding to match the local contribution
also they've they're gonna wear these in
factories on the firming cream so he has
been very supportive their hope is
located at 30 Temple Street which is
distant 3
currently we have 22 beer from units we
know we gonna compare those twenty two
bedroom units in 240 efficiency units as
he should know like to mention we're
gonna have build a community building
with kitchen on the room offices the
estimated development cost is about six
point seven million
we anticipate starting construction and
may 20 2008 later the housing authority
has allocated 36 project-based vouchers
to this 40-unit what it means is that
housing authorities put in a voucher but
it's not independent is in the unit so
those vouchers will stay there so that's
the difference between a 10 and base
voucher in a protest egg boxes so those
vouchers will stay with the unit so
their range for the unit will will be
suffered in order to be able to serve
the homeless and the chronically
homeless this is just a quick render II
of the last they signed that of the
property so this is a way for a look
when we revealed
the Housing Authority has a Mississippi
plan basically has 550 people the first
one is aligned with our mission is to be
able to provide safe quality and
affordable we have to manage our core
programs and asses to be a high
performance in financially strong agency
we are leader Anna strategic partners
with local statewide and federal
stakeholders to advocate for their
development and preservation of
affordable housing our community
developing foster a high efficient
collaborative and performing staff that
continues to achieve the Housing
Authority mission improve their lives of
our residents by providing opportunities
that foster self-sufficiency and by
Pacific protecting the rights and
diversity what are the current housing
needs the County Apollo housing fund s
basically estimates as an air of
subsidized rental units of 4300
subsidizing in housing units 350 the
city's affordable housing plan estimates
I need over over 2000 subsidized rental
as you can see fully unisys basically
provide 1% of it
why are the challenges opportunities
that the housing authority is facing so
the first one is funding what is it
funding that is available in order to
develop over 4,000 units as I mentioned
early the 9% low-income tax credit but
it's a very competitive in the month
where housing protest is capa 1.2
million basically if you receive the 1.2
million over 10 years that's 12 million
dollars
wizard a mono suspects basically you can
develop 70 to 80 units a year so we're
still very short amazing earnings as I
mention early the city has been very
soft for it also the counting and we're
looking into other funding like the
National Housing Trust Fund also the
affordable housing program that the
Federal Reserve banks have the Federal
Home Loan Bank up in order to reduce the
gap on our financing and make those
units affordable as I mentioned earlier
ha is basically directing the housing
authorities to reposition public housing
so whether that means basically means
that we need to compel the housing from
right now Polly house and received
funding from section 9 which is not a
stable funding anymore so they want to
have the housing authority swish
a more traditional housing model make
currently the funding that we receive
from from HUD for the public housing
units
it really doesn't meet the knees like we
receive the last few years we have been
receiving half a million dollars a year
for capital funds and those capital
funds are used to modernize the units
while our needs are over 20 million
dollars so with half a million dollars a
year we cannot meet in our own needs and
as you so early our properties are all
so what hot is basically telling us the
way you can reposition these units is
what they have which is called the
rental assistance demonstration program
which is also known as rad would you
convert to a basically a section-8
multifamily funding so you will you will
be converted to the voucher program you
can have project-based vouchers or you
can have project rental assistance they
also say what you can convert those
units to a voluntary conversion you can
disposal or demolish to reinstall a
section a demolition disposition or we
can keep those units in house will
basically release the declaration of
price basically saying okay now the
units are yours but you don't anymore
subsidy shows up to you to maintain
those unions in cover your operating
expenses which is right now with the
rentals that we collect the rents are
very low we cannot support our operating
cost so we get from hardware is follow
pretty
so they're offering subsidy basically
polish that cap from the income that
will receive and offenses that we need
in order to operate those units so all
that will go away if we just basically
say we release release those properties
to us so housing authority wouldn't have
the means to operate and without I'll
open my presentation to questions thank
you sure that I appreciate your
presentation and any questions of the
council it's comforting come on
thank you so much for your presentation
I really appreciate it
and for showing us those pretty
startling numbers I do have a couple
questions regarding just like general
data and I understand that I'm so it
might not be right just the role of the
about housing authorities to have this
but I'm curious if you do like like the
condition of the housing stock in the
city like its age um if it's been
restored right like what like just a
condition of the housing stock in the
cities do you have that kind of
information
so not really like I show you what our
units are right that's the one that see
like affordable housing units were built
in also in the 70s the newer ones are
all of our task force properties when
you see they were built in 2000 2002 up
to 2011 which is the last one but for
the city probably the city staff can
answer you mr. mayor pretend counselor
in Como Natalie green with commune
development we do have those numbers and
go work on getting those to you that's
wonderful
Natalie what about um like the average
rent in the city like that kind of data
so our housing means assessment will
have all of that
our estimated cost of houses that needs
to be rehabilitated what are their
conditions but considers four major
categories of conditions for them to be
deficient
usually that's a lack of plumbing
overcrowding and lack of working kitchen
so we have data on all of that that we
can get that would be wonderful and then
who does the inspection for us the
housing authority HUD will do annual
inspections on the public housing units
for the task or properties basically MFA
is a contract agent for hard in New
Mexico so they have staff that also will
do inspections in addition the investors
will also do an inspection and we in
there's a standard inspection and their
scores associated to those inspections
the housing authority the annual
inspections for is taken into
consideration for this all-day
assessment system which has other
indicators but unknown inspections
basically are 40 points out of 100 and I
just want to clarify that there's only
an inspection process if there's
subsidies tied to that so if it's a
member of the general public and they're
having landlord tenant issues we don't
have a mechanism to inspect those so we
would need some sort of ordinance or
something that gives us property
standards to maintain so if it's not a
rehabilitation or a new construction
where our community development staff
will inspect and we have no authority to
do that thank you for saying that
Natalie I think that's a really good
point
as mayor pro-tem on the run counselor
and como Larry Nicholas Community
Development we do not have a property
maintenance code
in our city we do have other codes that
would allow us to inspect but we need to
adopt a cause of that nature to enable
us to help with this inspection effort
thank you and maybe glad you said that I
am I'm hopefully going to be serving on
the Housing Committee where I think
we'll hopefully we'll talk about this
but I would love to see a work session
on something like this like a property
maintenance code where tenants have
mmm-more say in in the conditions of
their apartments or rental spaces thank
you so much
I think that that's it for me and thank
you both comfort of photos thank you
madam chair I do have a question for
Natalie Natalie you've said that Natalie
green so there are only inspections if
subsidized so and then you clarified and
said well that does it that's not just a
regular landlord tenant like a broken
window or you know plumbing that isn't
working so what what did what does what
do the HUD subsidized inspections entail
Mayor Pro temp counselor floors if
there's HUD funding there they have
regulation system it used to be called a
housing quality standard assessment I
think now it's a uniform basically they
have the housing quality standards which
also when the tenant has a voucher and
goes and find a place to leave - we do a
inspection of that unit we have a third
fire inspector that goes into that
property inspector units in accordance
with HUD housing quality
so what are those standards mr. Vader
you said HUD HQs housing police Tanner's
is a very very long inspection
questionnaire that covers basically
health and safety issues and also the
condition of the property structure they
look at everything yeah they look at the
erosion control see so it's not only the
union for us also is they all the common
area so if you live in if you're looking
into an apartment Union they look at the
Union they looked at the kitchen is
working families working but from the
condition there is no mall there is so
they look for deficient and based on
that if the unit doesn't meet those
standards then the tenant cannot move to
that unit HUD won't subsidize well we
will not allow them to move into the
unit because it doesn't meet the
standards we also do an annual annual
inspection we Housing Authority are
basically we have a third party
certified inspector from ha he's not
from Paris a third party inspector
certified by HUD and they do the
inspection every year if they find
efficiencies they identified those
officials are being either henan creator
or the tenant cause those efficiencies
or they are the Llano responsibilities
and based on that they need a better
landlord then the learner has to correct
those they will not pass inspection they
will do our respect until the unit
passage so is that the motivation for a
landlord to bring it up to standards so
they can wait it out well they have to
from the beginning okay but then there's
no standard whatsoever watching every
year we do an animal with to another
inspection to make sure that the unit
continues to meet those standards if
they don't meet those standards then as
I mentioned early they
is determined if those are caused by the
tenor or their land or then if they're
caused by the landlord the landlord to
correct those deficiencies until they
pass inspection if they don't find the
special we don't pay the rental
assistance so so then the tenant if the
tenant wants to remain in the property
they have to fix it not approve it but
but they be able to stay if they can pay
or so there they wouldn't be able to
afford it there won't be able to afford
so then it'd be almost like a self
eviction know what transfer you would we
will transfer them to another unit I see
thank you thank you Miss Greene and
thank you mr. Bennett any other
questions
there Patel thank you Mary Thank You fun
I noticed that I would agree with
councilor Bencomo the rates and the
numbers the need is staggering and so
you have some slides that depicted what
the county's needs are in the city and
in one of them for the county you have
the senior associate senior housing but
you didn't for the city no because I was
just basically focusing on base of the
rental units I don't remember if we have
that broken down in your plan mr. mayor
Mayor Pro Tem council Kannada will look
into that it's likely in our affordable
housing plan and they just want to point
out that this is only the subsidized
rental unit so this is a different
number than the number you used to
seeing in our plan because that's gonna
cover all affordable housing which is
over 4,000 so this is just subsidized
right
no I'm I think I got the numbers down
it's just that I found it odd that you
listed the senior but not for the city
or was it a combination of both so for
me it was clarification I think those
numbers are really important to me I
know they're important to the city my
our seniors are you know I often talk
about need versus what's are needing
what's out there right and what it's
going to cost and I'm especially
concerned about our seniors our disabled
seniors that really have no other there
on a fixed income
right so I want to make sure that we
have that number at all times and that
when we start moving towards building
that there's always that emphasis on the
seniors for sure the other and I was a
little confused about the bullet where
you talked about HUD and the way has
recommended that we're moving into
different funding not I'm assuming more
flexible rather than traditional funding
right yeah basically as I mentioned
public housing is funding through
section 9 of the Housing Act and then
the section 8 vouchers and multi-family
are funded through section 8 so section
9 over the years that funding is not as
available and as section 8 basically
hard cannot with the funding they
received they cannot meet the needs of
public housing remember public housing
was sorry but really in 1937 history as
a workforce housing so a lot of the
housing that were built in the nation
are very old and HUD cannot provide
enough funding as a matter of fact they
proposed budget by precedent from
basically eliminate a lot of that
funding eliminates the capital fund
program funding
which is the funding that the housing
authority in order to we have a
modernization units take care in the
operating subsidy we never receive a
hundred percent of the needs is
basically prorated to about eighty
percent so they will keep reducing that
operating subsidy that will receive so
it makes it really hard to they have
some authorities to operate all the
houses so that's a reason they're
basically they one housing authorities
to exit public house so that's what they
recommend in moving to the section a
which is a more stable funding platform
I say some other alternatives the one
the last one which is basically you keep
the unions will be listen to you you're
the owner world it's not a feasible
alternative because we won't be able to
sustain in operators units with the
funding that we have just with the rent
is the rent that we collect this minimum
yeah so when it talks about more stable
funding and you is the only
recommendation section 8 vouchers or is
there other funding out there that we
should be made aware of basically from
Hari will be Section eight and it will
be either tenant about tenant Bowser's
project-based vouchers or project rental
assistance basically you're converting
to Polly Hansen to multifamily which is
a different program is managed by a
different arm of HUD has a multifamily
program in a publican in the housing
program so one in order for I would it
it would be helpful to me to have some
sort of slide that talks about the the
various funding ray and the amounts
because it could be possible if HUD I
mean if our if
we the public said we want our
legislators our federal delegation to
focus aren't their budget or our
attention and in giving more of funding
to this particular area it would be
possible it's just over time they have
decreased it decreased it to where it is
now do you know what that total is and
then how does that money go to MFA and
then it gets distributed it goes
directly to you know the HUD funding for
public housing comes directly to us okay
also all the vouchers everything only
funding comes directly from okay was MFA
is doesn't play a role in the forest for
you okay
so what is the total that that gets to
you awesome too early for the vouchers
we get seven point seven million I'm
here too for to pay for the house in a
system payment that's the money that we
pay the lawyers we also get but
we get about 700,000 dollars a year to
administer those vouchers basically that
depends on the number of vouchers that
we leave we they pay us to manage those
bouncers they meaning the federal god
about all funding come from private now
from year to year has that increased or
that the 7.7 or has it decreased it has
increased because we have increased in
bouncers that we lease so hard measures
as I said we have 1642 vouchers but
basically had measures Hamas or vouchers
are you listen or how much money of your
hub you are spending and based on that
they increase the funding they have all
these tools that they used to measure we
report every month share our expenses
and based on that day for baby was the
funding okay and then the last bullet
around considering repositioning their
units theater or demolish so you just
gave us a fight with how old your units
are mm-hmm
right and what are your recommendations
in terms of addressing rehabbing those
because eventually we'll need to rehab
them yeah basically we're looking at his
property yourself and the population
that we serve so we look in the probably
at the two programs that we'll consider
is the rental assistance demonstration
which basically will convert the rental
assistance demonstration will give us
project-based vouchers or project-based
rental assistance so one of the
properties we look into doing that
commercial
but again in order to do that conversion
we need to find funding because
either we gonna have to apply for 9
percent or 4 percent I square it based
on what we want to do with that property
because we can basically go down to the
stubs and do a major rehab get rid of
all
pesto's in anything else upgrade to the
current car codes of the city I'm in
electrical so we can do that type of
rehab we can also do a complete
demolition demolition build new units
and not units if we if the zoning will
let us we can add additional units like
let's say in San Pedro we have 38 units
but we have plenty of space to increase
also we can build for another judge to
places we don't have any apartment units
anywhere so we could add more units so
we can increase densities right right so
is that what you're recommending to do
well that's one of the 30 tubs
alternative is that we basically request
for a disposition of the unions what it
means is doesn't mean that we're gonna
demolish and forget about those units it
means that now those units belong to us
but we get what is called tenant
protection vouchers for the residents so
with those tenant protection vouchers
basically the residents can pay for
their assistance we can then go ahead
and say okay we wanna again go back and
rebuild and do
I do names in present city so those are
the things that we're looking into so do
you have i guess i'm get trying to get
an idea from you what your plan is with
those older you well right now we
developing a plan not as did an
assessment we heard that consultant good
we just did an assessment and basically
it was presented to the board and we're
gonna start as part of our strategic
plan we're gonna start having work
sessions to develop that plan for it
be show that problem okay and so at this
point you don't know what total the
total cost of any of it no because it's
gonna be by property and based on what
we decide to do we wanna do substantial
rehab or we just want to take cover
comparing to vouchers or we want to do
completely new construction increase
densities or evolve dependence thank you
yeah um I appreciate that and I look
forward to hearing more what that what
that need is going to be in the cost and
how the city can assist in that in that
process lastly one I appreciate I had
invited you and what in over a few weeks
ago to speak to some of the issues that
I'm having in my neighborhood on the
residential side but also and and some
of the units there at housing and I
appreciate your willingness to meet with
me and to come up with strategies to
assist everybody involved and
encouraging right people to feel safe
and and in your in your housing complex
and just so you know I've had the
conversations with Public Safety and
we're passing on some information about
contacts and and whatnot and looking
hopefully we talked about a block party
right - yes involved
not only the residents but your
clientele as well and and I think those
are things that are kind of up and
coming so I hope to hear in a month or
so what the detail is going to look like
but we will certainly plug you in both
of you in know as I mentioned earlier
we're eager to participate in this type
of activity yes I appreciate that thank
you one Thank You mayor cancer florist
Thank You mr. mayor and thank you for
all your questions the death may occur
to mr. Ogata so I'm just curious so say
you assess some of the homes or all of
the homes inside Bethel
right there on misty think they must get
a example if you if you if gifts the
assessment comes in and says that
they're very old there's just too much
asbestos maybe they find mold in them or
something that is very very costly to
rectify and you decide to for other
factors or multitude of factors where
the decision is made to it's better to
raise them all and replace with new
housing and then as you said there's
room there to add more units or perhaps
because those are like duplexes correct
little buildings so would happen to the
tenants at that point they would have to
be real open they will be relocated but
also on a long term or short no it's
short term we will be it depends again
on the rehab that we con that we're
doing there will be a short term or if
it's a long term then they will get
tenant protection vouchers if it's
longer than one year if we sell one year
basically we they will be relocated to
other units but one of the things that
we look in is it doing any faces they
say we had 38 unit
so we'll start with a an area we'll s88
unions and then we'll move to say to
other units in the same complex well
basically we have any vacancies we will
not fill those vacancies to relocate it
to those other units so no we have to
relocate them we cannot just throw them
off to the street no Thank You mr. bear
Thank You mr. mayor sure anyone else
questions so want in and I'm sorry I had
to step out for a little bit so just and
it may have covered this or not but I
know your focus a lot was on low-income
housing
how about mixed-use housing are you
familiar with that and yeah baby
basically either what basically we that
we touch square is - Paris is just one
financing alternative to do but you can
develop a property that you have market
rate units they could have tasks where
Jonas which would be affordable you can
have Eunice I have vouchers and you have
units have poly housing like our project
desert hope was have affordable housing
units which is we were financed with
correct we our eligibility is for 30%
ami which is astronomy lobe which is for
homeless and also we have 36
project-based vouchers that will provide
that subsidy to those units so right
there you have mixed financing but yeah
as I made a comment before in other
conversations you know PHA so we develop
a property that we had market rate units
in this same complex
Palli have seen units vultures ant
aspirated it's a nightmare to manners
because each funding stream has
eligibility requirements in addition we
also use home units because if you get
home funds you've tagged on home units
so there's another eligibility which is
also different but you can create all of
those and basically that's something
that we saw looking is if we're gonna
increase density well that density that
we want the number of units we're gonna
have are basically could be market rate
units or be also project by special
units also we could have space for
commercial or retail but it's something
that we need to do right for each of the
communities well thank you for that I'd
like to use the analogy of my Southwest
Airlines a lot of times when you're
walking onto the plane there's people
who pay full price there's some who paid
the getaway Fiat fare some have the
vouchers for free and you don't know who
they all have a good seat and they're
all going in the same place and they can
some can pay you some the full price and
half price some free so I think that's
that's ideally what it should look like
the other thing is have you ever built
mixed-use housing yes a mitten I mean
large projects well we build the animage
them the one in El Paso which was a
hundred ninety eight units and also an
additional they were in place already an
additional public housing units there
were those public housing units were
single family units this is a gated
community he has basically wellness
center swimming pool basketball courts
walking trails and you have all these
people which you don't know who is who
because some are paying market and some
are getting the assistance of public
house and they pay $50 rent but they're
all seen this in the swimming pool they
don't know who they are
yeah and now basically we for that
project we requested I'm trying to
remember it was like 1.3 million dollars
on tax queries we were awarded those tax
credits so wasteful it was like 13
million
have you ever constructed any Delta I
constructed it by signing community
which is a net zero LEED Platinum you
yourself I mean well I was the basically
that well I was did they develop for the
housing authority I her a general
contractor I did a comparative bid to
her a general contractor to build that
place the same thing with the other
property that we that was talking
earlier we hire a general contractor
that's right you have a engineering
degrees from Stanford Stanford I don't
think I've ever heard of Stanford no you
know that's great really impressive well
thanks things want yeah and the
advantage of that is being the developer
like here in the case that we're doing
desert hope we are the developer the
developer fees is stay with Housing
Authority basically MA we could get up
to 15% of developer fees and that stays
here and that money will help us finance
additional affordable housing units so
that's one of the key or maybe might be
calling on you sometime
anytime okay you have my number yeah
okay uh anything else
members of the public thank you very
much one for for your presentation we
appreciate it we appreciate you hoping
take care of our other members of the
community that need that type of housing
Oh No thank you okay so moving on to
item number three yep
is the most critical these wastewater
improvements investment grade audit
recommendations and dr. Jorge Garcia you
told these director will be discussing
Thank You mr. mayor and council back in
late 2017 we came to you with the very
first performance contract with the city
it dealt with advanced metering
infrastructure for water and gas
utilities since then we've almost
completed that project and we're
finalizing the network infrastructure
and working on the web portal that will
have access give access to our customers
so a very successful project at the end
of the project we also have a report for
both the utility board and the council
to show you the savings the leak
detection system has proven very
reliable and we've detected several
hundred leaks we've repaired a hundred
leaks already in the system that nobody
could see so the technology is there and
the technology is it works in we're very
proud that we adopted that technology at
the time we informed the council that we
would look at water wastewater on water
conservation or water management
measures and leave the wastewater which
was Monali mainly energy savings
measures for later so here today we are
on the second part part two of that
investment-grade audit
well we looked at the wastewater plants
all of them and we found some
possibilities of savings and improvement
and operations so I'm going to ask mr.
Romine who you know from Johnson
Controls also introduces one of his
regional managers and after this
presentation we both will answer
questions and explain to Council what
the next steps would be if you concur
with this proposal without mr. Ramon
thank you dr. Garcia I could have to do
mayor and council city staff my name is
Harry Romine account manager with
Johnson Controls with me today is
Maureen Blais
she's our regional general manager for
like the West portion of the United
States including New Mexico so if you
have any tough questions for me after
the presentation I'm gonna turn it over
to Maureen so did you say her that's the
most blaze or glaze blaze BL ASE okay so
I do appreciate the opportunity to
provide you an update today on the
results of our investment grade audit
for the phase 2 project with the
Utilities Department just before we
begin just as a reminder to counselors
Bencomo in and Tessa beta Stewie this is
the gentleman who promised a certain
amount of savings and if not they'll
write us a check so just a reminder cuz
I know you've been given a lot of stuff
okay just so we can put you into context
who you are Thank You mayor you always
send them remind everybody about that so
we appreciate that so just a refresher
the ESP C it is a procurement vehicle
that allows you to make improvements
today and pay for those improvements
over a term using the savings and the
revenues to pay back the
and it's called performance contracting
because as a mayor just mentioned we
have to guarantee those savings for
example this phase 2 project were
guaranteeing about five hundred and
fifty thousand a year in savings and so
in year one you know a year after the
construction is complete if the actual
savings is only about five hundred
thousand I just talked directly into it
oh we have to bring the city of check
for fifty thousand that year to make up
the difference so it is financially
guaranteed before I move to talk about
the Phase two
dr. Garcia covered some of this already
just a quick update on phase one you can
see we are almost 100% complete on this
project it's performing very well and
even though we haven't moved into our
guaranteed savings on this yet we did
run some preliminary calculations on the
savings during the construction period
and very happy to say that it was just
in the increased water and sewer
revenues it was over you know five
hundred thousand a year so far this is
this during construction from the new
meters and the leak detection so
performing very well now I'll move into
the Phase two I'll try to move through
these pretty quick I know it's been kind
of a long work session already but if I
go too fast
just stop me I'll come back just a
little bit about the audit that we did
we did look at three years of operating
cost for the wastewater department and
the audit did verify a very good
opportunity for some self funded
improvements we had multiple workshops
with the utility staff to review and
agree upon you know the best solutions
so here your three waste here your three
wastewater plants
you could see that that Jakob hands is
by far the the oldest and has the most
operating cost so that is obviously kind
of where we found most of the good
improvements for the project
SCADA you know all you might not know
what SCADA is and it's basically its
industrial controls that utilities use
to operate their plants and their
distribution systems I'm just kind of an
industry term so the utilities has a
very well-organized SCADA for their
water operations you know their pumps
and their water wells and their storage
tanks but the bottom line is the
utilities has a real urgent need for a
new SCADA system for their their
wastewater operations I'll talk a little
more about that in a minute
Jacob hands plant as a mentioned this is
where most the opportunity is we
developed an extensive model of this
plant because of the size of it and the
model did verify that the plant is
actually even as old as it is is
performing very good but it did identify
some good opportunities one of those
opportunities is the two cogeneration
units at the plant you know they they
have already you know saved some good
operating cost at the plant but the
plant operators actually have to limit
the capacity of these two units right
now because there is not a inter
connection for the El Paso Electric grid
so I'll talk a little more about that in
a second East Mesa plant is also
performing very well and a few years ago
as most year where you installed a very
large solar PV system at this plant and
congratulations to the city and the
staff
it is performing extremely well it's
actually generating over 50% of the
power needed at this plant so that's
very good news and we did find a couple
opportunities where we could reduce the
cost a little bit more West Mesa plant
even though it has some old equipment
that was relocated from the Jacob hands
plant the current loads to this plant
are very low and the utility staff
instructed us not to include any
improvements at this plant right now one
other thing we looked at during the
audit is you have some wastewater
reclaim water meters for example New
Mexico State University you know they
have their own water wells for their
water but then they send all their waste
water to the city so you obviously have
to meter that and Bill University for
that so we we looked at the accuracy of
these meters you just this table we
tested 10 of the 20 and you can see out
of those 10 about five of them those
meters are reading low so they will need
to be replaced all right so that's the
audit I'll move into our recommended
improvements mentioned this two already
new waste water SCADA system wireless
communication between the three plants
and will also be tied into the emergency
dispatch center over Jacob hands this is
one of the larger improvements you have
for natural gas driven gas blowers these
are huge blowers there are over 20 years
old and they've exceeded their their
useful life in fact one of the four is
not even operational the plant is having
to steal parts from it to you know keep
the other three going so there's a real
need to
replace these with efficient blowers and
then we have a few more improvements
that we're doing there next one is
primary sludge pumping improvements
again we're just putting in these are
all this is old inefficient equipment
that we're upgrading last that Jacob
hands is the the cogeneration plant
improvements which I kind of mentioned
earlier that this took quite a while to
do but you know Johnson Controls and
utilities staff we had several meetings
with El Paso Electric and I'm happy to
say we negotiate a very favorable rate
and deal for the city one it will be net
metering so if you do occasionally over
produce from the koujun then it'll
subtract that usage from that monthly
bill just like your solar PV systems do
and the other thing is they're going to
allow you to remain on the very low-cost
power rate so we were very happy to
finally get those negotiations done this
basically will allow you to run both
these units full capacity 24 hours a day
seven days a week except when you've got
to take one down for maintenance and
really utilize the full benefit of these
and basically eliminate any more flaring
of extra digester gas that you do now
take that digester gas and use it as
fuel for the cogent plant at the East
Mesa plant just a couple of other
improvements there that will reduce the
operating cost of the plant and the to
lift stations this is the wastewater
reclaim water meters we will be updating
these meters the other thing is we will
be tying these to the the ami meter
eating system that we put in for the
water meters so they right now these are
currently manually read
in fact there's a few customers that
they own the meter and take the readings
each month and give it to the utility so
this improvement will take care of all
that a few other little more
improvements lighting improvements at
all utility facilities just upgrade to
LED technology there's also a few air
conditioning units we're going to
replace energy management system and a
few facilities last but not least is EPE
counts rate conversion we studied every
electric account that utility has and
through that analysis we identified I
think it was about five or six accounts
that you can switch to a better rate and
save I think the total savings was about
fifty thousand a year so we like to find
these because they don't cost anything
and you get a lot of savings I believe
the staff is already instructed El Paso
Electric to change these accounts so you
may already be saving some of that money
okay so we'll move to the cost
excuse me mr. Romain yes so I don't
suppose I'll pass electric his woman to
go back a few months of credit since
they've been overcharging us mayor
that's a that's a very good question I
will make a note of that and we have had
success in doing that sometimes in
requesting going back a couple of years
it depends on how the tariff is written
it may say that you know it's up to the
city to tell us you want to switch to
this other rate but it's a very good
question and I'll make a note to look
into that because we have not asked for
them to go back a year or two well it
doesn't hurt
maybe we can definitely done our time
right before we sue them
[Laughter]
okay use as part of the negotiations huh
okay back to the numbers this is a
breakdown of the cost for each ECM you
could see the SCADA and the aeration a
Jacob hands are the two larger projects
you've got some construction and
engineering costs and towards the bottom
you have your emn Rd fee and that is for
they will do a third-party review of our
investment grade audit report and then
they have to provide you a certification
of that report which they are reviewing
the report right now you've got your gr
T which comes a total of almost nine
point four million so to look at it from
a cost and savings standpoint you could
see that there's about 300,000 electric
savings 25 and natural gas there's some
meter accuracy benefits about twenty
thousand there there is some substantial
onm besides energy savings with it so a
total of about five hundred forty
thousand a year in guaranteed savings
which generates a simple payback of
about seventeen point two years and I'll
emphasize again if the actual savings is
only you know four hundred fifty
thousand after year one we have to make
write a check to make up the difference
on that guaranteed amount the other
thing I'd like to mention is is this is
the same presentation that we presented
to the Utility Board last month and
since then we actually have found or
identified some additional savings at no
additional cost
so the new total savings is about 585
thousand which generates a simple
payback of about sixteen point one years
so that's that's good news and that's in
the report that that EMI ard is
reviewing so from a financing standpoint
again we generated this before the board
meeting last month in our conversations
with your financial adviser RBC at the
time he told us to use a 20-year term
and three and a half percent interest
well I think everyone knows that you
know with the coronavirus and the issues
on Wall Street that the interest rates
are probably as low as they have been
for a very long time and in fact we
heard you know today that you know for a
20-year deal under 2% is is out there so
I think what this says is now is an
extremely good time for the city to
close on the financing for any of these
projects and the sooner you can move the
the better and and so so the financial
on this would only get a lot better
obviously at a low interest rate and I
think that your financial adviser and
you know the Utilities Department will
probably consider a shorter term as well
because they'll they'll be able to do
that if they want to just quickly you
can see that the expected life of
everything that we're putting in is
twenty years or greater which you want
it to be greater than the term of the
contract last slide I promise so one of
the big benefits of the project is it's
going to substantially reduce your your
carbon footprint
these are just some examples of from the
co2 emissions what's equivalent you know
you you got 548 vehicles a year is the
equivalency of the savings out of this
project
you know 297 homes for one year and
there's just some other examples there
but just to kind of wrap this this up
you know there's there's several
benefits that we see from this project
one is that the utility department has
as you know a lot of capital needs and
so by entering in and into this
performance contract ESPC this is taking
care of a lot of those infrastructure
needs that they have not all of them but
some of them and paying for itself so
that they can utilize their CIP funds
for other other projects the other
benefit of this is the current city
renewable energy goal that that you guys
have set and we're very impressed by
those goals
this project will also assist you with
that in two ways one it's going to lower
the electric bass line of the utility
department which automatically your
solar PV systems that percent will go up
because we're going to lower the
electric baseline and then two you're
going to limit the flaring of the
digester gas Jacob hands which and
convert that to renewable energy through
the coach in units so it has some good
benefits there so with that I think I'm
done and I'll open it up to any
questions anybody has no floor discounts
herb but have APIs to eat Thank You mr.
mayor and and thank you mister romaine
or is it romaine remind me row by ok
roommate it's been it's been said many
different ways okay thank you mister
romaine and as far as we have page 21
yes
probably slide 21 for you as well we
have it at page 21 is it that one yes
that's it so where it says cost its nine
million three hundred and sixty six
thousand four hundred and forty dollars
and then it has all the breakdown then
the last column says total annual
project benefits and then simple payback
seven point two years
can you explain all of that to me again
yes counselor so the what what the the
total project benefits is the 543 is
just adding up the previous four columns
has taken the electric savings gas meter
accuracy onm
so that's the total that we're
guaranteeing each year to pay back to
the project and so I take the cost
divide it by that total and that gets
you the 17 years simple payback so the
benefits the annual benefits are the
savings projected per the been the other
so that last column is what we are
saving and all of that will be recovered
the nine plus million will be recovered
at 7.17 point two years and the if we
don't recover annually five hundred and
forty three thousand plus dollars you
pay that back to us is that what I heard
yes counselor we would we would pay the
difference if the actual you know we'll
we'll be monitoring the actual savings
each year and so if it comes in at five
hundred thousand first year we have to
write you a check for the difference
which would be the forty three thousand
for that year and then we'll look at it
again in year two if we're sixty
thousand short in year two we have to
bring a check for sixty thousand
in the second year and we come and
provide you a report each year on how
the the project worked each year did it
over exceed the guaranteed savings or
under achieve and if it under achieved
then we bring a check to that that
council meeting does that mean that you
come back every year for 17.2 years yes
counselor we-well unless flowers at my
grave like projective actuarial noses
that didn't go that far I don't know
that I will be here every year for 17
years I kind of hope not
the contract does state that we will
come back and we're guaranteeing it
every year every year the term of the
contract now we have had some some
cities that after about year six where
we've over achieved the savings every
year they've kind of said well I'm good
I feel that we're gonna get them every
year I don't need to pay you to go and
measure and verify anymore that I'm over
achieving my savings so they would
cancel
they have canceled that M&V program but
it's kind of like an insurance policy
you've now cancelled our guarantee on
those savings each year if I don't do
that why would anybody do that I mean if
you bid pay okay all right well no I
mean it's a good it's a very good
question counselor the reason is that we
do we do have to charge a annual service
fee to monitor the actual savings each
year on a quarterly basis and make sure
that the city hasn't changed the
operation of one of the plants which is
causing the energy go up so there is a
annual service agreement that the
savings are paying for that too because
it has to by state law okay but so
that's the reason that some of the
cities have said well instead of paying
you that twenty five thousand dollars
every year
to monitor and come back and verify that
will cancel it we're comfortable that
we're getting the savings that we're
going to need you know to pay back the
investment of the project actually well
thank you thank you very much like
explanation clarification thank you mr.
Blaine Thank You mr. mayor sir about the
stealing thank you Mary Thank You mr.
remain why I'm looking in here you just
mentioned a service fee that we would
need to pay every year to have
everything checked out also when we have
these annual projected benefit savings
did you include any other fees that we
were going to be paying you as well how
is that included in here because that's
one area that I'm not saying yes
counselor that's another very good
question so yet yes we did
we included when we look at these the
O&M cost savings which is showing here
about one hundred ninety seven thousand
year we also look at well what are maybe
some new cost you're going to have to
support some of the new equipment such
as this new SCADA system so we actually
I mean dr. Garcia will decide how he
really wants to handle taking care of
this new server that you're going to
need for the SCADA but we went got a
quote where if he wanted to outsource it
to a local company it was going to cost
about fifty thousand a year so actually
we had to back- fifty thousand to get to
the one ninety stuff and that's all kind
of in the in the report where sometimes
we had a negative om that we had to
include in the cost as well okay and
then I guess just to clarify on this
when we have this compensating that's
also us paying your company for anything
that we are obligated to as well when
I'm seeing this number right here it's
also including that fee that you are
charging the city for us to be
monitoring to be doing
that's all part of the the measurement
verification program okay
so then our final total savings
service fee which we will have to
accommodate for yearly will be that five
hundred and forty-three correct yes
counselor and ten and there is a
business cash flow that was not in this
but it is in the in the IGA report if
you'd like to look at it and this is
what was shared with your financial
advisor and when you look in that it
shows the interest you know the total
loan payment over the 20 years and it
shows what our M&V cost is there's
separate column for that as well um is
the service be something that is able to
be shared with us later on so that we
know those actual budget numbers is that
can be heard somebody can come back with
me mr. chairman counselor on an annual
basis we'll be reporting to the board
and then to the council as to what the
status of the project is mr. Romine has
showed us that we have five hundred and
forty three thousand dollars worth of
benefits we've done some over the
numbers already with our financial
adviser and the debt service will be
about five hundred thousand five hundred
and three thousand in the annual
measurement variations in the twenty six
thousand dollars so even at the end of
the year every year there's some money
left over okay but the whole point of
having the savings is because this money
goes to pay for the debt now when I when
I come back to the City Council should
you agree with this project then I come
for the to the City Council for issuance
of the debt because only the City
Council can issue the debt I will have
the financial adviser RBC Capital
Markets give you a presentation an
independent review of this numbers like
we did last time with a twenty two
million dollar project so the financial
advisor will show you the debt service
what his projections are and he'll
verify for you some of these members
okay thank you and mr. Furst yeah we're
very confident that should we move
through with this that when we purchased
these new equipment areas whose our debt
will be now the seventeen point two
years that anything that we purchased
will outlive our debt and if not is
there any sort of guarantees on this
equipment mr. chairman counselor beta I
will have a mr. Romine answer that there
weren't a portion of the different parts
of the equipment when we did their water
meters the water meters were guaranteed
for 20 years and we had a cost for the
replacement of the batteries built into
the system so I last came to to
elaborate on that but the bottom line is
there is responsibility on top on behalf
of Johnson Controls to this project
there's responsibility of city staff to
make this project work as well if city
staff doesn't do their job they are hit
on the measurement verification is going
to tell the utility board and tell the
council that staffs not doing their job
on their part meaning if we don't
replace a part or the system the SCADA
system failed and it's not working and
we didn't fix it things like that so so
there is it's a contract it has two
parties and both parties need to do
their part would you like to answer them
something yes counselor so this is
you'll see that the expected life is
twenty years or greater and I really
think the the term of the financing will
probably be maybe end up being around
eighteen years when it's all said and
done with the lower interest rates does
that answer your question
sit very close for me I want to say
seventeen point two and twenty I know
that it also makes me question if we do
see any sort of great technology
increases are we now dressed up kind of
with what the equipment we have and now
we have a debt issue in and so that is a
major concern with me
technology changes so quickly and in 17
years I can imagine it being very
different than now and so that's kind of
one of my biggest hesitations I would
say is what happens if we need to adapt
for that technology but we are still
kind of locked in these debts yeah I
mean it's it's a very good question
counselor I think that at least in my
opinion you know dealing with wastewater
plants and water plants that they
typically hang on to their equipment
quite a while even though there is some
new technologies as you say do come out
all the time I think what we're putting
in is something that would stay for the
full even you know these years or even
longer but I understand you're you're
concerned we'll be happy to talk to city
staff about it a little bit more thank
you thank you miss Pam mr. chairman
councillor of eight is two if I can add
a little bit if we were to propose new
technology I would have to come here and
justify to you financially that it makes
sense to either abandon one of the items
on this contract because the savings of
the new technology will more than
overcome this as you know I'm an
enterprise fund so I need to show
management and the board and the council
that something will pay for itself
financially adopting technology for the
sake of adopting technology it's not a
good idea I had to show you that it's
gonna work financially and we're going
to further save or improve delivery to
customers so so again you can be assured
that we need to we need to do analysis
and not just say let's abandon the SCADA
system because there's something better
in the market the ami technology in
water meters has been out for some time
and we only adopted it last year
why because number one we couldn't
afford it so first we started with a
pilot project and we saw how we're going
to implement
over 30 to 35,000 customers and thanks
to a performance contract we found the
avenue to do that but the technology
didn't come out last year we found for
the right time and place to do that so
any more questions mr. Romine can you go
back to the earlier slide I think had
seven point two years seventeen it was
just a couple slide serve before that
one before there that one right there
so that's based on can you go back one
more thing you had two interest rate
three point five twenty years nine right
so this information here and then this
has to be the interest rate and then if
you go forward to the savings the five
hundred and okay that one right there
that was based on three and a half
percent interested well mayor this this
slide right here slide 21 this is really
kind of year one you know at the current
cost of power and natural gas OH
but but there is a button you included
the debt service in there right or so I
did in the in the cash flow the business
cash flow that it's not in this slide
deck unfortunately probably should have
had it it would have covered some of
your questions okay so let's go back go
back to the one where it has a night the
three point five percent what was that
representing here right there is that
what the terms that we're hoping to get
no sir this is this was like before we
did our presentation to the till tea
board in February and your adviser said
let's put in a very conservative three
and a half percent that's all that is
okay so did you use three and a half
percent I did and so it still works over
a 20-year term and so using this how
many years payback is it you had to go
out about twenty years okay so how did
you get the 17.2 that's just a simple
payback
in year one that does not include the
interest charges on a loan it's just a
simple if you paid cash nine point three
million seen divided by the savings
simple payback
I gotcha so it didn't include the
interest charges or some of the other
service costs how's that likes it I wish
I'd have had the cash flow okay I
apologize I see what you're saying okay
because we I ran the numbers and and if
we can get two percent interest is save
us about two more years yes sir I really
think it'll be a you know maybe an
eighteen year term that's eighty four
thousand all year savings that two
percent interest
Wow so that's big over twenty year
period that's one point six million and
let me just say this
usually the technology sure there's
gonna be technology on machinery but
it's a lot of it it's on energy and so
the energy is what drives this machinery
so so I still have the air conditioners
I use in my office or twenty someone use
or I'm amazed that they still work but
you know today's today's equipment will
bring it down a little bit better but if
I really wanted to that the ideal thing
is is solar that way it you know so
because if you have solar and their
current equipment still works just use
that it's free yeah okay great
any questions from members of the public
there's any public members I think
you're the only one Debbie anything else
dr. Percy no mr. chairman if of course
this is not work session so there's no
action but the next steps if the council
feels comfortable by the way the Utility
Board did recommend this project the
next step is we go back to the utility
board with the overall investment grade
audit contract which is a state contract
the utility board can only issue death
so they would approve the contract and
send it back to you for financing when I
come back for financing we'll have a
presentation from the financial advisor
and we will look at the terms of the
loan most likely given the size of this
loan and I will need approximately
thirteen
million dollars for the next couple of
years for other improvements so most
likely will issue about 22 million
dollars worth of bonds most likely
through to NMFA loans that's the
thinking today now I haven't taught the
financial advisor this morning so I
don't know things may change but so we
will come to you with a whole package
one will be the guaranteed savings
contract that's probably one loan and
the other loan is for the capital
improvement plan and at that time you'll
be able to ask questions like I say it's
an independent review by the financial
advisor of these numbers you've seen
today so at that time you will have a
first read and then the second read and
move forward with the financing we will
try to move as fast as possible because
interest rates are really low as you
know from the last two they are
refunding and so I'm trying to move as
fast as possible I'm trying to go to the
utility board next month and then come
to you and a first read also next month
you don't think you can call a special
meeting the utility board I could if
mayor if we have to we will
I think I'm trying to do simultaneously
almost your first read and the board
approval and that happens at the early
in the month so so we can get out next
month in have a get on the NMFA less
than we would be okay okay thank you
mayor and council thank you dr. C thank
you mr. Romine and miss blaze okay it
looks like the last item Las Cruces
economic outlook update presented by dr.
Francisco Polly Addis
I wonder we should teach a few classes
here at night with so many PhDs Wiggins
I saw for some college courses make some
money get a city discount right
good afternoon mr. mayor good afternoon
City Council my name is Francisco Perez
with the Economic Development Department
before if this is your first out of the
two yearly updates on the economy of Las
Cruces before we proceed I just wanted
to show for the new counselors how to
get to the report that I produce on a
quarterly basis so you just simply open
your search engine of preference and you
can type city of Las Cruces economic
development and the first one right
there should take you over to our city
page to our department page and it's
just scroll down there's a little button
that says economic outlook and report
and from there it says economic outlook
quarterly report so we have all the
different outlooks we produce since the
first quarter of 2018 the latest one is
this one it's a 42 page document
I typically publish this and doing the
month of the in which the new quarter
begins so this this one speaks of the
fourth quarter of 2019 and it has a lot
of information in there so it has
information with cumulative growth and
unemployment rates and a lot of
different things so you're able to
access that that is already currently in
our website actually the presentation
that I have for today is mostly based in
numbers from that specific report so
with that said
I can thank you very much for for the
time of allowing me to speak here today
the first thing that I will show you is
the labor market the panel on your left
shows you the unemployment rate by month
that we have seen in the city of Las
Cruces for 2019 and 2018 as you can see
the numbers are pretty resembling of
2018 figures we have pretty much behaved
the same for the last two years now in
terms of unemployment the unemployment
is compared to the state of New Mexico
it's it's still a little higher compared
to the state of New Mexico but not by
much
we're still somewhat far away from the
United States unemployment rate if we
take for example on December's which is
the preliminary figure for 2019 we had a
four point seven unemployment rate
whereas in the state of New Mexico had
four point five and the United States
showed a three point four percent
unemployment rate so the important thing
to figure from here is is to see that
we're not that far away we've been
consistently behaving like we had since
2018 and it's not that high of an
unemployment rate and it's interesting
because as I will say towards the end of
the presentation we have seen some
increases in the number of people that
are employed and some increases in the
number of people that are unemployed and
there's a reason for that
but we'll get to that as we continue to
move forward the next one it's a slide
that I usually show in front of you that
tells you what are the top employment
industries in the city the panel on the
Left shows you the top 10 industries by
employment in the third quarter of 2019
the biggest employer of course are
elementary and secondary schools then we
have our restaurant businesses which
employ collectively about 5,000 people
then we have one two three four
different industries all dedicated to
health care between general medical home
health care offices of physicians
services for the elderly then we have a
big chunk and police protection we have
us and contact centers such as still a
marketing as well as warehouse clubs and
super centers
just to point out these ten industries
collectively employed right around
18,000 people in the city so you you are
very likely to know someone that is
employed in one of those industries I
mean very very likely that you know
someone at least that is employed in one
of these images so with that said the
panel on your right shows you which have
been the biggest increases quarter to
quarter from 2018 to 2019 that third
quarter and the biggest jump that we
could tell from there is educational
services so educational services grew by
232 jobs and one important aspect that I
want you to see is that heavy and civil
engineering construction had also a big
jump professional scientific and
technical services had also a big jump
this is your engineers your accountants
your lawyers your your all combination
of the above we got some growth in
retail slight but small but Scylla
growth in gasoline stations some growth
in food manufacturing as well as some of
the others now this is for the
Metropolitan Statistical Area which
again this pretty much encompasses the
overall Dona Ana County and the panel on
your left is the total nonfarm payroll
employment that we have seen every month
on each one of those months the blue
line has been which 2018 below the Green
Line which is 2019 so that speaks of
course of the of a good labor market
we've been adding jobs consistently at
least compared to 2018 except for and
the month of September in which it was
slightly below but nothing that you
could tell was a big difference now when
we look at this December to december
year you change into a known for
parallel employment you can see that the
green lines represent industries in
which we have experienced growth if
there is no change in those then means
that it stays pretty much the same and
for those red bars it represents a
decrease in column for barrel employment
again this is for the metropolitan area
which is pretty much the overall dona an
account now why whatever some of the key
aspects that we're observing
how median listing prices have been
increasing and they have been increasing
by some bit if we look at the panel on
the left we have the home median listing
prices of homes in the city of Las
Cruces as it is reported by some
websites such as Zillow realtor.com and
trulia.com by the way the reason why you
don't see truly are going all the way is
because they got acquired by Zillow so
now they don't have to do research
departments at the same time they just
consolidated all one and Zillow so we
can say goodbye to Trulia now so the
important aspect here that I want you to
notice and I don't know if you can see
the arrow here right here in January
right around a hundred and about a
hundred and ninety five thousand median
listing home prices fast for 24 months
to December 2019 and we're kind of
observing 215,000 that is in a period of
24 months we saw an appreciation at
least in what we can see in the million
listing prices which sometimes people go
the higher bit right but it still
reflects an upward tendency of about
$20,000 in this 24 months just to see
whether we were doing the right thing
and this was a right tendency I looked
at the alternate sections index data
which is estimated using sales prices
plus appraisal from the US Federal hi
seen here the US Federal Housing Finance
Agency and we found the same tendency
now this one over here is an index so it
represents the movement represents a
general movement but you can see the
upper tendency in this index as well how
are we doing in terms of not only the
price but the supply the units so the
panel on your left shows you by
breakdown of new single-family
residential or multi-family the darker
green represents multifamily
but then the panel on your right is
actually quite interesting the Green
Line sorry
represents the 2019 figures as were
collected by the Community Development
Department of the city
courses these are single-family new
residential permits and as you can see
not only that the green line but the I
think maybe you see it as orange II a
reddish line represents 2018 figures if
you look at the 2018 figures 2018
figures were passed and their averages
from 2010 2018 in pretty much in most
cases
so since 2018 we've been adding more
units and then in 2019 we have also
continued to add more units to the
housing stock of Las Cruces now how much
more or how many more if we measure just
as the number of permits in 2019 there
were close to 581 of those and for 2018
it was 511 compared to 2017 or 470 so we
keep seeing this increase and it is not
only reflected in the number of permits
it is reflected in the median housing
prices and it is also reflected in the
data of the growth in construction so
we're seeing a pretty strong
construction sector at least in this
2019 now what about businesses or
business registrations the way in which
we trace them back using the single
excuses Community Development traces
back your panel on your right uses the
averages from 2010 to 2018
and I my deep apologies but I forgot to
put the 2018 figures in there so when we
put the 2018 figures in there we have
seen that it has actually plateaued so
we have seen that they have leveled off
in terms of the new business
registrations so what we were able to
see is that in 2018
there were 586 new business
registrations whereas in 2019 there were
530 so it was a decrease but not that
substantiated then the next one is his
business renewals and the renewal of
your of your business license of course
this has also represented the image
right here on your left represents kind
of a plateau and the same occurs right
here
the panel on your right also shows and I
have the data right here business
registrations in 2018 were about two
thousand four hundred and fifty one
whereas in 2019 if there were two
thousand three hundred and four so again
the tendency that we had from back in
2017 there was a substantial decrease it
has at least leveled off it is it is no
longer that that steep of a decrease so
again this is reflected in the strong
labor market we have observed as well as
some of the things that have been showed
in the other beta what about retail how
is the retail sector doing the button on
the Left shows you in nominal terms just
in current dollars he'll our retail
sector has been behaving and it's
actually kind of flat it hasn't
increased by much but it hasn't
decreased by much either so it has
sustained itself if we adjusted for
inflation and the panel on your right
actually traces real retail trade by
tracing their gross receipts that we've
been able to see you can see that we
have behaved just right around the
average
so our retail sector isn't growing by
much but it's not decreasing by much
either so this is what we can get from
the perspective of retail and the
consumer in the city what about the
investments that we have created in
terms of commercial commercial real
estate now the panel on the on the Left
that I've inputted a regression line
that dotted line right there
but it's it's there's a lot of
variability as you can see on the panel
on the Left
correct so when we look at this and
compared to the average valuation per
new non residential commercial permit
you can see that we had two big spikes
because of the construction of the
hospital and the construction of the
medical offices but then it just started
in some instances we were above and some
exists below but it just started
leveling off as the year continued to
pass by in terms of cost of living the
data that we collect from the council
for community and economic research that
we support them in doing and the
analysis for the cost of
the panel on your left shows you the
black line which represents the US and
city average so if we are below that
that means that we are so for instance
the composite index is the overall index
which shows you that where 88.3 compared
to a hundred being the US city average
so we're relatively about 11% cheaper
well not cheaper least expensive or more
affordable and here in Las Cruces
compared to the the average u.s. city in
terms of your groceries we exceed the
national average in terms of that so our
groceries are more expensive but our
housing is substantially much more
competitive we're right in there for
transportation right in there for
healthcare and other miscellaneous goods
and services are also below so the only
instance in which we have over performed
over performed in the US the average is
is in terms of groceries the panel on
your right here is us comparing to
ourselves so us in 2018 and us in 2019
so the way in which I calculate this is
that we look at the ranking on the
ranking the index that was provided for
us in in that specific quarter and how
does this doesn't measure with the
change in the current quarter so we saw
some decreases in miscellaneous goods in
healthcare and there was a slight
increase in transportation costs as well
as decreases in utilities housing
groceries in the overall composite index
now this is good news we finally have
data for downtown remember that at some
point the sofa benches were no longer
providing the service of how we could
track the number of visitors in downtown
we can track it back again
now it is it is in things to the IT
department that supported us in this
effort to be able to get a signal we
well it's actually no longer tracing the
benches but now tracing the plaza so
these are mostly plus of visits by month
the panel on your left you can see that
the orange
redish whatever the color it is on on
represents repeat visits on that
specific month and the green ones
represent new visits in that specific
month the blue line right there
represents the total visits that we had
in that specific month and then the
panel on your right tells a much
different story the panel on your on
your right I basically break it down by
day of the week and on that month what
was the highest concentration of
visitors in that specific day of the
week so you can see immediately that the
Green Line is pretty big right
that is your farmers market your people
going to go into one of the breweries or
just just hanging out in downtown on a
Saturday the blue lines that's stronger
so that the sky blue color represents
your Fridays so Friday's took a smaller
share of the week in October and also on
Friday on December but from here you can
you can start seeing certain patterns
that are interesting to observe now the
next one at this is a special
commendation for madam mayor pro-tem who
requested is having some information
it's having some way of tracing
vulnerable populations so Mamamia Pro
Tem has suggested can we add something
that helps us assess a way in which we
can be tracking kind of constantly how
our neural populations doing and and the
thing is that for information of that
nature the closest one would be the US
Census and the US Census only publishes
every American Community Survey
publishes every year so in order to try
to get to that in having it in more
frequency I looked at the snap cases in
Dona Ana County so as you can see and in
this case of course we want to be low
the lower the better in this case so the
panel on your left tells you the snap
cases by the sum of the three Dona Ana
administrative offices and this is in
thousands the blue line represents your
2018 figures whereas the Green Line
represents your 2019 figures and the
green lines
in all the cases below there 2018
counterparts so some efforts being
performed from that if we look at the
past 12 months you can see that the
tendency is very very slight it has kind
of plateaued but you can see that there
is a tendency right there with that said
what do we have ahead of us so the first
the slide we started with the labor
market and the interesting thing here is
that we were very very close to 2018 so
on average 45,000 people were employed
in 2019 which is above the 2018 figures
with 44,000 so that's a difference of
about 900 more people responded to be
employed in 2019 interestingly enough
2416 people responded to the unemployed
on average in 2019 which is above what
we experienced in 2018 so we had more
people employed and more people
unemployed how is this possible we call
that the discouraged worker effect that
means that when people see that there's
a better outcome in in in in the labor
market that people are hiring they leave
and they were not previously on the
labor force and they joined the labor
force to start looking actively for
employment so what that does is that if
someone was discouraged because the
labor market before was not that good
now that the labor market has improved
they start actively seeking for a job so
whenever the survey comes they say I'm
unemployed so that adds to the number of
unemployed people so we have seen some
of that discourage worker joining the
labor force due to the improvement in
the labor markets just as an example and
I did a quick search from New Mexico
Workforce Solutions just this March
we're still in March but this about
three days ago no four days ago I I did
a search and 438 job openings when you
just list las cruces and you just put
our radius of I think it was 50 miles
but when you reduce that to about 25
miles its I'm still about 400 job open
that are active in in their website what
are some of the things to look ahead
there is importance to look at what is
going to happen with the macroeconomy
the Fed just cut the rate from 1.75 to
1.25 about six days ago and this is amid
fear of coronavirus effect so the
coronavirus is expected not only to
disrupt which already has some supply
chains in because of factories in China
that they have to close in now you have
to get that specific one specific
product from from elsewhere but it could
also affect us not only from the supply
but also from the demand side it is no
news to you that a lot of people have
canceled conventions those are dollars
that are not gonna go in into a specific
economy the most famous case is South by
Southwest was canceled people are not
taking trips as a scam Flores mentioned
flights are pretty cheap right now so
the the fear that you could get infected
preventing people from actually going
and spending is what could be affecting
us from the demand side so we have to
keep an eye out for this because we're
currently fairly recently since this
happened the outbreak was kind of famous
in February and then it's starting to
see it in March so we will not be able
to track this until summer once more
data becomes available so we will
actually be able to see oh this is what
happened and this is the effect of the
corona virus could have had not only
that but here in Las Cruces we have
experienced lagged periods whenever
there's a reason well not always but in
instances in which we had recessions we
had a lag period it didn't affect us
immediately like other cities so we
could see a repercussion at some point
but this is just something to to have in
mind
so just some of the other things moving
ahead as of right now of course for our
city the the labor market strong
questions thank you doctor questions
tell something Komal Thank You mayor
thank you dr. Pettis I am so infinitely
grateful that we have someone like you
at the city not only cuz you're
brilliant but because you're not excited
to talk about numbers and where my
anxiety starts going this way so but
thank you for that presentation that was
incredible um I have a couple questions
the retail information is that sort of
normal across the country and why mr.
mayor and councilor of income oh the
retail it's it's not always normal
elsewhere but it's relatively common in
a border area that is a subset of a
larger metro area so not only consumers
from El Paso come here a lot of
consumers from us we go over there but
it is we are also kind of the hub for
southern New Mexico right so we do get
some some retail trade from from that
perspective but that I mean for us it's
pretty leveled but there's a lot of
regions in the US in which that number
that graph is actually going down okay
the cost of living graphic the one on my
right side can you sort of just help me
understand what that means for people
the four people it would be basically
comparing when we did the analysis back
in the third quarter of 2018 to the
third quarter in 2019 let's say for
instance in healthcare some of the
information that gets collected and that
has to do with the cost of a doctor's
visits of an optimization of a dentist
and the cost of I think land to solostar
which is for treatment of diabetes and
Africa so those those reflect the
overall movement that go into making
that one so in essence the six percent
decrease basically says that somewhere
when we trace the the prices around that
for the next year it represented a six
percent the
like for me as a consumer a reporter was
a big percent decrease in my health care
card and as I said is measured by the
things that go into building that
correct what about the transportation
does that include like cop cars gas that
kind of it includes costs of course and
includes the alignment for wheel
alignment
oh sure maintenance the maintenance and
then several I think it's and at least
another one and I cannot remember right
now but it reflects an overall change in
a specific basket if you want to call it
of goods and services and transportation
okay and then in terms of wages you have
data on that like more wages generally
on an up scale on a downhill so it for
wages we we do trace them but we trace
them by industry so different different
industries have different changes but
the overall one is on the on the bigger
report so in the bigger report is
actually 42 pages and that one you can
okay you can go and look for that one
but we do have information on wages yes
okay cool and then I think I just have
well so I'm a people person you're a
number person I'm a people person you
could be a people person - I don't know
when you say 44.7 unemployment rate I
automatically think who are those people
in our community right like that's where
my head sort of goes to do we know like
are these folks sort of like is there
chronic unemployment is there some sort
of transition an industry like what's
happening that these four point seven
percent of people in offices are
unemployed does that make sense yes yes
mr. mayor Councillor when como that
information is also part of the report
so we break it down by level of
education by the report that you should
have how to get one correct correct now
it with one caveat the latest
information to go that deep into
actually pointing out who is that
specific one
the specific person but that group is
only produced on an annual basis so
there's more higher frequency data is
aggregated so that it can be reflective
of an overall movement but once we start
dealing with a more specific topic that
is not as frequent as in a monthly basis
for instances as I've reported here but
it is reported for 2018 at least from
the sensors okay thank you then the last
thing I'll say because you brought up
coronavirus and we've been talking about
that all afternoon I do wonder how
that's gonna affect employment
unemployment given that a lot of
industries don't have paid sick leave
policies country right and when I think
about particularly the restaurant
industry and how many folks if they're
taking time off because they're sick and
they should be how about a look affect
unemployment rates this year coronavirus
is certainly no good news council right
in I guess for the hand sanitizing
industry may be right and for effort
Lysol and for but very very specific it
might be a good news but for the overall
economy it's it is not it will it will
prevent people from travel it will
prevent people from spending it will
bring in people from from going out and
having fun and going to dinner and yeah
yeah all right
thank you so much dr. Pettis okay that's
all of my questions also at this TV
thank you very thank you doctor um kind
of along the lines do we track other
industries that are affect our area I
know one of the big things we talk about
is when we have the oil boom and the
Carlsbad and stuff we're seeing a lot of
our skilled labor leave for these other
areas do we track that and do we have
any expectations now that we might be
seeing a differences in oil prices and
things on how that might affect our
community mr. mayor council a the story
the information on
migration and and domestic migration I
do not track it and there are there are
resources out there that we could
technically look at but seeing where is
someone in a specific industry coming
from going to work for might be a little
difficult now as we know I know the IRS
traces a number of times that the people
move from one place to another one and
you can trace in or out migration like
that on an annual basis but whether that
person became nurse or with that person
started working in some other field that
I am Not sure thank you and thank you
for all this information
I already have pulled up the 404 T 2
page report and I'm finding in fact
anything so I may be coming back to
y'all later with more questions once I
review all of this but thank you very
much for everything may pretend until
supporters Thank You meryt Thank You mr.
dr. Byas for your presentation and all
your work always appreciate that I am
interested in slide 5 around growth in
construction and my question was do we
know more the the homes that are being
built in what price range for the homes
that are being built uh-huh that is a
good question counselor I am not sure
whether perhaps Tim might have something
from but let me put it like this the the
new permits of course would have to
provide for a brand new house yeah and
the we typically trace that by the
average valuation now the fact whether
or not they're gonna sell it at that
valuation might be a little different
but the overall tendency that we can
truly of service is is that home medium
prices it can be new it can be used
correct from Trulia and from realtor
they can be sold at a specific and
actually and Larry Nichols from
Community Development know the answer to
your question again
definitely Larry Nicholas Community
Development right now we're seeing the
home prices the cost of the home itself
is about two hundred and thirty thousand
average a lot of prices about fifty
thousand so combined price about 285 one
of the things that we do notice is that
we don't have many of our contractors or
residential contractors interested in
building affordable housing they have a
market that they're selling about six
hundred homes a year right now in the
market that they're addressing and those
homes are selling but we we seldom see
affordable housing particularly makes
type of housing you know apartment house
you know quadbikes
triplex those type of projects we sell
them get a remnant request for those
that's a bummer huh
unfortunate um since you brought up
affordable housing and not having the
number of permits for all the various
types that you just mentioned I had made
mention to mr. dullahan that in
September they're doing an affordable
housing conference in Albuquerque I
believe and typically they have these
opportunities for all construction folks
that are interested in affordable
housing up there so I wondered if we
could do like a pre and/or a post sort
of where we encouraged them to come down
here and see what that looks like and
really looking at based on the
information we got earlier with Juan and
Natalie green and what our need is if we
can get some excitement about building
around the price ranges that we need
it's I feel we're desperate to to and
when you look at what the price is
that's kind of unreachable for many of
our families particularly our middle
class and so I thought that that might
be I found it a nice thing to add to you
know to you're all you all the things
that you do so I'd love to see that is
either a pre or post to really encourage
because I think what I was told from by
mr. Martinez that they have those
opportunities there many of them go and
they they set up their tables and
whatnot to encourage that and sort of
the relationship building and gauging
right but also it would behoove us I
think I feel like we need to have more
activity around there to to really hear
from construction developers what that
might look like mayor and council Pro
Tem Darrell we're going to find that as
the housing policy committee is
reactivated I think those are some
subjects that we can address before that
committee well I don't know when those
Piercy's are going to be up and running
but I'm hoping that that we can start
working on that particular piece I don't
know mr. Gela and had his light on so I
don't know if he's been working on it or
not if I mean we're working on a
organizing group
very preliminary one and then we'll
follow up time between thank you thank
you and on page seven mr. Peck dr. Paris
I had some questions about the business
renewals and last time when you brought
this up we have some concerns about the
the programming the difficulty that
people were having
I believe that come service cos did
bring up some of the issues specifically
around renewals and whatnot and still
seen some of that struggle with doing
some of that so I'm assuming that I
guess I wanted to see what if there was
any new developments or changes to the
process and if there are still problems
that might we have changed some of the
decrease in renewals and because of that
mr. Maer mother made with him I probably
lived and Tim Pete's answer that
question ma'am
however be very very quickly just for
context in 2017 the number of business
renewals was about three thousand five
hundred and four which compared to 2018
it saw a substantial drop of about and
well it was two thousand four hundred
and fifty-one so a drop of about a
thousand
that's 2017 to 2018 however 2018 to 2019
has leveled off so in 2018 it was two
thousand four hundred and fifty-one
whereas in 2019 it was two thousand
three hundred and four so they still
it's still negative but it's a the
second derivative right that the next
one is a decreasing rate so because the
old effective templates from Community
Development Department mr. pear here Pro
Tem as you know last time we did talk a
little bit about how the movement to a
new software caused some some issues and
you'll see it in the numbers a little
bit that the early months of 2018-2019
had some lower it took us a while to
work through how many new people were
process
they're renewals so the renewals aren't
really quite and they're saying the
right months always in the in the data
because it just took us some time to get
them through but you'll notice they they
do level off and they have and we have
found that as people have gotten through
the change it's not as difficult for
them so I think we are I think we're
pretty stable right now I'm not hearing
a lot of complaints and if you are
hearing them please send them to me and
I want to get them fixed but we we did a
lot of work over the past the last six
months of the of last year to make sure
that people had an easy way of getting
registered and I think most of them find
it to be an easier process now so I I
think but what we are doing right now is
we've gone back to older data and have
looked to see how many of these
businesses that we were reporting on
actually had been closed for a couple of
years and there were some of them and we
didn't have a good way of closing them
out so we'd have to go and do
investigations and well if you have a
home-based business and you're doing an
investigation of whether they're still
open it's hard to tell you know and what
I think is happening with a lot of the
home-based businesses it may actually be
a good thing
Francisco talked about the unemployment
rate I think a lot of those people who
had started businesses that maybe were
semi viable businesses in their home and
then when they got a job they stopped
doing it and so they stopped registering
their home-based business because they
got a real job and now they're getting
paid and well I'm not going to sell
stuff on eBay if I can go to work and
get and get us a paycheck so I think
there's a little bit of that and some of
it we just don't know we don't know what
and we think a lot of volatility came
out of the home-based business sector
and we just don't it's a it's a hard
industry to figure out what people are
doing since we don't expect them we
don't talk to them if they don't come in
and register we'll send them something
but we don't we don't want to bother
them at home it's not
that's not the goal in terms of anything
you did mention this in the in the
presentation in terms of the
brick-and-mortar businesses business
they have been very very stable we we
have businesses in business centers in
retail centers and so on have been very
stable now there's a lot of volatility a
lot of businesses open and close
restaurants open and close but you'll
find you look around in the community a
lot of those a lot of those retail
stores a lot of those places are have
activity in them they are they are
continuing to be successful just by the
way I happen to be talked to the mall
manager he's saying he's well over 80%
full and that he has somebody for Sears
but he can't tell us who that is yet so
the mall remains a viable business so
just just a couple of bees okay I I
appreciate the dialogue around the
Homebase the entrepreneurs I guess I
don't I would put it and so are the
recommendations to be able to attract
those more thoroughly because if I
remember correctly dr. bad as you did
the reporting about those three sectors
that we should really keep our eye on
and entrepreneurs is one of them medical
was another and aerial space was the
third I thought and so if there's
something as policymakers that we need
to do to establish you know some sort of
policy to ensure that we're collecting
that data better we should know that so
is there any recommendations around that
mr. mayor
my mother may attempt the the answer
that you're referring to is was some
more this is specific to the West Mesa
industrial park but yes they we were
trying to figure out some of the niches
that industry would fit in this specific
man what's missing no so Park but the in
terms of the data collection actually
the Community Development Department has
been implementing a brand new effort in
tracing which ones are home-based and
which ones are brick-and-mortar and I
think the data goes
was recently a doctor was in June 2019
so it is fairly new we need a little bit
more time so we have more observations
but but the the implementation is now in
there we can we can now see and in the
future once we have one year's worth of
data we can now actually see these have
been hallmarks these have been brick and
mortars so on slide 11 I find that
really fascinating particularly in the
increase of groceries that were higher
of other national well of the national I
guess rates right especially because
there's such a high increase of people
food insecurity right and that we're an
agricultural community so what what it
feels like
I don't feels really concerning to me
and I don't understand why that is mr.
mayor madam mayor pro-tem
precisely to answer that question
because I was asking myself that was
that I went out and started looking for
some information that could be out there
what I found was a report created by the
Institute for local self-reliance and
what they mentioned is that our town is
seen as a Walmart dominated city so in
other words that they share of them of
the market that belongs to to a specific
grocer is about what about 57% as to
their estimates correct and I'm not
endorsing their estimates but they
mentioned that it was about 57% so if
it's dominated by a specific player that
discourages other players because they
would be fighting close to a smaller
share of the market so that that
prevents other groceries from coming in
so the the report and in actually were
not as bad as some other places which
Portales I think it was 80% of the row
below groceries are completely dominated
by a single player so that that is of
course that goes beyond our scope here
it goes we to to the FTC and
instances of that nature but what are
the practices that are carrying but and
for for us that's that's at least one of
the explanations that I was able to look
for that it was it is difficult to fight
when when you're fighting for such a
small share of the market and I think
this goes to sort of a more a deeper
dialogue with our our partners like
Lhasa me on the post like that through
our food sustainability plan which I
think it sort of mirrors some of what
they've increases of like food and not
the trouble that we're having with I
guess the price of food here as opposed
to bringing it in that kind of thing and
maybe I don't know I don't know if that
has anything to do with it but I'm
assuming that it does and then I thank
you for the downtown numbers are really
exciting and I look a little deeper into
that I'm it looks like we're doing
really well right like what we've
intended to to do so that's exciting
and then the snap cases thank you for
doing that I really have appreciated
knowing that you're listening and that
your follow-up is great and I'm I'm torn
about this in that I know that people
feel like well the lower those snap
cases the better but I have to remind
folks that it's our people are only on
the rolls for five years and so whether
they can afford to or not whether they
have a job or not then they get kicked
off the rolls and they're required to
then you know fend for themselves and I
think that's one of the biggest reasons
why we have food insecurity and those
numbers I've got that have better units
in other other places where you see that
we're giving out like major amounts of
food
it is it's pretty concerning so I is
there anything that would suggest that
when they drop off can you calculate the
job growth and certain portions because
I want to say that there's a work of
work requirement or you have to be in
order to get snap
I won't I don't I wish I could be a
little more on top of the changes that
have been made but if that's the case
are is that why they're dropping off the
rolls because they're getting a job and
is there any way to calculate that mr.
maryk Mesa Mayor put them the short
answer to that is that there there there
are there's probably ways of doing that
the longer answer to that is it it takes
an actual research effort to conduct
that you told me that last time - yes
I mean it's doable but doable with
constraints of course well what what is
it it's an actual effort of going after
in tracking down and looking at and at
each one but it is it's a big research
effort correct and finally one last last
question it's like 14 year you might
show work for solutions to 438 job
openings in your in your report does it
specify the kinds of jobs that are
required or that that are out there and
the types of sort of job training that
is necessary to sis because we did a the
resilient leaders did the survey 1100
plus people and one of the things that
was very glaring and the information
around job training and higher ed was
many folks were saying there there
wasn't the job training available
that they needed in order to get the job
right so don't Anna Community College
may be the University if the access just
isn't there for the types of jobs I'm
assuming for the types of jobs that are
out there so so I would like for us to
dig a little deeper around what that
looks like and how we can help folks
especially those that are unemployed
good afternoon mayor madam Pro Tem this
is true seldom are tenant director for
the Employment Development Department
you are correct
I think that there is a disconnect
between the resources for job seekers
and also for employers on the resources
available we have continued to work with
work correlation solutions and workforce
connections to figure out ways to better
connect those thoughts and also two
weeks ago there was a roundtable from
the state economic workforce solutions
office at the state level and part of
their effort it was to understand from
the stakeholders perspective in our
community what the plan of their
strategic plan would look like from from
what we see in our community so a lot of
effort to connect the Dobson among
community members and other agencies are
taking place and so it it's not going to
be overnight but we're we're putting
efforts towards making those connections
thank you dr. Martinez I appreciate that
Thank You mayor dr. Byas I appreciate it
thank you sir photos Thank You mr. mayor
and thank you for your excellent
presentation dr. P Addison I really
appreciate that as far as you know
excuse me the employment rate goes we
have you listed the top employment
industries and these are full-time
positions and high-paying
or a relatively high paying job is that
correct we don't have a picture though
of other types of employment mr. mr.
mayor Councillor Flores the correct
ma'am did we have a picture that
resembles your panel on the left that
has this median salaries they earn on a
yearly basis attached to it on in the
full report so that information is
readily available on the report and if I
can record properly about out of those
top ten industries about I want to say
four or five paid an annual median
salary with benefits plus all the other
stuff of above $40,000 which is our
median annual income for household
income for Las Cruces it's a $40,000
part of the benefits or is in addition
including everything included or
anything okay so okay so you know you're
an economist so when I took economics in
my undergraduate school studies what I
was ingrained with was vapors
stratification this stratification of
classes and what we were told what I
learned and I don't know if that
stratification is so applied in so far
as how we reach our analysis and all
that but I remember my professor saying
that the van der Bilt's the du Pont's
were considered lower upper class the
upper class where I don't know gods
Kings you know people who are born with
a trillion dollars in their mouth I
don't know and then said that the
upper-middle class were the nouveau
riche that included maybe it was the
Vanderbilts in the DuPont's but anyway
the whole thing was so skewed because I
always thought we were middle class back
in the 50s and 60s and my father was
making a whopping twelve thousand
dollars a year
and but we had we lived very well I mean
you know it was I mean we had cars we
had you know whatever things are so so
so different than so when I learned that
in college I thought well then we're
dirt poor we're the poor you know we're
that there's a lower middle class the
middle class in the upper class and
within those stratifications there's
lower and upper so according to what the
professor told me we were lower lower
class and I don't know what $12,000 a
year equates to today but I do remember
that a dollar a dollar could buy a lot
like my mom would send us to the grocery
store and say okay get get some lunch
meat get some bread get some lettuce get
you know get get some onions get and
with a dollar we'd come back and she'd
say and give me the change and with 20
with 36 cents we could go to a movie buy
popcorn and buy a candy bar so that's
just showing you how $12,000 worked back
then and when you can go to the movies
once a week and have a new bike and then
when you turn 16 17 you get a little car
or something so and then your parents
are able to send you to college I mean
so I don't know how my parents did it
because no one no one no one can live on
$12,000 today and the way I see things I
mean I go to the market and buy a few
things and it's like 12 or 13 dollars or
just a few things so when I see that we
have like a $40,000 income and that
includes benefits that's really not a
lot of money and that's what I think
people are calling middle class and is
it relative to Las Cruces and and then
when mr. Nicholl says that developers
don't want to build quote affordable
housing while they're building out the
West Mesa primarily and people moving in
they're coming
from California and selling you know
crummy little homes for maybe close to a
thousand to a million dollars and then
buying something for 300,000 so that's a
portable for them so the whole thing is
so skewed and I I would just like to
keep that and that's why we have so many
you know so we have and then and then I
was you know as far as the employment
industries and the rate of employment
are the pirate time jobs are the full
time jobs and the fort and then you said
I think you said that the the forty
thousand dollars is average and averages
I mean if you said it they were medians
I'd be able to say Wow sort of kind of
wild relative to Las Cruces but for me
you know I and and it's not to say that
it for me it's really there's other word
is screwy you know just kind of it's
just hard for me to assess how anyone
can live on forty thousand a year and
and consider that middle-class I mean
you can't buy a home with forty thousand
today I don't think I just I don't get
it
so I I would really like to see I don't
know I would just like to see some I
don't know it's not for economic
development department but just as far
as a policy or a city as a whole a
community to see that the needs of our
our community are really met and and get
workforce solutions in here get the
bridge and get I don't know I guess I'm
just talking out of frustration and and
I but your your presentation is
excellent it shows a very very good
picture of where we are and the picture
isn't very very bright when you think
about it and then to hear that you know
that developers don't want to build
affordable housing well affordable
result it's relative like everything
else and
but it still makes me sad when mr.
Othello comes over here here that's his
name red wine I've bet on mr. Owen beta
comes here and talks about you know HUD
housing that went up in 1963 or whenever
and some of this stuff is probably full
of mold and whatever so all of that
paints a very grim picture for me and I
don't know what we can do as a city you
know let's let's work you know look out
for our residents for our people and
hopefully we can set up a model here
that really addresses all of those
things I don't know I'm just I'm just
feeling very just very I guess the
forecast is bleak and then with the
coronavirus that doesn't help either but
thank you so much dr. by Outasight I
think that I agree with I've said this
to you before I've said this before City
Council but I I agree 100% with with
Jana Ben como and I said this also to
dr. Martinez I think we really have
Jules we really have a gift and having
you in the positions that you hold and I
hope you stay here a long long time so
if you need a raise
talk to the mayor no I'm just kidding no
all kidding aside thank you so much
because this is really this is I think
helping us to to create policy that will
hopefully enhance the lives and the
quality of life of our residents so
thank you very much the two of you and
thank you mr. Nichols for your grim
report on our developer still Thank You
mr. Nichols for your information thank
you okay well thanks that finishes your
presentation yes because we Samir okay
well if there's nothing further intend a
motion to adjourn
motion beba Kelso in a second by Mayor
Pro Tem gondola
we adjourn all those in favor signify by
saying aye aye
as opposed we're adjourned it's 4:56
4:57 p.m.