okay you guys are good
good morning this is debbie moore i'm
co-chair of the las cruces economic
recovery ad-hoc
board and i will call the meeting to
order for a thursday july 30th
uh the first order of business would be
is there any conflict of interest
seeing done i will move to ask for a
motion
to accept today's agenda
do i have a motion
move to accept today's agenda sharon
thomas
do i have a second george miller a
second then
i have a motion and a second um
francisco or cynthia with someone please
call ro for
a vote on this yes vice chair
uh this is on the motion to accept the
agenda as presented
uh mr michael harris yes
ms george mr george miller yes
ms sharon thomas yes
miss brook montgomery
veronica archuleta yes mr
rumford server
mr rumford server is absent
uh mr doug cowan
mr doc cowan yes
absent miss susan greenwald
yes ms jolene martinez
ms jolene martinez yes yes
thank you mr lee lopez
yes
vice chair yes and mr chairman assassin
motion passes thank you moving on to the
next item
of approval for the minutes of the
meeting on july 23rd
2020 i would entertain a motion to
accept
this is michael harris i'll accept or
motion to accept
george miller's second i have a motion
and a motion and a second on the minutes
for july 23rd meeting
francisco would you please call the roll
sorry i was muted uh this is on the
motion to accept the meaning
the minutes that were presented uh and
mr michael harris
yes mr george miller yes
mr and thomas
yes miss brook montgomery
yes veronica
yes mr rumford server
it's absent
mr doc cowan
is absent
mr sun greenwald yes
ms julian martinez yes
missouri lopez
yes vice chair
and mr church is absent question passes
thank you very much with that we're
going to move
into out of number five which is which
is the discussion
and presentations we have two today the
first
being the topic that we've talked about
is the inclusive economic recovery
framework
and francisco did you want to say
anything prior to
me introducing our guest speaker yes yes
mom chair thank you very much uh
thank you excellent thank you for having
chair um and
mr joe parilla is is his
fellow with the uh with the brookings
institute and they have been working on
this
inclusive economic framework and
mr miller was actually kind enough to
provide a contact phone number for for
mr pilot
so we have uh we have reached out to him
and he has very kindly agreed
to speak on behalf of the work that the
brookings institute has carried
uh with regards to an inclusive economic
uh recovery framework
so without further ado i i would like to
introduce mr corellia
and you can share your screen joe um
just as
there's a green button right there in
the in the bottom portion
so i'm getting a message that says host
disabled participant screen sharing
so i think i need permission dominic
would you be
able to make him a host really quick so
he can share
i'm sorry for who for mr parliament uh
joe pereira
yes one moment thank you sir thanks
so um i'll try that again in a second
once the permissions are
are there um but uh francisco thanks for
the introduction
and i i really appreciate the
opportunity to be here on behalf of
brookings where you know our program is
one of five at brookings
for those who are not familiar we're a
public policy research organization
based in washington dc but our program
our
audiences are um
exactly the people who are on this zoom
call so
we uh work on research that looks at the
economic and social conditions in cities
and regions and states
and uh the the our audiences
are the cross-sector groups of leaders
government for sure but also non-profit
sector
and and the business sector as well as
higher education who
influence the the trajectories of their
communities
and you know no more uh
important is this is this group the
groups like it across the country than
in a moment of crisis and so
over the last matter of months you know
our entire
program has focused its research agenda
um on covid uh and specifically
on the economic recovery uh that needs
to occur in its wake
and so um i will uh walk through
the the kind of broad strokes of
of that framework and then give you all
um some examples
of what other communities are doing
across the country
that support that framework and then the
hope i think is that this just
instigates
some reactions or questions and we can
have a discussion uh following the
presentation but
um you know the the context of course
in every community is this two-front
battle um
so in the main covit is a public health
crisis
and the the safety and security of the
american people is the most important
outcome
and of course the um
you know the the county and the region
um
have not gone unimpacted by uh the virus
and as a result uh you know
as other governments have done you've
taken measures to
essentially shut the economy down which
we saw
during the spring resulted in you know
widespread business liquidity challenges
so
the middle graphic shows that about
three and four
small businesses in las cruces uh
received
loans through the paycheck protection
program which was the federal
government's attempt
to sustain the small business sector as
they dealt with these liquidity
challenges
and and the fact that they had to close
down many of them
um even with those measures and the the
idea of ppp was to try to keep small
businesses
in business while also retaining their
employees
um but of course there has been this
historic
uh negative downturn in the labor market
uh
and and the unemployment rate has uh
ramped up uh pretty drastically in las
cruces
uh as it has in other communities so
these are these are the near-term very
real challenges that everyone is aware
of
um but what covid revealed was that we
had a pretty insecure
economy to begin with and there was
really two
long running trends that i wanted to
highlight that that coven
basically landed on top of
the first was that
larger predominantly coastal
metropolitan areas
the bay area seattle boston san diego
those five metropolitan areas alone uh
accounted for 90
of the growth in innovation economy jobs
between 2005 and 2017. so this is an
illustrative stat
of how a combination of technological
and corporate wealth has concentrated in
the hands of
relatively few cities uh and then
relatively kind of few people within
those cities which is exemplified
by the second set of statistics which
shows that as
um the the country was sorting itself
geographically
and kind of this these really
high-paying jobs were concentrating more
in these larger cities
we had a broader challenge around job
quality
such that uh by my my colleague martha
ross's analysis
she estimates that um about 44 of the
u.s workforce
including 54 percent of african-american
workers and 63 percent of latino or
hispanic workers
essentially earned less than a family
sustaining wage
even before the crisis so you had a lot
of
economic insecurity that was built in
even though we had a relatively
strong labor market by certain measures
there were these
economic insecurities that were built
into that but then
kovit has has obviously pushed many of
these families
into crisis so
as i had said you know our work at
brookings is both around
documenting these economic conditions
but then also
providing a policy and programmatic
solutions and so
on thursday of last week we launched
this coven 19 metro recovery watch
website which uh really tries to
provide a framework for recovery it
tries to spotlight
local efforts and then it also provides
an index
that allows local communities to see
what's happening
over time unfortunately we um we
limit that to metropolitan areas that
have at least 250 000 residents so as of
now we're thinking about how to expand
this tool but as of now
las cruces not included in that metro
recovery
just in case you go you go look for it
um ultimately the the economic recovery
framework
looks at three key principles so the
first principle
is for local communities these can be
cities these can be counties
regions even states is to set
goals and objectives for their recovery
this is this kind of basic strategy
and we think that that should be a
two-part goal one is that
um the local economy should be uh kind
of
increasing prosperity in the wake of
covid so you're bouncing back and
rebuilding
better than you were before um that
would
be measured by things like kind of
average incomes
the quality of jobs that people are
achieving we think there needs to be a
very explicit second part of the goal
that is uh taking into account those
statistics that i showed earlier
about the fact that there are still
lingering racial inequities within the
country
and we think that promoting um racial
justice and racial inclusion is a really
important
second goal and so the idea here
is to take those
broader outcomes and and think about
like what are the
what are the goals and metrics that that
this community wants to
to choose and and you know this is an
example from
the san diego economic development
corporation which has been a partner of
ours that
essentially try to create three goals
that they think
leads to a more prosperous and inclusive
economy related to
uh skilled workers related to quality
jobs and small businesses and startups
and related to the number of of thriving
households which means households that
can
can make ends meet given their earnings
and the cost of living
um another example that we like to cite
is from kansas city so this is kansas
city rising which is a civic initiative
that is a partnership of the chamber of
commerce and economic development
corporation in kansas city as well as a
ceo group
again the mechanism is going to look
slightly different depending on the
community but the idea
is to take a series of of metrics
related to kind of broader systematic
outcomes
and and hold uh local institutions to
account
to try to meet those those metrics and
in kansas city what
they have a good framework and that they
have system metrics so they're looking
at things like
um you know education things like
um the number of quality jobs being
created the number of startups
but then they also have strategy metrics
so they they have like a portfolio of
strategies in each of these areas that
then
have their own individual performance
indicators
so this is this is just about like
taking the mantle to create some
some broader recovery metrics our sense
is to meet
this broader type of recovery
metrics framework you have to actually
adopt a strategic framework that is a
typically a little bit more
broad than traditional economic
development efforts we think that
that three areas are particularly
important um
and this is this is a framework that has
been advanced
in northeast ohio so a collection of
cities and metropolitan areas
in and around cleveland and akron and
youngstown and
canton and it's pretty straightforward
the ideas that you need to promote local
business and industry growth to create
good jobs
you need to upskill or reskill or
continue to train
and educate a racially diverse talent
base to fill those jobs
and that you need to ensure that there
aren't neighborhood level
or community level barriers that are
preventing people from accessing
opportunities so this is a creation
preparation access framework
um this is essentially the recovery
framework we've adopted
as in our products if you go to the
website you'll see a bunch of ideas that
are
basically under these three themes and
um and that is is really about
kind of giving people a way to talk
about their
work um both locally and to state
policymakers to say okay we have a
comprehensive strategy that
is worthy of investment from a broad
range
of government and perhaps philanthropic
and private sector stakeholders
and it kind of communicates to the
public here are the things that we care
about and here are the things that we're
trying to get
and so what should those things be right
the the remainder of the presentation
i'm just going to highlight three what
we call three actionable ideas
in in these areas the first
is uh really around the small business
challenge
uh and we
highlighted in in the recovery series
a case study from detroit which has
a significant concentration of
black-owned businesses within the
central city that traditionally had not
been well served by mainstream financial
institutions they had struggled to get
access to capital
they um were subject at times to kind of
bias
by financial institutions so when
coveted hit
they were in many respects last in line
to benefit from the federal
policy solutions to support small
businesses and so
what a group of philanthropic
organizations and then neighborhood
level business support
organizations did was immediately deploy
about 5 million in funding to support
these small businesses
through through
access to rent relief through access to
landing through access to grants in some
cases
um as well as access to technical
assistance
so that was really meant to to stem the
bleeding
the recovery strategy is is longer term
and
more robust and key elements include
um opportunities for small business
owners to access
uh technical assistance from these
intermediaries so these are like
entrepreneurship support organizations
or like business schools within
universities or other
folks even mentor kind of mentor to
mentor small business owners helping
each other
they're providing access to ppe kits
so at last count is about 3 400
ppe kits were distributed to help small
businesses open safely
and over 4 000 requests related to
questions that small business owners had
had been fielded
by this coalition which calls itself
detroit means business
ultimately this is probably going to be
a 10 million dollar strategy but
if you kind of calibrate that to
detroit is about seven times as big as
bruce says so you're looking at between
one and two million dollars that would
be a reasonable response to the small
business challenge if you wanted to
pursue
a similar strategy so the second
major challenge is around these really
really high unemployment rates
and for that one interesting idea has
been
put forward in birmingham alabama
really it's a coalition that calls
itself uh birmingham strong
uh which was led by the city of
birmingham but supported by
uh corporations and the community
foundation
among others and really
what birmingham strong spun out was
a program called the birmingham service
corps so this is an idea
similar to the works progress
administration during the great
depression
that there are these civic and public
needs that become
more acute during a crisis like covid
and and we have actually a group of
people who are unemployed
that could be brought to bear uh through
uh
activities uh with civic and public
purpose and so that's that's essentially
what this strategy tries to do
and it's worked with about 300 uh
folks these are all age 18 or older
they're people who have lost their job
they get paid between 15 and 25 an hour
to do things like drive public housing
residents
to testing locations to get
checks they do that safely of course
they're informing the deployment of
mobile testing
and providing patient referrals they
prepared and distributed
lunches for 12 000 public school
students
they've set up uh different um
sites where people can go and ask
questions about where they can receive
public benefits or get access to
charitable resources
um this this to us is a model of
something that we would love to see for
instance the
presidential campaigns take on this idea
of
a national service corps that could
support local communities but what we
like about what birmingham has done is
they've essentially put in place the
local infrastructure to execute
a service corps their budget is about
1.5 million
which is serving the city of birmingham
which is about 225 000 people just to
give you a sense of
of the cost and the size of the
community which is roughly in line with
las cruces
the final idea is um
acknowledging that there are these
long-standing gaps across neighborhoods
in our cities so every city no matter
how prosperous has pockets of poverty
um and and kind of economic distress
and those policies were like the result
of that
was in many cases the result of
intentional public policies that had
built up over a century that
that segregated people by income and by
race
and our notion is that without
addressing the underlying challenges of
those
place-based disparities it will be hard
to have an inclusive recovery
and so this idea that was put forward by
a couple of colleagues of mine
is essentially to advocate to states
so this would be something that would be
advocated to folks in santa fe
to set up funds that would
basically provide resources to locally
owned
new kind of investment structures so
this idea is a little bit wonky for
those who aren't as familiar with
with financing but the um the gist is
this like you could create
at a state level say a 25 million dollar
fund
that in turn could could help local
residents so these are folks who live in
the neighborhoods who kind of know what
they want in their neighborhoods
they could create these these communal
real estate ownership opportunities so
that local
citizens so neighborhood level citizens
can use these funds to actually purchase
real estate within their communities and
then as and then they can kind of
dictate how that real estate
is used to meet local needs and
because they have an ownership stake as
that real estate appreciates or as the
neighborhood changes
which is happening in a lot of cities
you're seeing these these neighborhoods
change especially in central cities that
local residents would
benefit from that and so um
this this is one where i don't think you
know las cruces would have necessarily
the resources itself
to stand up this fund but this would be
something that
would make sense to advocate to state
policy makers who are trying to think
about how to use their recovery dollars
to support
um recovery within local communities
and and um and and do so in a way that
particularly is is centering
uh issues of racial inclusion in the
recovery strategy
this is being done in places like
portland through
uh a organization called mercy corps
they have what they call a community
investment trust
that is uh doing exactly this type of
work
so those are three ideas just to to get
uh the conversation started um the final
point i want to make is just the way in
which this work gets delivered
so if first you kind of set your
objectives second you pursue
a portfolio of actionable ideas that you
think are going to get to those
objectives
our sense is that we need new types of
institutional community
capacity in our local communities and
deliver on these solutions
and so um this is this is an example
from minneapolis
where obviously uh the
murder of george floyd has made that
city a kind of national bellwether for
some of these
issues around policing and racial
justice but even before that
they had launched an organization called
the center for economic inclusion
which is really led by
the black community in minneapolis and
but it has
established support among local
governments
uh funder collaboratives regional
economic development organizations
ceo groups and importantly in a place
like minneapolis kind of large corporate
leaders uh leaders of large corporations
and i think this will look different in
every community that the idea
and and i don't mean to necessarily
suggest that
every place is going to have the type of
corporate leadership that minneapolis
has just because they have a lot of
fortune 500s
but the principle is that exactly as you
all are doing
bringing together leaders from um
across uh government the private sector
uh philanthropy
and non-profits the community grassroots
groups is just really
really important for this work to have
credibility among as broad a set
of community members as possible because
it is very hard work it is complicated
work
i'm sure as you all know and having the
buy-in
in an era of very limited resources
having the buy-in of as many
stakeholders as possible becomes really
really important
uh in terms of actually executing these
types of strategies and financing them
so i will stop there you can you can get
more if you just google you know covet
19 metro recovery watch you can go get
all nine ideas there's a whole bunch of
other
local recovery solutions that we profile
in case studies um and so i i didn't get
into all that here just
because of lack of time but uh it is
there online and it's exactly for
audiences
so i'll stop there and i'd love to just
kind of
take questions reactions um
from from folks
thank you for that awesome presentation
and um i really do appreciate you
meeting with us today
sorry i'm late too by the way i'm chris
i am the chair of the lost christmas
economic recovery
uh board um so with that being said uh
if any of our
members of our board have any questions
uh comments
anything like that please do raise your
hand at this time and we'll we'll get
you going
okay uh mr harris
uh yeah thanks for that presentation it
was um
really great these are things that i've
been thinking
also and i'm sure other people on the
board um
so um i guess a a
question i had if you have um
information it so
sorry about how effective
um any of these particular ideas
um are and in particular i was wondering
um so in in the first part of the
presentation where you were talking
about strengthening small businesses
and providing financial technical and
safety resources
um can you give us an idea of maybe what
the relative
importance of the different resources
that were provided were
to the businesses like was
you know if we're trying to go after um
low-hanging fruit or just the most
impactful things
you know would you say that providing
rent relief
is more important than uh providing ppe
you know probably in the early days i
could see ppe distribution being
important
um so what do you think about that
yeah so obviously it's the one caveat to
my
uh response is just going to be i'm not
as familiar as you all are about just
the nature of the public health
situation in las cruces i think
there is still at least in the
communities where
we're working more intensively like say
alabama um
like that is still very much a binding
constraint to the economy
because enough ppe specifically so the
idea that
um like for these businesses to open up
safely they need to invest essentially
in this these one-time
uh or or in some cases ongoing purchases
of
of equipment and they may not have the
money to do that
and it's a very clear uh example of
where
the government should probably be
stepping in or some sort of
civically oriented resources because
it's it's none of these businesses fault
that covet hit
and yet so it's it's and they're only
responding to
uh public uh much needed
uh public regulations about how to keep
the population safe
yet while the government is also is
providing those regulations
it makes sense for them to also provide
resources to allow those businesses to
meet those regulations safely and
to the extent that we're going to have
any sort of limited economic activity of
these small businesses going forward
it's only going to be um going into
so i i'd still say that's a pretty
important
um aspect i think the second
one where we've we've heard from
local stakeholders as being lacking is
what i would call like practical or
technical assistance so these are
everything from uh like i want to go get
a ppp loan but i'm not sure if it's for
me
can someone help me understand what the
requirements are what the process
is for for businesses that had
commercial banking relationships that
that was taken care of by their bank or
maybe they had a lawyer
but for a five person small business uh
you know like they don't necessarily
have those relationships so
these you know economic development
organizations or chambers of commerce
have stepped in
to provide that guidance and it actually
helped connect more people to those
resources
the challenge going forward with that
federal program is that
for the loan to be forgiven so for the
loan to become a grant
you have to like prove that you kept
people on your payroll
which is a more complicated undertaking
than getting the loan
in with so there was like this initial
wave of technical assistance to help
people get a ppp loan
and now there has to be this second wave
of technical assistance to help people
get the loan forgiven because otherwise
it'll just saddle them with debt
and so it it um i mean i know there are
some small business owners i think on
this
group so i'd be curious to get their
perspective too but it seems to me that
that
type of community level technical
assistance just around
accessing financing is important and
then
there's the more robust type of
technical assistance like
hey i want to create a website or i need
to
adapt my business model so that i'm
going from dining
to you know only take out or i need a
better digital marketing presence
if i'm going to make it like that type
of stuff is
is also important it's not as important
as like the first step but if we're
actually going to help small businesses
to the you know quote unquote new normal
where more is done online
like those also become important aspects
and so
like i think the detroit example is
trying to do all of that
uh but the reason we highlight it is
it's a particularly comprehensive
uh effort right like they're they're
trying to do it all at once i think
you know other communities like
different institutions are doing
different elements of that and they're
trying to coordinate as best as they can
but it's
by nature more fragmented i hope that
helps answer
your question uh yeah that
that helps how much have you seen
um businesses actually
so there's you know federal resources
how much have you seen people actually
be like
hey you know if the city just
stopped uh evictions or something
um or provided more direct financial
assistance
do you think um have you seen that
there's a demand for that or
or it's mostly just i need to know how
to access financing options that are
already there
and if i do then you know we're good
yeah i think the the moratorium on
evictions
was something that a lot of cities did
and are it's still
ongoing like in dc they basically are
extending that out until they
stop declaring a public health emergency
which could be a long time
so i do think that's a pretty
fundamental
part of the strategy the the challenge
with eviction moratoriums is you're
simply passing along the cost
to the to the um landlord
right and in this case like you know
they're part of the economy too
and and but i do think that a lot of
cities did that i think
the there were some locally provided
um funding sources like grants or very
low interest loans
that were let either cities put forward
or now you're seeing states use recovery
dollars to do like grants to
small businesses
and that worked in the near term it's
just no community has the resources to
do that
at the scale that is required so really
only the federal government
uh either acting through the states or
the
or just new new uh stimulus or is gonna
be able to
handle that um at scale so i guess
to answer your question there's some
near-term stuff that you know local
communities are doing and will continue
to do
uh but it becomes really important to
advocate to
uh state leaders about how they use the
dollars that they have in hand from the
federal government
and then up until uh folks in washington
as they design the next round of
stimulus to ensure that small business
support is included
okay yeah thanks that makes a lot of
sense
okay wonderful and then um just two
clarification points guys if you could
state your name for the minutes when you
do um ask a question or announce
yourself
and then also can i get co-hosting
abilities to deal with the hand
raising as well thank you and then um
miss martinez you have your hand raised
yes ma'am
go ahead hi julie martinez for the
record
um thank you for the presentation ada
just two questions
one was how would the city engage
with your organization in developing
a plan like you presented maybe three
actionable items where they could
address
uh the economic recovery of both um
citizens
that live in that gap that you
identified the racial equity gap and
then also address small businesses and
then also address future recovery
um so how would they engage in that
relationship with your organization was
the first question and then the second
question would be
what kind of training and technical
assistance do you provide to like the
city council or the city staff
that helps them decide if this
partnership with your organization
is one that would benefit would benefit
them and then how quickly do those kind
of things
can those kind of things be turned
around
so while we do do more intensive
partnerships with cities
um but we are they're they're few and
far between because they're very
intensive and we are
not a huge organization so uh
so to your first question is how do we
work together i mean if we wanted to
work together
on a on a more intensive basis than
how we're doing right now or you know
then that would require
kind of scoping that out um from a
resource perspective and a timing
perspective
and i'll just i would be transparent
just given that we're already kind of
underwater as a program
it would be hard for us to take on a new
intensive partnership right now
um and i guess that kind of answers your
second question so we
i wouldn't necessarily call us technical
assistance
providers like we are co-collaborators
in many ways
um but i guess you know my
recommendation would
on that would be you know we we could
we could think about if there are
particular ideas that
you all find compelling um
what we would do is probably link you
with the
folks who are leading those strategies
in other communities
so we wouldn't necessarily be the best
people to tell you about how to
implement something it would be them
and we'd be happy to broker those
introductions if there were
particular things that you wanted to
learn more about
um so i'd say it'd be more in those
informal ways just given the resource
constraints that we have
both time and money
great thank you so much thank you sure
thank you for that okay so i uh do have
a question actually
so under the community investment trust
um that actually sparks a lot of
interest so i sit on the board for the
community foundation of southern new
mexico
and in our strategic plan we have had
a lot of different conversations um
on what you know doing something like
this
so i would love if you could go back to
that slideshow under the state
community investment funds um
and if you could just like give me any
more information on this
i really would like that because we
would we called it like community impact
investing is what we kind of referred to
it as but it kind of sounds like
the same um kind of thing here and i was
just hoping you could maybe elaborate on
this a little bit
with the key components maybe if you
could just go over those again
yeah so these are
these are this is the brainchild of a
couple colleagues so i'll try to do it
justice
and i'll send you the link uh to the
full brief
as well just through the chat but
the the idea is really about
taking uh say a
pool of money that the state could put
forward or you could you could have like
a community foundation model
that did this too um it doesn't
necessarily matter where the funds come
from
and they would be the gap filler
in to use the technical term in the
capital stack
for kind of specific
new projects to move forward so say you
want to build a community center
and you know that is the most important
thing or you want to build
new housing or new uh commercial
uh like a commercial you want to support
a commercial corridor in a key
neighborhood
um you know private sector financing
may cover that but most of the times it
doesn't so you need things that fill the
capital stack
and so the idea of this fund is
essentially a subsidy
to those other investors and it would be
the idea would be that because
either there would be a perceived risk
by those investors that would be
different than the normal investment
that this would
this would incentivize them to put their
money in
and then the idea was that those
investors would get paid back first
before the folks who support the state
fund
right so the government is kind of
providing
uh first in last out money um
and the idea there is that a bunch of
activities that we think are really
important for community wealth
enhancement purposes but that the market
for whatever reason doesn't want to fund
on its own
would have a greater likelihood of
occurring now
where this doubly changes is who gets
ownership
right like like those deals do happen
like community development finance is
basically
is is that um but residents don't often
like invest in those directly so the the
double bottom line is not only you're
improving the community
but you're allowing residents to take
these
very small shares just like you would
buy a share of stock
in the stock market you'd be able to buy
into that real estate investment trust
and then as the gains accrued
they would they would accrue to the
residents so you're actually building
community wealth
while improving the neighborhood which
is
that's the innovation there's a lot of
effort that's been done to improve
neighborhoods through new investment
vehicles um
but rarely have they tried to be uh
designed in a way that the that the
residents directly
also benefit monetarily from the
improvements
if that makes sense awesome
that's actually a really cool idea
um awesome that was my question of the
day
um did anyone else have a question or
any
comments or anything like that right now
uh mr miller
hi mr aria i'm george miller for the
record thank you for your presentation
um even though um we las cruces may not
be the
the size that you have a direct
partnership with with um
brookings institute or they're not are
you not promoting or they're not other
like city groups across the country
they're working together and sharing
information
you talk about that a little bit if
you're still doing that or not i know at
one time they were
some of the cities that you were working
with started
forming coalitions or groups together
and trying to help each other
and that could be something maybe we
could leverage i don't know
absolutely absolutely so i think there's
uh so first i'll take kind of how
brookings works with cities and then
i'll talk about some of the other
um nationwide uh intermediaries that
would also be providing similar
guidance so brookings you know at one
level we do research and we share that
out and everybody has access to it
um at a second level we are
kind of soliciting through things like
webinars
or other like network what we call
network activities
the exchange of ideas between cities
um and those are usually done through
small cohorts because it's it's more
intensive so say eight cities will get
together
um the third way that brookings works
with cities is more
in this manner where we'll do um kind of
demand driven briefings
and then just through the networks that
we have
with other cities like this is my um
my answer to i think jolene's question
which is like we're happy to put you in
contact with
other people that are doing work that
you may be interested in if
but we're not obviously not the only
organization doing this so
the national league of cities is the
biggest organization that would be doing
this work they have an entire
portfolio of covid response activities
um the us conference of mayors which is
the mayoral association so the mayor of
las cruces
may engage with the u.s conference of
mayors
the national association of county
governments uh
is another one to the extent that the
county plays a really important role
here
and then you have other like networks
like the
association of chambers of commerce like
i don't know if debbie is engaged with
them
um so like yeah absolutely there's a lot
of information out there
and a lot of opportunities to join
webinars and learn about
different parts of this issue so i
wouldn't
i think it's a great point to say that
there are some ways that brookings may
be uniquely positioned to help
acknowledging our own capacity
constraints and and if we don't
we aren't the right fit there's national
league cities and other organizations
great thank you a follow-up question if
i may
um mr chairman when we talk about
inclusive
economic development when you're saying
the word inclusive some of the
three i think the three pieces you you
um
mentioned um touched a little bit on
that but
the structure of the of the city or the
people you get involved
can you talk a little bit about how to
get that inclusive voice
throughout the whole system to make it
really we could do three programs that
kind of help some workers but unless you
is it not true that unless we um can
embed that in the whole
structure then it's not really going to
go to the full effect
you can speak to that a little bit that
would be helpful
i think that is a it's a fantastic
question and
what what i'm realizing this slide it
includes a lot of
regional um intermediaries but what's
important about the center for economic
inclusion
uh their work is they've also engaged
with entities like the north side
funders group which is
a funder collaborative that supports
north minneapolis which is where which
is the
kind of traditionally african-american
community in minneapolis
and where a lot of the challenges around
racial inequity uh manifest themselves
and so the the that has been
the novel contribution of an
organization like this is they
they straddle credibility with what you
could call kind of
elites so governing elites or corporate
elites or philanthropic elites
and grassroots community groups and it's
through those grassroots community
groups like whether that's
nonprofits or churches or
other community-based organizations
they they have direct direct access to
residents
and what residents want i think the
challenge when
people are in crisis
is asking them to also
commit civically right it's kind of hard
when somebody's
barely keeping their head above water
for for them to kind of come out and do
a listening session
or a brainstorming session and so i
always find a lot of tension
in that where you absolutely do not want
to have
top-down solutions that don't actually
have people's lived experience in mind
and yet you don't want to put the onus
and the responsibility
on the already overburdened to come up
with the answer
and i think the the sweet spot is
working with the groups who are
kind of closest to those residents and
not
to come available and and kind of
comment on what the right
strategy could be i mean i'm this is my
own personal view on this stuff and
obviously there's a long
um there's been long to make debates
about how to do community engagement and
how to set policy i just i just think i
always find that there's this tension
where you need it for the for this to
work and for it to be credible you need
that community voice and yet
it's during times of crisis that it may
be hardest to usher it
because people are dealing with a lot
thank you mr chairman can i ask when
one final question i don't know if
anybody else has their hand up
do you from what you've what you've seen
what's the research you've looked at for
las cruces
and some of the things you've seen
around the company do you have any
specific um recommendations for
wakeboard for the
city of our size and with it
maybe unique some of the unique
situations that we find ourselves or is
that
it's kind of putting you on the spot but
if you have anything like that that
might be helpful
yeah i i absolutely understand the
question and and it's a good one i think
at one level it's a little irresponsible
for me to kind of comment on that
because i don't know lost crusades well
enough
i think to get beyond the generic
principles that i've offered
i will say that like what i've proposed
here
is in is both uh harder and easier in a
small
smaller community um it's easier in that
you
maybe you can kind of wrap your arms
around the different stakeholders
and you can get people together so it's
in a size where you can get some things
done
and people know each other hopefully the
challenge
also with scale is that you know you may
not have as many resources
as a larger community and you can't go
to the fortune 500 company and say hey
can you cut a check
which even you know a place like
birmingham can go do
uh where they have a big bank and a
power company and things like that that
are kind of invested
so i guess i say that my one kind of
point would be
you know to consider less about what are
the direct ideas i don't think i'm
prepared to comment on that but like
who within the critical
institutions in las cruces isn't a part
of the recovery conversation right now
and even if they can't even if they're
like hey we're not going to give you a
million dollars
you know to go launch your own thing to
figure out how they could plug in
with other types of resources so for
instance like if there is a
i know you have a university i don't
know if you have a business school but
if you had a business school who had
students who were interested in
accounting marketing uh finance like
whatever
like and would want to partner to help
small businesses
on some of these business model
challenges and you had
you know business professors that also
thought that that would be valuable
for kind of practical experience reasons
for their research agenda and for their
students
i mean that's a model that indianapolis
has been pursuing and it just makes you
i say it because there may be ways that
your anchor institutions if they're not
already engaged
could plug in not by cutting a check but
through
kind of shared interest and
and also probably civic commitment um
and and i know that probably isn't
exactly what you wanted but
i i ca to give more detail i'd really
have to know
more about what's going on i understand
thank you very much
thank you for that um next we have miss
debbie moore's hand is raised go ahead
miss debbie
i think mr chair uh sharon thomas may
have had her hand raised before mine
okay wonderful miss sharon thomas
okay let me unmute um i just want to say
we do have organizations in this
community who
have access to residents you know the
empowerment congress and the community
action agency
and so um in the past we've had
um good luck with those agencies helping
us get information to
the community members and
also currently there's a discussion
going on about new mexico developing a
public bank
and i think there's going to be
legislation come to the legislature
in 2021 and so on in that case the
state puts its uh funds into a state
bank rather than
someplace on wall street and that that
state bank then helps local bank help
local businesses and projects so you can
invest in a smaller more local
kinds of work it might be useful to have
the
public bank people give a presentation
to this group
as because they're working on their
legislation right now
that's just a couple of suggestions
thank you for that miss sharon um ms
debbie moore go ahead
uh mr chair i just want to this is a
great presentation thank you joe
as always brookings does wonderful work
i'm just a little concerned i want to
bring us back to
our roles i hear a lot of long-term
things here
i hear a lot of collaborations and a lot
of pieces to this
and i'm i'm just trying to put my arms
around what is the actionable item we
can move forward
potentially to the city council for
approval
um is there pieces of that is it
establishment of the center for economic
inclusion with all our partners
is it to go with the community trust i'm
just trying to
figure out what could be done in the
short term and then in the long term
because our direct directives from the
city council as they appointed this
board
was to cover the recovery period
and i i hear some things that are it's
actually going to be long-term
relationships and i'm very familiar with
birmingham strong and i've done some
research on birmingham strong so i'm
very familiar with pieces of this
and i think in our community mr chair
that's i think we've got several pieces
of this but i just want us to
try to think and maybe to link it kind
of how i mean i want an
actionable item that is very
sort of short-term and then we can move
to the long-term recommendation
maybe offline maybe the city would be a
partnership i just want us to keep
focused on what our uh ultimate
responsibility is
and directors from the city council
thank you mr chair
so just to just to help filter based on
debbie's comment i mean
so there was nine ideas that we put
forward that we all called actionable
they're actionable over somewhat
different timelines i would say
in terms of the three ideas that we've
presented that i presented today
the small business and worker uh kind of
retraining the service corps
those are much more near-term achievable
activities putting together a state
level
kind of investment fund or a public bank
or something like that is obviously
something that can help spur recovery if
you know if you're thinking about a 24
to 48 month time period which is
probably
what it's going to take for our economy
to recover um but
i i just appreciate debbie that you're
saying look like our job is to come back
with a couple of like
immediately actionable and so i would i
would just let people know that the
first two ideas presented i would say
are more immediately actionable
so mr chair just uh can i have a
follow-up
please debbie moore greater uh lost
chris's chamber i forgot to identify
myself
um i i think the advantage that we have
in our community joe just
i i think it's important is we've got
many of the workforce things already in
place
so i think sort of your second and third
actionable items is what
i think can be some of the short term uh
how we go about that
but i i just and i think the long term
of this would be a great recommendation
um but i think we've got the workforce
and some pieces of that in place work
with our workforce collaborative
but i also think there's some pieces
missing here
and so mr chair i just i just want to
reiterate again we just need to keep
focused on what shirt
short-term versus long-term thank you mr
chair
for that um
next up i have brooke montgomery miss
montgomery
thank you uh brooke montgomery for the
record
something that just um when joe was
speaking
it made me think about something we have
it and i miss nmsu
the mba program has students
who are in one of their kind of like a
capstone class
in the engineering department um they
form teams
and they reach out to businesses in the
community
and those teams solve real world
business problems
it's something that i don't think is
marketed very well but it might be an
actionable item
to reach out to them and see what their
classes are like next semester
and connect them to businesses to solve
problems that they're having right now
actually we were rude was a part of that
program
um the last two semesters we were we
were the case study
and they did a lot of work with that
even on the hr team
so that's actually a really good idea
that we can look into to get them
involved in
reshape reform and that would be pretty
cool cool
um said is there any other comments
questions or concerns we are at uh
1104 and we do want to keep these
meetings to about an hour and a half
uh so if anyone else has any comments
questions or concerns
for joe please raise your hand sharon
i just want to say that we could
ask the city council to support the
public bank
that would be a short-term action we
could do
all right thank you for that comment
miss thomas
anyone else have any comments as well
on the presentation that we just had
as i'm seeing none uh joe thank you so
much for joining us today if you can
actually i know that you said that you
had a link
uh to a couple things that you wanted to
get to us if you could
email that to um our staff or to me
and we can distribute that to the group
i'd be very appreciative of that
um and you probably will get a phone
call or an
email from me as well just on the
community foundation side because i
think that's some
really exciting things that we can help
with so i appreciate it
i'll share with francisco thanks
everyone i appreciate the opportunity
good luck
thank you so much
[Music]
okay with that being said um we just
went over the inclusive economic
recovery framework
through um joe and the brookings
institute which is really great so i
think we
have an opportunity to start thinking
about action items like debbie said
maybe something that is more
here and now and not 24 to 48 months out
but i do think those are going to be
important later on down the line
um so i think we should definitely be
looking at right now first
but also thinking creatively about what
we can do in the
in the far future um with that in
relation to that
uh with that being said let's go ahead
and start moving on to
the next part of the agenda which is
workforce scholarship for retooling
um and retraining i know that we kind of
brought that
up uh at the last meeting and i know
there was some concerns and questions
um legally if this was uh something that
we could look into
um so let's go ahead and start this
discussion this conversation and see
where we're at on this and see if this
is something
we can do hello everybody
um i just want to let you know that we
i have been working with different
individuals different groups
in the community to try and get more and
more information especially some of that
stuff that we kind of talked about last
time that you were wanting more
information on
um believe it or not it's been
challenging like there's
we're learning every day that there's
different um
points of metrics that we want to look
at that we
really weren't looking at before and so
it's not been
super simple sometimes to be like well
what happened with this demographic
what happened with these people well
what about this specific
for the for one specific county you know
we may know statewide what it looks like
but do we know down to the micro level
what happened
and so those are the things that i'm
working back and forth with the state to
get information on so i just want to let
you guys know that this is a work in
progress i'm trying to pull as much
information together as possible for you
so i'm going to share with you what i
have so far
i need to get screen sharing please
cindy can you help us with that
dominic
oh i think i got it let's see here we go
wonderful okay so
one of the the um i think
most important elements
of proposing this scholarship
um as it as it looks from the
perspective of the workforce system
currently i think is supporting
the alternative licensure and leap type
programs so basically last year we went
full throttle with the alternative
licensure programs
and um you know we've been working
together with a leap program
and uh you know we're working with we
you know we
were starting with las cruces public
schools and then we kind of started
working our way
out um in other areas of the southwest
but ultimately what we ended up finding
is that of course because it was a pilot
we ran into some trouble and i think
that either way we would have continued
to work it out
um you know and get to the point where
we could serve more and more people but
the challenge was is that we
for the first time ever expended all
three million dollars of our
of our training dollars and that's never
happened before in our region
um and so what we do know is there's a
need and we know we've identified it
what we need um to do now is um
you know work towards making sure we can
get that to more people
of course our board you know approved
more dollars to be transferred over
into the program and allowed for us to
continue serving people
however you know there are people who
don't
fit in the box for one reason or another
because as wonderful and well intended
as the federal programs are
they do have red tape on them and they
do have limitations in it and it makes
it um
challenging to be able to serve any
person who walks through the door
because every single situation is so
unique
um and so some of the some of the
challenges
is the funding stream firewalls we can't
double dip
and and ultimately um what happens is
that an individual
they go to a school or let's say they're
already working with the school but they
need to
they need to step up their licensing and
they want to move into another
area of focus or whatever it may be and
so
basically they get that that agreement
with the schools and then the school
and them work together with the higher
education
and then higher education works with us
um
and then we work you know with the with
the individual to get them eligible for
the tuition assistance
so um ultimately they already have their
position
somewhat secured by the time they come
to us and that's the way it works
so ultimately the teacher knows where
they want to work or they are already
working where they want to work
when they come to us and so if that
school happens to have the same type of
funding that we have
um but it you know of course it's being
utilized for some other purpose
um we can't fund it because that's
considered double dipping
and so those are that's one scenario
where one
may not be able to get assistance from
us
um and then the second one is the
federal eligibility requirements
um they're you know they're they're vast
and i think for the most part a large
portion of the population
does fit into that that criteria
um but there's there there are still
plenty that don't
um there's income limits um so of course
if you're dependent and the head of your
household and the only source of income
makes
fairly good fairly good money um you may
not
be able to do that but that to us you
know
is something that we don't want to limit
people
and what they can do as an individual
person because of someone else in their
household because that's not
their income that's not their career and
that's so we know we would love to be
able to say
what does it matter this person uh is
looking to
um move themselves up and have
self-sustainability
why not why not be able to do that but
of course there's limitations there
and then of course you know we're
looking for individuals with um
different types of barriers um you know
that of course their low income is
always one
um you know different types of
disabilities being a part of one of the
native
nations um you know uh there's so
there's different
different a laundry list of different
ones that we can
look at in order to find one eligible um
but believe it or not we run into people
who just don't fall into any of those
categories
and um in even though
for the most part it is really um
it's really likely that we can we can
finesse it and really really look
closely and dig deep
and and find a solution that that's
within the federal guidelines to get
them approved you know we just got to do
our homework
the trouble comes up when we
are like we were last year where we're
running out of funding
and we have to start scrutinizing a
little bit more
because the focus is always helping
those individuals with the most barriers
so if you have two people walk through
the door and one of them
has a disability has
you know is low income and they fall
under multiple categories and the other
one is at the high
end of the spectrum of income and they
have no other
disability they have no other barriers
of course when we're in a
in a point where we're low on funding we
need to choose
the individual that has the most
barriers because that's the point that's
the intention of the workforce
innovation opportunity act
and so you know it's not that it's not
possible to sometimes make people
eligible
it's that we're in a pickle we want to
make those dollars go
farther and we want to make sure that
we're serving the ones most in need
we do have to start raising the bar a
little bit
and um you know that's that's just the
unfortunate side effect of being
successful and running these programs is
that if you're successful
and you're spending all that money and
you're getting people training and
you're doing a great job
then you start having to tell people no
that you start having to turn people
away because you run out of money and
that's the
that's the stinky side effect of doing a
really really knock-up job
so i think um you know the the last
thing is going to be the program
restrictions and um and
and that's mostly speaking to the people
who are going into
for for college and or higher education
or technical training
because um as it stands we have to go
according to what we call in demand
fields and i'm gonna
there's a little more information about
this down at the bottom but um so they
if they're in demand um
they we go through a series of i don't
know whitman's tests i guess
of determining whether or not a field is
in demand and so we're looking at o net
we're looking at um
you know the market labor market
information we're looking at the
potential growth for that
field we're making sure there's actually
jobs for that individual in our region
and the
the hard part about that is that
sometimes the state of new mexico may be
considered as a whole um a good
industry for a certain sector but then
if you look uh if you
zoom in to the local area that the
individual is at
it's not so maybe in santa fe
uh considered a sustainable job with
growth but it may not be in las cruces
or socorro
and we have to go based on the local
area the individual is
in and so that's where it can become an
issue as well
so um although we know that these issues
exist
um coming up with the specific data um
is something that i'm having to work
collaboratively collaboratively with
uh lcps our workforce board the talent
collaborative and of course higher
education
and that's what i'm doing right now so
we we have a conversation going on right
now between several of us
uh you know with um wendy dr wendy
and um you know different people from
these different
organizations that are that are key
players in this process for these
programs and trying to get some more
actual data because if an individual
comes to us and says oh hey i want to
work at this school
oh well we already know that school has
uh title one dollars and we can't
we can't uh fund it there um
that person doesn't get logged anywhere
so we don't currently have a system to
to
log okay this is this many people didn't
get
um funding these many people didn't get
to join the program
we don't have that and now i'm thinking
maybe that's a process i need to develop
so that we are
we are tracking that because that's now
we know this is valuable information
um but that's not something we have so
i'm working with the school so that i
can try to get you guys some actual data
on how many people you know the school
sent to us
and came back and said they couldn't
help me and i'm hoping that we can get
some more information to help you guys
understand
that's just one piece of the demographic
though i mean we're talking about one
group it's a large group i'll tell you
that right now it's a large group
helping and filling the gap for the
alternative licensure programs is going
to be a huge
chunk of who this proposed scholarship
would help
because we have a huge demand and
and we know that um that's kind of what
tipped us over last year with our
funding is that we we launched that
program and it kind of just went over
the top
so as that information comes available i
will be sharing that with you guys
um from the schools um
so the sector the sector strategies can
limit dollars
so don't get me wrong the sector
strategies is something that has been
proven to be
extremely effective in creating career
pathways and developing
really efficient and effective ways to
spend those tax dollars and get
a community uh self-sustaining we know
that
and it's it's definitely something that
we need to do
um the scattered spending is is not
as effective in in the grander scheme of
things
as this more focused um
intentional process however though it
does still
limit the dollars because if the dollars
have to follow the
the fields or the sectors then what
happens when somebody wants to go to
school for something that doesn't fall
under one of those categories
what happens for uh entrepreneurs
um we know that entrepreneurs sometimes
they're not in a field that's considered
having sustainable growth
it may be something relatively new it
may be something that we need but we
just don't have
so if we're going based off the
traditional pattern that we use
to to determine if somebody can get
funding there's a high likelihood that
someone who is
trying to start their own business is
probably not going to fall under this
category they will not
we will not find it a sustainable field
so i mean not a sustainable it will not
be an in-demand field
and so we kind of almost completely cut
those folks out
which is really something i feel
like uh is unfortunate because i think
that some of the most
passionate business owners um that we
have in our community
and what makes our communities so rich
and uh culturally rich are those
entrepreneurs
so that's kind of where we it can get a
little bit difficult
is when we're we're looking specifically
at certain fields and certain
sectors um and we say this is where we
want to throw all of our our energy
and we want to focus on these first it
doesn't necessarily say we can't help
somebody that's outside of that
um but it does take um
it does take a little uh extra work
and and policy movement sometimes
to be able to do that like for example
the local workforce board
just recently approved film um so now we
have the ability to
use dollars for film because it's now an
industry in demand
so it's possible but it's not like we
can just do it and sometimes what
happens is the individual
kind of has a window and the window goes
and by the time we get the system to
catch up to what they need the window's
gone for them and so if we're looking at
this from the individual
standpoint it would be extremely
beneficial for them to have another
bucket of funding
that they could turn to if we weren't
able to
to um to help them right then and there
uh especially in those circumstances
where they kind of had a really good
opportunity
and didn't have the ability to you know
wait
four months for the system to catch up
so this is just some other information
that some of the
the folks on this call had asked about
last week
once again it's it's been a challenge
getting this type of information on a
local level
it's it's definitely coming into our
system but is there a report
where is the report who knows how to get
the report
all that stuff has been the sticky point
so basically all this information
is like me just bothering different
people
until i got it so we're working on that
i've been working with our state uh the
department of workforce solutions to
help us
um get better familiar with what the
capabilities of our system is so that we
know
how to pull this valuable data that
helps us make decisions about new
policies and programs
um but what i do have is um as i spoke
to you guys
um last week or i think it was the week
before when i did the presentation
initially about workforce
um all hands new mexico is the website
that the cabinet secretary
department of workforce solutions um
developed for in for
employers to be able to just jump on
there fill out a simple form and begin
the process of starting a job posting
within our system
um and then in addition to that we have
what we call rapid response and so the
department of workforce solutions
has to respond when there's uh
a closure when um there's a facility
that maybe
um they they shut down and they moved
something they could have moved it
overseas or maybe it just completely
shut down
and the point of that obviously is to
track that data and that information and
to track trending
trends there but it's also to determine
if in fact it was a massive enough
layoff
and we know that those jobs were sent
overseas
we have the ability to get the taa
dollars for each of those individuals to
be able to get unemployment for two
years
while they're getting a degree so we are
able to give them tuition our technical
training dollars
as well as extend their unemployment so
that they can get a degree
and or a technical certificate so that
they can actually write
bring themselves above where they were
at with the job they were in that got
um dissolved so
that's what the rapid response does and
so last week
they received notices from sunland park
race track and casino
there are 259 individuals that have been
furloughed
the employer did not wish for us to
engage with them um so that because
normally what the rapid response does
and i've done rapid responses before
is that we actually go on site and so
the employer will schedule times for us
maybe three or four times throughout the
day and bring in different groups
different groups you know 50 at a time
whatever it may be
right now we're doing them virtually on
zoom and basically we have
different segments one segment goes
through unemployment insurance how to
apply
what to expect and then um and then you
know
what i have done or somebody in my shoes
has done is they come in and they give
all the breakdown of what the workforce
has to offer
training opportunities etc so
ultimately that is what the racetrack
did not want they did not want us to
come in and do a zoom with their staff
to
inform them of what is going on so they
just sent us a letter notifying us um
and notifying the employees of what was
going to happen
um and so we will have to just
work on um as those individuals start to
apply for unemployment contacting them
individually
hrp body buying in grants new mexico 50
employers being laid off employees being
laid off
of course there's barriers in areas like
that with wi-fi so it makes it difficult
for us to do this so they're going to
have to do it by call
to talk with the unemployment talk about
the unemployment benefits with those
individuals
um navajo nation gaming i actually don't
know exactly where that's at
there was a thousand eighty one light
off chino mines
uh laid off 825 those have been approved
for those taa training dollars
so hopefully we'll be able to support
them and then our all hands new mexico
team
will be continuously following up with
those employers and the employees to
make sure that they have everything that
they need from us
on may 31st in period marketing
they closed and 128 employees at that
time
were laid off this is a permanent
closing those jobs will not be coming
back
on january of this year is actually
before the pandemic
389 folks were laid off with concentrics
and those individuals we believe those
jobs
were sent off overseas and they were
eligible for the taa dollars
and then kmart laid off 100 to 200
people
and so we know that those are permanent
closures as well
so this is kind of the the scattered
information that i get at this point so
i'm working on trying to
really get some isolated reports so that
we can
focus on each of the counties that that
we're overseeing in this region
but ultimately we know that
we are seeing lots of um
lots of furloughs turn into permanent
closures
and that's one thing i'm trying to get a
report on as we speak
because there was a lot of them that
started off as a furlough in march
and then they rolled over into a closure
unfortunately
when they weren't able to reopen when
they thought they would
we have 181 companies that have reached
out to us and
just last week 236 job orders were put
in
there's 1 315 job openings
and 617 have been referred
we've referred individuals to those jobs
so
we we are working
with the department of workforce
solutions to figure out how we can work
together with the local
uh you know the community colleges and
the different
organizations to try and get this
sustainable
work at the at the focus point um
you know we had a whole bunch of other
plans before covid
but now we realize that we have to focus
our dollars on sustainable work
meaning work that will be around whether
we have a global pandemic
or you know natural disaster whatever it
may be
and so we're trying to work together to
figure out what are those what are those
jobs
what is it that we want to invest extra
in
even if it's not traditionally
the highest paying jobs in the world
it's a job and it's sustainable and
it'll help carry people through
uh economic crisis so the last thing
is how much does workforce spend on each
participant on average
and so for tuition not including
the credentialing test per term
we're spending on average 1 155
and 87 cents um so it just depends on
you know of course what kind of
credential this person is going after
and um and and of course how costly it
is you know
different different credentials or have
different costs associated with them
we also cover supportive services which
is
child care transportation medical needs
i mean it's a pretty long list of things
that we can help
people with and the point of that is if
they're in training
if they're um you know if they are in
the process of
on the job on the job training so
they're working um
but they're still in one of our programs
if they're trying to get their high
school equivalency
any of those things we want to make sure
they're successful we want to make sure
that nothing stops them because
traditionally the thing that stops
people from completing their credentials
are life um are just unexpected
uh life experience basically
and that's i i'm having a human
experience right now you know i'm
i'm home right now with with three kids
and it's challenging and we're we're
trying to work and and they're going to
start school soon and here's all these
challenges you know there's child
challenges with child care there's
challenges with uh anything you know
what happens if you
um you know let's say a parent was um
was there was a two-parent family and
both of them were working in order to
pay the rent
now one lost their job um you know that
changes the dynamic
you know suddenly the other one may need
to pull extra shifts
and you know can you still go to school
work two shifts take care of a family
probably not so you're more likely
to just go ahead and quit school and so
ultimately the goal is okay do you need
child care sure
do you need help paying your rent are
you late on your rent we'll pay for that
well we're doing whatever we can do to
make sure that there's as much
as least amount of reasons to give up
before completion as possible and so
what we think that we have um
you know for on-the-job training
um is 11 000 per
contract which means it's about the
six-month period because we pay
we reimburse the employer up to 75
percent
of the employees wages for up to six
months while they're training
now the on-the-job training doesn't have
as many limitations it just can't be
entry level that's the limitation
it has to be something that's kind of a
step up at least from the entry level so
it has to be sustainable
we also have a limit where the minimum
they can make is 14.62 an hour
so of course for a smaller employer that
you know really could use this program
but can't afford to pay that kind of
money probably can't participate in this
program
we have the ability to get waivers but
we can only do so many of them in each
area and we usually
tap out of that real soon in the py so
that would be one area where these
scholarships also might be able to be
utilized is that if an employer is
hiring
that they can only pay 11 an hour
you know you may be able to support that
through a scholarship and and do a
similar thing to the on-the-job training
program
to essentially help get someone into a
new job
and help an employer get themselves back
on their feet so it's kind of a
two-edged sword so
ultimately i'm still working right now
to find out what we need
what our tuition assist i mean
supportive services is
um because i know that's something that
the city will probably want to know like
well how much money
in addition to that you know uh 1200 or
1100 um are you guys paying to make sure
they're successful
the other thing i'm working with the
board on is to see if we would still be
able to do supportive services
um even though we weren't paying for the
tuition or weren't paying for the
on-the-job training so let's say
it's an individual who comes to us they
don't qualify
um because xyz reason
so then we refer them to the city of las
cruces scholarship
they get funded through there but
technically they're still enrolled in a
program
so um can we still do supportive
services
so they can still come back to us if
they need child
child care so that's something else that
i'm trying to work with the board to
determine
um but um this is gonna you know be a
developing story here in the next
couple weeks um does anybody have any
questions so far
um nothing yet but i will remind you
that it is 11 30
and we probably need to start wrapping
the meeting up here yeah
i'm good that was my last that was my
last page so
um i will let you guys know um
as i get more of that data um and i will
try to
um work with well we'll probably be
working with griselda and
francisco to really form a good
proposal a tangible proposal
for how this could uh how this could be
rolled out
perfect and then did we ever get the
legal
question asked of whether this violates
the um
the what is it called the anti-donation
clause
that new mexico has do we have the
answer to that yet
miss martinez or francisco
mr chair this is crusader martinez for
the record
we are still pending to have
more information on what the
no mr chair uh can you hear griselda
or was she lost
i know she was having internet
connection problems mr chair
yeah she's frozen okay the the only
thing that i wanted to mention is that
uh once we have
the full proposal uh at that point we
can take it to
to uh our legal department for review
but we will have to have the full
proposal on
in order to know exactly what it entails
and then from there being able to move
forward with it
so so with that legal question it's it's
i guess the answer to that is
still standing by uh pending the
proposal the full proposal
and i think you viewed it mr chair
mr chair i think you're muted
that was my only real question uh
through this
um i think that it's a great idea to get
those
uh dollars into people's hands to help
further training so mrs lopez i
i really do thank you for this
presentation it was very thoughtful
very well organized and i think it
answered a lot of
my questions that i had the last time um
mr harris i see that you do you have
your hand racer
uh yes michael harris for the record um
yeah that was a very thorough
presentation
um i guess the thing that caught my eye
is that you mentioned that there were
1315 job openings currently
um and it seems like if there's people
posting jobs right now that those are
pretty interesting to focus on so i was
curious a if you knew what those were
real quick um
but if not you know going forward i
think
that that's an interest that's a very
interesting number for us to look at
you know short term um because
that's where where the jobs are
yeah i can definitely um get a get a i
have that
report on um what employers by industry
and then
by the actual name amount of positions
and things like that so
i can get that
awesome thank you uh
any other questions for miss lopez
as i am seeing none um i would recommend
that this be a
do you think miss lopez that we're gonna
have any real actionable items for next
week or do we need to put this off maybe
um until the following week
are you back on
she is there i'm sorry my my computer
just disconnected so i had to switch to
my phone
um mr chair i
believe that we would need as i was
saying talking to myself
we would need to have a proposal that we
can run through our legal department and
have
their legal opinion so i would recommend
um if possible for this to be an
actionable
item in a couple of weeks rather than
next thursday wonderful okay so we will
we will push this off until
we have a better proposal ready to go
so um we will take this off the agenda
for
next week's discussion um with that
being said is there any other
questions for miss lopez or are we
pretty much good to
move on with this
as seeing none uh we're gonna go ahead
and move on
to future discussion discussion items if
there are any
discussion items that anyone has in mind
that maybe we need to look
into or consider we had this great
presentation from the brookings
institute once again um
that was awesome thank you mr miller for
really suggesting that i learned a whole
lot today
um and then we also had the presentation
by ms lopez
furthering the discussion on the
scholarship that we could possibly bring
to the table with the city of las cruces
um does anyone else have any um
any possible discussion items that we
can do
michael harris you had your hand up
first sir
uh sure michael harris for the record um
so i have three things that i noted
that we could possibly bring up to the
city in the short term
um it sounds like increased ppe
availability
like you know making it available for at
lower no cost to local businesses
would be an interesting thing that the
city could do
the birmingham something like the
birmingham service corps model
also seems like a very interesting
short-term
item and maybe even you know workforce
connections could help
cross-fund that in some way
with their training dollars um and then
another action item that we could
bring up to the city i think that um
this sharon thomas brought up
was that we could suggest that they they
have a resolution or something in
support
of the state public bank
and that's all
okay so we have several ideas as a
public bank goes
i don't even think there's been a bill
yet to suggest to the legislature
correct me if i'm wrong i have not seen
anything
um so i don't know if we can necessarily
suggest to the city council that they
support something when they don't know
what they're supporting
because there is not a bill yet
but besides that i think those other
ideas are really good i see two other
hands raised
ms sharon thomas
um yes there has already been a
presentation to the council about the
public bank
and they were in support and um
the public bank people are i have the
document right now that's
that's for the legislation and so
they're going to be going forward with
bringing a summary of that to various
councils and commissions around the
state
and so i don't think we're quite ready
to
to bring that to the council but i can
get a timeline for you
and some some if we need
if people in this group want a
presentation so they understand it
better
we can probably do that but um they're
close to putting together
the legislation and they will be and
they're working on
garnering support from all over the
state at this point
wonderful thank you
okay um mr miller
i think uh most everybody covered my my
um
my ideas i think also that because the
um
ppe it could be more than that the
businesses need so they could
we need to probably find out what they
what they urgently need to open up
that's
causing them extra expenses by co
because of coving so
he mentioned things like grants or
technical assistance and pp but so could
expand that a little bit service core
thing i think that was right
the only thing about the public um bank
still we can still influence it if we
need to i don't know if it was
discussed further about the community
the community um
buy-in i guess or ownership of parts of
that whether we want to try to recommend
anything like that but
that's just open for that's the only
things i am
okay thank you for that um
so we have a couple recommendations uh
as far as discussion items go
i
far as the ppe um supplies go
to businesses i know that the state has
a program
i don't know if there's any way that we
can piggyback off of that
and or what we can really um
do or say but i definitely think there
should be a city-wide initiative
with that uh miss debbie moore you do
have your hand raised and i yeah
you're probably gonna be paradox chamber
we
we be in the chamber are still giving
away
a mask we still have a supply
at the office and certainly um
i was just on a call this morning where
there's some opportunity
for us to get more involved in the ppe
uh process i.e
sanitizers gloves things of that nature
um so there are some initiatives already
being done
um mr chair i do have a question um
maybe
you are sharon could answer it i've had
i could have had a presentation
of the public uh bank concept
um and i guess my question would be and
make sure i'd be able to answer it
are they do they have a direct tie to
recovery with regards to covet in their
legislation or potential
legislation
as i have not read the legislation i am
not the proper person to
speak to that does anyone know i don't
i have no idea
ms sharon thomas yeah i can check i
haven't looked at the entire document i
have right now but um
i i'm i think part of their argument
will be that especially in these kinds
of
crisis times a public bank could provide
intel
um enormous support to local businesses
so um i can just give a short report on
that next time if you want i'm
i'm about to finish reading the proposed
legislation and and i can get in touch
with the people who are doing this and
see what their timeline
is
that would be great um maybe if we can
not do it as a discussion item and just
email it to
the board for a future discussion item
um to see where we're at on that
because i don't know if anyone has any
thoughts on that being a
discussion topic i don't know if it's
time to do that and
mr harris um michael harris for the
record
yeah as somebody who's also very
interested in that i think it would
i think it would be useful to uh have it
emailed we could read it over and maybe
discuss it in a couple weeks
yeah so if you guys can email that um
to francisco sharon uh
he will distribute it to the board and
the board can review for the following
meeting for a discussion item
um in two weeks i think that would
probably be the best option for us
say that again sharon i'm sorry
no i just said okay i can do that
they're working on a real
short description that i can send around
okay perfect thank you um
okay and
so uh mr harris you did say something
what was your wording on your
discussion topic that you said earlier
um let's see i had the ppe one
the um the local service core
was the was the second
okay and what do you think this board
can do with the local service corps what
would be your
actionable item with this um
[Music]
i think my actionable item would be
just i mean suggest that the the city
expand its
we already have done some programs that
i think fit some of the pieces of it
and so maybe the discussion item would
be
you know look at the city the programs
that the city city's done so far
i know they've sent funds to fyi to do
lunches and things like that
[Music]
and maybe have some support for testing
sites
we could look at the programs that the
city's already done and then
look at maybe what the differences are
between that
and what say birmingham has done that
seems like a very specific example that
was
in the presentation and then prepare a
list of
you know here's the gaps and present
that to the city and say
here's what we suggest to to help
address these gaps
we should expand these programs and
maybe add these others
okay so what you're asking then is for a
presentation by the city of current
programs we have going on
is that correct uh yes and specifically
towards uh the the things that maybe
directly employ people by the city or
use
city employees who are furloughed or
provide
funds to organizations
to service organizations and directly
employ people um
i think we've had a pretty good
presentation discussion
of technical business assistance
programs
um so i think we're probably covered
there we don't need
to to rehash that um
so yeah that's that's what i think we
should hear
okay so let's go ahead and then get that
on
the agenda for the next meeting
um miss martinez you do have your hand
raised
hi this is jolene martinez for the
record um
thank you michael for recommending the
service corpse we do have
some similarly situated service corps
here in las cruces already
so at fyi we run an americorps vista
program
um and then there's also the mrscs the
medical reserve corps
they're actually actively working right
now with some stand-up
sites serving the medical personnel that
have tested positive for covid
and they're actually being isolated in
these isolation stations being supported
by the county
and so we have a big number of medical
reserve corp
individuals here volunteering and
working and
there's a lot of medical staff teachers
retired personnel
that are part of the dona ana
communities united and so there's a lot
of different
service corps organizations that already
exist in dona i think maybe the city
could play a role
in how we bring them together for
employment strategies of unemployed
individuals and to me a big portion of
that was identifying
um not just who are those that are are
unemployed but who are the ones that are
most at risk and
already existed in that 54 wage equity
gap
and making sure that we're reaching out
to those individuals for employment
first
and prioritizing that gap but i would
agree that i think a service corps is
something that maybe the
uh city could respond rather timely to
employing a small number of individuals
for a very targeted response
um during covet and then help support
those individuals back to their natural
job environments where they were
prior to to kobus i think that's a good
topic for us to continue
wonderful i like i like those okay so
discussion item we have two
one is going to be an increased effort
on distributing
ppe gear um
a discussion of what we can do or what
we can recommend with that
um i know that the county has done a lot
of work with that there's been a lot of
uh social media pushes of people out in
front of the county building
distributing so that will be one
good topic that we can talk about and
it's something that can probably be done
pretty quickly
um another one is gonna be in line with
what we've just been talking about and
the community action
uh kind of like um the last christmas
strong initiative that we've had going
on for years kind of doing something
like that almost is what it sounds like
so i think those are two great
discussion items
um and then we can go forth with the
scholarship initiative and any other
future conversations
on that um on a following week
with that being said uh i think those
are two very good and very strong
conversations to have um so that kind of
concludes our future discussion items
for the next couple weeks it sounds like
we do have
quite a few things to consider um
with that being said let's go ahead and
go into any discussions
uh does any or any announcements or
anything going on
if anyone has anything to announce with
an organization or a nonprofit that
you're with or something that might be
related to
a meeting that one of us can join in on
to kind of get more information
please let us know raise your hand and
let's hear that announcement
okay seeing none i will oh
griselda yes ma'am
uh chair this is crystal martinez for
the record um
i wanna uh let you know that tomorrow
there is a
zoom meeting um organized by the greater
chamber and this is to
talk about availability of ppp
that it's gonna be ending on august the
8th
so for any business that it still
hasn't been served by this opportunity
this
is almost like the last opportunity uh
for the upcoming week for them to
connect
to a service provider so um if you
if you can let others know that would be
great and debbie has sent
a an invite with the information to
login into the webinar so that's that's
a
time sensitive item that would be very
helpful for businesses
thank you mr ter perfect
um i think that is a great
uh announcement anyone else have
anything that they want to announce or
talk about
as i see none i will entertain a motion
to adjourn the meeting
mr chair i i'm sorry this is let's go
for the record the only thing that i
wanted to mention is that uh
it's a motion to adjourn and a second as
well we need a second
thank you yes sir
i can suck it now can't i this is
starting to focus for the record
yes you can all right i second
thank you so we have a motion and a
second to adjourn i would call this
meeting um
adjoined have a great afternoon everyone
and have a great week and we will see
you next time okay